Will in Scarlet (26 page)

The sheriff was holding his head with one hand as he stumbled, groggily, into the hallway, blocking Sir Guy’s path.

Sir Guy shouted a curse at the half-conscious sheriff and swung at him instead. The sword connected with a slash against the man’s chest, but the sheriff’s armor turned away the blade.

The sheriff cried out as he stumbled backward, and Will found his opening. The sheriff’s fall brushed Guy’s sword aside, and Will lunged. It was a move that went against all his training, a full-force stab that would leave him defenseless if he missed.

He didn’t miss, but Guy swerved at the last instant, and Will’s blade scraped along the Horse Knight’s ribs instead of finding his heart.

Sir Guy cursed in pain, and Will fell onto his knees. Both lost their swords.

For a moment, their eyes met. There was an ominous creaking of wood as the floor shifted beneath their feet. Each of them had a split second to act—to decide. Will leaped toward the open passage door while Guy tried for the fallen blade.

Will landed hard on his stomach—he’d made it inside the passage, but in doing so, he’d had the air knocked out of him. He could barely roll over in time to see Guy standing in the hallway outside the door, his sword raised, the flames behind him lighting his grinning face like a demon.

The hallway floor gave way and Sir Guy disappeared, falling into the raging fire. Will heard a scream beneath the rumble of the falling wood, then nothing but the roar of the flames.

Wasting no time, Will shoved the sheriff into the open passageway. The man practically fell down the ladder, but Will didn’t let up. Together they ran from the collapsing building, fleeing into the underground blackness of the dirt tunnel.

Down there the air was cooler, and the smell of burning wood was replaced with the sweet smell of earth. It was dark, and so they stumbled on blindly through the tunnel, eventually relying on their hands and knees to travel.

Once they were far enough from the blaze to feel safe, the two of them collapsed in exhaustion. There was nothing to hear down there but the sound of their own breathing.

Will had played this meeting out in his head a hundred times since the day Geoff was murdered. What would he say to the man who’d been a friend to his family for years, only to betray them in the end? In his fantasies, his daydreams, Will delivered such a speech as to make the sheriff burst into tears and beg for forgiveness. In others, he’d done away with words and used a sword. But if he’d really wanted the sheriff dead,
he could’ve left him back in the burning castle. And as for the power of his wounding words, well, he really couldn’t think of anything to say.

The sheriff prided himself on being practical, a survivor. But what the last few months had revealed about him was this—he was weak. Too weak to stand up to Prince John. Too weak to control Sir Guy, until he was forced to by the threat of a peasant revolt on his own lands. He might not have meant for Geoff to die, but by bringing Guy’s mercenaries into the castle, he’d been responsible. Let him live with that for the rest of his life. Let him try to control Nottinghamshire now that the people saw him for the puppet he really was. Let him wonder at the boy who saved his life this day, and what a small, cowardly man such as him could have possibly done to deserve it.

Finally, the sheriff spoke.

“Who are you?” he asked, his voice hoarse and full of pain.

“A ghost,” answered Will. Then he stood and began walking again, feeling his way through the dark.

“Wait,” called the sheriff. “My leg’s hurt. I can’t go as fast as you!”

Will didn’t answer, and he didn’t slow down. He stumbled out of the underworld and left the sheriff alone in the dark behind him.

John had carried Much throughout most of the journey to Sherwood. She was ashamed, looking back on it. John had spent days locked up in the stocks, he’d been beaten and whipped, and yet there he was, carrying her like she was some infant girl. Even after she’d stopped fighting him, after she’d given up the thought of running into the burning castle, he still carried her. When she’d buried her head into his big chest and cried so softly that only he could hear, he carried her.

When they reached the boundary of Sherwood Forest, John finally let Much walk on her own, but he kept his eyes on her. Nine Merry Men made it out of Shackley Castle; only one had been left behind.

Will Scarlet, bloody stupid Will Scarlet, was dead.

The old camp was no longer safe, so they made their way deeper into the forest, to the old crone oak. By the time they reached it, the men were asleep on their feet, and they collapsed at the foot of the tall tree, exhausted. After a rest, Wat
and a couple of the others went to fetch water while Rob and John set about making plans. They needed weapons, money, and food. Will had been carrying the coin purse they’d taken from the hidden cache, but if Rob was angry about their secret stash being looted, he didn’t say anything.

Much craved solitude, but John wouldn’t let her wander far from his sight. He worried that some of Crooked’s Men might have fled back to Sherwood after the fighting had turned against them, and he didn’t want anyone walking these woods alone. Much was too tired to argue.

She found a tree to climb instead. Despite the stupidly awkward dress, she climbed one she’d been up in before, when John had first shown her the old crone oak. It was a tall fir with enough cover to hide one from below but a good view of the forest floor in all directions. She’d spotted it almost immediately. Near the top, she found her old perch. Carved into the trunk was a sun and a moon, for father and daughter. She would’ve added a third, a star, but she’d lost all her knives.

She stayed up there the rest of the day, until the smell of cooking meat and a rumbling stomach lured her back down.

Wat had caught a brace of squirrels and was roasting them over a crackling fire. The men were drinking fresh water they’d hauled back in their caps—not a pleasant thought to touch Wat Crabstaff’s cap, much less drink from it, but she was thirsty.

John and Rob were still bickering over their next course of action.

“We need weapons,” John was saying. “What are we going to do if we run into Crooked’s Men? Wave?”

“You’ll just uproot a tree and swat them with it,” said Rob. “Isn’t that what you’re used to fighting with anyway?”

John threw up his hands.

“We’ll find weapons,” said Rob. “But let’s take a day or two to rest first. If Wat can do a little more hunting—”

“I almost had a rabbit, but he nipped me on the thumb,” said Wat, showing everyone the swollen bite. “Might turn rabid now.”

“If Wat can find us food before he turns rabid,” Rob continued, “we can get our strength back, and then, in a day or two, we hit the South Road. See if we can’t convince some kindly travelers to part with their silver.”

“And how do we do that without weapons?” asked John.

“That’s how we get the weapons!” shouted Rob, his patience gone at long last. “It’s not like Herne the Hunter or some woodland spirit is going to appear with a box of money! We have to steal it! That’s what we do—we steal things!”

Rob took a breath as John mumbled something too quietly to hear.

“In the meantime, we’ll have to make do with clubs and throwing stones,” said Rob. “You can handle that, can’t you, John?”

The men’s bickering eventually faded into a low roar in the back of her brain, and Much stared at the fire and remembered something Will had said to her. He’d told her that there was a time when it was necessary to become someone else, as he had. As she had. She’d been Much the miller’s son to protect Marianna the miller’s daughter, but what use was protecting yourself when you were already wounded near to dying? Who was she hiding from now?

“John,” she said, but the big man was too busy arguing with Rob to hear her.

“John!” She shouted this time. Her voice echoed out among the trees.

“God’s blood, what is it?” he asked. “You’re bound to wake the dead!”

Everyone else had gone quiet. Rob looked at her, his eyes curious.

“Yes?” said Rob. “You have something to say, Much?”

“I need to tell you something,” she said. “About who I really am.”

“You are Much,” said Rob. “You are a thief and a ne’er-do-well and a proud member of the Merry Men. Who you were before doesn’t matter. Whether you are Much the boy or Much the girl, it doesn’t matter. Not to us.”

“Matters a bit to me,” said Wat.

“Shut up, Wat,” said John. “What Rob’s saying, lad—er, girl—is that we all of us were once something different than we are now. You think Rob was christened Rob the Drunk? Or Robin Hood, for that matter?”

“We’ve all got pasts,” said Rob. “It’s what you are now that counts. And what you do.”

Much nodded. She’d been afraid of her secret so long that it was hard to let go of that fear. Especially when her heart was already pained with grief.

“Besides,” said John, “I always knew you were really a girl.”

“No you didn’t,” said Rob.

“Hey,” interrupted Wat, sitting suddenly upright. “You hear something? Something out there, I mean?”

Rob gestured for quiet as they listened for something amiss in the night sounds, but all Much could hear was the buzz of insects and the crackle of their fire. She squinted against the blackness, but the wall of trees was impenetrable.

“Sounded like someone calling,” whispered Wat. “I swear.”

They were at a disadvantage. It was night already, and in the dark the glow of their fire would be visible to anyone
approaching. Much and her companions wouldn’t be able to see farther than twenty yards into the trees. They’d been too tired to set up a lookout, and anyone could be out there now.

“There,” said Wat. “There it was again!”

That time Much heard it, too. A voice calling out.

“Crooked’s Men?” asked John.

“They wouldn’t let us know they were coming,” said Rob. “They’d just come. With swords.”

The voice called out again. This time Much could make out names.
Rob, John … Much
.

Much bolted to her feet and ran for the trees, ignoring Rob’s orders to wait. She burst through the stinging branches and tripped over roots hidden in the dark, nearly breaking her ankle in the process, but she got back up and kept running. The voice was getting closer, and soon she could see a shape stumbling through the trees, heading for the glow of their campfire.

She called his name and he answered her, and when she bounded out of the brush, he wrapped her in a great hug.

“I thought you were dead,” she whispered.

“Nearly,” he answered.

Then he loosened his hold on her, and she looked up into his soot-stained face. His eyes caught the firelight. Two tiny orange specks in the dark.

“I thought I wouldn’t see you again,” he said.

“Will …,” Much began.

He leaned close.

“Hey!” a voice called out from behind them suddenly.

Wat appeared out of the trees, pointing. “Will Scarlet’s alive!” he shouted. “And he’s filthy!”

“Up before me? That’s a break in tradition,” said Rob, yawning and stretching as he stumbled over to the edge of camp.

Will was seated on a fallen log, watching the sun come up between the trees. He made room for the bandit leader—for that’s what he was now—and tried to take a deep breath of morning air. It ended in a painful cough.

Rob gave him a light pat on the back. “You all right?”

Will nodded as he rubbed at his sore chest.

“You swallowed a good deal of smoke in the fire yesterday, I’d imagine. Your lungs will hurt for a couple of days, but you’ll feel better.”

“I’m not up before you,” said Will, clearing his throat.

“What’s that?”

“I’m not up before you. I just never went to sleep.”

Will had spent part of the night tossing and turning on the hard ground. Long after the rest of the band had given over to exhaustion, Will found himself unable to sleep. At first he was frustrated, but soon he just accepted it and lay there staring up
at the stars. Once the fire had burned low, he found a fallen log and spent the night there, alone with his thoughts.

Rob scratched at his beard. “Was it John’s snoring that kept you awake? Some nights I want to plug his mouth with his socks, I swear.”

“No, I was just thinking about everything that happened,” said Will. “You know, when I lived back at the castle, I used to begin every morning the same. Same breakfast, my clothes laid out the same way. Ever since I came to Sherwood, I don’t think I’ve woken up in the same place twice.”

Rob looked at him. “They make it a habit of setting out clothes for steward’s sons back at Shackley?”

Will shook his head. “I’m not a steward’s son. I’m—”

“I know who you are,” said Rob. “I’ve known all along.”

Will looked up at Rob. In the morning light, his eyes almost shone. So unlike the bloodshot eyes he’d first seen in that tent these many weeks ago.

“Word travels, and I caught wind of a story that Lady Katherine and her son were on the run and that they might be traveling separately for the coast. I think Gilbert had it guessed correctly, too.”

“Gilbert knew?” asked Will. He had been so careful in his story, and here these men knew all along.

“You were trouble from the start, and your story about the treasure was the only thing that kept you alive.”

Will still couldn’t believe that the secret he’d been so careful in keeping had been so useless. He felt foolish. Childish.

Rob must’ve seen the look on his face. “Don’t go berating yourself because a few of us sussed out your secret. Truth is, in the end, it doesn’t matter. It’s not about who you were, it’s about who you proved yourself to be, Will Scarlet.”