Nottingham

by Anna Burke

  Rain blew into her face. So much would be different if Michael had fallen in love with someone else. She allowed herself to savor the bitterness of the thought for a moment before discarding it. Michael could not have fallen for another woman, just as Gwyneth could not have loved the sheriff. She’d seen the way her brother and his wife looked at each other. There was enough leftover warmth to include Robyn, and her heart stirred helplessly as she remembered the easy grace of their shared lives. Her brother, singing off-key as he fletched an arrow. Gwyneth, trimming feathers plucked from one of Maeve’s geese with a smile on her lips as she caught Robyn’s eye, brimming with love for them both. Few families were so lucky. All of that was gone now.

  The door to the sheriff’s townhouse stood before her long before she was ready to face it. The oak gleamed in the last of the stormy light, and behind it somewhere was the man who had taken her brother away. I can’t, she thought, biting her cheek hard enough to draw blood. I can’t, Michael. She would die before she asked this man for help. I can’t. She would die, taking the sheriff with her, and then . . . Gwyneth would still lie there, fevered and weak, and Symon would pass out of the world without a fight. I must. What she did now she would do out of sight of pride and vengeance.

  She raised her fist and knocked.

  A servant answered the door after an eon and scowled at Robyn. “What do you want?”

  “I’m here to see the sheriff.”

  “His lordship doesn’t have time for the likes of you.”

  “It’s about Gwyneth.”

  The woman’s scowl deepened. “Wait here,” she said, not bothering to invite Robyn inside. The door slammed in her face. She stared at it, her mind curiously empty save for the repeating litany, I have no choice I have no choice I have no choice. When it opened again to reveal the sheriff, she bowed her head, hiding the murder in her eyes behind lowered lashes.

  “Robyn Fletcher.”

  “My lord.”

  “To what do I owe the honor?”

  The quiet mockery in his voice made her stomach threaten to throw up what little was in it. This was the man she had gone to for aid. This was the man . . . no. She steeled herself. “Gwyneth is near death, m’lord.”

  He waited, perhaps enjoying watching the rain run down her face as it plastered the hair to the back of her neck.

  “I’ve come to ask that you bury with him the grudge you bore my brother.”

  “Do you, now.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Gwyneth needs to eat, and I cannot feed her if I cannot sell our arrows.”

  “I hardly see how that is my problem.”

  He wants you to kneel, she told herself, but her knees refused to budge. “Everyone knows you hated my brother. But your foresters need arrows, and ours fly true. I could sell them to you.”

  “My men have no need of a poacher’s arrows.”

  Robyn focused on the muscles of her thighs and willed them to let her bend her knees. They remained rigid. Gwyneth, she reminded herself. Think of Gwyneth. Instead, she saw her brother’s face, turning red then purple as the rope dug into his neck and the blood vessels burst in his eyes.

  “Would you let her die, then?” she said, her voice dropping. She met the sheriff’s eyes and noted the cold calculation in their depths along with the pleasure he did not bother to hide at her humiliation.

  “Of course not. I heard she was near her time. She need only marry me, and she will want for nothing. I’ll even raise your brother’s child as my own.”

  Ice poured down Robyn’s back, only to be replaced with white-hot flames that licked at her insides and sent smoke across her eyes. Gwyneth, marry this man? The world tilted as she staggered and caught herself on the door frame. It was unthinkable. Symon would not grow up in the house of his father’s killer, nor would Gwyneth submit to him while Robyn still drew breath.

  “Never,” she said, venom filling her mouth. “She would die before she married you.”

  “Then so be it.” He dropped all pretense of congeniality. “But when she does, know this, girl. No one in this town will ever buy from you again, and your brother’s brat will beg for scraps in the street like a dog while you slum with the whores for your daily bread.”

  Robyn lunged for him, but he caught her by the front of her tunic and shoved her back into the street. She landed in a half-frozen puddle to the sound of his laughter. Slops and night soil soaked into her clothes and squelched through her fingers, but none of that mattered. The sheriff had shut the door on her and her hopes, and she sat in the downpour until the numbness in her limbs eased the ache of failure.

  That’s it, then, she thought, ignoring the curse of a man on horseback as he reined up sharply to avoid running her down. None of them would survive the winter. She’d only made things worse by coming here. She stared at the closed door and willed it to burst into flames. If only she had brought a bow, she could have shot the sheriff, which would have at least avenged Michael’s death before condemning the rest of them.

  Night fell in earnest as she stood on shaking legs and walked slowly through the darkened streets. When she arrived home, the shop sign swung overhead, and the arrow flew of its own accord as if to taunt her. Inside waited all those useless arrows. She could use them for kindling, maybe, when they ran out of firewood.

  Or you could use them to hunt. The thought stopped her short, and she hesitated with her hand on the door. Yes, Michael had been hanged for that same crime, but she wasn’t Michael; she was stealthier. She would be more careful. The sheriff wouldn’t expect her to repeat her brother’s mistake, and while he gloated over his victory, she would keep her family alive. She straightened her shoulders and stepped into the warmth of the shop as a grim determination curled around her heart.

  Chapter Four

  The stiff fabric of her court dress hung around her arms, and the irritatingly long sleeves threatened to catch on everything she passed. She eyed a freestanding candelabra with suspicion and veered around it to avoid entanglement, grateful that her dress, at least, was not as ornate as Emmeline’s or Willa’s. Willa wore enough brocade to weave a tapestry. Her red hair was wrapped in green ribbons, complementing the pale yellow ones in Emmeline’s honey brown locks. Her father’s wealth spilled from the jeweled mantle on her shoulders. Marian avoided meeting her eyes. She would have avoided Willa entirely if she could have gotten away with it, but Willa went where Emmeline did whenever possible, and Marian, as Emmeline’s companion, had no choice but to follow.

  Marian wore blue. She always wore blue. Her father had confiscated a great bolt of good cloth from a merchant last summer, and as a result all her court dresses were the same shade—a fact that the seamstress had done her best to hide with clever paneling, trim, and inserts. She didn’t mind. Blue suited her, and her goal in court was to draw as little attention to herself as possible. Bland wardrobes, combined with a proximity to Willa’s sharp tongue, nearly ensured this.

  Emmeline walked beside her as they made their entrance to the receiving hall, her arm resting on Marian’s and her other hand firmly closed around her son’s. He shot Marian a dubious look, fidgeting with his collar as he struggled to keep up with his mother’s limping gait. When she was sixteen, Emmeline had suffered a riding accident that left her with a bad leg, a fact that only seemed to encourage her preference for riding over walking. Marian wished they could ride away now.

  Willa left them to stand a few yards away with her father and twin brother, who slouched beside his sister with a bored expression that did not seem to please their father. The hall smelled of sparingly washed bodies and perfume, and the latter failed to conceal the former. Tapestries and heraldic banners muffled the sound of the courtiers’ voices, and the susurrus of soft-soled shoes moving over the rushes whispered underneath the conversations. Marian scanned the faces of Nottingham’s nobility. Most she recognized by name, and the rest she had seen in passing. She didn’t see her father or Lord Linley.

  “Emmeline,” a thin woman w
ith graying hair said as she kissed Emmeline on both her cheeks and stooped to bestow the same honor on Henri. Marian tried to fade into Emmeline’s dress, an illusion Lady Margery seemed only too happy to oblige as she attempted to engage Emmeline in the latest gossip. Around them, the assembled peerage cast curious looks at the empty dais while incense and smoke from the torches shaped twisting patterns in the high vaulted ceiling.

  “There you are,” said a voice in her ear.

  She turned, fearing to discover one of her father’s cronies, and smiled in relief as Alanna slid into her customary position to Marian’s left. The relief faded as the suffocating memory of the scene in the priory settled over her again. She did her best to stifle the urge to pull away from the minstrel. It had not been Alanna who had held her eyes during . . . whatever that had been. Alanna was her friend. She had only ever showed Marian kindness, and there was always the chance that Willa hadn’t told her that Marian had witnessed their tryst. Sin, she corrected herself. Alanna hadn’t changed the way she acted toward Marian, nor had she made any insinuations that Marian was anything like Willa, whatever that meant.

  It was also impossible to hold any sort of hard feelings against Alanna for long. It wasn’t just that her unornamented brown hair and plain features offered Marian a refuge amid the brightly painted faces of the nobility, or that she’d known her for years. When Alanna spoke, ripples of silence fell around her as passersby stopped, entranced by the low musicality of her tongue and the rich warmth that infused her words. When she sang, even the dead listened.

  “Any sign of the prince?” Marian asked.

  “He’s here somewhere, along with Isabella. You know how he likes his entrances.” Alanna hooked her arm companionably through the arm not occupied by Emmeline’s, which earned Marian a mocking glance from Willa.

  “Have you seen his herald?” Marian asked Alanna.

  “Fat old fraud. I think he’s losing his sight. Half the time he can’t even tell who he’s announcing.”

  “But he is loud.”

  “Which is really all that matters.” Alanna pursed her lips in professional disapproval. “And how is Lady Margery?”

  “Pretending I don’t exist,” said Marian, turning her face to hide her words from the lady in question.

  “Well, she wouldn’t want to give you ideas above your station, baroness. You might try and snatch up her son.”

  Lady Margery’s son fidgeted as he waited for his mother to return to his side. At fifteen, he had the complexion of a parsnip and almost as much personality.

  “I wouldn’t dream of reaching such lofty heights,” said Marian as she suppressed a strong urge to laugh.

  “Margery might not have heard you two,” said Emmeline when Lady Margery departed, “but I certainly did. Alanna, the word incorrigible comes to mind.”

  “My lady. I’m honored.”

  “You shouldn’t be.”

  “And yet she never seems to let that stop her,” said Marian.

  “Indeed. No, Henri, you cannot play with the other children.” Henri left off tugging on his mother’s arm and pouted. Emmeline was spared the need to further chastise her entourage by the slightly off-key trumpeting of the herald.

  “I think he’s losing his hearing, too,” said Alanna.

  The prince’s herald was an elderly man with a stooped back and wispy mustache that fluttered as he spoke. “His Royal Highness, Prince John, Count of Mortain, and the Lady Isabel of Gloucester.”

  The assembled nobility fell silent as the doors swung open and the prince and his wife strode down the aisle to the dais. John cut an imposing figure in his fur mantle and ceremonial garb. He lacked his brother’s towering height, but there was something about his eyes that set Marian’s teeth on edge. Richard might have been nicknamed the Lionheart, but John walked with a predator’s easy gait as his eyes roamed the audience. Marian kept hers averted. John favored her father, but she did not plan to give him any cause to give her so much as a second glance. She had seen what happened to the women who played that game.

  John took his seat on the throne and held out his hand to his wife, who smiled demurely.

  “I wonder why Isabel looks so pleased,” Alanna said. Marian wondered the same thing but did not get a chance to dwell on it further, for the prince began to speak.

  “It is with great sorrow that I must announce the capture of my brother Richard. As many of you know, Duke Leopold has . . . delayed . . . Richard’s return, which grieves us all.” But John looked neither grieved nor greatly concerned by his brother’s mishap. “We do not yet know where, exactly, my brother is being held, but I have been assured that our good regents are looking into the matter.”

  Heated whispers broke out amid the court, which John allowed to grow into a cacophony of speculation.

  “He looks as if his prayers have been answered,” Willa said, breaking away from her family once more. Marian wished she would stay where she belonged.

  “Perhaps they have,” said Emmeline.

  According to court gossip, Richard had been on his way back to England after signing a truce with Saladin when bad weather drove his ship to port in Corfu, and then more bad weather on the next leg of his journey wrecked his ship near Aquileia, forcing him to make his way over land. Marian could picture him standing on shore in the middle of the wreckage, mustering his forces for a trek through unfriendly territory. How his pride must have stung when he was discovered. No demands had arrived from the Duke, but the prospect of civil war stirred the air, fanned by the speculations of the peerage. She toyed with the brocade on her sleeve.

  “We won’t hear much in this weather anyway.” Emmeline accepted a goblet of wine from a passing servant and took a long swallow. Marian knew the damp irritated her bad hip, and suspected Emmeline was in considerably more discomfort than she let on.

  “Your father’s here,” Alanna said, touching Marian’s arm lightly and pointing toward the dais.

  She followed the gesture. Her father, the sheriff of Nottingham, had his head bowed beside the prince’s, and he appeared to be listening intently to whatever John was saying. His face was flushed from drink, just as it had been ever since her mother had died, and Marian felt a familiar surge of pity. He needed a wife. Not only would it be good for him, but it might make him more amenable to other prospects for Marian. Prospects, for instance, who didn’t have a habit of picking their teeth at table and beating their wives.

  A minstrel struck up a tune on the other side of the crowd. Alanna’s head jerked, and her eyes lit up, distracting Marian from her thoughts.

  “Perhaps this isn’t a total waste of our time after all. Dance with me?” Alanna caught Marian’s hands and pulled her into a jig, twirling her until Marian laughed despite herself as the song wound down. Breathless, she broke free, and Alanna gave her an exaggerated bow before turning to Willa. “And you, my lady? Would you do me the honor of a dance?”

  Willa curtsied, playing along, but Marian didn’t miss the smoldering look the redhead shot the minstrel. Nor, Marian realized, did Emmeline. Marian saw the crease in her mistress’s brow and wondered what she knew of her best friend’s dalliance with her singer. Did she think it harmless? Or did she, like Marian, see the danger in the way Alanna’s hand brushed Willa’s hip?

  Marian bent and swept Henri up in the music to distract herself, eliciting a giggle from the boy. Perhaps it was wrong to dance so soon after the news of their captured monarch, but the rest of the court seemed more than eager to shake off the tension, and as the evening unfolded into a tumult of music and wine, Marian allowed herself to hope that all might yet be well. The pope would intervene, and Richard would return, and when he did she’d remind him of his affection for her and beg him to persuade her father to arrange another match. Until then, she’d do her best to stay out of her father’s way. Her eyes met Willa’s again as she whirled a giggling Henri around. Besides, she thought, jerking her gaze away, she had plenty of other things to worry about.

&nbs
p; Chapter Five

  The roe deer couldn’t have weighed more than three stone, but after a quarter of an hour in the warm spring air, three stone felt like fifty. Robyn crouched in the shadow of a large elm with the deer’s small head lolling against her chest and its delicate forelegs resting almost companionably across her knees. The sweet close smell of the meat made her mouth water and heightened her awareness of her empty stomach. Game had grown scarce as winter waned, and with the child nearing four months old and still as ravenous as ever, this deer was an unexpected boon.

  Foolish, she told herself. She was too close to the edge of the forest to have risked a deer. She should have taken a few cuts and abandoned the rest of the carcass to the wolves, or, better yet, shot a rabbit instead. Sweat dripped off her upper lip. There was still time to hide the carcass. She could take the haunches and the loins, leaving the rest for the crows and wolves, and consider herself lucky.

  “Luck favors the rich, little bird, and no one else,” she knew her brother would have said if he were there.

  She’d be damned if she fed the crows today. Using the stave of her unstrung bow to haul herself to her feet, she continued back along the game trail toward Nottingham.

  Foolish, trilled the birds high up in the budding branches, but it was hard to feel fear beneath the trees with bluebells carpeting the forest floor as far as the eye could see and sunlight piercing the new green of the canopy in lazy shafts, trickling like mead where it glazed trunks wet with sap. She passed a cluster of mushrooms, dewy white and begging to be sliced into venison stew. The burning in her shoulders and thighs kept her moving. There would be time for gathering mushrooms later, when blood from the young buck was washed from her hands and the deer was hidden in the musty dark of her uncle’s mill.