Outlaw Princess of Sherwood (9 page)

“A bit of wine,” said Mother thoughtfully, “just a few sips to settle my stomach, would be lovely, and I'm not likely to remember anything about it at all.”

“Did I hear a little bird sing of wine?” The man-at-arms gazed at the sky. “What a good idea.” He strolled off, leaving his mantle lying on the floor of the cage.

Etty lunged up, burst out of the bushes and ran like a deer toward her mother.

Elsinor of Auberon sprang to her feet, scattering mantles and blankets. “Daughter!” she cried. “Oh, my darling!” She lunged to her knees at the edge of the cage, her bare arms reaching through the bars.

Etty spent only a moment in her mother's embrace. Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them back; she had to be able to see what she was doing. “Wait just a minute, Mother,” she whispered, and she tugged herself free, her rough fingertips snagging the linen of her mother's chemise.

“Ettarde, your hands!” Mother said with shock in her voice.

Darting to the cage door, Etty had to smile. Mother hadn't changed.

“I can't keep my hands soft and white in the forest, Mother,” she called as she studied the large padlock that secured the cage.

“Truly?”

“Truly. Not if I want to eat.”

“Well . . . have you at least been taking care of your teeth and hair?”

“Yes, Mother.” Ettarde pulled from her pouch one of the strong steel bodkins she kept there. With a faraway look she probed the padlock.

“What's going on here?” said a man's gruff voice with phlegm in it; either he had a cold or he was getting old.

“Oh, Captain!” Mother sang in nightingale tones, as sweetly as if she were receiving visitors in the solarium at home. “How nice of you to come see me. You know my daughter, Princess Ettarde?”

“Pleased to meet you,” Ettarde mumbled without looking up from the padlock she was picking. Mother was playing a desperate game, she knew, trying to get the captain to pretend with her that nothing untoward was happening. . . . Oh, blast. Out of the corner of her eye, Etty saw a second man join the first.

“And this is the sergeant of the men-at-arms, dear,” Mother said.

“Delighted.” Etty felt herself sweating. How long could Mother charm them into doing nothing? Confound the padlock, it was not cooperating. Etty thrust the bodkin into her belt and tried another one.

“Call your soldiers,” said the gruff voice to someone. “Seize her.”

“No, let her go.” The new voice had to be the sergeant. “She'll lead us to the king.”

“Is your head filled with fish guts? She has come for her mother. Why would they flee toward the king?”

A pox on everything, she had to get this padlock open now, quickly—

“
Mon foi
, shall I search for you the key, mademoiselle the princess?” asked an unexpected voice.

Etty jerked her head up, so startled she nearly dropped the bodkin. Then she blinked, startled anew, for right beside her stood a lovely white pony, saddled and bridled, its harness decked in crimson and yellow, with a yellow plume nodding between its ears. Beauregard, of course, held the reins, resplendent in his plumed hat once again, grinning wickedly in its shadow.

“You!” Etty gasped.

“
Probablement
it shall be in the breeches pocket in the pavilion,” Beauregard continued.

Etty could not catch breath to answer. Her head spun, seeing him there, this boy who was supposed to be her accursed enemy, once again offering to befriend her. She couldn't think, let alone move, but she had to move, do things, free Mother. And it did not help her to see most of the men-at-arms gathered around as if for a cockfight, watching.

“I go search the key,
non
?” Beauregard offered.

“No,” Etty whispered before she knew what she was saying. “No, stay here in case . . .” In case she needed him. She trusted him, blast it all, and she liked him. She had liked him from the first, and her heart had never led her wrong before. Was he really such a scoundrel as he seemed? Etty suspected not. Somehow that fake accent of his, and that devilish grin, calmed her fears. Things couldn't be too bad if Beauregard was still able to annoy her.

Just at that moment, things rapidly got worse. “Men,” yelled the captain, “seize her!”

Etty gasped and took one last stab at the padlock, giving the bodkin a wild twist, and she felt the lock's iron innards give way at last. It fell open. She pulled it out of the latch. The cage door swung wide.

“No!” the sergeant yelled at the advancing soldiers. They hesitated, glancing at one another.

Barefoot, looking as fragile as frost in her chemise, Mother pattered forward to the door of her cage. “What a lovely pony,” she told Beauregard.

“For you to ride, my lady.” Beauregard swung the pony around for her to mount. “Her name, it is Dove.”

“How sweet of you.” The smile at the corners of Mother's eyes showed that she knew she was being absurd. But just the same, Mother would not give up her courtly courtesies unless blood started to flow. As seemed all too likely.

“
Seize
them!” the captain roared.

“No!” the sergeant shouted just as loudly. “Follow them.”

The soldiers surged and muttered like waves of the sea, washing forward, then back. Beauregard grasped Queen Elsinor by the waist and set her upon the pony, lifting her easily although he stood no taller than she did. Etty grabbed the mantle lying at the edge of the cage and threw it around her mother's shoulders. Clicking his tongue, Beauregard tugged at the reins, urging Dove into a walk. Etty trotted to her mother's side.

A rough hand grasped her shoulder from behind.

Etty snatched her knife from her belt and struck. Whoever he was, he swore and jerked his hand away, but there were more captors now, more hands grabbing, clutching. Ettarde flailed with the knife, seeing no faces, only arms and grasping hands, a wall of men all around her.

Through the pounding panic in her ears she heard a hunter's horn blow three notes as soaring and joyous as the song of a lark. “Robin!” Etty cried.

There was a surge of sound, brush crackling, feet tramping. The soldiers around Etty froze. She dodged through them.

Ranged along the edge of the clearing stood two-score archers in Lincoln green, their six-foot yew bows drawn to the fullest, each with its clothyard shaft's honed-steel head pointed at a man-at-arms's chest. The men of Auberon outnumbered the outlaws three to one, but the soldiers weren't wearing their helms, most of them had laid aside the heavy quilted tabards they wore by way of breastplate, and some of them had even laid aside their weapons. They stood dumbstruck.

“Step back,” commanded the tallest outlaw, Little John, and the soldiers did so.

From the forest strode a towering, brown-clad youth even taller than the outlaw captain. “Are you all right, my dear little lady?” he called.

All of Etty's fear melted into exasperation.

“Lionel—” The lummox, he could see she was fine. “I'm not your dear lady!”

Atop the white pony, her mother smiled at her over her shoulder. “Come, my dear little daughter,” she called with a quirk of laughter in her silver voice. “We've tarried long enough. We really should be going.”

A
ll right, Beauregard,” said Robin, looking as vexed as Etty had ever seen him. “Explain.”

“
Sacre bleu, mon ami
, what is there to explain? I go back to get Dove and my hat, that is all.” Under the brim of that large plumed headgear, Beauregard rolled his sparkling dark eyes. “Why you shout at me? You think I leave Dove with those varlets who speak rudely to her and give her the forage fit only for cows?”

“Trickster knave—”

Etty burst out laughing. She couldn't help it. Imagine, Robin Hood calling someone else a trickster?

Robin scowled at her.

“Robin,” Etty told him, laughing, “everything is all right. Let it go.” The sun shone fairer than the king's gold, Mother sat on a throne of soft deerskins with worshipful outlaws clustered around her, Father had been banished into the giant oak tree's hollow trunk, and all was well compared with what it had been. Etty wanted only to enjoy the peace of the moment. “Judge a tree by its fruit, not by its leaves,” she added.

“Euripides,” Beauregard put in.

Etty gawked at him, but managed to continue her thought. “Beauregard helped me free my mother. And he came back here, didn't he?”

Robin said grimly, “What I need to know, first of all, is how he got away.”

“
Mon foi
, why you not say so?” Beauregard could not have been more infuriating if he had thumbed his nose. “
C'est facile.
Easy. I climb inside the tree until I find a little hole, and out I slip, then away through the branches like a, how you call it, a squirrel.” He flashed a grin.

Robin's eyes widened. “Lady have mercy.”

“But I think the king Solon will not climb so,
non
?”

Once again Robin scowled. “Beauregard, I don't know what your game is—”

“Game? Why do you think I am playing a game?” Beauregard flared. By the way he squared his shoulders and dropped his Frankish accent, Etty could tell he meant it.

“You think I am a spy?” Beauregard challenged.

“I don't know what to think.”

“Robin,” Etty put in, “it's simple. Judge the tree—”

“I heard you the first time.”

A gruff, unexpected voice spoke. “I was welcomed for less reason.”

Several heads swiveled to stare at Rook, sitting there with his grimy hands on his scabby knees, his strand of the silver ring hanging by a thong on his bare chest.

“All I did was keep my mouth shut,” he growled.

“You could have betrayed us,” Rowan said, “but you did not.” She turned to her father. “Just as Beauregard could have betrayed us—”

“And may yet do so!” Robin lifted his hands in appeal. “He comes here with bleached hair and a false accent and you want to trust him? We are
outlaws
! We cannot afford to let down our guard.”

Although no one restrained him, Beauregard stood watching and listening, something impish dancing in his dark eyes.

Robin went on. “He's hiding something. Why would he wish to join us when he held a favored position at court? Why would he return here after I had imprisoned him? He
must
be a spy! There can be no other reason!”

Etty spoke up placidly. “But there
is
another reason, and I believe I know it.”

Several heads turned toward her at once. Rowan stared. Lionel peered. Robin frankly gawked. And Beauregard stood like a startled deer.

“Toads,” Rowan murmured, peering at him, “you're pale. Are you all right?”

His dark eyes looked huge in his white face. He did not answer.

“There's no shame to your secret,” Etty told him.

Still he did not speak, but just stood there poised as if to leap and flee.

Etty sighed and turned to Rowan. “Do you remember,” she asked, “when I first met you, you were dressed as a boy, but I knew you were a girl?”

She heard someone gasp, perhaps Beauregard, and other voices murmuring, but she kept her eyes on Rowan, because it was always a treat to see Rowan smile.

Rowan did not fail her. She smiled like a summer day. “As I recall,” she remarked, “you knew it because I showed such good sense.”

“Is that what I said?”

“Yes, indeed it was.” Rowan turned her smile on Beauregard, and Ettarde looked up to see that his fine-boned face had gone even paler than usual.

“In Rowan's case,” Etty told him, “she had very few choices. She could serve the lord of a castle in all the ways such a lord usually uses a young woman, or she could wed some peasant for the sake of safety, or she could disguise herself as a boy and travel to Sherwood Forest to be with her father, Robin Hood.”

Beauregard's eyes widened.

“You didn't know?” asked Ettarde wickedly.

“Etty, stop it,” Rowan chided. “Don't torment him. Or her.”

“You think he's a girl?” Robin demanded. “Why?”

“Because I've been using my brain, as someone once said I should.” She gave him her most serene glance, reveling in the look on his face, as she went on. “Why would a page boy, a favorite of the high king, chuck it all to be an outlaw? I'll tell you why.” Her voice softened. “Because soon her body will start to betray her. Already, maybe, she has to bind her chest. When her hips widen, or her voice fails to change, someone will guess.”