gold Gisborne had mentioned. There were too many smaller targets to effectively rob them all on the way into the festival, but there would be a brief window of opportunity as the gold left Nottingham on its way to Prince John. As on the way into the town, there would be few guards, nothing to attract attention. They’d leave sometime after the festival’s end, once the other vendors in town for the event had left, so that Robin would be distracted harrying the vendors and not the shipment of gold, humbly disguised.
She discussed strategies with Alan and John, while Will gazed at her with shining eyes. Not for the first time, she wished he’d been born with a little of his sister’s good sense. He watched her with as much worship in his gaze as the lads in town whenever Robin Hood made an appearance, and it made her nervous. Love—even the love of a boy for his hero—made people foolish.
Despite her attempts to keep them on the subject of the gold, the others were more interested in the archery contest than highway robbery. Marian could not stop thinking about it either, though not for the same reasons as the others—they talked about the poetry of it, the idea that Robin Hood meant something now to the people and could not be seen to abandon them even when faced with an obvious trap. But she could not help but think about the other prize offered almost as an afterthought alongside the golden arrow: pardon.
She had left them arguing about the best way to cause a distraction in which Robin could escape after winning the contest. Will had proposed winning the contest with one arrow and killing Gisborne with the second. John had countered with an offer to challenge the winner to a public wrestling match, which he’d graciously allow Robin to win, and then escape in the press of the crowd. Alan was explaining all the ways their ideas wouldn’t work when Marian slipped away, and an indignant rumble of “Shut up, Alan” followed her as she hurried back toward Nottingham.
She’d left in the late afternoon, but the sun had set by the time she reached the walls of the town. Marian was counting on the darkness to aid her in reentering the castle. She was used to sneaking in and out by now and had discovered more than one inconspicuous route, but this time she intended to bring the cloak and bow with her. The contest was in only a few days’ time, and with all the arrivals and departures taking place, she didn’t like the idea of leaving her gear in the stables with Jonquille anymore.
Marian climbed up the wall where she’d grappled with Gisborne and then ran lightly along its top. People rarely looked up, she’d discovered, and in the tricky indigo that followed twilight, she was nearly invisible. She’d left a second cloak in a hollow where a stone had fallen away from the wall, and this she slipped on to cover the signature green of Robin’s. The bow and quiver she tucked close to her side, and after scanning the alley below to make certain no one was watching, she dropped with a bone-jarring thud to the earth.
Elena had shown her a few of the servants’ entrances, and it was through one of these that she crept back into the castle.
The important thing, she thought as she made her way through the castle corridors, was not so much that Robin won the contest, but that someone did. The pardon was meant to be a lure as great as the golden arrow itself, in case Robin was not tempted by wealth—Marian thought it likely that Gisborne, and not the Sheriff, had been the one to propose adding a pardon to the prize. Marian knew who she wanted that pardon for, but Alan’s skill with the bow was mediocre at best. He could hit his mark more often than not, but only if the target was the size of a deer—or a man—and then it was anyone’s guess where his arrow would strike.
It had to be her own hands that drew the bow and released the arrow, if she wanted to be certain of victory. But it must be Alan who received the prize.
A guard stood at the junction of the stair to the corridor that led to Marian’s room. He was one of the younger ones, helmet too large for his head and beard too wispy