The next morning, I went to Nottingham early. I’d wrapped my hands, thick enough that the burns and cuts didn’t bother me. I wore fresh clothes—slightly crumpled from my saddlebags—and tied my hair back, still looking every inch a boy. If the servants in the keep noticed, they didn’t comment on it to me. I didn’t want to be the sort of lady that were feared, but at the moment, silence were easier than trying to earn their love.
I rode my horse to the castle. The rain had cleared much of the haze, but now there were a new smell, like water and death mixed together and left to rot.
“My lady!” David called, seeing me in Nottingham. “Where have you been? We couldn’t find you this morning, your horse—”
“Investigating my holdings in Nottingham,” I told him. I saw Rob at a distance. “I don’t—I have to find a way to tell Rob,” I told him. “It has to be me, not you.” I frowned. “Especially not Allan.”
He nodded. “Of course, my lady.”
“Thank you.”
Everyone that had been in the forest came, even Bess, bare any help at all in her state. It didn’t matter. This weren’t about pitching in, it were about being solid. United. Bricked up together like a wall so they could feel for a second like this might not be done to them again.
Of course, I wouldn’t let that happen. I could protect them now, like I should have before. I were Lady Huntingdon, and I answered only to the king. Prince John had no business here.
We started to tear down all the burned things that were wrecks. Wood that could be salvaged were separated from wood that couldn’t be. Every few houses, we found another body that had been trapped. The third one we found were a child, a little boy. When his mother found him, she broke apart. She dropped to her knees and picked him up, holding the misshapen, small charred body against her. His body made a sound like something cracked, and she wailed this horrible keening sound.
Women went to her. Some knelt in the rubble of her ruined house, some crowded behind her. They reached out their hands to touch her and pass on their love.
“Lully, lullay,” one woman began to sing.
“Lully, lullay,” the others answered.
“The falcon hath borne my make away,” they sang together.
Men joined in. We all knew the song from Mass, but it made me tremble to hear it here, outside the walls God watched over.
Monks came forward too.
“He bore him up, he bore him down. He bore him to an orchard brown,” they sang.
“In that orchard there was an hall
That was hanged with purple and pall.
And in that hall there was a bed:
It was hanged with gold so red.
And in that bed there lay a knight,
His wounds bleeding by day and night.
By that bedside there kneeleth a maid,
And she weepeth both night and day.
And by that bedside there standeth a stone:
Corpus Christi written thereon.”
As she continued to weep, slowly the voices got louder, covering her grief over and letting her cry in peace as the rest tried to bear her son’s soul to God’s hands.
I pushed tears off my face and turned away from them. I wanted to honor her grief, but my pain didn’t belong here. Instead, I turned and went up to the castle.
My castle now.
Memories flickered behind my eyes. I remembered when Gisbourne dragged me back from the gate when the people had been rioting, when de Clare near cut the hand off a young girl. I remembered walking, slow and numb, from the snow-filled bailey where Gisbourne’s body hung, where John bled bright red onto the white snow.
I remembered how my knees hurt, being made to kneel before the prince in the snow, on the stone cobbles.
I remembered rage and hate and pain and death.
And I felt so weary of them now. Of the pain that never ended, of the death that never stopped taking, of the rage that didn’t help anyone.
The prison where I’d almost lost Rob. The hall we’d tumbled to the ground, where I’d married Gisbourne, where I’d first met Eleanor.
I went up to the room I’d shared with Gisbourne, but all I could see were the way he threatened me, slammed me against the wall, trying to raise my skirts, trying to force me. I couldn’t even cross the threshold, and tears were starting in my eyes.
Refusing to let them fall, I went down to one of the low rooms, nearest to the prison. The last I’d been here, Rob had been living in these rooms, waiting to fight, taking the punishment that Prince John passed down and rising triumphant and unscathed, like something God himself had ordained. Like a phoenix.
And now the city were a pile of ash, and I would give my people a way to rise again. Somehow, they would be whole again.
I sat on the bed, letting the unwrapped fingertips of my hand skim slow over the pillow.
“There you are,” Much said, coming through the doorway. He went to the window, looking out for a minute before hopping onto the sill, looking at me. “Saw you come up here.”