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XXXVII: A Threat
to Little John

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Thomas and Will returned to the King’s Houses to find that Sehild had brought them all a late meal of fried pork pies and bean tarts. The two of them sat at table and greedily consumed the small pies and tarts, and drank good ale. The other three had already indulged. Little John was enjoying his ale while watching Isabella Birkin and her son. No one showed any inclination to leave the Great Hall, even after hearing of Thomas and Will’s rout of the demon knights. Will showed off the pooled material of the Yvag suit of armor. When Adam looked up, envious, Thomas handed him the second suit he’d collected.

Thomas suggested they would want to repeat their ambush at the other two identified gates and send out more archers to confront others, creating (he hoped) a fear of opening the way from Yvagddu to Sherwood at all. “With luck, we’ll soon attract more bowmen and be able to compel them not even to try and come through. And this will all stop.”

“Yes, but by suspending forest law,” replied Isabella.

Thomas picked up his ale and walked to where she sat nearer the fire. “Forest law is objectionable,” he said as he sat down. “Preserves of deer and fowl for royalty only, who only come here when they remember to make use of any of it. You said yourself that no one has used this estate or the deer preserve in so long that the caretaker’s died and not been replaced. All while people go hungry.”

“It is the rule of law.”

“Then the law is inadequate.”

Adam, perhaps fed up with the conversation but more likely eager to try on the elven armor, got up and left. John followed him, leaving Thomas to look after Isabella. Will Scathelock arose then before he could be drawn into the debate. He bid them a good night and departed.

Isabella sat and studied him again, a disposition she seemed to be perfecting. He sat uncomfortably under the scrutiny but made no further argument regarding forest law. Finally, she asked, “What is the truth of you, Robyn?”

Caught off guard, he didn’t know what to say in reply.

She continued, ticking off each point as she made it. “You know who the spinners have been made for. You know the workings of them as well as the elves do, and you say you saw your wife cored out by one. You descended through Nottingham castle rock with the ease of someone who can shift their shape at will—and I suspect that’s true, isn’t it? You know things about these demons—these elves—that no one else knows. In fact, you know too much about too much. So, I ask again, what is the truth of Robyn Hoode?”

He had to smile—she’d been carefully observing and assessing everything that had happened. “The truth is,” he said carefully, “there is no truth to Robyn Hoode. As I said before, you’d be as accurate calling me Robyn Goodfellow.”

“You’re a puca, then.” She stared. “Battling elves?”

“That’s as near accurate as any other story you might concoct.”

She shook her head, dismissing all nonsense. “All right, puca. Where do you come from? When were you born?”

He ignored the first question. “I was born in the Year of Our Lord 1121.”

She laughed. “That’s impossible.”

“Everything about my life is impossible. You want the truth of Robyn Hoode, you’ll first have to embrace that.” And then he told her a version of his story just to show her how impossible. He left out where it took place, left out Janet and Morven, said only that the elves had tormented his whole family while he served as a soldier and he had decided to put an end to them. He told her what the gleaming city of Ailfion was like, how time was somehow unhinged there and that twenty years could pass in a matter of weeks or months, he couldn’t be sure.

When he was done, they sat without saying anything for some time. Then as a coda to his story, he added, “That’s how I know the Yvags won’t stop coming after you so long as they can find you. You and Adam both, I fear. They want someone to rewrite some part of forest law for them, perhaps to give them control of Lincolnshire and Derbyshire. Somewhere lies a plot involving de Montfort and the bishop.”

She said, “So in the end this all boils down to a grab for power.”

“The core of everything they do, yes.” He anticipated more questions from her.

Instead, abruptly, she stood up. “Upon that, let us retire. You’ve given me much to think about, not to mention impossible visions of spires that stretch to the stars.” He got up with her. Stern in demeanor, she said, “I want to believe you, and to embrace your tale, I do. But there is much in it that remains inaudita. Perhaps once all of these threads are knit into a whole, I will see the picture and understand. Perhaps then we will know each other again.”

She turned and walked away.

Left to interpret that, Thomas retired to his own chamber, pulled off his clothing down to his braes, and collapsed on the bed. He couldn’t very well blame Isabella for keeping him at a distance now. At least, he thought, she wasn’t furious with him.


Pounding at the door awoke him, and a voice calling out, “Robyn, it is Isabella!”

Thomas rolled off the bed and answered the door.

It was indeed Isabella. The nearby chamber doors opened. Will and Adam peered out. She said, “Little John has ridden off. One of the serving staff came and woke me just now.” The woman in fact stood in the shadows behind her looking distraught. He thought it was the woman in charge of the kitchen, Sehild.

“What’s caused this?”

“A body has appeared. At the gatehouse.”

Thomas turned to grab his clothes, and that was when he saw that the flap of the mason’s bag had been untied. He reached in but knew already the dights were gone, stolen while he slept. Hastily he pulled on the Lincoln green surcoat and leggings, and bolted from the room.

Across the hall, down the steps and outside, he ran, all the while thinking how John must have taken off in pursuit of whoever stole them. Fool, he called himself, to think that just because Zhanedd had searched and found nothing, they wouldn’t look there again. The Yvags desperately wanted those spinners.

Beyond the paddock, the gatehouse stood like the remains of a fortress wall built above the outer ditch. Running for it, he took in everything: the black Yvag beast in the stable still, motionless but tracking him, or more likely his ördstone; in the archway of the gatehouse, the King’s Houses equerry, Edrick, standing over a body; no one else in sight. Even at a distance, he could see that it wasn’t Little John’s body. Closer, it became a young man, no more than fifteen at a guess. From the look of it he’d been run through with one of those terrible swords.

Edrick began explaining as Thomas drew near. “Don’t know when nor how this one showed up, good sir, but wasn’t here before this dawn.”

These details only reinforced the idea that John was in pursuit of the thief. Maybe there had been more than one—but John wouldn’t have wielded one of those swords, wouldn’t have touched it. Who—

“Beggin’ yer pardon, good sir, whoever left him left this with him.” Edrick drew from his tunic a crumpled piece of parchment and gave it to Thomas. It read:


To Little John,

Your brother from Palavia Parva sends this greeting to you via his eldest.

Return us the dights or we shall take another of his family—one for each day until you do.

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“But the writing would have meant nothing to John,” he said, and held the parchment up. “Did you read it to him?”

Edrick shrank a little bit. “I confess, good sir, that I did. I did not understand all of the words, but enough of them. The mistress of the kitchen has long been trying to teach me how to read, mostly Latin. This man, John, could not but squint at it. I’d no presentiment what I was about to say, how terrible the news.”

By then Will and Adam had arrived. Both stared at the dead boy. Isabella, roused last of all, was just coming along the path.

Thomas handed the scrap of parchment to Will. He turned for the stable. As he crossed the paddock, he saw that John’s piebald mare was absent. He saddled the Yvag beast and led it out of the paddock.

“Will,” he told Scathelock, “I don’t want to do this but no one else here has a chance of stopping Little John. If he gives up the dights, the Yvags will surely destroy Lady Isabella. You and Adam must keep to her side at all times, let no one near her, not even those you think you know.”

“I swear it, Robyn,” Will answered.

“I as well!” added Adam.

“You’ll swear what?” asked Isabella. Then she saw the body and gasped.

Thomas didn’t stay to hear them answer. He kicked the beast into a gallop, and in moments was beyond Clipstone and on his way to Barnsdale.

The vill of Palavia Parva was on the far side of that wood, not far from The Saylis. John had spoken of both places. If only Thomas had visited it, he could conjure its location. . . . Abruptly, he tugged on the reins.

Maybe he didn’t have to. He didn’t need to arrive at the destination; he needed only to get ahead of Little John.

He climbed down from the Yvag beast.


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