Lion Heart Read online

  Also by A. C. Gaughen

  Scarlet

  Lady Thief

  A. C. GAUGHEN

  For my brother Kevin—

  As your little sister, I may have gotten a lot of your roar,

  but you have always had the strongest lion heart.

  I love you.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Author Note

  Acknowledgments

  CHAPTER

  There were no light. I had gotten used to it, in a way. I always rather thought that I were a creature of the dark—moving in it felt like my home, and that hadn’t changed. I weren’t the sort that went mad in the dark.

  Sometimes—like when the last time you saw daylight you watched your friend die, staining the snow with his blood—it weren’t so bad to be haunted.

  The strange thing were how much I missed the light. I’d gotten a taste of it, in Rob’s kiss and touch, in the fickle, brutal shine of hope, and I wanted it back. I didn’t want to be a thing of darkness anymore.

  I ran my hands on the wall, feeling first with my fingers until I found the flat bit of rock I’d pried free from the wall. It weren’t a knife, but it gave me the same kind of calm to have it in my hand. I squeezed my half hand round it, pain aching through the stiff, scarred stumps that were left of my two fingers.

  The noise were the first thing to announce the visitors. A heavy iron clang that ran over the stones, rushing its way to me. And then the footfalls, too many for just David, my favorite guard. At least two people—beyond that it were hard to tell.

  I sat up straighter, staring at the cell door.

  The light came then, the tiny flicker that spread like fingers crawling over the wall to get to me. Holding a breath, I tucked the stone shard back against the wall.

  When the torch appeared, it were almost blinding. I blinked against the brightness as David came, holding the flame, and behind him, in heavy boots and a thin cloak, came Prince John.

  He stopped in front of the door to my cell, looking me over. “Marian,” he said. “You should greet your prince. Haven’t I taught you any manners yet?”

  I stared back at him.

  “I’ll take that as a no,” he sneered.

  I didn’t move.

  “Very well, then. Give me your necklace.”

  “What necklace?” I asked.

  “The one my mother gave you. The one you somehow smuggled in here with you, because it’s not with any of your belongings. And without it, she’ll never believe you’re dead.”

  I gripped the rock tight. Dead. “Why don’t you come in here and find it yourself?”

  “Don’t be stupid,” he growled. David moved a little, enough to make his armor give off shivery metal noise.

  “She’ll never believe I’m dead. Because you’ll never kill me, we both know that.”

  He smiled at me. “Do we,” he said.

  “You won’t risk Mummy hating you forever. Isn’t that why you keep moving me around? You don’t want her to find me.”

  “It’s only a matter of time,” he said, shrugging.

  “Until what?” I asked.

  “Until she—and the rest of England, including your foolish Hood—forgets about you entirely.” He smiled at me, and his teeth gleamed wet and yellow in the light. “You are nothing, Marian. Do you know why I keep you here? Why you will stay here until I am king, until people say the name of Robin Hood and ask who that is? Because you will be forgotten. You have ceased to matter.”

  “I think I’ll matter quite a bit to you when my father returns and pounds you into the dirt for hurting me. You remember him, don’t you? The King of England?”

  His face twisted. “The necklace, Marian!”

  Slow, I shook my head.

  “Get another guard,” he ordered David.

  David hesitated for a breath, meeting my eyes, but he walked down the hall and rapped on the door. Thomas came in, the only other guard who had been with us the whole months he’d kept me traveling round. David unlocked the door as Prince John ordered Thomas to restrain me.

  Thomas stepped in and grabbed my wrists, pulling me up and pushing me hard against the wall. He held my wrists in one hand and wrapped his other round my throat as David stepped in.

  “Easy,” he growled at Thomas. “Don’t forget, sir, that she is still a noblewoman.”

  Thomas’s eyes flicked to David, and he let go of my throat and just held my wrists above my head. I took a breath, and his eyes wandered down to my chest as it rose.

  “Forgive me, my lady,” David murmured, patting down the filthy, tattered dress I’d been in since days after my capture, since Prince John decided Eleanor, my grandmother, could exert too much influence and I should be hidden from her.

  David saw the chain fair quick, drawing it up rather than touch any bits he shouldn’t. He bowed and handed it to Prince John, who looked at the glitter of the moonstone.

  “The only thing you’ll accomplish is more pain for yourself when the Lionheart returns and seeks vengeance for his daughter, Uncle,” I snarled at him.

  Thomas’s hold grew lighter at the mention of my father.

  “Yes, your father has done so much to show he loves you, hasn’t he?” Prince John mocked.

  I frowned.

  “But you’re right. My brother has quite the temper,” he told me, still smiling, weighing the stone in his hand. “I wonder what I should do about that.”

  “Run,” I told him, glaring over Thomas’s shoulder.

  He smiled in his dark way and toyed with the chain of the necklace. “You keep assuming that I won’t dare kill you, Marian. You think I am so frightened of my mother’s disapproval and my brother’s wrath that it will stay my hand. But she has changed her mind before, and kings will come and go. You may have noble blood, but you are a common thing. You see the world as fixed and finite, and it is not. It is liquid and ever moving, and one act can change everything.”

  My blood rushed to ice in my veins, and I didn’t say anything.

  “Your father has been captured, Marian,” he told me, his words slithering out from his evil smile. “Held ransom by the Holy Roman Emperor. He will never set foot in England again—so just imagine what I would do to you now.”

  Thomas’s hands squeezed harder.

  Prince John chuckled. “Guards, come along. I need to speak with you both about her arrangements.”

  Thomas held me until David and the prince were out of the cell, and then he locked the door behind me.

  I sat back down on the ground, breathing hard.

  It weren’t long when Thomas and David came back, now without the prince. I tucked the rock into my sleeve, standing to meet them.

  “Where are we going?” I asked. If they were planning
to kill me, it would be best to do it here. Caged and in close quarters, I’d be less likely to get away. And I weren’t big enough that they’d worry about the weight of carrying me out. I glanced at their weapons. They both had their knives drawn, but not their swords.

  “We’re just moving you,” David said, nodding to me, trying to calm me like I were an animal. “I believe the prince was only trying to scare you, my lady.”

  “Stop calling her ‘my lady,’” Thomas snapped. “She’s a traitor to the Crown.”

  David bristled. “She’s a princess,” he returned. “Something you ought to remember, sir.”

  “Open the gate,” Thomas ordered. He were shifting his weight, foot to foot. Restless. Ready.

  David frowned, noticing it as well. “What did you and the prince discuss, Thomas?”

  “When?” he said, but he were a bad liar.

  “When I left to call for the prince’s horse,” David said.

  “Open the gate,” I told David soft.

  “I asked you a question, sir,” David told Thomas, raising his knife and resting his hand on his sword hilt.

  Thomas turned to David. “Don’t get in the way,” he warned him, shaking his head slow.

  “Of what?” David asked, lowering his stance. He were ready for the fight that were coming, but Thomas were the brute of the two of them. In the narrow space of the hall, I didn’t want to watch David die.

  “Open the gate, David, please!” I called, coming closer.

  This distracted Thomas for a moment, and David raised his foot and kicked him hard. Thomas reeled back and stopped, charging at David with a roar.

  There weren’t nowhere for them to fight. Thomas heaved David up against the stone wall, and when David swiped at him with the knife, Thomas jumped back.

  “You know what we have to do!” Thomas shouted, drawing his sword. “We are the prince’s knights; we must obey his orders!”

  David shook his head, holding fast to his knife. “Those are not my orders.”

  “He knew you wouldn’t agree to kill her!”

  “Then why did you?” David demanded. “I will put you down if I must, Thomas. For all the time we have served together, do not make me do it.”

  “You think a few months of following this girl around makes us brothers?” he snarled.

  “The oath we swore as knights makes us brothers.”

  “The oath we swore demands we obey him!” Thomas said, lunging forward.

  David jumped into his lunge, grabbing Thomas’s hand and slamming the sword and Thomas’s wrist against the iron door. David tried to stab Thomas, but Thomas grabbed David’s wrist and they held, trembling with the force of fighting against each other’s strength.

  “I never swore an oath to the prince,” David growled. “I swore an oath to the queen mother.”

  I slammed the rock shard as hard as I could against Thomas’s captive hand, still holding the sword. The rock caught and tore, blood rushing out.

  Thomas yelled and dropped the sword. His hold lost strength, and David’s hand pushed forward, stabbing him in the side where his armor didn’t cover.

  Thomas tried to reach for his own knife, but David punched him across the face. Thomas hit the stone wall and slid down it. He didn’t get up, though I saw his chest move with breath as the red spread out beneath him.

  “Come along, my lady,” David said, fumbling with his keys to get the door open.

  “You’re one of my grandmother’s knights?” I asked him.

  He looked up at me, nodding. The key clicked and the door opened, but I didn’t move.

  “She knew where I were the whole time?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “No. She told me contacting her would be too dangerous; we couldn’t risk Prince John questioning my loyalty. But she told me to protect you at any cost.”

  I shivered, nodding and coming out of the cell. He took off his heavy cloak and wrapped it round me. I pulled it tight. “Can you take me to her?”

  He nodded. “Yes, my lady.”

  I stopped. “I’m sorry you had to do that, David.”

  His mouth were tight. He didn’t lie and say it were fine, that he were glad to do it. He gave me a sharp nod, I reckon more so I knew he heard me than anything else.

  “Thank you,” I told him.

  He sighed. “We should go.”

  I nodded, crouching and taking Thomas’s sword from his still body, and capturing his knife besides. I stood, and David led me down the hall to a larger chamber that guarded the hallway. There were a door there, and I could just see the dark night out beyond it.

  “Stay back,” he murmured to me. “The castle is well guarded. I don’t know how much they know of what was meant to happen.”

  “Let me help,” I told him. “You can’t fight them alone.”

  His mouth settled into a grim line. “You aren’t strong enough for that, my lady. And there are too many of them.”

  “They may not know that it were meant to be you and Thomas,” I told him.

  He looked at me. “We can’t risk it if they do.”

  I sighed. “Where are we?” I asked him.

  “Bramber Castle,” he told me. “Sussex. We’re only a few hours’ ride to London.”

  I opened the door, looking out. There were two horses, and affixed behind one of them were a cart filled with hay and a white cloth, the perfect size to hold a person. I shivered.

  “What did you think that were for?” I asked him.

  He shook his head. “That wasn’t out there before. Thomas must have ordered it hooked up to the horses.” He looked at me.

  “But why would he want my body?” I asked.

  “Maybe Prince John wanted . . . proof,” he said slow.

  I nodded, shutting the door. “Of course he would. Which also limits the time we have until Prince John discovers what’s been done.”

  “Not necessarily,” David said. “He wouldn’t have wanted to risk being seen in public with your body. Thomas must have had another location to meet him. I can forge Thomas’s hand well enough and send Prince John a letter.”

  “But the guards here still need to believe it,” I told him. I looked down the hallway to where the cell were at the end. “But I may have an idea for that.”

  David looked at me and crossed himself.

  “What?” I asked.

  “My lady, I find this quite chilling.”

  I touched my face. I’d rubbed mud from the cell on my skin, letting it dry gray and white, before smearing Thomas’s blood on me, spattering it on my face. To anyone who saw, I would look truly dead.

  I looked at my hands, paler than usual and chalky looking, with blood on them. A dead man’s blood. “Yes,” I told him. “Well, that is the idea.”

  He nodded, and with a sigh, he put his arm around my back and crouched to sweep under my knees. He picked me up and carried me to the end of the hall. “Remember,” he told me. “Try to move—and breathe—as little as possible.”

  I nodded, shutting my eyes and letting my head fall limp in his arms, craning back at an awkward angle.

  The door creaked open, and I felt the chill of the night air around me. It were late spring now, months since the winter when I’d first been imprisoned, but the nights still held a chill, like the sun couldn’t quite keep its hold on the world.

  My hand slipped from my stomach, stretching out at an awkward angle, but I didn’t dare move. I didn’t know who were in the courtyard with us.

  “Move the sheet,” David ordered someone. I heard rustling, and David lowered my body onto the hay. It were sharp and hostile, poking into skin that weren’t supposed to be able to feel it. I felt a harder weight beneath me—David had put Thomas’s sword and knife in the cart before me. I couldn’t move enough to grab them, but knowing they were there were a comfort.

  “Christ,” another voice murmured. “She’s a child. Who was she?”

  “You’re not paid for your interest, sir,” David said sharply. “This let
ter must be taken to the prince immediately. Have your messenger see it directly into his hands, do you understand?”

  The cloth came down over my face, pitching me deeper into darkness, and I opened my eyes a hair, cautious. I couldn’t see anything, which should mean they couldn’t see me.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Tell them to open the gate,” he ordered.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Moments later, the cart started to move slow, only to stop again after a short distance. I felt a low shaking and wondered if they were raising the portcullis.

  “Where’s the other fellow?” someone asked.

  “We had some difficulty with the prisoner,” David said. “See that your priest gives him a proper burial.”

  There were some low noises I couldn’t make out.

  The shaking stopped with a metal grunt, and the cart began to move again.

  After a few moments, I heard the portcullis shudder closed behind us. As we rode out, I knew we were near the ocean. I could feel it in my bones, and I could smell the salt in the air, laced with peat smoke, like I had fallen into the ocean blue of Rob’s eyes. It were as if Robin were there, behind me, beside me, just out of my sight, but when I turned to look at him, there were only darkness.

  I nodded off at one point, and woke as we were slowing down. I tugged the sheet down careful so I could see out a tiny sliver.

  We were in the woods, on a path wide enough to hold the cart. I couldn’t see anyone else. “David?” I called.

  “Stopping for the night, my lady. Are you comfortable there or would you prefer the ground?” he asked.

  I tugged the sheet down so I could breathe easy. It weren’t a matter of being comfortable; in three months I’d barely moved, and I were weaker than I could ever remember being. I didn’t much want to move.

  Shivering a little with cold, I wrapped my hand around the sword. Having the means to defend myself at last, more than anything, helped me sleep.

  When I woke again, the cart were moving, swaying in a way that were sleepy and gentle and made opening my eyes again difficult.

  It were just past dawn, the sky still rich with blushing like the young thing it were. I loosed my fingers from the sword, stretching them from the grip I’d had through the night.