by Anna Burke
“I’m going to get you out of this.”
Clovis laughed. She ignored him, fixated on her brother’s face.
“I love you too, little bird,” he said.
“Stop it. Goddamn it, stop.”
A disturbance stirred the crowd somewhere to her left. She turned to look, desperate for help from any quarter, and saw instead the sheriff of Nottingham astride his black horse, followed by the hooded executioner.
“Michael Fletcher,” he said as he dismounted. “You stand accused of poaching in the king’s wood, and you’ve been found guilty.”
Murmurs rose from the crowd. Some of them had bought meat from Michael, and others had looked the other way, but none now spoke in his defense. Robyn hated them for their cowardice. Michael would have spoken up. Michael would have pointed out the breach in justice had it been one of them, but they just stood there.
She took a deep breath despite her aching ribs. “You can’t. Not without a trial.” Robyn stared up at the sheriff’s face. Handsome, yes, but his cheeks and nose bore the red stain of ruined veins, and while his shoulders and arms were hard with muscle, his stomach protruded over his belt, a testimony to his position of favor in Prince John’s court. He slapped the end of his reins against a meaty palm as he considered her.
“You must be the sister,” he said. “And you will address me as ‘my lord.’”
She placed herself between him and her brother and glared up at him. “You can’t hang him without a trial. My lord.”
“Do you always hide behind your women, Michael?” A few people laughed at the sheriff’s words. “Although your sister’s tall enough to be a man herself,” the sheriff added with a curl of his lip.
“Enough, Robyn,” said Michael. “Ed turned me in.”
“Ed?” Affable, smiling Ed, who always had a kind word for Robyn when she passed him in the street? She refused to believe it.
“They caught him with a leg of deer.”
And he’d named Michael to save his own skin. Michael’s eyes, so like her own, contained a weariness so profound that she whirled around to find Ed’s face in the crowd, intending to break it beneath her fists, anything to hide from Michael’s weary acceptance, and instead saw Gwyneth.
“Please.” Gwyneth’s voice carried over the laughter, and the sheriff’s sneer stiffened. Robyn turned to look at her sister-in-law. Gwyneth stood behind the barrier of men with her chin tilted up and her eyes blazing with unshed tears. “Please let him go,” she said, and the arms holding her back dropped away from her as if she’d burned them.
Hope surged in Robyn. Gwyneth stepped forward, still holding her belly as if it pained her, and placed her hand on the sheriff’s wrist. His eyes softened as he looked down at her, but then his gaze traveled to her stomach and the child within, which was not his, and Robyn knew her brother’s fate was sealed. It didn’t matter if the sheriff broke his own laws. Who would punish him? The prince? Their distant king?
“You know why he had to poach,” said Gwyneth. “You gave him no choice.”
“Gwyn,” said Michael, but Gwyneth paid him no heed. She, too, seemed to know his fate was sealed, and the hatred in her voice should have flayed the sheriff’s skin from his body.
“You only hang him because I spurned you.”
“Silence, woman,” said the sheriff.
“You sicken me. You sicken us all. It’s no wonder no good woman will have you, and—” Clovis handed Michael’s rope over to the executioner and slapped Gwyneth hard enough to send her to her knees. Robyn fell at her side and put her arms around her shoulders to forestall any more punishment.
“Hang him,” said the sheriff of Nottingham, and the crowd opened its mouth and howled, in protest or in triumph. It didn’t matter. She sought her brother’s eyes. They were glued to his wife, but he glanced up as if he, too, had heard the sound of Robyn’s soul splitting down the middle.
Robyn carried that look with her all that winter. It hovered over the bed as Gwyneth screamed in childbirth, blood soaking the sheets and the midwife shaking her head as the hours passed and Gwyneth strained, and still the child didn’t come. It waited behind her eyes each time she blinked the weariness away, stroking Gwyneth’s sweat-soaked brow, and it was there on the midwife’s face when at last the boy ripped free of his mother’s womb in a surge of blood, so much blood, the boy too large for Gwyneth’s frame and his little face red with the rage and grief Robyn felt each time she woke up in the bed she now shared with Gwyneth, because Michael was gone forever.
Chapter Two
Marian listened to the wind howling outside the Edwinstowe Priory walls and settled deeper into her chair. The sky had been clear when they left Harcourt Manor, but the weather around midwinter was always unpredictable, and now icy rain lashed the roof and battered the shutters. She contented herself with the satisfying knowledge that they would likely have to spend the night, and possibly the next night too if the weather didn’t relent, which put even more distance between her and her father.
She turned her attention away from the window and back to the parlor. The Lady Emmeline of Harcourt sat by the hearth with her sister, the prioress of Edwinstowe, but where Emmeline was willowy and fair, the Reverend Mother was broad and ruddy, dwarfing even the two mastiffs that accompanied her everywhere. The sisters bore a striking resemblance to each other all the same. The curve of the prioress’s cheeks held up her wimple with the same mischievous grin Marian had seen on Emmeline’s face all throughout their girlhood. It seemed impious on a nun, and yet the nuns of Edwinstowe Priory had elected her prioress unanimously. Marian didn’t blame them. She dispensed sound advice to all who asked, delivered sympathy to those who needed it, and knew when a penitent required compassion or a firm word. Women from nearby villages, towns, and manors sought her counsel regularly.
This was partially why Emmeline had braved the winter roads today with Marian, Willa, and Alanna in tow. Midwinter’s long night crept closer, and with it all the despair attendant to the season. A fire had destroyed some of Harcourt’s grain reserves, and the mood on the manor was grim. Mead, prayer, and the prioress’s blessing would settle Emmeline’s mind.
Marian studied Emmeline over the lip of her goblet. They’d grown up together after Marian’s mother had died. Emmeline had been the daughter of a wealthy lord in Lowdham before she married the Earl of Harcourt, and Marian’s father had sent her to Lowdham to serve as Emmeline’s handmaiden when he was appointed sheriff of Nottingham. “I will not have you running wild in Basford while I am in the city,” he’d told her. Marian smiled at the memory, pleased with the irony. She might have learned her station better on her father’s estate, instead of riding over the countryside with Emmeline and her brothers.
Now, however, Emmeline looked every inch the lady. Marian curled her feet more tightly up beneath her and smoothed the blue wool of her dress over her knees. In the chair beside her, Willa of Maunnesfeld twirled her goblet of mead and arched a red brow, either noticing the nervous habit or the impolite way Marian had been staring at Emmeline. Marian dropped her eyes to her own goblet and took a sip. The heady, summer-sweet liquid burned away the last of the cold still lingering from their ride. It did not burn away Willa’s eyes. You don’t need to be here, Willa, she thought uncharitably, but Emmeline always brightened when Willa came to stay with her at Harcourt, and so Marian reminded herself she should be grateful that her friend was happy.
Willa, like Marian, was seventeen and ripe for marriage. Unlike Marian, Willa was the daughter of a duke, a man who outranked Marian’s own father by several degrees of peerage. The Maunnesfeld estate bordered Harcourt, and Willa visited Emmeline as she pleased. Willa would marry the duke or marquis of her choice, while Marian would have to be content with her betrothal to Lord Linley, the Viscount of Nottingham, as if any woman, alive or dead, as were his two previous wives, would be content with marriage to that—no. She stopped the thought before it ran away with her like a pair of poorly trained carriage horse
s. The wedding wouldn’t take place until the autumn. Richard would be back by then, and she could appeal to him to make her father see sense.
Richard wasn’t a friend exactly; he was her king. He spent little time in his own country, but he liked to see Marian when he was home. They often shared a drink at banquets, and he’d walked with her through the Nottingham castle gardens on summer evenings, talking of music and politics and horses. Some of the court women had made insinuations about their relationship, but the rumors never managed to spread far. Too many real scandals occurred at court to make much of something that wasn’t there in the first place. She just had to hope his affection ran deep enough to foil her father’s plans. Maybe he could even convince him to let her join the Edwinstowe Priory. She could help the Reverend Mother brew mead from the priory hives and illuminate manuscripts with delicate brushstrokes in the scriptorium, and she wouldn’t have to worry about dying in childbirth like her mother.
“Daydreaming?” Willa said.
She glanced up. With her red hair, green eyes, and lean face, Willa looked like a fox, and right now her lips shared a fox’s predatory cruelty. Marian felt her face flush beneath her scrutiny. Willa was bored, and when she got bored, her teeth came out.
“I was just thinking it would be nice to join the priory.”
“You? A nun?”
“Why not?” She knew what Willa was thinking, but she wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of saying it.
Willa saved her the trouble. “Because Jesus can’t put a viscount’s baby in your belly.”
“Willa,” Emmeline said, whipping her head around to glare at her friend. “Can you blaspheme outside the church?”
“It’s cold and wet out there.”
“But hot and dry in hell,” Marian said under her breath, but not so quietly that Emmeline couldn’t hear. She thought she saw her lips twitch in a smile.
“Forgive me, Reverend Mother,” said Willa in a tone that noticeably lacked contrition. “And excuse me. I’m going to go see where Alanna wandered off to.”
“Yes, go find your minstrel. No doubt she’s in the stable, singing to the horses.” The prioress waved Willa’s apology away and leaned back in her chair, clasping her hands behind her head in a sprawling gesture that strained the fabric of her habit. Marian couldn’t shake her memories of the young woman the prioress had been when Marian had first come to stay with the family. Then, she had not been a holy sister. She’d been Tuck, the girl who could outeat any of the men at her father’s table, and who outdrank them too, when given the opportunity. Gossips claimed the lord of Lowdham had sent his eldest daughter to the priory because no suitor dared bed her out of fear of her voracious appetites. Marian knew better. Tuck was her father’s favorite, and when she’d asked to join the church, he’d acquiesced.
If only I was half so lucky.
Marian watched Willa leave with a surge of bitterness. Willa, Tuck, even Emmeline. They had choices—or at least more choices than Marian. She would marry Linley because Linley’s position in Prince John’s court was secure, and because a man of his rank was more than her father had dared dream for his only remaining heir. She listened to Tuck and Emmeline talk of festival days and honey harvests with half an ear and hoped Willa would bring Alanna back soon. She could use a song.
Alanna wasn’t Willa’s minstrel, despite Tuck’s phrasing. She served Emmeline and Harcourt and had since Emmeline’s wedding. Marian, however, couldn’t deny the affinity Willa and the minstrel had for each other. Sometimes, Marian wondered if Willa came to Harcourt to visit Emmeline, or Alanna. Only one was proper. Not that it’s any of your business. She couldn’t even blame Willa. Everyone liked Alanna. Marian just didn’t understand what Alanna saw in Willa—or what Emmeline saw in the redhead, for that matter.
“Marian,” Emmeline said.
Marian snapped her head up. She wasn’t sure how much time had passed while she’d been brooding, but the fire had burned lower than she remembered. “Yes?”
“Can you go find out what has happened to Willa and Alanna? It’s getting late.”
“Of course.” She stood and braced herself to leave the warmth of the room for the drafty corridors of the priory.
Outside in the hall torches guttered as the wind blasted through chinks in the mortar. She wished she’d thought to grab her cloak. At this hour, most of the sisters would be in bed, or else holding private vigils in the Lady chapel. She hoped, for the nuns’ sake, that none of them were on their knees on the cold stone tonight. Her breath spun a frosty veil in front of her as she walked.
She passed the door to the kitchen and resisted the urge to nip inside and warm herself by the banked coals of the ovens before braving the outer courtyard on her way to the stable. Then she retraced her steps. Cutting through the kitchen would save her the longer walk through the refectory. Bolstered by the promise of temporary warmth, she put her hand on the latch.
Willa’s voice drifted through the oak. Something about it gave Marian pause. She’d never heard Willa sound like that. It sent a shiver down her spine, and she opened the door cautiously, uneasy and unsure of the cause of her unease, knowing only that she didn’t think she wanted to know what lay over the threshold. But she was unable to stop herself from looking.
Alanna and Willa stood on the far side of the shadowed room. A single torch flickered in its sconce, and Marian blinked as she puzzled to make sense of the scene before her. Willa leaned against the wall with her head thrown back, and Alanna stood so close she seemed pressed against her. She was pressed against her, and her lips were on the fair skin of Willa’s neck. Marian glanced down. Willa’s skirt was hiked up past her thighs, and she said Alanna’s name again in that low, throaty voice as the minstrel’s hand moved.
Marian swallowed against the sudden dryness in her throat. She no longer felt cold. Heat had flooded her body, and she stared, transfixed, as Alanna moved her lips up to Willa’s cheek and then to her ear, where she whispered something that made Willa gasp. One of Willa’s hands buried itself in Alanna’s dark hair. The other braced herself against the wall as she cried out in such obvious pleasure that Marian felt her own body respond.
The unfamiliar feeling brought her back to her senses. She knew she should leave. This wasn’t for her to see, and she still wasn’t even sure of what, exactly, it was she was seeing—just that she had to get away from the sight of color peaking in Willa’s cheeks as her breathing came faster and faster. She took a small step backward, and as she did so, Willa opened her eyes.
The green flash fixed Marian to the spot. She waited for Willa to scream at her, or cover herself, or at least push Alanna away. Instead, Willa held her gaze as Alanna’s hand moved beneath her dress, the rhythm rising to a crescendo that parted Willa’s lips in a cry of rapture. Her eyes fluttered shut as her body arched against the woman who was, beyond any shadow of a doubt, despite the impossibility of it, her lover, and the severed eye contact at last broke Marian free of her paralysis. She whirled and fled. Her cheeks flamed as she bolted down the hallway, and she ran until she came to the door that opened into the cloisters and stepped out into the winter storm.
The covered cloisters blocked the worst of the freezing rain but did nothing to break the wind. It cooled her face with icy blasts, and she half fancied she felt steam rising off her skin. Her heart pounded faster than the run had called for, and there was an uncomfortable heat between her legs that made her want to douse herself in the frozen pool in the center of the cloister garden.
Willa. Alanna. She couldn’t make sense of it, and yet it had seemed to make perfect sense to them. She squeezed her thighs tightly together as the pressure between them built. She’d heard of women who engaged in unseemly acts. Somehow, though, she couldn’t reconcile what she’d just witnessed with the horror in those whispered voices as the tellers related sordid tales of women with male parts preying on fair maidens. Neither Willa nor Alanna had any unusual bits of anatomy, as far as she’d seen, nor had they l
ooked as if they’d needed any. She closed her eyes to try to block out the images that still seared her retinas, but that only made it worse. With her eyes closed, she could hear Willa.
“Our Father who art in heaven,” she began, but the prayer felt inappropriate on her lips and she stopped at once. She took several deep breaths to calm herself. As the seconds passed and the cold leached away her body heat, some of the uncomfortable need inside her dissipated too, and her head cleared enough to think.
Emmeline’s husband was away in the Holy Land with Richard on Crusade. In his absence, Marian slept with Emmeline and her young son, as was fitting for a handmaid in Marian’s position. It was warmer that way in the winter, and Emmeline liked to talk at night after little Henri fell asleep. Sometimes, Marian woke up with Emmeline’s head resting on her arm or her legs intertwined with her lady’s, but that was different from the embrace she’d just witnessed. There was no desire between her and Emmeline.
She raked her memory for some precedent. She knew that women sometimes developed friendships that raised eyebrows at court, though they mostly went ignored by husbands too busy scheming to care overly much about their wives. What she’d seen, however, would have given Willa’s future husband plenty to worry about. Was this what went on behind those closed doors? Given her intimate role in Emmeline’s household, Marian had seen men and women together often enough to know the sights and sounds of pleasure, and Willa certainly had looked like someone in the throes of passion.
The image disgusted her. Or, at least, she thought it did. Her mind struggled to provide her with a label for the conflicting emotions welling up inside her. Part of her wanted to burst into hysterical laughter. Sinning so boldly in a priory was exactly the sort of thing Willa would do, and a part of Marian admired her for it. Another, stronger part worried for the stain this placed on both of their souls, as well as the position they’d put Marian in. Should she tell someone? Who? And what would she even say? All she wanted was to be back in the parlor with Emmeline and Tuck and her own sour mood, worrying about her marriage and finishing her mead. Perhaps she could slip back in and say she hadn’t found them. It wasn’t like Willa would dare contradict her.