LOCKSLEY CASTLE, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE

MARION PLACED HER HAND on Walter’s shoulder and gave a meaningful squeeze. Her fingers found more bone than muscle beneath his modest doublet, and she flinched, worrying she had hurt him. But Lord Walter of Locksley simply smiled, hermit lord no longer, and wiped an embarrassed tear from his eye.

“I can’t remember the number of years it’s been since I’ve seen the dining hall so lively,” he said. “Sometimes I forget to just sit and take it in, you know? Even at my age, I have to remember to enjoy the little moments.”

It would have been an understatement to say it warmed Marion’s heart. To see Lord Walter thriving again, and his estate flourishing, was to see some great wrong lifted from the world. “You have plenty of years ahead of you,” she said, straightening his collar. “This is just the beginning.”

The dining hall was brightened only partially by chandeliers, and the rest by personalities. The room heaved and swelled like the ocean, mixing together sounds of laughter, dining, and life. It reminded Marion of her youth, when her family would visit Locksley often, when she and her sister would play with Lord Walter’s sons.

It would certainly be good to have new, happier memories of the place.

Only a year earlier, she solicited Locksley’s help for a man named Baynard—an aging local gentleman with an unfortunately common story. Ever since the war tithe was implemented, the Saladin tax, nobles were finding creative ways to minimize their assets—such as evicting their least valuable vassals. People without masters, like Baynard and his family, were still legally subject to pay son vassalus for themselves. This was a typically empty threat outside of a city, but had been increasingly enforced in the last year on account of the war’s thirst for coin. And poor Baynard had been naïve enough to petition Nottingham for assistance, where he might have been thrown into a debtor’s cell if Marion had not intervened.

She recalled her trepidation in approaching Lord Walter on the matter, given their history, but was now so glad she’d taken that chance. Relocating Baynard to Locksley Castle had been a gamble that now paid off a hundred-fold. Despite his reputation as a recluse, Lord Walter was a charitable man with wealth to spare, and his manor was in dire need of tending. Hoarding his coin for decades at the expense of his estate had earned him the nickname of “the hermit lord.” He was thought to be quite peculiar by those too young to remember, but Marion knew better. It was not greed or eccentricity that had closed Locksley Castle’s doors, but heartbreak.