Nottingham, Page 22

Guy reeled. He marched toward the body that should have been Robin of Locksley, and saw immediately how mistaken he was. The distance, the shadow of the hill—his own expectations had tricked him. Glancing out to where Elena had fallen in the mud, he no longer saw the young girl but a short thin man with black hair. White-hot anger ripped through Guy’s muscles, which instantly surrendered to exhaustion. He dropped to the ground and sat, too furious to even react.

  “You said they had a prisoner with them,” he said, staring at FitzOdo.

  “I did lie about that.” The knight shrugged. “I heard you had come through Hallam, asking about a group of riders that had a Guardsman as a prisoner. I figured you might help me on principle, but … well you know how it is.” FitzOdo laughed, as if it were just a joke.

  “You son of a bitch.”

  “I ain’t never claimed otherwise,” FitzOdo sneered at him. “Still, you got a couple less murderers running loose, you can take that to heart. Mind if I take these two back to Tickhill, or are you so ass hurt about this you want to claim them for yourselves?”

  “I want you to get out of here,” Guy said with an unnatural calm he did not feel. “Take them with you, and make haste.”

  “As you say,” the knight balked. “Let me take some souvenirs first. Red Roger’ll want proof the other two are dead. And hey. I owe you one.” He flashed a vaguely apologetic look to each of them, and took no discouragement from the lack of response. “By and by, your friend is dead. No reason for a pack of thieves to keep a regular Guardsman as a prisoner. No offense. You can get a ransom for a knight, at least.”

  FitzOdo cut off the heads of the two dead men, and made each of his captives carry one as he led them away. Guy and his regiment were left with nothing but a cold trail and the sickening sense they ought to start mourning the life of Jon Bassett.

  * * *

  THERE WAS LITTLE DISCUSSION as to whether or not they would continue their search.

  “There’s no picking up the trail now,” Guy said. “If they still have him, they know we want him back. We’ll have to wait for them to contact us.”

  But despite his own words, Guy insisted he was going to stay out looking, going from town to town, to hunt for any last leads. He had a few old acquaintances whose ears were still on the ground, and they were worth visiting. His men offered to go with him, but he ordered them to return to the castle.

  “I know it’s pointless, and I won’t have any of you wasting your time. This is just for me. I’ll see you in a day or so.”

  They begrudgingly obeyed. Devon of York lingered last, thanking Guy for trusting his instincts, fruitless though they were. Guy felt for the young man. This victory would have bolstered his confidence, and his sense of belonging. The others were sure to accept his strange addition to their ranks if he could prove himself useful, but Robert FitzOdo had stolen that opportunity. Devon’s plan had worked flawlessly, but still felt like a complete defeat.

  “I think maybe you were right, earlier. About right and wrong,” Guy said, just before Devon climbed onto his horse. “Maybe they do exist. I’ll ask ahead of time that you don’t repeat this to the others. I need to be ironclad—it wouldn’t do to be too passionate about this. But they’re coming, even now, even thinking about it.”

  Guy turned away from Devon’s confused reaction to blink away whatever tears were rising. He had been where Jon Bassett was before. Alone, trapped, relying solely on his companions to save him. He had touched something within himself, down in that hole, something he never wanted to feel again.

  “Some things, you tell yourself they’re right, so you feel better doing them. And they stack up. You’re too young for that now, but over the years you’ll carry them. They’ll hurt. The choices will, and the grey is a heavy thing.

  “But what they’ve done to Jon Bassett, that’s pure wrong. That’s why I’m still here. Because when I think of the alternative, my stomach shrinks and my skin goes cold. Jon’s out there. He’s a prisoner, and he’s alone, and he needs us. Every step we’ve taken since yesterday, every bite, every laugh we’ve had when we’ve forgotten ourselves, every breath, every blink, even while we sleep, we’ve done it while Jon’s been in a hole. He’s in a hole, and there are people that put him there who will beat him and starve him, and it’s all he knows. There isn’t a word in our language for these people. We never made one. We didn’t think we’d have to.”

  Uncomfortable and fatigued as he was, Guy had a meal in his belly, a sword at his side, and companions. Jon Bassett had none of that.

  “Do you think that bastard knight was right?” Devon asked. “You think he’s already dead?”

  “I hope he is. I do,” Guy said without hesitation. “It’s better than the hole.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  ARABLE DE BUREL

  NOTTINGHAM CASTLE

  ONLY A HANDFUL OF mirrors existed in the castle, making it difficult for Arable to use one with any sort of privacy. So she stole into the widow Murdac’s old bedroom, a cozy chamber on the third floor of the high keep that remained relatively untouched since the previous sheriff’s death. Arable had not lived in Nottingham then, but she understood Ralph Murdac kept it solely for his wife’s infrequent visits. So long as Roger de Lacy was sheriff, there was little threat of his family ever using the room. Only dusted and refreshed once a month, Arable was usually happy to claim the duty. Its décor had a forced feminine flair—a man’s attempt at a woman’s touch—but she found it a comfortable place to disappear now and again. A single shuttered window could see all the way down across both the lower baileys to the castle gates, though she refrained from enjoying the view for fear of being spotted from below.

  A quick rummage through the widow’s vanity yielded a small squarish piece of polished silver. She took it and curled up beneath the window’s sill to let the last of the day’s sunlight on her face, and squinted at the rippled reflection scowling back at her. Across each of her cheeks, the long straight knife wounds had grown bright red and puffy, though their edges had begun to harden and scab over. She teased her hair forward, letting it dangle on either side of her face in thick bunches to see how well they concealed her cheeks. There was no hiding the gashes. Arable had done her best for days to stay hidden, to obscure her face, to wear oversized bonnets that kept her cheeks shadowed. Her reflection made a mockery of her attempts at secrecy.

  That knowledge burned black inside her. Aside from William and Gunny, no other soul had given her face a moment’s notice. Either nobody cared about what happened to her, or they simply considered her attack too normal to bother with. Both were suffocating in their ramifications. She was faced with the crippling reality that she was exactly as weak and ignorable as she pretended to be.

  There was something darkly poetic that it happened just minutes after William had left her in the stables. The very moment William came back into her life, he had not been there when she needed help. It didn’t matter. When next he saw her, William swore obscenities and would have marched directly to Jon Bassett and cleaved his head off if he could. But the entirety of the Captain’s Regiment had yet to return from their journey, and there was no word as to what delayed them. William was left to fume with no target, and to swear empty horrors upon the man once he was finally back.

  Arable might have appreciated his chivalry if she had not already spent two days coping with the attack entirely alone. At first she had been in shock, clutching her face in horror for hours until a horsehand found her. Then, nearly as painful as the attack itself, it took the majority of her savings to tend to the wound. She paid handsomely for a decent physicker in the Parliament Ward, who promised he could stitch her with ant heads and catgut without leading to any greenrot. He was kind and had a calming voice, and he likely did not realize how terrible his words were to her.

  “You’re lucky,” he actually said without laughing. “Whoever did this used a sharp blade, and very thin. Might have been far worse.”

  There was no world in which this m
ade Arable lucky. Luck was not involved with what had happened to her.

  “I won’t inquire as to the particulars,” he continued, “but you were wise not to struggle. Smart girl, could have made a botch of your face otherwise.”

  If her face had allowed it, she might have told him exactly what she thought of this determination. The idea that it was someway her responsibility to react appropriately when an attack like this happens was nauseating. But she could not so much as scowl without agony lancing through her cheeks, so she had said nothing. She paid the physicker once for his work and twice for his silence and returned to the castle with almost nothing in her coinpurse.

  Reflected in the silver, she saw France. Her lost chance to escape was carved into her cheeks. She had wasted so much time worrying about an exact destination, and now she could not afford to have one at all.

  The few times she had seen William since, his smile turned into a sympathetic frown with a thousand connotations. She instinctively took its worst meaning—that when he saw her, he saw only her wounds. As if that was all she was now, a thing to be pitied. She was no longer herself, but a victim. Bassett’s victim. His signature was on her face. Surely William did not think that, but it was all she could see.

  Rage filled her, and left again. For a time she even believed she deserved it, that it was her own fault for spying on the Guardsmen in the wine cellar. In the end, that didn’t matter, either. It was a thing that happened, and the world wasn’t fair. When she closed her eyes she could still hear Jon Bassett’s voice.

  “This is what happens to nosy young ladies.”

  He meant it as a threat, to scare her. And yes, Arable was scared of him now, but his words had taken another meaning. It was simply a lesson to be learned, an inarguable truth about the damned world she lived in.

  This is what happens to nosy young ladies.

  * * *

  AFTER COMPOSING HERSELF, ARABLE hurried down the hallway to the keep’s master solar, which was now only used for housing prominent guests. Roger de Lacy preferred more modest quarters himself, which availed the sheriff’s traditional bedroom for notable visitors. She was already late for her afternoon’s task, which was to wait upon the Earl of Warwick and his wife, who had arrived unexpectedly.

  Though the hallway never changed, it seemed to slant up today. Her every footstep took effort—she retracted from herself as she climbed it. Her servant’s mantle no longer felt like a disguise, it was now her actual life. She tugged her hair farther forward to crop out her cheeks. Not because she didn’t want anyone to ask, but so she wouldn’t have to feel it when they didn’t.

  The unmistakable rumbling of an argument carried all the way down the hall, and Arable opened the door of the solar to an absolute frenzy. She barely found room to curtsy to the two guests between the bustling of personal assistants busying themselves at ignoring the spat between the earl and his wife. The earl himself, Waleran de Beaumont, was a wild-eyed man with spotted skin and white wisps of hair that seemed eager to escape their captivity. His wife, Lady Margery d’Oily, might have been his polar opposite. She remained stoic and composed in the middle of the room, her every blink executed with precision.

  “Ah, be a dear girl,” the Lady Margery said upon seeing Arable, “and point me in the direction of a jewelry box, would you?” Arable only had time to open her mouth and glance about before Lady Margery waved her hand in glib dismissal. “Oh, never mind, I forgot that I have no jewelry left to put in it.”

  “You’re going to take this out on this poor girl?” the earl asked with some derision. “Is that where we are now?”

  “I would never presume to tell you where we are.” Her face shrugged off any blame. “I trust entirely in your leadership. I can’t recall the last time you steered us poorly.”

  “I apologize for my wife’s flat-handed sarcasm,” the earl said to Arable. “She has decided it is entirely my fault we were victim of robbery on our way to Nottingham earlier this day.”

  Arable made a concerted effort to have no reaction. A minute ago she had been staring at her own disfigured face trying to drum up the will to stand, and now she was expected to care about this lady’s jewelry.

  “I would not call us victim.” Lady Margery turned elaborately away from her husband. “All in all, it was a rather pleasant experience. I found him charming.” She toyed with her fingers, as if to highlight precisely where her jewelry had once been. “You ought to try being charming now and then.”

  She was pleased with herself, which she showed by lilting her head back and forth like a top.

  “Try not to smile, love,” the earl moaned at her. “You haven’t used those muscles in decades. If you ask them to work now, they’re like to quit entirely and slough off your skull.”

  At this the Lady Margery narrowed her eyes to slivers, her lips pursed in preparation of her next words. Arable, who was at the moment categorically incapable of any interest in their minor troubles, was still forced to participate in their meaningless banter. “A robbery, you say?”

  “Yes indeed.” Waleran de Beaumont snatched the chance to tell the story, his wild eyebrows burning white from the window’s glow. “Not as you may expect it, though. We made haste from York, as it were, until our carriage came to an unexpected stop in the middle of the Sherwood Road. There lay a gathering of men, all quite friendly, who apologized for the delay. One of them shook my hand and slipped my father’s signet ring from my finger, explaining himself thusly—‘Don’t worry about this, I promise to take care of it,’ and ‘You’re lucky to have come across us.’”

  “Pay him no mind, girl,” Lady Margery commanded. “He cannot comprehend how little you care about this.”

  Arable startled at the lady’s accuracy. The passing inconvenience of a lost ring was meaningless to them, but a single piece of jewelry like that was worth everything she had just spent. The lady’s trivial losses could send Arable to France half a dozen times over.

  She would never abuse Roger de Lacy’s trust, but it was impossible not to fantasize. How easily she might return to the room later, when it was empty …

  But the other half of the equation was also there. No matter how gentlemanly, thieves on the forest roads were far more dangerous for a woman on her own than for a carriage full of notable dignitaries. She doubted she could survive an encounter with the same glib lack of consequence.

  “As I was saying,” Waleran continued, “then he slipped into our carriage and relieved my wife of her jewelry as well. It was all done very kindly and quickly. It was over before I even realized that being robbed had quite been the highlight of my day.”

  “I don’t even have words for you.” Lady Margery rolled her eyes and turned to the window.

  “Did I mention what he said when he left me?”

  “Who?” Arable asked.

  “The gentleman thief. He said, ‘Now I’m going to smell of lilacs all day.’ My wife drowns herself in lilac oil, you see, I’m sure you can smell it already.”

  Arable gave a quick sniff of the room, and had to admit it had a pleasant fragrance.

  “I have no idea how she survives it, personally. When the thief opened the door to our carriage I would have given him half my coinpurse just for the welcome breath of air. My wife no longer needs air to breathe, you see, her body is fueled solely on my misfortune.”

  “What was that, dear?” Lady Margery asked idly from the window. “I’m sorry, I was distracted by something more interesting, perhaps a hangnail or some dry skin. Do talk at me again, would you?”

  Arable forgot herself for a moment and laughed at this, which she immediately regretted. She felt the skin tug at her cheeks, the sharp quick scratch that meant she had torn one of her wounds open. Reaching up quickly, she found a spot of blood on her fingertips. She held her face tightly, pushing her skin back together as if it were clay that might heal itself again.

  You can’t laugh, she told herself, but the words dug far deeper. That’s what Jon Bassett took fr
om you. Your very ability to enjoy things.

  The earl and his wife seemed oblivious to her pain. “Is the Sheriff ready to see me?” Waleran asked, fretting at his own clothes. “I sent word ahead of my arrival, and have urgent news. Is he indisposed?”

  “He regrets he cannot see you until the morning,” Arable stammered, keen on disappearing. The earl reacted as if she were personally denying him, but then settled himself into a polite smile.

  “It is urgent,” he said. “But I understand the day has grown late. Thank you.”

  She forgot to curtsy a goodbye as she grabbed at the door to leave. One glance backward, accidental, brought her a startling glimpse of Lady Margery watching her departure, her face full of exacting scrutiny.

  * * *

  MISTRESS ROANA ASSIGNED HER only a single task for the remainder of the evening, accompanied by the ugliest face she was capable of making. Whatever Arable had done to offend her, she did not know, but she doubted it would be a mystery for long. The task was to tend to a stateroom in the southwest corner of the Great Hall, one of the respectable bedrooms kept for the type of lesser dignitaries that rarely ever visited. The fact that it was her only task meant the room must be in serious disrepair, but several hours working alone seemed like a blessing.

  The door opened to a room that needed no tidying. The rushes were clean and the bed linens already changed, a fire warmed the brazier, and Arable froze to think she had been misinformed. But curiosity stayed her, and a second sweep of the room revealed an obviously placed note pinned beneath a single candleholder, paired with an apple blossom.

  She crossed the room timidly, almost certain this was some cruel trap, but recognized William’s indelicate penmanship on the outside of the note.

  The stable loft. I’ll be there. I promise.

  She stared at the parchment in shock. She was alone in a massive crowd, only to suddenly find someone looking directly at her. It took her breath away, she trembled in fear. She wanted to believe it, she wanted to fall into those words and float away, but the world had trained her otherwise. It had to be a trick. It would vanish later, she knew, but for one perfect moment she watched the ink blot as the parchment soaked up her tears, as her feet left the stones.