Maid Marian (30 page)

Clym had everything neat and ready in the stable, with poor Stephen’s body slung over the steed’s back like the sack of meal he truly resembled. Together we put out our candle’s flame, eased open the wide stable doors, and slipped our horse out, taking care to replace every gate softly behind us. I led our horse across the open fields where my feet tripped over broken earth and fallow, but I was grateful just to follow a path that was free of guards and steered us away from the brightly lit gatehouse. Our roundabout path cost us precious minutes, but ’twas worth our while to leave no trace, no guard with a memory of our passing by to alert the lady when she rose in the morning.

As soon as we reached the hard-packed road, Clym bid me a hasty adieu and broke into a run, for he was commissioned to reach Denby Manor before any alarm came from Sencaster, to tell Robin that our moment had come and that I was approaching with Stephen in hand. As I’d promised the lady, I’d sent a rider for Denby Manor to draw off Sir Thomas, and I hoped and prayed with my every last fiber that when Clym reached my love, Sir Thomas would be gone, already riding on his way to the north.

Left alone in the dark, I continued on, keeping to the good road as long as I was well protected by the cover of blackness. Stephen’s light body shook and jostled on the steed, but I saw that Clym had lashed him on so there was no danger of his slipping off. I cringed at the pain I knew he would feel when he awoke after such a night, but with a sigh I turned my face to the road, telling myself that this was Stephen’s contribution to his rescue.

Time and timing had me frightened, so when I could I jogged with the horse, leading it behind me for mile after mile. And when I grew weary I slowed to a walk, keeping my mind from spooking itself by calculating the pace of our travels and checking on Stephen and the tears in his sack. The night was strangely loud on the road, perhaps more so on account of the terrors I’d so recently witnessed. As chilling as the manor had been, whispering with silence, the woods were more alarming still—wild and stormy, alive with strange sounds. They made me feel ghastly alone.

A
T LONG, LONG LAST
the sky in the east began to grow paler than its fellows on the compass rose, and my own heart began to lift. That night was done, it would exist no more, and this day I might land in Robin’s arms if I could make a swift enough pace. I kept my eye firmly on that sky and on the sun as it raised its nose, and when the clouds grew sharp and rosy, I spied what I’d been hoping for. Sherwood Forest loomed ahead, and I bent our steps in that direction, thrilled to take refuge under its cover.

Through Sherwood Forest I would manage a short-cut, following the same path Clym had traipsed during the night. Better still, here I knew we would be safe from prying eyes and Sencaster guards. I had no notion how long it might be before Lady Pernelle noticed me gone, and I feared our odd incident in the night might make her thoughts turn back to me more frequently than I wished. But within these woods I felt secure, and I turned my thoughts to Robin’s face and let it lead me, footfall and pace.

The sun was already overhead when at last I heard some sound from Stephen, a low moan and a twitch of the sack that made me halt the horse where it was. I loosened his ties and cut the sack from off his head, surprised to see his face still white, though splotches of pink began to warm his neck and beneath his eyes. As well as I could, since he at fifteen was larger and heavier than I, I grasped his arms and helped him slip down, easing him to his feet and the earth. His legs, of course, proved too weak to hold him, and he landed like a dropped poppet, all wrists and ankles to every side. He fell on top of me, but that was no matter—I was thrilled enough to see that he lived.

Soon enough I had him positioned on the ground with the sack as a pillow, and I watched and waited for his eyes to open and his brain to exhibit some sign of intelligence. His body most clearly was awake, for his fingers flexed and his legs twitched, but I awaited assurance from his face.

In time his eyes began to flicker, a moan escaped his pale lips, and I leapt up and dashed for the water sack to wet his mouth and wipe his face. His battle to resurface to life proved as violent as Orpheus’s own journey had been, for he gasped and whimpered as if his whole being were laced in a net of hellfire. Watching, I felt a second time glad that I’d never chosen this potion for myself, for its effects upon the drinker proved brutal indeed. But I reminded myself that in Stephen’s case he would otherwise have died, and this helped me watch his shakes and tremors with a more settled and patient heart.

After many minutes of terrible palsies, he awoke enough to take a drink, and then another, and then I saw a faint flush return to his marble cheeks. He blinked at me many long minutes before recalling who I was, but when he did he seemed well pleased, glad to have conquered his own sluggish head.

“Kate,” he whispered, his voice strained. “What . . . Can you tell me? What has passed for me this night?”

I nodded slowly and crouched beside him, holding the weight of the water sack while he drank again. I also drained two doses of an herbal liquid into his mouth from vials that Clym had gathered for me, the treasures of Lady Pernelle’s own store. These would help to ease his pain and let him breathe in some comfort.

“Indeed, Stephen, I can tell you the tale, but I must warn you, ’tis a strange one.” I spoke in French, though for the moment he was too weak to notice the change. “And you must speak out if you feel overworn, for as you can tell your body has been through a dangerous bout.”

He nodded weakly and lay his head back, appearing all sagacity and calm.

“You may recall the events of last night, how you and your mother sat in her antechamber and drank your nightly cup of wine.”

With a start, at my words, I could see he recalled even more than I, for a yellow look of anger came over him, and he started up upon one elbow.

“Cruel woman!” he cried, still weakly. “I know, Kate, what passed last night. I knew the instant I sipped that wine that there was something unnatural in it. I screamed at her then and told her so, that I knew she’d killed me, wretched, foul woman. She is mother to me no more. But she smiled and tried to smooth my hair, while I felt such pain, such fire in my throat, that I knew I faced my own grave. But how came I here, Kate—am I not dead?”

“You are not,” I said, in the firmest of tones. “You live, Stephen, I swear to it.”

“Hold, Kate—how do you come to speak French to me? What devilry is this? How does a village maid learn the tongue of kings, and so well?”

“If you listen close, you will understand. All will be clear as I tell my tale, but you must promise to rest and listen.” As if in answer, he reclined again and composed his face to make me easy. “You once asked my friend, Nicholas Atwood, how I came to have such bold opinions for a maid servant.

“The answer lies, quite simply, in the truth that I am no born servant. I come not truly from Titfield town, but was born and weaned in Denby Manor. I, dear Stephen, was born Lady Marian Fitzwater of Denby, and I lived my young life in Warwick Castle, awaiting the day when I should again claim the land of my parents.”

I saw his eyes light with recognition, for of course my name was not strange to him, but I held up a hand to keep him silent and continued on with my wild story.

“When I was but five years old, as you well know, I was wed to your brother Hugh by instruction of your mother. I assume this was done in harmony with my parents’ wishes, for by that time they both were dead and had been long buried.

“Hugh and I were youthful friends, and though we grew distant as we aged, my heart still grieved to hear of his death, and I undertook to mourn for him with a willing heart. But at that same time, your mother tricked me into losing my wedding dower, for she and the queen had the marriage annulled, and I was left with no more for my marriage than my original lands of Denby.

“You may see, now, after hearing this tale, why I was not keen to enter again into the house of Sencaster Manor, for I had once been cruelly misled by your mother and knew a life lived at her side would bring me nothing but misery. And so when I was engaged to wed you, Stephen of Sencaster, I fled from Warwick, thinking that I would give up my title, my noble birth, and my own lands in order that I might gain my freedom.”

“But did you escape there on your own? For you disappeared so completely, we all were certain you had died.”

“Aye, that was a lucky stroke, for just as I was about to give up all my hope and perform the marriage, the bold outlaw Robin Hood”—here I gave Stephen time to gasp—“arrived to help me slip from the castle. Together we went to Sherwood Forest, where I lived a full year among the outlaws. I’ve resided in Denby since, till I formed my current plan of coming to Sencaster in disguise to serve your mother.”

“But Robin Hood?”

“Robin Hood is the selfsame Nicholas Atwood, formerly cook to Sir Thomas Lanois. We are both of us living false lives in hopes that we might trip up your mother and Sir Thomas and so regain what is rightfully mine, the land of Denby.”

It took some moments for Stephen to fully accept the notion that he’d sparred at quarterstaffs with the famed Robin Hood, but when he had recovered at last and thought through my own tale of disguise, he desired to know how he came to be here with me, a part of my plan. I explained then how I’d owned a potion that could perform the magical feat of making a body appear to be dead.

“When Lady Pernelle bade me find her a draft of poison, with which she meant to kill you, Stephen, I substituted my own powder for it. This, sadly, is the one you drank that caused you such pain, but as it also brought you again to consciousness, I trust you will not think meanly of me for having used it. In the night, last night, you were laid out, your masses were said, and your grave dug, but an empty coffin was buried inside, and you passed the night on the back of that horse while you and I fled this far south.”

My words stunned him, for I suppose the description of his own grave and masses shook him as deeply as the angel of death himself might have done. But at last he roused himself to the present, to the blue sky flashing above his head and recalled that he was still of the earth.

“And whither do we travel now?”

I smiled to hear these words from him, for they made it clear that he’d traced the full path of the slumbering bear, sleeping through winter, but rising in spring, famished and restless, ready to hunt. I paused in my tale to coax him again to the horse’s back, promising a recital of every last word as we made our way through the brilliant forest. The sight of the steed made him rub his ribs, but in time he consented and mounted again, riding this time as a proper man does rather than a parcel of meal.

We spoke at length as we pushed through the brush, and at last I made Stephen see his place in our scheme and the value of his aid. When we neared the far edge of the wood, he paused to thank me, in ringing words, for saving his life from his mother’s cold hands. For now that he felt the full weight of it, his voice was quiet with emotion, and I believe I saw the glint of tears.

Chapter Twenty-six

I
N TIME
we reached the Blue Boar Inn, Robin’s old winter haunt, and here I exchanged a stack of silver and our horse for two fresh mares. Newly seated on these, Stephen and I bent our heads to the wind and rode fast as we could, for the hours of daylight remaining were few, and I longed to reach Denby Manor this day.

As we rode, I glanced to the right and left and recalled that sad day when I’d walked this same road on my flight from Sherwood to Thetbury. How different the fields appeared to me now, how changed the fallow marshland seemed! And it was not only the change in season, for where before I had seen them in summer, I now passed a land that seemed thick with slumber, as a man who’s taken his fill at table and now has settled for drowse and sleep.

Nay, more thoughts than these filled my mind as we rode, for I pondered the change that my own eyes brought to the view. When I had walked this way before, I’d reached my course’s deepest lowland, the dark valley bog where moisture sits and seeps out from the cloying earth. But now I flew on the raven’s back, climbing higher with every heartbeat, alert and eager in the clouds’ thin air. I nearly laughed to think on it. And when I realized the urge, I did laugh, for it seemed to me that there was no greater show of my change than to laugh now where I could not even bring myself, before, to smile.

S
TEPHEN AND
I
RODE
swiftly on. As the sun began to set that day, catching stormclouds in its golden net, he said he spied Denby Manor. In a minute more I saw it myself, barely distinguishing its dark mass from the whirling clouds that moved overhead, and I urged my horse to give it her last and take me on to my lover’s arms.

Robin had been on the lookout for me, for he came from the gatehouse as we approached. I leapt from my horse and ran to him and was caught up in so full an embrace that I nearly wept from the joy of it. We stood together there a long moment, rejoicing in our own reunion, until we heard Stephen make a cry of pain, for he had tried to dismount alone and had caught his foot in the silver stirrup.

“Now then, Stephen, you’ve had a hard night. Let me help you, lad,” Robin cried, dashing to catch the boy.

Stephen, still startled by the knowledge that the Denby cook was the hero of the midcountry, gaped a bit as he was let down and turned to Robin with a stammering voice.

“Thank you, good Master Atwood. ’Tis pleasing to make your acquaintance again.”

His formal words made Robin laugh, and soon enough Stephen’s shoulders eased, and he relaxed with a laugh himself. No one, I’ve noticed, can long depend upon formality when Robin is near, for something in his smile and laugh makes everyone long to be his close friend.

O
NCE
S
TEPHEN WAS SAFELY
on the ground, Robin became serious, for he had a quantity of news to share. Sir Thomas’s guard, he told us both, had been toppled that morning by Will Scarlet’s band. A score of Will’s men had arrived in the night, and just as the sun was rising Robin had smuggled Will and David of Doncaster inside the manor dressed in cooks’ garb. From there the task had been fairly easy, for creeping about the halls in silence, they’d managed to surprise both the captain of the guard and his assistant still in bed, and had bound these men and locked them away.

“When once the masters of the men were gone, ’twas as easy to crush the rest of the lot as to get the juice from a soft apple, for they knew not which way to run. Will waited until the hour of the shift change, when the men are wont to report to their captain, and then sent a signal to his men outside. They attacked from this end,” he said with a thumb jerk toward the manor front, “while we trapped and caught men from the other. Soon enough we met between, and the manor was ours, simple as that.”

I praised his sharp thinking, for I was truly impressed. As I spoke, I gazed about me and was pleased to see the very faces of the Greenwood tree now poised about the manor gatehouse. Some waved at me and called me “Maid Marian,” and I greeted them back as best I could, calling each man by name as I saw him. Inside I met with David of Doncaster and Will Scarlet, happy to see them looking well despite their long year away from Sherwood. Will, indeed, looked much the same, but when I spoke with him at length, I found that he now carried about him a new air, something solid, which came, I supposed, from the weight of managing three score men in an untamed forest.

Together we passed a merry evening, sitting before the great hall fire, toasting one another with sweet Gascon wine. Robin, I saw, was pleased as a schoolboy to be surrounded by these friends again, and he told them tale after tale of his adventures and listened with patience to all of theirs. For his nephew Will he had the strongest praise, both for his skill at leading his men and for his bravery, and it warmed my heart to see Will blush to hear such praise from his uncle.

We were all well pleased, though fear of the morrow hung round our heads like smoke and shadows. Robin feared that one of Sir Thomas’s men might escape and ride for London or for Prince John. Will fretted over the number of archers Sir Thomas might bring on us in the morning, and whether we’d have strength to repel them all. But I alone worried over Lady Pernelle. None but me knew how swollen her wrath must be, how eager she’d be to crush the maid who had deceived her. I shared my fears, then tucked them away, determined to stop them from eroding one whit of my joy this night.

Only the call of our shared bed could pull my love from his friends, but that call was strong as drink to Robin and soon enough we let them be. That night, as our guard kept watch through the tempest, I lay abed with my head resting on Robin’s shoulder and thought how close our dream now stood. We slept that night in the master’s bed, that very same that had been Sir Thomas’s and, not so many years before, had no doubt belonged to my parents. I thought of them, lying here in our same places, perhaps thinking of their coming child, and I turned my face closer to Robin and buried it in his warm skin.

W
E ROSE EARLY
the next day’s morning, both more nervous than we chose to admit, for in our deepest hearts we expected to meet Lady Pernelle in all her anger that day. Whether she would come attended by an army or a limited guard we could not guess, but Will’s men were all well prepared, and Robin told me again and again how little it mattered how she arrived.

I spent the morning wandering the halls, popping my head into every chamber, hoping to light some memory beyond those I’d formed in my childhood visit. But for all my efforts, nothing came, and with a sigh I admitted aloud that I had been too young to recall either my parents or their home. The servants were instructed to pack up every last article belonging to Sir Thomas, and as I moved from door to door, they paused and called me “Lady Marian,” in voices that were nearly reverent. They thought I had died, they confessed to me one by one, killed by the same sickness that had felled my parents. Sir Thomas, it seemed, had encouraged the spread of this lie, for even when I visited as a child, he had addressed me as Lady Marian of Warwick and left no hint of my honest connection to Denby and to this house.

I questioned them all to see if one might have known my mother or tended my father, but most knew the Fitzwaters by name only, and those who had served in their day seemed to know them no better than dear Meg Tamworth. But even so, I was pleased to see that they bore me no grudge for having done away with Sir Thomas so abruptly. Each one said she knew the Fitzwaters were the rightful heirs to Denby-upon-Trent, and they all seemed glad to have things “put right again,” as they said.

Pacing these halls raised a nostalgia for my childhood days, and I cursed the fate that had brought me here, but left Annie far off in Wodesley village. I wanted her near now, to talk over old times, to remember the fields and woods of Warwick and the long afternoons we both passed there. I suppose I felt as close then to my own lost mother as I ever have, and feeling this way made me yearn for my surrogate as for nothing else.

In the afternoon I waited with Robin and Stephen in the great hall, each pretending not to twiddle our thumbs as we paced from hearth to door and back. None of us, I knew, could be calm until we had dealt with Lady Pernelle, and Stephen especially seemed to sway in emotion from shaky nerves to a bitter silence. I did not envy Lady Pernelle the look she would face in her son’s eyes, but as I knew she deserved it all, I did not waste my sympathy on her.

At last when the sun had slanted its way deep into the western sky, we heard a commotion at the gatehouse and, dashing to every stairway window, we hastened to catch a view of the scene. There, indeed, were Lady Pernelle and Sir Thomas seated on horseback, bickering with our men at the gates, acting as if they bore no heed to the three score arrows aimed at their heads. For Robin had posted men at every lookout and cranny on the manor’s facade where a man might crouch, and Denby Manor now resembled some strange sea creature, all bristly with arrows, each one directed at the lord and lady.

At last Lady Pernelle surrendered, calling off the ten guardsmen she had thought sufficient to serve her here. She and Sir Thomas were led inside, and we three hastened to take our places, determined to look at perfect ease when our prisoners were presented to us.

In they came led by Will Scarlet, and I need not describe the shocked expression on Sir Thomas’s face when he saw me seated in his high chair. Robin, standing at my side, thanked Will and dismissed him, for we had little fear of our prisoners as one was too aged, the other too fat, to cause a great stir. Indeed, they made a humorous pair, for Sir Thomas was all shock and amazement, while his partner stared with formidable anger, allowing nothing to catch her eye or shake her silent composure.

When we had been left alone, she came forward to peer at my face, and at first I thought she might spit in my eye. But perhaps a look at Robin, so near, caused her to reconsider.

“Hateful girl!” she hissed instead, fixing me with a look that told me she had realized our entire game. “Don’t think you can continue to play me false, Marian Fitzwater. Thorn though you have been in my side since the day you were born, you shall not triumph over me. The world of court thinks you dead, do not you know? And they shall allow no dead girl to seize the manor of Denby—you have no right to it!”