“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 been 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!”