“Aye,” Little John agreed glumly. “Come along, then, I’ll take you to the woman. Though I can’t say what Will Scarlet will do about it—he’s wanting to sell her to the sheriff in exchange for his freedom.”
“William deLacey would never allow that. He might agree because it’s politic, but he’d never stand for it. He’d merely find another way to have him taken and killed.” Robin bent slowly and caught up Little John’s forgotten quarterstaff. “Before it gets dark, if you don’t mind.”
Little John looked down at him. “Not a Norman. Nor a peasant.”
“No.” Robin’s grim smile hooked crookedly. “A ‘pretty girl,’ you said.”
Little John grunted. “I’ve been wrong before.”
Much froze into poised watchfulness. Was it time? Was it now?
No. Surely not. Where was Robin?
Now?
He could see Will Scarlet standing before Marian, stubbled face twisted into an expression Much had seen on other faces before now. It was helplessness, futility, and an unalloyed need to do something, something, anything at all, to relieve the painful emptiness that filled a peasant’s soul.
Marian’s back was to him. He could see her hands from where he squatted. Her wrists were still tied, her hands still slack. The knots, he didn’t doubt, were no less taut than they’d been before, and he still lacked a knife.
He might have taken Robin’s, but he’d said he could do it with naught but nimble fingers.
Then Scarlet abruptly grabbed Marian and snatched her off the stump. His strident shout was clear to Much. “Put yourself in my place, little Norman whore, and ask yourself why I murdered four of your own kind. Put yourself in my place, little Norman whore—and ask yourself why I shouldn’t do to you what they did to her!”
Much’s mouth dropped open. He lingered on the border between flight and some kind of protest. Did Scarlet mean to harm her?
But Marian said nothing, nor did she make any attempt to move. She just hung there in Scarlet’s hands. Much rubbed distractedly at his stuffy nose. This was for him to do, to set the princess free.
He fixed his gaze on the strip of wool binding her wrists. If he were a magician, like Merlin, he could conjure the knots undone. But he wasn’t. He was Much. He’d have to do it himself just the way he always did.
Marian refused to shut her eyes. He’ll do whatever he wants—but I won’t let him make me cower. Part of her wanted to cower. Part of her wanted to cry. But a greater part of her was angry, very angry, that she would be violated not because he was a man who believed in abusing women, but because of a mistake.
His eyes were nearly black. His hands clasped her arms, fingers digging in. She could smell the stink of him, hear the hiss of his breath, see the malignant grief and helplessness that drove him so mercilessly. “Meggie,” he whispered.
The cracking of a twig heralded an approach. Even as Scarlet stiffened, fingers digging more deeply, a crude quarterstaff was inserted almost leisurely between his body and hers.
“You will let her go.” Robert of Locksley, moving abreast of the red-maned giant, stepped out of deepwood shadow into the gilt-clad glamour of sunset.
Twenty-Eight
Will Scarlet released Marian so rapidly she lost her balance, staggering back a single step to ram one bare heel painfully into the tree stump. Brought up short, she sat down awkwardly. Splinters bit through fabric into flesh, but Marian didn’t care. What mattered this instant was that Robert of Locksley—somehow wetter even than she—must be able to hold off Scarlet before he could grab her again.
With that, I can help. And she did so, jumping up hastily to edge around the stump, putting its solid presence between her and the murderer. Her breath hissed raggedly past the painful gag.
“Back,” Locksley suggested mildly, tapping the staff very gently against Scarlet’s ribs.
He backed, fingers splayed stiffly on the end of rigid arms. Marian wanted very much to warn Locksley—no, she recalled, Robin—of the man’s reputation for violence, of his acknowledged madness, but the gag prevented her.
“Down,” Robin said.
Scarlet sat down. The butt end of the quarterstaff hovered at his throat. He glared at the giant. “How much did he pay you? How much did he promise you?”
The shepherd shook his head. “Not for money, Will Scarlet. For the truth. ”
“Truth? There is no truth. The Normans are lying pigs—”
“So they are,” Robin agreed in clear Saxon English, “when it suits them to be so. But there are also Saxon liars, and Saxon pigs ... which one, I wonder, are you?”
Marian stared at him. He was different, somehow, in a way she could not define. He was more alive, more intense than the man she had seen on the dais of Huntington Castle. And somehow less vulnerable than the man who had killed the boar, mouthing prayers—or curses—in a language she didn’t know.
“Take her, then!” Scarlet rasped. “Take the whore and go.”
“And leave you here?” Robin’s thin smile was edged.
Will Scarlet twisted his head and spat a clot of saliva to the dirt at Robin’s feet. “Will the sheriff buy me from you, then? Is that why you came?”
Robin set the staff against Scarlet’s throat and prodded very gently. For an interminably long moment the murderer didn’t move, glowering blackly at Robin despite the pressure at his throat. But in the end he gave in, sinking stiffly to the dirt. He lay flat, limbs rigid.
The quarterstaff lingered. “Why I came,” Robin said, “is none of your concern.”
“It is!” Scarlet cried hoarsely. “By God, Saxon or Norman, you’re all the same! You treat us like dogs, to creep about your ankles hoping for scraps of meat, belly-down in the dirt with our tails between our legs—”
“Enough,” Robin said.
“—and all because you were born to a name with money, while the rest of us grovel in dirt from the day we take a first breath to the day we take a last one—”
“Enough.”
“—and you don’t even care. None of you cares. You just expect us to do, so you don’t have to—”
Robin raised the quarterstaff. One blow would crush a throat.
“No—” the giant blurted, even as Marian tried to protest.
“No,” Robin agreed. “It’s what he wants me to do, to prove his point.”
Will Scarlet’s face turned red, then faded to bleached white. “You’re like all the others—”
“I’m like none of the others.” Robin planted the butt end of the staff in the dirt next to Scarlet’s head, and leaned. “What you did to four of Prince John’s pet Normans troubles me not at all. It was—and is—your concern. But what you did with this woman—”
“I didn’t hurt her!” Scarlet snapped. “Ask the giant. I promised.”
Robin smiled grimly. “And what is your promise worth?”
Dull color suffused Scarlet’s face. Dark eyes glittered balefully. “I’d do it again, if I had to.”
“That, at least, is truthful.” Robin flicked a glance at Marian. “This woman—”
But Scarlet kicked out, knocking the staff away, then swung his legs and hooked Robin’s right ankle, jerking him to the ground. “Now we’ll see—” he hissed.
William deLacey leaned forward in his massive chair and fixed the man with a cold stare. “Say that again,” he commanded.
Abraham the Jew clasped his hands quietly before him. “My lord Sheriff, we have contributed more than enough to the cause. We can do no more.”
“This is for your king.”
Abraham shrugged slightly, “My lord, we have already given so much for the king’s ransom . . . to do more now would destroy us—”
“Then let it.” DeLacey sat back. “It is treason to refuse a king’s command.”
The old man nodded. “But this isn’t a king’s command. This is a prince’s greed.”
DeLacey was thunderstruck by the Jew’s audacity. It was true, of course, but one did not say so�
�certainly not a Jew who survived on the sufferance of others; not Abraham, who made money off Normans and Saxons, and who most certainly had more coin to spare than he admitted.
They’re all like this, these Jews... they think God loves them more. DeLacey smoothed a wrinkle in his tunic. “You will of course carry word to the Jewish Quarter that the tax collectors will be circulating in two weeks’ time. If the taxes are not met, penalties will result.”
“My lord . . .” Abraham spread his hands. “You may levy all the penalties you like, but it will avail you nothing. We have given three times the normal amount. There is no more.”
DeLacey bit back an angry retort. “King Richard has been most generous toward the Jews. That you would so sorely disappoint him now—”
“We disappoint only his brother, the Count of Mortain. Surely the king would admit defeat when he has drained a people dry of everything save the coin they require to live by.”
This was getting him nowhere. Delacey suppressed a scowl. It was important to put forth the impression that such intransigence meant nothing to him other than a brief inconvenience. If Prince John knew how difficult it was dealing with the Jews, he very well could appoint a new man in deLacey’s place to attempt other methods. The Jews, in the end, would pay, but deLacey would not be there to enjoy it.
“Harsh times require harsh methods,” he said quietly. “Perhaps if you charged a higher interest rate, the excess could be put toward the king’s ransom.”
“And give those who borrow even more reason to hate us.” Abraham’s tone was limpid. “If we could be assured that the taxes would be put toward the king’s ransom—”
Self-control was obliterated. “Damn you for an impertinent fool!” deLacey roared, thrusting himself to his feet. “This is a royal command, not a passing whim! You will do as I say.”
Abraham inclined his head. “My lord, be assured I will tell my people of the requirement. But as to their ability to pay the additional tax, I cannot say.”
The sheriff leaned forward on braced arms, using the table as support in lieu of self-control. “Do not place yourself so high, Jew. You and your people are not the only ones in England being commanded in this manner. Your money is no better than anyone else’s.”
Abraham kept his eyes downcast. “And yet it is to us the nobility turns so very often. Coin to build castles, buy jewels, ransom kings—”
“Just do it!” deLacey shouted. “I’ll have the money by the end of the month, or you’ll surrender your silver plate!”
“My lord.” Abraham bowed.
“Go,” deLacey rasped. “I’m sick of the sight of you.”
The Jew removed himself at once from the hall and the sheriff’s offended vision.
Damn him—damn them all.... DeLacey plopped himself back down in his chair, rubbing wearily at burning eyes. He was tired and needed to sleep, but this business of Marian and Will Scathlocke would keep him awake until it was resolved one way or another.
“My lord?”
DeLacey squinted into the gloom. “Yes, Walter?”
Walter dipped his head briefly. “My lord, the old woman is asking for a priest.”
I have no time for this—“What old woman?”
“The woman attending the Lady Marian, my lord.”
Impatience was arrested. “Matilda.” DeLacey nodded recognition. “We haven’t got a priest.”
“There is Brother Tuck—”
“He’s a clerk, not a priest. He can’t hear confession, or celebrate any other offices.” He leaned upon an elbow braced on the arm of the chair. “Is she dying?”
Walter shrugged. “Perhaps, my lord. The women say she worsens.”
DeLacey waved a dismissive hand. “Then send along Brother Tuck. If she’s near to death, she’ll never know the difference. We’ll let him worry about it.” He tapped a fingernail against the chair. “And Walter ... have more candles put out.”
“But—”
DeLacey glared, daring him to bring up Gisbourne’s ridiculous edict against the profligate use of expensive and unnecessary items such as beeswax candles, which gave much cleaner light than cheaper tallow candles. Some things, he thought, were worth paying for.
Walter did not bring it up. He bowed himself out of the hall.
Will Scarlet walked the edge of the blade, very close to falling off. Distantly he heard the flutter in his ears, tasted the flat metallic tang, smelled the familiar odor he couldn’t describe properly, because he didn’t understand it. He knew only that the madness teased at his mind, begging to be let in, promising him victory if he gave himself up to it. He had done it before. When he’d attacked the six Normans.
Two had run away, seeing what he was. The other four had died before they realized it.
And now this man—?
He didn’t know this man. A Saxon, by language and accent, certainly by color. But one of them, withal, by bent and temperament, forcing him to obey, to sacrifice his dignity.
—s’what all of them want—Flesh lay in Scarlet’s hands. He caught it, gripped it, twisted his fingers in it. He heard the raspy inhalations of a constricted throat, the grunt of extremity, the hissing invectives of a man hard-pressed to live when another wanted to kill him.
He made the same noises, swore the same curses, mouthed identical threats. The effort expended matched the other’s, as did the intent. Only the accent differed.
Die, Scarlet thought, thrusting a thumb toward an eye.
The old woman was dying. Brother Tuck knew it at once.
It frightened him. His place was not at the side of a dying woman in grave need of a priest, because he could not fulfill that need. His place was at the abbey, learning self-control and the responsibilities of the offices a priest was required to know, so he could become a priest. He wasn’t prepared for this.
But there was no one else. And the woman had seen him enter the tiny chamber.
He approached hesitantly, hands folded tightly into the sleeves of his black cassock. His palms were damp and cold, not fit to touch the flesh of a woman such as this one, who deserved much better. But there was no one else, and she had so little time.
Drawing in a huge breath, Tuck moved to the side of the bed and halted there, looking down upon her face. It was eerily naked with neither wimple nor coif to hide forehead and neck, gray and glazed with sweat. Hair too was gray, trailing to her shoulders in limp disarray.
Her eyes fluttered closed. Tuck bent, pulled the stool close, then settled his bulk upon it more gracefully than one might expect. But he was accustomed to kneeling; squatting upon a stool was little different.
He withdrew his hands from his sleeves and made the sign of the cross. Softly, he chanted, “In nomine Patris, Fili, et Spiritus Sancti—”
Her eyes snapped open. Her voice was barely a sound. “You must hear my confession—”
Tuck broke off, lowering his hand. Indecision warred with honesty. “I am sorry, but—”
“You—must hear—” The old woman coughed painfully, clutching at her breast. “Hear me—I beg you—” She was gray, and plainly fading. In moments she would be dead, lacking the comfort of confession or last rites.
He could offer neither relief. He should tell her so at once.
But.
What harm? Tuck fretted. What harm in comforting her?
It was a lie. It was a disservice. It was a sin.
The old woman was fat, like him. Her breathing was noisy and uneven. “My lady ...” she gasped. “Who will see to her now? No mother, no brother, no father—” Time ran out so swiftly. “Hear my confession, I beg you—” Hands groped for his. “Please—hear me—”
Tuck caught and held her hands in his own. They were strangely dry, almost chalky, as if her skin turned to ash even as she spoke. “We will pray together,” he offered; it was all he had.
Her eyes gazed blankly. “Will you hear my confession?”
Tuck bit at his lip. What harm in it?
“Hear me—please�
��”
I cannot. But Tuck squeezed her hands. What harm, indeed? If it would ease her passing ... Wasn’t it more important that a devout woman be made to feel at ease? Didn’t God want people on the verge of joining Him in heaven to look toward that reward with joy? Surely He would not want the faithful to die in fear of unworthiness.
Surely God would understand.
Even if the abbot doesn’t. Tuck managed to smile kindly. “Of course I will hear you.” God would understand.
The old woman did. She smiled tremulously. “Forgive me—” she began.
Tuck listened in silence to her list of sins so insignificant that only a good and devout woman would consider them worthy of confession. And his sin was only half a sin, because his part in the absolution was not required. What God wanted as penance would be tended now in heaven. “Forgive me,” he murmured, folding her lifeless hands on the coverlet.
Locksley felt the breath fade from his chest. Nothing replaced it. Hands were on his throat, shutting off air entirely.
He lay sprawled across Will Scarlet, legs twisted awry to gain balance and leverage. He had intended to drag Scarlet up from the ground so he could batter at him again, but something had gone wrong. Scarlet had caught his throat and was squeezing it dry of air, digging avid fingers and ragged nails into his flesh.
The edges of his vision turned a bloody, opaque crimson, red as Scarlet’s name.
One hand clawed at Scarlet’s fingers, trying to pry them free. The other bunched and struck his nose, adding blood to stubble and grime.
Scarlet roared. The hands slackened minutely. Locksley jabbed an elbow just below the ribs, then jammed a knee between splayed legs. Scarlet’s bellow of pain at the offense against his nose altered instantly to outrage as something else was threatened.
Not hard enough—But enough to break the grasp on his throat. Locksley twisted, lunged aside, came up even as Scarlet did. And the dance began again, albeit bloodier than before and with less civility. Locksley staggered to his knees, then his feet, twisting his fists into Scarlet’s tunic. Blood from the broken nose streamed down the stubbled chin.
Jennifer Roberson - [Robin Hood 01] Page 31