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XXXVIII. Spinners



The question was where exactly Little John would pass by. Sherwood and Barnsdale were full of footpaths and trails, many known exclusively to outlaws. John would know more of them than he did. Robert Hodde was buried, and it seemed unlikely he would ride near his hermit’s hut and the grave, and even less so that he would go near Nicnevin’s gate. But there was a reasonable destination on his route.

Thomas closed his eyes. He imagined he stood in the shadow of the immense limewood tree he’d climbed only days ago though it felt like an ancient memory now, and as he did, he recalled the riddle he’d babbled long ago in the presence of Robert Hodde:


A parting of ways,

The band dissolves.

Before is met a new friend,

The survivor to the Great Limewood will be summoned.


Well, he’d thought he understood it, but what if he’d got it all wrong the first time? Or what if the riddle could mean two things? Who said the nonsensical byproducts of these fits only applied to a single situation? The citizens of Ercildoun certainly thought they could recast his riddles to align with any event they imagined. Why couldn’t he?

This was a parting of ways; John had grabbed the spinners and ridden off on his own. The dissolved band could be the Waits—they had returned to Nottingham—or the Keepers or even Hodde’s original band of outlaws. He’d thought Sir Richard to be the new friend, but what if that referred to Lady Isabella herself? Then Little John would be the survivor—certainly he was the last remaining member of Robert Hodde’s little band. That left the question of how to summon him to the Great Limewood tree. But even as he climbed up on the beast, he knew the answer to that, too. That left only the question of how to stop him from giving up the dights and endangering Isabella and Adam. He must capture John’s attention before he could capture John.

He withdrew his ördstone from its pouch, and focused again on Hodde’s old camp.


Everyone else seemed to have some critical task to perform. With Robyn and John gone for an indefinite period, Isabella Birkin’s tasks included overseeing whatever needed doing in the King’s Houses, riding the adjoining park to tally the number of deer in it, and looking for any signs of poaching or illegal clearing of timber in the park. She had plenty to do. She did not like being someone else’s task.

All morning Will and Adam followed her everywhere as if she cast two shadows. She couldn’t so much as walk to the stable without the both of them jumping up and joining her, silent and ever-vigilant. They would not let her be, and she cut short her circuit of the deer park and returned to the houses early.

When Sehild came up the stairs with a supper for her, Will met her at the ready, his bow drawn, which caused her nearly to drop the wicker tray she carried. Even after Isabella said, “It’s only Sehild,” Will kept her in his sights. Not until she withdrew did he put away the arrow. Meanwhile, Adam was sampling the food and drink to make certain it wasn’t poisoned. And if it was? What then? Her son would die protecting her? She didn’t want that.

Finally, she put down her spoon and said, “Enough. Robyn’s gone to retrieve the spinners. The demons don’t have them, so they aren’t going to harm me. Honestly, you two, how many outlaws have we chased down and arrested together? You never worried about me then or if you did, you had the good manners to keep it from me. I am quite capable of looking after myself. Which of us brought down a demon right out there with a crossbow?”

Will folded his arms in silence.

Adam said, “Robyn told us to stay by your side and to trust no one.”

Isabella frowned. “‘Robyn told us.’ You sound like a child, my son. Before this turn of events I know you were both planning to ride to Nottingham and get as many of the Waits as possible to join us here so we can close all of these gates the demons open, and put an end to their incursion once and for all. The sooner that’s done, the better. Why don’t you go off and do that?”

“But we’d be leaving you alone,” said her son.

“You would also be leading the devils a chase through the forest. They might actually pursue you and let me be. Besides, Nottingham is so much closer than Barnsdale, you could ride there and back before Robyn returns.”

“You could ride with us,” suggested Will.

“I could not.”

It was clear they wouldn’t leave her unattended no matter what she said, and finally in frustration, she got up and told them, “Figure out what you’re going to do. I’m going to walk the perimeter as I’ve done a hundred times or more.” They both made to accompany her. “No,” she said. She drew her long dagger. “I’m armed and perfectly safe until Robyn comes back with the spinners. No one is rewriting forest law today. I’ll only be out of your sight a half hour.”

She left them in the Great Hall and exited beside the recently rebuilt king and queen’s chambers, past the currently idle “king’s kitchen” with its clay and straw daub walls, and walked toward the main gate. From there she followed the palisade and ditch around to the Great Pond. It gave her time to think.

What was she going to do about Adam? How could she propose to kill D’Everingham and explain it to him? “You watch, he’s going to melt like Passelewe”? That should be the case, knowing what she did of him. But it was still his father, whether demon, monster, or awful man. She could easily go to the gallows for her actions no matter what he was. In Adam’s position, she would probably step in, or try to, just as she was proposing to interfere with her husband’s plot to murder her and her son, none of which she could prove at the moment but all of which she believed. The body of that boy in the gatehouse, now laid out in one of the stable stalls, only reinforced her notion of the cold-bloodedness of these creatures and, by extension, her husband.

And then there was Robyn. What was she to make of him? A puca who’d lived a hundred years? It was ridiculous and she knew he wasn’t telling the truth about himself. So many questions that he simply flowed around, giving answers that answered for nothing. Yet, he was loyal to his friends—to the outlaw Little John as much as anyone. He didn’t seem to care whether any of these outlaws had broken the law—she supposed because many of those who made or upheld the laws seemed to be themselves possessed—Passelewe, her husband, the bishop of Doncaster. She could not deny the unnaturalness of them. This loyal Robyn seemed alternately merciless and gentle, forward and shy, forgiving of almost anyone, but also naive. Didn’t he understand that without forest law, the people in the towns and vills and manors would strip the forests of every tree, every deer and boar? People were not thoughtful, and some form of order must be maintained. Inaudita, indeed. What would Gervase of Tilbury have made of him?

Along the length of the Great Pond, with the terraced garden and fruit trees on her left, she strolled as she watched the fisher wading in with his net. No doubt he was catching tonight’s dinner. He saw her and gave a cursory wave, then went back to seeing what he’d caught.

Coming full circle, she returned to the paddock, passing the smaller Queen’s Hall and kitchen, and beyond it the tiny, single-story apartment known as Rosamund’s Chamber, built apparently for King Henry’s mistress, Rosamund Clifford. Odd, however—the door to Rosamund’s Chamber stood open. She approached it cautiously. She’d stayed in there a few times, back when Adam was a baby, so that he would not keep other foresters awake if he wailed at night. It was a dark, warm house in the winter, but rarely put to use.

Isabella drew her dagger and stepped across the threshold.

The bed, the bench and table stood empty and unused, the room deserted, musty. Then why?

There came a sting on the back of her neck. Isabella slapped at it and swung about, ready to thrust with her dagger at some invisible source, but already the venom in that sting was locking her muscles. Her thrust died, the tip of the dagger barely poking something solid but unseen. A hand gently removed the dagger from her grasp. The figure seemed to step out of nowhere, out of the room itself. Glamoured to the shadows of the room. She understood now.

Isabella stared into a perfect copy of her own face.

“Zhanedd,” she guessed. The word sounded garbled in her mouth. The venom made it difficult to speak.

The Yvag bowed theatrically, smiled as if to reassure her. “This will all be over before your protectors even notice you are missing.”

It was strange hearing such an inhuman voice emerge from her mouth, more strange oddly than the double itself.

“You mean to kill me.”

“Yes, and no.” Zhanedd raised into view one of the spinners.

A cold horror of anticipation and helplessness closed over Isabella. “I thought you had none—your knights . . .”

“It’s true,” Zhanedd said, while carrying the dight to the small table. “We have failed to recover those, and they are most difficult to come by. But not impossible.”

So the demons still didn’t have the remaining three. She hoped that meant Robyn had been successful.

Zhanedd returned and gripped her by the shoulders to guide her to the bench.

“You’ve been told how these work, yes? So I won’t bother to lie and say you’ll feel nothing,” said Zhanedd. “I will say, you won’t feel it very long. Consider that a blessing.”

Isabella had placed herself in this position. She should have listened to the wisdom of Adam and Will instead of taking umbrage at being ordered about, followed around. She’d let her rage at how Robert D’Everingham treated her provoke her into this fatal mistake.

Zhanedd pulled her down to sit on the bench. One slender gray-green hand reached around her and turned the spinner over, stood it somehow on its point. Then the hand hovered above it. The device began to spin.

At least they’d come for her and not Adam; at least she’d protected him from this. Green light flashed out from the spinner, which whirled and whirled, rising aloft, the green line rising with it. God protect her son from both his parents now.

The green line climbed, and Isabella Birkin was scoured out of existence. It hurt beyond all imaginable pain.


Thomas could only guess when Little John would be within range of the ram’s horn. He knew it could be heard far from the tree because he’d heard it any number of times while in his hut or wandering the woods, most of the time blown by Much, if Hodde had been telling the truth.

The call might draw more than John alone—the horn served as an alarm, after all, whenever their woods were threatened or invaded; it was how they had so often eluded the Keepers—assuming there were any others left in this wood.

Sitting high up in the limewood tree, he leaned back, gathered his breath, and blew long and hard into the ram’s horn. The note echoed through the woods. How far, he could not be certain, but it had been loud the times he’d heard it in his hut, times it had given him enough warning to glamour the hut from sight. So at least an impressive distance. If John passed anywhere near the old camp on his way through Barnsdale, he would have to hear it.

In the first hour, perhaps three times he blew the horn. Understandable that no one arrived after the first call. Even if Yvag gates hadn’t opened to slaughter night after night, no one would likely be sure they’d heard this horn. He tried to recall when last it had been sounded. A year or more, perhaps. Also, anyone who did hear it would almost certainly know by now that Robert Hodde was dead; they would have to wonder who would be sounding the call, if not his ghost.


Four times he blew the horn before Little John appeared. As he rode up to the limewood tree, Thomas put away the horn and dropped down out of the low branches to meet him.

Little John stared at him in wonder. “Woodwose, what are tha doing here and how did tha ever get ahead of me?” Off to one side of the small clearing, the glamoured black beast stood still, and John cast it a wary glance.

Thomas pointed at the worn leather satchel hanging off John’s right hip. “The spinners,” he said.

John closed his hand around the strap. “I can’t give ’em up. You know that. Young Wilkin they killed. ’E was apprenticed ta my brother, Drustan, learning a craft, an’ they think that was ’is son. They’ll kill one’a his family for certain next if I haven’t delivered these soon as I can. Three girls my brother has. I can’t let them come to harm.”

Thomas came forward. “John, listen to me. You take those to the vill and they’ll kill you and those girls. Your brother’s whole family. You’ve had enough experience with them to know I’m not lying—probably you’ve seen more than anyone else I know.” He nodded at the quarterstaff tied up under John’s leg. “They’ll pull those damned swords of theirs and cut you to ribbons. Your staff won’t save you. Your bow would have been of more use.”

“Nah, I got to get close enough t’hand these things over.”

“Says the man who saw them up close on the road and in the gaol, saw them skewer his best friend and innocent Much.”

John sighed, head lowered. Finally, he climbed down. He drew the staff before turning back to Thomas. “I have t’go. Have ta try.” It was obvious John would knock him down if he came any closer. He had an idea why.

“How did they find out about your brother and his family, John? I’ve been by your side for most of a week and I knew nothing of them.”

Little John’s expression tightened, darkened. He looked furious but unable to direct that fury anywhere. His hands turned and turned the quarterstaff that seemed to have nowhere to strike. He said finally, softly, “I told ’em, I think. When Passelewe had me under castle, he and t’other demon asked me things, all about Robbie’s crew and my own. Who was I and where’d I come from—like that.”

Odd, Thomas thought, how much this was about brothers—Onchu so long ago, the Lusks, Hodde’s brother the tanner, presumably harmless and useless to the Yvags, and now John’s, who was proving of far more use to them. He said, “It’s not your fault, my friend. You were ill—” He tried to say “ill-used” but his mouth suddenly didn’t work. A fit had snuck up on him. His head throbbed with cold, and lightning jolted through his skull. He reached out a hand. “John,” he managed to get out before he dropped to his knees. It was like the time with Hodde. Did this limewood tree trigger seizures? Its scent? He suddenly smelled a burning, heard his trembling, jagged voice choke out the riddle:


“Palavia Parva another millstone

’Round your neck it weighs your fate.

A prick of poison to end you,

To welcome death’s embrace.”


He came to his senses with John kneeling beside him. A look of relief crossed Little John’s face. “Robbie told me this of you.”

“What did I say?” He’d heard himself this time, but wanted to confirm that his mad riddle had named Palavia Parva. John repeated it. Yes, it was as he’d heard, pulling John into it.

Thomas got up, wiping spittle from his chin. “A millstone ’round my neck, not yours? That makes no sense.” And yet . . . A “millstone”? What was his dark self trying to tell him?

John got wearily to his feet. “Robyn, I have t’go, else they slay another before the night. Surely you see that.”

Now, Thomas had spent his hour in the limewood tree thinking about their situation. Like John, fearful for his family, the longer Thomas left Isabella Birkin unattended the more certain he became this was all a devious arrangement. At the same time, he couldn’t let John ride to his death, either. The plan he’d conceived was mad to be sure, but it did hang the millstone around his neck. With false confidence, he said, “There’s another way, John, a way where maybe nobody dies and you get all of your family out safely.”

John stared at him as if he were insane. “What about the rest of those living in Parva?” he asked.

“They aren’t leverage. If the elven have no other plan, they might leave the vill altogether.”

“But they might not.”

“No, and to that end we must do more.” Thomas steepled his fingers, bowed his head. Without seeming to realize it, he walked away, around the enormous tree bole, ducking under one after another massive branch.

The remaining population of Palavia Parva weren’t leverage, more like expendable to their captors. What if he leveraged them first?

He returned to John, grinning, and reached out his hand. “Let me see the satchel, John.”

Very reluctantly, Little John lifted the strap over his head and handed it over.

Thomas untied the cover and flipped it aside. He took out the spinners before handing the satchel back. “Now,” he said, and all but danced back under the tree. He swung up into the branches, vanishing in the greenery. He found the tree hollow where the ram’s horn was kept, and carefully removed the horn and set the dights inside the hole. Then he climbed back down. “There. As before, we both know where they are.” He tied the ram’s horn to his belt.

“What good does it do for tha t’give me this?”

“That will come into play later. In fact, for this part don’t bring the satchel at all. We’ll put a spinner in it later.”

John looked around himself. “For this part?”

Thomas drew his ördstone from the pouch around his neck.

“Ah, not that thing.”

“It’s not for me, it’s for you,” he said. “You are going to wield it.”

John stared at the black, glittering stone in horror. “I would nah touch it.”

“You’ll have to,” said Thomas. “Because between us you’re the only one who’s been inside your brother’s house.”


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