CHAPTER Five
I woke in some strange form of hell. The fire weren’t all out; it were glowing and red and making red glow around me. But Robin weren’t behind me, he
were on top of me and screaming. His fist crashed down over my face and I yelled too, finding my legs and bucking him off me. I reached for the knife I
kept by my pillow when I saw it flash in his hand.
“Scar!” yelled Much as Rob lunged for me.
I swung my leg down and kicked his out so he fell. The knife skittered and Much ran for it. I jumped on Rob, pinning his arms down. “Robin!” I
shrieked. “Rob!”
He roared like a gutted animal. He twisted his leg up and kicked me hard in the belly. I fell off him and he followed, slamming his bear paw on my face
again. I rolled him, punching him back and hitting him so hard in the face it made pain rush up my arm.
“Scar, get him outside!” Much yelled.
Rob rolled me again, but I were ready this time and tucked both my legs up to push him hard back. I leapt up, dizzy and swimming, and grabbed Much’s
good hand and ran.
We ran for the door and the night and the snow, and Rob followed us, grabbing my hair as we opened the door.
I swallowed a scream but fought tooth and nail to get outside, letting him crush me into the snow.
The moment the snow hit us he sucked in a hard gasp and rolled off of me. “Scar?” Much called. “Scar?”
I pushed up off the snow, and it were stained with red where my face were. I were shaking hard and when I tried, my legs wouldn’t hold me none, and I
fell to the stone in the cloisters.
Much stripped off his overshirt and stuffed it with snow, bringing it back to me and pressing it to my face. Rob were down the row, huffing and trying to
breathe and I couldn’t help him. My bones were shaking so hard I thought they’d tear straight apart.
“Don’t let him see,” I mumbled to Much. “Please.”
Much were whiter than the snow, but he nodded.
Rob turned toward us. “Scar,” he said, like his mouth were half full of rocks.
Much stood over me, blocking me from him. “Just go inside, Rob,” he said quiet.
“Where’s John?”
“I don’t know,” Much answered. “Please, go inside.”
I heard Rob’s breath still huffing out hard. Then I heard his feet scuff over the stone and the door creak open.
Much turned back to me, but I were bent over my body, heartbroken and bleeding and letting rivers run from my eyes, cursing the day they tortured Rob and
brought back whatever phantom he were fighting now. They had tortured him and now it were torturing me too.
Much went back in after a while. The monks filed past me for their prayers at sunup. Then John came along and found me, and his face went flat and he
went into the warming room.
I heard raised voices and smacks and thuds. Heat and shame rushed up and I stood, wobbling on my legs, wavering toward the door that didn’t look so
fearful in the daylight. My body hollered at me, my stomach turning and rolling. I went into the warming room to find John and Rob with their shirtfronts
caught up in each other’s fists, bellowing in each other’s faces.
“Stop,” I said, and they both fair shocked me by obeying. Rob saw me and he went slack and more than a bit green.
John let him go, and Rob just hung there like God were a puppet master making a toy with his body. John could bare contain himself; he were huffing
through his nose like a bull in pasture.
“You have to go,” Rob said. I knew he said it to me; he were looking right at me, but I couldn’t imagine he meant it for me.
We all looked at him. “What?” I squeaked.
“You have to go,” he said again, swallowing whatever were stuck in his pipes. He looked at me and away. “All of you. I want you to go to Tuck’s and
stay there.”
“No,” I spat. “Don’t be daft.”
“Daft?” he growled. “Daft? I beat you within an inch of your life and you’d stay here, but I’m crazy? You want me to do it again, is that it?” His
voice raised. “Do you want me to kill you?”
John pushed Rob hard, and he hit the wall.
“Rob!” I yelled, and it made me hurt everywhere. “We don’t leave each other. You made me promise to stay when all I wanted to do was run, Rob, and
that were the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Don’t make me break that oath.”
Rob straightened up, staying farther from me. “No,” he said. “No. This isn’t the same. This is your safety and my sanity, so you leave or I will,
Scar. Tuck will take you in, but I don’t trust myself there.” He swallowed again. “I don’t trust myself anywhere.”
“I won’t go, Rob,” I told him. “Why can’t we fight this together?”
“Because it’s not your fight, Scar!” he yelled. “You can’t fight this for me. And I can’t fight this with you.”
His eyes stared at me, wide and lost, and I felt like every rope tied between us were snapping. I felt bloodless, like I hadn’t anything inside me but
bones and air.
Rob’s eyes dashed away from me. “John, you’ll take her to Tuck’s.”
“I won’t come back here, Rob,” he told him. “Not for a few nights at the least. I can’t even look at you right now.”
My eyes dropped to the floor like my gaze were weighted with stone. There were nothing between us all but quiet.
“Much, go with them,” Rob said.
Much swallowed, but he nodded.
John’s big feet shuffled close to me, and he let me lean on him. “Come on,” he told me. “We’re going now. Much, can you gather everything up?”
Much nodded. “I’ll meet you there.”
I wanted to yell—to scream that I would stay, that I wouldn’t leave him, that I didn’t much care if it killed me.
But I didn’t. I let John herd me out, and I didn’t say a thing more, my voice tiny and trapped inside me.
John led me outside like I were a child, and he walked slow beside me, watching me.
“I’m fine, you big lug,” I murmured.
“You’re not. He beat you,” he said, and it turned into a snarl. “Christ, I want to kill him.”
“He weren’t himself.”
“I know that. I don’t care about that.” His fist went tight. “And I wasn’t there to help. And I’m furious that somehow this is my responsibility,
to be there when everyone is damn well sleeping so that the man you love won’t beat you. This isn’t fair, Scarlet. It is awful to somehow be part of
you and Rob. To protect you from him. And I can’t do that anymore. I can’t.” He threw a punch at nothing, batting away the cold. “I loved you, do you
know that?”
He looked at me, but I fixed on the ground. “You never loved me,” I told him soft. “You fancied me, but it weren’t the same.”
“No, Scar. I loved you, but it wasn’t enough. Love isn’t enough. There has to be other things there, like choice, and duty. I keep thinking these
things, Scar—I think about having a family. What it would be like, to be a father. I want that more than anything. That role—it’s more important than
everything mashed up together.”
I dared look up at him. “You’d be an uncommon good father, John,” I told him.
His shoulders lifted a bit. “Do you think?” he asked, his voice awful quiet.
“I just said so, didn’t I?”
“Bess is with child,” he said soft. “My child—”
“John!” I yelled, and winced at the pain that shot through my face. “Ow.”
He smirked. “Easy. I asked her to marry me—to make a right family of it all—and she hasn’t said yes yet. And waiting for her answer, Scar, it burns.
Every second burns. Because maybe she won’t. Maybe all my sins have piled up so high I’m beyond saving, and I’m not supposed to have a family.” I
started to protest—of all the damn things!—but he shook his head. “And my point is that maybe if you have the chance to annul your marriage, you
should take it. Rob’s crazier than a bag full of cats right now, but he loves you. And it has to be killing him that he can’t be to you what he wants
to be, because love isn’t enough. You have to choose that person. You have to choose them every damn day. I made my choice—you have to make yours.”
That were it, the thing that had been rolling round my mind like a loose marble. “You think I should take Gisbourne’s offer.” Shivers ran through me
as I thought of that day in the castle, when he had me by the throat, squeezing, and his growled words: I want to see you die. I want to see the light
tamp out of those devil’s eyes.
“No,” he said, kicking a branch out of his path. “No. I don’t think you should go to Gisbourne. I don’t think you should go back to Rob. I don’t
think you’re getting anything done by staying at Tuck’s. There isn’t a right way here, Scar, but if I were Rob … I’d want that annulment more than
anything.” He looked at me. “The monks said you were asking about how to get out of a marriage. Seems you want this annulment too.”
“I do,” I admitted. “And sometimes I think, there ain’t nothing what I can’t take, thinking on all we’ve already been through. What could Gisbourne
possibly do that I couldn’t take?”
“Kill you,” he said quiet.
“He wants something. It’s such a strange offer, he wouldn’t make it just to kill me.”
“He well might, Scarlet. But say he is telling the truth. There are other ways he could hurt you.”
I remembered listening to the things my sister had to do in London, the way men touched her. It pushed blood into my cheeks and made me shiver. “Not if
he wants an annulment.”
“You want the annulment. What if he doesn’t really want an annulment?”
My shoulders shrugged up, but I didn’t answer him.
“You’re already married, Scar. If he can’t—or won’t—swear before a priest that you’re still a virgin, there is no annulment. That’s all it takes.
He outweighs you by more than a hundred pounds, at least. If he comes after you in close quarters, there isn’t much you and your knives can do about it.
”
I were starting to sway, my head dizzying round.
“I know I’m scaring you, Scar, even if you can’t admit it. You should be scared. You have a lot of fight ahead of you no matter which way you go.”
Rubbing my arms didn’t do nothing for the cold, for the hot swirl in my head. “I’m tired of fighting, John.”
“We’ve all been fighting more than our fair share, Scar. Maybe both of us should start fighting for our happy ending.”
My eyes shut and my eyeballs felt like ice behind them, like little bits of my eye had gone to frost. “What if there ain’t an end, and it ain’t happy
besides?” I asked him. “How could it be, after all this?”
“I don’t know, Scar.”
“Can we stop?” I said. My stomach were overtight and rolling and twisting. “I think … ugh,” I whined, bending over, ready to cast up anything that
remained in my belly. Nothing came up, but the pain didn’t ease and the world were sliding round me.
“Come on, we need to get you out of the cold,” he said, tugging my arm.
I straightened, standing on wobbly knees. My head beat a cruel tattoo, and it were choking me. “J-John—” I never got a chance to finish the thought,
as the dark trees and bright day pushed together and changed to total dark.
My eyes were bare open before my belly twisted and I retched. I were in a bed, and the best place seemed to be off the side of it. Lucky there were a pot
there, and someone set my face toward it.
When I were done, I looked, and it were Ellie, one of Tuck’s girls. She petted the duck feathers left of my hair where I’d cut it off months before. “
You all right?” she asked.
I shut my eyes and hugged the pillow, but the lumps Rob had put on me yelled in protest and I rolled onto my back. “Christ,” I moaned.
“Sit up a bit,” she told me. “Tuck sent some broth up.”
I obeyed, though I didn’t much feel like it. She pushed a bowl at me and I reached to grab it when I saw one hand was covered with bandages hard and
stiff. “What …” I asked her.
She shrugged. “Brother from the monastery said you broke your hand.”
My chest felt like it cracked open. My hand were broken? I couldn’t throw knives. I couldn’t … Christ, I could barely defend myself. My hands shook as
I took the bowl from her.
Ellie leaned back on her hands. “So strange,” she said, staring at me. “Never would have even thought you’re a girl, but now that I know I feel
stupid for not seeing it before.”
I frowned. She were more stupid for hussing her bits at me so often.
“Robin’s downstairs, you know,” she told me. “Stalking outside like a lion. John won’t let him in.”
Coughing a bit, I shrugged. “He won’t never, not with Bess in here.”
Ellie sat up straighter. “You think? Do you reckon he’s serious about her, then? I told her John is just a boy, and a stupid, disloyal one at that.”
I didn’t throw the soup at her. I felt right proud for that. “You don’t know nothing, Ellie,” I snapped at her. “John is the most loyal. The most
protective. He chooses Bess and he’ll love her till he rots. He deserves a family.”
Now her eyes narrowed. “Have you and John fooled around, then? Living in the woods with all them boys, must be just like everyone says, isn’t it?”
“Don’t be a fool. I ain’t never done nothing with John. You have.”
She shrugged. “So?”
I put the soup down and tossed the blanket off. “I’m going to see Rob,” I told her.
She didn’t stop me. I went down the stairs and near the door, but I stopped. I went to the window, looking outside.
He were there. He were pacing, just as she said. Looking fair miserable.
I didn’t want him to know what he’d done. Sure, he knew, but seeing me were a different thing. The hand were bad, and he’d know just how bad. He’d
know what it meant for me. And he couldn’t know.
Most because, as I watched him, sad and hurting and the kind of alone that I couldn’t be a part of, I knew what I had to do. I knew what I wanted to do.
And Rob wouldn’t never rest if he knew I were going to Gisbourne and couldn’t bare throw a knife.
Rob wouldn’t never forgive himself, neither, if I died.
I went back from the window and asked Tuck where John were. John came up from around the bar, glaring at the door, where Rob were just beyond. “What?”
John asked.
“Find out what Gisbourne wants,” I said. “And find out when the prince comes.”