The Greenwood Shadow (19 page)

"This makes zero sense," Evey groaned, but she yanked the basket from Isaiah and started rifling through it.

She did her best to look as though she was extremely interested in some fine white cloth. Several times a soldier or a knight passed by them, and she tensed, but each time they were ignored and passed off as fine ladies.

"This won't work forever," she whispered after the fourth guard walked by. "What's this grand plan of yours? And why couldn't we just run out the gate?"

Isaiah looked up at her. "And be chased down? We'd be caught for sure that way. Just be patient."

"I was about five seconds from having a rope around my neck. I'm a little past the 'be patient' stage." She accidentally raised her voice too loudly.

"Quiet. Just wait for it."

Evey muttered a few words that no fine lady would have in her vocabulary.

Isaiah's sharp intake of breath gave away his own stress. After all, he had been seconds away from becoming live archery practice. This was not a great day for either of them.

For the briefest of moments, Isaiah leaned in close. "Trust me."

She nodded. She trusted him more than she trusted herself. More than she trusted anyone.

"I'm sorry," she said.

Isaiah smiled.

A moment later, he went deadly serious again. "Okay, let's go."

She followed without question.

The crowd had calmed somewhat by that time, and they worked their way through it at a leisurely pace. Evey was desperate to move faster, but knew that running was a sure way to catch the guards' attention.

Isaiah meandered to another corner of the yard. It was blocked from the view of the rest. An obvious flaw in the defensive design of the place. A large man stood there holding a rope and a huge hammer. He passed the rope to Isaiah and took up a position at the edge of the alcove.

Without waiting for direction, Evey scrambled up the rope. After two weeks in the dungeon, the work was much harder than it should have been. Isaiah climbed behind her, and soon they reached the top of the wall.

"You're clear, John," Isaiah called in a carrying whisper.

The man nodded and put the hammer back into his belt before blending into the crowd out in the yard. Isaiah pulled the rope up and lowered it to the other side of the wall. Again, he had Evey go first, and they climbed down the far side.

"Well, your plan worked," she said, half in apology.

"Thankfully."

They stood awkwardly at the foot of the wall for a few seconds. Then Evey surprised herself by leaping for Isaiah and wrapping him in a tight hug. He was stunned as well, and took another several seconds to hug her back.

"You're such an idiot," she said. "You shouldn't have come."

Isaiah squeezed her a little tighter. "You know I had to."

For a moment, Evey got that feeling again. The one where everyone else knew something that she didn't. But that wasn't important.

"I'm alive."

Isaiah laughed, and stepped back. There was definite strain in his voice.

The two of them walked toward the tree line to the east. Evey didn't know what to say. Which was a first since that day they met. This time, though, it wasn't so much an awkward silence as a tense one. They had both been through so much. It was hard to put that into words.

"So..." she started. "How did you get the rope up there anyway?"

"John. He climbed the wall. He's very good at tricky stunts like that, especially for such a big guy."

"Speaking of tricky stunts, your shooting has gotten really good." She tried to infuse the compliment with a note of pride. After all, she had taught him everything he knew about archery.

He cleared his throat loudly.

"Uh... Not really. To tell the truth, I was aiming for the chair above the king's head. I only hit the scepter by accident."

Evey choked a little. "Oh."

"I know it was risky, but I had to do something. And they would never know. As long as I hit something, and I made the shots fast enough, I could play it off." He paused for a moment. "I wasn't lying, though."

"What, you secretly are Robin Hood?"

She chuckled at the thought.

He looked up at her with serious eyes. "The best archer in the country was in their presence. You."

"Oh, please."

"You could have made those shots on purpose."

Evey tipped her head back and chuckled.

"It's true," he insisted.

"The scepter? From a hundred yards away?"

"I've seen you do better."

"I doubt it," she replied.

Once she thought about it, though, she had made some incredibly difficult shots, not unlike the scepter hit. There was still no way she would call herself the best archer, though. Well, not in the country anyway. She'd settle for her county. The Sherwood region, too, maybe.

"There are some horses up here." Isaiah indicated a curve in the path ahead that lead straight into the forest. "Let's get clear of this place."

"Gladly."

They rode through the trees for a half an hour before Isaiah turned back to the north. Once they were out of immediate danger, they slowed and let their horses set the pace.

"Are you crazy?" she suddenly burst out. "That was the royal castle! I'm amazed that we're both still alive!"

"Both of us wouldn't be if I didn't come back for you," he pointed out.

"So risking a double execution was a good idea? What good would that have done anyone? And your family works for the king! What if your father saw you?"

"I didn't see him there."

Evey rubbed her temples. "Couldn't you tell it was all a trap? It's a miracle we made it out."

"I know."

"You knew!" She threw her arms into the air. "You knew it was a trap, and you came anyway? Do you use your brain at all?"

He paused, and then asked in a truly confused voice, "Didn't you want to be rescued?"

"Not at your expense."

Isaiah went silent. She began to feel guilty for yelling at him. He had just saved her life, after all.

"Look, I'm sorry," she said. "Obviously being executed at sixteen isn't exactly how I planned to go. I wasn't ready. But if you knew it was a trap, why did you do it? I'm not worth that."

"Yes you are."

Isaiah glanced at her, then shifted his eyes to a cut on his saddle. Now it was her turn to be stunned into silence.

"Think about it. You're the one that could have made those shots. You're the one that's taken a stand against the oppression for years. You're the one that can keep it going. Compared to you, I'm a nobody. I don't matter."

She whacked him gently on the back of the head. "Don't talk like that."

He just shrugged. "It's true."

"But Robin Hood? Really? What if he–"

"Stop playing games, Marion. It's been coming on for a while. After you were captured, suddenly I knew. It's you, Marion. It's been you all along. But Robin is what they wanted, and Robin is what I had to give them if my plan was going to work."

By this time they had stopped riding and faced each other.

"It was too risky. What if they had taken your deal?"

He shrugged again. "Then I'd have been hanged."

"No!"

Evey couldn't make sense of her feelings. She was confused, relieved, and under the weight of heavy responsibility all at the same time. She got down from the horse and walked him down the path. She could think best when she was moving. Isaiah copied her.

"What are you thinking?" he asked.

"I can't decide whether to hug you or punch you in the face," she answered. "And will you take that cloak off, please. It's getting weird."

"Right. You probably should too. These colors stick out in the forest."

She nodded and opened the fancy hooks at the neck. Her green cloak was still underneath, so she pulled the red one off, and immediately pulled up the hood on the other. During the moments that her face was free, Isaiah's changed. He stared at her for a second, but then shook his head and took the cloak from her.

"What?"

"I... I don't know."

She raised her eyebrow. "Where'd you get these, anyway?"

"They were my mother's."

"Oh." For some reason, that made her feel awkward.

He replaced his own hood, then handed her a strip of black cloth with two holes in it. He tied his own mask back on.

"We'd better wear these. Especially so close to the castle."

She took the mask from him. "Thanks."

"We're almost there. John and Will should be in the clearing just ahead."

CHAPTER TWENTY

The instant they reached camp, Evey set up a hammock and slept for hours. It was late afternoon when she finally woke. Down on the ground, Isaiah sat near a fire with two men. The big one she recognized as John. The little one had to be Will. They were already silent, but when she joined them, it got even more awkward.

The four of them sat around the fire, all staring at each other with obvious suspicion. John and Will focused most of their doubtful glances on her, and she didn't really blame them. They had just risked their lives for her and probably had no idea why. Despite what Isaiah had said earlier, she was still trying to figure that out herself.

Will, especially, fixed Evey with a nasty glare. Unwilling to be the center of such unpleasant attention, she cleared her throat and spoke.

"Well, I think each of us has a piece of this story. Let's get on with it. You go first,
Robin
. I want to know what went through that thick head of yours when you decided to swoop in and stir up this hornet's nest."

For the first time, the two other men shifted their attention to Isaiah, who cleared his throat.

"First of all, there's something you two men need to know. It will explain quite a lot about the escape. This girl,
Marion
," he said in the same tone that she had used, "is the power behind everything we do. I understand your concerns. You've heard a lot of fanciful stuff about Robin Hood and his band. Most of it is almost true, but it's about her, not me. I've just been labeled as the troublemaker because no one in their right mind would ever believe that a small, innocent looking girl could cause so much mischief. But believe me when I say that she would make a much more dangerous enemy than I ever could."

"This girl?" John asked. "What's she gonna do, make tapestries of us?"

"Give me a bow," she said through gritted teeth. "Now! A bow!"

Isaiah had already unwrapped a staff of wood, as though he knew what would happen. Good lad. At least one person trusted her. She took the bow, and shot a stinging look at both newcomers. Once she had it strung, she nocked an arrow.

"What shall it be?" she asked, keeping the arrow carefully pointed right at Will.

He flushed as red as his hair, and John answered instead.

"How about that tree there? The sycamore maple, fifty yards out."

Evey rolled her eyes. "Any peon can hit a tree at fifty yards. Which part of the tree?"

"Uh..." he stuttered.

"Never mind. Lowest branch on the left, just where it connects to the trunk." A moment later an arrow thudded right where she had said. "Or maybe that wasn't the branch you were thinking of. Second from the bottom on the right, in the darkened knothole."

Again, a moment after she called it, the arrow hit its mark perfectly. Three more times she called a target, each one more difficult than the next, and three more times she hit exactly what she meant to. Both Will and John gaped at her in awe, rather than disgust.

"What did I tell you?" Isaiah said to stave off another volley of arrows. "And that isn't the half of it. Marion, why don't you go get your arrows out of those trees."

She started to tell him where he could put the arrows once he got them himself, but he winked at her. Suddenly she understood what he had in mind. She nodded and started casually toward the first tree. Isaiah drew the men's attention for a moment, and while he did, she easily slipped away.

"Where'd she go?" John asked with a tremor in his voice.

"I won't have any dealings with ghosts," Will added.

Isaiah laughed heartily and reassured them. She used the noise to her best advantage and crossed a particularly dry, leaf strewn patch of the wood. Moving silently was much slower than walking normally, so it took her almost ten minutes before she had gathered all five arrows, but she enjoyed the scene immensely. Even from eighty yards away, she could hear the muttering of the two men as they kept trying to spot her.

After another five or six minutes, she perched easily in a tree, directly above their heads. They were still scanning the forest, unwilling to leave the matter until they were sure that she really wasn't a ghost. Isaiah kept up the pretense of talking to them about the successful rescue. She knew for sure that it was only a pretense when he glanced up and winked at her. The very last of her sour mood dissipated with that wink. She'd taught the boy well.