Everything I Do: a Robin Hood romance (Rosa Fitzwalter Book 1) (26 page)

But Sir Hugh seemed not to listen. His eyes were on something behind Robin.

Rosa approached and as Robin turned to see what had drawn his opponent’s attention nearly slashed her clear with his sword. She stepped back at the last minute.

“Have I injured you?” Robin asked and then, abruptly, “Why are you here? Will?”

Will was rather reluctant to come forward just then, but he would have, only Rosa answered before Robin’s anger had a chance to become full-blown.

“Forgive me for interrupting you,” Rosa said although she did not seem the least bit sorry.

Sir Hugh continued to watch her, speechless, from the ground.

“My father told you I was dead, didn’t he?” Rosa told him calmly.

He got up abruptly, as if only just remembering he had been prostrate on the ground all this time. Robin, puzzled, made as if to detain him, but quickly he saw that the man was no longer dangerous. White as a sheet, he seemed more likely to faint than to do anything else.

“You -you are alive?” he croaked through dry lips.

“As you see,” Rosa replied.

“He said the outlaw had killed you,” Sir Hugh went on, his eyes void, as if he was in a trance. “He said he did it to spite him. I came to avenge your death. I came to tell him you had died for him once already, hadn’t that been enough?”

Robin started to ask a question, but Sir Hugh went on.

“I came to kill him,” he said as though Robin wasn’t standing right next to him. “I knew he was good with the sword and the bow, better than most men really, and I knew he had many on his side and I was only one, but I thought, surely I was angry and desperate enough to kill him in one swoop.”

He sat down abruptly. He closed his eyes and leaned back and Rosa thought he would collapse there and then, before Robin Hood and all his men. He seemed to pull himself together however, with a great effort, and lifted his eyes to hers once more.

The hatred was gone now.

His eyes were pleading, sad. They were bereft.

“You had already died for him once,” he repeated.

…

“Is this acceptable?” Robin asked Rosa through gritted teeth nearly an hour later.

She nodded, trying to still her racing heart. She looked frantically around, looking for another opportunity to postpone the inevitable, but judging by Robin’s impatient pacing, he wasn’t likely to wait for much longer. And neither was he going to forget Sir Hugh’s declaration of her ‘already having died’ for Robin.

She had managed to buy some time by asking that they go back to the camp and calm themselves, dress their wounds and wash. Robin had no intention of letting the matter drop, but her pallor and the gathering darkness persuaded him after a while. Once they were back at the camp she insisted that they all try to eat something, but both Robin and Sir Hugh declined, staring icily at each other.

Now the night was enveloping them all like a velvet cloak and the men were waiting in silence for Sir Hugh’s next words.

Yet he hesitated.

Rosa sent one last look full of anguish in his direction. “You promised,” she whispered, more to herself than to him.

“Forgive me, my lady, I do not wish to break my promise to you,” he said and clamped his lips shut with determination.

Robin almost throttled him on the spot, but someone restrained him.

“You’ll never learn this way,” Little John said.

“Then how
will
I learn?” Robin cried desperately. “
She
won’t tell me, that’s for sure.”

He pointed at Rosa and it was the first time he had spoken to her in anger. She looked up, surprised.

“I will tell you, master, if you command me,” she replied, evenly.

“I would never command you, you know that,” he said, somewhat more calmly. “Just, please, someone tell me,” he went on in a tormented tone, his hands clenching each other until his knuckles turned white. “I think I might go mad. Please, take pity on me, my lady.”

He spoke these words softly, for her ears only, and his black eyes spoke more eloquently than his tongue. She couldn’t stand it.

“You may tell what you want,” she told Sir Hugh, resigned, and hoped for the best.

Sir Hugh’s narration was rather more detailed than Rosa had expected.

He described everything, from the throng of people gathered to watch the scene, to the blood that soaked Rosa’s elegant dress.

Robin’s face paled. The men gasped. Little John leaned forward, all attention. Father Tuck grasped Will Scarlet’s arm for support. And still Sir Hugh went on.

Rosa wanted to run and hide behind the trees like a child, but she held herself in check. What she found she couldn’t endure however, was the look of pure torture on Robin’s face when Sir Hugh described the Sheriff’s dagger plunged into her heart. He then went on to say that thankfully it hadn’t been her heart, but her left lung, and that was the reason for her recovery, impossible as it had seemed at first that she would live.

“You must remember that day,
‘chief’
,” Sir Hugh said to Robin, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “You had foolishly come to mass without any of your men. Mayhap you had one of your hot-headed arguments with your giant here, for which you are both infamous. Or else you grossly overestimated your abilities, for if memory serves me well, the Sheriff and no more than ten of his men had you surrounded and bound within seconds. A boy you had once fed recognized you, remember? I’m sure you cursed the day you’d ever stooped to do good to his family of coarse peasants. He ran to you and hugged your knees, crying to his mama: ‘Robin Hood’s here!’”

Sir Hugh laughed harshly, and his laugh rang in the tense silence, sending chills down the men’s spines.

“The Sheriff couldn’t wait,” Sir Hugh continued. “I was there, I remember it well, two years though it’s nearly been since then. I tried to reach him, to whisper in his ear to wait, but there was no time, he acted so quickly. Immediately he came at you with his dagger, straight for your heart. Then you were on the ground, and the Sheriff was bending over you and cursing loudly, the holy chapel ringing with profanities. When he stood up, shaking from head to toe, we all saw the reason.”

Robin breathed in sharply, and Sir Hugh’s voice broke.

“There she was, our sweet princess,” Sir Hugh said in a thick voice, looking at his boots, “dressed in all her finery, drenched in her own blood, the Sheriff’s dagger sticking from her heart. She’d fallen on the sorry thief, we discovered in horror, and her hair concealed the face of a coward, the one whose life she had saved, and who disappeared before we could lift her body from the floor. We did not know then whether this sudden turn of events was due to accident or calculation…”

Sir Hugh turned his face aside, as though disgusted by the mere sight of Robin Hood. “I suppose your men had come to your rescue belatedly and drew you discreetly from the scene,” he spat at him. “No matter. All my thoughts were for her. I thought… I
knew
she was dead.”

“No,” Robin muttered, his head in his hands, and he didn’t seem to be able to listen to any more after that. Still Sir Hugh went on with his tale, ignoring the tormented gulps of breath Robin was struggling to take in, like a drowning man.

He looked about to break apart entirely, his entire body still as death, suspended in disbelief and horror at what he was hearing.

“She lived, however,” Sir Hugh said. “She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t speak, she couldn’t eat for months on end. And yet she lived. She suffered -still does, I’m sure, attacks of pain in her left side, unbearable torture of which none of you are worthy. And yet, she’s still loyal to her killers, to the men who left her to die on that cold chapel floor. Judge for yourselves this day whether you deserve her among you. Whether you deserve another chance at killing her in order to save your sorry lives.” 

Sir Hugh was finally done, and the men began to whisper excitedly to one another, eyeing Rosa with new-found respect. She noticed Robin get up on shaky feet and slip quietly away, but didn’t have time to see where he went, for Will Scarlet was beside her in a moment.

“The day of the festival,” he began abruptly and she noticed his eyes shone strangely in the light of the fire. “When I was in the Sheriff’s dungeon, someone left a dagger next to me, a dagger that later would save my life. It was you.”

She nodded, there was nothing else to do.

“I thank you, mistress,” he said simply and knelt at her feet.

“Don’t- don’t thank me,” she said quickly, horrified by his gesture. “Please. I was happy to be of service to you.”

Will merely smiled and brought her hand to his lips.

“You could have paid for that service with your life,” he said and his handsome face winced at the thought.

“Still, that was what I chose to do,” Rosa insisted. “No need to thank me for that.”

“Indeed there is,” Will said, refusing to release her fingers. “Even if you do not see it, I do. And,” he went on, gently retaining her when she would have gotten up, “furthermore, I find I wish to thank you for my master’s life.”

“Do you think he…?” Rosa began to ask, but was interrupted by a resounding thunder that seemed to crash directly over their heads.

They ran for shelter as the sudden rain began to pelt on them in torrents. Even though it was a short run to their makeshift rain shelter, and an even shorter wait until Little John could open its well-concealed entrance thickly concealed with rotten leaves and sticks, they were almost drenched when they finally stepped inside. It was a bit crowded, but they lit fires and prepared to make merry while they waited the storm out.

They had been obliged to sleep in the earthen shelter before, and were not afraid of their confinement, however long, because for once they had something exciting to talk about, to wonder at and to exchange opinions on.

“Where is the master?” Rosa asked a man who was sitting next to her.

She was vigorously rubbing her arms to warm them and did not know exactly who it was she had posed this question to. As soon as she lifted her eyes, however, she almost jumped; for it was the only man in there she would have rather not ventured to talk to. It could not be helped now, of course, and it would be even worse to get up and leave. So she stayed, expecting his silence at best.

When he answered she was surprised, and even more so when she found out there was not a trace of hostility in his voice.

“I think he went to clear his head,” Julian told her. “I saw him galloping away on his horse, a couple of minutes before the rain began to pour. He’ll be back when he is drenched enough, I think,” he added with a smirk.

Rosa didn’t know quite what to say to that, so she remained silent.

Slowly the heat of the fires began to warm her, and someone passed her a pelt to wrap around herself. She would have liked to get up and away from Julian, maybe even say a few words to Sir Hugh, who sat sullenly in a corner, silent and pale. Indeed, she would have liked very well to have him know her opinion of his actions, but that seemed nearly impossible at the moment, for she would have to struggle to make her way through limbs and heads and laughing men’s bodies closely packed together in the close space.

So she turned to Julian and asked him if he cared to share the pelt. He shook his head and said he was warm enough, but looked at her in a curious way, as if he was surprised at her kindness. They sat in silence for a while, not knowing what to talk about, and then he drew something from a pocket concealed in his tunic, his blond locks sending droplets of water to land on her arm.

It appeared to be an object dangling from a roughly-tied piece of cord, perhaps in an effort to create a makeshift pendant.

“Robin told me you heard the story -the story of my little sister, the other day,” he said.

“I did,” she replied, “I overheard. I am sorry, I hadn’t meant to…”

“He said you cried,” Julian interrupted her and his luminous eyes bore into hers with emotion.

“Yes,” she said.

“Thank you,” he answered simply.

She raised her eyebrows, thinking she had somehow misunderstood him and wondering whether he was mocking her again.

“Thank you for crying for her,” he repeated. “Would you like to see her?”

“See her?”

“I have a miniature portrait of her, it was done when she was a child, before we set out on a journey that… that resulted in her death,” he pursed his lips and she wondered if she had heard of this story before, because it seemed vaguely familiar to her. “We lived in extreme poverty, but there seemed to be a particular reason for this miniature to be drawn and to travel with us -two of them actually, an original and a copy- although I never exactly understood its importance. I was little more than a child myself then, you see.”

Rosa listened attentively to his story, but he seemed to have forgotten her presence, to have been transported to a place in the past.

“Anyway, d’ you want to see her?” he asked gruffly after a brief silence.