It felt like sun finally breaking through storm clouds.

Rob went back to his room with a glare toward David, and I took Much (Bess insisted, since she still needed to rest and couldn’t help) and Missy Morgan aside and asked them to come with me to the forest.

David strode over to us, frowning. “What’s going on?” he asked.

“There’s going to be a wedding,” Missy crowed.

“A secret wedding, Missy,” Much reminded her gentle.

She blushed and blinked her eyes slow at him. “Sorry.”

“A wedding, my lady?” David demanded. “The queen—”

“Won’t know,” I told him. “Now if you’re my knight, I need you to help.”

He frowned again. “As you wish, my lady. But surely this is women’s work.”

I frowned too. “Perhaps, I just . . . I don’t know many women. Fondly, at least.”

“I can take care of that,” Missy told me, smiling.

“Remember it’s secret,” Much and I said at once.

She laughed. “I know. Let’s go to the forest, then!” she said.

We did. Before we were done the first night, Missy also got Ellie and Mariel, Bess’s two barmaid friends from the inn, to help out. Though Ellie gave me a bit of a saucy wink, she never made fun of the things I didn’t know as she started to order us all about.

We hunted one more day, and then didn’t hunt the next. The butchers round Nottingham wouldn’t be able to buy more meat so soon, and we let the littler ones hunt small animals to feed the workers. Rob went to help with the tree folk, and I went to cut peat with the women and children.

Down in the mud and muck my knife kept slipping from the weak grip of my half hand and I gave up, hacking at it with the full hand only. I had spent so long in the stillness of prison, I’d forgotten just how much I needed this hand for. I’d forgotten just what Prince John had taken away from me.

It were late in the hazy warm of the afternoon when we heard a crack and a boom. The women all lifted their heads and turned like a pack of gulls, and I sprang up and ran for the sound.

Much and a whole group of workers got there ’bout the time I did, called over by yelling men. Everyone were hollering, throwing their hands about, and pointing at one another, gathered round a downed tree that had taken two others in its path, and from what I could see, landed on at least three men.

“Rob?” I cried. “Rob!” I hated the girlish shriek there were in my voice, but I couldn’t help it none as I scrabbled round the trunk, looking for him.

“Scar,” he said, hands catching my shoulders as I turned.

Relief choked me as I hugged him overtight, clinging to him. “Christ and his Saints, Rob,” I breathed into him.

He kissed me quick, and we broke apart, looking at the damage. Two men were close together and the third were farther down. “Cut the trees,” he ordered. He started barking men’s names and indicated the three sections to cut so that the trunks would be small enough to lift. “Much!” he said, pointing to the men. Much nodded and moved quick, overseeing the cuts the axes were aiming for.

The men were crying out with every hack of the ax, and I turned to the gathering women and young folk. “Rocks,” I said, pointing. “And the logs they’ve already cut. Wedge them next to the men so the weight’s off a bit,” I told them, grabbing an armful of wood myself. We built up little walls on either side of the pinned men, pushing and heaving till it pressed the trunk up, ever so little.

My heart kept pounding hard right up till it were late at night and the last man came free. The first two had broken their arms, I reckoned, but he were the worst. He could bare stand.

“Here,” I said, and looped his arm round my neck, hugging close to him and holding him up. I held him tight and he groaned, slipping from my arms.

I yelped as he fell to the ground, and Rob and the others tried to haul him back up. He resisted, and coughed once. A gush of blood came from his mouth. I dropped to my knees and the other men stepped back a bit. Trembling, I rearranged myself around him and knelt by his head, laying his head gentle on my knees. I wiped the blood from his mouth, dashing the red on my legs and wiping his mouth again.

His name were Thomas Percy, and he were so young. Bare twenty-and-two, only a few months older than Rob. He were handsome—all the Percys were, their hair like corn silk and their eyes so soft and brown they looked like a puppy’s. “Rob. Robin?” he said, and his voice were thick, caught up in his throat and wet.

“Right here, Tom,” Rob said, kneeling. Emma Percy, Tom’s little sister, gave a yell and came over to him, sitting on Tom’s other side. She grabbed his hand, crying a terrible fuss.

“Rob,” Tom said again. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—I was trying to help.”

It sounded young and pitiful to my ears, and I stroked his hair back as tears slicked down on my cheeks. Rob clapped Tom’s hand in both of his and nodded solemn to Tom. “You did well, Tom. You did very well.”

“Tom, no,” Emma said. “No!”

He touched her cheek, but there were a bit of his blood on his fingers and it smeared over her face. “You’ll be all right, Emma. Connor will take care of you. He loves you, Emma.”

She gripped his chest, crying hysterically and tugging him as if she’d keep his soul from flying out. “No, Tom,” she said, over and over.

Tom coughed again and spat out blood, but more caught in his throat, shining at me in the dim light from the torches someone’d lit. “I’m sorry I won’t be there, Emma. To give you to him. You’ll do it, Rob,” he said, looking solemn at Robin. “You’ll give her away?”