Lion Heart (4 page)

I nodded, trembling in the saddle. I spurred my horse hard, David out in front of me and Allan somewhere behind.

We turned round the bend, and the rioters were
closer than I thought. They'd separated for David, but now they were turned, looking at him, and not moving for me.

My horse reared and tried to stop at the same moment, twisting to the ground with an unearthly scream. He threw me off as he went down, and my legs landed bare shy of the horse's back. People swept back from the horse, stepping on my body as I struggled to move away, off the road.

My sword were gone—I couldn't even see where it went.

I got to my knees, and a body slammed into mine, sprawling me backward again.

Panicking now, I got to my knees again, desperate to stand, fearing the force of the crowd. I got one foot under me, and someone pulled me up.

“Hush, I have you,” a voice said in my ear.

My blood rushed over with dizzy relief. “Allan!” I cried.

“Hold on to me, lady thief. We need to get you out of here,” he told me.

I nodded, holding tight to his arm. I'd lost a boot, and the other one were tatters. I felt every rock in the road as we pushed against the tide of people, trying to find a way off.

We made it back to the heart of London, and Allan
tugged me down an alleyway that weren't half as crowded. He nodded me ahead, farther away from the mob.

“My lady!” David shouted, grabbing me as we pushed down into an alley that were open and dark.

“Lady?” someone growled, grabbing me round my waist.

I yelped as one arm held me tight and the other started patting and grabbing my clothes, looking for money or jewels or God only knew what else. Three other men set on David and Allan as the man pulled me off my feet.

I drew my legs up and let them drop, slamming my heel into the man's kneecap. He howled and dropped me, and I whipped round to shove my elbow against his face.

He roared out a curse, covering his eye and wheeling back.

One man were bleeding on the ground and David dispatched a second. Allan slung a punch over the third with a little whimper. The man stumbled, and I jumped over him, running down the alley. Allan ran ahead with his long loping legs, leading the way. I followed behind him, and David followed behind me. I were the middle. The weak point—the one that needed defending. I'd always been one of the guards, not the guarded.

It weren't far, now that we were away from the crush. Allan took us down closer to the river, to a tavern that bore the name Rose and Thorn, and I near collapsed against the door, heaving for breath. “It's shut,” I told Allan.

He looked wounded, knocking twice, pausing, and knocking twice more on the door.

We waited several long moments.

The door opened a crack, and whoever were behind it saw Allan and opened it.

He nodded us in. I went first, and a young man led me into the tavern room. Windows that would look onto the street were boarded over, and there weren't no fire in the hearth. There were a few candles on a table near the casks, and two other people at a table. They looked up at me.

One were a boy, and the other were a grizzled old man.

The one who led me in pointed to a bench. “Sit.”

I blinked at the sound of the voice. “You're a girl,” I realized.

She looked at me like I were mad. “So are you.”

She turned away from me, going to the back, and I sat at the bench, feeling strange and put out of my own body.

David came and sat at the bench of another table,
his back to the wall. It were a soldier's choice. He could move from there, cover me, and fend off attackers, while still sitting closest to the door to defend an exit.

Allan didn't sit. He paced, jumping to help the girl in men's clothing with cups for us and a plate of bread. “My thanks, Kate,” he said.

She frowned at him as she passed us ale and the bread. I took a piece of the bread and handed the rest to David, and he took some and passed it to the others at the table. “You shouldn't have brought her here,” Kate said to Allan.

This made the others look at me, and the bread went to ash in my mouth.

“Not here, Kate,” Allan warned.

“They can be trusted,” Kate snapped. “As much as I can, at least.”

Allan frowned.

My surprise must have shown. “I know who you are,” Kate told me, crossing her arms. “I've heard you're a bastard royal,” she said to me. “And if King Richard's dead, you can bet your head will start causing an awful lot of problems.”

“He's not dead,” I told them. “That's what the rioting is about?”

Kate nodded. “We heard he was killed in the Holy Land. And Prince John set off to murder the king's
nephew to replace him as the heir.”

I shook my head. “The king's been captured. Ransomed.”

“By who?”

“I don't know,” I told them. “But the man who told me had no reason to lie.”

Kate frowned. “Every man has a reason to lie.”

“Not when he were planning to murder me a moment later.”

This settled over the others, and the man and boy looked at each other.

“How did you find us?” David asked, looking at Allan. “You never said.”

“I told her,” Allan grumbled. “You were too busy knocking my block off.”

“
Me!
” David returned, but Allan weren't paying him mind.

“We've all—we were told you were dead,” he said, looking at me.

I put the bread down. “We?” I repeated low.

“It wasn't more than a week after you left Nottingham that our noble sheriff got a letter, telling him you'd been executed.” My chest squeezed. “He never believed it. Not once. But he sent me south to find the truth of the matter, and for all the people I know, I couldn't find you. Rob said that if you were dead you'd be easy to find, but I never had the same
faith. Until a few days ago, when I followed the prince to Bramber,” he said, looking up and crossing himself dramatic.

“And Rob—” I didn't know what I wanted to ask. But the feel of his name on my mouth were painful.

“Doesn't know, yet. I couldn't write to him till I were sure. But he writes to you,” he told me. I frowned, confused, and he went to a satchel I hadn't noticed, opening it and pulling out a small stack of papers, looped together with a ribbon. He came and handed them to me, and I reached out to touch them.

But my hands were filthy, bloody and dirty and cut, and I pulled back.

I looked up at Allan, and to my horror, saw pity bright on his face.

“Come on,” Kate said. “You lot can't go anywhere tonight. I'll show you where you can wash up and sleep.”

“Thank you,” David said.

“Thank you,” I repeated.

She glared once at Allan and nodded her head back toward the kitchen. She led us out to a tiny little outdoor bit with a basin of water in it. “Beds are upstairs. If you want to wash, I'll show him up,” she said to me.

I nodded, and she tossed me a cloth from the kitchen.

David glanced round, nodding once. “Would you rather I stay close, my lady?” he asked.

I shook my head.

Shutting the door behind them when they were gone, I pulled off the pants that I'd made quick work destroying, and I left the loose shirt on, pushing up my sleeves and using the cloth to clean off my skin and make a slow record of my wounds.

My shoulder were scraped and ragged from where I fell on it, with matching wounds on my hip. The soft inner bit of my other arm were cut where I'd been stepped on, but not bad. My hair were a matted mess, and I were thinner than I'd realized—I could feel my bones under my hands, sharp and raised under the thin layer of skin.

When I were done, I opened the door again, and Kate were there. “Here,” she said, handing me a pile of clothes. “Clean. It's no lady's dress.”

I took it. “Thank you,” I said.

She nodded once, looking me over before leading me back through the room and up a narrow stair. She showed me a little bedroom and I went over to it, staring at the bed.

She hung in the doorway, but after I didn't move for long minutes, she started to turn. “Very well,” she said.

“Thank you,” I called. She stopped. “Thank you. It's been—thank you.”

She looked at me, coming back to the doorway. “Where were you all this time?” she asked.

My shoulders lifted. “I don't know. Different castles. Different prisons. He moved me often, and at night. I never knew.”

“Prince John,” she said, and her voice were low and dark.

I nodded. “You're well informed, for an innkeep.”

She shook her head. “Inn's my father's,” she told me. “I'm a trader.”

“A woman trader?” I asked.

She gave me a slow, side-slung smile. “Not an entirely legal trader.”

This made me smile too. “You're a pirate.”

“I've been called worse.” Her mouth tightened, and she looked down, like she were considering something. “I loot ships to feed people,” she said. “And I train the orphans to be sailors. England is falling apart, you know. With or without Richard alive.”

I stared at her.

“It isn't just Nottingham. I wasn't sure if anyone had ever told you that.”

My head dropped.

“Good night,” she said, shutting the door to the room.

Changing into a clean shirt were all I could bear to do before falling asleep.

CHAPTER

I slept like the dead. When I woke, it were to full, body-aching pain, but it were also to the sun. It came in through the window to lie over me like a blanket, and I didn't move for a long while, looking at the light, feeling the heat of it on my skin. I trailed my fingers through it, wondering if I could just touch it, just hold on to it, maybe I could change everything else.

Shutting my eyes, I remembered it so clear—the feeling of waking up with Rob, his heartbeat under my cheek, making me feel that we weren't so separate, that if we stayed like this long enough we'd melt into each other. Like somehow we could become unbreakable.

Standing from the bed, I put on the rest of the clothes that Kate had given me—boy's pants and a thick tunic. Outside my door I found a clean pair of soft old boots, and I put those on too.

Downstairs, David and Allan were swallowing bread and bacon and hard eggs like men possessed. Kate were watching them, fair disgusted.

David saw me first. He stood from the table, and Allan swallowed a bite and did the same. David bowed his head to me, looking surprising less like a knight without his royal uniform. “Good morning, my lady.”

“Lady thief,” Allan said, mocking him a little. David scowled.

“Please don't do that,” I told them both.

Allan sat back down, but David looked uncomfortable. “My lady, you're a princess. I can't—”

“And yesterday I were a prisoner,” I told him. “Please sit.”

“Yes, my lady,” he said.

“Yes, my lady,” Kate mimicked under her breath. I frowned at her, and she lifted her shoulders in innocence.

“How did the palace fare last night?” I asked, scared of the words.

Allan waved this off. “Very well. They never so much as got within the gates, and all the nobles had already fled.”

“They had?” I asked.

Allan nodded, pushing the bowl of hard eggs to me. I took one and a piece of bread. “The lot of them got
out when the word about Richard first came; that's why everyone thought he was dead.”

“So Eleanor isn't at the palace?” I asked.

He shook his head. “She's with most of the court at Windsor, last I heard.”

I frowned. “Could Prince John be there?”

“I don't know, my lady. Why do you want to see the queen mother?”

I glanced at Kate. “When Prince John thought I were about to die, he told me that Richard had been captured and held for ransom—but he said that Richard would never set foot in England again.”