wasn’t thinking, just acting. She didn’t know what Elena’s brother had been accused of or who had arrested him. But Elena’s family was from Locksley—Robin was the one who’d suggested Elena for a lady’s maid and companion when Marian’s mother died. And I won’t let Robin come home to find his people being slaughtered on his own lands.
Marian flew down the stairs and into the courtyard, where a few torches had lit the way for her. Midge had Jonquille ready and was holding her by the reins. No sign of her father awake yet, for which she was grateful—she didn’t have time to argue about whether she should or shouldn’t go. Several servants were standing around in their nightclothes, candles transforming their drawn faces into waxy masks. A lad stood by the stables doubled over, red-faced and gasping. She recognized him as the son of one of the farmers from beyond Robin’s manor house—he must have run all the way from Locksley town to bring Elena the news. At a dead sprint it was an hour’s journey on foot.
Marian ignored them all and bunched her skirts up around her thighs, mounting the dappled mare and taking the reins from Midge.
Jonquille had picked up on her mistress’s urgency, and as soon as Marian let her grip on the reins loosen, the mare leaped into a run. The glow of the torches in her manor courtyard fell away behind her, and she was left to race through the darkness.
Edwinstowe was quiet—her father’s lands were small, and the town at their center even smaller, and his people all farmers. They’d stir soon, to feed and water their animals and work the land, but they’d sleep until sunrise.
Marian leaned to the side and cut through the finger of the forest that stretched across Edwinstowe lands, aiming for the King’s Road. Branches whipped past, and she dropped her head, burying her face in Jonquille’s mane. Jonquille knew the way. Locksley was her home, too.
The sound of Jonquille’s hooves striking the earth changed, and Marian lifted her head. They were on the road. Not long now. Marian raised her eyes to the glimpses of sky she could see overhead as the branches passed. A terrible lightness painted the sky to the east the color of bloody ink.
“Hurry, love,” Marian whispered, leaning low across her horse’s neck, trying to lessen the resistance of her body in the wind.
The road forked. The road to the right would take her into the heart of Sherwood, while the road to the left passed through a hedgerow and then on to Locksley town, and beyond it, Locksley Manor. Jonquille knew which way to go without being told, and together they burst through the undergrowth bordering the fields with a gust of honeysuckle and heather on the wind. The landscape was awash in blue-gray light, the cold harbinger of the dawn.
There were torches burning in the center of town. Marian aimed Jonquille at the light, not bothering to slow her down. Men in chain mail stood in a semicircle around the town center, and a figure in dark gray armor and a black tabard stood at the head of the crowd. The Sheriff’s men. Beyond them the townsfolk watched, pale faced and silent.
In the center of the firelight was a young man on his knees in the stocks, a hood of rough-spun canvas over his head and tied around his neck. The soldier nearest him held an ax.
Jonquille broke into the crowd, people scattering left and right and hens fleeing in a startled wave. Marian threw herself off the horse before the mare came to a full halt—all the better for no one to have time to see her with her skirts hiked up above her knees.
“I demand to know what’s going on,” she gasped, gripping Jonquille’s reins more to support her shaking legs than to control the horse.
The man in the tabard was staring, and with a jolt, Marian recognized him. His eyes raked her over, from her wild hair to her muddy, day-old dress. “My Lady Marian,” he said quietly, inclining his torso. “Good morning. Are you all right? You seem . . . distressed.”
“Good morning, Sir Guy.” Marian smoothed down her hair, abruptly aware that she wasn’t wearing the modest veil she ought to have donned. “This man. What is his crime?”
Guy of Gisborne pulled off his horsehair helmet and ran a gloved hand over his hair. He was older than Robin by a few years, but had none