by Sue Wilson
Three sentries held Gisborne-by arm and elbow and scruff of neck-and still he wriggled in their grasp like a serpent set afire. "Damn you to hell, you miserable flock of vultures!" he shouted. "I have come to report! Let me go or, by Christ, I will have you in irons!"
"Cousin?" The Sheriff's voice was laced with steel, rage frozen in each clipped syllable.
The soldiers who held Gisborne fell back into stone-stiff postures, mail-cowled chins tucked into their chests. Even Mildthryth managed a quick curtsy, dusting straggling gray hairs from her forehead.
"What is the meaning of this commotion?" Nottingham asked, eyeing the much-subdued parties before him.
"I tried to stop him, my lord-"
"Out of my way, you old cow!" Gisborne tugged the hem of his surcoat tight and shoved past Mildthryth's failing attempts to halt him. He would have plowed into the solar had Nottingham not stopped him with a large hand braced over his shoulder.
"You presume much, Cousin," the Sheriff said.
"I presume that what I have to say you would not want these crows cawing from every castle tower." With a sneer, he jerked his head in the direction of the guards and Mildthryth. "Unless you are without care for the dispensation of His Majesty's...ransom."
Sarcasm was unmistakable to anyone within earshot, the rush of fetid breath as obvious. Clearly, Gisborne had spent the better part of the eve with his head in a vat of ale, drowning both caution and discretion.
Nottingham cursed under his breath and moved aside. "Then report, and be quick about it. Your timing leaves much to be desired."
Gisborne shouldered past the Sheriff.
"My lord," Mildthryth said, "if you require-"
"No, Mildthryth," Nottingham interrupted. "Busy yourself elsewhere for the while." He saw the woman's eyes narrow with suspicious misgivings, and resolutely closed the door. Thea had risen from the furs on the floor, her bearing regal, magnificently affronted, despite the tangle of hair that fell in disarray about her hips and the too-large fit of the his robe, which she had donned over her shift.
A deep gurgle of laughter tore his attention back to Gisborne. "You don't think she is slipping you poison with every kiss?" The lieutenant's gaze slid the length of Thea's silk-covered body.
Rage slammed through Nottingham's veins, sizzling along nerve endings until all he saw was scarlet fury, all he felt were the corded sinews in Gisborne's neck flexing convulsively beneath his hands. His thumbs pressed into the flesh of his cousin's gullet. "Say the wrong thing, Gisborne! Show yourself for a fool for, by God, I have cause to murder you where you stand!"
"Murder-? I-" The words barely croaked past his cousin's throat.
"For any number of offenses. For incompetence. For dereliction of duty. For drunkenness. For simply being the aggravation that you are!" He saw Gisborne's lips purple and tremble, saw the milky eyes bulge with terror.
Slowly the Sheriff's hands loosened their hold and fell to his side. The man was not worth the punishment of mortal sin. He turned away, glanced toward Thea, then quickly aside, ignoring Gisborne's coughs and gasps for breath. "Report then, damn you, and be gone."
"In front of Locksley's spy?" Gisborne's reply was clogged with disbelief. "Or have you won her over so completely as that?" Suddenly he stopped, seeming for once to glean from the Sheriff's silence that he had gone too far. "I have been at your back from the beginning, Cousin, giving my loyalty to no one save you. Credit me for that, if for nothing else."
Nottingham faced him again, squinting at him through the candlelight. "Your report."
"It all seemed so perfect. Your plan to divert the tax silver to Prince John, to win our fortunes. A brilliant plan, brilliant..." Gisborne stuttered to a weak end and started again. "But there is one thing neither of us anticipated."
"And that is?"
"Someone has seen a way to thwart our arrangement."
"Impossible. The silver is secured, the prince's visit nigh upon us-"
"Someone, I fear, who makes a stronger alliance with Lackland than you or I could ever hope to make."
The Sheriff stopped, something in Gisborne's certainty stealing the rebuttal from his lips. This was more than a drunkard's idle fears, something more than ale stirring up last minute reservations in a belly gone weak with treachery and deceit. Beneath the quiver of Gisborne's guttural voice lay a conviction of doom.
Nottingham lifted his chin and stared hard at his cousin. "Who would dare?"
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Thea shivered and wrapped the giant robe closer about her, trying to seek heat from its heavy, silken folds. The room felt unnaturally cold, as if winter had seeped through the castle walls and into her veins where fear ran like ice through her body.
Nottingham had talked with Gisborne for the better part of the evening, his rage at his cousin dissipating with each passing moment. In the end, the two of them had parted company, if not amicably, then at least without the uproar of temper Thea had first witnessed. Now the Sheriff sat facing the fire, as silent and unyielding as she had ever known him to be, his fingers steepled beneath his chin, his dark eyes and darker thoughts surrendered to the hypnotic dance of the flames.
"You still intend to go through with it." She spoke without realizing it, the thought she secretly harbored slipping past her lips before she could measure its discretion.
The Sheriff glanced sharply at her, his unfocused stare turning black with hard-edged scrutiny.
"I thought-perhaps-" she stammered, unable to say what she truly hoped: that loving her had changed his heart, changed his mind, made of his soul something new and noble.
Thea swallowed hard and looked away. When had she entertained a more foolish notion? She had held him, comforted him, lain with him because of her own desires and her longing to heal his suffering. He had made no profession of love, only of his need, and little enough of that. She had heard him confess all the torment locked inside him, allowed him to slake some momentary thirst for her, but to have expected his transformation was fantasy. Nothing had changed. Mildthryth could not keep the world from their door after all, and the truth rushed in like a wintry storm.
"The silver belongs rightly to King Richard," she said, lifting her chin, daring him with an imperious tone to deny it.
He said nothing, merely turned from her and gazed back at the fire.
"Your office, your responsibility, requires justice, more so with the king gone. He entrusted you with the care of this shire, of its people. Would you abandon them now for your own ambition? For greed? Whatever hopes you had for Nottingham are still possible, but not this way-not by allying yourself with John. The man is no ruler. He wants only the power his brother has, as Gisborne covets yours. Twin wolves, both of them, and without conscience."
His eyes lowered fractionally, his fingers gripping the armrests like claws.
"Damn you, speak to me!" She put herself between him and the hearth, knelt at his feet, her hands tugging his. "You know I cannot allow this! I cannot stand by and watch what you're doing. It's madness! It's beyond reason, beyond all humanity! There may have been a time when I was fooled into believing that wrongdoing came as natural to you as breathing, but I know you now. And you can't pretend that any of this is right. If change is needed, so be it. I concede that. But this is not the way!"
He still refused to meet her eyes, although she could tell by the clenching muscles beneath his black beard that he heard, and rejected, every word. She stood and tightened her fists in the robe, holding it close as if it could lend her strength.
"I cannot let this treachery continue," she said with quiet resolve. "You know that. Throw me in your dungeon for, by God's oath, if you do not, I will stop you. I will find a way to stop you!"
"Save Sherwood from me, is that it, Thea?" he spoke at last, words slicing through the tension like a Saracen's blade. "And how would you accomplish that? Sneak past my guards in the dark of night? Rob me of a horse, perhaps a crossbow to defend yourself? Make for the wood alone?"
He stood, looked at her with all the fiery magnificence she remembered in his eyes. "But then you are quite adept at navigating Sherwood's paths, are you not? Moonless nights pose no threat to you and-"
"You bastard-"
"For bringing up a past you could never lay to rest to begin with? Thea, Thea, how long do you suppose we could have kept up this pretense? Gisborne knows you for what you are. Do you think I do not? Do you think I have not known since the first day I met you?"
Suddenly he broke from her, strode to the far end of the solar, and jerked open the top drawer of the chest. He rifled through parchment until he found what he searched for, then slammed the drawer shut and held out his hand to her. Her worn journal lay in his palm.
"That is-"
"Your confession," he finished for her.
She was too incredulous even to reach for the book. He had known even before she had admitted the truth to him in her cottage. God in heaven, he had known all along! Frantically, she tried to recall the pages she had written, the names she had used, the places she had described. Her heart pounded violently with each entry remembered.
"There is enough information to indict you and your outlaw friends thrice over. Oh, perhaps not written as overtly as I would wish, but I am Sheriff, and the law bends fully to my interpretation."
"I don't understand. If you had the evidence you needed to arrest me, to find them-"
"I should have handed it over to Gisborne? Watched as he questioned you, tormented you, tortured you and delighted in it? Having wrung the truth from you, knowing of your guilt and your complicity in Locksley's crimes, what, as Sheriff, could I have done but sentence you to hang for aiding known outlaws? Gisborne would have demanded it. Justice, Thea, would have demanded it."
Slowly, she allowed her gaze to drift from the journal in Nottingham's hand to his face. He stood in semi-darkness, his features obscured by shadow, his eyes narrowed with an iron control hammered out of nothing but sheer will.
"But left secret..." His voice trailed off.
"And now you intend to use it to bind me to you. You would have me do nothing, to let this travesty with Lackland and the barons take place, in return for your silence."
"You have lain with me and still think me capable of that? God's blood, woman! Had I the power, I would not let you leave. If need be, I would take you to my bed again, and again, and yet again, until you could not remember why you ever wanted to be any place else." He laughed ruefully. "But as you see, my power in this shire is as much a sham as I am myself, and my power over you-" He shrugged. "I can claim your body, but I cannot even capture your heart. How powerful is that?"
"You have every power to do good-"
"We are caught, you and I, in some horrible division of the soul that cannot be repaired. You, girded up with immutable conviction that you are right, that honor dwells within the rebellious deed of your woodsmen friends, and I-" He laughed softly, as if to himself. "And I, as devoid of honor as ever a demon was, cast upon this earth in a man's body. Stop looking for nobility, Thea, where none exists."
He approached her, held out the journal to her. "Take it. By rights, it is yours."
Tears blurred her vision as she looked down at the tattered volume. She had thought herself stronger than this, thought she could tear down the wall of his defenses by loving him, but what existed between them seemed suddenly too monstrous. Some division of the soul, he had said. Something she could not piece together as easily as she had sewn his arrow-torn belly, something even the union of their bodies could not make whole.
"Take it!" he demanded in the moment she hesitated. His voice had become newly forged steel. "As for the rest, I am Sheriff of this shire, and my plans remain unchanged. If it so displeases you, do all in your power to thwart me. By the saints, Thea, I would expect no less of you. Simply know that when Prince John arrives, you will not be clad in Lincoln green, returned to the grateful nest of those forest vipers you so admire. You will be by my side, day and night if I so desire, at my table, in my bed, until this whole miserable ordeal is past."
"And afterward, if you are so lucky as to survive the treachery planned against you?"
The fire-bronzed color faded from the Sheriff's face, and any pretense of anger with it. He glanced away, and for a moment, Thea caught the slight smudging of shadow beneath his eyes and the tiny seams of fatigue and worry at their corners.
"There is London," he murmured distractedly, "a royal appointment. I will have done with this sheriffdom, and the forest."
"And with me?"
He did not answer immediately. It was with reluctance, it seemed, that he even forced himself to look at her. "When I am through with this scheme, you will not have me."
~*~
"My lady?"
Thea lifted her head at the concern in Mildthryth's voice.
"Will you not eat?" The maidservant sat next to the hearth, spindle and yarn cluttering her lap. She paused a moment from her work and nodded toward Thea's untouched supper. "'Tis a new recipe, something devised to tempt the royal palate of his highness the prince. Take a taste and see, before it grows cold."
Thea shook her head.
"What is it about the man? You can spend the better part of two days in his chamber, loving him-and don't waste your breath denying the truth of it-then come back here, as pale as any ghost, refusing the best mutton pie the cook could conjure up. Did the Sheriff steal your appetite, as well? Oh, more's the pity for he'll not want a scarecrow of a girl on his wedding night."
"Mildthryth-"
"Nay, and don't be denying that as well. 'Tis a wedding I see, and a gown of white and silver for you, lamb, glinting like crystals in the sunlight. A crown of fresh heather woven through your locks-"
"Mildthryth, stop! I can't bear it!"
"'Tis the Sight, my lady, and never false-"
Thea stood, walked over to the old woman, and took her gently by the shoulders. "You are a weaver of dreams. Forget such tender notions as fill your head. I fear Nottingham wants nothing more than a shiny bauble on his arm when he greets Prince John. A trophy, perhaps-something from Sherwood he has managed to capture."
Mildthryth hissed in a scandalized breath. "It went as well as that, did it? Given your time alone, could the two of you do naught but cross swords again? Saints, lamb, I swear 'tis the fighting you love, the both of you!"
Thea pushed away the memories that threatened her-memories of lying in the Sheriff's arms, willing and pliant to his every touch, wanting him with a ferocity that tore all reserve away from her. The lingering passion she recalled was all too real. Even now the touch and smell and taste of him surrounded her, multiplying the misery she felt at their parting.
He would have had her stay, she knew. Would have had her in his bed another night, and another, until she was his, thoroughly and irrevocably, until not a soul in the castle would have dared whisper a suspicion of her loyalty to him. Yet he had let her go without debate. And in the intervening days, he had not visited her or called her to his chamber. Instead, he had plunged into the preparations to ready the castle for the royal visit, delegating tasks and overseeing their completion.
The royal apartments in the upper bailey were freshly limed and the floors strewn with fragrant herbs mixed among newly gathered rushes. The great hall was draped in garlands of holly and ivy, and everywhere the scent of bay permeated the air. Straw was harvested for the extra pallets required by the prince's staff and courtiers, and the recently reconstructed stable was supplied with feed and hay for the additional horses.
Nottingham personally inspected the prince's quarters, chastising the chambermaids for their stingy use of tallow candles over finer beeswax. It was even rumored he dictated a fortnight of menus to the cook, and threatened him with disembowelment should the platter of peacock turn out the slightest bit bedraggled when presented fully plumed for his highness.
By the time Lackland's arrival was imminent, the Sheriff had made of Nottingham Castle a Christmastide retreat
that banished all memory of its rough, inhospitable reputation. Of himself, he had made a specter of stiff formality, brusquely efficient and smoothly elegant in his presence.
When she had seen him from afar, he even seemed to have mastered the fugue of preoccupation that had come over him when Gisborne had warned him of his father's plans.
Thea shuddered. The possibility of Guy of Gisborne wearing the chain of office was unthinkable. Never mind that the man seemed to have not a single honorable thought in his head. He was weak, too easily swayed by avarice and his own ambition, too bent on self-indulgence to achieve for himself what others could achieve for him. Why, the moment Gisborne assumed the title of Lord High Sheriff, John Lackland and his baron cronies would be leading him by his thin, hawkish nose. The villainy that resulted would make pale by comparison any misdeed Nottingham had ever committed.
That Gisborne had rushed to the Sheriff with this news was no consolation. The loyalty he bore for his cousin was inconsistent at best, driven as much by jealous rivalry as by devotion. If he appeared now to be at the Sheriff's side, it was only that he was safer there, or perhaps there was more to gain.
Thea paced to the seat nestled in the stone embrasure and lifted the oiled hide that kept the splinters of ice and snow from her window. The storm had abated, but not the cold; her unsteady breaths were white puffs against the blackness.
"Very well, then," Mildthryth said, glancing from her spinning to the plate of untouched venison Thea had left behind. "Starve yourself for all the good 'twill do. There'll be lavish enough spreadings soon enough. Mulled wine and song. Dancing and merriment. The Yule log burning in the firepit. Oh, I'm one for this blessed season, I am, and even the pock-marked visage of the weasel-prince cannot rob me of that."
"Why, Mildthryth," Thea said, startled to hear the slightest defamation rise from the woman's lips, "you do not like the man yourself!"
"Hush, lamb! 'Tis indiscreet to blather such nonsense. Besides, it makes not a whit of difference if I like the little bastard or not. He's the prince, and will make himself England's chosen one soon enough."