Allan frowned.
My surprise must have shown. “I know who you are,” Kate told me, crossing her arms. “I’ve heard you’re a bastard royal,” she said to me. “And if King Richard’s dead, you can bet your head will start causing an awful lot of problems.”
“He’s not dead,” I told them. “That’s what the rioting is about?”
Kate nodded. “We heard he was killed in the Holy Land. And Prince John set off to murder the king’s nephew to replace him as the heir.”
I shook my head. “The king’s been captured. Ransomed.”
“By who?”
“I don’t know,” I told them. “But the man who told me had no reason to lie.”
Kate frowned. “Every man has a reason to lie.”
“Not when he were planning to murder me a moment later.”
This settled over the others, and the man and boy looked at each other.
“How did you find us?” David asked, looking at Allan. “You never said.”
“I told her,” Allan grumbled. “You were too busy knocking my block off.”
“Me!” David returned, but Allan weren’t paying him mind.
“We’ve all—we were told you were dead,” he said, looking at me.
I put the bread down. “We?” I repeated low.
“It wasn’t more than a week after you left Nottingham that our noble sheriff got a letter, telling him you’d been executed.” My chest squeezed. “He never believed it. Not once. But he sent me south to find the truth of the matter, and for all the people I know, I couldn’t find you. Rob said that if you were dead you’d be easy to find, but I never had the same faith. Until a few days ago, when I followed the prince to Bramber,” he said, looking up and crossing himself dramatic.
“And Rob—” I didn’t know what I wanted to ask. But the feel of his name on my mouth were painful.
“Doesn’t know, yet. I couldn’t write to him till I were sure. But he writes to you,” he told me. I frowned, confused, and he went to a satchel I hadn’t noticed, opening it and pulling out a small stack of papers, looped together with a ribbon. He came and handed them to me, and I reached out to touch them.
But my hands were filthy, bloody and dirty and cut, and I pulled back.
I looked up at Allan, and to my horror, saw pity bright on his face.
“Come on,” Kate said. “You lot can’t go anywhere tonight. I’ll show you where you can wash up and sleep.”
“Thank you,” David said.
“Thank you,” I repeated.
She glared once at Allan and nodded her head back toward the kitchen. She led us out to a tiny little outdoor bit with a basin of water in it. “Beds are upstairs. If you want to wash, I’ll show him up,” she said to me.
I nodded, and she tossed me a cloth from the kitchen.
David glanced round, nodding once. “Would you rather I stay close, my lady?” he asked.
I shook my head.
Shutting the door behind them when they were gone, I pulled off the pants that I’d made quick work destroying, and I left the loose shirt on, pushing up my sleeves and using the cloth to clean off my skin and make a slow record of my wounds.
My shoulder were scraped and ragged from where I fell on it, with matching wounds on my hip. The soft inner bit of my other arm were cut where I’d been stepped on, but not bad. My hair were a matted mess, and I were thinner than I’d realized—I could feel my bones under my hands, sharp and raised under the thin layer of skin.
When I were done, I opened the door again, and Kate were there. “Here,” she said, handing me a pile of clothes. “Clean. It’s no lady’s dress.”
I took it. “Thank you,” I said.
She nodded once, looking me over before leading me back through the room and up a narrow stair. She showed me a little bedroom and I went over to it, staring at the bed.
She hung in the doorway, but after I didn’t move for long minutes, she started to turn. “Very well,” she said.
“Thank you,” I called. She stopped. “Thank you. It’s been—thank you.”
She looked at me, coming back to the doorway. “Where were you all this time?” she asked.
My shoulders lifted. “I don’t know. Different castles. Different prisons. He moved me often, and at night. I never knew.”
“Prince John,” she said, and her voice were low and dark.
I nodded. “You’re well informed, for an innkeep.”
She shook her head. “Inn’s my father’s,” she told me. “I’m a trader.”
“A woman trader?” I asked.
She gave me a slow, side-slung smile. “Not an entirely legal trader.”
This made me smile too. “You’re a pirate.”
“I’ve been called worse.” Her mouth tightened, and she looked down, like she were considering something. “I loot ships to feed people,” she said. “And I train the orphans to be sailors. England is falling apart, you know. With or without Richard alive.”
I stared at her.
“It isn’t just Nottingham. I wasn’t sure if anyone had ever told you that.”
My head dropped.