The Hooded Hawke by Karen Harper Read Free Book Online Page A

Guildford were barely visible far beyond the rolling hills. She turned around and sat on the top step.
    “Your Grace,” Rosie said, “you were shot at in broad daylight before, and sitting up there like a target …”
    “And the sun glitters off that chest armor like a shining bull’s-eye!” Ned protested.
    “I’m coming down. Ah, if I could only forget my troubles and be a country maid, I could reign from this crude wooden throne over this lovely piece of land and not worry for aught.”
    She sighed and gripped the rickety banister to come back down. But as she gave one last glance at the scene of the great house and gardens below, and the breeze lifted the limbs of the trees, she saw it: She had the perfect view of the very spot where she, Drake, and Fenton were standing when the fatal bolt was shot.
    “’S blood,” she cried, “this stile is a shooting platform and this hedge both a hunter’s blind and escape route for the murderer!”
    M eg was grateful the queen had let her and Ned stay behind to gather some herbs along the hedge. She cut hawkweed, for tinctures for wounds or nosebleeds, and knapweed, which was always good as an astringent. She took some broad-leafed dock, too, useful for rubbing skin stung by the very nettle that grew beside it.

    “Nice of the good Lord to give us both the bane and the cure side by side,” she told Ned, who was evidently anxious to get back to the house. He was standing on one foot, then the other, but she could tell he was also pleased to see her even momentarily content. Or was he eager not to leave but to say something?
    “This lords-and-ladies is poisonous when fresh, you know,” she told him, “but if I’d roast the tubers, then pound and dry them, it’s good for all sorts of deconcoctions for irritated eyes, even handsome green eyes like yours, Ned Topside.”
    “Best leave the poison stuff alone,” he said gruffly, when she thought he might banter back.
    “You aren’t fearful I’d use poison on myself?” she asked. “No more chance of that than poor Naseby hanging himself—not a man with boys to tend. Husband, even when things have been the blackest, I wouldn’t harm myself.”
    As if she’d said something seductive, he pulled her to him, and she didn’t protest that the herbs were smashed between them.
    “Meg, Meg, I’ve missed you so, being alone with you—the way things used to be.”
    “I know I’ve not been a good wife to you lately—since … But I couldn’t help it. I just can’t bear to think of us together like—like we were. Even after we had little Ned, we took our joys so much, and then he died …”
    “It’s all right,” he said. “I can wait, but I don’t want to. I need you.”
    “We can’t here—in the meadow. Ned, you said we need to get back.”
    “If we lie down, the meadow grass will hide us. If we can’t here, we can’t for the entire royal progress. We don’t get time alone, we don’t live together. My sweetheart, let’s just …”
    She couldn’t say she felt what she usually did with Ned, but she was happy to have him hold her. The hay and earth itself smelled fresh and sweet where they crushed it under their bodies. Still, she didn’t forget her little lost boy, even when Ned’s love embraced and filled her.
    When it was over, they heard voices nearby and scrambled
to cover themselves. One person howling, one perhaps sobbing or gasping.
    “Where’s that coming from?” Meg whispered, picking up her knife and gathering her scattered herbs.
    “Can’t tell. But it’s tormented, disembodied voices—”
    “Stuff and nonsense. It’s hardly your ghostly Robin Hood.”
    They were barely to their feet when two heads popped over the hedge at the top of the stile—two lads, one a bit bigger than the other, shouting boyish variations of “Ow, it smarts!”
    “Oh!” the larger boy said when he saw them. “We got to patch the hole in the hedge. Our father’s the hedger, but he been took’way for