If the men had been there for some innocent reason, they would have let the children go. Mary, John, and Eleanor should have been able to simply walk away. But the men had a purpose, and without a word they rushed forward.
“Go, run,” Mary said, pushing John and Eleanor behind her, putting herself between them and the attackers.
Three more men came out of the trees on either side of them, swords drawn. John tried to dodge, but one of them scooped him up and turned him upside down over his shoulder. John kicked and shouted but it did no good. Mary kept Eleanor behind her; her sister clung to her tunic. No matter which way she turned, there seemed to be more of them.
A cry came from above, a wolf-like howl that chilled her spine.
The ghost fell from a high oak, straight down on the first group of outlaws. His staff came down on one head, then another, then swept across the legs of the third. Shouting and panic followed. Mary took Eleanor’s hand and ran, pausing only long enough to kick at the knee of the one who held John. The man howled and swung out a fist; Mary didn’t duck fast enough and was sent sprawling. John cursed and raged; both he and his captor fell.
And then, the thunk of an arrow striking a target.
In terror, Mary looked for the sound, and saw the ghost fall to his knees, an arrow sticking in his right shoulder. His staff dropped; his arms hung loose. He looked at the wound as if he could not believe it, and chuckled.
She got her first real look at the Ghost of Sherwood. He was a tall, large man, incongruously large for the nimble way he climbed in and out of trees, for how silently he moved. He had shaggy hair, a grizzled beard, and his clothes were worn and patched.
Across the way, he met her gaze, and Mary saw such sadness there, her breath caught. His shoulders slumped, as if he resigned himself to his fate. The men he’d attacked got to their feet; one of them kicked the ghost in the gut. His back arched in pain, and he cried out.
Another of the outlaws, a broad man with a ruddy beard, stalked to the ghost and grabbed his hair. “Who are you?”
“No one,” he murmured.
Eleanor was kneeling by Mary, her eyes wide and filling with tears, her teeth gritted like she wanted very much to scream but couldn’t.
Mary told her, “Run, run and get help!”
Her sister shook her head, quick and scared like a bird, and kept her grip on Mary’s tunic. Before Mary could think of what else to do, one of the other men put an arm around Eleanor’s middle and hauled her back. Another did the same to Mary, and she screamed, all fury now.
“Let go of her, keep your bloody hands off her, if you hurt her, I’ll murder you, I’ll murder you all!” She kicked and flailed—John was still doing likewise—until her captor put an arm across her throat and locked her head back until she could hardly breathe. Pinned now, she couldn’t move.
The ruddy-bearded man turned to her. “And who are you? Some farmer’s brats? Or something else?”
“She looks like Locksley’s bitch,” one of the others said.
John yelled, “How dare you! She doesn’t kill you first, I will, we’ll rip all your heads off—” Then he was cut off with a hand over his mouth, and they were all firmly caught.
“Do you belong to Locksley, then?” the broad man said, sounding pleased. He studied them and seemed to make some calculation. “What are the baron’s children doing wandering off alone, hm? Outlawry runs in the blood, I think.”
“We were supposed to take the woman,” one of the others said. “The baron’s lady.”
“This is better.”
“Locksley will murder us if we take his kids.”
“On the contrary. We hold a knife to their throats, he’ll do whatever we want. Our master can hold them hostage for years. Keep Locksley tame.”
Their master—she thought of all the people who had a grudge against Father, all the names that came up when talk turned to politics. It could have been anyone. A name wasn’t going to help her.
“Wait. Edmund, where’d the bloke go?”
“What bloke?” said the ruddy man.
“The man I shot, where is he?”
Mary craned her head and saw that the Ghost of Sherwood had disappeared, leaving behind only a mark of blood on the road.
“Christ, Morton. You two, go find him and slit his throat.”
“I had my eyes right on him! He just disappeared!”
“No, he crawled away when you weren’t looking—”
“They say Sherwood Forest is haunted. Maybe he wasn’t—”
“Bollocks! Go find him, now!”
Someone else yanked her arms behind her and tied her wrists tight, then shoved a cloth in her mouth and tied it in place and slung her over a shoulder. She couldn’t have done anything, she kept telling herself. There were too many of them and they were too strong.
And now the Ghost of Sherwood was likely dead, trying to save them. Mary choked back a scream.
They carried her and her siblings away, into the forest.
iv
DUSK CAME, AND MARIAN wasn’t quite worried about the children yet. Eleanor had disappeared, but so had the other two, which meant they were likely together. Robin and Will were off visiting Much at the mill and smithy. When he returned, she’d ask if he’d seen them. They might have found each other on the way. She put away the mending and spinning, lit candles in the hall for supper, and added fuel to the hearth.
When an hostler rushed in from the yard, shouting, then she worried.
“My lady, there is a man at the gate. He’s crazed, badly hurt—I would not let him in but he said . . . he asked for his lordship by name. He said the lord would see him. What should I do?”
“Show me,” she said. They ran to the yard, to the gate, which stood open. A crowd had gathered and parted for Marian.
There, in the middle of the dirt path, Pol the stable master and one of his boys supported a man who had an arrow in his shoulder and was covered in blood.
“Take me to Robin. I must see him, please!” the man cried.
She was both shocked and not, to see this man before her after so many years. His beard grew to his chest, his hair stuck out wild, all of it gone to a kind of hoary gray, like frost on slate. The blood from the arrow wound was sticky, near dried. How far had he come seeking help, and who had done this?
He saw her at last, in the open space the crowd had made for her.
“Marian,” he breathed. He lurched, and Pol and the boy stumbled to catch his weight.
Marian rushed up and displaced the boy to take his good arm over her shoulder, but he was too tall, too large, still all muscle and strength. She almost couldn’t hold him. “Bring him into the hall. Send for Robin!” Pol helped her, and the boy ran off.
“I have news, I must tell you—”
“Tell us after we’ve got that arrow out and you’ve had a drink. God, John, what have you been doing?”
“The children, Marian. They are taken. I could not stop it.”
She had been angry many times, she had been frightened many times, for herself and her friends and especially for Robin. But never like this, so that her breath choked in her throat and her blood ran to ice and she wanted to break something. No, she wanted a bow and arrow in her hand, and to kill something.