Jennifer Roberson - [Robin Hood 01]

by Lady of the Forest

“But if you can’t—if there is no money . . .” Locksley shook his head. “He will say it’s for his brother.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “And keep it for himself.”

  In Abraham’s silence the answer was implicit.

  Twenty

  Marian frowned, watching as the soldiers cut the leather gag from Will Scarlet’s mouth. The flesh beneath was pale and compressed, baring a long-set network of creases in the midst of grime-smudged stubble. She knew it must be painful, but he made no move to rub his face. He was, withal, filthy, and no doubt lice-ridden as well. Her body answered at once, setting up a chorus of nonexistent itches she longed to scratch vigorously, but didn’t because she felt it would give a murderer victory, when he deserved nothing more than contempt for such base brutality. Four men, she reflected. Out of spite, or out of temper?

  “I want to know,” deLacey said, “if you understand.”

  Will Scarlet stared at him from dark eyes aglitter with abiding malignancy.

  The sheriff was patient. “Do you understand?”

  Still the man was silent. The crowd began to murmur.

  And yet a third time, with additional explanation. “If you win the match you will not be hanged. I say this before witnesses: half of Nottingham.”

  Scarlet’s fixed stare did not waver. He merely thrust out his manacled wrists in a jangle of chiming iron.

  The sheriff looked to his guard contingent. “I charge you with the keeping of this man. If he attempts to escape, you will kill him at once.” He looked at the crowd, raising his voice, pitching it to carry. “Is that not fair? That if a murderer escape, he be killed immediately so as not to risk innocent souls?”

  Marian looked at the faces. Everyone was nodding. He plays them with words. He plays them all like fish. They know the giant will win. All they want is entertainment. Iron chimed again as Will Scarlet altered his stance. The sheriff motioned a soldier to unlock the shackles. Why? Marian wondered. What does he gain from this?

  She was a blaze of crimson before Will Scathlocke, all swaddled in brilliant wool. It made it easy to find her. It made it easy to see her. It made it a simple thing to mark out the sheriff’s woman, who believed he should be hanged.

  Had she not proclaimed it? You said he had been sentenced. Telling him, very plainly, she thought he should be denied a chance to save himself.

  Wife, daughter, mistress. The title didn’t matter. She thought he should hang. Even without her words she damned him with her eyes, with the stiffness of expression, sickened by his crime.

  No crime at all, killing those men. Had he to do it again, he would do much more than kill them. He would rend each limb from limb and laugh while doing it.

  She was beautiful, he saw, in the Celtic way: dark and bright at once, with a fey, compelling glamour set to snare a man’s attention even in repose, when she put no thought to it. Not so very different from the woman he had loved.

  Noise around him rose. Vision flickered faintly. Even the smell had changed: prelude to the madness. He tingled in his groin and armpits, felt the tightening of genitals. Saliva filled his mouth.

  They asked: would he fight the giant?

  He’d fight any man; often, he had no choice, when the madness came upon him.

  And a second ludicrous question: would he not attempt escape?

  In that also, there was no choice. What fool would stay behind, to suffer for Norman justice? To be hanged for Norman lies?

  But William Scathlocke nodded.

  DeLacey motioned for the iron to be removed and watched dispassionately as a soldier bent to unlock the ankles, then rose again to tend the wrists. Weight fell from imprisoned limbs, clamoring of freedom. DeLacey heard the murmuring spread: Nottingham was astonished that he would treat one of them so fairly as to give a second chance to a man, a brutal murderer, already tried and sentenced to hang.

  It would do, he knew. The fight and its fury would command their attention, and then, very quietly, in the midst of so much turmoil—he knew Scathlocke’s history would ensure a violent battle—the sheriff could at last tend his office. The boy would surreptitously be taken away to the castle, to receive proper punishment as prescribed by law. The giant, Little John, would eventually prevail, because no single man, regardless of battle madness, could win against such power.

  And William Scathlocke, who would of course attempt escape—only a fool would not, and Scarlet, regardless of birth, was no fool, they said—could be cut down in the streets like the brutal beast he was. And all my problems solved with nary a word of protest.

  With everything settled so neatly before all of Nottingham, even Marian couldn’t protest that the sheriff had been unjust. A woman’s weapon, the tongue; but he would blunt it, for now.

  John Naylor, Little John, Hathersage Giant and shepherd, stared down in some consternation at the man who was meant to fight him. He did not know him personally, but knew a little about him; William Scathlocke, called Scarlet, had become notorious. Everyone in Nottinghamshire knew well what he had done. And none, so far as Little John knew, blamed him for any of it.

  But murder was murder, even in Norman England. And that a lowborn English peasant had dared to lay his dirty villein’s hands on four Normans in Prince John’s personal service, let alone kill them . . . well, no man guilty of such could hope for an attempt at understanding, nor even a chance to explain, save from his own people. People such as dared speak no word in Scathlocke’s defense, lest the Normans look to them.

  Scathlocke, he decided, did not look like a murderer. He looked very much like every other Englishman trying to make a living in an age of brutal indifference, ruled by ruthless, selfish men. Little John knew nothing of nobility, save names and royal castles, and how to offer servility when such behavior was required. His entire life experience was limited to shepherding and peasanthood, to ignorance and hardship, to unending labor performed to pay killing taxes to Norman overlords. He knew what was fair, and what wasn’t; he knew the grinding poverty so many others shared. He knew a little of anger, something of resentment; had more than a passing acquaintanceship with frustration and helplessness.

  Madness he didn’t know. But William Scathlocke did.

  Little John was not afraid of the man, whom he couldn’t understand, whom rumor claimed went mad when the heat of battle was on him. Little John’s fear of physical abuse at the hands of others had died in early adolescence, when he stood head and shoulders above even the tallest of men. Of course, such tremendous size did not ward him from other abuses. He had grown up with a raft of names meant to cut him to the heart, if not harm the body. Some had managed to do it.

  He discovered the only true escape, the only true chance at making a life for himself, was to turn from humans entirely and take solace in animals. They loved unconditionally. And if they couldn’t speak, not as men and women spoke, at least the language they used offered comfort and release.

  Shepherding suited him. He expected no better life, content to tend, to lamb, to shear. But when a sweating, belligerent man at a North Country fair had challenged him to a wrestling match—he’d beaten everyone else—Little John discovered he could do more than tend his sheep; he could win by sheer power if not by technique. But making a living from the fairs was not fulfilling enough. There they gawked at his size, murmuring comments behind his back, muttering of the monster, resurrecting the old names, though with less virulence than simple astonishment underscored by a trace of distaste. Always, it was the sheep to which he went for personal peace.

  He was not a violent man. He was not a difficult man. He was not a man who desired to irritate his betters, yet irritate one he had. Little John knew it instinctively, as well as who the man was: the lord high sheriff himself. But the giant could not stand silently by and do nothing for the boy, who was like to lose his hand without a protest in his behalf.

  No—the woman had protested. She had spoken her mind, voicing the concerns that Little John felt as well, but she w
as a woman, with no more influence in matters of decision than a serf. She couldn’t win without someone to help her, without a man large enough to propose a way to alter the “justice” that would deprive a boy of his hand.

  And now here he stood, staring down at the man called Will Scarlet, murderer, whom everyone said was mad. A man but half the giant’s size but who, in his madness, could kill four armed Norman soldiers.

  Scathlocke had, rumor said, beaten one man to death. The fourth and final soldier he had relieved of his throat.

  Little John was not afraid, but neither was he such a fool as to assume there was no danger in a man with nothing to lose.

  Much stood very still, offering no protest. He was quick and deft and agile, but he knew when he was caught. He knew also, instinctively, when it was best simply to wait, because trying to escape when the time wasn’t right merely resulted in additional pain.

  The soldier was big, sheathed in mail shirt, blue tabard, and the conical Norman helm with its ugly metal nasal that distorted a man’s face even as it protected it. The Norman’s hands were big also, and very strong; Much felt the weight of them around his wrists, crossed snuggly behind his back.

  He breathed noisily through his mouth, letting it hang slack. It was easier to breathe that way, because a backhanded blow in childhood—he didn’t remember from whom; not his father, was it?—had collapsed the bridge of his nose. Things were better now that he had grown, but spring and fall were difficult seasons because his head was always stuffed.

  The giant he found astonishing. Never had he seen a man so tall, nor with such an incandescent bushiness of red hair and beard. He wore only baggy hosen so his freckled torso was bared, giving Much—and everyone else—an unobstructed view of a massive chest.

  Blue eyes, Much saw, tilting back his head to look. And pale, reddish lashes. Giant, he said in silence, thinking of the world he had created for himself, where imaginary beings treated him like a king.

  He added someone to it. A friendly, red-haired giant, who protected him against harm.

  Marian, and the giant. Princess and protector.

  Much smiled happily. His world was getting better.

  Cold, Marian thought. Cold—and very angry. The near-black eyes were unsettling, so fixed and oddly compelling. She would not have characterized them as the eyes of a madman, because she had never seen a madman before; if Will Scathlocke-Scarlet really were one, he was her first. She hoped he was her last.

  DeLacey stirred beside her. “Get on with it,” he commanded.

  She glanced at him sharply, hearing the undertone of anticipation; of an odd, unstated pleasure, as if he knew perfectly well what would come of the bout. She found it both interesting and dismaying at once, that a man could predict a thing so accurately as to display not even the slightest concern over men he did not control.

  Or did he? He was, she had come to believe, a consummate manipulator of people and things around him. She had seen it in the past two days; she had been a victim of it herself. She understood there existed such things as subterfuge and intrigue—she was not an ignorant woman, and her father was plainspoken—but never had she seen the practice of gamesmanship applied before her eyes, when she had the vision to see it.

  For example, the game of matchmaking: he had intended to make a match between Eleanor and Locksley and had worked toward that aim with concerted diligence. That the ploy had failed was hardly his fault— Eleanor herself had destroyed the chance of a marriage—but for all Marian knew the earl himself might have withheld his permission once it got that far. And, of course, there was Locksley—

  Robin. She conjured his face, hearing in his tone the thing that had made him someone else, someone other than what they claimed; not so much a hero-knight as a vulnerable young man, come home to things unknown. Robin. She was cognizant of new confusion; of victory and pleasure in the name no others used.

  “Marian.” The sheriff put a hand upon her arm to move her out of danger.

  The ring was abruptly a battlefield. Marian knew nothing of wrestling, and very little of fighting. This was, plainly, mayhem, the focused, obsessed intent of one man to defeat another so he could escape execution.

  She did not know what the giant expected. Perhaps it was a time spent in introduction, in the courtesies of discovery while they tested one another. But what Scarlet answered with superseded courtesies, being nothing more than a brutal display of raw, unfettered need, and physical expiation for sins only he understood.

  Will Scarlet spun on his heels and charged at the giant, aiming for his shins. Hands clutched at knees, thumbs dug into muscle. Little John growled a startled protest, then grabbed doubled handfuls of Scarlet’s ragged tunic and shoved down across bunched shoulders even as he himself stumbled back, struggling to hold his balance.

  A simple shove, no more, yet the giant’s unthinking reaction hurled Scarlet to the street, smashing his chest into packed dirt. Onlookers shouted, elbowing one another and raising myriad wagers.

  Scarlet coughed, swore, then scrambled up, wiping at a split lip. The tunic was filthier than ever, stained now by manure and blood. Lank, dirty dark hair hung into his face and eyes. He hunched, twitching fingers and rolled his head against taut shoulders, cracking the bones in his neck. Marian saw the same cold, wary look in eyes and expression as he moved around the circle, measuring the giant. This time when he dove, Little John was ready.

  The giant snatched Scarlet out of the air like an insect caught in midflight and slammed him down again, driving the air from laboring lungs in a blurted, garbled bleat. This time he knelt over Scarlet, leaning on splayed hands. Legs were spread and braced.

  As Scarlet, gasping, pressed himself up from the dirt, Little John slid an arm between his opponent’s wrist and the ground and neatly hooked away the braced limb that held up Scarlet’s weight. The murderer fell. Again. And again, as the giant alternated arms. The maneuver, repeated four times, deprived the smaller man utterly of mobility and dropped him easily every time he tried to rise.

  “D‘ye give in, then?” Little John asked. “D’ye yield to the better man?”

  Scarlet lay prone, panting in the dirt, and the giant hovered over him, waiting for him to move.

  A trick, Marian saw. Wrestling tricks a body when the man least expects it ... the winner uses weight, and balance, and power—

  Spectators were shouting encouragement to both men. It didn’t seem to matter to them which man won. Amazed, Marian stared around the throng closing in on the ring. The faces were avid, the eyes oddly vacant of sense or comprehension. To them it was enough merely to shout aloud, for one man or the other, before the hated sheriff.

  Little John was laughing. He sprawled on knees and hands across Scarlet’s body, then slapped him on one shoulder, murmuring something Marian couldn’t hear. Another call for surrender, she guessed, which still wasn’t answered. The giant turned his head to look at Much, whose hand would remain attached now that victory was assured.

  Scarlet moved then, kicking out at Little John’s ankles even as he snatched a thick wrist and jerked it from the ground. As the giant wavered, shouting unintelligibly, Will Scarlet carried the big hand to his mouth and bit deeply into flesh. Little John howled as blood began to flow.

  “Cheating!” someone shouted.

  “Forfeit the match!” cried another.

  “You’ve doomed yourself!” came a third. “They’ll have to hang you, churl!”

  The giant slammed a fist into the side of Will Scarlet’s head, hurling him across the ring. People continued to shout that Scarlet had cheated; that the giant was the winner.

  Marian glanced at deLacey for a ruling. “What becomes of him now?”

  Delacey’s expression was grim. “There are rules to a match, albeit unspoken ones.” He looked down at her. “This cannot be tolerated.”

  “Then you’ll hang him anyway.” She looked past him to the boy. “What about Much?”

  In the ring, Scarlet charged Little J
ohn, who caught him by the shoulders and hurled him away once more.

  “The boy will—” DeLacey’s hand reached for her arm. “Marian—beware—”

  And then a body fetched up hard against her legs and feet, nearly knocking her down. Marian cried out, staggering, flailing her arms awkwardly as she attempted to regain balance.

  The body came up clawing, rolling upward from the dirt, snatching at mantle and kirtle, dragging cloth aside as it fouled his route. Hands dug through fabric, gouging into tender flesh. She smelled the stench of the man. “What do you—?”

  But one arm went around her ribs, squeezing the breath from her body. Another clamped down on her throat. She felt a man’s rigid body pressed hard the length of her spine, crushing her buttocks into his thighs, smashing her head against his heaving chest.

  “I’ll kill her,” Will Scarlet promised. “And don’t think I can’t. I like the taste of throats, especially Norman ones.”

  Twenty-One

  Locksley heard the muffled tumult as he stepped out of Abraham’s dwelling, mentally counting coin he had counted three times over, thinking bleak, dark thoughts about ransoms left unpaid and taxes unfairly diverted to greedy, treacherous princes desirous of being king.

  The narrowness of the twisting alleyway funneled and distorted the sound, making it difficult to determine from which direction the shouting and cheering came. He paused, listening, wondering at its cause. Market Square, he guessed . . . and then it stopped, cut off like a stewing hen’s head. The uncanny absence of sound was as eerily absolute as the moment after a thunderclap so loud as to still a heart.

  He heard through the funnel William deLacey’s voice, raised in fury and fear: “Kill me this villein!”

  And then a second voice, bellowing another order in lowborn, deep-toned speech: “Let the woman go!”

  Marian FitzWalter had been with the sheriff. Locksley touched his meat-knife, then broke into a run.