Lady of Sherwood

by Jennifer Roberson

  Unless, of course, the king desired Locksley be sent to London, where he might be beheaded at Tower Green. Though deLacey rather hoped he would hang, because death took longer at the end of a rope unless the neck was broken; and the sheriff would bribe the hangman to botch the drop.

  Smiling, deLacey turned in the saddle, looking over a shoulder. There he was, Sir Robert of Locksley, Crusader knight, king’s hero, tied to a horse by virtue of a rope connected to his chains. He walked steadily with no sign of a limp, but deLacey did not doubt it took effort; de la Barre had struck him a hard blow behind the knees. Yet nothing in his expression divulged his thoughts.

  The loose fair hair shielded some of his face, but deLacey, riding in front, could see him clearly. Pale gold stubble defined jaw and cheekbones, pointing up the aristocratic cast of his features. Hazel eyes were quietly fixed on the horse before him, judging the pace, marking if the animal might trip or shy, either of which could prove disastrous for him. His mouth was set in a grim line, but there was no fear in his face. Only a calm mask that deLacey had witnessed five years before, when Locksley was just returned from captivity. He had been strange then, withdrawn and mostly mute, given, when he spoke, to unpredictability in temperament and conversation. The years since had aged him—what boyishness had been left after war and captivity was now gone—but it merely underscored a certain ruthless competency in his features.

  A bad enemy, deLacey did not doubt. But now merely a prisoner, and incapable of troubling the sheriff ever again.

  Through Market Square among shocked stares, whispers, murmurings, and the occasional shout. If Locksley were aware of them, he gave no notice. The castle gates stood open. DeLacey rode through, lifting a hand to the men who stood at attention, amidst the ringing clop of iron-shod hooves against cobblestones. Through the outer bailey and into the inner, to stop before the entrance . . . there he gave the order for the prisoner to be loosed from the horse. The rope was undone. The men, dismounting, fell into place around Locksley. DeLacey stepped off his own horse, gave the reins to the waiting boy, and led the procession into the hall.

  Mercardier, seated at the table for an early supper, glanced up in mild interest, meat-knife in one hand. But that turned to startlement as he looked upon the procession, marking the men and their prisoner. He thrust himself to his feet even as his meat-knife clattered against the hardwood table. For the first time the mercenary was unmasked; his expression was a mingling of shock and, as that passed, speculation.

  DeLacey unhelmed and passed it to a servant who came forward to aid him. He slipped the mail coif to his shoulders and peeled off his gloves, handing them over even as he walked, smiling faintly at Mercardier. He could not have asked for a better tableau.

  “You see,” he said calmly, “we have caught the man responsible for stealing the taxes. The man who proved himself more able in robbery than you in defense, despite the king’s trust. Perhaps that is why you have never liked Locksley; might he be better than you in all things? Is that it, Captain?” He paused. “Did the Lionheart love him better?”

  But Mercardier had donned the mask again. One hand rested lightly against the table. His dark, opaque eyes followed the guard contingent without expression as the prisoner was led the length of the hall.

  “Perhaps you can visit,” the sheriff commented. “Just now Robin Hood must inspect his private lodgings, but I believe it will be possible for him to receive you tomorrow.”

  Mercardier flicked a glance at deLacey. With a slight jerk of his lips—was that truly a smile?—he sat down again and returned to his meal.

  Inwardly deLacey laughed. Oh, indeed. He could not have dreamed a better moment.

  It was, Robin supposed, a humiliating spectacle, the procession through Nottingham. But he went deep inside himself, detaching himself from the world. His body was aware it moved—his knees ached, for instance, and his abdomen was sore—but felt little beyond the repetition of step after step after step. His mind marked the movements of the horse, watching for a misstep, but even that was done from a distance. His awareness was a kernel within the flesh, warding itself against the predations of pride, of shame, of mortification. He had survived the Saracens. Had withstood the beating meted out by Norman soldiers ostensibly his compatriots. This, too, he would endure.

  Onward through the castle gates . . . through the baileys, where the rope was removed and his arms could drop down again, still heavy with iron but no longer stretched taut and subject to the motion of the horse. Still he built walls around his senses, distancing himself from the stares of the sheriff’s men and servants. It was not until they entered the hall and he heard the scrape of a bench against the floor, the clatter of a knife, did he take note of anything beyond what was required to go where he was taken. And then he saw Mercardier, and detachment shredded.

  Especially when deLacey asked, “ ‘Did the Lionheart love him better?’ ”

  There was more. But he burned with anger. It took all he had to meet Mercardier’s eyes without giving away his emotions. And those eyes were as usual shielded behind a barrier even Robin had never been able to penetrate with the irony and edged witticisms that pierced so many men. It had been learned in the years with his father, though kept internal. As a soldier on Crusade, among the king’s favorites, he said what he wished, albeit not in obvious ways, and made enemies for it. It had amused Richard. Mercardier abhorred it.

  There were many, Robin knew, who would relish this moment.

  But the moment passed. DeLacey had him taken down into the dungeon. There the sheriff himself peeled back an iron grate, and motioned to the others.

  A ladder was brought. But before it was put in place, before Locksley had so much as a glimpse of the pit below, a hand was planted in his spine and he was shoved forward over the lip.

  He fell, twisting in midair, landing on hip and shoulder, braced hands pushing against the floor as he rolled to take some of the weight. There was straw beneath him, and soil beneath that. Above him, the grate was dropped down. He heard the sound of the bolt shot home, the heavy click of a lock. There was no light save what crept down through the cross-hatched iron. He pushed up to one knee, determined not to let deLacey see him lying on the floor, and stared upward. He could make out nothing but colors, shapes, and movement through the iron lattice.

  He expected the sheriff to offer a comment. But nothing was said. The torches were carried away. Footsteps receded, ascended stairs. In the distance a door thumped closed. He was left in darkness and the squalor of the pit.

  Robin released a hissing breath. Now he felt the aches, smelled the tang of nervous perspiration, knew the tremor of humiliation inside. But there was more to think about, even as he rolled his shoulders in an attempt to loosen overtensed muscles. There was his father, dead or dying. He had wanted nothing more than to confront the man about his acquisition of Ravenskeep, but in the moment of discovery, of seeing him so drawn and frail within the massive tester bed, anger had dispersed beneath the onslaught of shock. And then there had been no time for anything as he was attacked from behind.

  Now there was time. Plenty of time. To see again in his mind’s eye the man who had sired him and always regretted it, grown ancient but no less selfish and autocratic; and to know he was dying even as the sheriff acquainted him with his son’s latest failings. To see again Ralph’s desperation, to hear the steward’s pleading for him to come home to Huntington. But Huntington Castle had never been his home. His home, Huntington Hall, had been razed years before.

  He was not his father’s heir. That had been made clear. But the task of having the earl’s body, upon his death, interred within the Huntington crypt was likely his to do.

  Except, ironically, it was now entirely possible that the son might die before the father.

  Robin closed his eyes a moment, composing himself, then peered upward. Somewhere above a torch yet burned; the faintest trace of wan light made its way into the pit, though it illuminated no more than a dim patch
upon the floor. Everything else was blackness.

  He began to kick over the straw, digging through the loose scattering on top to the crusted layers below, down to time- and filth-packed earth. It was foul in the pit, rank with the stench of ordure and travail. There was likely a slops bucket somewhere, but from the pungent sting of urine issuing from one area he believed an inhabitant prior to himself had forgone that small token of civilization. He overturned the straw not to uncover things best left hidden for want of exercise or curiosity, but because he did not wish to sit in or, if he managed it, to sleep in waste and vermin nests.

  When he had groomed one area as well as possible, kicking loose straw back over old, he sat down and leaned carefully against the wall. He assimilated the chill of raw stone until he could stand it without his flesh jumping, then drew up his knees and began to knead the undersides with his hands, shackles clanking, trying to bleed away the knots and tenderness.

  He would endure captivity. He had before.

  Much indeed brought back a deer, albeit small, and only one. Nonetheless it was more than enough for those who had not tasted its like before. Such meat was not permitted anyone lacking a writ of vert and venison—official permission from the king to kill and consume royal deer—and thus the peasantry, unless they turned to poaching, were denied the privilege reserved for select noblemen such as the Earl of Huntington.

  Hung and drawn for a hasty bleeding, then skinned and pierced with a tree limb for crude spit-roasting over the fire, the deer proved most tasty. Marian, leaning against a log, did not even mind the grease dribbling down her chin. A corner of blanket proved up to the task of imitating table linen, and she occasionally dabbed at her face. But mostly she ate. With a belly full of venison and the last of the ale—they would have to steal more, Scarlet suggested; Tuck said they could buy it—she was sleepily replete under the rising moon.

  “Alan,” she said, contemplating the last of her bread as she heaved a happy sigh, “sing something.”

  He was perched upon a stump. “I haven’t my lute.”

  “Sing without the lute.”

  Alan licked his fingers one by one, then wiped them against a quilted doublet that once had been rather fine. But its green velvet now was compressed and shiny with soiling, and there was one sizable tear along a seam coyly displaying the stuffing that formed its padded shape. They were all of them filthy now, save for Marian, who had bathed two days before. She was only mildly grimy.

  “I could,” he said finally, “if I did not despair of being shouted down by those who refuse to appreciate my talent.”

  “I appreciate it,” Marian replied. “And if any of them complain, they can wash up the dishes.” Joan had packed a handful of wooden bowls and two badly dented pewter platters along with several equally dented mugs. Keepsakes, Marian believed, of the sheriff’s destructive visit.

  “If he sings,” Scarlet said, “you can wash up the dishes.”

  “He sings very well,” she retorted.

  “He does,” Tuck agreed, soaking up the last of the blood and fat in his bowl with a crust of bread.

  Firelight shone off the film of grease on Much’s face. “Sing about Robin.”

  Alan was startled. “Robin?”

  Scarlet grunted. “He’s got no songs about Robin, lad.”

  “Oh, I think he does.” Marian had a very clear memory of certain nonsensical verses she had heard years before. “And appropriate, methinks, in Robin’s absence.”

  Little John was skeptical. “Have you one, then?”

  Much scooted forward eagerly to sit at the minstrel’s feet. Alan smiled faintly. There was no lute to aide him, but he did the best he could.

  Lithe and listen, gentlemen,

  That be of free-born blood;

  I shall you tell of a good yeoman,

  His name was Robin Hood.

  DeLacey, ensconced within his cushioned chair upon the dais, permitted a servant to refill his goblet. In very good spirits—he had dined already, and this was his third cup of unwatered wine—he smiled upon Mercardier. The mercenary had said no word since being summoned to the hall. He merely waited stolidly, helm tucked under one arm, as he stood before the dais.

  “You do understand that it shall save time and effort,” the sheriff said. “You may explain to the king what became of his taxes—albeit briefly, by the grace of God!—and tell him that we now have in custody the man responsible for robbing you. I shall have my clerk write it all down, of course, but I am quite certain the king will request a verbal report as well.”

  Mercardier said, “I understand.”

  “Contained in the report of your misapprehension regarding your ability to guard the shipment will be detailed information of Robert of Locksley’s behavior these past weeks. My lord king will recall, I am certain, that it was Locksley who stole the shipment five years ago. Clearly he has returned to his old habits; worse, he has extended them. But he resides in the dungeon now, awaiting the king’s pleasure. When the king so desires, he may inform me as to his wishes with regard to the prisoner’s disposal.”

  Something flared in dark eyes—pleasure, perhaps?—though the tone was without inflection. “And so you mean to kill him.”

  “I mean nothing, Captain! It may be my duty to have him executed, but it is not my decision.” He waved a dismissive hand. “I shall have my clerk write the letter tomorrow. Expect to leave in the afternoon, yes?”

  Mercardier inclined his head. “Yes.”

  No ‘my lord.’ DeLacey might call him on the crude informality. But he was too pleased with the ordering of his world, just now, and the promise of his future. He let the slip go as the Lionheart’s captain of mercenaries took his leave.

  Besides, within a matter of days Mercardier’s mouth would be filled to choking with honorifics and obsequious words, as he admitted before the king that he had failed.

  After a while Robin stopped kneading his legs. With knees still drawn up he crossed his arms over his chest, tucking shackled wrists beneath armpits—the chain was long enough for that—let his skull rest against the wall, and closed his eyes.

  Marian and the others would eventually realize he was captured, likely tomorrow. But he did not believe there was anything they could do about it. His future, if there was to be one, depended entirely upon the pleasure of King John.

  Who once had wished Sir Robert of Locksley to marry his daughter. Bastard daughter, withal, but still of royal seed.

  In the darkness, surrounded by the stench of dead men’s waste, Robin smiled. It was a hard, twisted, self-deprecating smile, composed of very little humor. DeLacey himself had said it: And lo, how the knight has fallen.

  Low indeed.

  Forty-Four

  Marian had never ridden so fast, so recklessly, that she endangered her life, but she did so as she returned from Huntington Castle—and didn’t care. She had no time to care, merely to plan; to realize that another man had died and, in that dying, the world had once again been turned upside down.

  She heard the bird calls in Sherwood, but made no answer. They knew her; they merely warned one another. And when she ducked under the last tree limb and threw herself out of the saddle, all of them had gathered.

  “Trouble?” Tuck asked.

  “The worst,” she said breathlessly. “The sheriff has taken Robin.”

  “ ’Twas a trap!” Little John cried, as Scarlet cursed.

  “Not initially.” Marian let Much take her horse, but asked that the animal remain saddled. She went at once to her possessions and found shift and chemise. “The servant said deLacey and his men came after Ralph left. When Robin got there, they took him. He’s in Nottingham Castle already.”

  “What about the earl?” Little John asked.

  She shook out shift and chemise, gathered up long girdle. “Dead; he truly was dying. And Ralph was badly injured protesting the sheriff’s intentions.”

  “What are you doing?” Alan asked.

  “Changing back,�
� she answered shortly. “I mean to go see deLacey.” She glanced at Tuck. “Would you wrap my bow for me, make it look like a walking stick?”

  Mystified, he nodded.

  “We’re going, too,” Scarlet declared. “You’ll not leave us behind.”

  Marian grabbed a blanket and flung it over the nearest tree; if it was not enough, they could turn their backs. “I know. I want you there. I need you to steal a wagon and put it near the castle gates, in Market Square.”

  “And do what?” Little John asked.

  “Wait. Be ready.” She slipped behind the screening blanket.

  “Wait for what?” Alan asked, voice somewhat muffled.

  Marian unfastened the belt that held tunic and hosen in place. “For us to come out.”

  “Who’s ‘us’?” That was Scarlet.

  “Me. Robin.” She jerked the hooded capelet and tunic off over her head, then folded them into a compact package and stuffed it into the back side of her hosen, belting both into place.

  Little John was astonished. “And how d’ye mean to get him out of the castle?”

  “I’ll find a way.”

  “And if you don’t?” Alan asked sharply.

  “Then I shall be in the dungeon, too, and you’ll have to rescue us both.” She yanked shift and chemise over her head, flailing and digging for sleeves. “I am the only one of us who can confront William deLacey in person, so I shall.”

  “Confront him!” Scarlet echoed.

  Little John was appalled. “And do what then?”

  She tugged shift and chemise down over breasts and hips. “Find out what he wants.”

  “He’s got what he wants!” Alan declared. “Robin!”

  Marian double-wrapped the girdle low around her waist atop the tunic and capelet, then tugged at the skirts to make sure the hosen and boots were covered. “William deLacey is a man who will always want more. I intend to find out what it is.”