veil, feeling strangely naked in her lady’s attire, faced with the three outlaws, who all gaped at her. The rest of Robin’s clothes were in her saddlebag, but the cloak she held draped across her saddle. “Good morning, gentlemen,” she said lightly, smiling in sheer relief at not having to strain her voice to the lower tones that—she hoped—sounded more masculine.
“Lady Marian.” Will took a step toward her but halted when he saw the thick green cloak. “Robin—is he—”
“Safe and well,” she said. “I was about to ride out to look for you when Robin arrived in Nottingham and told me that you were safe. He also told me about your plan this morning. We’ve made a few additions.”
Will’s face was flushing with agitation. “But he—for God’s sake, my Lady, you can’t be here. The danger—if you’d been found by a different band of men—not to mention when the rest of Nottingham wakes to find you missing—”
“Let us accompany you back to the edge of town,” Alan suggested, firmly breaking in across Will’s stuttering. “We’re going that way already, and we’ll make certain you’re safe.”
Marian was torn between anger at their misplaced chivalry and the absurd desire to laugh. Instead she only shook her head. “I know these woods nearly as well as Robin does. And I’m pivotal to his plan.”
“If you join us in handing out alms, they’ll know you’re sympathetic to Robin, if not outright helping him.”
“Not that part of the plan,” Marian said patiently. “The pearls aren’t enough. They’ll feed a few people for a few months, but they’re a . . . a statement of mission at best. We need to—”
“We need to think bigger,” Will interrupted, striding through the leaves, eyes lighting. “Aim for richer targets . . . maybe use the pearls as bribes, get information about the nobles staying at Nottingham. There’s more where these came from.”
“Steal from Nottingham?” Little John looked dubious.
“I—” Marian barely got the word out before Alan rounded on John.
“Why not?” asked the minstrel. “That’s probably where Robin got the jewels in the first place. Our faces aren’t so well known—well, Will’s maybe—but we could get in and out of the town without difficulty.”
Marian wanted to demand their attention, but if she let herself act too much like “Robin,” it’d be all the easier for them to make the connection. Instead she cleared her throat, and then again, and finally raised her voice enough to be heard over the others: “Gentlemen, please listen.”
Little John heard her and shushed the others. “Pardon, my Lady. Thank you for bringing us the news that Robin’s safe.”
Marian held on to her temper with an iron will. “I’m bringing you news of a plan,” she said again. “To steal the Sheriff’s entire shipment of grain headed for market by month’s end.”
That, finally, brought silence. All three men went still, wearing such identical expressions of stupefaction that Marian almost laughed. Alan’s was the first face to change, growing thoughtful as his surprise faded.
“That’s got to be whole wagons full,” he said slowly. “I can’t imagine the Sheriff allowing three men—four, if Robin somehow has a plan for getting in without getting his neck stretched—to lead an entire caravan through his gates.”
“That’s because he’ll send it to us,” Marian replied. “In exchange for a hostage.”
Alan’s eyes widened, then shadowed, his expression carefully blank. Will and John, however, simply frowned at her. She waited, and when enlightenment failed to dawn on them, Marian dismounted, hauling Jonquille’s reins to hang down to the ground and then holding out her hands with a smile. “I’d rather you not tie me very tightly, but I ought to have some marks from bindings by the time I get back to Nottingham.”
TWENTY-TWO
THE SUN WAS CLEARING the trees at the horizon when Marian heard the low, distant murmur of surprised voices. Something—or someone—had awakened a few of the beggars camped outside Nottingham’s walls.
She’d left the others their instructions—orders from Robin—and made her way west around the wall encircling the town. There was a place where the stones’ mortar was crumbling, or had been years ago, when she’d discovered it during another of these meetings of the lands’ nobility. With some work, it’d be possible to remove enough of the stones to squeeze through, although that wasn’t what Marian intended.
Instead, she’d been removing scattered pieces of stone, at seemingly random intervals up the wall. Using those excavations as footholds, she climbed to the top of the wall and peeked over the other side to