He winced as the hurled stone slammed into Acre’s walls, smashing creamy brickwork. The sappers had tunneled carefully to undermine the walls, so that as the trebuchet hurled stones the foundation fell out from beneath. Christians now charged the weakened portions, climbing over fallen stones and smashed bodies in their quest to enter the city.
And then Robin was charging as well, crying out for God, Richard, and England, spurring his mount forward to leap the rubble and dust. His sword was unsheathed, raised high into the air as the Christian horns sounded. Joshua at Jericho, blowing down the walls.
He was over a pile of brick and rubble, then through, his horse floundering for footing amidst the fallen bodies. Already Christians engaged Saracens, shouting of God or Allah, hacking through flesh and bone while all around them men died.
Caught up in the knowledge. of the warrior-king he served and the glory they did God, Robert of Locksley felt the rush of pride and desire that filled him near to bursting. He hardly noticed that his horse crushed living bodies beneath shod hooves, or that women ran screaming through streets. He rode on, thinking of his vow to help free Jerusalem; to see the Holy Sepulchre.
Warm sticky blood sprayed across Robin’s face. He felt a tug at his boot, a grasp at cross-gartered leg; he brought down his blade and felt it bite into an arm. All around him men shouted and screamed.
Acre’s walls continued to fall, pounded to bits by hurled stones. He could hear the sound of it: stone after stone after stone smashing into the weakened wall, filling his head with noise—
—and he was up, scrambling from bed, reaching for the sword that was no longer at his side, as stone after stone slammed into the wall. “Insh’Allah,” he blurted, then heard his breathing halt.
He stood in a gloomy chamber with the wind blowing in his face, and the crack of an unlatched shutter banging repeatedly against the wall.
Ravenskeep.
Relief dispersed his strength. Shaking, he collapsed onto the edge of the bed and sat there slumped and wracked, wiping the sweat from his face as his heart regained its rhythm. The shutter banged and banged, but he let it make its noise even as dust and debris blew into his chamber.
No blood on his hands—no severed limbs at his feet. Robin sighed heavily and scrubbed his face with both hands, trying to vanquish the sluggish aftereffects of a too-vivid dream. Slowly he got up and took the two paces that put him at the window; as the wind beat against his face, he stared out into the storm, tasting the metallic tang of lightning, the turgid dampness in the air.
“England,” he muttered, nodding, then closed and latched the shutters. He lurched back to the bed and collapsed across it again, knowing the bath had banished much of his soreness but as much of his strength.
He rolled over onto his back, staring fixedly at the roof. He meant to get up, to go out and down the stairs, to take his leave of the woman who so unsettled his soul. She would protest, of course, because of the storm, but it reflected his turmoil more eloquently than any words could do, and he saw no reason for wind to hinder his flight.
He shut his eyes. I need to go—But sleep had no more mercy than the Saracens did.
The hall at Ravenskeep had not originally contained the oratory, for it was older than Marian’s parents and had housed generations of FitzWalters, not all of them particularly desirous of a personal relationship with God. But Sir Hugh’s pious wife was desirous of such, and had asked for a private room to which she might retire for prayer and contemplation. Her husband had caused one to be built, placing it off the side of the hall nearest a small walled garden. It wasn’t a proper chapel, for it lacked an altar and a piscina for rinsing the chalice after Mass, but it was quiet and out of the way, offering peace to the individual who sought communion with God—or even with herself.
Sir Hugh had, for reasons of economy and haste, built the oratory adjoining the hall, but had not had a door put through. Therefore the only entrance to the oratory was the low wooden door from the walled garden, much like a postern gate; anyone desiring to use the chamber was required to go out of doors, into the garden, then into the oratory. In winter it had proved most inconvenient; Sir Hugh had promised to have a door knocked through to the hall, but his lady had died before it was accomplished and he had never been near the oratory again.
Marian had always liked the oratory. The small cozy nook of a chamber appealed to her desire for a place of her own. As a child she had imagined it a miniature hall where she presided as chatelaine. As she grew older she played less and less in the oratory, but occasionally found it a peaceful retreat, much as her mother did. When Lady Margaret died, followed closely by her son, Marian used the oratory for its intended purpose: a private place to pray. In the weeks immediately after their deaths, she had gone there many times to vent her grief and rage where only God could hear.
She left Joan, gathered cloak and shuttered lamp and went out into the storm, defying the insolent wind. Storms had never frightened her. Carefully she made her way around the corner of the hall, opened the gate to the walled garden, then unlatched and opened the low door into the chamber itself. The hinges were shrill in protest; like the main gate, they needed oiling.
Wind whipped down through the budded trees into the garden, stripping flowers of petals and leaves. Damp air issued forth from the oratory, snatched away by its angrier brother. Marian thrust the lamp inside, then ducked down into the room.
Lamplight whitened pale fieldstone, illuminating the dimness. Marian stripped off the cloak and draped it over a bench, then carried the lamp to the candle stubs set in chiseled hollows in the walls. Deftly she lighted each candle, then set the lamp on the floor near the wall separating the hall from the oratory. She breathed in rain-weighted air. There were no windows, splayed or otherwise; crude notches knocked into the rough fieldstone walls admitted air into the room. The stone was damp and cool, colored gray and cream and chalk.
Two benches for the knights, a woven mat for the Round Table, the throne a rickety chair tied with rope to keep it together. Here she had been queen in the days of her childhood: Guinevere, Arthur’s lady, or Eleanor of Aquitaine, whom her father had met; later a proper chatelaine, much as her mother was, wed to the most chivalrous and handsome lord in all of England.
Marian smiled sadly. “So many lies,” she said. “Is that what childhood is?”
What then was adulthood but the perpetuation of a life built on bitter reality: childhood dreams were unreachable things that wasted a woman’s time.
She walked through the tiny chamber, trailing fingers along the rough stone. The last time she had come had been but a handful of days after receiving word her father was dead. She had been grief-stricken, enraged, bereft, trying to conjure the man in the place her mother believed was best for talking to God. Marian had cried and screamed and pleaded that the message be a lie, a mistake, that her father yet lived. But not long after that the sword of Sir Hugh FitzWalter—and a casket containing the dried remains of his heart—had been brought to Ravenskeep. Her dreams were abruptly ended.
She stopped walking. She sat down in the chair, holding her breath as old rope protested. But it held, and she sat very still while the creaking subsided. The keening of the windstorm was mournful as the bean sidhe which according to Irish folklore presages a death.
Marian drew up a knee and hooked her heel into the chair seat, hugging her leg. She pressed her chin upon her knee and stared into the wan candlelight.
She remembered very clearly when they had brought her brother home. They had tried to keep her apart from him, to make sure she saw nothing, but she had seen, all of it: the blanket-wrapped form that still dripped water, the pallid, dead flesh, the livid bruises on his face. From rocks, someone said; from the millwheel, said another. Sir Hugh FitzWalter’s son had drowned in the millpond, not found for three full days.
It was Much who had discovered him, the miller’s halfwit son who spoke but infrequently and with little sense to his words. No one questioned hi
m. No one said anything. They just put Hugh into the mausoleum with his three weeks’ dead mother—and all the other deceased FitzWalters—and Marian never saw her brother again.
Outside there came a banging followed by a clatter. Marian, roused, left the rickety chair and went to the nearest notch that looked out into the courtyard. All she saw was premature night: an ash-gray, indigo darkness.
More clattering yet: shod hooves ringing on cobbles.
Loose horse? “—no—”she blurted sharply, turning toward the door, “—not in this—” She went out into the wailing, fighting imperious wind as it snatched the oratory door and slammed it against the wall. Marian struggled to shut it, but the pressure was too strong. She left it then, and shoved open the garden gate.
The storm was full upon her, buffeting her senses as she tried to remain upright. Hair whipped free of her hands, blotting out her view; she caught it again, twirled it deftly into a rope, then stuffed it down the back of her kirtle.
Debris rolled through the courtyard. She saw leaves, branches, a tree limb; a stool left out from milking; a starling caught in the pressure and slammed against the wall. Feathers shredded at once, spun away into the maelstrom.
Marian shielded her eyes with both hands. She was a fool to be outside, but she was sure she’d heard a horse. Sim had said they’d secured the stables, but if the storm had broken the gate there would be more than one mount loose.
There—it loomed ahead: the bay gelding loaned to Robin ... with Robin in the saddle. Pale hair whipped in the wind: a beacon in the darkness.
He woke up with a cry, dripping sweat. All around him the bodies cavorted, grinning maniacally. At the forefront was Hugh FitzWalter’s, keening its wild grief over Robin’s failure to keep him alive; his failure to carry the message to Marian.
“But I did!” he shouted. “I did—”
The bodies fell together in an obscene intercourse, Saracen and Christian, man and woman, Richard and Blondel, who was Richard and himself—
“No,” Robin whispered.
The bean sidhe’s howling filled up the entire room, rattling the shutter latch. More bodies yet were fighting to enter the room, to join in the morris dance, the macabre dance of death.
FitzWalter fell to pieces. His head flew across the room and landed in Robin’s lap, spraying blood in a tumbling arc.
“God—” he choked, and snatched at boots and cloak, then unlatched and yanked open the door. The bean sidhe followed, hooking nails into his shoulder and tearing the tunic away, the linen sherte beneath, the flesh beneath that. Blood ran from his back. Behind him, FitzWalter howled.
He tugged on boots and fled, sweeping the cloak around his shoulders. Faces swam before him as he made his way through the hall, as he clawed for the latch, as he tugged open the door; and then he was in the storm where the bodies screamed and cavorted, and he knew his only escape lay in leaving Ravenskeep.
He fought the wind across the courtyard, tripping over loose cobbles, and at last found the stable block. It was securely latched, but he undid everything and let the wind throw open the door. Deftly he caught up bridle, pad, saddle; quickly he caught the bay; in taut silence he readied the horse, then swung up into the saddle and rode him out of the stable into the howling wind.
Eyes teared from grit: he was on the road to Arsuf, spitting and swearing and fighting to keep his seat on the horse. Debris rolled by: a tree limb torn off from its trunk like a man’s arm from his shoulder, a shutter from the hall, a mass of russet feathers still attached to a one-legged chicken.
“Robin!” Marian shouted.
The bay danced across the cobbles, shedding sparks from iron-shod hooves.
“Robin—” she cried.
He glanced back as she ran toward him, buffeted by the wind. He saw the shroud of hair wrapped around her and the pallor of her face: a skull like Hugh FitzWalter’s grinning into the storm. From the blackness of her mouth the bean sidhe shrieked his name.
“No—” he mouthed. Then, in desperate fury: “There is no God but God—”
Marian couldn’t see his face, just the pallor of hair and hands. He wore her father’s clothing. The dark cloak snapped in the wind, winding around his body.
Like Hugh’s and Mother’s shroud—And then the pain was renewed. Not another death—
She saw his expression as she reached the horse. He was white-faced, white-lipped, with eyes gone wide and black. If he saw her at all he did not appear to know her, for he reined the horse toward the gate. “There is no God but God—” And then something more, more raggedly, in a language she didn’t know.
“Wait!” she said. “Robin—wait—” She reached for and caught rein, dragging the horse around. “—not in this storm—”
The main gate’s bar gave way with a muted crack. Wood crashed open. Rusted hinges broke, freeing the gate completely.
The boom of wood striking cobbles frightened the horse into a frenzy. He reared, striking out, as Robin fought to control him. Marian, blinded by her hair, put out a warding hand. She fell back a single step, caught her heel on a cobble, then blurted an outcry as the hoof slashed by her head and snagged a tangle of whipping hair.
It jerked her to the ground. Marian sprawled there, gasping, as the horse reared again. She thrust up a rigid hand. “Robin—NO—”
The horse fell out of the sky.
Forty-Seven
Robin fought the horse as the bay rose up and up beneath him, flailing iron-shod forehooves like a war-trained destrier. He saw Marian fall, saw the white flash of her hand, heard her garbled outcry snatched away by wind. Acre all over again—another woman crushed—
With effort he battled the horse as it slung its head from side to side, mouth gaping open. He dared not let him down in the same position ... he hauled on rein, digging in with his left heel once, twice, thrice, banging boot into flesh, fighting to move the bay a step, or two, or three ... cursing wind and screech and equine strength. In midair he jerked the horse offstride, abusing the gaping mouth, kicked free of stirrups and jumped, sliding down across saddle and rump as first the cloak snagged, then tore free as he bent over FitzWalter’s daughter.
His hands closed on her slender wrists, clamping flesh to flesh as cloak billowed and black hair whipped, obscuring her face. Robin jerked her from the ground, stood her there, peeled back her hair even as she staggered, stripping hair away from her face, expecting to see blood and a matted, splintered hole like the ones he had seen before, in Acre and here, in his room.
“No—” she said, “I tripped—”
No blood at all, only hair, and a pale face gleaming like a peeled skull, like the faces in the room, grinning with clattering jaws.
He recoiled. “No—”
“Robin—Robin . . .” She clutched at him. “I promise—I tripped over a cobble—”
He clung to her shoulders as black hair was flung at his face to mingle with his own. “No more—” he gasped. “I can’t—”
“Robin—” She shook back hair, but the wind caught it again. He could see nothing of her face but white rents between whipping strands, and the flash of a Celt-blue eye. “Come in out of the storm.”
“I can’t—” he said again, “can’t stay here—”
She pulled hair from her mouth. “You won’t get ten paces in the wind ... here, this way—” She slipped from his hands and caught a wrist, tugging adamantly.
The nightmare would not diminish. “Richard—” he said. Then, in anguish, “La ilaha—la ilaha il’ Mohammed—”
She pulled him to a walled garden, through its gate, then into a tiny chamber full of lamplight and pallid stone, a milky luminescence in the darkness of the storm. “Here,” she said breathlessly, and yanked shut the flimsy door that rattled in its place as the wind clutched at it again.
He breathed noisily. “Bean sidhe,” he murmured.
Marian smiled. “That’s what I thought, too—” But then she lost her smile. “Robin—?”
One step a
nd he caught her, clasping her arms, hanging on to his only salvation: the price of his survival on the bloodied plains of Arsuf, because he knew he had to tell her; he had been charged to tell her. But it wasn’t enough, not now; there was too much in his soul. It swelled like a putrid canker, then burst through inflamed flesh to release the pressure at last.
“Why can’t he understand? Why can’t he let it be? I told you what he wanted—I carried the message to you ...” His face was stark, sharp bone beneath taut flesh. His mouth felt rigid and warped. “I did what he asked me to—I did what Richard asked me to, save the one thing ... I couldn‘t—I couldn’t ... and all those people dead—all those people butchered ... Saracen women and children, the girls raped to death, the mothers spitted on swords—breasts hacked off ... stripped naked to die in the streets ...” He shuddered from head to toe. “Acre was heinous—it wasn’t a victory, it was a massacre—a disgrace ... he ordered all of them killed, all of them beheaded—more than twenty-six hundred Turks ... because Saladin broke his word—” He gritted his teeth. “An excuse, nothing more—he’d have done it anyway ... he could be hard and cruel and brutal, dangerous to anger—” He had to make her see, and he was doing it all wrong; Richard wasn’t a monster, he was a man. “And yet he was never cruel to me ... even when I said no, that I couldn’t—that I was not a man for that—not for bedding men, nor kings, nor even Richard—” He bared his teeth. “I failed my liege in that—all I could do for him was butcher Saracen souls, not ease the needs of his body—” He broke it off then, gazing blindly into her face. “The needs of his body—Ya Allah!—the needs of my own—” Breath hissed through his teeth. “And I can’t—I can’t ...” He laughed, then chopped it off. “What would Richard say? What would a woman say?” Fingers found her hair, threaded their way through, touched the curve of her cheek. “What would Helen say, to a Paris who cannot love her?”
Tears stood in her eyes, bright in candlelight, then one broke over a bottom lid and spilled down a bruised cheek to dampen his fingertip.
Jennifer Roberson - [Robin Hood 01] Page 51