Even Will had to touch their shoulders and ruffle their hair, and Mary repeated that they were all safe. Eleanor wouldn’t let go of Marian’s arm, which was all right because Marian wouldn’t let go of hers. Robin studied their wounds. In the dark of the oak, he hadn’t seen their faces clearly, but in the firelight, the blood and bruises shone plain. John’s eye was swelling shut, though he insisted it didn’t hurt a whit. He was lying, of course. Then her father acknowledged the blood on Mary’s face and tipped her chin up to see her neck. She wished she could see what he saw, then she didn’t.
“Does it hurt?” he asked. He brushed the skin with a thumb and the bruises lit with pain. She winced and hissed. Robin had never looked so angry. “I can see the marks of a man’s fingers there. Which one of them did this to you?”
“Him.” She nodded at the one with the ruddy hair. He lay on his back, the arrow sticking straight up from his neck. His eyes had frozen wide. The firelight made the pool of blood under him shine. He’d been facing his death straight on and not seen it coming. Well, she’d warned him, hadn’t she?
Marian had turned to block Eleanor’s view of the dead men, though the girl kept trying to stare. “Don’t look at them, sweetling,” Marian murmured, and Eleanor pressed her face to her mother’s arm. Mary couldn’t not look. Same with John. They had seen the dead before, but this was different. The violence of it blasted like a lightning strike. Edmund still seemed about to shout at them. Mary wondered if she would have nightmares about this and felt a sudden need to practice her archery more diligently.
Robin glanced at Marian. “Can we bring him back to life and kill him over again? Slower this time.”
“No, love. We will go back home, sit by the hearth and get warm, and tell Little John that all is well.”
“Little John?” the younger John said. “What do you mean? He’s real?”
Will glanced away and laughed, and Robin—well, the look on her father’s face defied understanding.
“The Ghost of Sherwood,” Mary said. “Didn’t you ever see the hooded figure hiding in the trees?”
Her brother’s brow furrowed. “Yes. But, well . . . I always thought I imagined it. He looked like something from the old stories.”
Mary turned to her mother. “He’s alive? We saw him shot, and he fell—”
“He’ll be a long time healing. But yes, he’s well, and will be relieved to see you all home safe.”
Mary started crying again and quickly brushed the tears away.
“This is quite the mess,” Robin said, regarding the three bodies. Will went to one, started to put his foot on it to yank out the arrow, when Robin held up a hand. “Leave them. We’ll load them on a cart and send them to the Earl of Pembroke’s son with Robin Hood’s arrows sticking out of them. Let him make of it what he will.”
Will gave a curt laugh. “That’ll start a row.”
“I’m not starting this one, am I? I never started anything, but by God, I will finish—”
Marian took Robin’s arm, standing firmly between both him and Eleanor. “Robin, you have nothing to justify.”
“Oh, no, it’s just . . . I thought I could stop fighting.” He touched Eleanor’s cheek and kissed Marian.
Much and his troop arrived with horses to load the bodies on, and, by torch and lantern light, they started back for home. The younger of Edmund’s men was some distance down the path—he had fled, screaming, and now he was tied up, and still screaming. Robin hauled him to his feet and wrapped his hands in the man’s collar.
“No, please! I beg you, have mercy, have mercy!”
“Mary, did this one lay a hand on any of you?” her father asked. The man wept harder.
“No, he didn’t,” she said, though the curiosity of what her father would do if she said yes tempted her to lie. The power of holding this man’s life in her hands was shockingly enticing.
“Well then. You are spared.”
“Oh, thank you, God bless you, God bless—”
“You will take your fellows back to your master and tell him what happened here. Do you understand?” Sobbing, nothing more. Disgusted, Robin dropped him and let the others load him up with the dead bodies, which did nothing to settle the man’s wailing.
Robin looked at his children. “What in God’s name did you do to these men?”
Mary started to speak, then closed her mouth because she didn’t know where to start. Didn’t know how to tell what had happened without making it sound fanciful.
John answered him. “Mary told them that Sherwood is full of ghosts and looks after its own, and she was right.”
The father regarded them, nonplussed. “Is that so?” John nodded, so sure.
“Those old stories are good for something after all,” Marian said evenly. “Come along. I think dawn is nigh.”