Jennifer Roberson - [Robin Hood 01]

by Lady of the Forest

  Books by Jennifer Roberson

  LADY OF THE FOREST

  LADY OF SHERWOOD

  LADY OF THE GLEN

  Lady of the Forest

  JENNIFER ROBERSON

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Dedication

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty Nine

  Forty

  Forty One

  Forty Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  Forty-Eight

  Forty-Nine

  Fifty

  Fifty-One

  Fifty-Two

  Fifty-Three

  Fifty-Four

  Fifty-Five

  Fifty-Six

  Fifty-Seven

  Fifty-Eight

  Fifty-Nine

  Sixty

  Sixty-One

  Sixty-Two

  Sixty-Three

  Sixty-Four

  Sixty-Five

  Sixty-Six

  Sixty-Seven

  Sixty-Eight

  Sixty-Nine

  Seventy

  Seventy-One

  Seventy-Two

  Seventy-Three

  Seventy-Four

  Seventy-Five

  Seventy-Six

  Seventy-Seven

  Author’s Note

  LADY OF SHERWOOD

  LADY OF THE GLEN

  Copyright Page

  For Arzelle, Maurice, and John

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Special appreciation must go to several people for a variety of functions and influences, most notably to my agent, Russell Galen, a man of patience, vision, and insight. To Betsy Wollheim, for generously and unselfishly allowing me the opportunity to stretch my wings; to Michael A. Stackpole, for research materials and conversation; to Gail Wolfenden-Steib, for information and sourcebooks on 12th-century fashions; and particular appreciation to Maryeileen McKersie, for continuity, comments, and support.

  Additional thanks to Dr. Neil Kunze, history professor at Northern Arizona University, who has undoubtedly forgotten the journalism major who took his English history courses for the sheer love of it; to Ray Newton, journalist, who taught me much of what I know about writing, then encouraged me to do it my way; and to my editor, Ann LaFarge, for her enthusiasm and support.

  Special appreciation to my grandfather, S.J. Hardy, and to my mother, Shera Hardy Roberson, whose love of books proved to be genetic; to Georgana Wolff Meiner, for being there at the beginning; also to the Thursday Morning Corgi Club, for helping to keep me sane.

  Many other people contributed to this novel in ways both large and small, none so insignificant that I discount them as unimportant because, as any author can attest, even a single word dropped in passing can help shape a manuscript. To those who dropped the words, I thank you sincerely, even if I’ve forgotten the time, the place, the reason.

  Then from among the dispossessed and banished arose the most famous freebooter Robin Hood, and little John with their accomplices, whom the foolish multitude are so extravagantly fond of celebrating in tragedy and comedy; and the ballads concerning whom, sung by the jesters and minstrels, delight them beyond all others.

  —entry for the year 1266 by Scottish chronicler Walter Bower, Abbot of Inchcolm, 1445

  Prologue

  Nottingham Castle

  Late Spring—1194

  Darkness. Silence. The weight of solitude. Each was a weapon meant to break her, to drive her into humiliation out of defiant self-possession; to goad her into surrender, into pleas for mercy, for compassion, for understanding.

  Grimly she reflected, But mostly into compliance, in bed and out of it.

  A sound destroyed the silence even as light banished darkness. The heavy door scraped open. “Marian.”

  She wanted to laugh. Such a soft, seductive whisper—But with the edge of a blade in the sound, issuing from a man long accustomed to being heard no matter how softly he whispered.

  He brought the torch with him, unattended by liveried soldiers; what he wanted from her he wanted given—or taken—in the privacy of the chamber. Capitulation? she wondered. Perhaps even retribution. Or merely the opportunity to have what another man had.

  The roaring of the torch swallowed the darkness and the world was alive again.

  She lurched abruptly upright, squinting against the torchlight, then forced herself to relax. Her legs were tangled in heavy bedclothes, bound up by twisted skirts.

  She knew what he saw: tangled black hair harboring bits of dungeon straw; a soiled, dishevelled kirtle smelling of horse and sweat and smoke; gritty blue eyes red-rimmed from tension and lack of sleep. I know very well what he sees. What he wanted was as blatant, though he would say nothing of it. Not yet. He was a subtle man, she knew, and therefore all the more dangerous.

  He held the torch aloft. Flame blazed in the darkness, setting the room alight. She stared, momentarily transfixed by fire, by the flare and gutter in the eternal dance, the courtship of air and flame. “Marian.”

  The room was bathed in shadow, courting the flame. As he walked the shadows walked, gliding across the floor, into cracks, into corners, running up the walls, quick and black and sly, like the rats she had left in the dungeon below:

  Illumination glittered in the silver threading his curly dark hair, forming an eerie nimbus around his well-shaped head. An artist might choose to paint him. But she was disposed to believe he made a supremely unlikely angel.

  He smiled, baring a blade-sharp line of square white teeth against the dark rim of his bottom lip as she rearranged her skirts to make certain her legs were covered. She refused to give him that. What he got from her would be stolen.

  He carried the torch closer yet. Smoke teased the air, curling around his head. She looked through it to his eyes, brown by the light of day, now blackened by firelight.

  For the third time he said her name, as if by keeping it in his mouth he possessed it, and her. But she refused to bow down before it, to show any sign of surrender or even acknowledgment. All she did was stare back steadfastly and defiantly, denying him the victory he desired so very much.

  Flames transfigured hair from silvered brown to raven gold. Light overlay his face, dividing it precisely in half. One side was made flat, stark, without character, leeched of humanity; the other was cast into shadows that licked at eyes and nose, caressing his smiling mouth. Divided face. Divided soul. Black and white, she thought, lacking all the grays.

&n
bsp; Legs now puddled in skirts and bedclothes, she sat against the wall. She was no longer in the dungeon, where she had made the acquaintanceship of rats, but in a bedchamber fully furnished and well-appointed; he was a refined man. A painted cloth hanging cut the chill of dark stone. But not enough. Not nearly enough. It did nothing to warm her blood.

  “You have a choice,” he told her. “You have always had a choice.”

  Marian wanted to laugh. Slowly, with unstudied grace, she put out her left hand to him. Palm down. And as, surprised, he reached out to touch it—thinking, she knew, that she meant him to—she snapped the wrist over and turned the palm upright. His hand instantly retreated; she knew he regretted the motion already.

  “Choice,” she said softly, in her smoky, dark-toned voice. “Repent before the abbot, then take vows and become a nun—though I lack a true vocation.”

  He waited in silence, intent. The torch spilled smoke and flame.

  She put out her other hand and snapped it over. Light bled briefly across the ragged edges of broken nails, the grime of harsh usage. “Choice,” she said again. “Make vows and become your wife, though I lack a true vocation”—she smiled before he could speak—“or even a trace of desire.”

  The torch robbed his face of color. “What do I want of desire?” His tone was cool, divulging nothing. “With or without, I can have you.”

  “Unless the stake takes me first.” She turned her hands down and let them lie across the hillocks of skirts and bedclothes. “When you are done, will the abbot come to argue his side? Or did you mean to keep this attempt at persuasion secret?”

  He smiled faintly. “Truths, not persuasion. In the morning you will be tried on charges of witchcraft. We both know you are guilty, so I doubt you will survive.”

  She knew very well she would not, though guilt had nothing to do with it. No one, witch or not, survived being burned at the stake.

  “Truth,” he said quietly. “Take vows and enter a convent, and there will be no trial.”

  Bitterness crept in. “And my lands will go to the Church—”she paused a moment, looking for additional truths, “unless you mean to take part of them as payment for what you do now.”

  The tone—and confirmation—was ironic: “Suitable dowry, I think, for a bride of Jesus Christ.”

  Marian laughed; she knew him better, now. “But that isn’t what you want. That would deny you, and you couldn’t countenance that. Not William deLacey. His pride would never permit it.”

  It banished the hint of a smile. “Take vows and marry me, and there will be no trial.”

  Now her own irony. “And you will have all my lands.”

  His eyes were alight with quiet laughter. “Suitable dowry, I think, for the Sheriff of Nottingham.”

  She looked at him steadfastly, maintaining an even tone. “And if I take no vows, perishing in the flames, neither of you shall win. My lands will go to the king.”

  He permitted himself a smile. “Your father was the Lionheart’s man, always. He died in Richard’s cause, in Richard’s holy insanity.”

  He knew how to goad and succeed even with her, who knew him better now; it was a particular talent. “My father would never---”

  The sheriff cut her off. “But now it is said Richard himself will not come home from his cell in Henry’s German prison—in which case his brother John, our present Count of Mortain, shall inherit the throne of England.” William deLacey paused. “Do you think your father would rest easy to see his lands given over to John?”

  No. No and no. Bitterly she said, “They are my lands now, in accordance with all the laws of England ... and it might be worth giving them to John Lackland if only to thwart you and the abbot.”

  The sheriff stepped closer to her. She looked at the hand on the torch—his sword hand, and strong, hardened from years of experience. No longer a soldier’s hand, but lacking none of the strength or skill. She thought of that hand in her hair. She thought of it at her throat. Imagined it on her breast.

  Marian wanted to vomit.

  He bent over her carefully and set the torch into a bracket. The shadows, sly and silent, lay thick everywhere but on the bed. She could smell him: oil of cloves, and incense. He had bathed. Had he prayed?

  In the light his face was as naked to her as her own to him. In his she saw suffering of a sort she could not fully comprehend. Or do I dare not risk it, having learned a little of pain?

  “Marian,” he rasped.

  Abruptly she tore back the bedclothes, lurching out of the bed. She meant to run from him, to snatch open the door and fly down coiled stairs, to escape Nottingham Castle—

  But he caught her, trapped her, sat her down upon the bed. And then took his hands from her. “Do you know what I see?”

  She drew in a ragged breath. Mutely, she shook her head.

  “The little girl,” he answered, “astride her father’s great destrier. With black hair all tangled and dusty, coming out of useless plaits.”

  It was not what she had expected.

  “Sir Hugh FitzWalter’s daughter, little Lady Marian, born and bred to Ravenskeep on the edge of Sherwood Forest, so close to Nottingham.” He smiled, though bitterness wracked the corners of his firm, well-cut mouth. “I married twice, and buried them both. I loved neither of them.”

  “They gave you children,” she said.

  DeLacey’s tone was bland. “Getting children on a woman has nothing at all to do with love.”

  She drew in a steadying breath. She was not afraid of him; she had never been afraid of him, but she knew enough now to be uncertain of his intentions. “You were my father’s friend.”

  “I was. And am, Marian. He asked me to tend your welfare should misfortune befall him.”

  She knew that better than he. “But he did not require this!”

  White teeth gleamed in torchlight. “You make this necessary.”

  “You are a fool,” she told him. “A ruthless, coldhearted fool—”

  “And worse,” he agreed, “but I do not stoop to rape.”

  Marian wanted to spit. “You will get me no other way.”

  The sheriff merely smiled. “Do you know what I see? FitzWalter’s black-haired, blue-eyed daughter, but four months of age and without a tooth in her head. Laughing and waving impotent fists in the Sheriff of Nottingham’s face.”

  She knew then what he meant to do, how he hoped to reduce her to helplessness in the face of shared memories of childhood, of girlhood, of when her father lived.

  His smile dropped away. Now the tone hissed. “Do you know what I see?”

  Resolutely she held her silence.

  He answered her anyway, harshly. “A woman ripe for bedding, begging for it with her eyes.”

  Jaw muscles tautened. “Give me a knife,” she retorted, “and I will show you what I am ripe for.”

  The sheriff raised a single eloquent eyebrow. “Did he teach you that? Did he also teach you the sword?”

  She knew precisely what he meant, though not long ago she had known nothing at all of hardship or the harsh argot of such men. Now she knew, and spoke it, answering him in kind with cool self-possession, fully cognizant of what the admission could mean. “The fleshly sword, yes. But he also taught me what you cannot: what it is to love a man.”

  Dull color stained his face. Her thrust had gone home cleanly, and more deeply than she had hoped. Her matter-of-fact confirmation of his crude insinuation turned the blade back on him.

  His eyes glittered in flame. “Do you know what I see?”

  She knew very well what he saw. She named it before he could. “Robin Hood’s whore,” she answered. “And grateful for the honor.”

  One

  Huntington Castle

  Spring—1194

  Marian smiled crookedly. This place transforms Ravenskeep into a hovel.

  It did not, quite; her beloved manor was a worthy enough residence, and far better than a serf’s hovel. But Huntington Castle, in its towered and portcullised gr
andeur, was hugely imposing as well as exquisitely new, boasting the latest improvements in architecture and defenses. The keep was surrounded by a newfangled curtain-wall replete with ornate defense machicolations and murder-holes, but Marian was less overwhelmed by the size and sheer massiveness than by its master’s ambition and wealth.

  The great hall itself was no less impressive, if a trifle intimidating, with its fashionably massive masonry walls intermittently shielded behind painted cloth hangings. The hall was awash in candle- and lamplight, painting ochre and umber shadows in corners, cracks, and crannies. Lute-song was an underscore to the warmth of so many bodies, the odors of sweetmeats, spice, strong wine; to the animated discussions swirling throughout the hall. Marian was aware of them all, if distantly, thinking instead of the reason she and the others—even those uninvited—had attended.

  He will not remember me. He could not, of course; why should he? He was an earl’s son, and she a knight’s daughter. That they had met once, as children, would mean nothing to him. I wish—But she cut it off. There was no purpose in it.

  Lute-song drifted to her through a break in the crowd. Marian glanced idly at its source. The handsome minstrel—some might call him pretty—she had seen upon arrival, marking him as true to type in bright-eyed, eloquent discourses designed to snare a female audience before he played a note. The rapidity of his success made her smile, but not fall victim; an answering glint in long-lashed blue eyes told her he marked her as something more than a simple, immediate conquest. But she had not entered the game for more than one reason: she was not disposed to play, and she had come for Robert of Locksley, Huntington’s heir.

  Something pinched her stomach. This is wrong. I know it is. I shouldn’t tax him with this; simply because he’s from the same shire, I can’t expect him to know anything more than I do. She drew a deep breath. But I’m here now; it’s done. I’ll approach him anyway. What harm in the asking?

  No harm at all in the asking ... if he deigned to answer. If he even knew who she was, or what her father had been.