DeLacey, his breathing quick and shallow, took up the pitcher of wine and poured his cup full. His hand trembled.
“Is it so terribly difficult,” Huntington inquired icily, “to know your own mind? Or do you predicate every decision on how best it serves yourself?”
DeLacey drank deeply, then set the cup down with a decisive thump. Wine smeared the rim of his upper lip. The edge of his hand removed it. “Arthur of Brittany is a boy.”
“His mother is no fool. And there is, as always, his grandmother to consider. Eleanor of Aquitaine may wish to be queen again.”
“John is her son.”
“If you are a woman, Sheriff, and you have the appetite to rule as well as the wherewithal to do so, whom would you support?”
DeLacey’s answer was immediate. “John would never permit her to rule.”
“Even so. Therefore we are left with a choice: John, who is a man grown somewhat acquainted with rulership—and who is not so incapable of ordering a realm as his enemies might suppose—and Arthur, who is yet young but surrounded by ambitious and powerful women, among them one who has already been England’s queen.” And France’s, but France was, at this particular moment, unimportant. Only after England embraced a new king would the matter of France take precedence again.
“But if the king names an heir before he dies . . .”
“If. And even then there is no certainty his choice may keep the throne. Kings have lost them before.”
“I must think,” deLacey blurted.
“Indeed,” the earl said. “I suggest you do so. With all great haste and diligence, for time is not precisely a collaborator in this matter.”
The sheriff rose. He steadied himself with one hand pressed against the table. “My lord, may I inquire as to your heart?”
“You may not,”Huntington replied imperturbably. “But you may leave. After you have poured and presented me with water.”
Grim-faced, deLacey performed both duties. Then he backed out of the chamber with a stiff inclination of his head.
Huntington drank deeply, bathing an unhappy throat to prevent an explosion of coughing. Then, still gripping the cup in both hands, he smiled satisfaction at the closed door now empty of the sheriff.
It did not matter which way the man jumped, any more than it mattered how the frogs in the lily pond leaped. What mattered was knowing which way—and when—deLacey intended to go, so as not to trip over an obstacle when least expecting it.
With movements abrupt and discourteous, William deLacey snatched leather gloves out of the servant’s hand and tugged them on. Even as the servant attempted to settle his cloak over his shoulders, the sheriff swore and yanked the fabric away, pinning it himself even as he clumped in heavy riding boots out of the hall into the stableyard. He shouted for his horse; it was brought immediately. DeLacey caught rein and stirrup leather and prepared to swing up, but the clatter of incoming horses briefly distracted him. With one foot hovering and a horseboy poised to offer him a leg up, he paused long enough to recognize the first rider and immediately set his foot down again. He paid no attention to the horseboy now deprived of duty, and curtly told the other at his mount’s head to tend it yet.
She was cloaked and hooded, but tendrils of black hair had escaped captivity to frame the rim of her hood and the face within. Roses lived in her cheeks. She had not yet seen him, did not yet know he was there, and thus her expression was open and enchanting. For a moment deLacey wished he might permit her to remain ignorant of his presence—it would retain the expression and grace—but he had no time for it.
He stepped to her horse and caught the rein before the scurrying horseboy did. “Marian.”
Her attention had not been on the man, but on the boy. Now she saw him, and he marked how the grace transmuted itself to stiffness, how the set of her mouth tightened into displeasure. Blue eyes were chill as she gazed down upon him, making no effort now to dismount, because to do so would put her into his arms. Behind her came a companion, one of the Ravenskeep women, whose startled expression gave far more away than Marian’s measured mask.
He had no business with her, but it amused him to avail himself of her. Her choice was to stay on the horse, or allow him to aid her. So he made that his business.
Plainly annoyed, Marian eventually dismounted with his assistance. This close, he smelled her perfume: a tracery of roses and cloves. She was petite, delicate, fragile—and yet a woman of tougher temperament he had never known.
Except perhaps Eleanor of Aquitaine, whom he had met once, and briefly. But Eleanor was a queen, a woman born to rule men. Marian wished, apparently, to rule herself.
“A question,” he said.
Marian waited for him to release her gloved hand. When he did not, she tugged it free. Her mouth was a tight seam now, her jaw sharp as steel. In five years her beauty had matured, but the absence of innocent girlhood did not trouble him. Now he would learn if it troubled her.
“A question,” he repeated. “Has he married you yet?”
The pallor of her features was transmuted to blazing color. He thought she might strike him a blow in the face, but she forebore.
“A fair question”—he caught her arm as she made to move beyond him to the steps—“since you have arrived at his father’s home. It is my understanding you are denied that particular pleasure. Therefore I assume he has married you, and I should wish you happy?” Marian attempted to snatch her arm out of his grasp. She failed. That much he could ensure; he was far stronger than she. And then, with a polite smile, he relinquished his grasp. At his whim. “By your silence, Lady Marian, I assume the answer is no. Why then are you here?”
“The earl is ill,” she answered tightly.
“So he is. But not so as you might fear he will die, thereby permitting entrance into a place that is expressly denied to you.” He studied her pointedly. “Unless you have come to relinquish your claim on his son? Surely even you would do so, if only so the boy might see his father again. It is a sad state of affairs when a man”s affection for a woman turns him from his father.”
“And his legacy?” she asked tartly. “Oh, Sheriff, do not bestir yourself on Robin’s behalf. He lives as he wishes. He lives where he wishes.”
“And forfeits a title. A castle.”
“And he would gladly trade both if it would keep the king alive!”
She meant to go past him. He caught her arm again, trapped it. Swung her to face him, so roughly her hood slid off her head to puddle across her shoulders. “You know about the king?”
“Robin is even now on his way to France.” Bleakness flickered in her eyes as her arm went slack in his grip. “The king sent for him.”
DeLacey released her. The earl knew. Locksley knew. Marian knew. How many others?
Prince John? He was in Brittany, visiting his nephew, Arthur.
The king was dying, and John was with Arthur.
“My God,” the sheriff murmured. “John will have him killed.”
“Robin?”
“No . . . no, of course not. Locksley has nothing to do with this.” DeLacey scowled at her, then tempered it into casual concern as his thoughts worked it out. “You became a ward of the Crown on the death of your father.”
“I was,” she said guardedly. “The king released me of that.”
“And pardoned murder, thievery, rape, and other such activities as might earn a man a hanging.” His smile now was cold. “If John becomes king, as he is certain to do, he may have other ideas. Pardons may be revoked. Unmarried daughters of dead knights may have their lands—and the disposition of their hands—claimed by the Crown.”
Color flared in her face again. “And will that be your advice to the new sovereign?”
“That shall be for the ears of the new sovereign, whomever he may be” deLacey answered smoothly. “But my advice to you is to consider that your circumstances may be about to change.”
Before she could speak again—if indeed she meant to—he turned
once more to his horse. This time he permitted the boy to offer him a proper leg up, and swept his cloak across the saddle as he settled and slid his right foot into the stirrup. The reins were supple in his gloved hands.
William deLacey smiled, inclined his head to her with all lordly courtesy, and rode out of Huntington Castle. There was much to do, far more than had been on his plate an hour before. Knowledge of Richard’s imminent death altered everything. The world would be unmade, then remade in another king’s image.
He had told the earl nothing of his thoughts, his preferences. But he knew very well his only chance to retain his office and power was to support Prince John. Arthur of Brittany was a boy; he would be surrounded by ambitious women, and Bretons who had neither love for nor understanding of England. But John, John was eminently preferable. The Count of Mortain and the High Sheriff of Nottingham had already established a rapport.
Now was the time to solidify it.
Marian offered the earl’s steward nothing but courtesy—yet seasoned it with consistency. She would see the earl, she said. Repeatedly. To offer him comfort.
Ralph’s expression suggested that her presence would offer no such thing to the earl, though he said nothing of it. Merely explained the earl was ill and could receive no visitors.
“He has received the sheriff,” she countered calmly.
“Lady, I do apologize, but I fear—”
She interrupted. “You fear nothing save your master’s displeasure. And indeed he shall be displeased when he sees me. But admit me, and I vow by the time I leave, the earl’s displeasure will be mitigated.”
Ralph’s suspicion led him out of courtesy into demand. “How?”
Joan, bearing the bundle of things Marian had ordered brought for the earl’s pleasure, blurted a shocked exclamation that a fellow servant would so far overstep his duties as to question her mistress.
“Convey my request to the earl,” Marian repeated. “Tell him I am aware of the king’s illness, and what it means to my circumstances as well as his own . . .” She paused. “And those of his son.”
Something flickered in Ralph’s eyes. After a moment he briefly inclined his head and directed them to wait. Still clad in cloaks, still bearing as yet unaccepted gifts, Marian and Joan waited.
“Will he see you?” Joan murmured.
“Oh, yes.”
“How can you be certain, Lady Marian?”
“He is ill. He needs an heir.”
Joan whispered it. “But—my lord of Locksley has repudiated his father.”
“All things change when a king dies.”
“All things, my lady?”
Marian felt the pinch of grief. “When old King Henry died ten years ago, my father yet lived. But the new king, the warrior-prince who dedicated himself to regaining Jerusalem, summoned knights to serve him. And my father died for it.”
“But that was Holy Crusade, my lady!”
“Of course it was. But my father died nonetheless.” Marian brushed a strand of hair from her face. “And now the warrior-king is dying, and a new king shall have the ordering of the realm, the ordering of our lives. And I cannot promise you anything of those lives shall remain as they are.”
Ralph was back. “The earl will see you.”
Marian smiled at Joan and gave her the second basket even as a page appeared to gather up their cloaks. “I should not be long.”
Five
The day dawned befogged, but promised yet to be sunny, lacking the clouds and drizzling rain of the previous days. Robin felt an unexpected lift in his spirits—until he recalled why he and Mercardier were on this road.
Dulled again into an abrupt and pernicious sense of futility, he watered his horse, then hastily saddled it and mounted, settling the cloak around his shoulders and pinning it haphazardly into place even as he urged the gray to move. Mercardier already waited on the edge of the road a few paces from the small clearing they had inhabited for the night, wreathed in layers of thinning fog. Robin, annoyed by the pinch of guilt—he felt rather as if his father waited for him—expected to be reprimanded for tardiness, but he found Mercardier distracted, at pains to identify a rider coming their way.
Fog yet obscured him. The slap-and-dig of galloping hooves into wet track became more apparent as the rider neared, as did his haste and the raspy, rhythmic breathing of his mount. At last the fog thinned and peeled away, stirred to recoiling by the motion of horse and rider, so that Robin and the captain caught their first glimpse of the man who rode so swiftly.
His quartered crimson tabard, flapping in the wind of his passage, was mud-spattered, soiled with his mount’s lather and froth. It was not until he was nearly on them that his badge came into hazy view and was thus identified: the triple leopards of England.
“No,” Robin murmured. And inwardly: It is come.
Mercardier spurred his horse into the center of the road into a pocket of fog, shouting at the rider to stop in the king’s name. The rider, wind-ruffled and red-cheeked from the efforts of his gallop, pulled up sharply. His expression was grim, tense, focused on his task. His sliding, muddy-legged mount fretted at its bit, grinding steel in massive teeth as it fought for footing.
Oh, my lord . . . oh, Richard . . .
“Gerard!” Mercardier blurted.
The messenger, focusing now on the man who stopped him, blurted a startled and heartfelt oath in French. He reined in his blowing horse with unthinking expertise. “Captain—”
Mercardier cut him off. “What news?”
As fog stirred and thinned about them, as equine exhalations set spumes of steam into the air. Gerard’s gaze flicked to Robin, who read the answer in the messenger’s expression. “Le roi,” Gerard said breathlessly. “Morte.”
Robin shut his eyes. But closed lids did nothing to shield him from the truth, the piercing anguish of acknowledgment.
Richard Plantagenet. Coeur de Lion. Richard, King of the English. Malik Ric, as the Saracens called him.
Not Richard.
Not Richard.
Not the warrior who had knighted him at Acre after they took the city, who brought him into his inner circle of counselors and boon companions, who ransomed him from the Turks before even his father could.
The Saracens would say, what is written is written. But he could not countenance such loss. Could not comprehend what such absence would mean to the world.
The world that was, in one moment, utterly unmade.
Mercardier, with startling alacrity, heaved himself out of the saddle and fell to his knees in the muddy, fog-laden road. With no grace, merely a surfeit of grief, of seemingly incongruous piety, he bowed his head and crossed himself, then began to murmur a prayer in hoarse-voiced French.
Not Richard.
Robin’s eyes, painfully dry because nothing in his youth had permitted tears, locked on to those of the messenger. His sluggish mind told him he knew this man, that this man knew him. And Gerard, acknowledging it, wore the face of bitter acceptance.
“We are sent,” Gerard said in his accented English; he, too, was a man of Aquitaine, of Eleanor and Richard, duchess and titular duke. “Many of us, so many of us, to carry word. To London. To France. To Brittany. To all the great houses, the great men of England.”
“My father,” Robin murmured blankly.
Gerard’s expression acknowledged that. He knew Sir Robert of Locksley. Knew who and what his father was. “My lord,” he said. “The king is dead. It is my duty to carry word.”
Mercardier, done with prayers, surged so quickly to his feet that his horse shied back, prevented from leaving the road only by dint of a mailed hand clenched upon his rein.
“Who?” his ruined voice scraped. “Who was named? Prince John, or Arthur of Brittany?”
Gerard’s face was pale and taut. “Both.”
“Both?” Robin demanded, shocked out of sorrow into politics and the necessity of understanding the implications.
“The king wishes—” Gerard broke it o
ff, began again. “The late king wished the strongest to inherit.”
He understood at once. He knew Richard better than most, and understood.
So did the mercenary. They stared at one another, tense and grim, knowing what the king had done and what it meant.
“I am for France,” Mercardier declared abruptly, turning to his horse.
Of course he was. Richard was there. Richard must yet be served.
“Where?” the captain asked, swinging a leg across the broad rump of his mount.
“They will take him to Fontevrault Abbey,” Gerard answered. “To be entombed at his father’s feet.”
Robin grimaced. Fontevrault was in Angers, in Richard’s French domains. England lost even the body of her king, as it had lost his father’s before him.
As Mercardier settled into the saddle and gathered reins, he nodded once, decisively. “Then that is where I shall go.” His gaze was grim as he looked at Robin. “And you?” He paused, and the tone acquired an undertone of contempt. “The king now has no need of his matched boys.”
Wincing inwardly—Mercardier wielded words as well as his sword—but permitting none of it to show, Robin looked at Gerard. “Where are you bound?”
“To Huntington. To Nottingham.”
To the earl, and the sheriff. Neither of whom would permit such news to paralyze mind or body, nor halt the plans they would plot.
“Go elsewhere,” Robin suggested. “I will carry the word to my father, and to the sheriff.”
But Gerard was experienced in such things as might affect the governance of a realm in the wake of a monarch’s death. His face was oddly calm as he shook his head. “It is my task. A service for my lord king.”
There was no service Sir Robert of Locksley might offer a dead king. But there yet remained living companions, and the woman he loved. He said no word to the mercenary who now lacked a master, to the late king’s courier. He simply wheeled his horse upon the track and set it to full gallop, cloak rippling in the wind, and ignored Mercardier’s curses as the mud flew up behind.
Lady of Sherwood Page 5