Jennifer Roberson - [Robin Hood 01]

by Lady of the Forest

  Marian laughed again, very softly. She tilted her head against the door, then rolled it against the wood in futile, resigned denial. “It isn’t fair,” she said, “that after so much time I have to love you again.”

  The scimitar was truly beautiful in its deadliness, a shining silver wafer of seductive and lethal curve, made of Damascus steel. He saw it silhouetted against the sun, blotting out the brilliance while it stood, however briefly, paramount in that moment, a cynosure held above the battlefield in homage to God, whom he would come to know as Allah. Then the Saracen hand turned the blade only slightly, and it glittered, and he knew it would come flashing through the air to sever the head and limbs from a man he knew and respected.

  “No!” he screamed, ripping the flesh of his throat, but the Saracens merely held him very still upon the sand with his head jerked back so he could see, and then the scimitar sliced the man to bits, as if he were beef or goat meant to serve the king’s table. The head was thrown to land at his face, where it gushed blood into a living mouth opened to scream again, and into wide eyes that could not shut out the sight, because in his shock and rage all he could think of was the daughter the dead man loved so well, who was to be told her father loved her.

  “Marian.” He said it very clearly, because now it was more than a name. Then, it had been nothing; it had meant nothing. He had not thought of it again, until he heard it said to him on the dais at Huntington Castle, where he saw the dead man living in the woman’s eloquent face.

  William deLacey lay awake in the darkness. The night was warm, even for spring; he was hot and his brain overtaxed, attempting to sort out various responsibilities, dealing with them before the fact, so that he could stop thinking and go to sleep. He spent many nights this way, and cursed every one of them.

  Annoyed, he contemplated the mess his daughter’s behavior had created. Prior to word of Robert of Locksley’s return, he had not decided on any particular man to whom he would like to wed her. Her sisters had married conservatively—one to a wool merchant, another to a goldsmith who practiced his trade in London—with unspectacular returns for a father who wanted to rise. Eleanor was his last hope, and she had just devalued herself so badly he could anticipate nothing now. All he could do was marry her off as quickly as possible, in case she ended up bearing the minstrel’s child.

  DeLacey turned onto one side, hooking an elbow beneath his ear. I ought to marry her to the lute-player . . . if she were forced to wed a man with whom she merely wanted to dally, the lesson might be learned.

  He turned over yet again, trying the other side.

  He had ordered Walter to investigate the possibility of marrying Eleanor off to a man at some distance from Nottingham, but that had only been to make her fret. DeLacey knew of no offers that he hadn’t already turned down in his zeal to land Robert of Locksley.

  “Hens coming home,” he muttered. I’ll need to find someone soon. Someone of enough rank to be respectable, ambitious enough to consider it an honor—and a chance to rise in the world—and malleable enough to overlook her reputation.

  He flopped over onto his back, scowling at the curtains swathing the lumpy bed. Aggravation swelled. Aggrievedly, he demanded, “Why couldn’t it have been Eleanor whom Will Scarlet kidnapped?”

  But it hadn’t been. Eleanor was safe, but ruined ... and Marian FitzWalter by now was probably safe as well, and probably ruined, too; worst of all, in deLacey’s view, it was Robert of Locksley’s doing.

  Forty Two

  The oil lamp cast a wan, ocherous glow, painting the royal pavilion in a chiaroscuro of saffron and cinnibar, underscored with umber shadows. Richard, King of the English, contemplated his fate as he sat upon a camp chair nursing a cup of wine. He was thirty-six years old, but the russet-gold of his hair showed the first threads of silver, won in the name of Crusade.

  “Malik Ric,” he said. “That is what the Turks call me.”

  Robin, who had played the part of a body servant at the king’s request and stripped him of mail, dropped the heavy hauberk across the foot of Richard’s bed. It left the king in quilted gambeson, linen sherte, and leather-gartered hosen, but Robin made no effort to divest the king of anything more. “So they do, ” he agreed quietly as he poured himself wine and resumed his seat on a camp stool. “Thanks to Saladin, your legend will live on.”

  “Not if I don’t take Jerusalem. ” Richard gulped wine, then blotted his mouth on the back of his wrist. His blue eyes were rimmed in red and luridly bloodshot, dried out from a day of heat and sand. He had washed, but the fine dust was pervasive; a faint trace dulled the gleam of his ruddy hair. They were days out of Acre, bound first for Arsuf then Jaffa, and on to Jerusalem.

  “You took Acre in one month,” Robin said. “Guy of Lusignan had two years, and couldn’t win the city. That should offer some consolation.”

  “And the cost?” Richard’s eyes bored into Robin’s. “At what cost—what will the chroniclers say of me, for killing the Saracens?”

  It seemed to Robin that the king was much taken with concern about how his actions would be viewed; but then his black mood was not out of the ordinary for a warrior who had been, but days before, exulting over a victory everyone claimed miraculous. And it had been, in a way: Richard’s siege of a city that had withstood other attempts for two years had proved wildly successful. Sappers had undermined the walls, and the trebuchets launching stones had done the rest.

  But that exultation was over; the king had time now to reflect upon the uglier side of the victory, when he had ordered the beheading of more than 2,600 captive Saracens.

  What would the chroniclers say?

  Robin drew in a breath. “They will very likely remind those reading their accounts that Saladin broke his word.”

  Richard grunted. “Perhaps. But a costly revenge, was it not?” He swallowed wine. “I think the accounts will be dependent on who writes them.”

  “Probably, my lord. Chroniclers are not known to be unbiased in the matter of royalty. ”

  The king bared his teeth. “They will most certainly write of Philip’s cowardice, and Leopold’s withdrawal.”

  “And how you continued undeterred.”

  Richard snorted. “I should declare you my chronicler. You will see to it I am treated fairly, no matter what it may cost you. ” His eyes were very bright. “A fair friend, my Robin—they are few when one is a king.”

  “Kings cannot afford friends. ” Robin looked at the massive Norman sword leaning sheathed against the king’s bed. It had killed uncounted men in the taking of Acre. “Kings must rely on such things as might and wit and cunning.”

  “But when they lack their own, they look for it in others. ” Richard sighed heavily and rubbed at his face. He was thinner now than when he had arrived from Cyprus, and his face less round, showing the shape of his jaw. “You did well at Acre, my Robin. The knighthood was deserved.”

  He smiled crookedly. “Some might argue it was too hastily declared, and the colée not hard enough. ”

  “Hard enough to knock you down,” the king retorted mildly, “but then, you’re slender as a reed. ”

  “Bad food.”

  “No. You’ve grown taller. There’s but a finger’s width between us.”

  Robin demurred; the king was well known for his size.

  “Stand up!” Richard cried, scenting a challenge. “God’s Rump, but I’ll have this settled!”

  “My lord—”

  “Stand up!” The king himself jumped to his feet and grasped double handfuls of Robin’s tunic and yanked him to his feet. The cup was dropped. Wine spilled in a puddle the color of old blood. “Here, now—we’ll stand back to back ...”But Richard made no move to shift his stance, and his hands did not release Robin’s tunic. The blue eyes, bright with challenge, faded into softness. The firm mouth loosened.

  Robin stiffened. “I’m not—” But he bit it off.

  The softness faded, replaced with a hard glitter. “Say it,” Richard said hars
hly.

  “My lord—”

  “Say it! In French, in English, in Latin—I’ll hear what you meant to say!”

  Robin breathed shallowly, very conscious of the powerful grip upon his tunic. His answer was in English for the ears of the Angevin king. “I am not Blondel.”

  Marian jerked awake as the latch was lifted. It took her an extra moment to recall her whereabouts: in Ravenskeep at last, slumped on a stool next to the bed in which Robin slept deeply, twitching in fever dreams. She had not thought to sleep at all, but obviously had dozed off.

  Now the door was opened enough to admit a woman’s head and shoulder. “My lady? Lady Marian—please . . . will you go to bed? I’ll sit with him.”

  Marian blinked. Her head felt curiously light; words came sluggishly, from different parts of her brain. “No—no, Joan... I’ll stay.”

  Joan was an older woman, brown of hair and eyes, with a kind set to her round face and a perpetually smiling mouth. The smile dimmed only a little as she came into the chamber. “Lady, please... you’re all set to fall off that stool and crack your head, and don’t tell me you won’t. D’ye want two invalids, then?”

  Marian didn’t, but neither did she want the servants privy to Robin’s words. He could well say things in delirium he would want no one to know.

  She sighed and stroked her hair out of her eyes. “I’ll stay, Joan.”

  The woman left the door ajar and came to stand but a pace away from Marian. “You’ve a tongue in your head and you know how to use it, but we’ve eyes in our heads. Sim came to me after bringing Sir Robert up and said I was to see you to bed as well, that you’d likely catch his fever if you sat up all night with him. And don’t say me nay—you’ve only to look at your poor face to know how you must be feeling. You need a hot soak, and then a warm bed.”

  Marian blinked several times in rapid succession, aware that she was very near fainting from sheer exhaustion. She had eaten a little earlier, and drunk watered wine; now her body demanded more than simple assuagement of hunger and thirst.

  Squinting to keep her eyes open, she looked at Robin. He slept deeply, lids twitching. His color remained high and sweat still soaked his hair, but his breathing was normal. She put a hand on his brow and felt the expected heat, but it did not strike her as dangerously high. If anything, he felt a bit cooler.

  “Lady—” Joan again.

  “All right.” Marian gestured surrender, then gathered her ragged kirtle skirts as she rose unsteadily. “No—I’m only weary. I promise, I have no fever.”

  “Will you have a bath drawn?”

  “Only to fall asleep in it and drown?” Marian smiled faintly. “No. Just point me to bed before I fall and crack my head.”

  Joan nodded and guided her out of the door. “D’ye want me to take you there?”

  The words sounded muffled and distant; her ears were already asleep. “No,” Marian managed. “I can get that far, thank you.” She paused in the corridor, turning back again. “He’s been on Crusade,” she said with elaborate precision. “He may say things in his fever that make no sense to you.”

  Joan’s eyes were kind. “Go to bed, Lady Marian. From what little you said of events, I’d say you had your own Crusade.”

  Marian touched a fingertip to her battered face. She had said little about her ordeal, and none of it the truth: her horse had, she’d explained, been frightened by a boar and, in bolting, had carried her through the deepest part of the forest, then dumped her into a stream.

  As for Sir Robert of Locksley, he’d come to rescue her, but had been felled by a fever while escorting her home. That was true enough. It would all suffice, she felt; no need to say any more.

  Joan was plainly exasperated as Marian lingered unsteadily to look at Robin a final time. “Lady—go to bed. I’ll see he’s kept safe.”

  Instinct told her Joan was not a fool. I’m giving too much away... With effort, Marian nodded and turned away from Robin.

  The tiny alcove was dark, very close, and redolent of mice, dampness, and something Tuck equated with sanctity: the odor of unwashed wool and the nervous perspiration born of intense, powerful prayer and the certainty of unworthiness.

  He awoke with a start and stared blindly into the darkness as his heart resumed its rhythm, wondering what sound had broken his sleep, then realized with a familiar sinking feeling that what invaded his rest was guilt and a sense of doom. This had happened many times before, but always after overindulging in foodstuffs against his genuine intentions and the personal expectations of Abbot Martin.

  This time the guilt had nothing to do with food. It had to do with the certainty he had done a terrible thing; no—two terrible things.

  Tuck lay slack on his pallet with his face upturned to heaven, and knew he was a sinner.

  His breathing, always audible because of his weight, grew louder, intensifying the closeness of the alcove. He lifted both hands to his face and covered it, pressing the features out of shape, wishing he might erase his face so no one knew it was he. If he could only start over, he would be a better man; undoubtedly he would make a much better monk.

  But he was a sinner. He had known it was wrong to mislead the dying old woman, just as he had known that going to the sheriff entailed betraying Walter.

  He dealt with the last sin first, which he thought might be excusable; had it not saved an innocent man from being hanged in place of another? What if he hadn’t brought it to the sheriff’s attention, and the innocent man had died? What then would be Tuck’s fate?

  He shuddered, pressing his fingertips into his closed eyes. It made his blackened vision flash multicolored light and odd images. “Father,” he murmured wretchedly, “oh Father, forgive me... tell me what I must do ... show me the way—”

  He needed a priest, of course, so he could confess and do penance and receive absolution. But short of going back to the abbey, there was no priest—or was there?

  Tuck lifted his hands from his face. Nottingham was not a small village. There was bound to be a priest. He could go there. He frowned into the darkness. If there is a priest in Nottingham, why didn’t the sheriff send for him when the old woman worsened? Surely he suspected she might be near to dying.

  Perhaps he hadn’t suspected. The sheriff was a busy man; what if no one had told him until it was too late? And so he had turned to his clerk, prevailing upon him to play the part of a priest to give the old woman peace.

  It was too complex to consider. The fact remained the same: he had committed a sin on both counts. He would inquire as to the Nottingham priest’s location, so as to confess. Until then, all he could do was pray.

  Tuck heaved himself off the pallet and knelt on the stone floor, unmindful of the painful hardness, the dampness, the chill beneath his knees, because Abbot Martin believed punishment of the body brought glorification to the soul.

  A thumping on the door woke William deLacey. In the first moment of coherence he was incensed; he had trained his household staff to refrain from awakening him except in the direst of emergencies. Then he recalled that Nottingham Castle currently hosted Prince John, whose whims were legendary, and who had more right than any man alive, other than the king, to awaken whomever he chose at whatever time he decided to do it.

  Accordingly deLacey sat up in bed, saw the bedside candle had nearly burned out, and called for the person to enter. He had no intention of relinquishing his bed—no, Eleanor’s bed—unless absolutely necessary.

  The latch was lifted. A guttering hand-held lamp shed fragile illumination. “My lord Sheriff.” Gilbert de Pisan’s austere face, lighted by the lamp, appeared beside the door, perched atop clean tunic and robe. He appeared to consider morning welcome, and deLacey despised him for it. “My lord, the prince requires the man to be hanged at once.”

  DeLacey squinted, rubbed briefly at his left eye, then looked again at the fat candle beside the bed. It was marked for each hour; currently, it showed the time as near dawn.

  He scowled bal
efully. He was in no mood to dance the dance of diplomacy. “I was led to believe Prince John required the man hanged at breakfast. In fact, I specifically recall it, de Pisan; you said so.”

  “Indeed.” De Pisan’s calm expression did not alter. “The prince has changed his mind.”

  DeLacey sighed. Clearly there was no room for argument. “Very well. If you would be so kind, please to tell the Count of Mortain I shall be with him presently. There are arrangements to be made.”

  “Of course.” De Pisan withdrew and pulled the door closed once more.

  The sheriff sat upright in the bed for several moments longer, weighing options. Then he sighed, muttered an oath, dragged himself from bed, and opened the door, shouting for a servant to attend him at once. When the yawning servant arrived deLacey chastised him for tardiness and a certain disreputable dishabille—his tunic was not on straight—then dispatched him to Walter with a definitive order to prepare the murderer, William Scathlocke, for execution, to be carried out immediately in the castle bailey.

  He then washed and dressed himself and went out to do his duty as Sheriff of Nottingham, for who was he to quibble with the dictates of royalty? Nottinghamshire was John’s. If he wanted to hang every peasant in the shire, he could, and William deLacey would dutifully order the service rendered.

  In a more philosophic frame of mind, the sheriff strode toward the packed hall. Well, at least he won’t require me to chase after the real Will Scarlet in the depths of Sherwood Forest. If we can’t catch or keep the villeins, I’d just as soon hang them all by proxy. It does make the job easier.

  Awake now and lucid, Robin lay in bed and stared fixedly at the ceiling of the chamber in Ravenskeep, Sir Hugh FitzWalter’s home. The dreams had come again, reacquainting him with things he would rather forget, among them FitzWalter’s death and his own captivity.