Lord of Sherwood

by Laura Strickland

  Gareth tipped his shining head as if listening to something. Curlew was not sure he believed in angels—were they not a construct of the Church, like hellfire and eternal punishment? But if they did exist, he thought they must look like his father at that moment—otherworldly, righteous, and strong.

  Gareth said almost lightly, “You know, I have seen Falcon weep more than once over the years—when your aunt Lark gave birth to that stillborn babe, when we lost so many to the cold that harsh winter, even when a beloved tree came down. Falcon has a loving heart. Do you know, lad, how many times I have seen your aunt Lark weep? Yet they sat together and wept like terrified children when they could not pull her back for you, for me.”

  Emotion clutched at Curlew’s heart, so tight it ached. If the other two thirds of the circle could not rescue her, what could? Only the love of this man beside him.

  But he would have already tried, and tried again.

  “Pa,” he whispered around the pain that possessed him, “what does this mean? What, for the guardianship of Sherwood?”

  Gareth shook his head. “I do not know. Lark and Falcon do not seem to know. Both have prayed on it. A day and a night they stayed here, praying. As I say, they raised a fearsome magic. It was not enough.”

  “She still lives.” Curlew asserted it like a demand. But for how long?

  “Aye, there is that. So long as she lives—even thus—the circle and the protection stand. I keep thinking she might just awaken in her beauty, as she has done every morning, in my arms.”

  The pain that held Curlew’s heart increased. All his life had he wished for a great love like that his parents shared, in total devotion to one another. This, then, was a glimpse of the other side of it, devastation beyond imagining.

  He said, though he did not want to, because he must, “Six days, you say—she will need food, water. What of that?”

  “No food has passed her lips. I have dribbled water between them. I cannot tell if she swallows it. But you know what the water of Sherwood is.”

  Curlew did. It had healing properties, magical ones. Yet could a few drops sustain a woman and keep her alive?

  And if she died...

  Curlew swiftly shut that thought away. He would not entertain it, would not contemplate it. For her death would mean that of this man beside him, and of the triad, as well. All personal grief aside, he and Heron were not ready to take their places.

  His father’s voice interrupted the dire thoughts. “I wondered if you would try.”

  “Eh?”

  Gareth reached out and grasped Curlew’s hand. “Son, you were conceived here in the magic of this place. Even before your birth we were told you would be the most important person ever born in Sherwood. Perhaps you are the one who can catch hold of her and call her back.”

  Tears blurred Curlew’s vision. Aye, such tales had been told of him before his birth. But what had come of them? He had grown well and strong, yet with nothing extraordinary about him save the ability to hit a target with great precision, an uncanny sense of the forest, and a penchant for mischief that often caused more trouble than otherwise. It was Heron who possessed all the important gifts, the talents, the otherworldly grandeur.

  Curlew came to this armed with only love. And much as he might adore his mother, if love alone could call her back she would have answered that of this man beside him. Yet he would try, of course he would try. He nodded.

  He lowered himself to the ground beside his mother, reached out, and took her hands in his. Aye, he loved his mother’s hands, quick and gentle, that never so much as once struck one of her children in anger. How fortunate they had been to have such a woman for mother! He would gladly lay his life down now for her and his father.

  He bowed his head over his mother’s hands, closed his eyes and began to pray. He called upon the things he loved best—the trees that arched above him like a living roof, the water that carried always promise and memory, the deep loam, and the light, the eternal light. He felt something come alive in him, take hold, and flare bright. His heart opened like a new shoot in spring.

  “Mother?”

  Never had he called her that she had not answered. Her soft voice and reassuring touch when evil dreams found him in the night, as they sometimes did, leaving him convinced he lay wounded and bleeding in the forest, struck to the heart. And the time when the boar caught him and he could not get up the tree fast enough, when everyone thought he would lose his leg. When he lay parched with fever his tenth winter—always, always she came.

  Could she fail to answer him now?

  What ties lay deep, twined and tangled, between a mother and her son? He hauled deliberately on them now and located her essence—a mere spark of radiance.

  Gladness uplifted him. Aye, she was here, not gone from them yet. But so far, so very far away.

  Come back to us. I need you, all of us do. Father needs you.

  No response. Her flame burned very low but steady, not affected by a breath of wind. Curlew focused himself and reached for her still more intentionally.

  He saw what she saw: green leaves dancing overhead, dawning, birds darting through the light in bright shards of color. Flames on a winter hearth, throwing warmth, safety, and comfort. The flash of silver in his father’s eyes and the smile Gareth Champion kept for her alone. Himself as a child, lying in her arms, the future in his eyes.

  Blessed child.

  She was not alone where her spirit lay. Others gathered round her, some he knew and some he did not. A few he had met, in spirit form, on his own journeys through Sherwood—the great man wearing the sheepskin who, he knew, was his grandfather Sparrow, now deceased, and the woman as ever at his side—she who had Aunt Lark’s golden eyes—his grandmother, Wren. And a man with a thick, tawny mane, one with a bristling, brown beard, another with a lion’s head of hair.

  They all looked to him. He felt rather than heard their message: You cannot linger here. You are needed. Your time approaches.

  Send her back with me, he appealed to them. We cannot go on without her. He cannot.

  Remind him he is never truly apart from her, not here in Sherwood.

  Please.

  Go and play your part, Lord of Sherwood. Uphold the circle.

  I cannot. We cannot. We are missing the third of our number.

  She comes.

  She comes.

  She comes!

  They thrust him away from them, out of that deep and silent place back into the light of the autumn morning. It rushed in upon him with its scents of damp earth and dying leaves, the much-loved essence of Sherwood itself. His mother’s hands were still clutched in his, and she still lay like a carved effigy of herself.

  He turned his head and met the gaze of the man who crouched beside him. “I could not bring her, Pa. She is not alone. A host of other spirits hold her. They said to remind you she is here with you always.”

  His father bent his head and wept like a man heartbroken.

  “Aye,” Curlew whispered, “it is little enough comfort now.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “You there! I saw you take that. Put it back, lass. Hie—After her! Thief!”

  Fleet of foot, Anwyn whirled like a dancer and sped off, the hard words and more than one set of feet following. Market day again, one hung in gray cloud and chill, with a damp wind. She had been unable to force herself to stay inside, even with the best of intentions. For this very morning her father had informed her Roderick Havers had arranged with the priest for a marriage on Sunday next.

  She had demanded that her father refuse it now, before it was too late. She had wept and threatened and stamped her feet. Her father, for once in his life, had remained unmoved.

  “You have left me no choice, Daughter,” he told her once again.

  Nay—he had left her no choice. Face screwed up in concentration, hair flying loose behind her, she dashed through aisles and alleys between carts and stands, twisted and turned away from pursuit. She would not wed with t
he vile Havers. But the only way she could see out of it was to make certain he refused to accept her.

  And the only way she could see to assure that was to ruin her reputation most thoroughly. Had she not heard Havers ask her father if she remained “pure”? Aye, well, she meant to convince him she did not.

  Her knee caught the edge of a barrow in passing and knocked it over, spilling an array of vegetables. A rutabaga flew into the air and arced gracefully before striking the nearest stallholder square in the head. Cries arose all around, not the least those of the people still pursuing Anwyn. She gasped, spun again, and leaped over two casks, her skirts flaring high.

  Where to turn? Surely the men after her would tire long before she did, and give up. She had taken but one small ribbon, and that only because the imp inside had bidden her to it.

  “Catch her!” The cry rang out like the bright blare of a clarion. Several people responded and moved toward Anwyn. She ducked again and changed direction.

  And ran straight into a wall of solid muscle.

  She rebounded slightly with the force of her impact. Hands came out and captured her, hard enough to leave bruises.

  “You, lass!”

  Anwyn, the air heaving through her lungs, looked into the last face she conceivably wanted to see. How came Roderick Havers here? Given, she had just been thinking of him, but must that cause him to appear like a devil? Her knees wobbled beneath her and she gasped, “Leave go of me.”

  “I do not think so.” He smelled of unwashed male and something else—dead animal, perhaps. He clutched her close enough that she could also smell his breath, a hot miasma striking her face. “What are you doing here? Does your good father know where you are?”

  “You know this lass? Does she belong to you?” The persistent stallholder, much disheveled, had caught up, and addressed Havers with a modicum of respect. Foresters, favored by the King, were men few wished to cross.

  Havers raked Anwyn with his small, porcine eyes and clutched her still more cruelly tight. “Why? What has she done?”

  “Stolen from me, as well as left a trail of ruin through the market.” Several other panting stallholders, including the owner of the vegetable cart, had now reached them and stood looking on angrily.

  Havers returned hard eyes to Anwyn. “What did you take?”

  “Nothing.”

  He raised one of her hands, his fingers wrapped around her wrist. She tried to resist but might as well attempt to fight a bull. Her fist concealed the ribbon. He forced her fingers open, also against her will; it felt as if he would snap the bones of her hand like twigs.

  He glared at the ribbon revealed. “You took that?”

  “I saw her,” the first stallholder put in, “bold as you please.”

  “Why?” Havers asked Anwyn.

  “It was green.”

  “But why steal it? Your father would afford you a score of ribbons.”

  She shook her head. How could she hope to explain to this behemoth? But maybe a kind fate had brought him to intercept her. Surely if he saw that of which she was capable he would abandon all intention of taking her to wife.

  “Give it back.”

  Anwyn shook her head again.

  Havers let go of her with one hand, drew it back, and slapped her face so hard she saw stars.

  Several people cried out. Anwyn made not a sound, but her eyes burned and she tasted blood in her mouth.

  “Give it back and apologize,” he ordered, and shook her like a rat in the grip of a terrier.

  Anwyn extended her trembling hand and the crumpled ribbon to the stallholder. Her parents had never done more than swat her when she was small. Now anger surged inside her, along with a good measure of indignation.

  The stallholder snatched the ribbon. Scurvy thing—Anwyn did not want it any longer. Havers shook her with the meaty fist that still held her trapped. “Say how sorry you are.”

  But Anwyn was not sorry. At that moment she hated everyone, including the stallholder, her father, and especially the man who pinioned her.

  Havers raised his hand again.

  Almost, Anwyn let him strike her. But her head still rang from the first blow, and the inside of her mouth still bled.

  “Sorry,” she choked out.

  The stallholder snorted. He and the others drifted away—a small crowd still stood watching, but they had already begun to lose interest.

  “What you need,” Havers told Anwyn, “is a good thrashing. And once we are wed, you will have it.”

  “Take your hands from me.”

  He leaned still closer so the smell of him assailed her more intensely. For her ears alone he said, “Very soon, lass, I will have more than my hands on you. Do you know of what I speak? No matter, once we are wed, you will. Perchance you will learn some manners on your knees.”

  Anwyn’s eyes widened. How dared he speak to her so? Aye, she knew of that to which he referred; most women knew. But if he ever forced such an act upon her, she would vomit all over his feet.

  “You do not wish to wed with me,” she told him, holding hard to her defiance. “I am wild and disobedient.”

  “I have said I can cure that. With some sense beaten into you, you will soon settle down. A wench worked hard enough has no time for mischief.”

  Anwyn glared into his eyes. “You do not want me. I have been with three men.”

  His gaze stabbed at her, weighed the look in her eyes and then dropped to her bosom where, Anwyn was dismayed to realize, her top two laces had come undone.

  “You lie,” he said. “’Tis something you seem to do uncommonly well. Your father has sworn to me you are intact.”

  “He does not know,” Anwyn retorted, now wholly desperate. “I did not tell him that I sneaked out while back in Wales.”

  “Why, you bitch,” he said so softly she almost thought she did not hear him right. “If that is the case, I could have you now myself, and need not wait for the priest.”

  Anwyn gasped. How could the game she played turn back upon her so? “You would not. My father—”

  “Your father, as I say, is a good man. I will do well under him if I can keep his approval. I think the best way to do that is solve his problems for him, and the greatest of them is you.” His grip on her arm tightened still more brutally. “Come with me.”

  “Nay!” Anwyn tried unsuccessfully to dig her toes into the soil of Nottingham. She would go nowhere with this man. “I will scream.”

  “Go ahead. Folk have already seen me discipline you. What more will they expect?”

  He dragged her away, his strength such that she had no opportunity to resist, not back through the stalls the way she had come but in another direction, toward a part of the castle grounds where she had never ventured. Her mind raced, seeking an escape or some hope of one. He would not do as he threatened—surely he would not dare. Yet she realized belatedly that the blow he had delivered, and the very act of laying his hands on her, had inflamed him.

  Aye, and she had played the tease many times—too many, she must admit. She knew well enough what usually heated a man’s blood, and it was rarely violence. This man, she sensed, harbored a cruelty—well-disciplined, perhaps—linked to his desire, the like of which she had never before come up against.

  Always had she been able to put men off, sometimes with difficulty, aye. Always had she met them, though, in public places. This man dragged her away into the quiet, and her heart beat harder as they went.

  “Leave go of me. What is this place?”

  Gray stones and a cluster of what looked like huts huddled beneath the gray sky.

  “Never you mind. I know where we will not be disturbed. You will learn a few lessons this day, lass. And by the time the priest speaks over us, you will know how to behave.” He paused outside one of the huts and gave her a mirthless leer. “Maybe you will even carry my babe by then.”

  “I swear I will tell my father—”

  “Tell him what you will. He already knows you lie. And
he will be so glad to be rid of you he will not mind.”

  Anwyn’s head jerked up. It could not be true. Her Da adored her. Or was this beast right, had she truly killed the last of the deep affection between them? That possibility struck her to the heart, froze her where she stood, and gave Havers the opportunity to haul open the door of the stone shed.

  “In with you.”

  The interior of the hut was dark and smelled like something had died inside. Anwyn knew if she entered that place she would come out changed. Her spirit reached for freedom—she had been meant for something more than a sordid tumble in a wretched hovel. The knowledge of that made sudden sense of all her restlessness and the unnamed desire behind it.

  The belief gave her strength. Even as Havers pushed her through the door she reached out for a weapon, any weapon. Her fingers closed around the first thing they found, a stout length of wood that leaned against the wall just inside the door.

  She drew it up into the light. As soon as he saw it, Havers’ face changed. He bared his teeth in a grimace, seized her wrist, and forced it back against the wall of the shed.

  “No,” he growled, “you will not.”

  Anwyn felt a flash of pain as her wrist made contact with the stones. His fingers, relentless as when she held the ribbon, forced the spar from her hand.

  If she had thought him angry before, she knew him enraged now. He pressed his bulk against her and spoke directly into her face.

  “You think to strike me? I will give you back two blows for every one. You, lass, play a dangerous game, running about with your hair and skirts flying. You need to learn: if you can hit, so can I. And,” he raised his voice, “if you can lie, so can I. Your father is in charge over me. Do you truly suppose I would do aught against him?”

  Anwyn’s head spun in confusion. Did he not mean to force her, then? Was all this some terrible attempt to frighten her?

  He continued, harsh and low, “I no more believe you have slept with three men than with King Henry himself. I will have you first, but not until we stand before the priest together.”

  “Leave go of me,” Anwyn gasped. If she got away from him now, she would run long and far.