Ethelberga hid any impatience she might have had to return to her evening’s engagement, and worked through Marian’s braids to loosen the intricate coiffure. Once she had, she gathered Marian’s locks at the nape of her neck, twisted the mass of hair, and tied it into a large loose knot, leaving the rest to hang down her mistress’s back.
“I will take your wrap,” Marian said, speaking of an old fox-lined cloak of dark blue that she’d given her maid some time ago. It had a deep hood and would serve to hide her face well. “If anyone should ask for me, I am ill and cannot rise from my bed. Do not allow anyone to enter.”
Marian then piled a good amount of pillows and clothes under the blankets of her bed so that if anyone should defy her maid, or peer through the horse-eye peephole on his way to the garderobe, he would believe she slept there.
She made Ethelberga’s lover peer out into the passageway first to ensure that no one was about. No one was, which was not surprising, as some of the women were likely still emptying their bellies in the hall, and the others were certainly hovering around them, offering assistance.
The garderobes would be busy this night.
Marian hurried silently through the passage behind her guide, and down the stairs that led to the hall. More than a few diners remained in the great chamber, and the serfs bustled about clearing away the remnants of the meal. Her guide took her past them to the back stairwell leading to the dungeon, and showed her the dark passage.
“Shall I go wi’ ye, my lady?” he asked.
“Nay,” Marian told him. “I will carry this torch. You must return to Ethelberga and entertain her.” She gave him a silver coin, and when he hurried off, she turned to the darkness that yawned before her.
Down, down, down she’d go.
She must see this prisoner, this purported Robin Hood, and, if he was somehow an innocent pawn in a game of the prince and sheriff, find a way to help free him. She must act quickly, while the prince and the sheriff were ill, for she wanted no witnesses to her task.
Her torch cast flickering lights and eerie shadows that followed her down the long, curving stairwell. The walls gleamed damp with sweat and lichen, and the scent of rat droppings and stale air filled her nose. She’d pulled the hood so far up over her face that she had to turn her head to look to the side, and the wrap’s hem draped silently down the steps behind her.
At the bottom, she was met with a gray stone wall and two choices of direction. The steward’s son had told her he believed that the new prisoner was held in the last chamber to the right, so Marian turned that way. Her torch exposed a long, dark passage with barred doors along one side.
The sounds of little scrabbling paws, the drip-drop of water, and the stench of death and darkness consumed her. Marian continued on, gripping the torch, determined to get this over with as quickly as possible. She wasn’t certain how she’d release the man once she found him, but she’d figure that out when the time was right.
At the end of the passage, she found the fourth and final chamber did indeed hold the man who’d been taken off the archery field today, the one who’d been snared in some sort of rope trap in the wood. The one who was supposed to be Robin Hood. She identified him in the low light as the new prisoner because he was the only one of the inmates who looked up and appeared to be aware of his surroundings, and because she recognized his clothing.
When she paused at his imprisoning bars, casting the light more fully between them, he pulled to his feet and limped toward her. At this close range, she immediately recognized him, and despite the iron studs between them, she stepped back in surprise. The prisoner was one of the desperate men who’d attacked her the day of the boar hunt, when Robin had come to her rescue.
Will told her he and his men had found some of the outlaws in that band. . . . Either this man was one of those who’d been captured before, or he had been caught today. Either way, he was no innocent man or unfortunate villein used as a scapegoat.
He growled at her, rattling the bars, but she turned away, heart skipping with relief and alarm. The clanging iron studs echoed like a fury in the silence, sending uncomfortable jitters up her spine. Could anyone abovestairs hear it? Would the noise call a guard or man-at-arms down to investigate?
And then, as if a signal to the other inmates, the ratcheting, rocking noise drew them from their stupors to rock their own gates of iron. Soon the dim, damp passage was filled with the horrible sounds, the desperate bids for release and freedom, exuding anger and despair.
