the openings, and only one torch was lit, burning unsteadily. Intermittent sounds—scratching, gnawing, rustling—echoed like shouts in the quiet, and Marian could not tell if the sounds came from men or rats.
She took a breath through her mouth, trying to avoid the stench of human waste, but the odor was so pervasive she felt she could taste it on her lips. She stepped forward.
Will was not the Sheriff’s only prisoner, although most of the cells were empty. Ordinarily criminals either served their sentences in the stocks in the town proper, or were hanged—neither fate demanded a lengthy stay in a dungeon. It seemed clear to Marian that only Will’s usefulness in unmasking and capturing the Locksley impostor had kept him alive.
Marian crept quietly past several unoccupied holes before she heard a rustle of fabric to her left. She paused, peering through the gloom, until the shadows moved and a paler oval appeared from the darkness.
For a moment, Marian could not speak—he was so changed. She’d seen him beaten and bloody, but his time in captivity had reduced Will to something else entirely. His cheeks were gaunt and his eyes crusted and puffy; his lips were cracked with thirst, and one side of his jaw was purple and yellow and swollen.
“Good morning” came a voice, dusty and thin, and bitter as the astringent smell of urine in the air. “Or is it afternoon?”
Marian tried to regather her wits. “Will,” she said softly.
He didn’t rise, or come nearer the grate that blocked off his cave from the others. His eyes glowed balefully in the reflected torchlight. “Most of him,” he answered.
“Will, I’m sorry.” Marian stepped closer, glancing over her shoulder toward the corridor where Gisborne waited, listening. “Is there anything I can do?”
He eyed her for a long moment, eyes bitter. His expression carried a desperate kind of insolence, as though the bars between them had stripped away the barriers of class and gender and civility. No one of the peasant class would look at any nobleman like that, and certainly not a noblewoman.
“Elena—” Marian’s voice cracked, and she fumbled for the slit in her kirtle that would allow her to access her pocket. “Elena sends her love. She wrote a message—”
“I’ll take it.” The sullenness of Will’s face eased a fraction, and he extended one dirty hand through the bars, palm up.
“You’re sure you don’t want me to read it to you?” She pulled the bit of parchment from the folds of fabric, hating the way her hand shook. Will was the one facing his death—why then did she want nothing more than to flee as fast as her feet would carry her?
His expression hardened. “I can read enough,” he said shortly. “My Lord was always generous with any of his men who wanted to learn.”
Robin. Marian hadn’t known that he’d taught some of the peasants to read. It had certainly never occurred to her to teach Elena or Midge or any of the commoners who served her father—it had never occurred to her that they’d have any desire to learn. Cheeks burning with shame and disquiet, she placed the scrap of a page into Will’s palm. The holes in the iron grille were large enough that he could’ve stuck his whole arm through up to the shoulder, but too small for anything larger. The lock on the door was massive and crude, a battered, rusty thing with a large keyhole.
It wouldn’t be hard to pick, she thought, if she had something narrow enough and strong enough, but opening the lock itself would be the easiest part of getting Will out. How long would an emaciated outlaw last, trying to make his way up from the very bottom of Nottingham Castle?
A tiny sound prickled at Marian’s instincts. How quickly her senses had adjusted to the atmosphere of the jail—this sound wasn’t one of the rats, or a prisoner stirring. It was the tiny scrape of leather against limestone. Gisborne, in the corridor, shifting his weight from his bad leg.
“Will,” she said, raising her voice a little. “The man who helped you escape before you were arrested. What can you tell me about him?”
Will had been staring down at the scrap of paper, frowning, and Marian wondered if he was regretting turning down her offer to read his sister’s message for him. Now, his head snapped up, and the eyes she remembered as merry and full of humor narrowed with the same sullen ire with which he’d greeted her. “You mean your