The Stolen Crown Page 4

They struggled through the crowd. Everyone else seemed to be surging toward the castle, as if they thought they could figure out its secrets just by gathering before its walls. Ellie thought of the dead king inside, his body growing cold. John had been a cruel ruler, but surely even he hadn’t deserved such a painful end. She thought too of Lord de Lays and the malice in his face when he saw her across the hall. What would his next move be? He’d killed the king and he already had the crown jewels. Did he plan to wear the crown himself and sit on England’s throne?

  At last they left the crowd behind. The narrow town streets gave way to fields and muddy lanes. As they turned onto the road that led to Sherwood Forest, Ellie inhaled deeply, glad to breathe in the scent of earth and grass once more.

  She glanced at Stephen, who strode along with the swagger of a lord surveying his estate.

  “We’ve got time for those questions now, haven’t we?” she said.

  “Go on, then.”

  “How do you know Nottingham Castle so well? And don’t try to tell me you’re a servant.”

  “Why would I do that? I’ve already told you my father’s a nobleman. We visit the castle sometimes.” He squared his shoulders, as if daring her not to believe him. “My father is friends with the sheriff. He had a hand in organizing the banquet.”

  “I don’t think it went exactly as he planned.”

  He gave a surprised laugh. “No, I suppose it didn’t. But at least the king isn’t around to complain.”

  Ellie had no love for King John, but she was a little shocked at this. She could just imagine Sister Bethan’s face if she heard Stephen mocking the dead. She hardened her voice. “You’ll find it’s much tougher staying in the forest than at a castle.”

  “I’m sure,” said Stephen breezily.

  “How do you even know about the League, anyway?”

  He shrugged. “How did anyone know about the Merry Men? People talk. You and the League stand for something. Which is more than my father can say.”

  “What does your father have to do with it?”

  “I hate him,” he said. His blue eyes flashed again with the anger he’d shown earlier. “I’d rather be an outlaw than live with him. I’d rather sleep in the dirt and . . . and eat nothing but twigs and berries than live with him.”

  Ellie couldn’t understand it: to hate your family so much you’d leave them behind. She hadn’t seen her father since he left her and her mother years ago to join the Crusades. As far as she knew, he’d died there. In his absence the baron had seized the Dray home, so Ralf and Alice’s family had taken Ellie and her mother in. Desperate to earn their keep, Ellie’s mother had hunted on the baron’s land—and when she was caught carrying home a deer, the baron had had her hanged.

  Ellie missed her parents all the time. Some days it was like a scream she couldn’t voice, but most days it was an ache. A beat of sorrow that lived inside her heart. If they had been alive, she couldn’t imagine turning her back on either of them, no matter what. Stephen must surely have good cause to leave his father behind.

  She gave him a nudge. “Don’t worry. We manage better food than twigs. And the dirt’s actually pretty comfy.”

  His face softened somewhat.

  “But are you sure about this? What could your father have done to make you leave home? Surely things can’t be that bad.”

  “Not that bad?” Just like that, his anger returned. His brows, much darker than his hair, drew into a scowl. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “All right, calm down! Sorry I asked.”

  They strode on. Ellie searched around for something to say that would lighten the mood, but she couldn’t think of anything.

  At last Stephen broke the silence. “He did something terrible. Something that can never be put right. That’s why I want to join the League.” There was no bite to his words—he just sounded sad.

  In the chill light of early evening Ellie led Stephen off the road and over windblown fields. When they reached the edge of Sherwood Forest, she stopped Stephen and unwound the black scarf he wore around his neck. He raised an eyebrow.

  “You’re wearing a blindfold,” she explained. “The way to the Greenwood Tree is secret to everyone except the League of Archers.”

  “But I’m joining the League,” he protested.

  “You’re not a member yet. I’m leader of the League, not their king—we make our decisions together. You’re not in unless all of us decide you’re in.”

  “Fine,” he grumbled.

  She covered his eyes with the scarf, tying it tight behind his head. “Now give me your sword.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “I’m not.”

  He grunted before carefully drawing the blade, passing it to her, hilt first. She grasped the beautifully carved handle and tucked it into her belt.

  The rest of their journey took far longer than it should have. Leading Stephen was like leading a balky pig. Ellie had to guide him around trunks and through the underbrush, help him up when he stumbled, and ignore his complaints that she should just let him take off the blindfold. They splashed through the chilling, waist-deep water of a river because Ellie judged it impossible to lead a blindfolded boy over the narrow bridge Jacob had built to span it. Stephen winced as blackberry brambles snatched at his clothes, and swore when he walked into a face full of pine needles.

  But their journey became far more perilous when they reached the dangerous ground around the Greenwood Tree. There they had the Merry Men’s traps to contend with, repaired and reset by the League of Archers. Despite Ellie’s orders, Stephen got cocky and put on a burst of speed, nearly tumbling over the edge of a pit trap.

  She tackled him to the grass and yanked up the blindfold. He had the grace to look chastened at the sight of the large hole he’d almost fallen into, which was lined with sharpened spears like a dragon’s teeth.

  “Exactly,” she reprimanded him. “So don’t think yourself clever. Out here, with our traps, you’re as ignorant as a donkey.”

  He was easier to lead after that, following her commands to the letter. At last they reached the thickly clustered greenery at the edge of the clearing where the Greenwood Tree grew, and where the League made their camp. She could hear the murmur of voices and smell smoke from the campfire. It struck her forcefully what she was about to do—expect their close-knit group to accept a stranger she’d met a bare few hours ago.

  I had to let him come, she thought. It was that or be captured. They’ll understand, won’t they?

  It was time to find out.

  She took Stephen’s arm and pushed through the thick wall of greenery and into a clearing.

  Ralf was the first to notice her, looking up from where he sat sharpening their knives against a whetstone.

  “It’s Ellie!” he cried, his voice ringing with relief. “She’s made it back!”

  He started to stand—then saw Stephen, grappling his blindfold free, and froze.

  “About time!” Alice cried, her voice coming from high in the Greenwood Tree. “Ellie, we were starting to worry!”

  Stephen looked up in wonder at the tree’s leafy expanse, full of platforms and walkways and tiny wooden rooms. The League still lived mainly in the arms of the tree, but Jacob had put up a tent on the other side of the trunk to sit in when he made arrows—he loved heights less than the rest of them—and he emerged from it now. When he saw Stephen, a clutch of arrow shafts fell from his hand. By the crackling fire Margery sat, paused partway through skinning a deer to stare at the stranger. The flames cast dancing shadows across the shocked faces of the League.

  Alice, climbing down the tree, was the only one who hadn’t noticed him.

  “We were starting to think you wouldn’t get out,” she was saying. “People were running in and out of the castle, the soldiers were trying to push them back—we wanted to wait, but we knew you’d never find us.” She jumped to the ground and pushed back her untidy curls. “So what exactly happened . . .” Her
voice faltered to silence.

  Ellie gestured toward Stephen.

  “He helped me escape,” she explained. “The guards had me surrounded. I’d be in the dungeons now if it weren’t for him. He . . . I promised him something in return, if he got me out of the castle.” Just say it. “I . . . I told him he could maybe join the League of Archers. If we all agree to it.”

  Alice’s mouth dropped. Margery stood up sharply from the fire. Jacob marched toward Ellie, the anger on his face making her stomach drop.

  “Ellie, you’ve been tricked,” he said, his voice like ice. “He hasn’t come to join the League. He’s come to ruin us.”

  Ellie gaped at him. “Ruin us?”

  Jacob nodded grimly. “This is Stephen de Lays. The baron’s son.”

  5

  HE CAN’T BE, THOUGHT ELLIE, her mind a whirl of confusion. But when she studied Stephen’s face, she at last saw the truth of it: His cool blue eyes, the sharp cheekbones beneath them, exactly like his father’s. His hair sweeping back from the baron’s high forehead, the arrogant cast of his shoulders.

  Oh, how could I have been so foolish?

  Jacob had seized a bow and quiver of arrows from where they were propped against the trunk of the Greenwood Tree. He nocked an arrow to the bow, training it on Stephen. Stephen’s face turned pale, but he lifted his chin and looked Jacob in the eye.

  “I’d know you anywhere,” Jacob said, his voice rigid with an anger Ellie had never seen in him—not when the baron took Maid Marian, not when he was made an outlaw and had to leave home. “I was with my father on the last tax day. I saw your father demand more money, more than we’d ever given. And I saw you sitting right there beside him, smiling when he told you what a good lesson this was—a lesson in keeping the peasants in their place!”

  “I wasn’t smiling,” Stephen said. His voice was low and steady. “I hate him as much as any of you—I know the taxes are wrong; they’re cruel, but if you’d just listen—”

  “No baron’s son can ever join the League of Archers,” said Ralf, moving to Jacob’s side. Alice went with him, her face as fierce as the knife she’d snatched up.

  Stephen swallowed. “Please don’t kill me. Just listen.”

  Ellie saw Jacob’s fingers tremble on the bow, realized his anger might make him clumsy. Swiftly she moved between Stephen and her friends. Jacob growled but lowered his bow.

  “Of course we’re not going to kill you, Stephen. Are we?” she said sharply to the League. “That’s not what we do. But Ralf and Jacob are right—the baron’s son can’t join us. You’re putting the blindfold back on and we’re leaving the forest. Now.”

  Stephen shook his head. “I meant everything I told you. I’m not going back.”

  “You tricked me!” The words burned on the way up. “You’re a liar and your father’s spy. Whose idea was it for you to save me, yours or his?”

  Stephen’s sword still hung from her belt. Ellie drew it. If she had to force him to leave, so be it.

  For the first time Stephen looked afraid, but he stood his ground. “I would never help that man. You must believe me. He’s no father to me—he never has been. His cruelty to me, to my mother . . .” His voice was unsteady. “I’m the last person in England who would help Lord de Lays. I want revenge for what he did.”

  “What did he do?” Margery’s voice held the barest rind of sympathy.

  “Killed my mother, or as good as. Blamed her for not producing more sons, hated the one he had, and let her lie with a fever three days after my sister was stillborn. Mother was the only person who . . . she was the only . . .” His eyes filled with the sadness Ellie had seen on the road through the woods. “After she died, he sent me to the Crusades. I was a squire, serving a knight, barely eleven years old. I saw terrible things in the Holy Land. Terrible.” His eyes locked on Ellie, stern under storm-dark brows. “That’s what my father did.”

  She stared back, still seeing the baron in his face but noticing the differences now too. His nose was narrower than his father’s, the bones of his face more pronounced. She tried to imagine the woman who had married de Lays and produced Stephen. How his cruelty would have made her a prisoner. How much colder their castle must have become for Stephen after she died.

  “I want the same as you,” Stephen said. “To make him pay. And I know more about him than you ever could. Can’t you see how useful I’d be to you?”

  Ellie’s head was swimming. “We don’t want to make the baron pay,” she said shortly. “We want to help the poor.”

  “I want that too,” Stephen said eagerly.

  “How do we know he’s not lying?” Alice’s voice sounded rusty.

  “We don’t,” Ellie replied.

  “Then I think we should tie him up. Till we figure it out.”

  “What’s there to figure out?” Jacob asked. His bow was lowered, but still taut and ready to fire. “He’s the baron’s son.”

  “I never chose to be,” countered Stephen. “No more than you choose to be his subject.”

  Ellie turned away. Of course Stephen hadn’t chosen his father. But does that even matter? He’d grown up at his father’s table. He’d never known hunger, never known true want. Yet he had also saved her from certain capture. If not for him, she’d be shivering in a cell right now. Or hanging from a gallows. And she was sure his being here was no plot—neither the baron nor his son could have known Ellie would be in the castle that day. She hadn’t known it herself.

  The clearing had fallen silent, her friends looking to her to decide what would be done with him. She was the leader, and she’d brought Stephen de Lays here, to the very heart of the League. Alice watched her with narrowed eyes, Margery with wide ones. Jacob still held his bow taut, as if ready to shoot the moment Ellie gave the word.

  Ellie’s eyes met Ralf’s, and a wordless agreement passed between them. She knew he saw what she did—that the situation was more complicated than Jacob allowed. Who was she to claim to read Stephen’s mind, to know his true intentions? She knew now what her decision must be.

  “You can stay.”

  Alice gave a disappointed hiss and Jacob threw down his bow in disgust. Ellie ignored them both.

  “But,” she said, stepping closer to Stephen, “if you give us even the slightest reason for doubt, you’re gone.”

  “Or worse,” Alice muttered.

  Relief flooded Stephen’s face. “Thank you,” he said. “You won’t regret it. I swear I’ll make you glad I’m in the League.”

  He would have said more, but Jacob stopped him. “Go over there,” he said rudely, gesturing toward a corner of the clearing. “I need to talk to our leader.”

  Stephen shot a look at Ellie but did as he was told. She remembered what she’d told him earlier: “I’m the leader of the League, not their king—we make our decisions together.” Yet she’d been the one who’d ruled that Stephen could stay, ignoring Jacob’s and Alice’s objections. Wasn’t that the behavior of a king? The thought gave her a quicksilver flash of shame. She rubbed her eyes. What else could she have done? Even Robin Hood had had to decide what was best for his Merry Men.

  Of course, in the end his Merry Men had left him.

  Jacob’s jaw was tight. “I’ll watch him, Ellie. I’ll watch his every move. If he does anything that doesn’t seem right—I’ll see it first.”

  “Good idea,” she said, wondering what on earth she’d done.

  That night felt like it stretched on forever. Every time Ellie’s eyelids started to droop, she jolted back to waking, remembering the intruder in the clearing. The intruder she’d brought in.

  Not an intruder, she corrected herself. Stephen.

  Still, she reached her fingers out in the dark and felt better when they wrapped around the hilt of his sword. It lay safely beside her on her platform high in the Greenwood Tree, next to her bow and arrows. Alice and Margery, lying near her, stirred restlessly. She could see Ralf’s profile where he sat on a nearby platform; he clearly couldn�
��t sleep either. And when she peered down through the leaves, she could see the fire still smoldering below, Jacob huddled beside it. His bow and arrow were at his feet, his eyes fixed on where Stephen lay sleeping beneath his cloak on a heap of dried leaves.

  Someone’s getting a good night’s rest, she thought resentfully.

  The next day everyone went about their business without talking. Alice disappeared early to hunt, Margery settled down to skin rabbits, and Ralf took over watching Stephen so Jacob could climb up into the tree’s branches to sleep. Stephen mostly kept out of their way. He leaned cross-legged against the roots of the Greenwood Tree, staying quiet, awkward as an uninvited guest. Which, Ellie supposed, he was. Finally Ralf took pity on him, handing him a rabbit carcass and a knife to skin it with.

  “You’re giving him a knife?” Jacob said incredulously, climbing blearily from the tree.

  “Why not?” Ralf said. “It’s not like he can do anything with it.”

  Stephen flushed, and Ellie could see he was biting back a response. He applied himself with enthusiasm to the rabbit, making a mess of it, until Margery stepped in and firmly took it away.

  “Well, skinning’s right out. What can you do?” she said.

  “Oh, sharpen knives, fletch arrows, whittle pretty much anything,” he said airily. “I wasn’t a squire for nothing, you know.”

  “You were really in the Crusades?” Jacob said, his voice sounding almost impressed. Then he cleared his throat, making his face indifferent. “You can’t have done much fighting, though. My father says most of the crusaders just spend their days wading through muck.”

  “And blood. We spent our days wading through muck and blood.”

  Jacob stood awkwardly for a moment, then handed Stephen a clutch of branches. “Here,” he said abruptly. “You say you can whittle—these need to be made into arrow shafts.”

  They left him to it. When the sun was at its highest, Ellie brought Stephen a skin of water. As he gulped it gratefully, she sat beside him. There was a pile of arrow shafts at his feet, almost as neat as Jacob’s.

  “We’ve been talking,” she said. “We want to show you something.”