Something was wrong. His color was bad, his flesh had a pinched look, and he carried his head gingerly, as if it hurt to move. The fight with Will Scarlet. Marian’s mouth tightened. He would say nothing of it, of course, just as her father would not, and had not, often enough, following a particularly painful weapons practice session. So she said nothing of it also, raising another topic. “How much farther?”
He shivered, then rubbed an arm as if to ward off a chill. “Not far. The track lies a little that way”—he pointed—“and the forest proper ends just ahead. We are not so far from Nottingham—”
“Ravenskeep,” she said firmly.
A faint smile hooked one corner of his mouth. “Ravenskeep.” Dampness stuck together the finer strands of hair at his temples. “I have only one horse.”
“Yes, so you told me.” Marian smiled. “One of us shall have to ride pillion.”
He arched a single brow. “They will remark it an intimacy.”
“I will remark it a necessity.” She grinned. “Besides, who will see us? And if anyone does, who will recognize us? Your face is near to purple, and mine no better, I fear.”
“No,” he agreed judiciously.
“Well then, we shall be free of idle gossip—surely an uncommon occurrence, and therefore to be treasured.” She caught up her kirtle once more, dragging the torn hem out of the way. “In our dishabille, we will be fortunate if we are not taken for peasants riding a stolen horse. We would be hanged on the spot.”
His tone was odd. “Your father did not sire a peasant.”
She opened her mouth to retort, but something in his eyes stopped her before she could answer. His expression was strangely intent, almost fixed, with a burning, feral intensity, as if there were more to the statement than a simple rejoinder.
Why does he—? But she let it go, because she was afraid of the answer, afraid it would be the one she did not desire to know, because she wanted more of him, more and more of him, without understanding why.
Marian swallowed tightly. “Neither did yours.”
It broke the moment. “Mine? No. And he would be at some pains to make certain you knew it.” Now the tone was dry and a little ragged, fraying at worn edges, like a length of threadbare cloth. “This way. Through here.”
She went on even as he did, thankful for Much’s shoes as fallen tree limbs cracked beneath her. “Why did you not leave the horse closer?”
He peeled back a bough. “Sherwood houses outlaws other than Will Scarlet. One need only ride a track, and your coin is taken—if not your life, or your horse. I did not want to make myself so obvious to men more conversant with Sherwood than I.”
Marian ducked the branch, feeling the caress of a leaf across her scalp. “But you are conversant.”
He let go of the bough, moving ahead. “A little. I roamed the fringes when I was young. The village of Locksley is on its edges, close to Huntington.”
“What is it like?”
The silence between them stretched, filled with the crackle of their passage. “I have never been there.”
“But—your name ...” She let it go then, because she feared to intrude.
“My father bestowed Locksley upon me before I left on Crusade, so I would be more than Huntington’s son, but a lord in my own right. I should have gone, but ...” He shrugged. “I was too impatient to be away. A village and small manor in the English countryside did not interest me, when Jerusalem—and glory—beckoned.”
Her kirtle snagged, bringing her up short. Impatiently, Marian jerked it free. “And you are sorry for it.”
He glanced briefly back, saw her level gaze on him, and turned away quickly, as if he could not bear the simplicity of her comment. “I should have valued the people, if not the revenues.”
“You have the chance now.”
“Yes.” He pulled aside a creeper. “Here. My horse is—” He stopped short, clinging to creeper, “gone. ”
“Your horse?” Marian came up beside him, picking at a sticky substance in her hair that proved to be a cobweb. Making a moue of distaste, she wiped the residue from her hands on the nearest tree trunk. “Are you sure this is—”
“Yes. Completely sure.” He gestured. “Right there; see how the grass has been uprooted?”
She looked, seeing the telltale signs of an iron-shod horse and the damage done by its hunger. The horse was decidedly absent. “Yes.”
He sighed heavily, murmuring something she couldn’t quite catch as he scraped both hands through his hair distractedly. “And I said the track was hazardous ...”
He sounded so disgusted, so ineffably dismayed that Marian smiled. She was footsore, aching, and tired, but short of conjuring a horse there was little they could do.
She moved two paces and sat down on a moss-clad stump, settling her skirts around her. “We’ll rest, then go on.”
He pressed his spine against a tree and leaned heavily, then slowly slid down, scraping bark, until he sat on the ground. He appeared altogether exhausted, scrubbing his face all out of shape like a toddler in need of a nap. The pinched look of the flesh around his eyes and mouth deepened almost imperceptibly, but Marian saw it.
“Are you hurt?” she blurted. “I mean—worse than the obvious?”
Eyebrows lowered into a knitted shelf no less forbidding for its pale hue. The scowl was eloquent.
Marian put up a staying hand. “Oh, I know—men are never to say what does or does not hurt them ... I learned that from my father. But from my mother I learned that men generally lie, because they feel it unmans them to admit they feel pain.” She picked a long-stemmed flower and put the end between her teeth. Around it, she said, “How badly did he hurt you?”
A ghost of a crooked smile softened the austerity of his expression. “Not so badly as you just have.”
“It is the truth, and you know it.”
“Then if I tell you I am not hurt so badly, you will accuse me of lying.”
“If it is a lie—though it usually is.” She grinned around the stem. “Fairly caught, Robin. The truth, if you please.”
He stared at her a long moment, saying nothing, so intent she felt her peculiarly high spirits wane. And then the mask slipped, and the faint smile returned. He scrubbed again at his face. “It isn’t so much what Will Scarlet did—”
“You see?”
“—as what the Holy Land did,” he finished stolidly, ignoring her comment.
“The—oh.” She took the stem out of her mouth. “I did not mean to pry.”
“Yes, you did. Why else would you ask?” He lessened it with irony, which surprised her; he had displayed very little of amusement before. “Men born of England do not fare well in heat and sun. There are fevers—” He shrugged. “I, like many others, brought one home with me.”
She sat very straight. “Then you’re not just hurt, you’re ill—”
“But it will pass. It always does.”
“Always does ...” she echoed. “Then this has happened more than once?” She had believed it of no consequence; clearly, this was different.
“At least three times. Richard had it twice—” Abruptly, the mask was back in place. “It isn’t worth discussing.”
Which means, he won’t discuss it. Marian sighed, tossing aside the long-stemmed flower. “Then perhaps you should remain here, while I—”
“No.”
She took offense, albeit mild. “You don’t even know what I intended to say.”
“Oh yes. I have taken your measure, Marian”—which both astonished and intrigued her—“and I know very well what you intended to say, and what you would like to do.” He stood up, scraping bark bits from his tunic. “I am not so ill or infirm that I will allow a woman to strike out through Sherwood Forest with no one to escort her.”
It called for something, if only to lessen some of her concern. She saw him shiver again. “As if you could do anything,” she declared archly. “Who was it stunned Will Scarlet?”
Clearly, the
audacity astonished him. He was rigidly, perfectly still.
Her spirit wilted. I’ve gone too—
For the second time in two days, she heard Robert of Locksley laugh. She found it intensely pleasing.
Alan of the Dales tripped over a half-buried tree root and fell sprawling into bracken, flinging out hands to catch himself, then twisting onto a shoulder because his hands were too valuable to risk on unseen hazards. He landed awkwardly and painfully on his left shoulder, then his left hip; lastly—and most annoyingly—he banged his head on an accompanying root.
He lay there a moment, swearing inventively in French, then switched to English, which he found cruder and therefore more satisfying. French was for music and women.
Alan sat up in the midst of hip-high fern, peeling a frond away from his mouth, and glared sourly at the offending root. It did not please him to realize he had undertaken a foolish and impossible task. It did not please him to admit he had been even more foolish to leave the track. But he had heard hoofbeats—or believed he heard them—and now he found himself dirtier than before, with green stains soiling his clothing and mud on his elbows.
I am thoroughly disreputable ... And so he was. Before, it had been through his exploits in bed, which merely added to his allure. Now it was solely because of his appearance, which did not please him at all.
He stood up, muttering in English, and brushed as much dirt and debris from his clothing as possible. He took a single step toward the track, heard hoofbeats again, and ducked down into bracken.
This time it was hoofbeats.
Alan squatted very still, daring only to breathe. With the FitzWalter girl missing he had no doubt the sheriff’s men were searching for her in Sherwood, where rumor said Scarlet had taken her, but even if he were not the target of the search he dared take no chances. They would snap him up readily enough for the sake of Eleanor’s lie; only the night before the Watch had been set on him.
He waited. Morning sunlight glimmered through the spring foliage. He saw a flash of steel and blue livery as the hoofbeats grew louder.
Normans. As expected, deLacey’s men, armed with swords and crossbows. He recognized none of them, except to know their livery and the arrogance of their faces.
Alan watched them go by. He lacked his lute and tunic—and much of his minstrel’s demeanor, as well as a razor—but he had no doubt they would at least draw rein to question him, if only to ask about the girl. Better to hide himself than to risk recognition.
The Normans were gone. He waited a little longer, then slowly made his way out of the foliage onto the edge of the track, massaging his left shoulder. He set out once more, heading deeper into Sherwood, assuming at some point the one-handed man would appear. He was after all an outlaw acquainted with the forest, which meant he likely knew it well and who belonged in it. And as he had extended an invitation—
The faint jingle of bit and bridle intruded. It came from behind, from the direction the Normans had ridden ... Alan froze, then lunged off the track once more. This time he chose his bolt-hole more carefully than before.
He dropped to his knees, ducking beneath the surface of the tall bracken, and peered through gaps as best he could. But ten paces up the track came a boy with a horse—a boy leading a horse, with no apparent intention of mounting the horse even though it wasn’t lame and showed no other infirmities.
Alan frowned, chewing a lip. The horse was very fine. The boy was not. They did not belong together. If I could impress upon him my need to burrow the horse—
But Alan’s need went unmet. Even as he considered stepping out onto the track, inventing an explanation, someone else did so first—a dark-haired, dark-eyed man with bruises on his face, and the pinched, pale, desperate look of a man hard-pressed to survive.
His explanation was much simpler than Alan’s. “Here,” he said roughly, “this horse is mine, now.”
Gilbert de Pisan, overseeing the packing of Prince John’s retinue and baggage train in the bailey, gave a series of commands in a quiet, unhurried tone, saw to it those receiving the commands began to follow them properly, then took himself inside the earl’s remarkable new castle and found his master alone in denuded chambers, chewing his fingernails.
John lowered his hand as de Pisan entered. “Well?”
“Things commence as they should, my lord. We shall be able to leave for Lincoln the moment you desire it.”
John perched a portion of his weight upon the corner of a slab of English oak set upon trestles. One braced, booted leg propped him up. The other was hooked across the corner, swinging in small arcs of restless energy and poorly suppressed impatience. His crimson traveling cloak, much finer than any worn by others on the most elaborate of occasions, drooped from jeweled brooches pinned at padded shoulders.
The prince’s expression was feral. “What I desire is information.”
De Pisan inclined his head, folding hands inside wide sleeves. “The girl is a relative of Robert FitzWalter, Lord of Dunmow. Sir Hugh FitzWalter, her father, was a distant cousin. There is no indication they have had any dealings together, to hatch plots or for any other purpose.
“Her father’s dead. What of his holdings?”
“They are hers, according to law; she is a ward of the Crown.”
“Then my brother administers her dowry.”
“Yes, my lord.”
John mused silently, working at another nail. “She is wealthy?”
“Not incredibly so, my lord ... Ravenskeep is a modest manor with moderate income. But she is the only remaining issue of the marriage, and both her parents are dead.”
John nodded. “Find out what you can about the current state of her coffers. My brother has been somewhat occupied this past year himself ... and if this manor is as modest as you claim, it may well have been overlooked during the ransom collections.” He spat out a sliver of nail. “If so, we shall have to see to it she donates to this collection.” “Yes, my lord.”
John’s gaze was level. “What of the sheriffs price?”
De Pisan smiled faintly. “I was put on notice that Sir Guy of Gisbourne will not be so malleable as he once was.”
Angevin brows rose. “Oh?”
“Indeed, it was made most clear to me that Sir Guy expects to be as well-rewarded as the sheriff. In fact, I found it most fascinating to learn of Gisbourne’s desired reward.” Briefly, de Pisan’s amusement displayed good teeth. “He told me explicitly what he wanted. He then told me what the sheriff wants.”
“And?”
“They are one and the same, my lord. He did not say so—in fact, he said otherwise; something about a rich old North Country woman—but it was obvious to me. He lied about the sheriff, because he knows very well a simple knight of no reknown will stand little chance against a man like William deLacey.”
John sat very still. The leg no longer swung. “Yes?”
“The selfsame FitzWalter girl.”
“For knight and sheriff?”
“It would seem so.”
John’s dark eyes narrowed.
De Pisan smoothed his surcoat. “My lord, if you would entertain a suggestion from your seneschal, it might behoove you to look to the FitzWalter girl yourself, with an eye toward administering her disposal upon the proper man. They say she is beautiful—that even a man of high station would care little enough for her holdings so long as the lady comes to his bed.”
John made no answer.
De Pisan drew a breath. “Men such as Alnwick, Hereford, and Oxford are wealthy already ... I believe flesh would mean more than yet another tedious manor.”
The king’s brother said nothing.
“Ravenskeep lies on the other side of Nottingham, my lord. In fact, a man who held lands on either side of the city—such as Huntington, and Ravenskeep—would be in position to dictate Nottingham’s strength.”
“Yes,” John said at last. “Oh yes, I do see ...” He looked at de Pisan. “It would be most unfortunate to waste a woman held i
n such high regard—and with such valuable holdings—on a mere sheriff.”
“Yes, my lord. My thoughts exactly.”
“In fact ...”John smiled. “The Earl of Huntington himself, with his brand-new castle, has no wife to house in it.”
Thirty-Six
Much gaped at the outlaw. He knew him: Will Scarlet, who’d fought the Hathersage Giant, then stolen Marian.
“Here,” Scarlet repeated. “Save yourself a hand and let me have the horse.”
Much fell back, dragging at a rein; the horse, protesting, yanked its head upward. Much did not relinquish his grasp upon the leather, which stretched his arm taut and nearly unhinged his elbow.
“Let go—” Scarlet grabbed his own share of rein. “By God, boy, don’t make me hurt you—”
Much kicked one of Scarlet’s shins, then bent and scooped up a handful of dirt and flung it at his face, jerking the horse his way. “Mine!” Much cried.
Scarlet swiped dirt out of his eyes, then lunged toward Much. Frightened, the bay stallion set back, digging up track, even as Scarlet’s grasping hand came down on Much’s shoulder, grabbing a handful of tunic. “You little—”
Much bared teeth, jerking the rein again. The bay squealed and plunged backward, dragging Much and Scarlet in tow like fish on a willow stringer.
“Mine—” Much hissed.
“You little whelp—” Scarlet attempted to halt the horse by sheer force of will, but he was no match for a frightened horse.
A body darted out of the trees and leaped for the saddle, flinging a leg across cloak and leather. Toes dug for stirrups. “I’ll settle this,” the man offered breathlessly. “I’ll take the horse—”
“By God, you won’t—” Scarlet caught at a hosen-clad leg. “Get down from there—”
“Mine!” Much shouted.
The mounted man jammed heels into the bay’s flanks, grasping one loose rein even as the other remained well-claimed. He pulled the horse’s head around toward his knee, trying to turn him, to deprive them of leverage, so he could break the horse free.
Jennifer Roberson - [Robin Hood 01] Page 39