The rider, much as Robin had himself not so long before, came off in a tangle of cloak and flailing limbs. By the time he unwrapped and levered himself up on one elbow to sputter his outrage, Robin was treating the stranger to a view of the tip of his sword.
His mouth twitched; had he appeared so undignified and indignant when Adam Bell greeted him the same way? “The balance of your day may now be somewhat rearranged—I would suggest a bath and clean clothes—but you are alive and whole. Be thankful for the small blessings of life—”
“Blessings! ” the man erupted. “Blessings?
Robin continued despite the interruption. “And be grateful also I haven’t the time to make you feel more indisposed and uncomfortable—and possibly more humiliated”—he arched an ironic eyebrow—“than you presently are.” Whereupon Robin saluted the red-faced man with the sword, stepped back, sheathed it deftly, then turned and, suppressing an indecorous wince of pain, swung up onto the snorting horse.
“Outlaw!” the merchant howled, scrambling up awkwardly from the oozing track. “You’re a bloody outlaw—”
“Muddy,” Robin corrected with precise enunciation, gathering reins as he anticipated his own bath and clean clothes.
“—and I’ll have the sheriff on you!”
Robin ignored the threat. “There will be a man along behind me,” he said helpfully, “likely within the hour, or perhaps two. You might relieve him of his horse, should you find the wherewithal—” Somehow he did not believe the merchant’s aim and execution would be as effective as his. “And then nothing much be lost except the shine on your boots.” He smiled: and thus even more time would be put between Gerard’s arrival at Nottingham and Huntington, and Robin’s at Ravenskeep.
Giving the muddy, angry man a helpless shrug, Robin set heels to his stolen mount and set off yet again for Ravenskeep. He had no doubt that by the time his victim was found, was admitted, and complained to the sheriff, the number of thieves who had set upon a poor, helpless merchant would have increased from one to twenty.
Marian had just stepped down from the saddle when Hal, near the gate, hallooed that another horse was coming in. She thought nothing of it—people arrived when and as they would—until Hal added that the horse was lacking a rider.
On the ground now, handing the reins to Sim, Marian turned sharply. Joan’s horse was in the way; impatient, Marian slapped the firm rump to shift the horse, then squeezed by. And stopped short, stricken, as she saw the muddy-legged, lathered, froth-spumed horse Robin had departed on the night before.
“Catch him!” she cried, even as Hal stepped out and did so. She left her own mount in Sim’s competent charge and went at once to the big gray Hal was examining. She caught a stirrup and looked at the saddle, searching for blood. She ignored the horse as he turned his head and attempted to rub hard against her. Hal murmured an apology and took a tighter grip on the bridle. “No blood—” Marian said tautly.
“Nor injury,” Hal confirmed. “To the horse,” he added quickly, belatedly recalling her concern lay elsewhere. “This big boy could have had him off, Lady Marian.”
“Robin doesn’t come off that easily.”
“Any man may,” he reminded her.
It was true. It was also true men came off because other men assured it. “I’m going back out,” she said abruptly. “Take Joan’s horse, and bring this one. If Robin is afoot, he’ll want Charlemagne. If he’s hurt—” She looked at the man. “If he is hurt, I’ll send you back for aid and stay with him myself.”
Hal’s voice was diffident. “You’ll be wanting more than me if he’s—”
Marian cut him off curtly. “I have no time for more than you.”
“And what about us?” demanded another voice: Little John’s deep bass.
Marian looked over her shoulder. Hal’s shout and her own raised voice had brought the others out from the hall into the courtyard. She saw their curious expressions change to sharp concern as they marked the riderless horse. Tuck crossed himself, murmuring a prayer. Everyone in Nottingham knew Charlemagne belonged to Huntington’s son.
“No time,” she repeated. But mostly because none of them, save Alan and nimble Much, rode better than poorly. Then, as she saw the expressions of stunned disbelief, she flapped a hand. “Come after, then,” she relented, if impatiently. “Sim—”
Sim was there with her horse, aiding her to mount. Joan was saying something, remonstrating that a lady should not go unaccompanied into possible danger, but Marian had less time for that than she did for poor riders. With a glance for Hal, who was mounting Joan’s horse even as he pulled Robin’s gray close enough for leading, Marian gathered reins and turned her mount sharply. It was entirely possible she would find him walking, bereft of horse but safe, yet she knew there was an equal chance Robin was injured. The sheriff and his soldiers had not yet tamed Sherwood’s outlaws.
But Much was faster. Even on foot, Much was faster. He darted past her, past the horses, and was through the gate. Marian, understanding the boy’s fear, followed at a hard long-trot preparatory to a gallop, mind fixed wholly upon hasty departure and hastier discovery of what had become of Robin—but as she rounded the open gate, she very nearly collided with Much, who had inexplicably stopped short, and another horse.
Her mind registered that she did not know the horse, even as it registered she did know the rider. But only after she eventually recognized him beneath the mud and grime. “Robin?”
He was as startled to find her piling out of the courtyard and nearly into his horse, with Hal riding Joan’s behind her leading a riderless gray. She wanted to question his disheveled appearance and the circumstances; clearly, he wanted to question her haste. But both of them instead were somewhat occupied with sorting out various equally startled horses, who snorted and sashayed and cast white-rimmed, wary eyes upon one another as they bared large teeth in potent promise. Charlemagne, completely out of temper, kicked at Marian’s horse, which promptly protested with a ringing squeal and high-flung head, and Hal’s horse, borrowed from Joan, took an instant dislike to the one Robin rode. It was only after they had all spent long minutes wrestling with discommoded horses, averting an equine war by the narrowest of margins, that anyone was able to complete a civil sentence.
“You’re all over mud,” Marian managed at last.
Robin, scowling, leaned forward to smack the flat of an admonishing palm down across his borrowed mount’s head. “Where are you going in such haste?”
“Stop it!” Marian muttered to her own fractious mount, before the gelding might begin hostilities anew. “Looking for you,” she answered when she could. “Charlemagne came in—”
“Thank God!” Robin said fervently, looking the big gray over with avid eyes. “I feared he might be taken by someone else.”
“—and I was worried,” she finished dryly. Then, with a bland expression, thinking of Hal’s observation, she inquired: “Did he throw you?”
It provoked, as she meant it to. “He did not throw me, nor did I fall,” Robin explained with precision. “It was a trap.”
“What trap?”
“Adam Bell,” he answered. “And the others.”
“Adam?” She was startled. Robin and Bell had parted in amity years before. “Why would they set a trap for you?”
“Not for me specifically. For anyone. It happened to be me.” Robin peeled away a smear of mud on his chin, still studying the mud-splattered gray Hal ponied. “I suspect they would have stolen him, had he not taken himself away.”
Marian had no time for the horse Robin so valued. Her concern was for his rider. “Did they hurt you?”
Robin shrugged out of the loose, unpinned cloak, hoisted a leg across the saddle, and jumped down. “They robbed me,” he elucidated, pulling the mud-weighted cloak from the saddle. “Of my pride, if nothing else. Much—” He turned to the young man, handing him the reins of the borrowed horse. In that moment he had no attention for anyone else, speaking clearly and with a glint i
n hazel eyes. “Take him into Nottingham. To the castle; you can get in safely?” Much nodded, eyes alight, and Robin smiled broadly. “Make your way to the stables and put him with the sheriff’s personal mounts.”
Marian was astonished. “Is that deLacey’s horse?”
“No. He belongs to the poor fool I stole him from.” Robin slapped the horse on the rump as Much set out for the Nottingham road, smiling. Marian knew that look; he plotted something. Something to do with the borrowed horse, that would plague deLacey.
She refused to be put off from her line of inquiry. “You stole the horse? I thought you said Charlemagne was stolen.”
“Charlemagne broke loose, or he would have been stolen—although perhaps they would have given him back in light of the news.” Robin shrugged. “Once Adam and the others let me go—”
“After they robbed you.”
He nodded, flinging the cloak across one shoulder. “I was on foot, and needed a horse badly, so . . .” He shrugged, much as a little boy who is helpless to justify proscribed actions.
“Robin.” Marian, sighing inwardly, climbed down out of her own saddle and turned to fall in beside him, even as Hal, leading Charlemagne, brought up the rear with a bemused expression on his face. She thought of Huntington then, thought of telling Robin his father was ill, but something within her shied away from it. Not yet. Later. Let him be put at ease first, let him bathe, eat, sleep; she could tell from the way he moved he was in some pain. For now she would speak of other things. “I understand not wishing to walk a muddy track, but why did you need a horse so badly you saw fit to steal one?”
“Because of you,” Robin said.
“Me!”
And he added, as the others joined them, “Because of them.”
“Why us?” Will Scarlet demanded. “What’s you stealing a horse got to do with any of us?”
Robin’s expression, as he slid an arm around Marian’s waist, was bleak. “The king is dead,” he said, “and even now a messenger is on his way to carry word of it to the Sheriff of Nottingham.” He looked at each of them. “None of you is safe.”
Eight
With Marian’s help, Robin stripped slowly out of mud-caked clothing in the tiny chamber serving as a bathhouse. As his battered back came into view, she drew in an audible breath of empathy, which he appreciated—everything hurt!—then spoiled it by murmuring of carelessness, stupidity, and a man’s stubborn pride.
Somewhat aggrievedly, he asked, “Why are you blaming me? I didn’t do this to myself!”
One well-placed palm pushed him toward the oak half-cask Joan and others had laboriously filled with steaming water. “You were far more concerned with the welfare of your horse and how Much should leave a stolen horse in the sheriff’s own stables.” Marian poked his spine as he dawdled, and he winced. “You left with Mercardier, bound for France—get in, Robin—but your horse, apparently disinclined to go, came back without you. Do you have any idea what thoughts went through my mind . . . and will you please get in before the water turns cold?”
“I never have any idea what thoughts go through your mind.” He climbed into the cask gingerly, hissing as bruised flesh recoiled from heated water.
“I was concerned.”
Robin gripped the cask rim. “So was I.”
Her tone was somewhat testy. “What had you to worry about?”
“My reception . . .” He twitched as cool fingers investigated a particularly sore abrasion. “Here,” he finished. “Marian—”
“Sit,” she commanded. “Mother of God, Robin, what did this to you?”
“A tree.”
“A tree?”
“It is somewhat chastening,” he confessed, sinking down onto the bathing stool, “for a king’s knight to be defeated by vegetation.” And then he went very still, recalling that the king who had knighted him was no longer alive.
After a moment Marian bent and encircled his neck from behind with both slim arms. Her chin rested gently atop his mud-weighted hair. “I am so sorry.”
He closed his eyes. The arms around his neck were comforting, familiar, beloved. Strands of her hair stuck to his damp skin. He smelled her welcome scent, felt her breath in his own hair.
“I know you loved him,” she said quietly. “All England loved him. But England has loved kings before, and shall again.”
“Perhaps not the next one,” he said grimly, thinking of what he had said to the others in the hall, how he had explained that new kings were not always committed to supporting what dead kings commanded. Thinking, too, of Much’s abruptly bloodless features, of Scarlet’s crude curses, Little John’s furrowed brow, Tuck’s distraught silence—and Alan’s ironic smirk—he said, “They will do better at Locksley.”
Marian unwound her arms, taking up the ladle so she might pour water over his sore shoulders. “If they will go,” she agreed.
“They must. You know the sheriff will come here.”
She did know, and said as much as she emptied the ladle.
He shivered beneath the water. “Can you do without them?”
“I did without them before they came.” She took up a ball of soap and gently began to lather his shoulders. “And did without you, as well.”
He smiled, recognizing the banter that masked her worry. “Marian—”
“Later,” she said. “Close your eyes, forget everything but that the warmth of the water can soak the ache from your bones, and let me tend you.”
He had dreamed of this as he stole the horse from the merchant. He had recalled this as he shared a campsite with Mercardier. He thanked God for this as he closed his eyes, forgot everything but that she was with him, and let her tend him.
Alan found Marian in the kitchen the next morning. He had for once left his lute elsewhere and was unencumbered save for the mane of golden curls tumbling across doublet-clad shoulders. Surprised by his appearance, she left off directing Cook in the preparation of Robin’s favorite breakfast, which she wanted him to eat before she sent him to his father. Unexpectedly, Alan did not tease, nor seek to charm out of habit as he leaned against the wall in casual negligence, arms crossed. But she sensed a subtle tension in him.
“What is it?” she asked.
“ ’Tis no hardship for me,” he told her matter-of-factly. “I am a minstrel—my life is upon the road, and music buys me a meal most nights and a roof over my head. I can move on from here today, if necessary, and may well do it.”
Marian frowned in perplexion.
Alan shrugged. “But the others are not so fortunate.”
She studied his face, trying to read it. She could not; Alan had learned years before how to present a bland mask to the world. Testing his intent, she said, “He has offered all of you shelter at Locksley.”
“For which Tuck is grateful—he is a generous, trusting soul and would do well anywhere—but what of the others?”
“What of them?” Marian was exasperated; she could not divine his point. “They have been offered a home, Robin’s home, as I offered all of you mine five years ago.”
His expression was serious, the bright blue eyes quiet but oddly anticipatory. “The sheriff is no fool. If they are not here, he will go there.”
“What would you have us do?” she asked. “All of you are family now. Should we put you out and lock our doors behind you because England has a new king? Because the sheriff will use it as an excuse?”
“He will.”
“I know it,” Marian said. “As you do; you know best of all what is in William deLacey’s mind.”
Alan’s expressive mouth twitched wryly. “Because I was in more than his daughter’s mind?”
“What would you have us do?” she repeated, ignoring the crudity; Alan of the Dales enjoyed provoking shock. “Send you to London? To France?” She shook her head. “With King Richard dead, there is no Crusade, and thus no room for you all to become anonymous soldiers in a large army, or minstrels, or friars, lost among your brethren.” Marian spread her h
ands. “What else may we do save what we have done?”
“Send us,” Alan said, “into outlawry.”
She was stunned.
“Much is a thief,” the minstrel declared plainly. “He has remained so despite his place here with you, cutting the occasional purse in Nottingham, no matter how often you told him it was wrong.” Marian’s face grew warm; she knew it for the truth. “He is a simpleton,” Alan continued, “doing what he knows best. Sending him to Locksley village will not alter his habits.”
“Why are you telling me this?” she asked, giving up; perhaps annoyance might win a direct answer. “Is it merely to put me out of sorts, or is there a purpose in it?”
Alan’s gaze was level. “Five years ago it was a simple thing to offer all of us shelter. We were pardoned, and none of us—save for Much, who doesn’t understand—of a mind to be outlaws beyond what we became so briefly in the name of King Richard’s ransom. But now . . .” The minstrel shook his head, stirring hair against shoulders. “We will be unpardoned, exactly as you fear, and sheltering men who would be hanged, maimed, or imprisoned is not the same.”
Marian understood at last what Alan was doing: providing opportunity, a chance for disengagement, because of them all, only she and Robin had opportunity. “No,” she said simply. “We will not turn our backs.”
A flicker in his eyes acknowledged she had found him out. “He is an earl’s son. And you a knight’s daughter.”
“An earl’s son who has, as you yourself just admitted, stolen from the king, and who has repudiated his father.” Inwardly she winced; that repudiation might well soon be altered. “As for me, I may not have stolen the money, but there are other reasons for the sheriff to treat me unkindly. Turning our backs on those we consider family would gain us nothing.”
Alan’s brilliant smile was abrupt as he adorned himself once again with the persona of charm and insouciance. “Ah, well, it shall make a lovely ballad . . . how a Crusader knight and his lady fair gave succor to lowly outlaws.”
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