Jennifer Roberson - [Robin Hood 01] (39 page)

Marian pulled aside foliage. “There,” she said. “The road.” It lay just ahead of them through the last fringes of forest, a rutted stretch of road leading west to Nottingham, east to Ravenskeep. She cast him a relieved smile. “Not so far, now.”

“Do you—” But he stopped, turning even as she did toward the forest track but paces away from them, to the sound of galloping horses. “Charlemagne!”

She saw the riderless horse as it rounded a curve in the track. With it came another, bearing a blue-liveried man bent low in the saddle. The shaft of an arrow protruded from one shoulder. “Robin—”

“I see,” he said tersely, moving hastily toward the track. “He’s Norman—Wait ...
Charlemagne
—”

But the wounded soldier rode on, as if he dared not stop, and the bay ran with him.

Marian watched him go. Then she sat down and methodically began to untie the laces binding the shoes to her ankles.

Locksley, deeply disappointed, turned back to her. “What are you doing?”

“Taking them off.”

He glanced down the road again, muttering under his breath. “He was trained better, once ... but I’ve been gone too long.”

“At least he’s free of outlaws.” Marian stripped off one shoe and began on the other. “Surely the sheriff will see to it he’s sent home.”

There was a curious note in his voice. “Why are you—”

“Blisters,” she supplied crisply. “If we’re to walk to Ravenskeep, I’ll have to do it barefoot.” She got up, bundling the shoes together. “I just won’t tell Much.”

The mews at Nottingham Castle were filled with perches of differing sizes as well as differing heights, servicing a variety of hawks and falcons: the long-winged gyrfalcons, peregrines, sakers, and the lanners, as well as the smaller merlins, for use in unobstructed hunting; and the short-winged goshawks and sparrow hawks, for hunting in wooded country. The building, built specifically for the tending and training of fine hunting birds, was purposely kept dim, illuminated only by a single window. Its door was just wide enough to allow a man carrying hawk or falcon on his wrist to pass through.

William deLacey was justly proud of his mews, for he had spent much time and money on hiring expert falconers. He deeply enjoyed the communion with fierce raptors, deriving great satisfaction from the taking of eyases—nestlings, from tree or cliff—and the juvenile branchers, carefully caught in nets or socks.

When the soldier came with undue haste into the mews, knocking a shoulder against the narrow door, deLacey was furious. But to speak loudly and sharply in the presence of the birds would upset them unduly and do great harm to their training. He took the soldier by one arm and firmly ushered him out again.

DeLacey swung the door shut. A swift glance told him there were no falcons tied for weathering on the outdoor blocks. “Never come to me here. You will wait outside until such a time as I exit the mews. Do you understand?”

The soldier nodded hastily. He was young, russet-haired, clearly worried. “It’s the castellan, my lord. He’s come back wounded. We’ve put him in the guardhouse and called for the surgeon ... a horse came with him. There—the bay.”

DeLacey looked where the soldier indicated as they crossed the bailey toward the guardhouse. The bay was a fine animal, but one he did not recognize. “See to it the horse is tended. We’ll have its presence cried later in the market.” He moved past the soldier to the guardhouse door, shouldering aside the group of men gathering there. Archaumbault was popular.

He found the older man stretched out on a pallet, breathing heavily. He lay belly-down, his head turned to the side. Already they had stripped him of cloak and surcoat, but the mail hauberk remained. An arrow shaft stood up from his shoulder.

“By God,” deLacey said tightly, “have the shaft cut. Then take the mail
off.”

Archaumbault’s tone was harsh. “I said no. I sent for you first.”

DeLacey knelt. Archaumbault’s color was bad and he sweated, but nothing indicated that it was a fatal wound. “What of the others with you?”

“Dead.” Archaumbault coughed, and swore. “Outlaws—with longbows—”

Contempt flickered. “Your men had crossbows.”

The castellan coughed again, grinding his teeth. “All of them, my lord ... the boy, the giant—Will Scarlet—”

He found it astonishing.
“They
were there?”

“Yes.” Gloved fingers twitched. “Adam Bell, and others—but the red-haired giant was with them, and the boy—”

Grimly, “—and Scarlet—”

“—and the lute-player.” Archaumbault held his breath. “There’s more—”

“More than
that?”

“On the road—on the way ... I did not dare stop—it was the woman, my lord ... the Fitz Walter girl ...”

Marian
—He was poised as a fox to bolt, no longer concerned with Archaumbault, who would live. “With the others?”

“No. Not there. The road to Ravenskeep—”

“Ah.” Relief was overwhelming, combined with jubilation. “Free of Scarlet, then—”

“With another man.”

“Another ...
who?”

A man came into the guardhouse. He was tall, very thin, gray-haired. He carried a leather bag. “My lord Sheriff, if I may—”

The surgeon. DeLacey barely spared him a glance, fixing his attention on the castellan. “Who was the man, Archaumbault?”

The surgeon was diffidently insistent. “My lord—if you please—”

DeLacey waved a silencing hand.
“Who?”

Archaumbault breathed tightly. “Tall—very fair ... hair nearly white—”

DeLacey’s blood chilled. “Robert of Locksley.”
What has he to do with this?

“My lord—” Archaumbault gritted. “May I have water?”

DeLacey gestured imperatively to the surgeon. “Get about your business. I have other concerns.” As the surgeon bent to his work the sheriff pushed his way back through the men and out into the bailey. He went directly to the stables, where he ordered the bay horse brought to him. When it was, he studied it closely.

“My lord?” A boy came forward, bearing a bundle of cloth. “My lord—’twas hooked on the saddle.”

DeLacey took it, shaking out folds. A man’s mantle, no more, of good weight and weave, but no elaboration.

Something fell into straw. The boy bent, retrieved it, handed it over.

DeLacey held it in his palm. A plain silver cloak-brooch, a simple heraldic device.

He shut his hand over it. “Huntington,” he murmured. He stared blindly at his fist. “Robert of Locksley.” Naming the enemy.

“My lord?”

The sheriff glared at the boy, thrusting the bay’s reins back into small hands. “Here. Take it. Put it with the others. Then have my horse readied and brought out into the bailey.” He nearly cuffed the boy for slowness. “Immediately!”

 

The morning mist dispersed and the sky was clear of cloudiness, leaving the day bright with promise. But Locksley was in no mood to appreciate the weather. He wanted to stop, to sit down, to
lie
down, so long as it meant he could shut his eyes and rest, ridding himself of weakness, aches, and chills, and the vague disorientation that accompanied the fever that had wracked Richard’s army. Some men had died of it, but they had been weak to begin with, deprived of proper food and rest, cooked in their mail by the unblinking eye of a harsher sun, stripped of dignity and strength by the illness that ravaged their bowels. When the fever found them, too, there was little hope for survival.

Locksley had survived. He had survived worse than that. He would survive this.

Meanwhile, he walked with increasing stiffness next to FitzWalter’s daughter, who had in undimmed cheerfulness hiked up her kirtle and shift, tucked the folds beneath her girdle, and strode on barefoot.

“Not so far,” Marian said, avoiding a puddle of urine.

He shivered, wondering if she could hear his bones rattle. He offered her no answer; what she had said did not require one.

“What is he like?” She strode along the road with no pretense to maidenly distaste. She did, in fact, appear to relish the freedom; he began to wonder if, as a child, she had proved difficult to discipline out of hoydenish ways.

But the question was a proper question, with an answer expected. Instead, he countered it with a question of his own. “Who?”

“The king,” Marian said.

Of course. They all asked. Even those who considered the question unimportant, because its answer might divulge the sort of information they required to make decisions. Or those who asked it with a sly wink, or a smirk, or a blatant vulgarity.

None of them knew Richard. They only thought they did, basing their conclusions on rumor and innuendo. Those who
did
know Richard knew better than to ask.

Marian had asked the question. Her reason was innocent: what was the man like whom her father had died serving?

“Worth dying for,” he answered.

She paused only an instant, a hare before it bolts, then strode on again. He knew then his answer hadn’t been the one for which she had fished. But now that it was said, she contemplated it closely.

“He would have to be, wouldn’t he?” Her tone was odd, a bit hurried, a trifle strained, with a hint of diffidence. “Kings who lead men in war
ought
to be worth dying for, since so many men do it.”

Yes. Kings ought to be. Few of them were. He believed Richard was.

“My father said he was a brilliant campaigner. That a man would be a fool to place his trust in someone else.”

The sun, for England, was bright, unfettered with cloud or haze. Everything sounded unnaturally loud. “Yes,” he said. “That was one of the things Leopold despised.”

“Leopold of Austria?”

“And Philip of France.” It helped a little, to talk. “Philip was a weak man in all respects, save his opinion of himself. It was natural that men would revere Richard more—he is every inch a warrior-king, best equipped to inspire and lead men into battle. Philip was best equipped to stay at home and connive, which he eventually decided to do. Richard begged him to stay, but Philip was adamant. He packed up and left.”

“And Leopold? What did the king do to him to make
him
go home?”

Locksley smiled wryly, recalling the harsh words traded by the angry men. “Leopold was not a weak man. He believed himself as good or better a soldier and leader as the famous Lionheart, with some grounds for such a belief. But no one else believed it—Richard has a way of
dominating
anything, be it conversation, games, or brute physical tests—and Leopold was insulted. He also packed up and went home.”

“But there must be more to it than that. Being unable to match King Richard—or better him—in all respects is not grounds for kidnapping him and throwing him into a dungeon, then selling him to the German king.”

A part of him wanted to argue that Leopold had been a petty, spiteful man who had done as he’d done out of sheer maliciousness. But another part of him acknowledged that Richard had done much to provoke and encourage Leopold’s hatred without foreseeing the consequences. “It was Leopold’s way of regaining what had been lost.”

“Pride?” Marian laughed briefly. “Men do so many things in the name of pride.”

It stung, a little; he had his own share of pride, which even now prevented him from admitting he felt too ill to go much farther. “And would you call it a bad thing?”

She cast him a sideways glance, as if startled by the question. “No. I only wonder if there are times when something other than pride might solve a difficulty.”

The implied reproof made him cool. “For a woman, perhaps.”

The trace of condescension did not appear to discomfit her, if indeed she noticed it at all as she challenged him. “Ah, but a woman who has pride is said to be vain.”

“Because a woman’s pride is often misplaced.”

“How so?” Her tone was sharper now.

“A woman’s pride is in her beauty—”

She interrupted. “Beauty is often equated with value. A woman must think in terms of her value, since there is so little else she is good for.”

He was not prepared to argue that. “A man is most proud of his ability to protect his family and serve his king.”

“Of course.” She borrowed his condescension. “He takes pride in his ownership of a woman, his ability to sire children, and his placement with the king, who might reward his persistence with preferment, such as a knighthood.” She cast him a bright glance.

She meant to provoke him, of course, who had been knighted on the battlefield by the King of England. He didn’t feel it worth pursuing, except he
was
interested in the contents of her comments. “Is this what you believe? That a man takes pride in
ownership?”

“A man does own a woman. A man
buys
a woman—”

“It is the woman who brings the dowry, not the man who pays for her. It might better be charged the woman buys the man.”

She was undaunted, continuing unabated. “—or he offers certain things, certain assurances of protection or preferment, in exchange for relieving her father of her.”

“An uncharitable view. Is it yours?”

Marian frowned. “I’m not sure. But neither am I certain it has no merit.” She chewed briefly at her lip. “Eleanor deLacey said many things that have made me think.”

He snorted. “Eleanor deLacey is one of the vainest women I have ever met—and with little cause.”

Marian laughed. “You say that out of injured pride.”

“How so?”

“Because she is the only woman who came to the feast who did not set her cap for you. In fact, she made it clear she preferred the minstrel to you.”

He grinned crookedly. “I would say I am grateful for that, if it wouldn’t be churlish of me.”

“You have already proven yourself churlish by remarking upon her vanity, and the lack of need for it,” Marian observed archly, then the humor faded into consideration. “But she did make sense. I had not thought of it before, until she addressed it, but Eleanor is right: women have no say in the matter of their disposal. Fathers marry us off where they will. Our chastity is well-guarded so our value is increased.”

“Eleanor deLacey’s was not.”

Marian laughed. “But she made it her choice, did she not? She did what she wanted to do, bestowing her affection on the man she preferred, instead of letting her father marry her off to the first foul-smelling old reprobate who had the price—and the title—for her.”

Locksley digested that. “I am neither old nor a reprobate, and I bathed only yesterday.”

“What do you—?
Oh!”
She laughed again. “Forgive me—it was you, wasn’t it?”

“And I would have said
two
women came to the feast who did not set their caps for me.” He cast her an exaggeratedly austere glance. “Unless you lied to me when I accused you of it.”

“No.” Marian smiled. “No, I didn’t lie. Nor did I set my cap. I only came because I wanted to know if you had seen my father.”

Much more than that. But she knew that, now.

He swerved from the topic. “Eleanor deLacey has lost whatever freedom she knew because of her preference for the minstrel. Do you believe it was worth it?”

“I’m sure she believed she would never be caught.”

“And therefore did not consider the consequences of her folly?” He nodded. “Men do that, as well. I have no doubt the minstrel gave little thought to the consequences.” He considered it further. “Or, if he did, it added spice to the liaison.”