LITMIR.BIZ

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around my ribs so that I could not breathe.

      Our fall broke his grip on my arm. I snatched a tiny breath with the top of my chest, pushed myself out of the scrub and hit him hard in the face. He stepped back.

      ‘My grandmother had friends…’ I yanked at my bodice, tried to breathe and run again. ‘…like you! She died on the block because of…friends…like you!’ I could already feel the axe falling towards my bared neck.

      Even the loyal Mrs Hay was willing to whisper how the Scottish king had been happy to take the English crown from the same hand that had signed the warrant for his own mother’s death.

      The young man picked up his sword, dropped in our struggle. ‘I can’t let you go.’

      He must know as I did that he was almost certainly a dead man now, sooner or later, no matter what happened to me.

      And I could no longer scream for help, even if I could be heard. Not now that I knew what he intended.

      I shifted my weight onto my hurt ankle as slowly as a cat stalking a bird. The ankle felt cold and watery with pain but held, just. I tried to read him as I would a new dog or horse. ‘I also see that you don’t want to do this. I think you’d rather let me go.’

      Startled eyes met mine. I hopped my good foot back beside the other. ‘I think you’re a good man and something has gone wrong.’

      ‘If you knew…!’ he agreed fervently. ‘But I have no choice now.’

      Our panting seemed to fill the low vault of arching trees. In his face, I could still see a last gleam of my enchanted prince. ‘I thought at first you were under a curse,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t entirely wrong, after all.’

      And in a different story, we might have been friends. I hopped another step.

      ‘I’m damned,’ he whispered.

      I begged my courage rise up to fill that cold hollow space inside me. ‘I trusted you when I first saw you,’ I said.

      ‘That’s why Robin…’ He caught himself. ‘…why I was sent alone. For fear that you would take fright at a group of armed men.’

      I straightened my back to give my courage room to rise. Please, I begged. At first it felt as fluid as water, flowing into my limbs, rising through my belly and chest. Slowly, another stronger creature, that was both me and something else far greater than I was forced its way up through the tight column of my throat until it reached my eyes.

      I burned my attacker with a wolf’s fierce gaze. ‘Is my father already dead?’ Even stiffened by courage, I didn’t dare ask about Henry.

      ‘I don’t know. But it makes no difference now. It’s too late to turn back!’ He looked at me, his mouth slightly open. ‘I beg you, forgive me, your grace, I never meant…’

      ‘I think you should run,’ said the young she-wolf steadily. ‘As fast as you can.’

      He closed his eyes. ‘Holy Mother, protect me…!’ His sword shook in his hand.

      I had to tempt him to rewrite this story. I felt certain that he wanted to. ‘It doesn’t have to be too late,’ I said. ‘I don’t know who you are, or what you truly intend. If you go now, I won’t raise an alarm.’

      He shook his head.

      ‘You don’t believe me? Don’t you see why I can’t raise an alarm? Why I must not even admit that you exist?’

      I might be just a slip of a girl, but even I could see why no one must ever connect me to him and his friends. I knew suddenly that, though he was a grown man armed with a sword, my wits were quicker than his.

      He kept shaking his head.

      ‘You’re a fool! But not wicked enough.’ I eased back another step. ‘They sent the wrong man. I swear I won’t betray you. Save yourself, if you can.’

      I watched his eyes as I watch those of a new hound to see whether it means to lick my hand or bite. ‘Whatever you and your friends are plotting, you must stop it, so I can try to save myself.’ I saw struggle in his blue eyes. ‘Neither of us wants to be here.’

      ‘No,’ he whispered.

      ‘Then we must simply agree that we’re not here and never were. If I don’t betray you, what crime will you have committed?’ I held my breath.

      ‘You’re scarce more than a child and don’t understand men’s affairs.’ Then he went still, in that moment-of-just-before. Just before a dog is unleashed. Just before a bow-man releases his bolt or the dangling pig’s throat is cut. I had seen men gather themselves up like that before, when they had to do something unpleasant.

      ‘You must come with me,’ he said. ‘Please don’t make me hurt you.’

      I had lost him.

      But I wouldn’t die on the scaffold like my grandmother! Because that was how I would end, if I let him take me to these ‘friends’. Better to die now, with only a short time for fear. Struggling, perhaps not even noticing the fatal blow. Better that than to wait blindfolded for the first blow of the axe, and the second and the third. Better that my Belle not creep whimpering out from under my skirts, like my grandmother’s little dog, covered with my blood, to sniff at my severed head.

      ‘I won’t come!’

      He shook his head, avoiding my eyes.

      I tightened my grip on my dirk.

      ‘I can’t be queen if I’m dead.’

      ‘I swear that I won’t kill you.’

      ‘But I will.’

      He stepped towards me.

      I placed the tip of the dirk in the hollow at the base of my throat. I felt the point prick my skin. I took another step back.

      Don’t think! Don’t think! Be ready to push…twist…Just do it!

      ‘It’s harder than you imagine,’ he said. But I had made him uncertain again.

      I hopped back another step. He started to follow.

      ‘Don’t misjudge my age or sex! I’m not a child, whatever you may think.’ The young she-wolf looked him in the eyes. ‘And I’m not one of your delicate English ladies, neither. I’m a Scottish barbarian. I cut the shoulder of a stag when I was seven.’ I hobbled another step. The she-wolf still knew that I would use the dirk. My eyes told him so.

      And another step.

      He wavered, sword half-raised.

      ‘God speed you!’ I turned my back with the knife still at my throat.

      Breathe in. Hop. Breathe in. Hop.

      The courage-wolf inside me gobbled up the pain.

      Breathe in. Hop.

      I listened for his footsteps over the sound of my own breathing.

      Around a bend in the track, then past a hazel clump. I began to hope. Unreasonably, that fragile physical barrier between us made me feel safer.

      Breathe in. Hop. And again. And again.

      Suddenly, the pain returned. I stopped, dizzy with pain. I looked back. Through the screen of brown hazel leaves, I could see him only in parts. He sat on his heels in the middle of the track, rocking, with his head in his hands.

      Get out of England! I urged him silently. As far away from me as possible!

      ‘Robin,’ he had said, ‘a band of armed men.’

      There were others, but how many? And what were they doing at this very moment? What did they intend? Oh, God! I begged. Please let Henry be unharmed!

      The snake word ‘treason’ coiled around my throat and tightened. I must warn Henry. But how, without entangling myself in treason?

      A

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