Jennifer Roberson - [Robin Hood 01]

by Lady of the Forest

  A young woman came up, as he paused to work tension from grimy fingers, and offered a cup of sweet cider with a bob of her head and brief curtsey, paying tribute to his talent. She was plain, too thin, mostly shapeless, but female nonetheless, and responsive to his smile, to a warm glance from bright blue eyes.

  Be careful, his conscience said as he drank. Then, as the girl smiled tremulously, I will sing this one for her.

  He gave her back the empty cup and bent his head, letting the tangled ringlets tumble across a shoulder. Fingers found their places, pausing as he built anticipation. Then, softly, somberly, Alan began to sing.

  He won them easily. He was, if nothing else, a genuinely talented minstrel and took pride in his appeal, using lute and voice to dominate the moments it took to complete the ballad. As he finished the peasant girl was crying, tears running down her face though she made no sound at all.

  Alan unexpectedly was moved to shame. She was not Eleanor. She was not a rich man’s wife. She was not a silly ladies’ maid looking for a moment’s dalliance. She was a young English peasant girl touched by a tragic story and the power of his skill.

  I waste myself . . . But then two coins fell into his hat, followed by three more, and the thought passed from his mind, as did the peasant girl.

  Games of skill and strength abounded, offering purses of various sizes. Locksley, who had wrestled the Lionheart himself, though unsuccessfully—Richard always won—briefly considered trying for a purse as a way of restoring his coin, until he saw the prospective opponent. He stopped short, shoulder to shoulder with other gaping men gathered around the lopsided roped-off ring near the center of Market Square, and stared in startled silence. Then, with exceeding—if unspoken—fervency, he gave pronounced and explicit thanks to God for bestowing upon him the wit to know when to hold his tongue.

  As did so many who had seen him, Locksley measured men against King Richard when determining size. Part of the Lionheart’s personal power and tremendous grasp of command was derived from his physical appearance, and his willingness to use it. Richard was a head taller than most men, particularly the smaller, slighter Saracens. His limbs were thick with muscle refined through arduous marches. Where others dwindled in the privations of Crusade—Locksley himself was one—Richard thrived. Known as a hearty trencherman, the king, being king, wanted for nothing in food and drink. In frame, habits, and spirit, Richard Coeur de Lion was impressively robust.

  But this man was enormous, even as he bent over to scoop up his hapless and squawking opponent, who vociferously protested being dangled by an ankle in midair from one hand.

  Locksley nodded absently. It lacked style, he reflected, but not effectiveness.

  He glanced around the swelling knot of onlookers as they gawked at the giant, traded wagers among themselves, and murmured vulgar appreciation for the power of the man. Someone called out that the victorious giant should dump Hal on his head, to teach him better manners. The unfortunate Hal, still suspended, shouted back, but his words were distorted by his precarious position.

  It drew a laugh from the others. Then a red-tunicked man stepped out of the crowd, brandished a purse, and challenged the next brave soul to go a fall with the giant.

  Locksley arched a brow, surveying the suddenly quiet audience. He grinned to himself. Then, not being a stupid man—and marking how the red-tunicked man’s eyes roved the audience speculatively—he took himself off to find a game promising less exertion, fewer chances for defeat, and an opponent who did not resemble a man less than some red-maned tree.

  DeLacey, clasping Marian’s elbow, deftly steered her around a puddle of urine left by a passing horse. Coolly she said, “That was cleverly done.” She eased her elbow from his grasp. “Matilda had no chance at all.”

  He gave in at once, knowing when to discard prevarication. “Yes, it was clever—and the device of a desperate man. Had I addressed myself to you, we would not now be attending the fair.”

  “No,” she agreed. “And you know why.”

  He nodded as an off-duty soldier called a greeting. “Matilda was much improved, Marian. You saw that for yourself.” He allowed the faintest tinge of iron to enter his tone. “You have been a year in mourning. It’s time you thought of frivolity again.”

  She pulled the hem of the crimson mantle out of the dust. Eleanor was taller. His daughter’s height, he thought, was the only thing in which she surpassed Hugh FitzWalter’s magnificent daughter. Certainly not in voice; Marian’s was low, and oddly—seductively—smoky. “I am more concerned, just now, with Matilda’s health.”

  “She is old, Marian. Even rest will not replace lost youth.”

  The bluntness startled her, striking home with truth. “My lord—”

  “Let us not argue.” He took her hand and tucked it into his elbow smoothly, locking it into place. “Believe me, if I thought Matilda to be in serious jeopardy, I would summon the finest physician in Nottingham. But she is old, and weary, and journeys tax her now. She shouldn’t have gone with you.”

  “No.” Marian’s expression was sober. On Eleanor’s face it might have been sullen; on hers it was exquisite. “No, I thought not myself ... but how do you say so? She has been with me all my life . . . how do I tell her I want her to stay at home?”

  “The way a knight’s daughter must,” he told her evenly. “With gentleness, with compassion, and utter inflexibility. If you want her to live to be nurse to your children, she must stay home.”

  His words triggered something. Surprised, deLacey saw a wave of high color wash away the Celtic pallor. It lent her a vividness that took his breath away. Then, aware of his gaze, she made a pretty gesture meant to stave off a question.

  The compulsion was overpowering. At that moment—this moment!—he wanted nothing more than to strip the mantle from her, and all the other fabrics, to lay bare the flesh he needed so much to taste. To yank the coif from her head and free the glorious hair, sinking his hands into it, losing himself in the satiation of the flesh that was, if only briefly, as intoxicating as power. I want it all. ALL. The wealth, the power, the woman.

  “My lord?” she inquired.

  Sanity rushed back, filling in the hole that desire had so unexpectedly uncovered in his soul. “William,” he said harshly. “You must call me William.”

  For a long, too-long moment, she regarded him intently. He felt hideously exposed; that she read every nuance in him, every fleshly need, and was repelled by it.

  But Marian was unawakened. Marian as yet did not understand such needs. Not as Eleanor might. “No,” she said merely, in her quiet, smoky voice, and pulled her hand away.

  Seventeen

  Locksley stopped at a well, since he had no coin for cider, ale, or wine, and waited his turn in the midst of Nottingham’s inhabitants and country peasants. He heard their desultory talk, the comments of dissatisfaction, the muttered imprecations against those who taxed them unduly, who sentenced them to starve because venison was denied them, in the name of the king’s selfishness, or the earl’s private holdings.

  The sheriff, all agreed, was a harsh, unbending man who carried out his office with no thought to their plight. How would he like it, they wondered aloud aggrievedly, if the Lord High Sheriff of Nottingham were forced to toil for others, denied the forest game that could feed a thousand villages throughout the worst of winters? Was it any wonder poachers were made of farmers? And what then could they do, they and their women, when the men were maimed for trying to feed their children?

  Mute, Locksley waited his turn, listening closely, and at last was given the dipper. He nodded his thanks and took water from the bucket that quenched the thirst of peasants; set his lips to the dipper that peasants had set their lips to; drank from the water that peasants also would drink from. Water, at least, was free, requiring no physical toil, exacting no tax or servitude, requiring no permission from the lord who ordered their lives.

  Locksley lowered the dipper, staring blankly into the well as water ra
n down his chin. The realization was abrupt, and as unsettling. I am they, and they are I ... there is no difference between us. The Saracens made me their peasant, just as I make these men mine.

  “Here, now.” It was the man behind him. “Here, now—d’ye mean to drink it dry?”

  Locksley swung to face him. The man fell back into the man behind him, who cursed, muttering of clumsiness, and then shut his mouth abruptly as he also saw Locksley’s expression. They were peasants, both of them, trained from childhood to know and acknowledge their betters. He wore plain, unadorned clothing not so different from their own, unless one studied workmanship and cloth, but the bearing and intangible power of presence set him apart from them.

  Each man hastily tugged at a forelock, wondering inwardly what he was doing here, drinking so publicly from a well best used by the peasantry, but neither said a word save to murmur a servile greeting.

  “No,” Locksley said tightly, pressing the dipper into the first man’s hands. “No, I’ll not drink it dry. You deserve it more than I.”

  Marian could not look at William deLacey. He had spoken so easily of Matilda being nurse to her future children, not knowing he echoed the woman’s own words. In and of themselves the words were not so startling, nor particularly uncommon, but to hear such things mentioned by the sheriff, whom her father desired her to marry—and who had, inexplicably, assumed an intensity she had never seen in a man—left her feeling oddly unsettled. He had stared at her so oddly.

  She dragged the borrowed mantle more tightly around her shoulders, tucking her hands out of sight. Steadfastly she stared into the crowd, searching for a distraction, and saw it almost at once. “Ribbons!” she cried. “I must fetch Matilda a ribbon—” She moved swiftly across the street, to busy her hands and mind with the examination of color, fabric, and length.

  He followed, of course, as she had expected him to. But by the time he stood again at her shoulder Marian had recovered her self-control. And so, she saw, had he; he put out a steady hand and pulled loose from the basket a single crimson length. He laid it across her shoulder, atop the bright woolen mantle. Then, sharply, he said “No,” and took the ribbon away.

  It was altogether puzzling. Marian turned from him again and pieced through the baskets, finding many colorful ribbons that took her fancy. In the end she chose dark wine, knowing it suited Matilda.

  Before she could speak, the sheriff paid for the trifle. Marian protested, but he dismissed it easily. “Come with me,” he said. “There is something I want to do.”

  She accommodated him, tucking the newly purchased ribbon into the purse hung beneath her mantle as he escorted her to a stall full of finely loomed wool. The quality was exquisite, the dye-lots rich and clean. No slubs in the weave, no splotches in the color.

  “This,” deLacey declared, and pulled up a fold of cloth. It was a rich, brilliant blue. “This,” he said, “not that. Blue to match your eyes, and for the blackness of your hair.”

  “No,” she said promptly. “No, my lord—I forbid it.”

  He smiled easily. “The other is ruined. And this—” He touched a fold, “—this one is Eleanor’s. It does you far less credit than you deserve.”

  She was adamant. “I have other mantles at home.”

  He was as inflexible. “I will have it made up, and bring it to you myself.”

  In that moment Marian realized the confrontation would color the rest of their lives, if she took no pains to change it. Something had happened. Something had given him leave to pursue her. Something in his eyes, that indefinable intensity, told her very clearly he intended to do so. How do I deal with this? How can I dissuade him without destroying the linkage with my father? “No,” she said, half pleading, protecting her memory of Hugh FitzWalter. “Please, my lord—”

  “It pleases me,” he agreed. “I will not be denied.”

  It will get worse, not better. She sought her only weapon. “I will not wear it. ”

  His expression was very still. She could not pierce its facade. “That is your choice,” he told her evenly. “But I will have this done.” He had told her to be inflexible. She saw the example before her.

  He is buying little pieces of me, breaking them off bit by bit. No matter what I say, no matter what I do . . . Firmly, she repeated, “I will not wear it.”

  DeLacey turned from her and looked at the merchant. “Have it taken to the castle. The account will be settled later.”

  Marian put a hand on his wrist, knowing instinctively it would hold him. “My lord, I beg you—don’t put me in such a difficult position. I can’t accept it.”

  “Indeed you can, and you shall. I insist. The matter is settled.”

  She jerked her hand away, knowing the ploy failed. “Have I no say?”

  He smiled. “In this, no. Marian—honor me. I have seen you grow up from an awkward, coltish girl into a lovely woman. I wish only to pay tribute to what you have become. Can you deny me that?” He continued before she could answer. “Your father and I were friends. I ask no more intimacy than that, Marian . . . allow me to give you this in memory of his name.”

  He was smooth and eloquent. She knew him for many things, not all of them admirable, but she could not deny the effectiveness of his words. His manner was impeccable. The underlying tension she had seen but moments before was gone, banished by a courtesy no different from that he offered others.

  And yet there remained a single small weapon, born of bitterness, that she should be so weak. “What are you like, I wonder, when you speak as you’d like to speak, without the requirements of office?”

  The recoil was minute, but present. She knew it when she saw it, because she had waited for it. “Do you imply I am a liar?”

  Marian laughed, seeing and hearing genuine astonishment. “A diplomat, my lord. A man overschooled with words, who understands phraseology far better than most, I fear. And while I understand the means, I don’t comprehend the intent. Why manipulate me?”

  She had at last effectively undercut him. “Because,” he said finally, in an unfamiliar tone, “you insist upon it.”

  It dumbfounded her, but he offered no explanation. He offered nothing at all, save a tight, masked expression she found less than eloquent, yet strangely illuminating.

  The smell of meat pasties roused Locksley’s appetite, but he had no coin with which to buy any. While water cost nothing, victuals weren’t free, which only renewed his determination to find a game at which he could win a purse.

  He heard the sound before he saw the cause: a whining hum of displaced air, cut through by wooden shafts. He knew it instantly. Swiftly he made his way through the multitude, and stopped short at the edge of the green near Market Square. Six archers competed, shooting at a distance that would soon bespeak their skill. Locksley watched closely, marking longbows and cloth-yard arrows, fletched with ticked goose quills.

  The targets were vaguely man-shaped, made of straw stuffed into sacking, then bound against movable wooden standards. On the breast of each “man” were painted multicolored rings, with a heart-shaped bull’s-eye in the center.

  Locksley smiled, folded his arms and spread his legs to relax his stance. He watched as the six men drew arrows, nocked, and loosed. One shaft flew wide, ending that archer’s participation. Two others struck straw, naught else, which also ended the turns. One struck the outer ring, two others the center ring. But none pierced the heart. No man could continue.

  Absently, he nodded. The barker was calling for new archers. He marked his man apart, and when all six failed archers stepped away from the line, Locksley moved to intercept him. “A good stout bow,” he said lightly, altering his accent to something less than aristocratic, “but a bit too tall for you.”

  The man glowered at him. He was dark-haired, dark-eyed, sullen, with a squint to one eye. “D’ye you think you could do better?”

  Locksley hitched a shoulder. “But one way to see. Give me the loan of your bow and five of your arrows. You’ll share in t
he winnings.”

  The man assessed him, noting quality and cut of clothing; considering possibilities. “How much?”

  “A quarter,” Locksley answered.

  “Half,” the man countered. “Without bow nor arrows, you’ll win nothing at all.”

  Locksley paused a moment, as if thinking it over. “Bargain.”

  The man squinted at him. “Who be you, then?”

  He hesitated. “Robin. Robin of Locksley, hard by Huntington.”

  “I know it.” The man handed over the bow. “I’m Tom Fletcher, of Hathersage. ’Tis what I do, d’ye see: make arrows such as these. So what, I ask myself, do you know of bows?”

  Robert, newly christened Robin, hitched a single shoulder. “Watch me shoot, Tom Fletcher, and you’ll see what I know of bows.”

  “Hmmmph,” was Tom Fletcher’s comment, but he stood aside to watch as Locksley tested the bow.

  It was smooth, sleek yew, measuring more than six feet. Locksley found the pull to his liking, as anticipated, and the fit of the leather-wrapped handgrip. He put out his right hand for an arrow, and Tom Fletcher gave him one.

  “Clear away!” someone shouted. “Clear away for the archers!”

  He stepped to the line, along with five others. The butts remained at the same distance, as no one had struck the heart. He measured it automatically, marked the play of breeze, and honed his concentration. A strange bow and a strange arrow; it would take him more than once.

  Five others loosed. Locksley nocked his borrowed arrow, raised his borrowed longbow, brought back his right hand to his jaw. Tension sang through string and arms, promising sweet power. He hadn’t handled a longbow for more months than he cared to recall.

  He counted, then loosed. The string hummed briefly as it catapulted the feathered shaft through the light spring air. It struck into the target just outside the heart-shaped bull’s-eye.