Outlaw Princess of Sherwood (8 page)

Firming her voice, Etty spoke. “Father.”

With a jerk he faced her, his sharp red eyebrows bunched like wings. He opened his mouth.

“Father,” Etty said before he could start scolding, “you will send orders for Mother to be clothed, fed and released. At once.”

She saw his face go meat red, dark beneath the carrot color of his beard. But he kept control of his rage, letting it give force to his words as he told her too softly, “Foolish girl, your impudence will be punished. Your mother will die.”

Inside herself, Etty felt little Princess Ettarde quivering like frog eggs. Papa really did possess the power, legally, to have Mama killed. Yet outwardly, Etty did not tremble, for she was an outlaw now. She said, “Remember what Seneca said, Father: All cruelty springs from weakness.”

It was her father who had taught her to read and memorize her Latin and Greek. He had provided a whipping girl to be beaten with a dog lash when Ettarde did not learn her lessons, and it had been harder for Ettarde to watch the peasant girl cry than it would have been to take her own punishment. Papa was like that—perverse, somehow cruel even in kindness. And proud, all too ready to show off his wealth or his horses or his learned daughter before his honored guests. A daughter who could read and write, forsooth! But above all, Father was proud of his own learning.

The only way to defeat Father, Etty sensed, to really defeat him in his heart, would be to conquer him with the weapons he had taught her. With words. The Romans, the Greeks.

Not this time, Etty told herself. Not with the help of the coolness her mother had taught her and the defiance she had learned from the outlaws.

Seated across the fire from King Solon the Red, and taking care to appear at ease, Etty helped herself to some fresh wheat bread.

Her father aimed his forefinger at her like a spear. “You munch bread in my presence like a dairymaid? No daughter of mine is a coarse, common—”

“Argumentum ad hominem,”
Etty told him, reaching for some of Robin's dark, wild honey to go with the bread.

“You overspeak yourself, ungrateful wench, just because I gave you an education. It is as Socrates said: Once woman is made equal to man, she fancies herself his superior.”

“In more honest translation, Father, Socrates declared that educated woman
is
superior to man.” Etty licked honey from her fingers.

“Have you forgotten how Semonides compares woman to a hairy sow, a braying donkey, a vixen?”

“And whom would you rather contemplate, Father, Semonides or Socrates? Or Plato? Have you forgotten how Plato and Xenophon argue that the soul is without gender, and woman is therefore the moral equal of man?”

“But not the legal equal!”

“Yes, in Plato's
Republic,
the legal equal also, to be educated alongside the men, take physical training like men, and share in the responsibilities of state.”

“Bah. You believe in such a fairy-tale world?” King Solon the Red drew himself up and fixed his daughter with his most stern and regal stare. “Speak truth, girl: Do you consider yourself my equal?”

Etty had learned to her bones the code of Sherwood Forest: An outlaw is the equal of anyone. Therefore, although her knees trembled under her skirt, it was not too difficult for her to placidly reply, “Absolutely, Father. And in some ways, your superior.”

His face flushed crimson above his orange hedgehog beard. He stiffened like a barking dog. “Strumpet!” he howled. “Shameless vandal of good taste and tradition!”

There. He had lost his temper. She had breached his fortifications, at least.

Etty became aware that outlaws had gathered around the fire, listening, that Robin stood grinning behind King Solon, that Rowan had settled beside her with a quiet smile, and that she, Etty, was almost enjoying herself, enraging her father.

But she had not brought him here to enjoy herself.

Or even to defeat him in debate, really. She had broken down his defenses somewhat, but . . . how to find the man inside?

Had he ever loved Mother? At all?

Etty sighed, set her food aside and wiped her hands on her kerchief. She faced her father levelly, inwardly begging him to hear her. She looked into his hawkish eyes—had she ever dared to really look into his eyes before? They surprised her. Hard, yes, but also old and bleak.

Etty asked quietly, “If I am such a disgrace to you, Father, why do you want me back? Why not leave me here?”

He replied too quickly, without thought. “Because, in the proper order of things, the father should exercise authority over his family, and the king—”

A flare of rage took Etty by surprise. “Is that what you call it?” She could not keep her face from hardening as her voice turned ice sharp. “You call it authority, to punish and humiliate your wife, who has done nothing but serve you, whom you should cherish the most—”

“You speak like a child.” Back in control, King Solon showed his teeth in a cold smile. “Have you forgotten your Thucydides? The powerful take what they can, and the weak give what they must. Woman is weak—”

“Only in the narrowest sense of the word. In other ways, man is weaker.” Confound everything, she had lost her advantage, and he was back on his high horse. Within an eye blink, Etty changed tactics. “Tell me, Father, why are there holes in your smallclothes?”

She could not have appalled him more if she had spit. He jerked upright and gasped for breath. “How dare you! I—”

“You lack a few coppers to spend for the making of new ones. Why so?”

With his red eyebrows bunched fit to fly, he glared at her without speaking. She stared back at him. From the far side of the oak, she heard the laughter and talk of outlaws. A mistle thrush ranted from a high branch, and in the sky overhead, a hawk screamed. But around the campfire, all was silence.

Etty said at last, “Lord Basil is pressing you hard, is that it?”

“Aye!” The answer exploded out of him. “If you had married him as I bade you, to ally our families, all would have been well. But since you willfully disobeyed me—”

“Have you not reared me to possess my own mind? Now should I take poison if you command me to?”

King Solon ignored this, ranting on, releasing truth at last. “Since you wed him not, all has fallen to ruin. His army is three times the size of mine. Already last autumn he took from me the better part of my lands. And now that spring is here, he will soon besiege Auberon itself.”

“Oh,” Etty whispered, for she was beginning to surmise what he wanted of her.

“Because you have been an undutiful daughter,” he said with his teeth glinting amid his bristling beard, “folk will starve and soldiers will die.”

Etty felt weak. Visions flashed in her mind of terrified peasants running from their homes, of crops and villages in flames, of soldiers bloodily dying and castle walls falling, of rude strangers brawling into Auberon, tearing the tapestries, into her tower chamber, tossing her books into the fire, into her home—

No. Sherwood Forest was her home now.

“But perhaps it is not too late,” her father was saying with an edge like a rat's bite in his voice. “Lord Basil might yet be mollified if you submit yourself to him in wedlock.”

Etty felt Rowan's gentle touch on her hand. That contact seemed like the only real thing in the world, the only thing that kept her from whirling away in a wind of nightmare. Her father's high-browed face swam before her eyes, his pallid skin stretched like parchment over the skull of his forehead.

“You quote the philosophers,” he was saying. “What would Socrates or any of the rest of them say now? Just by doing your duty to me as a daughter, you could save many lives.”

“Etty,” Rowan whispered, “no. It's all wrong.”

Was it wrong? It felt wrong, yet . . . Etty shook her head, trying to clear it, but the thought would not go away. All her father wanted of her was sacrifice. And sacrifice was noble, was it not?

S
acrifice. Etty knew her duty: to give herself, the way most women did, the way Mother had always given and given of herself. . . .

Mother.

In that cage of Father's making.

Have Father command Mother's release? When sky turned brown and earth turned blue, maybe it would happen. But till then, somebody had better do something.

Etty's feet, wandering like her thoughts, had already carried her to the edge of Robin Hood's hollow. “I'm going to get Mother,” she said to the oak, the songbirds in tree and sky, the outlaws.

She felt many eyes staring at her. Lionel, Rook, Rowan, the merry men, they all gawked.

It didn't matter. Mama would know what to do. Etty turned toward Fountain Dale.

Rowan limped forward to catch her by the arm. “Etty, wait.”

“No. I'm going now.”

“Lass, bide a bit.” Robin Hood strode forward to stand in her way, reaching out toward her as if his touch could change her mind. “Wait and see whether your father's captain makes an offer.”

“No.” Wait and see, with Mother in that cage? Another minute would be too long. Etty stepped back from Robin. “I'm
going!
” Bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, she looked around, saw her bow and sheaf of arrows lying where she had dropped them, picked them up and slung them over her shoulder. She felt at the leather pouch on her belt; everything she needed was there. Her knife rode in its boarskin sheath. She was ready.

“Too risky,” Rook growled.

Robin said, “He's right, lass. You can't.”

“But I can and I will and I shall and I am going to.” Feeling light-headed with relief, Etty grinned. “I'm the only one who can.”

“Etty, sleep on it,” Lionel put in.

When Mother had been sleeping in a cage for three days now? Were they insane?

“He's right.” Rowan laid a quiet hand on Etty's arm. “You're too tired. You're not thinking clearly.”

“I'm thinking like a jolly old logician!” Etty thought she was. Hands on her hips, she scowled at the group of them ranked between her and the edge of Robin's clearing. “Listen, idiots. You're all outlaws, with bounties on your heads. But I'm just a runaway. You can be killed. But there's no reward for anyone to kill me. As for capture, the man who wants to take me captive is
your
captive.” She jabbed her forefinger toward her father's sullen form seated on the far side of the oak, out of earshot. “Without him, his men won't know what to do about me. At the very worst, if they detain me, I'll arrange an exchange of prisoners. I'm going.” She brushed through them and through thornbushes into the forest. Only Lionel reached out to attempt to stop her.

“Only if I go with you,” he said.

“
No
, curdlehead.” She strode away.

 

Straight as an arrow's flight, and wishing she could be half as quick, Etty ran toward Fountain Dale. When she slowed, it was only to catch her breath, not for fear of guards. Let them threaten her all they liked.

But in fact, she encountered no guards. None.

Hot and panting from running, she paused, crouching, in the hazel bushes at the clearing's edge. “By Aristotle's beard,” she murmured, scanning the clearing.

Throughout Fountain Dale, her father's men lolled in the sunshine, eating and talking, or sleeping on the sweet new grass. No guards stood around her mother's golden prison. However, sauntering from one group to another, a man-at-arms paused at the cage, lifting his mantle from his shoulders. “Whew, it's hot,” he said in owlish tones. “My lady, do you mind if I lay this here for a moment?”

From her hiding place in the bushes, Etty heard her mother chuckle. “Thank you, good yeoman,” said Mother's silver voice, “but I am quite warm now.”

Etty edged sideward to look past him, and her eyes widened. In the cage, Elsinor of Auberon sat with mantle upon mantle wrapped around her, and blankets covering her feet.

“Some of the men lay their mantles under them to soften the ground,” remarked the man-at-arms.

“Indeed, so they told me. And I must say, breakfast tastes much better when one is comfortably seated.”

The man-at-arms peered at her owlishly. “And how was your dry crust of bread this morning, my lady?”

“Wondrous fine,” she answered him just as soberly. “Somehow, miraculously, it had been transformed into hot sweet buns with slatherings of butter.”

“Bother! Have the men been forgetting His Majesty's orders today? You'll vouch for me that it's not my fault?”