The Ghosts of Sherwood Read online

  They bowed in turn and watched Robin and Marian go, walking back to their camp. Marian’s thoughts had scattered utterly. Robin clung to her hand, his touch full of nerves and anger and more.

  “Robin . . .” she started. She had a hundred things to say to him.

  “What did you think of William de Ros? He seems a nice lad,” he said, as if speaking of the weather.

  “When were you going to tell me that you have arranged our eldest daughter’s marriage?”

  “Right now.” He smiled, but it didn’t win her over. “It is a good match. She’ll be taken care of. Her children will have land and title. They get the association of our name. I like the boy’s look.”

  “Will she like him?”

  He hesitated, which he hardly ever did. “I think so. Marian, she’ll have to fly the nest sometime—”

  “I would rather she do it in her own time, in her own way. Like we did.”

  “You want some nice brave lad to come along and worship at her feet and win her love?”

  She knew what a rare and precious thing she and Robin had won for themselves. Looking around, she saw no other husband and wife walking arm in arm, still gazing adoringly at each other after twenty years. One generally did not see husbands and wives together at all. That was only one of the reasons people stared after Robin and Marian. How uncomfortable it was, to have songs and stories told about their love. How lucky they were, to fall in love before they married, rather than hoping to fall in love after.

  “And why not?” she said stubbornly.

  “I’m trying to do what is best for her. She knows her duty—”

  “What a thing to say! What if I had known my duty all those years ago?”

  “Marian—”

  “Little John was right; you’ve very nearly turned into what you once fought against so fiercely.” She let go of his arm and marched off before she said something even worse.

  “My lady—”

  “When we return home, you will tell her about this yourself.”

  He winced. “I had hoped you would—”

  “No.”

  “Don’t you think it’s really best for a mother—”

  “No!” She put more distance between them, and he followed sullenly.

  Time, Mary needed more time . . . no, in just two years, she’d be the age Marian was when she met Robin and he upended her world. Maybe a quiet arranged marriage would be better . . .

  They and their retinue camped like they were under siege. Apart from everyone else, a defensible space of meadow between them and the next cluster of tents, men on guard. She had felt like they were being watched from the moment they arrived; she constantly looked over her shoulder.

  Worst part of it was, she often found they were being watched. And not even by the king’s men. Everyone was watching Robin, to see what he would do. It wore her out, that she must act like nothing was wrong in the middle of it all.

  Will greeted her almost as soon as she came in view. He was a tall man, solid, with well-worn hands and crow’s-feet from so much watching and worrying. “Where’s Robin?” He looked over her shoulder for her absent companion.

  “We’re arguing,” Marian said darkly.

  “Oh. Well. We have a visitor.”

  Enough, when would this all be enough, when could they go home . . . Robin came up beside them.

  “What is it?” Looking around, he marked every person within his view. His left fist squeezed, holding a bow that wasn’t there.

  “Visitor,” their old friend said, stepping aside to show where he had seated the man by their fire.

  “Oh, dear,” Robin said, looking on the Earl of Pembroke, Sir William Marshal.

  The most famous knight in England, and perhaps in all of Europe, was an old man now but as impressive as ever. His thick white hair was tamed under a cap, his tabard was pristine, and his hand rested on his sword as easily as a songbird came to rest on a branch. He stood, and he was so very tall and broad. Age had not bent him a bit. Marian glanced at Robin, wondering what he would do.

  “My lord,” Robin said, bowing his head. Marian had only ever seen him show this kind of deference to King Richard.

  “My lord,” Marshal replied, and offered his hand. They shook. “Well met.”

  “How may I serve you?” Robin seemed a bit stunned, as if he had missed the last stair.

  Marshal’s smile turned wry. “I only wish to give you my goodwill, sir. And to say I hope that this marks an end to all your talk and trouble.”

  “Ah. Yes. Just so. I hope so too. That will be up to our lord and king, won’t it?”

  “And he will be watching, I can assure you.”

  “Is that a threat?” Robin said, smiling as if to make a joke, but his gaze was hard.

  “Only if you take it as one. I mean you no harm, Locksley. But do try to stay out of trouble for a while, yes?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The old knight turned to her. “My lady, your reputation for grace and beauty falls far short of your presence. You have my admiration.” He bowed.

  “My lord Pembroke, you are very kind.” She gazed at him in wonder.

  “Fare you well, friends.” He bowed again and departed.

  They watched him go.

  “I think that man does charm better even than you, Robin,” Will said.

  “No doubt about it. God’s wounds, I thought I was going to faint.” He blew out a breath he must have been holding.

  Marshal’s retinue waited for him some distance off, and they included his eldest son, also William, a man of five-and-twenty who shared his father’s height and strength if not his reputation. He had sided with the rebel barons—at first. Then he had repented. He’d been eager to display his loyalty since then. Robin didn’t like the man much.

  “And we will all watch each other,” Robin murmured. The younger William Marshal kept glancing at them over his shoulder, long after the others had turned away.

  “This charter will not last,” Will said. “This peace will not last.”

  The Baron of Locksley had nothing to say to that.

  “Robin, I want to go home,” Marian said.

  “And so we shall, my love. We’ll leave at dawn.”

  iii

  MARIAN HAD NOT GROWN up in the north, in the shadow of the forests and the wilds of the moors. She had been raised in Norman courts, taught courtly graces and speech, learned to hold herself like an ornament, to flatter men of power. The north had seemed a wilderness then, full of outlaws and danger. But after twenty years, it had become home. The road from Surrey went past towns and villages, chapels large and small with pealing bells, market squares, pastures full of sheep, fields full of farmers. Then the villages and settlements gave way, the first of the twisted, ancient oaks appeared—far off on distant wild hillsides, like ghosts in a haze. Then closer, until their shadows touched the road itself and the air grew thick with the scent of the forest, old wood and rich earth, and the sunlight seemed to take on a green cast. This wilderness was home, and she was happy to return to it. When she was young, she couldn’t imagine a life outside court, which seemed the center of the world. Now she was sure Robin had rescued her from something grim and stifling.

  Finally, they arrived back home at Locksley, in the comforting shade of Sherwood Forest.

  “All seems well,” Will said, shading his eyes and surveying the manor, its lands, tenants in the fields and in their workshops. He kept sword and bow on his saddle, close to hand.

  “Expecting to see it all burned down, were you?” Robin said.

  He’d meant it as a joke, but Will’s look was somber. “You have enemies. Especially now.”

  “What can they do to me now?”

  Marian exchanged a serious glance with Will. Here they were, watching the man’s back, just as they always had. The manor gates stood wide open, as they ought, and Marian sighed. She needn’t have worried. She trusted the men and women they’d put in charge of the place—many of them had bee
n with Robin in the old days.

  Robin kept pressing Marian the whole trip. “You’ll speak to Mary—”

  “No, I will not. I will not defy you on this, but you must be the one to explain her duty to her.” Marian was the last woman in England who would force her daughter to marry anyone she did not wish. Surely, Robin knew this.

  The hero of Sherwood sighed, defeated.

  Will worried about threats from without, but they entered the stable yard to find Mary and John shouting at each other. What a greeting, after so many months away.

  “You went without me!” yelled John, their middle child, son and heir of the great Robin of Locksley. “You said I could go along next time you went to the forest!”

  “I did not,” Mary muttered, trying for dignity and only managing flushed and furious. She was scuffed and sweaty, wearing boy’s clothes. She still had height on her younger brother, but probably not for much longer. “You want to go out to the woods, just go; don’t make me carry you.”

  “I don’t need to be carried!”

  “Yes, every time we go to the woods, you get lost!”

  “Which is why I asked—”

  “I don’t need to tell you whenever I go somewhere—”

  “So, instead you sneak out like a thief—”

  Well, that was a bit cutting.

  “You’re very tiresome, John,” Mary said flippantly, which drove her brother to further rage.

  “Now then, let’s have a proper hello for your long-absent parents, shall we?” Robin said in a calculated interruption.

  The pair managed to put on cheerful faces to greet the crowd of horses and riders coming in through the gate. Not so full of righteous independence that they were ready to turn outlaw. Not quite yet. Her two eldest were both lanky and awkward, growing too fast and struggling to stretch their wings. Especially Mary, who was by most counts a woman grown, but Marian blinked and still saw the child she’d been. They both had Marian’s chestnut hair and Robin’s rich brown eyes.

  Hostlers and folk of the house came out to greet them, telling how things were and what had gone wrong in their absence. Marian smiled at the stableboy who took her horse’s reins, and he blushed.

  Mary and John came to her, offered a quick curtsey and bow in turn before she scooped them into an embrace and buried her face in their hair to take a deep breath of the smell of them, full of sweat and dust and life.

  “You’re both alive, good,” she said. Mary had grown. They looked straight at each other, the same height. Marian suddenly wanted to cry, but instead she hugged them again and passed them on to greet their father. Mary wasn’t ready to go off to be married, she wasn’t.

  Scanning the yard for her youngest, she found Eleanor, age eight, sitting on the steps to the main house and weaving straw into something intricate, apparently oblivious to the commotion. The girl was clean, her light hair braided and her kirtle neat and straight—muddy at the hem, but that only meant she’d been outside, which was good. Well fed, she even had some color in her cheeks. So, perhaps things at home had not gone entirely amiss while they were away.

  Marian never wanted to leave home again. This was what she wanted now; this was what Robin had promised her, though he hadn’t quite known it at the time.

  “What are you two on about?” Robin asked his two eldest, hands on hips. He sounded far too amiable for his children to ever believe he was cross with them.

  “Mary’s been running off to Sherwood alone!” John announced.

  “And you think you ought to have the duty of accompanying her?”

  “Well, no! But you’d have words if I ever ran off alone!”

  “Have you tried it?” Robin said, and John was taken aback.

  “So, you don’t care if I turn outlaw?”

  Mary ranted, “I’m not turning outlaw! I just want some peace and quiet, away from you!”

  Marian left them to it and went to the steps to sit by Eleanor. “Hello, sweetling.”

  The girl glanced up, then back to the work in her hands. She didn’t say a word but shifted close to Marian, pressed up to her side, and didn’t complain when Marian put her arm around her and squeezed.

  “How’ve you gotten on, then? Your brother and sister looking after you, or have you been marking all the trouble they’ve got into?”

  Eleanor smiled, her face lighting up, as good as a laugh for her. Marian brushed a strand of sun-lightened hair out of her face.

  The old wives round about said that Eleanor was a changeling, a queer unworldly thing, while the real child was stolen away by fae spirits. Punishment for her parents’ wild ways. Or more charitably, the Fair Folk wanted a bit of the legend for themselves and so took their third baby and left something else in her place. Quiet, knowing, haunted. No one ever told the stories in Marian’s hearing, but she knew. And knew they were wrong, even if she was the only one who looked in Eleanor’s eyes and saw her father’s spark there and Marian’s own watchful manner. Eleanor did not speak but she listened, she knew, and she was their own girl.

  And would Robin bargain his youngest daughter away if it suited him, even if she couldn’t speak to say yes or no? No, that was where Marian would put her foot down.

  If Eleanor didn’t speak, it wasn’t because she was changeling but because her siblings never let anyone get a word in edgewise. They were still at it, across the yard.

  Robin scowled. “John, Mary, enough from both of you. There are no more outlaws in Sherwood.”

  Mary put in, “But—” then clamped her mouth shut.

  Marian frowned; Robin caught her gaze across the courtyard, then looked away.

  Perhaps, he should have said. Perhaps there were no more outlaws in Sherwood.

  * * *

  Something had shifted, gone off-balance. When the lord and lady returned, everything should have gotten back to the way it was. Mary expected some kind of calm to return. But a simmering wrongness lingered. Mother and Father were in the middle of an argument, which must have been going on some time, as unhappy as they both were. They pretended all was well but Mary caught them exchanging scowls.

  While her mother was gone, Mary had taken on some of the responsibilities of the lady of the manor. She had made decisions about the cooking and cleaning; she had taken care of Eleanor and made sure she ate and that her clothes were mended. She had held Marian’s keys for her. And now she gave them back and found herself at loose ends. But she didn’t want those keys, that responsibility. She would not inherit this place; John would. His future wife would hold the keys, and what was there for her then? A flattering, horrifying marriage. Or a convent. She had overheard talk about Eleanor taking vows and becoming a nun—a vow of silence would not be so difficult for her, their father had joked, but Marian had glared and said that Eleanor could do whatever she liked and if she wanted to stay at Locksley and get underfoot her whole life, well, John would just have to put up with her. They hadn’t said that about Mary.

  Mary was as tall as her mother now, and she hadn’t noticed that before the months they were gone.

  That evening, they held something of a feast to celebrate Robin and Marian’s return. They had brought gifts from London, a bit of silk and some spices from the Holy Land, and there were sweets and music. Robin told the story of facing King John and persuading him to the rightness of his cause. He was a good storyteller, expansive, his flattery becoming subtle mockery with a shift in tone. Her father walked a line between deference to the rightful King of England, a title and position he revered, and the old hatred of the man who now held that title.

  It was exhausting. She picked at her food, picked at the seam in her kirtle, found herself slouching and tried to sit up straight, and wondered why she bothered.

  A few days later, when the travelers had settled back into manor life, there was washing and mending to be done. Mary sat outside with her mother, sister, and some of the other women of the house. She wore a gown today, all proper, her hair neat and braided. And it wasn’t that
she minded all this, the baskets of cloth and yarn and chatter of women that sounded like starlings. But she would blink and find herself staring out at the road, hands resting in her lap with tunic and needle, mid-stitch.

  Will was putting John through his paces with sword and buckler to see if the boy had practiced while they were gone. Wooden swords clacked as they parried one way, then the other. Will pressed John back, invited John to press him. John had practiced, his blocks and thrusts were surer than they had been at the start of summer. Will grinned and seemed pleased, while John frowned, serious and determined.

  Mother was also watching them, her work resting in her lap, unmended. She seemed so very sad, and this made Mary uneasy. Lady Marian was the merriest person she knew, apart from Father.

  Mary shook herself awake and tried to be attentive. “What did you like best about the king’s court?” she asked her mother.

  “Oh, the news, I think. News from abroad, from across the kingdom.”

  “Did you meet the queen?”

  “Not really, not so as to mention.” Marian winked and donned a bit of a grin. “Her Majesty mostly wanted a look at your father. But these days, he doesn’t look so very much like the stories say he did. I think she was disappointed.”

  “Surely not,” Mary said, astonished.

  “Or it may be only that everyone was angry with your father. But no, I mostly stood to the side and watched with the rest of the wives. I’ll tell you a secret, though: the wives have all the good gossip.” A dog barked, ran up to Will and John, who stopped sparring to send it away, laughing. Mary was trying to think of what gossip Marian meant. Nearby, Joan and Beatrice were talking about which chickens were laying best this month and which might be ready for the soup pot.

  “Why is Eleanor so much better at spinning than I am?” Mary said. Her sister had diligently spun her entire bundle of wool and started on the next.

  “She doesn’t get distracted.”

  Her sister seemed hypnotized by the spindle in her hand and the slender, perfectly even yarn twisting around as it emerged from between her small fingers. The stitches Mary had been making in the tunic seemed hideously large and uneven. Her mother would look at them and say, “It’s fine, it’s not like we’ll be showing it to the king.”