Outlaw Princess of Sherwood (5 page)

Yet Etty stayed where she was, frowning down on the encampment as if it were a puzzle she could solve somehow. The sun rose higher, drying the melted frost from crags and bracken and prickly holly leaves. The wood larks flew away, the robins and wrens quieted. Hawks circled in the high sky. Down below, a few travelers walked the Nottingham Way. A peasant driving a yoke of oxen. A charcoal burner with his load of wood piled on his donkey. A dark-cloaked figure . . .

Etty stiffened, wondering if it might be Robin Hood in his idiotic disguise again. But no, this was a smaller man, and she could see his matted beard hanging. It truly was one of those accursed Wanderers this time. One of those roaming foreigners with their black hair and black eyes and their sad, narrow faces. At the sight of him, Etty's nose wrinkled as if she smelled something bad. She felt entitled to sneer, for everyone hated the thieving, begging Wanderers with their hoards of gold. Everyone said they lent gold to rich lords, and demanded human flesh in return. Folk said that they stole babies from cradles and raised them to be witches. Folk said they possessed the evil eye, and that if one of them walked between two men, one of those men would die.

Etty did not believe in the evil eye. But the beggary, the thievery, the hidden riches, these were common knowledge. She could see how the soldiers down below had frozen like songbirds when the hawk flies over, silent and wary as the accursed one passed. Etty's lip curled like her nose as she watched the dark-robed figure slip by.

Once it was out of sight, her body relaxed. Time inched on. Etty sighed. Had the sun ever before moved so slowly in the sky?

Along came a peddler in a cart, trundling by almost as slowly as the sun. Later came a swineherd driving his pigs, and later yet, a knight with his squire trailing him. All turned their heads to stare at the encampment, the lady in her cage. Etty felt her face burn with mortification for her mother.

Otherwise she took small interest in the travelers, even the knight shining in his mail, even a page boy on an aristocratic white pony. Etty did give a moment's regard to the pony, slim and sleek and pretty, for even at a distance she could see the bright yellow plumes nodding between its ears, matching the plumes in the page boy's hat above his long, curling yellow hair. Quite the dandy he was, what with the hat and the hair and a tight crimson tunic and perfectly fitted yellow hose above tall leather boots. Etty blinked as she saw him enter the encampment, sweeping off his hat as he approached her father's canvas castle of a pavilion. But then she forgot about him. Some lord's messenger, that was all.

The sun crawled like a yellow snail toward noon. Somewhere, monotonously, a cuckoo began to call. Annoying bird. It laid its eggs in other birds' nests. Backdoor bird, folk called it, because of the way it came and went when no one was watching. If a man's wife were unfaithful, folk mocked him: Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Calling him a cuckold because someone had been sneaking in his back door.

Bracken rustled slightly, and Etty heard a panting sound. She turned, then smiled. Tykell, her escort today, stood waving his plumy tail and breathing his meaty breath in her face. He licked her ear, then turned around three times and lay down on the sun-warmed rock beside her.

“Ready for a nap, Ty?” Etty murmured, stroking his thick fur. But her smile did not last. Down below she saw that her father had emerged from his pavilion. Father, like a lead soldier—no, an itsy-bitsy leaden king—was stalking around the encampment and, judging by the way he flailed his arms, roaring orders.

The cuckoo kept calling. “Hush,” Etty muttered.

“Cuckoo!” It perched almost over her head now, in the holly, so close she could see its sleek gray feathers, its beady amber eye, its yellow bill gaping as it called. “Cuckoo!”

“My father's not a cuckold.” Mother was a virtuous woman. All the more reason that Father should not be treating her this way. “Go away, backdoor bird—”

Etty gasped, and her eyes widened. The cuckoo did not go away, but she forgot all about it, sitting bolt upright, staring at the scene below. Mother seemed to be lying down on the hard, bare floor of the cage, maybe warming herself in the sunshine, maybe even napping. Nothing else had changed. But Etty whispered, “Yes! That's it!”

Stiff from her vigil, she struggled to her feet. “Ty,” she told the wolf-dog, “I am an idiot. Come on, let's go find the others.”

 

“I am an idiot!” she cried to the others when Ty had led her to them. They took no notice, preoccupied by the task at hand. In a secluded glade of Sherwood Forest, they were butchering a deer. The air smelled of new green leaves and violets in bud and innards and blood. Ettarde did not mind the guts and blood, but she noticed that Lionel did; he stood with his back to the deer—even though he had shot it, apparently. The skin lay at his feet. “Your kill?” Ettarde demanded.

Lionel nodded. “Better one full-grown stag than a dozen yearlings,” he grumbled.

There it hung by its hocks from the limb of an oak, its elegant head dragging on the ground, looking silvery naked with its skin off. Robin and a couple of his men were doing the butchering. They would receive a share of the meat, Etty knew, for this was not a fallow deer or a roebuck; it was a massive red-deer stag, with so much meat it would spoil before Rowan's small band could eat it all.

“Well done. Even your great belly could not eat so much venison,” Etty teased, trying to cheer Lionel. He hated to kill. But someone had to, if the band was to eat. Rook brought in fish he caught with his bare hands, but it was not enough. Etty could shoot a bow, but she was no hunter. And Rowan, a fine hunter, could not yet follow the deer. She was still limping. Also, Rowan had all the gathering of herbs to see to. So it was left to poor overgrown-baby Lionel to kill game for meat. Etty smiled to herself, knowing that she and the others would hear Lionel lament for days now.

Rowan saw the smile and returned it, perhaps thinking the same thing. Sitting with a mass of mistletoe in her lap, she plucked its cure-all leaves, which had to be gathered before the berries appeared. Next Rowan would be looking for nettles to heal sores, then mallow and mullein for poultices and colds, agrimony and camomile for fever and bellyache. And holly and hyssop and coltsfoot and comfrey.

“I am an idiot,” Etty told her.

“How so?” Rowan inquired gravely. “I have no cure for idiocy.”

Forgetting to be either a princess or an outlaw, Etty bounced in place like a puppy. “I
was
an idiot, but I have it now!”

They all turned to her—all except Tykell, who began devouring scraps. Rowan put aside her mistletoe. Rook, who had started scraping Lionel's deerskin for him, stilled his knife. Robin stood with his jerkin sleeves rolled up and his bare arms bloody, organ meats in his hands. “Have what, lass?” His voice sounded hoarse from his cold.

Lionel demanded, “You know how to rescue your mother?”

“Yes. No. I mean, not exactly. Sort of through the back door.”

They stared at her blankly.

“Back door,” Etty repeated as if they were quite dense not to understand. “All I was thinking is Mother, Mother, rescue Mother. But I can't. Father has her at the center of Fountain Dale, with all the guards in the world stationed around her. But
his
pavilion is off at the edge of the clearing. There are a few guards, but they won't be expecting us. If someone can make a little diversion at the far end of the dale . . .” Etty looked at Robin Hood, then at Rowan. “An odd noise or something, just enough to distract the guards but not enough to make them raise the alarm, then Lionel and I can get to him before—”

“Now, wait!” Lionel peered at her. “My dear lady, why me?”

“I'm
not
your dear lady. Why you? Because you're big enough to carry him off.”

“But—but—but—”

“Lionel, no more
but
s! You know you're going to do it.”

Rowan said in her soft way, “Instead of rescuing your mother, we capture your father?”

“Yes!”

“And his ransom will be her release.”

“Exactly.”

“Well thought!” Robin was beginning to grin, even as he coughed into his rolled jerkin sleeve. “‘Tis a worthy plan, forsooth. But does he keep no guards in his tent, lass?”

“My father? No. He hates people.”

“But he'll slice us to bits!” Lionel burst out.

“That's
your
father, Lionel. My father is a scholar, not the kind who sleeps with his sword. He thinks too much to make a proper king. He's afraid of the dark.”

“No! Truly?” Robin exclaimed.

“Truly. He's noble on the outside but a coward within.”
The opposite of Lionel,
Etty thought. “He won't fight us. We must see that he does not cry out, that's all.”

Rowan murmured, “It sounds almost too easy.”

“And afterward?” Robin asked. “What are we to do with our good king Solon the Red, lass?”

“I'd like to hang him up like yonder deer!” Etty sighed, blowing away her sudden anger, then spoke with the calm her mother had trained into her. “But I suppose I must somehow make him let my mother go. And let me be.”

I
n the darkest mid of night an owl gave its ghostly call. A fox barked. A mouse squeaked. Etty, who was the mouse, knew that the fox (Robin Hood) and the owl (Rowan) had taken their positions. In a moment it would be time to move.

Crouching in the shadow of a giant oak tree with Rook on one side and Lionel on the other, Etty focused just to one side of the guard she was trying to watch. Trying to see in a moonless, cloudy night was like trying to see a dim star. The guards near Mother's cage kept fires going to warm themselves and to see intruders by, but at this end of the clearing there was only a whisper of firelight, and in the woods not even that. By not looking directly at the guard, Etty could just barely see him standing about ten paces away, yawning, at the edge of the clearing, between her and the back of her father's pavilion.

Father, lying asleep so near her . . . Without warning, Etty's thoughts jolted back to when she was a child, her father's little princess and his little scholar. Lacking any surviving sons, he had taught all his learning to her, even though girls were hardly ever educated. He would summon her to his throne and show her off before visiting lords. Had he . . . was it possible he had loved her then? Or had she been just another of his prized possessions, like his golden drinking goblet or his well-trained horse?

It doesn't matter
, Etty told herself, jerking her thoughts back to the present. Most assuredly he did not love her now.

And she would never be anyone's possession again.

Where was that guard? There. Still in the same place.

From the far side of the clearing voices sounded. Guards calling to each other.

“What was that?”

“A wolf!”

“No, a dog, fool. What would a wolf be doing—”

“It's a wolf, I say! Shoot it!”

Ettarde smiled to herself, listening, knowing what would happen next. She and Rowan and the others had grown accustomed to what had once seemed almost unbelievable.

Sure enough, the man shouted, “The brute caught my arrow!”

“Fool, what are you talking about?”

“He caught it in his mouth! Snatched it right out of the air.”

“This I have to see. Shoot another.”

The guard turned his head to see what was going on, then left his post to get a better look. It sounded as though most of the guards, if not all of them, were gathering at the far end of the clearing to watch Tykell leaping to clamp his jaws onto arrow after arrow, snagging them in midflight like a swift darting after mayflies.

Signaling Rook and Lionel by touching their hands, Etty ran forward as silently as she could. She could hear Rook loping almost soundlessly on his bare feet and Lionel thudding along behind her—the big lout, surely the guards would hear him! But no one raised the alarm as she sprinted through the hazel bushes and across a few paces of open clearing to crouch, breathing hard, in the shadow behind her father's pavilion. She could hear the wild boy and the oversized minstrel panting beside her.

Then there was a ripping sound. As planned, Lionel was cutting a way into the pavilion with his dagger. Soft yellow light spilled through the rent: candle glow. Within the tent, an expensive beeswax candle stood burning uselessly in the middle of the night. Mirthless, Etty smiled. Yes, her father still required his candle for comfort in order to sleep. Likely he still required his sleeping draughts, too.

As Lionel cautiously spread the opening he had made in the canvas, Etty could see her father lying there with his pointed beard in the air and his hands symmetrically tucked under his chin, over the coverlet.