Jennifer Roberson - [Robin Hood 01]

by Lady of the Forest

  Inured to it all, John waved the sycophants away. When the mass of horses and riders fell back but a stride or two, thus encapsulating him in moist, hot horse breath and damp, sweaty bodies, Prince John, the Count of Mortain, shouted at one and all to leave him room to breathe—and reminded them it was the hunt upon which they were engaged and that they couldn’t very well hunt the beast if they danced the maypole around him.

  As for himself, he said, he would wait. When the boar was found, and contained, he would advance to witness the kill; whereupon everyone, thus dismissed, deserted John for the boar—save for those few required to personally attend the prince. One of them, John decreed, was William deLacey.

  The prince smiled. “For we have not concluded discussing the administration of Nottinghamshire.”

  DeLacey, who doubted Nottinghamshire was the issue, gave his horse over to a servant and made himself instantly available.

  John smiled warmly. “The last time we met in private, I asked you a question. Do you recall it?” He waved a hand. A cup of wine, tasted, was placed in it. “It was last night, Sheriff. Or have you forgotten already?”

  DeLacey had forgotten nothing. He said so, very politely.

  “The question I asked was simple: ‘What do you want?’ And now I ask it again, as you’ve had a night to sleep on it.” John sipped appreciatively, dark brows arching over the rim of the studded cup. “Do you have a better answer?”

  The sheriff smiled faintly, certain of his course. “I want whatever you see fit to give me.”

  “Ah.” John’s smile briefly matched deLacey’s, then faded to a thin, retentive seam. “No one gives me anything. What I want, I take.”

  DeLacey nodded. “We inhabit considerably different worlds, my lord. I am wholly answerable to you for my actions.”

  “While I am answerable only to God—and to myself. And God is, methinks, a more merciful taskmaster than I. He expects less of me.” John drank more wine, then thrust it into the hand of the waiting servant. His tone was excessively casual, emphasizing nothing; that in itself put deLacey on his guard. “I think God would not want a man to be king of England who cannot sire a true heir.”

  Ah, thought deLacey, there it was. No more subterfuge. No more implications. It lay between them both, bared for all to see on a fine spring morning beneath an English sun. Ambition, and intention. Now it was up to him to decide which course to take.

  John leaned forward in his chair. “I think that is the heart of the matter, deLacey. Richard goes haring off to the Holy Land whenever he feels God is discounting him. He intends to bribe God. Perhaps he hopes God will provide him an heir without requiring him to do the work...” John sagged back again, chewing idly on his remaining thumbnail. “So long as he sleeps with boys, there will be no heir. So long as Berengaria does not have the wit to fill her bed with a proxy, and claim the get of him Richard’s—did she do that, she had best have him murdered, of course, or I’d have him hauled here for the truth—there will be no direct heir.” He tore, then spat out the ragged nail, contemplating deLacey across the brutalized thumb. Very quietly, he suggested, “And so long as German Henry does not relinquish his honored guest, there will be no direct heir. There will be no heir but me.”

  DeLacey inclined his head, praying John could not guess his thoughts. This is not what I might have foreseen. This is not a choice any sane man would choose to make, this alignment with a would-be king against a man who is—but what choice have I? Neither would anyone have predicted that Richard would get himself thrown into a German dungeon!

  Contemplatively, John remarked, “Huntington has a castle. A Norman castle, no less; as he himself has put it, nearly impregnable. And a man would be a fool not to wonder why he built it.”

  DeLacey said nothing.

  John smiled thinly. “He also has a son. An only, and unmarried, heir. And you an unmarried daughter, like not to wed, at this rate, before her teeth fall out.”

  The pain was very distant, because the promise loomed so large. DeLacey felt light-headed. “My lord, yes. Eleanor.”

  “Eleanor.” John nodded. “I have always liked the name.”

  “Oh, my lord—yes, it is quite a lovely name—” The sheriff gritted his teeth, seeking and finding a modicum of control. More quietly, he said, “I named her for your mother, the dowager queen.”

  John was indifferent. “They all did.”

  DeLacey drew in a breath to ask the question. If John were serious with regard to Locksley and Eleanor... “My lord—”

  The prince gestured. “Pray, do not delay. Do not keep the boar waiting.”

  It was a dismissal. DeLacey tensed. “My lord—”

  Then the king’s sole remaining brother laughed, changing tack abruptly. “And what will you say in private, when I am gone?”

  The sheriff met John’s avid, unwavering eyes. His own future now was sealed. He had told John the truth: William deLacey was wholly answerable to the Count of Mortain, within whose control Nottinghamshire thrived or died. As did the careers of ambitious, intelligent men, who understood very well that an absent king, no matter how popular, was no match for a resident younger brother who lacked scruples of any kind.

  DeLacey knew what John wanted. He required leverage. A plan to force the hands of any number of men such as the Earl of Huntington with his new Norman castle, wealthy, powerful men who might otherwise stand against him. John required a subtle, undetectable means of establishing, then fixing personal control, in such a way as to insure no one could accuse him of trying to wrest England from beneath his brother’s nose.

  Especially if the nose remained in Germany.

  The knot in his belly tightened. But commitment was called for. Commitment—or destruction. Quietly deLacey declared, “I would say, were I foolish enough to speak of this at all, that I believe most confidently in your ability to succeed to the throne—in the unhappy event that the king’s Crusade has drained England of the very wealth she now needs to ransom her beloved sovereign.”

  “Ah.” John smiled. “I so hoped you also would see my way is the only way to help our beloved England.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “Raise the taxes, Sheriff.”

  Delacey sat very still. Damp fingertips rested on his knees. “My lord, I would be remiss in my duty if I failed to inform you there is already some complaint regarding the taxes.”

  “Of course.” John waved a ring-weighted, indifferent hand. “Noted, Sheriff; I doubt you are ever remiss in anything, save when it benefits you.” A glint from slitted eyes. “Raise the taxes, deLacey. I have debts. Nottinghamshire is mine. Raise the taxes, and bring them to me in Lincoln. Do you understand?” He leaned forward from his chair. “Do I make myself clear? Raise them, on my authority—and bring them to me.”

  DeLacey, sensing dismissal, rose. “It will take some time, my lord.”

  “I think not.” John smiled. “See to it those taxes go nowhere but to Lincoln, and into my coffers. Do you understand?”

  The sheriff bowed. “Yes, my lord.”

  John slumped back in his chair and waved a hand. The audience was finished.

  DeLacey turned away and motioned for his horse, which was brought instantly. He mounted, gathered rein, inclined his head to his lord, then rode away into the wood, little marking the hounds in the distance or the winding of the horn, thinking only of Prince John and the magnitude of his ambition.

  A little distance away, shrouded in trees and shrubbery, the sheriff drew rein. He sat very quietly in the saddle, staring at the tree just in front of him, and laughed softly, incredulously, as he acknowledged fully John’s intent.

  “He’ll take what’s left,” he murmured. “What little the Crusade has left, John will take for himself. At the cost of Richard’s ransom.”

  DeLacey closed his eyes a moment, wiping the sheen of dampness from a chill face. Then opened his eyes once more and signaled the horse to move. His hands, on the reins, trembled.

  Eleven


  The world was all of green: a verdant verdigris, shaded emerald, olive, and jade. Trees eclipsed the sun, charging shadow with dominion. Here the day was cool, muted, still damp and dazzled by dew. Fine mist was beginning, like tissue, to shred. Even sound was muffled, lending each horse and hunter a passing sense of separation, a transitory isolation.

  Marian beat her way through brush even as the others did. She knew very well most of the other women rode with men, or had male servants to break a trail before them, but that was a luxury she couldn’t enjoy. She was left to fend for herself, contemplating Eleanor’s determined and hasty departure—likely she is halfway back to the castle, by now—and wondering if she should not mimic it, though toward Nottingham and Ravenskeep rather than Huntington Castle.

  But that would prove Eleanor correct in the matter of Marian’s spine. “I’ll find him first,” she muttered, wincing as a leafy stem broke free of her warding hand and slapped her in the face. “I’ll find him first—ask my questions—then go on.”

  Or go first to Huntington Castle, collect old Matilda, then venture on toward home.

  The hounds belled in the distance, sound muted by dense-grown trees and acres of tangled vines. She heard the wood-damped noise of cracking brush and shredded vines on either side, muttered oaths as men hacked a way, the breathless laughter of highborn women emboldened by the hunt. For all Marian knew, another rider could be but ten paces away; the wood was so thick as to swathe everyone in a private, personal shroud of green.

  “A man could hide in here for years, and no one ever find him.” Grimacing, she unhooked an encroaching branch from a fold in her mantle. “And if anyone ever got lost...” She reined in her mare, still wrestling with branch and mantle. “Wait—”

  A crashing very close by caused the mare to sidle sharply toward the tree even as Marian yanked cloth from the branch. Her knee collided with the trunk. She grimaced and reined the mare away, pushing one-handed against the tree to take the weight off her knee.

  “Lady Marian!”

  Occupied, she barely glanced up. Briefly she marked Sir Guy of Gisbourne, breasting through undergrowth, but paid him little mind as she finally persuaded the mare to move off the tree, and leaned down to rub her knee. Bruised, she thought, but whole.

  “Lady Marian. I thought—” He broke it off. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?” He spurred his horse forward anxiously. “Is there anything I can—?”

  Marian thrust out a hand. “Stop! Just—stop.” As he reined in, white-faced, she laughed a little. “No—it’s all right... I’m sorry. Your horse startled mine, no more... hold your place, and she’ll be all right. As for me ...” She shrugged, laughing a little self-consciously “My horsemanship wants improving.”

  He began yet again: a litany. “Lady, if there’s anything I can do—”

  “No. ” It came out more harshly than she intended; he was embarrassingly persistent. “I am well. I promise. I think she is only a little unsettled by so many others, and the hounds, and this shadowy wood. She is only a gentle mare, and quite unused to hunting.”

  Beyond them, from the depths, came the bright sound of the oliphant. The barking and yelping grew frantic. Marian’s mare shook her head and sidled uneasily.

  Gisbourne’s swarthy, dark-featured face was dubious. “Lady—”

  She cut him off. “There! The oliphant—do you hear it? Perhaps they’ve trapped the boar.” Marian waved a hand. “No need to stay here for me, Sir Guy. Better you go to the boar.”

  He straightened in his saddle. “Prince John promised me first thrust,” he declared. “But if you—if there is anything—if I can do—”

  She recognized the declaration for what it was: an attempt to claim some importance. If indeed he was as ineffective a knight as Eleanor had implied, such a boon was a true honor. “Go,” she said quietly, smiling encouragement. “I would not keep you from that.”

  Indecision warped his expression. “But I—”

  The belling of the hounds grew imperative. Muffled shouts threaded more distinctly through the trees: huntsmen and hunters. “They have need of you,” Marian told him. “You shouldn’t keep them waiting.”

  Red-faced, he blurted, “There is something I must tell you—something you must hear—”

  His earnestness touched her. But clearly the hunt was nearing, and if it were true John had promised the first thrust to Gisbourne—though why an untried knight better accustomed to doing the sheriff’s sums would be given such an honor baffled Marian—she didn’t want to be the cause of him missing his chance.

  “Sir Guy, please... we can speak later.”

  “I won’t have the courage,” he cried. “Don’t you understand? But here—now—”

  “Sir Guy—” But her protest was cut off as the hunt arrived most spectacularly in their midst, in the guise of a foam-flecked boar.

  Marian had time only to see the small, lurid eyes; the bloodstained, wicked tusks; the bristly, compact body. And then leashed hounds broke through the brush, dragging cursing handlers at the end of leather thongs, and other hunters on horseback, hoisting spears into the air; and she smelled the stink of fear and rage and wildness, from the boar, certainly, and undoubtedly from the hounds. But from the men also, she thought, gathering to kill.

  They are as avid as the boar—But the observation died before she finished, lost in the porcine grunting and the high-pitched yelping of frustrated hounds.

  “First thrust,” someone said, and she saw Gisbourne abruptly go white.

  “I—I have no spear—” he blurted, grasping impotently at his saddle. “I forgot—”

  Laughter, and murmured comments. It made her abruptly angry. What right have they—But her mare stomped, snorting fearfully, and the panting, grunting boar abruptly took a step in Marian’s direction.

  “First thrust,” someone suggested, derision thick in the tone.

  White-faced, Gisbourne unsheathed his sword and flung himself from the saddle.

  “No—” Marian cried, even as others shouted, but the boar charged Gisbourne.

  The mare shied, nearly unseating Marian. She scrambled to regain her balance, dragging herself upright one-handed as she hauled on the reins, forcing the mare to comply. She heard the frenzied barking of hounds, the cursing of their handlers, the shouts of gathered hunters, the bellows-breathing of her mare. Already she was free of the clearing, free of danger. Marian reined the mare up short, spun her back, urged her forward again. There’s Gisbourne—

  A horse broke through beside her, nearly knocking the mare over. At first Marian thought the horse unmounted, possibly Gisbourne’s, running from the boar, because she saw no rider—and then she did see him and realized he was clad in the colors of the forest, nearly invisible, almost indistinguishable against the emerald, olive, and jade. It was the shock of white-blond hair that betrayed his identity, and the grimness of his features.

  “Stay back!” he shouted at her, cutting diagonally across her path to knock the mare aside. And then the bloodied boar was free of brush and vines and hard upon them both.

  His horse was in the lead. Marian, frantically reining in her mare, saw the flash of bloodied tusks; heard the screaming of Locksley’s mount; saw the plunging forelegs collapse as the boar sheared through them both. Blood sprayed flesh and foliage.

  It came in pieces, a shredded coverlet sewn haphazardly back together:

  —Locksley, free of his ruined mount—

  —nothing more than a knife in his hand—

  —white-haired, white-faced—

  —shouting something unintelligible in a language she didn’t know—

  And others, breaking through: the earl, the sheriff; others. But Gisbourne wasn’t with them. Gisbourne—? The horse thrashed its shattered forelegs, spraying blood into the air. Oh God—not Locksley—

  Gore-clotted tusks slashing, trying to rend fragile flesh.

  —and Robert of Locksley, one-handed, slashing down with a stroke of his own: a single edg
ed-steel tusk slicing through hide and fat and muscle to peel back the substance of throat—

  White hair ran red with blood. His face was a ruddy mask. “Ya Allah!” he shouted hoarsely. “La ilaha il’ Mohammed rasul Allah!”

  And then let the boar fall slack, collapsing against blood-muddied ground.

  A scream filled Gisbourne’s throat, but only a whimper issued. His arms trembled, and his hands; the shaking rattled his bones. But he could not stop the trembling. He could not ignore the fear. Can’t let it harm her—

  A puny, slender sword against a maddened, vicious boar. Everyone in England knew how dangerous the beasts were, even a man who had never hunted for his food, nor turned to boar for sport.

  The powerful beast came on, knocked aside the trembling sword, threaded tusk into hosen and thigh-flesh and shredded both with a practiced slash. Gisbourne smelled the stink, felt the compact weight, saw the small, unblinking eye, but the pain, as he went down, was inexplicably absent.

  I’m dead, he thought. Then, no—?

  The boar hewed him down like a sapling, tipping a massive, tusk-laden head to hook vulnerable flesh and fabric, then broke over Gisbourne’s shoulder to flee through deadfall and bracken.

  —not dead—?

  Behind him he heard the crashing, the scream of an injured horse, the shout of victory warped awry by an unknown language.

  “Not dead?” Gisbourne murmured, struggling to sit up.

  And then they were on him, all of them, with hands at shoulders, belly, hips, pushing him back to the ground. He was abruptly cold, and shivered; stared wide-eyed, mouth agape, as the men gathered above him, telling him to lie still; don’t move; hold still; keep quiet; until he wanted to scream.

  He didn’t scream, but he wanted to. At them, from fear, in panic. “Not dead?” he whispered. And then, in his head: Yet?