Chapter 1 #3
Her grip shifts on the arrow still in her hand, thumb dragging along the ridge of its iron tip until it bites enough to sting. Inside the forge, men shout over the roar of fire, their voices drowned by the bellows’ growl.
Marian’s gaze flicks to the half-stamped blades cooling on the rack. ‘It’s been three days of this,’ she huffs. ‘The smiths can’t keep this up.’
‘They don’t have much choice, do they?’ Tilda sighs. ‘That hooded fae brute made off with five wagons’ worth in a single night.’ Her mouth twists, sharp with disdain.
Marian smirks. Robin Hood. The name drips from every tavern tongue between Nottingham and the shires.
The ghost of Sherwood, whose arrows strike like omens before he vanishes without a trace.
Some swear he wears the hood to hide some horrible disfigurement; others say it’s to veil a mark of exile carved into his brow.
A few claim he was once a fae prince who’d bargained his soul to the forest itself, trading his crown for the wild.
Whatever the truth, one thing was certain: he and his band of Merry Men were the only ones brave – or foolish – enough to stand against the Sheriff of Nottingham.
Her father and the Sheriff had spent countless nights cursing the Merry Men, stalking through the manor like a storm in search of someone to punish, as if fury alone could mend what they’d undone.
But beneath the bluster, Marian had seen the truth in them.
Their anger was only armour. What hollowed them out was fear.
Robin Hood was a dangerous reminder that power could be stolen back.
The smiths’ shouts rise in a rough chorus, punctuated by the clash of hammer on anvil as sparks spray like fireflies, born and extinguished in a blink.
Men’s shoulders glisten with sweat, their faces ashen and hollow in the furnace glow.
Exhaustion clings to them like soot, but still they work, because they must.
‘Hopefully, this will be the last full day of it,’ Marian mutters before stepping back and starting toward the manor. ‘Then the Sheriff and that snivelling weasel of his can crawl back to where they belong.’
‘Not sure even the heathens of Nottingham deserve what the Sheriff’s putting them through.’ Tilda clicks her tongue. ‘Seems like every fortnight there’s another levy, another tithe, another tax. Grain for the Sheriff’s storehouses. Coin for his guards. Timber for his forges.’
Marian chews the inside of her cheek. ‘Why does no one stop him?’
‘The king’s off chasing glory and playing martyr in the Holy Lands, leaving Nottingham to starve. The Sheriff wrings the people dry because there’s no hand powerful enough to slap his away.’
Marian’s gut lurches. She pictures the market stalls she used to visit as a child, hands sticky with honey-cakes, where merchants’ voices were as warm as their hearths. It’s been years since she last rode through Nottingham’s square. Could it truly have changed so much?
‘And it’s not just coin any more,’ Tilda adds darkly.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Haven’t you wondered why Aislyn Briar no longer attends Sunday service? Or Ellyn Rowe?’ Tilda shakes her head, braid swishing against her shoulder.
Marian frowns. ‘I thought Aislyn got married. And Lady Rowe mentioned that Ellyn was sent off to the nunnery in York.’
Tilda snorts bitterly. ‘Aye, that’s what their families have been told.
But it’s not vows or prayers those girls are keeping.
Aislyn’s brother quarrelled with a guard who came away with a split lip.
A week later she vanished. Ellyn’s father was caught in a brothel with his pants around his ankles and a half-blood babe already swelling the belly of the fae wench beneath him. ’
Marian gasps. ‘That’s treason.’
‘It’s an abomination is what it is.’ Tilda’s mouth twists. ‘But he never met the hangman’s noose. The Sheriff’s men took Ellyn, same as Aislyn. Another woman cursed to bleed for the sins of a man.’
Marian stills. ‘Took them where?’
Tilda glances around. ‘No one knows for certain. There are whispers they’re taken to the Sheriff’s keep, that he has a taste for pretty things he can ruin.’ Her voice drops, rough with the kind of fury that has nowhere left to go. ‘Either way, they never come back.’
Marian’s stomach twists. She remembers Aislyn’s laugh, bright as bells, and Ellyn’s way of pressing flowers between her hymnbook pages. Gone. Just like that.
‘How could their families let this happen?’
‘What choice do they have?’ Tilda snaps. ‘Resist and hang. Complain and lose twice over. Your father bends the knee like the rest, selling his soul for a pat on the head. To men like them, a girl’s body is just another tax to pay, another field to reap until it’s barren.’
Marian swallows hard, stomach roiling. The path slopes upward toward the rise where Hallomere Manor waits. She stares at the looming shape of her home, her cage, and forces her feet forward.
Behind her, Sherwood waits, veiled in silver mist. Before her, the Sheriff’s shadow festers in her father’s hall.
And Marian wonders which place truly harbours the greater monsters.