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"I hope so."

"Why?"

"Because a signed statement can be challenged. Fitzwalter can claim it's forged, or that Crane was coerced." Guy tapped the paper. "But if Crane stands before the royal council and confirms that signature, he'll be much harder to dismiss."

I looked at the final document. It wasn't another ledger or a statement.

It was a single sheet of paper, folded carefully. My grandmother's name was written on the outside.

I took it a few steps away and sat down among the nettles.

Then I unfolded it.

Mother,

If this has reached you, then the men I warned you about have come, and you will know better than I what happens next.

The papers with this letter are proof of what they've done. Keep them where you've hidden this, and don't take them to court. I don't know which men at court can be trusted, and I won't risk handing over the only evidence that can condemn them.

Above all, protect Robin.

She's young and stubborn and far braver than I deserve. She'll want to do something about all of this, and you mustn't let her until she's ready.

Tell her I love her. Tell her none of this was her doing. Tell her I never regretted standing against these men, and that I'd do it again even knowing how it ends.

Whatever becomes of Locksley, she must live.

I reached the last line and stopped.

Then I read it again. I tried to read it a third time, but I couldn't get the words out.

My father had known.

He'd known what those men were capable of, and he'd understood that he might not survive what was coming.

Even then, he'd been thinking about me.

I folded the letter along its original creases, taking care not to damage the paper. Then I slipped it inside my shirt, against my ribs, close to the compass rose tattooed on my skin.

I sat there for a while, trying to steady my breathing.

Guy didn't interrupt.

He stood a few feet away, keeping watch near the opening in the wall.

For six years, I'd heard my father called a traitor.

I'd heard it shouted in Nottingham's market and read it in the proclamations posted around the shire.

Everything the Crown had left behind about him had been written by the men responsible for his death.

Now I had something he'd written himself.

He'd thought I was brave.

He'd wanted me to live.

And he'd loved me enough to make certain I knew it.