Jennifer Roberson - [Robin Hood 01]

by Lady of the Forest

  Marian could smell the stink of the dungeon on Scathlocke, the tang of filth and physical exertion mixed with tension and fear. She thrashed once, flailing violently, trying to kick free of her mantle and the man who imprisoned her. Half throttled, she gasped, “But—I’m not—”

  Dirty, bloodied fingers locked into her veil and braid, jerking her head into stillness. The arm across her throat cut off the rest of her protest. “D‘ye think I care? D’ye think it matters to me? You’re meat for eating, lady . . . sheriffs leman, are you?”

  It was harder to speak now, but she gritted it between her teeth. “No—I’m n—” And then vision darkened perceptibly as the pressure on her throat increased. She choked, wailing mutely, trying to claw at the arm.

  His breath stirred her veil, gusting across her cheek. “Best come with me, little whore. You’ll buy Will Scarlet his freedom.”

  Even as he spoke he backed away from the others, pulling her off her feet. Marian scrambled for purchase, digging in her heels, trying to right herself even as he moved, but Scarlet was taller, stronger, heavier, more determined even than she. Half dragging, half carrying her, he worked his way through the murmuring crowd as deLacey and soldiers followed.

  The sheriff’s eyes were wild. His mouth, as he gave terse orders, was warped into ugly grimness. Marian, seeing that, felt a measure of relief. Surely deLacey would stop him.

  She stumbled, hissing in startled fright. Scarlet held her elbows pinned against her sides by one thick arm, immobilizing her head with the other even as he dragged her. All she could do was kick, hoping to hook an ankle. But slippered feet fouled on heavy folds of crimson wool, thwarting her attempt.

  He can’t mean to carry me off . . . Acknowledgment blossomed: indeed, he could carry her off, even through Nottingham. And probably would, using her as his parole. Someone has to stop him. Marian grimaced, baring teeth, wishing she could bite. Wishing she could breathe.

  “Kill me this villein!” the sheriff shouted in fury.

  And then the giant, bellowing, blood smeared on his face: “Let the woman go!”

  Scarlet stumbled, cursing, and caught her up more closely than ever, near to cracking ribs. Above her own choked gasp Marian could hear his ragged breathing. He wasn’t certain, she realized. He wasn’t completely convinced that she would be enough.

  Inconsequential thoughts fed her frenzied mind inanities she didn’t want to consider. He killed four men. He had called her little whore. He had called her the sheriffs leman. He had even called her a Norman. I’m not! she railed futilely. As if it might make a difference.

  Much gaped as hands fell free. He was loose. The soldier let go of his wrists as the murderer grabbed the woman.

  Grabbed Marian.

  Transfixed, Much stared. He wouldn’t kill her, would he? Not Marian. Not her.

  The sheriff, enraged, was shouting. Even the giant was.

  Should he shout, too? But wouldn’t they catch him again?

  Much laughed: he was free.

  He spun on his heel and ran, darting through the crowd, ducking arms and elbows. Keeping in the tail of one eye the blood-bright woolen mantle.

  A woman, the giant raged. How could he threaten a woman? It was one thing to attack a man twice your size, even unfairly; another entirely to offer harm to a woman.

  Little John strode through the crowd rapidly, thrusting aside human impediments with huge, practiced hands. Sheep were more amenable, and certainly considerably smaller, but they were similar in habits to Nottingham citizens, who followed a single man as the flock followed the bellwether.

  But this bellwether, he knew, was no castrated ram with a bell around his neck. This bellwether intended to desert the flock, taking the finest ewe with him.

  He did not know her. He had never seen her before. It didn’t matter to him that she was the sheriffs daughter, or wife, or mistress. What mattered to Little John was that she was being treated unfairly, much too roughly, and had no recourse at all.

  The giant recalled what that was like. When he was small, and powerless; when he was bigger, and shy. He also remembered the day he had put a stop to it, using for the first time sheer physical strength—and the anger of too many years—to stop the verbal abuse that hurt worse, in many ways, than the beatings he’d undergone.

  No more beatings. No more verbal abuse. No one dared, now.

  Yet Will Scarlet dared. And he dared it with a woman.

  Not fair, Little John muttered inwardly. One thing to bite a man . . . but to carry off a woman—

  If no one else could get the woman back, Little John would see to it he did.

  DeLacey was cold, very cold, in mind as well as body. A part of him wanted very much to lose control absolutely and bellow to the heavens of this incredible outrage, screaming furious epithets at the outlaw who had so confounded him. But to do so risked Marian; it also risked his precarious governance of Nottingham itself.

  He had felt it clearly but moments before. They questioned him, the people. They dared to question him, even within their minds; even if they didn’t realize what they did, he knew they questioned him. Marian had caused it initially, but that had passed. He had won back control with the introduction of the murderer into the contest for Much’s hand, intending to maintain that control with the outcome of the match.

  But now the murderer had gained control for himself by abducting Marian. And everyone in Nottingham—including Marian herself—expected the sheriff to resolve the situation. With an abundant expediency. I will have her back, he declared. Alive, unharmed, untouched.

  Or he would, in his authority, order Will Scathlocke hanged, quartered, decapitated. With all of Nottingham made to watch.

  “—mistake!” Marian gasped. “I’m not—” She swallowed convulsively, gritting her teeth against the pain of her throat. “I’m not who you think—” But the voice was weak and thready, distorted by compression even as it died out. She doubted he heard her over the rasp of his own breathing, or the muffled hum of onlookers. Can’t someone—? Anyone—?

  No, they could not. Or would not. He had killed four men. And who was she to them? Most of them didn’t know her, even if they knew of her. Why would anyone risk himself in an attempt to stop Will Scarlet?

  One of her slippers was lost, baring stocking and foot. Marian scrabbled awkwardly, trying to regain purchase, but Scarlet merely tightened his grasp and dragged her more quickly yet. She could barely breathe through the constriction around her ribs. If he loosened only a little—

  “Be still!” he snapped.

  Marian gritted her teeth. If he wants so much to drag me, why not let him carry me? She sagged, going briefly limp. As Scarlet cursed, paused, hitched her up again, Marian doubled up both legs and kicked out backward. She wanted to land both feet in the most vulnerable place she could reach, be it belly, groin, or knees. Anything would do, so long as it obstructed him.

  He was spread-legged, which defeated her attempt. One of her feet grazed the inside of a thigh and went through, doing no damage. The other, bare of slipper, caught a knee briefly, then fouled on baggy hose.

  One of her arms was free. Marian reached up behind her head, clawing, and caught an ear. With what strength remained, tapping also into anger, she attempted in all violence to rip the ear from his head.

  Cursing, Scarlet clamped a hand closed on her wrist. “Let it go—Let it go—”

  She wanted to curse back, but the pain in her wrist demanded all her attention. He didn’t twist it. Didn’t even try to pull her hand away. He just squeezed.

  Fingers sprang free of the ear. Scarlet forced the arm back down to the other, caught at her midsection, and thrust the aching wrist into his other hand. There he held her just long enough to catch a handful of mantle and sweep the folds of summerweight wool up over her head. He swaddled her in the mantle, blocking light, vision, air, then lifted and dumped her facedown across one shoulder.

  She tried once to struggle. The arm slackened briefly, showing her wi
thout words the danger she risked. If she struggled, he’d let her fall. Headfirst to the street, where she’d likely break her neck.

  Marian’s thoughts worked swiftly, purging her of pain and humiliation, the overwhelming fear. There was more here at stake than being carried off like a sack of flour. There were plans to be considered. Patience —She damped her bitterness. An opportunity would present itself no matter what she did.

  Eventually, he would stop. Eventually he would take her down from his shoulder. Eventually he would unwrap her. And then she would do whatever it took to win herself free of him.

  Locksley thrust his way into the crowd, shoving others aside. He saw the red-haired giant doing much the same, working his way through the throng. The streets were almost impassable, clogged with hundreds of people now all oddly intent upon a single thing: to follow the giant, who followed the sheriff, who followed someone else.

  He caught an arm, stopping one man in his tracks. “Who is it? What has happened?”

  The man scowled back. “Fight’s over.” He shrugged. His face was pocked with the scars of a childhood disease. “Scarlet’s got himself loose.”

  Locksley frowned. “Scarlet?”

  “Will Scarlet, they call him. Man what killed four Normans. Sheriff let him fight the giant for the boy’s hand, but he snatched the woman with the sheriff instead.” The pockmarked man shrugged again. “I never seen her before.”

  He was curt in urgency. “Was she wearing red?”

  The man lacked three teeth. He displayed his lack in a grin. “Bright as day, she was. Made her an easy target.”

  Locksley stared at the man. “He killed four men, you say.”

  “Four Norman soldiers. Due to hang, he is—if the sheriff doesn’t kill him barehand for this.”

  Locksley stood very still in the midst of constant motion. The man stared at him a moment, then shrugged and edged away. Locksley was aware of movement around him, the comments of the people as they eddied around the obstruction, then passed on by him. But none of it was important. None of it mattered.

  Marian FitzWalter, in the hands of a murderer.

  Once, he might have assumed a man would never harm a woman, but war had changed that assumption. War changed men; it had certainly changed him. And though he had protested, though he had tried to stop them in the name of God, the king, and chivalry, not a single Christian soldier had listened. They had done whatever they pleased, shouting then of conquest; later, of education: the dead were Saracens, they said, heretics and faithless dogs God wanted destroyed.

  He knew better. He had seen too many women sundered by Christian swords to trust to gender to save her. He had seen too many women raped by groups of Christian men to trust to manners to save her.

  Stripped of the weapons to stop it, of the freedom to do it, of the will to even attempt it, Locksley had been forced to watch the father die.

  This time was different. He had weapons and freedom and will. He would not stand idly by and let the daughter die.

  Twenty-Two

  Will Scarlet was a stranger to Nottingham, hailing from a village near Croxden Abbey. He knew nothing of the alleys, the streets, the winding passageways between buildings that nearly touched one another, so closely were they built. He knew only that if he gave way, if he let the soldiers take him, the sheriff would see to it he died in a way much more lengthy and painful than hanging. And so he carried the woman down every winding alley that gave onto another, hoping to foil the men that surely would follow, to gain back the sheriffs woman.

  After putting up a fight that had taxed his patience and temper, she’d quieted. She hung now across one shoulder, slack as a sack of flour, not even so much as moaning. He heard no crying, either, nor the stifled sobs of a woman in fear trying not to let him know. He knew that sound very well. It woke him every night, in the darkness of his dreams.

  She was still, and very quiet. Not even so much as a twitch.

  Not dead, is she? Abruptly he wanted to stop, to let her down, and lay her gently in the street, and strip the mantle back. To see if she breathed. Don’t let her be dead.

  But he didn’t dare stop running. If they caught him, he was dead. Dead for four killings, not counting the sheriffs woman. They’d hang him anyway, even if she lived.

  No choice, then. Just run ... and run some more, until he was free of the city, safe in the shadows of close-grown woods, where he could be a shadow and hide himself in foliage and see if the woman lived.

  Panting, he went on, ignoring the trembling in his legs, the gnawing weakness of an exhaustion that threatened to bring him down. No decent food, very little water, beatings twice and three times a day—there was little of him left, save what he manufactured out of hatred and anger and pain.

  Don’t let her be dead.

  That, he couldn’t bear. It would drive him mad again. And he would kill again, lost in grief and pain. Kill and kill and kill, until someone killed him.

  Maybe it was best. Maybe he deserved it. Maybe letting them kill him would stop the sounds he heard, in the darkness of his dreams.

  Let her be alive, he thought. But he said nothing aloud. If she was dead, she couldn’t hear him. Alive, she wouldn’t believe him. No more than the sheriff himself, when Scarlet had told him the truth of the killings.

  Alan of the Dales reached out and caught the boy, pulling him up short. The object of his attentions twisted in his grasp, but Alan’s hands were strong. “Wait,” he said only, using the tone of voice he’d heard used by men of power, when they wanted a thing done.

  The boy froze stiffly, one arm trapped in Alan’s grasp. He made no protest, made no sound, merely waited, as he’d been bidden. Lank brown hair straggled into eyes the color of ale, dark with a tinge of russet when the light hit right.

  Alan redistributed the weight of his lute. “Do you know what happened?” It was important that he know; a minstrel needed fodder for his music, if he were to continue.

  The boy stared back at him, big-eyed and pale of face.

  Alan shook his arm. “A question, boy. Do you know what happened?”

  The boy shivered. He was thin, and slight, and fragile. His face was made of hollows, cut through with oblique angles. The nose was misshapen, flattened across the bridge by something other than nature. Circles like smudgy bruises lay beneath his lackluster eyes.

  Alan had seen such faces on the beggars in every city. He had thanked God often that his music saved him from the life, when there were no other prospects save scrabbling in the streets. He was fortunate his mother had lived long enough to buy him lessons from the duke’s old lute-player. His pretty face would have bought him a living, if he’d stayed at the keep with the duke, but his tastes lay in other directions . . . ah, but that was long ago. His life was different, now.

  He loosened his grip on the arm. “I don’t mean to hurt you, boy. I’m only asking a question.” It got him nothing. The boy stood perfectly still, watching out of eyes slewed sideways in his head, like a dog about to be whipped. Alan let him go. “Never mind. I’ll ask someone else.”

  The boy didn’t run at once. “Marian,” he said softly, in a muffled, slurry tone. Then darted into the throng and was gone almost instantly.

  Marian. Marian FitzWalter? The woman from Huntington Castle?

  No. Surely not. And even if it were, what did it matter to him? She was dangerous. She could tell the sheriff he was in Nottingham. He wanted nothing to do with her.

  Alan shrugged a little. Not worth the wondering. What concerned him now was the temper of the crowd, moving onward through the streets like a herd of the king’s deer being worked by huntsmen and hounds.

  Worth following, the boy. If he could be seen again.

  Alan hugged his lute. No sense risking it. He would move, like everyone else, toward the edges of the city. Hoping for the sort of thing he could put into a song.

  The right sort of song could make him his fortune, but he hadn’t found it yet. There was no one in England wo
rth making music about. Certainly Prince John wasn’t. The only one who was worth the effort was imprisoned in a dungeon in a foreign king’s castle.

  They said a minstrel had discovered the Lionheart. Blondel, they called him. King Richard’s personal lute-player, who’d been with him on Crusade.

  No doubt Blondel had plenty of inspiration, while Alan was left with none. “Give me a hero,” he begged, speaking to his Muse. They were on personal terms. “Give me a man—and a woman?” He considered. “There should be a woman, so love can play a part . . .” He nodded. “Give me a man and woman about whom legends can be made.” He paused again, thinking seriously, then added a final request, because it wouldn’t do to present himself to his Muse as a man with no humility, though some might argue that he had none anyway. Alan shrugged, dismissing that. “And give me the talent to make those legends live.”

  William deLacey was furious. The guard contingent summoned from the castle faced him in the center of the street, every man a fool, protesting the sheriffs orders without saying a word.

  “You have crossbows,” he said flatly. “If swords can’t stop him, a crossbow quarrel will.”

  “But—” One of the blue-tabarded soldiers shifted from foot to foot. “My lord Sheriff, he’s carrying the woman. There is a danger that we might strike her instead.”

  DeLacey shut his teeth on the fury he longed to display. “I sent for the eight of you because you are reputed to be the best archers in the castle.” He waited for comprehension. When none came, he lashed out. “He has legs, has he not? Aim for his legs, you fools!” He stared angrily at each man, noting reticence and resentment on the dark Norman faces. “Or is it you fear your reputed competence is lacking? That no matter how careful you are, your incompetence will harm the woman instead of the man?”

  The soldiers exchanged glances. Their expressions did not improve.