Page 4 of Wench

Her father and the Sheriff had spent countless nights cursing the Merry Men, stalking through the manor like a storm in search of someone to punish, as if fury alone could mend what they’d undone. But beneath the bluster, Marian had seen the truth in them. Their anger was only armour. What hollowed them out wasfear.

Robin Hood was a dangerous reminder that power could be stolen back.

The smiths’ shouts rise in a rough chorus, punctuated by the clash of hammer on anvil as sparks spray like fireflies, born and extinguished in a blink. Men’s shoulders glisten with sweat, their faces ashen and hollow in the furnace glow. Exhaustion clings to them like soot, but still they work, because they must.

‘Hopefully, this will be the last full day of it,’ Marian mutters before stepping back and starting toward the manor. ‘Then the Sheriff and that snivelling weasel of his can crawl back to where they belong.’

‘Not sure even the heathens of Nottingham deserve what the Sheriff’s putting them through.’ Tilda clicks her tongue. ‘Seems like every fortnight there’s another levy, another tithe, another tax. Grain for the Sheriff’s storehouses. Coin for his guards. Timber for his forges.’

Marian chews the inside of her cheek. ‘Why does no one stop him?’

‘The king’s off chasing glory and playing martyr in the Holy Lands, leaving Nottingham to starve. The Sheriff wrings the people dry because there’s no hand powerful enough to slap his away.’

Marian’s gut lurches. She pictures the market stalls she used to visit as a child, hands sticky with honey-cakes, where merchants’ voices were as warm as their hearths. It’s been years since she last rode through Nottingham’s square. Could it truly have changed so much?

‘And it’s not just coin any more,’ Tilda adds darkly.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Haven’t you wondered why Aislyn Briar no longer attends Sunday service? Or Ellyn Rowe?’ Tilda shakes her head, braid swishing against her shoulder.

Marian frowns. ‘I thought Aislyn got married. And Lady Rowe mentioned that Ellyn was sent off to the nunnery in York.’

Tilda snorts bitterly. ‘Aye, that’s what their families have been told. But it’s not vows or prayers those girls are keeping. Aislyn’s brother quarrelled with a guard who came away with a split lip. A week later she vanished. Ellyn’s father was caught in a brothel with his pants around his ankles and a half-blood babe already swelling the belly of the fae wench beneath him.’

Marian gasps. ‘That’s treason.’

‘It’s an abomination is what it is.’ Tilda’s mouth twists. ‘But he never met the hangman’s noose. The Sheriff’s men took Ellyn, same as Aislyn. Another woman cursed to bleed for the sins of a man.’

Marian stills. ‘Took them where?’

Tilda glances around. ‘No one knows for certain. There are whispers they’re taken to the Sheriff’s keep, that he has a taste for pretty things he can ruin.’ Her voice drops, rough with the kind of fury that has nowhere left to go. ‘Either way, they never come back.’

Marian’s stomach twists. She remembers Aislyn’s laugh, bright as bells, and Ellyn’s way of pressing flowers between her hymnbook pages. Gone. Just like that.

‘How could their families let this happen?’

‘What choice do they have?’ Tilda snaps. ‘Resist and hang. Complain and lose twice over. Your father bends the knee like the rest, selling his soul for a pat on the head. To men like them, a girl’s body is just another tax to pay, another field to reap until it’s barren.’

Marian swallows hard, stomach roiling. The path slopes upward toward the rise where Hallomere Manor waits. She stares at the looming shape of her home,her cage, and forces her feet forward.

Behind her, Sherwood waits, veiled in silver mist. Before her, the Sheriff’s shadow festers in her father’s hall.

And Marian wonders which place truly harbours the greater monsters.

ChapterTwo

The bathwater smells of lye, lemon peel and earth. Marian’s wrinkled fingers rub at the mud embedded within her cuticles, at the dried sap nestled in the crook of her elbow, but with every fleck she scrapes away, another clings tighter. The water clouds brown around her, a thin film collecting on the surface. She sinks lower until all but her collarbones vanish.

Wet curls plaster her temples as she closes her eyes and tilts her head back against the rim, only to be met by those unblinking emerald eyes. A shiver ripples up her spine, despite the steam rising off the copper tub. Her eyes snap open and she scrubs harder, as if she can erase the forest from her pores, but the wild doesn’t wash off so easily.

The door creaks and Tilda slips in, carrying a threadbare towel. ‘You’ll scrub yourself raw if you keep at it like that,’ she scolds softly, setting it on a chair and gesturing for her charge to stand.

Marian sighs and slides out of the water, skin pebbling as cool air rushes over her. She reaches for the towel and begins to blot away the water.

Tilda clucks her tongue as Marian tugs the towel around her shoulders. ‘Best steel yourself, girl. Your father’s in a mood already.’ She lowers her voice, glancing toward the door as though the stone walls themselves might carry the sound. ‘And the Sheriff’s not much better. Strutting through the forge-yard like a cockerel, demanding to see your latest sketches.’

Marian stills, towel clutched to her chest. She doesn’t need to ask which sketches he means. The Sheriff had insisted she make alterations to the hook-netting she’d already laboured over for weeks. The unique design required an intricate weave of ore-thread and tempered steel that she had to calculate perfectly, until the balance was precise enough to hold against fae strength without tearing apart the human hands that dared wield it.