the spot where the arrow shaft protruded as she tried to stop the flow of blood. Gisborne ignored her attempts to escape, grabbing her leg and dragging her back when she would have kicked him.
Her fist met his jaw and he only grunted and pinned her arm beneath his knee, as if the same blow that had knocked Alan unconscious in one hit at the archery contest were of no more consequence than a timid slap. He had one aim, and though Marian tried again to knock his hand away as he reached for her face, he brushed her arm aside.
The leather cord of the mask snapped as he tore it away. In their struggle, her hood had fallen back and a few tangled locks of her hair had come free of its binding. Gisborne knelt, pinning her at leg and elbow, and looked into her face. His own was so blank he looked like a statue, or one of the miracle play’s little marionettes with their painted, still features.
He didn’t speak. His eyes met hers, and the look they held was dizzying and familiar, though Marian struggled to understand why. Her thoughts were slow and tangled, and kept seizing upon strange, inconsequential details—the taste of salt and metal on her lips, sweat and blood mingling; the sound of running water, not far from where she lay; the slight, insistent burning of the palm that had gripped her sword, somehow distinct from the liquid agony that poured into her from the hole in her chest.
Gisborne’s mouth fell open, and with a moment of sickening clarity she knew where she’d seen the look in his eyes before. They held the same look of world-shattering confusion and surprise the guard’s had held that night in Nottingham Castle before he looked down and saw the arrow that had killed him.
His hand appeared again, no longer holding the mask, scarlet gleaming like ruby inlay along his palm. His eyes moved from his hand to her face, and then down to the mess of blood and splintered wood at her chest. He reached for her, fingers instantly slippery with blood, mirroring the motion she’d made when instinctively trying to stop its flow. His mouth moved, working silently, the remote confusion in his face draining away as his eyes searched for answers, flicking this way and that with deepening horror.
Then, punctuated by an unrecognizable cry of effort that rang in Marian’s ears, something heavy swung into view and collided with the side of Gisborne’s head, knocking him flat.
He had gathered Marian in his arms at some point, for when he fell, he dropped her. The part of the arrow sticking out of her back hit the ground and slid through the wound it had made, the bloody end sticking out of her like the figurehead on the prow of a ship. Marian screamed again and dropped down, down into the dark, cool green of the forest around her.
FORTY
MARIAN KNEW WHERE SHE was before she opened her eyes. Tiny sounds, smells, currents of air that she could not have described had she been asked, but that she’d absorbed in every minute detail over a thousand moments like this one, waking here. The precise give of the mattress beneath her. The scents of meadowsweet and lavender mingling with fletching glue and saddle oil. The light tap-tap-tap of the yew tree against her window. The muffled, indistinct sound and vibration of movement and voices below, carried through the floor and the walls and the bed frame and her own body.
Pain came with light as she opened her eyes, and she moaned, vision immediately obscured with tears.
“Easy, easy.” The voice was unfamiliar, and a hand, gentle but firm, wrapped around her arm to prevent her from trying to rise. “Lie still, child.”
With the pain came memory, fragmented and frightening, flashing swords and heartache and screams. Marian gasped and grabbed for the hand at her arm, though only one of her hands moved, and fresh pain erupted when it did.
“I have to go,” she moaned, a ripple of muscle along the side of her body making her shiver with the need for action as pain and blood loss scattered her every effort. “My men—he knows—let me go, I must—”
“You must lie still.” The voice sharpened, and only then did Marian think to blink away the tears swimming in her eyes and try to focus. A familiar form took shape, then crystallized. It was the monk, the one who had tended the