The Ghosts of Sherwood (The Robin Hood Stories 1)

Most of these people would follow Robin into hell if he asked them.

“That man hates you, and you will bend a knee to him?” John said, disbelieving.

“There is power here. The king is only king as long as the barons support him, and I can use that. Ensure he never treats anyone the way he treated us.”

“Us? You’re a lord, and the rest of us are lowborn. There is no us. You choose your wealth and title over your honor,” John spat.

Robin hated when John threw down their ranks. He glared. “Will you please listen—”

“I can’t do it,” John said. “I won’t kneel before that man.”

“Oh, John. I need you most of all. Marian, tell him what it means, why I must go—”

“You’re both right, that’s the devil of it.” She shook her head. “When you turned outlaw, you had nothing to lose. Now . . . I at least have so very much to lose. Bess, help me, I need to walk a bit.” Her maid took her arm and she lumbered to her feet like some bloated cow. Everyone, all Robin’s followers, flinched as if to leap up and help her. Sometimes, she felt like a bit of heraldry, the flag they followed, some holy icon. Robin’s lady. Ignoring them, she rested her hand on the ache in her back and walked slowly, balancing the baby’s weight. Movement helped the little one settle, for now. “Robin’s right. He can do more good behind the new king as a loyal baron than in front of him with a sword. But no one should have to bow to a man who treated them so ill.” They didn’t know it then, but the swords would come out again one day.

“If you go to kneel before him, he will find an excuse to hang you,” John insisted.

“No, I think it will be the sword and block for me next time,” Robin said, grinning.

“Robin, don’t joke,” Marian said, and his grin fell dead away. “If he harms Robin, he risks outright rebellion from the barons. Richard has nephews. There are other heirs if the lords and bishops of England back them. The new king knows this. He must placate his vassals. So, the Baron of Locksley has the power here, at least for now.”

John chuckled bitterly. “I’ve never understood such power.”

The power of reputation, of tit for tat, back-and-forth, and hope and fear? That was all the power women like her had ever had. But she lied. “Neither have I, but it’s there nonetheless.”

“Marian, are you well?” Robin asked gently.

“Stop asking me that, please.” She should not snipe at him, but he had asked that every single day for the last five months, and God, she was tired. The baby kicked so powerfully, like she wanted to break out through the skin, and Marian was so frightened and angry at her helplessness and she hadn’t told anyone that, not even Robin. He wouldn’t have understood, would have tried to make it better with a joke, and he needed to ride to Westminster—“I loved King Richard like a father, but if he wished to be King of England, he perhaps should have spent more time ruling it and less fighting wars abroad. This is partly his fault.”

Robin begged John. He never begged. “Come with me. Be one of my men. Just to see the look on his face when we stand before him together—”

“And then kneel? No. I cannot.” John stood, took up his cloak and hood. “You must do what you will, and so will I. My lady.” He made a quick awkward bow to Marian and turned to go.

“Where are you going?” Robin demanded.

“You take your fortune for granted, my friend,” John replied. “Fare you well.”

Some of the others called after him, but he marched out of the chamber, then out of the manor, and that was the last time any of them had seen Little John.

In the years since then, she often looked up in the trees, studied the shadows for a hooded figure who might linger there. Several times a year, she went to one of the springs and left a basket with new stockings, a wool blanket, some sausages and cheese and the like. Odds and ends that might be useful to someone living in the greenwood. Others of their folk did likewise, she knew. The baskets always came back empty, hanging from a branch at the edge of the woods near the manor. She wished for a way to ask him to come home. Robin rarely spoke of him, but she caught him searching the shadows, too. Now and then, a forester would come and tell of snares he’d found, someone poaching rabbits in Sherwood—and Robin would say to let it go, never mind. It was only a few rabbits.

And now John Little was back. No—he had always been here. Sherwood had always been haunted.

vii

NIGHT FELL, AND THEY had not left the forest or reached any kind of destination. Their captors made a camp some ways into Sherwood, near a spring that they probably thought no one else knew about. They started a small fire burning, though some of them grumbled about it.

“No one will find us here, and it’s too cold to go without,” Edmund said. So the fire stayed lit.

They set her and John and Eleanor up against the trunk of an oak, all in a row. At least they were together. Eleanor leaned against Mary; she was shivering. Mary wished she could put an arm around her, but she could only lean her head against Eleanor’s and give her a quick kiss.

“Father will come looking for us,” John said decisively.

“Will he?” Mary whispered. “They may not even know we’re taken, and these men will meet with horses on the road and carry us away. How will Father find us then?”

“But he will. He must.”

“We must find a way to escape.”