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When a breathless messenger came galloping up, my hopes rose for something — anything — to distract Prince John from marrying me, or to at least buy time. But the message, whatever it was, didn’t have the effect I’d hoped for. Quite the opposite, in fact, because the mysterious news only made Prince John spur everyone on — literally.
“Move it,” he snapped at his troops while pushing his own mount harder. “There’s no time to waste.”
Lady Winthrop and I looked at each other.
“Maybe our allies are finally on the move,” she whispered.
My hopes peaked, then faded over the next few hours. No allies rushed to my aid, nor did helpful bandits appear. Just Lady Winthrop and me creaking along in that carriage.
Of course, I didn’t sit idly. I worked with the horses to cause delay after delay. One stumbled, throwing his mount, the captain of the guard. Another skittered sideways into the horses hitched to the wagon, tangling the harness. Others whinnied, reared, and refused to go on. But I couldn’t overuse such tricks, lest the soldiers grow too cruel in their reactions.
At noon, another messenger rode up, and that time, my hopes were even more cruelly dashed.
“Robin Hood has been captured!” the man cried as he passed the troops.
Prince John usually rode near the carriage, so I heard the whole breathless report.
“Robin Hood has been captured! He turned himself in at Nottingham!”
At that point, I’d shrugged, unconcerned. Robynne was a woman. They must have had the wrong person.
But then the messenger corrected himself. “Turned herself in, I mean.”
“Robin Hood — a woman?” Prince John gasped, along with many others.
I rolled my eyes, and Lady Winthrop patted my hand. “Now, now. The more they think we’re weak and incapable, the better our chances of delivering a sound surprise.”
She was right, but still, I grumbled. “We’re on the dawn of the twelfth century. How much longer will it take for men to appreciate what women are capable of?”
“By the time your children have children,” Lady Winthrop told me. “I’m sure of it.”
A quick estimate put that at about 1239. That long?
My gut said that was on the optimistic side, but heck. A girl could hope.
Or maybe I shouldn’t, at least when it came to the part about children. How was that ever going to happen if the man I loved was a monk? We might have shared one sizzling night, but the moment Tuck took his vows, it would be bye-bye to any bang-bang for the two of us. And if I couldn’t have Tuck, I didn’t want anyone.
I cut off those thoughts before they pushed me even deeper into despair. The present was hard enough, especially if the real Robynne Hood had been caught.
I doubted it at first, but then I overheard Prince John mutter gleefully, “I knew I could count on Jessica.”
My gut sank. Jessica was Lady Thornton, and this was exactly her type of trick. But why would Robynne turn herself in?
As it turned out, for the same reason I’d agreed to ride with Prince John. Blackmail.
I overheard it in snatches of conversation that rippled through the soldiers riding around us. Apparently, Lady Thornton, hell-bent on avenging her brother, had seized a young woman and her children in Nottingham’s marketplace in broad daylight, such was her scorn for the law.
“Lady Thornton gave Robin Hood until this morning to turn himself in,” one of the messengers said. “If he didn’t, she threatened to kill a child every hour, and the mother, Bess, first.”
My heart leaped. Bess? The sweet young woman I’d visited with Tuck on alms day?
If Lady Thornton had ridden up with the news herself, I would have pulled a dagger and gone at her, consequences be damned. What kind of monster did such a thing?
“Good thinking!” The prince nodded appreciatively, answering my unspoken question. A monster like my future husband — at least, he would be, if things continued in this vein.
“Robin Hood — a woman?” The men jabbered about that all afternoon.
Less wowed by the woman part, I pondered a different question. Why would Robynne surrender? She had to know Lady Thornton was not to be trusted. The Merry Men needed her leadership, and the people of Nottinghamshire needed her too. Why lay all of that on the line?
