Lady of Sherwood

by Jennifer Roberson

  “My lord, you are dying.”

  He supposed he was. And how odd that he felt no stirrings of anger at Ralph’s bald speech.

  “My lord, allow me to send for your son.”

  He stared into the distance, through the shadows of the chamber. “I have no son.”

  “You have a fine son, my lord.”

  He managed a thin smile. “Arthur of Brittany shall have it all, Ralph, even if he is not king in name yet. John has coveted and feared this castle since first he ever saw it. Let him continue to covet it. Let him continue to fear it. Let him know that all of my wealth and power, which he needs so desperately, shall be delivered on my death to the boy in Brittany.”

  “You did not have this castle built for Arthur, my lord.”

  No. Not for any king, living or dead, nor for a boy in far-off Brittany. But for a boy who believed himself a man, capable of self-government, now living in the forest.

  Let Sherwood be his castle. Let outlawry be his legacy.

  “Let me send for him, my lord.”

  He was very tired. “So he may witness my death, and rejoice?”

  “He will not rejoice, my lord. Trust me in this.”

  Huntington closed his eyes. “He was never the son I wished for. I believed, when Henry and William died, he might be made to understand what he must become. But he did not. He refused.”

  “My lord, he is your only surviving child. Your immortality. Forgive him the failings you believe to be his.”

  He was not so near death he could not parse out careful phraseology. “ ‘Believe to be his,’ ” he echoed. Ralph’s way of saying Robert had failed in nothing, only his father in accepting his differences. Huntington considered chastising his steward for such frankness. But just now he hadn’t the strength.

  I have no son.

  His sons were dead. The only one remaining belonged wholly to his mother, equally dead.

  How perverse of God to take the sons he needed, and leave behind the one he could not countenance.

  Ralph disapproved.

  Let him. He was not the earl. Only the earl’s steward.

  It came to him then that he should make provision for the man who had served him so many years. Even if Ralph did believe there was worth in Robert.

  But then, Robert had always had a way about him that attracted others, enabled them to forgive him all his sins and failings. He had won Ralph. Even the Earl of Essex. All men, it seemed, save his father. And the Sheriff of Nottingham.

  Knighted, but disinherited. He was an outlaw now. But the Earl of Huntington believed, with sour acknowledgment, it was entirely possible his fey, fanciful son was capable of winning forgiveness even for that. Again.

  He plucked ineffectually at covers, was relieved when Ralph resettled them for him. I was not strict enough with Robert. I should have beaten the fancies out of him.

  He had tried. But obviously not hard enough.

  Morning fog lay low along the ground, dampening hair and clothing. “Bird calls,” Robin said.

  Marian blinked. She was not quite wholly awake, seated on a pallet of folded blankets with a cloak wrapped tightly around her to keep out the chill. “Bird calls?”

  He smiled. “Like this.” And proceeded to run through a series of whistles and hootings Marian could not distinguish from the actual fowl.

  “How can you do all that?” she asked, astonished; he had never before demonstrated such ability.

  He shrugged; a tendril of fog peeled away from a shoulder. “As a boy I spent many hours tracking and mimicking birds. I pretended to be them.”

  Little John was taken aback. “To be birds? An earl’s son? Whatever for?”

  Marian thought about it. “I never pretended to be a bird. I pretended to be a horse, galloping across the meadow.” She could see it again in her mind’s eye, feel the choppy rhythm of her pretend canter.

  “I was never the horse,” Robin said. “I was always on the horse. A destrier, in fact, riding to the lists.”

  “And winning?”

  “Of course, winning! Would I imagine losing?”

  Will Scarlet, gnawing on hard-crusted bread, grunted through a mouthful. “I imagined eating a whole meal.”

  “Tedious,” Alan remarked. “I, on the other hand, pretended to be Queen Eleanor’s most favorite jongleur.”

  “Well,” Little John said slyly, “you were Eleanor’s favorite jongleur. But she wasn’t the queen, was she? Only the sheriff’s daughter.”

  Alan promptly tossed the remains of a loaf at Little John, who batted it away.

  “Here!” Scarlet bestirred himself to fetch the loaf out of the new-laid fire, brushing it free of soot. “You never wanted for food, did you, any of you?”

  “I was always fat,” Tuck said resignedly, adding wood to the fire. “No one, looking at me, would ever think I wanted for food.”

  “Bird calls,” Robin said sternly. “Let me hear them.”

  “Why?” Marian asked.

  “For signals,” he explained. “Far better than shouting names across the road at one another as we’re preparing to rob people.”

  “I can do a duck,” she said, and blew firmly through pursed lips into the hollow of a fist. She mitigated the volume and intonation by opening and closing her fingers.

  “A decent duck, that,” Tuck observed judiciously.

  “Except ducks are in lakes and ponds, not hiding in the forest,” Scarlet pointed out. “No one will believe a lone duck is calling to others along the Nottingham road.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Robin said. “Marian goes back to Ravenskeep today.”

  She stiffened. “I do?”

  “You do. We are embarking on outlawry—well, more than what we did yesterday, or five years ago—and it’s best if you go home.”

  “Yesterday you believed it wasn’t safe for me to go home.”

  “Yes. Yesterday. But the soldiers have been there now.”

  “They could come again.”

  “And if you remain gone, it will be far too suspicious.”

  “You were the one who said the sheriff might arrest me and take me to Nottingham to make me tell him where you are.”

  “Yesterday you knew where we were. Today you will not.”

  It shocked her. “You intend to hide from me?”

  “It is safest.”

  “For you?”

  “For you.”

  Almost as one the others got to their feet, murmuring identically about returning in a moment—Scarlet was frank enough to declare he needed a piss—and disappeared into the fog, crashing through vegetation. Even Much went, when Tuck tugged him to his feet.

  Marian watched the mass defection with interest. “They believe we are going to fight.”

  “There is that possibility,” he agreed. “If you refuse to go.”

  She knew that tone, that tilt of the head. He was amused, but serious. “Explain it to me, then,” she invited. “Why should I go back to Ravenskeep while all of you are hiding in the forest?”

  Employing his meat-knife, he carved off a sliver of cheese from the chunk in his hand. “Because the sheriff knows it was us—me, Little John, Tuck, Will, and Alan—in Nottingham yesterday, rescuing Much. He does not know you were there. Best to leave it that way.” He ate the cheese, and carved another bite. “You are already in his bad graces.”

  “So you will send me back home to wait and worry.” She scowled at him, noting absently the stippling of white-blond stubble along his jaw. Would he grow a beard now that he hid in Sherwood? “I have told you before how much I detest that. Women sent along home to wonder in ignorance what is becoming of their men.”

  He continued to carve the cheese into pieces with all due seriousness, as if nothing else in the world mattered but his breakfast. “If you leave Ravenskeep now, you tell the sheriff he’s won. You forfeit possession.”

  Her head came up sharply.

  “Marian,” he said, “outlawry is hard. It is not a life any man choos
es for himself. Why would he choose it for the woman he loves?”

  “Perhaps she will choose it for herself.” But the protest was half-hearted. Robin was right. She could not absent herself from the manor while the sheriff plotted to take it. “If I go,” she said, surrendering, “how will I find you?”

  He smiled; he never gloated in victory, for which she was grateful. Otherwise she would have to smack him. “Ride along the road. If you hear a plethora of bird calls, likely it is us.”

  “Robin—”

  But he cut her off. “I have thought it through, Marian. When added to what Little John took from the peddler, within a day, possibly two, we should have enough coin to cover your taxes. I will have it delivered to deLacey, and a proper receipt executed in front of witnesses.”

  “Who shall deliver it? You? You would walk into the castle and risk arrest?”

  “Abraham the Jew,” he told her. “DeLacey dares not arrest Abraham, not for this. He will be safe. And then the taxes shall be paid, and Ravenskeep will no longer be at risk.”

  “But you’ll still be in Sherwood. Robbing people.”

  “Until deLacey is dismissed, yes. But if we rob enough people and steal all the taxes, make it impossible for him to properly govern the shire, he shall be gone in short order.”

  “And until then?”

  “Until then, you will be home safe in Ravenskeep—”

  Dryly she interrupted, “While you and the others pretend to be birds.”

  “But not a duck,” he said, feeding her the last piece of cheese to silence further protest.

  From behind them in the trees came a rude cacophony of very poor bird calls.

  DeLacey ran lightly down the steps of the castle into the inner bailey. The fog had lifted and he felt ineffably young this day, buoyant with high hopes and good spirits. He smiled at Mercardier, standing by the wagon.

  “Well?” the sheriff asked. “Does it meet with your approval?”

  “I am not a horse,” the mercenary declaimed, “to know if the wagon is loaded properly or not.”

  DeLacey wondered if ever the man said a word that could not be construed as criticism, or failed to imply the question he answered was foolish. “Oh, the loading has been handled properly.” He walked around the wagon, tugging at the canvas covering the chests, checking ropes and knots. “I inquire as to whether you approve of my escort arrangement.”

  Two soldiers sat on the wagon seat. A dozen others ranged on horseback in the bailey, waiting for departure. Only two men meant to accompany the shipment were not yet mounted: Mercardier himself, and Philip de la Barre.

  “It appears suitable,” the mercenary answered. “Though I am not convinced you need to dispatch quite so many men. It becomes obvious, my lord.”

  “It is obvious,” deLacey agreed. “It is what it is, Mercardier: every coin in taxes collected from the shire so far this session. Were outlaws to steal it, we would all of us be most discommoded.” In fact, many of them would likely be dismissed from their service, including himself. Discommoded, he felt, lent the moment a touch of understatement.

  “You are expecting an attempt?” Mercardier inquired.

  DeLacey permitted himself a brief and genuine laugh. “You ask that after what occurred yesterday?”

  “They rescued a boy,” the mercenary said. “I am not convinced they would attempt to steal taxes.”

  “Is there anything you are convinced of?” But the question was purely rhetorical; deLacey continued without waiting for a reply. “Perhaps I have attached too many men to the duty. But I had rather be certain the shipment arrived where and when it is intended. Better to be a careful fool than a poor one.” He paused. “Or a dead one.”

  Mercardier studied him a long moment from beneath heavy dark brows. Then he seemed to arrive at a conclusion, for he turned away from the sheriff to signal for his mount. A horseboy brought the animal forward, even as the castellan asked for his. Within moments the wagon was surrounded by armed and armored soldiers.

  Two on the wagon seat. Fourteen to ride alongside. Any outlaws who attempted to take the taxes would face certain defeat.

  Mercardier, now helmed, looked down upon deLacey from his huge horse. “Lord Sheriff,” he said, “I thank you for your hospitality. Be certain I shall tell the king of your assistance and thoughtfulness.”

  A pretty speech. DeLacey repressed the impulse to ask if that truly were Mercardier behind the helm. “I serve the king in all things.”

  “Indeed.” Which sounded altogether like Mercardier again.

  DeLacey caught the eye of his castellan. “Philip,” he said, “guard this wagon with your life.”

  The young man inclined his head. “Of course, my lord. It is my honor.”

  “Allez, allez,” Mercardier said impatiently, and signaled the wagon forward.

  DeLacey watched the taxes roll out of the inner bailey into the outer. When the gate was shut, he turned and ran back up the stairs.

  With a stab of mild surprise, he realized he was humming.

  Thirty-Eight

  Marian, clean again, clad as a woman again, reacquainted herself with Ravenskeep. This time she saw it through eyes grown cynical, eyes that understood the motivations of men, not merely the eyes of a girl grown to womanhood, the eyes of a chatelaine. There yet remained damage from the sheriff’s men, but Joan and the others had taken care to repair and put back what they could. Somewhat battered, but still her hall. Still her home.

  But empty of those men she had come to care for.

  She felt herself divided, become two people. One had the ordering of the manor, was busily sorting through what they had and what was needed, counting bags of flour, how much salt was left; did the roof require new shingles yet again; how many lambs had been born, and which old ewes should be slaughtered. The other person, the other Marian, was not beneath a roof at all, but out among the trees with a longbow in her hand and bird calls echoing.

  He would come home again. They all would.

  When deLacey was no longer sheriff.

  But deLacey had been sheriff for as long as she could remember. He had begun in Old King Henry’s time, before her birth; continued through King Richard’s ten-year reign, twice buying his office; and now served John. She could not speak for his habits when Henry was king—she had been too young to know of such things—but he and her father had been friends. He had certainly been kind to her as a child. Nor would Sir Hugh FitzWalter, before the battle that killed him, have told Sir Robert of Locksley should anything happen to him, his daughter was to consider a marriage with William deLacey—unless he believed deLacey would treat her well.

  Perhaps once he might have. The sheriff had been a decent man, she knew, a man her father respected. But no one could apply that description to William deLacey now. Surely her father would abhor what he had become, would never suggest his daughter consider his suit.

  When had it happened, then, and what had happened that caused a man to change so significantly?

  In her own experience she knew men who had changed, had been changed, because of circumstances. Will Scarlet, formerly Scathlocke, had come home to his peasant’s hovel one day to find his wife so badly violated by Norman soldiers that she died of it, bleeding to death in his arms. He had sought the men and killed four of them before he was captured. Grief and the need for revenge had changed him into a murderer, had left him bitter and angry and violent. He had found a measure of peace at Ravenskeep in the past five years, but there was a part of him none of them knew, that he kept locked away. A part of him wholly unpredictable, and equally dangerous.

  And Robin himself, for that matter. She had known him slightly in her youth, had worshipped him in burgeoning womanhood, but he had gone away to war. Like Will he had killed, but in the name of his God and his king, in the name of Jerusalem, not in revenge or in grief. Yet he had been altered by the war despite its righteousness, and captivity had changed him even more. There were nights when he woke her crying out,
striking out; nights when he woke her by leaving the bed entirely, and when she sought him she found him downstairs by the fire, eyes transfixed by memories and waking visions he would not share.

  But these men had reason. A wife, violated by men and weapons until she died. A soldier imprisoned a year by the enemy after months of brutal battles. What had William deLacey encountered that had altered him? That would cause him to plot to trick her into a sham ceremony to force a genuine marriage; to name her a witch with manufactured evidence and coerced witnesses; to set his men to tearing apart her hall; to strike her name from the tax rolls so that he might claim her manor and turn her out of it?

  But she was no longer a child, no longer innocent. She understood the things that some men needed. Craved.

  Power. Ambition. Politics.

  Not offenses of the body, the ravages of emotions, but desires of the mind.

  William deLacey could never be a king who was born of such things as power, ambition, and politics, whose royal parents wed and conceived children solely for the sake of holding or gaining realms. He could never be a lord born to wealth and privilege, only a man appointed to office by the king, finding identity in it, defining himself by power, and the ambition for more. A man utterly dependent on the king’s whim; and John was notorious for the fickleness of his whims.

  Politics.

  John had wanted England when his brother ruled it in absentia. DeLacey’s little kingdom, the shire of Nottingham, was therefore threatened. He had judged John most likely to be the victor, and thus took his part. But John had lost the battle for the throne when Richard came home from captivity, ransomed by nobles and poor alike through auxilliary tax collections. DeLacey had then bought back the office Richard might have stripped from him; the warrior-king needed money to continue his battles, and he was not averse to allowing men to remain in office if they would pay for it. But now Richard was dead,John was king, and deLacey, King of Nottinghamshire, once again was firmly in John’s camp.