The Black Thorne's Rose

by Susan King

  Emlyn laughed hollowly. “Either God, or myself must do.”

  Letting go of Emlyn’s hand, Maisry turned her head suddenly. “Hark—Aelric comes,” she said. Rising swiftly, she went to the door and unbolted it.

  Aelric’s huge frame, clad in the tunic and breeches that he had worn under his May Day costume, filled the doorway. Maisry clung to him with a fierceness that caused Emlyn to look away, wishing to give them privacy. Aelric embraced Maisry a long moment before releasing her and stepping into the room.

  “Yer unharmed?” Maisry asked in surprise and relief.

  “I am well, good wife,” Aelric said, “though I cannot say as much for Chavant and the rest.” He laughed, an odd note of pain mixed with mirth, and shuffled toward the fire. Hunkering down, he almost lost his balance. Maisry’s brows snapped together.

  Poor soul, thought Emlyn, he must be sore hurt. Bruises swelled one eye, and crusted blood glazed his cheek and lip and creased his throat. His skin had a sickly green cast where the greeny ointment must have been rubbed off.

  “Tell us!” Maisry demanded. Aelric grinned at her impatience. Though his face was lined with fatigue, his dark eyes twinkled with some secret pleasure.

  “Ye shall hear all in a moment. Greetings, my lady,” he said to Emlyn as he held his hands out before the flames.

  “I am glad to see you safe, Aelric,” she replied, as Maisry slipped past her to fetch remedies for Aelric’s wounds. Noticing that the front door had been left ajar, letting in the cool night air, Emlyn went to close it.

  Pushing against the solid wood, she felt a sudden resistance and peered around the door. A tall figure, cloaked and hooded, loomed in the entrance. Emlyn gasped.

  Long fingers pushed back the hood, and Thorne cocked a dark eyebrow at her. “Might I come in, my lady?” he asked softly. His gaze traveled over her face, touching her eyes, her lips, her hair. Emlyn recalled the previous evening, his deep kisses and his sudden rejection, and color rushed into her cheeks, heating her face and throat. She swallowed hard, staring at him, knowing her eyes devoured his face, but she was unable to move.

  His hand covered hers on the edge of the door, and the weight of his warm fingers stirred a subtle quivering in her belly.

  “Emlyn,” he urged softly, “open the door.”

  “Emlyn,” he repeated. Feeling her hand, small and soft, curl beneath his, Thorne wanted to reach out and caress the downward turn of her lower lip. She looked away as if flustered and withdrew her hand, stepping back to allow him space to enter. Behind him, she swung the door shut and latched it.

  He moved past her, unfastening his dark cloak and hanging it on a wall peg before he went to the fireside to squat down beside Aelric. When Emlyn sat near the hearth on a cushioned bench, his heart thumped strangely. Knowing she was so close, he wanted to turn to her, but he held himself still.

  Her eyes, her subdued manner had told him that she still felt the pain of last night’s parting. He sighed deeply and rubbed his fingers over his face, the back of his hand already heated by the fire. These weeks with her had sorely tried his self-control. God knew how he had found the will to pull away from her lush sweetness last night; God knew how he kept his hands off of her this very moment. His desire for her had become an intense distraction. Though he had told himself that his duty was to fulfill his debt to her and let her go, he had not counted on wanting her like this, craving not just her soft, firm body but her keen mind and open heart as well.

  He had lost a good deal of sleep last night, tossing on the pallet in Aelric’s barn where he had spent the nights that she had occupied his cave. Thinking of her winsome face and trusting eyes, remembering the sweet burn of her body against his, he was unwilling to let her go. He had devised a plan, finally, that was simple yet bold, and potentially as dangerous as any venture he had yet tried. If it worked, he could help her and still keep her with him. All he would need was her consent.

  “Good even, Thorne,” Maisry said, entering the room. She went to the table and set out a small clay jar, linen cloths, a large jug and wooden cups. “Do ye share my husband’s triumph? He is gleeful, though I cannot think why.”

  “Greetings, Maisry. I was not there, though I have heard the story,” Thorne said, glancing up. “We met outside the village and walked back here together. Since Aelric wants to crow, I shall let him tell you how he bested Chavant.” He tilted his head toward Aelric, who grunted as he rose heavily to his feet.

  Maisry beckoned to her husband. “Come here and let me tend to ye while ye speak,” she said. Aelric was soon seated at the table, head angled while Maisry cleaned his facial wounds with a damp cloth. Then she scooped up a fingerful of greeny ointment.

  “No more of that stuff, I have had enough today for my lifetime,” Aelric said. She rubbed it into his cheekbone. “Echh, go easy, my dove. It hurts,” he grumbled.

  She scrubbed at his lip with a wet cloth and dabbed the oozy green stuff at his mouth and throat. “And well it should. Bested Chavant, ye did, and then ye downed a full keg? Ye smell like a brewer’s kitchen.” Aelric laughed. Maisry rubbed the elder leaf ointment quite vigorously into his cuts, wiped her hands on the damp rag, and looked fiercely at her husband.

  “Tell, Aelric,” she said sternly, “before I best ye myself.”

  “I trow she could do it well, Aelric,” Thorne said, chuckling. He shifted to settle his back comfortably against the bench Emlyn occupied, his shoulder only a breath from her knee.

  “Harken, then.” Aelric leaned his elbows on the table. “When Chavant and his men came back to the village, they were mad as boars to lose the Green Knight. They took me, and Richard Miller and John atte Well and John Tanner—this much Maisry and Lady Emlyn saw. We were taken to the mill and bound hand and foot. Chavant asked questions and we answered as before. Where is Lady Emlyn, what do we know of the Green Man, why does he harass Whitehawke’s men.” He paused for a moment, accepting the wooden cup that Maisry offered him, and sipped. “Water?” he choked.

  “Good spring water,” she nodded. “Drink it.”

  “Well, of course we knew naught to help him. John Tanner told the legend of the demon again, and Richard Miller agreed that Whitehawke must be at his wits’ end concerning his bride, and was she pretty, for he might have noticed a pretty thing wandering about, though perhaps not a dung-faced woman.”

  Maisry screwed up her face in exasperation at that.

  “After a bit, Richard Miller’s eldest boy Henry came in, who helps his father around the mill. ’Twas fair brave of the lad, for he acted surprised to see us there, and then offered us ale.”

  “How say ye?” Maisry asked. “Ale? As if they were visitors, and not after murdering the lot of ye?”

  “Aye, just so. Chavant must have had a powerful thirst, for he accepted. Henry came back rolling one of Christina Miller’s kegs of new ale.”

  “Oh! By the saints,” Maisry gasped, “Henry is a clever lad.” She turned to Emlyn to explain. “Anyone in the village knows not to touch a drop of Christina’s new ale unless it has been watered, for it has a punch like a donkey’s kick,” she said. “ ’Tis usually kept for Christmas and bride ale.”

  “Many is the fine strong man who has gone down, all unsuspecting, in the path of Christina’s ale,” Aelric said. “We who knew drank sparingly, with Henry filling the cups. Chavant and Robert, one called Etienne, and the fourth—ah—”

  “Gerard,” Emlyn said, speaking softly behind Thorne. He glanced at her. She did not look at him, and seemed tense and as keenly aware as he of the closeness of their bodies. He felt her gentle warmth near him, and had known each movement she had made, each breath she took, since he had arrived here.

  “—Gerard, aye,” Aelric continued, “well, they had a mickle thirst, and Henry filled their cups over and over. Soon Robert loosed our bonds, John atte Well produced a pair of dice, and we tossed bones with them all, and Chavant in the thick of it.”

  “Gambling with such a lot,” Maisry said, �
� ’tis not only a sin, but foolish, too. Chavant likely cheats.”

  “Aye, he cheats, because he cannot throw bones straightlike with that wild eye of his,” Aelric said. “He got pouty after a bit, and John atte Well began to talk of the Green Man—”

  “John atte Well talks so in his drink, he can go through the night and the next day,” Maisry groaned, rolling her eyes.

  “Aye, my dove, but none of us were as cupshotten as Chavant and them, for we knew the danger of Christina’s best,” Aelric said. “So John talked, and we all added some, and we told the finest tale ever spun in this valley, I vow. Frightening enough to curl the tail of the devil himself. How the Green Man haunts us mercilessly, takes our children and spoils our crops, and steals the lambs from the fields. Richard Miller said the green demon hangs upside down at night in hawthorn trees, and John Tanner said a man in his da’s time had been beheaded by the creature.” Aelric, well pleased with his tale, paused to look at his rapt audience. “One thing more, Thorne,” he said.

  “What is that?” Thorne asked, watching him carefully.

  “Chavant did say to me, and he deep in his cup, did I know of a man called Black Thorne, who might pose as the Hunter Thorne.”

  “Aye—?” Thorne waited. He had not expected this as yet.

  “I answered that I had heard of him, but that he was dead, and could not pose as anyone unless ’twere a ghost.”

  Thorne nodded, blowing out a breath. “Aught else, then?”

  “John Tanner said that the man must have been a thorn in the earl’s side for years,” Aelric drawled.

  Thorne shook his head at the poor joke. Emlyn turned to gaze fully at him, and he looked up, his belly fluttering oddly as his eyes fastened on hers. He shifted slightly to lean his shoulder against her knee. She looked away, pressing her lips thin and flat; he sighed and shoved a hand through his hair.

  “Where are they now?” Maisry asked.

  “Three are cupshotten and snoring on the floor of the millhouse. Etienne relieved himself in the millpond and fell in, so we pulled him out and left him on the bank.”

  “Mercy of God, what happens when they wake?” Maisry asked.

  “Likely their pates will ache badly,” Thorne said, “and they will leave Kernham ashamed of their poor effort to find their prey.” He looked at Emlyn then. “My lady, I must take you away.” Her wide eyes met his again. “When?” she asked softly.

  “If we go before dawn, we will be far away before any of them crack an eyelid. You can be at Wistonbury by vespers,” he said. She bit her lower lip slightly, nodding, staring at him.

  Her gaze heated every fiber of him, flaring an ember that spread through his body and warmed his loins. He wanted to reach out to her and fold her into his arms, feel her soft warm curves meld to him. Above all, he wanted to amend what he had begun last night and so callously ended. Now that he had decided what course was needed, he sorely wanted to ease the hurt he had caused her.

  Her hair slipped over one shoulder, rippled golden silk glistening in the firelight. Her eyes, large and round in the smooth oval of her face, were deep blue spangled with gold beneath her straight, serious brows. As she squared her shoulders, Thorne mused that for all her appearance of fragility, there was an underlying graceful strength in the way she moved and in the delicate, firm structure of her body. She had resilience of heart and mind, too, and thankfully so: she would need it if she agreed to his plan on the morrow.

  “I will be ready, then, before dawn,” she said. “My thanks.”

  “A debt is owed, my lady, and gladly fulfilled,” he murmured, gazing steadily at her. God willing, Thorne intended to fulfill his debt to the breadth and strength of his being. But he knew the risk. This marriage that he planned could endanger both their lives and their hearts.

  Chapter Ten

  “Devil take it,” Emlyn muttered, hopping briefly on one foot and casting a dark look at Thorne’s cloaked back at least fifty paces ahead of her. Her leather pack weighed like a great stone on her shoulder, the heel of one foot was blistered, and the last time they had stopped to rest was midmorning.

  Thorne had set and kept a steady pace with his quick, long strides. An hour into their journey he was well ahead of her and had stayed there since, glancing back occasionally to inquire if she was tired. Scowling and blowing a wisp of hair out of her eyes, she vowed now to stop, with or without him.

  Looking around her, she immediately forgot the pinch and rub of her boots and her irritatingly tireless companion. Throwing back her hood, she circled slowly on the sunny moor, ankle deep in early pink heather and buttercups. The high dark crags above the dale were far behind them, replaced by an even wilder beauty.

  Ahead and to the left, a vast, serene moorland, dusted with pink blossoms and fringed by dark clusters of forest, rolled toward a flat silver river. But to the right, the open mouth of a gorge split the earth. Hearing muted thunder, Emlyn walked closer and peered down. A waterfall tumbled and rushed down one rocky wall to pour into a pool at the bottom of a narrow ravine, about eighty feet below her.

  Thorne waited, swathed in a long brown cloak and deep hood that hid nearly all of him but his beard, boots, part of his left arm and the longbow and quiver suspended across his back. After a moment, he strode back toward her.

  “ ’Tis Mercie’s Force,” he said. “A legend says this is a sacred place, tended by a fairy named Mercie. ’Tis good luck to drink from the pool, yet bad luck to carry water away from here.”

  “May we stop for a drink?” she asked, awed by the possibility that a magical creature inhabited the place.

  “Aye,” he replied, “ ’tis time we rested.”

  Emlyn followed Thorne as he walked down a twisting path of moss-coated slate that led down into the deep, narrow gorge. The high steep walls were a jumbled, haphazard pile of jagged rock slabs, slick with spray and furred with moss. Ferns sprouted in every crevice beside tangles of pink rock-roses and golden saxifrage. The force, not a very large waterfall, tumbled from the cliff edge, plunging and hissing over the mossy rocks to fan out in delicate lacy sprays and spill down into a wide pool.

  “Oh!” Emlyn said, sitting on a jutting wedge of rock by the pool, across from the tumbling force, “ ’tis a fitting place for a fairy to live! Like being at the bottom of a deep well.” She craned her head up to look at the cliff edge far above.

  “A noisy well,” Thorne said over the soft thunder of the falls. He dropped his bow and quiver and sank down beside her to dangle a foot over the lip of the rock.

  Emlyn looked down. “Is it deep?”

  “Quite deep,” he said. “Are you thirsty?”

  Emlyn smiled and nodded. Thorne swung his legs behind him and leaned over the edge. Scooping his hand down, he came up and brought his cupped fingers to her face.

  She glanced at him, hesitating. He nudged his hand toward her chin. “Regretfully, my lady, I have no silver cup for you.”

  Leaning forward, she placed one hand beneath his and timidly touched her lips to his hand, sipping lightly. The water was cold and tasted slightly of him, wood smoke and leather and a hint of lavender from Maisry’s soap. She kept her eyes downward. “My thanks,” she said. He lowered his hand slowly.

  He leaned down again and drank deeply from his hand, then rubbed his wet fingers across his face and through his wavy, unruly dark hair. Emlyn noticed how very much he looked like the baron, though she thought him far more handsome than his odious half-brother. Thorne’s eyes were very green, a paler hue than the moss surrounding them. The set of his bearded jaw, indeed the whole graceful length of his body, belonged to a more relaxed man, more content in his life and heart, than Nicholas de Hawkwood had shown the brief time he had been at Ashbourne.

  “We should eat here and rest, my lady,” he said.

  Emlyn nodded and loosened the thongs of her satchel. “Maisry gave us plenty of food,” she said, spreading a cloth on the rock. She laid out a wedge of cheese, a loaf of dark bread wrapped in cloth, and
roasted, seasoned apples and onions. “I have taken much of your time recently,” she said, slicing bread and cheese with the knife he handed her from his belt.

  He glanced at her. “Time given without complaint,” he said.

  “Thorne,” she asked, “what is it you do in the dale?”

  “I am a forest-reeve, my lady, so I keep a watchful eye, mostly, and see that not too many of the king’s deer are taken, nor wild boars either.” She glanced at him in surprise, knowing that the king’s deer were not to be taken at all; apparently he turned a blind eye to a certain amount of hunting. “There are hunting rights to be granted to those who would catch smaller game. At times I discourage the cutting or burning of forest land, except by permission of the monks. And I make reports to my overlord on the state of the parcels and tenants. Since I am not the only forester in the dale, there is not an undue amount of work for me.” He shrugged as he ate.

  “Your overlord is the abbot?” she asked.

  “Aye.”

  “You do not meet with Nicholas de Hawkwood?” she asked.

  His eyelashes winged down. “Nay.”

  She frowned. “How is it that Whitehawke does not know of the forest-reeve called Thorne in Arnedale?”

  The sudden flash of his crooked grin caused her heart to flutter. “The reeve is very careful, my lady, to avoid the earl. There are, as I said, other foresters there.”

  Finishing her meal, Emlyn gathered the remaining food and returned it, rewrapped, to her pack, and handed him back his knife. Easing up the sleeves of her gown, she stretched to scoop a drink out of the pool. The water felt cool and silky and wonderful, and she reached again to splash her face with wet fingers. Golden tendrils, loosed from her long braids, clung to her damp cheeks.

  Thorne reclined on one elbow and watched her, his eyes steady and unreadable. “Think you, my lady,” he said, “that your uncle can help you?”

  She sat back, looking up toward the milky mist of the waterfall. “I hope so. None else can help me.”