Chapter 2
Rumplestiltskin's skin tingled at the intrusion of genie magic in the atmosphere. Regina grew bolder and more vicious, her month as a peasant had served him well, but her cruelness combined with the Sheriff of Nottingham's incompetence did not inspire much confidence. More than he wanted to sit back and watch them destroy one another, he wanted his wand back. Across the dunes in Agrabah, an aspiring sorcerer would simply have to wait; the Dark One had more pressing matters in front of him.
Rumplestiltskin vanished from the castle, into the shade of a Nottingham street full-to-bursting with rabble. He looked around at the unfamiliar faces and clothed himself in the brown, coarse-spun robes of a wandering Friar; no one ever questioned the presence of an extra mendicant in the crowd. Rumple completed his disguise with a flourishing glamour, concealing his eyes, skin, and teeth behind a thin sheen of magic. Glimpsing his face – fuller, more haggard, complete with baldpate – he doubted that even Regina would recognize him until he jumped up and grabbed her.
The city gates of Nottingham stood tall and bleak, its walls crumbling in places, and the deteriorating town square – mean to be a village green, he was sure – sat nestled between the city gate and the gate to the royal courtyard. Houses and shops lined either side to the left and right of him, with scores of alleys and warrens branching off and circling the keep. Rumplestiltskin wandered the streets until he passed into the shadow of a high tower at the rear of the motte wall and found himself standing at the edge of the marketplace.
"Who are all these people?" the Friar asked a passing merchant, peddling apples guaranteed to have no fewer than three weevils apiece. "These lands were sparsely populated by old women, children and widows when the King took his armies to war."
"You must have been gone for a long time, Friar," the man answered. "It's been a dog's age since I saw a man of the Old Faith in these parts. Richard's not King here anymore—"
"A pox upon the Phony King!" a wrinkled washer-woman passing near enough to hear interjected, spitting at the ground beneath the merchant's feet. He ignored her.
"These lands belong to the Dark One now," the merchant continued. "Or the clergy. Take your pick. The people are refugees."
That he'd bargained for Nottingham in exchange for making its King victorious over the Ogres was a misnomer; his deal entitled him only to the Dark Castle. If the Sherwood felt that it belonged to him, it happened merely as a technicality of Richard's abandonment. Legally, the kingdom's government, sans monarch, fell to the next-most-senior member of the King Richard's High Council. But naturally, Richard had need of his strategists, metallurgists, healers, and sorcerers on the battlefield. What he'd no need of were clerics, and that left Nottingham almost exclusively at the command of the Sheriff and the Church.
And a smashing job they'd done of it, too, if Rumple were any judge. Broken men lined the streets and crowded the alleys, bodies pressed thick over cobbles in ill-repair, and the whole place stank of rot.
"Seeking refuge from what?"
"Well, the Ogres, for a start. How long has it been since you left the abbey, Friar? Cities are collapsing all up the seaboard in King George's lands, unless Richard and his men arrive in time to defend them. And even then, there's not much left by the time they're done."
"Do they think Richard's going to come home and save them?" Rumple asked incredulously.
"No, not especially. It's just that the Ogres don't come here – haven't since the new King arrived. The Sparks say Ogres are the men he corrupted, the ones who made deals with him, and that's why they obey his orders to stay away. Older stories say the Dark One walked out into a raging battle in the First Ogre Wars and it just stopped; that they remember not to stray into his path like a horse that gets whipped."
"People like to talk about things they know nothing about," growled Rumple. If they were wise, they wouldn't tell too many stories of the Dark One's origin. Some secrets needed to be kept at all costs, and Rumplestiltskin kept his mercilessly. "What else are they saying?"
"More than my life's worth to repeat all of it, Friar," he leaned in to whisper. "They say Queen Regina murders her own small-folk, whole villages at a time; they say the Blue Star herself talks to the High Spark when he visits the privy – I swear by the Stars, she does! – my sister's mother-in-law hears a woman's voice in there, sometimes, when she comes to collect the wash; They even say there's a Lady who danced so beautifully for an Ogre that he wept for joy."
"Rot and nonsense," grumbled the Friar.
"Aye, mostly. But here's a fact: Nottingham's the last place free of Ogres this side of the mountains, but her people are hungry. If you Brown Friars have any notion of charity, we'd thank you for it. Elsewise, you'd best go back to your abbey. It's a hard world out here for a beggar."
"And what of this Hood fellow I've heard mentioned?" Rumple asked, proffering a small coin for the least offensive apple in the bushel.
"You mean the Merry Men? Squatters and poachers, the lot of 'em, but they don't dare steal from the likes of me, praise the Stars! Poor Sheriff Guy has no end of trouble off 'em. Ha, my boy says they stole the sapphires off the High Spark's shoes last week!"
It was on the tip of Rumple's tongue to ask about the man's son, but a large procession led by shouting men in indigo tunics, brandishing spiked maces spared him the burden of remembering. The Crusaders began to clear the marketplace, and Rumplestiltskin melted through the stinking press of bodies to a more secluded place.
He spent the night in the streets, listening to the collective groans of a city over-burdened. The rabble fought one another over stale loaves, made their homes with three or four families pressed into each cottage, and cleared the streets for none but the priests in their blue, embellished robes. They existed as a veritable rat-warren, a breeding-ground for thieves and plague. A generous liege would simply have fed them in exchange for turning over the Hood and his gang. Why hadn't the Sheriff done it already?
Rumplestiltskin pulled the hood of his robes down, close to his face, and shuffled slowly toward the castle gate. Some time in the night, the unmistakable presence of Regina's Queensguard had arrived, swarming the castle walls and streets. She had probably already made herself comfortable in Richard's throne room.
To call the place a palace was a disservice to the grandeur and battlements of the Dark Castle, yet the Nottingham castle – complete with a feasting hall and manor house – was a vast improvement on the rustic motte-and-baily mud-heaps favored by minor nobles and hedge knights of smaller villages. It had, once upon a time, functioned as King Richard's winter home and municipal seat.
Nottingham grew up around the castle, engulfing her and putting up walls of her own, and then over-flowing those and spilling out into cleared woodland farms and huts. The castle and city were older even than Rumplestiltskin's reckoning.
As he approached the gatehouse, a voice accented with the rolling lilt of the East echoed out of an alley behind him. And, as such things are wont to do, the shape of the future shifted and warped around that otherwise inconsequential point. For Rumplestiltskin, coincidences did not exist; he spun on his heel, intrigued.
"Belle, please, you're the only one he'll listen to," the voice begged. "He arrested Robin in the market for adultery. You know he's an idiot Marian's concerned, but she can't be moved yet. She's too weak."
"We're running out of time!" a man's voice interrupted. He sounded low and soft, like the squat, rolling hills and hard labor on a farm. "The Queen's Huntsman was spotted inspecting the prison this morning, and her guards are everywhere in the streets. You know what they say of Queen Regina: she'll rip the heart from every man, woman, and child she meets until she finds Snow White. They'll kill him, Belle."
"But what does Snow White have to do with us?" the other – Belle – asked after taking some time to think. The tone of her voice came softly, dulcet and exotic – though more familiar than the first woman's – but without the mushy, slouching pronunciation of the man; it was not an accent that Rumple would soon forget.
"They think she's the Hood," replied the first woman. "That's what started this madness. Hood stole something meant for the Dark One, and Sir Guy's been tasked with recovering it."
"Then give it to him!" the Sister hissed under her breath. Rumplestiltskin had not anticipated her ferocity, and edged in for a closer look. She wore the plain, sky-blue habit of a novice, modest and cheaply made, with a green paisley cloak. Her chestnut curls had been pinned up, atop her head.
"We, um, don't know what it is," murmured the man, shaking his head of messy, brown curls. His face was obscured, in part by shadow and in part by a thick beard, but his features appeared genial and broad. "We don't steal magic, it always comes with a price and no good ever comes of it. Well, I don't have to remind you about what happened with Will Scarlet. None of the Merry Men would have touched it, if they'd known what it was. But, if there really was magic stolen, the Phony King's the last villain I'd want having it."
"John Little, you go back there this instant and you tell them to figure out what he wants!" the Sister insisted, and the man looked suitably cowed, meekly promising to return to the camp as soon as possible. Finally, something Rumple could work with.
"I'm not even supposed to be out of the Cloister," the young novice continued. "Do you have any idea what will happen if the Sparks find out I'm involved with matters concerning the Dark One? I have to take my vows in two days."
"You're the only one who can help, Belle. You've the right as a Lady to beg his mercy," the taller of the two – raven-haired and clad in segmented armor – stated factually. She spoke like a soldier accustomed to being obeyed. "And failing that, you've the right to petition the Queen directly."
"You're the smartest person I know, Belle, and the only one of us Guy would listen to," the large man told her. "The Sheriff is hardly my favorite person, but even he doesn't deserve to fall afoul the Evil Queen and the Phony King all in the same week. What's one more waltz with the devil to you?"
"That was different. You know that was different."
Rumplestiltskin was intrigued. Usually when people spoke of devils and demons, they were talking about him, but he would have remembered a dance with a woman like that, wouldn't he?
"You're not asking me to tip-toe through the darkness," she continued. "You're asking me to march right up to Sir Guy in broad daylight and calmly tell him to forgive his rival. Then I've just got to convince him to defy the Queen and fail the Dark One. It would take a miracle."
"Don't think like that," the soldier hushed. "If the Dark One could find us, he'd have done it. We're safe for now, but Robin and all those people in the jail won't be. The Princess Snow isn't here. What's the Sheriff going to do when Queen Regina executes all his prisoners and comes up empty-handed? He needs our help, and we need his. You can do this, Belle."
"If the Sparks find out—"
"Fuck the Sparks," the man swore, and the two women gaped at him, looking around frantically to make sure he hadn't been heard.
"Fuck them," the man repeated. "They're not the law here, no more than the Phony King is. When King Richard returns…"
"He's not coming back, John," the Sister said sadly. She looked pensive for a moment, worrying her lower lip with her teeth. "Not soon enough to help us, at least. But you're right, no one deserves that fate. I will try to help."
The other two thanked her profusely, and the trio made their way toward the gate. The Friar followed, a plan already taking shape. They would lead him to the Hood, that much was plain to see, and when the prophesized time came, he would be able to return to the jail and identify the thief.