Jennifer Roberson - [Robin Hood 01] (60 page)

“English,” she said plainly. “Not Norman French, my lord Earl, but common Saxon English. Is that not what all of us are?”

“
Leave
here!” he cried.

“No,” Robin said.

The earl shook with fury. “I will not have her in this hall.”

“Why not?” Robin released her shoulder and took a single step forward, linking his hands behind his back. She knew him well enough now to hear the subtle undertone that warned her of his mood; if his father had sense at all, he would comprehend the danger.

But his father has no sense. He believes I am the cause of this.
Marian knew better.

“Why not?” the earl echoed. “By God, Robert, you heard her—”

“She told you the truth, nothing more, as you have often required of me. That truth may distress you, it may even offend you, but it is what it is. If you accuse her of dishonor for that act which we both committed, then you must send me from your hall also.”

De Mandeville sat down quietly. Bohun lingered a moment longer, then also resumed his seat. Marian saw the opacity of their eyes, the studied negligence of their movements as they took up cups of wine. They were powerful noblemen accustomed to subterfuge, to turning away attention so as to guard another’s pride.

Mine?
Marian smiled.
No—I think the earl’s.

“Robert.” The earl pressed hands against the table as if to steady himself. “Robert, I will not have this played out here before my friends—”

“Why not?” Robin took another step forward, hitching a single shoulder. “They have heard much of it already, have they not? I doubt you could convince my Lord of Alnwick to leave; he is much entertained, I believe.”

Marian glanced at the man. Indeed, the other looked on with a bright-eyed fascination.

The earl’s voice was crisp. “This is not suitable business to be aired before others.”

“Then air more suitable business.” Robin’s spine was rigid. “Perhaps you might explain what has become of Huntington Hall.”

It was not at all what the earl might have expected. “I had it torn down,” he replied simply. “Only a fool would have overlooked the brick and timber. Why buy more when the old can be reused?”

She could not see Robin’s face, but she marked the sudden surge of interest in Alnwick’s avid eyes, and the utter stillness of the others.

“You shame me,” Robin breathed. “
Ya Allah
, but you shame me.”

“I shame
you!
” The earl was infuriated. “By God, boy, I should disinherit you on the spot for speaking to me this way. Shame you, indeed! I am of a mind to have you flogged for such impertinence!”

Very softly Robin said, “You will never flog me again.”

The earl’s mouth tightened to a grim, flat line. He turned from his son and stared harshly at Marian. “You are to leave this hall.”

Say nothing—don’t give him the satisfaction.
Marian gathered her kirtle and cloak and curtseyed very slowly. “As you wish, my lord.”

“No.” Robin half turned toward her, staying her with a hand. “No, Marian . . .” He turned again to his father. She saw the line of level shoulders, the rigidity of his spine. “There are few things in life I cherish, my lord. One of them was my mother. The other was that hall. Both of them you destroyed.”

“
Ro
bert—”

He raised his voice. “There is the regard of my king, of course, which was earned on the battlefield . . . and the regard of this woman, which was never earned, but given.” Robin paused thoughtfully. “No—nothing more. Disinheritance would strip me of nothing I do not willingly forsake.”

The earl clutched the table. “Before
God,
Robert—”

“Before God, certainly. Before your peers as well.” Robin spread both hands. “Shall this be
attendre,
then—to employ the language of our sovereign . . . or, in good Saxon English, do you declare me attainted?”

Geoffrey de Mandeville set back his bench and rose. “I am Justiciar of England, so declared by Richard, King of the English,” he said quietly. “If you so desire, my Lord of Huntington, I will officiate over this disinheritance.”

“I desire no such thing!” the earl snapped. “You know that, Geoffrey ... this is a boy speaking, no more, offering hard language and idle threats merely to provoke me.”

De Mandeville looked at Robin, then turned toward the earl. “If you would for one moment cease behaving very much as you have accused your son, you would see that neither of you desires this. But I am convinced that both of you are eminently capable of seeing this travesty through merely to outface one another.” His blue eyes glittered. “You have no other son. Will you so easily forfeit this one?”

“Geoffrey.” The earl’s tone was raw. “Geoffrey—you heard the things he said.”

“Harsh words, old friend”—de Mandeville’s expression was sad—“but if you would have him be a man you must let him declare himself.” He shook his head slightly. “Put away the strap, Robert, even in your thoughts . . . the time for that is done.”

The earl’s face crumpled. He sat down hard upon his bench and stared blindly into his wine as Robin reached for Marian’s hand.

 

DeLacey sat in the castle chapel. He profaned it with drunkenness, drinking from a pitcher without recourse to a cup, so he need not leave the chapel before he desired to. He did not, just at present, desire anything but recompense, and relief from bitter conviction.

“He’s had her,” he said. “Locksley. He’s
had
her.” DeLacey drank wine. “Tupped FitzWalter’s daughter.” He stared hot-eyed at the altar. “
Last night,
I’ll wager—”

God, but it hurt. It hammered in his head.

“She sends
me
away, then spreads her thighs for him.” Wine ran down his throat until he took the pitcher away. “Earl’s heir or no, I’ll have the whoreson’s balls.”

 

In the darkness he called her name. Marian awoke, twisting, and put her hand on his chest. “What is it?” He was damp with sweat, breathing raggedly. She smelled the tang of fear. “
Robin—
”

“No,” he said, “no . . .” And then moved almost frenziedly, gathering her to his chest. She felt the lean, hard length of his body as he wrapped her in his arms, hooking a leg over hers. “Let me feel you breathe. Let me feel your warmth—I need to know it is real—”

Her head was cupped in the hard hollow between his jaw and collarbone. Her breath touched his face. “It is real,” she whispered. “And
I
am real—I promise.”

Pale hair mixed with dark. “I need you,” he said unevenly, “for more reasons than I can count . . . but also for the dreams. To drive away the
nightmares—
”

“I know,” Marian whispered. He lay very still against her as her naked flesh warmed his. “I know,” she said again, thinking of his demons. She hoped it would be enough; that
she
would be enough.

The dawn was wet, but drying. Marian stood at the narrow splayed window and folded the shutter back, admitting infant daylight. Behind her Robin dressed, pulling boots on over hosen.

The subtle sound of his movements and the knowledge of his presence filled her with fierce joy, but also a poignant awareness of a division she felt too keenly: love, but also anger, that joy could be usurped by the presence of other realities she had no desire to acknowledge.

She glared fiercely out at the dawn.
It isn’t suppose to be like this.
Certainly it hadn’t been in any of her dreams, in the discussions with her mother, in the comments of her father. Love simply
was,
a purity of passion, without the impedimenta of men like William deLacey and fathers like the earl.

Cynically, she reflected,
This is not what the minstrels sing about.

He said something then, a murmured inquiry, and she knew reality had shattered the fragile illusory web spun in dream-filled sleep.
Dreams are childish things . . . I cannot afford them now.

“Marian,” he said, and she turned to tell him finally what had brought her to Huntington. His face was very still as the cock in the castle bailey crowed the day duly come.

She had awakened early, thinking of how to say it. So now she spoke with little inflection, merely reciting facts, to strip the words of weight so he would not react as another man might: in fury and foolish vows.

Robin listened quietly, then resurrected the mask she had wrongly believed discarded. It closed him off to her.

“Don’t,” Marian said. The mask was not for her, she knew, but she disliked the omen of it. It conjured Robert of Locksley before her, not the kinder Robin; she wanted very much to vanquish the former forever. “It is done, Robin. Finished. Surely the sheriff knows that.”

“No.” He shook his head. “You know that as well as I, or surely you would not have come here last night.” Marian bit her lip; he read her too easily. “He is not the kind of man to accept defeat meekly, or even to tolerate it.” The scar writhed briefly. “Nor are you the kind of woman a man would be willing to lose.”

It was something men like the minstrel said, to flatter vain or plain women. But she did not view it in the same light; it was not what they discussed. What might please other women, women like Eleanor, served only to underscore her rising desperation.

The child in her cried out, “It isn’t supposed to
be
like this!”

Robin smiled faintly with no hint of condescension; perhaps he had believed it also, before he went to war. “No doubt Helen said the same when Menelaus attacked Troy.” He rose, gathering mantles and brooches.

In the aftermath of pleasure, knowing what lay before them, she was hollow and spiritless. “Troy was destroyed. It was impregnable, like this castle . . . but the Achaeans burned it down.”

Robin stood before her, smiling into her eyes. “The Trojans believed too implicitly in false gods and their own abilities.” He draped the mantle over her shoulder, touched her cheek with intimate fingers, then pinned the brooch deftly. “I have learned better than that. If my father is to be Priam, I will not stay here to see it.”

“Ravenskeep will be a poorer Troy,” she said dryly, wishing he might touch her again so she could forget William deLacey and the father who was an earl. “We have no gate anymore.”

He grinned, swinging on and pinning his own mantle. “No. We’ll go somewhere else . . . somewhere my father will never think of, so I am left in peace, and somewhere the sheriff will not think of either, so
you
are left in peace.”

“Ah.” Marian nodded. “We are leaving England, then.”

It amused him, as she meant it to; anything to crack the tragedian’s mask. “No,” he said, laughing, “we’ll go to Locksley. It’s mine, after all—I should have gone before.”

Marian blinked in surprise; she had not considered it. “Where is Locksley?”

He turned his face to the open window. Beyond the curtain-wall lay lush and undulant fields; farther yet the encroaching tree line, slate-gray against pewter-pink sky. “Out there, beyond the trees.”

She looked. “But that’s Sherwood Forest!”

“The hem of the skirts,” he said. “Not the blacker soul.” His breath was on her cheek as he turned his mouth to hers. “And if he strips
that
from me, I’ll simply be Robin of Sherwood.”

When she could speak, when he allowed her mouth respite to frame words instead of kisses, Marian asked, “Could you do so much? Could you give up so much?”

So close to her, he was warm. His eyes were not. “I count it little, Marian—he threatens disinheritance when I want nothing he means to withhold.”

She would not let it go. “An earldom, Robin—”

“I care little enough for that.” He put fingers to her lips, smiling faintly. “Do not name me a saint for it . . . I admit to some advantages for being heir to Huntington, and such things as my father’s power are craved by many men. I use it myself, now, to serve the king”—his eyes glinted oddly—“but not in my father’s way. Nor ever would. I have learned my own way—have
made
my own way—and it is patently not his.”

If he would not look at all facets, Marian would. “You are his only son. Is it fair to an old man to deny him a fleshly legacy?”

He stroked her cheek. “Is it fair to ask me to live in my father’s image, when I am not he?”

She smiled; he was nothing like his father. “No.”

“Then do not.” He kissed her briefly again. “And I am no longer precisely the honorable son he would have me be.” Deftly he displayed the purse tied to his belt, peeling back the thong-snugged lip. A shake of his hand spilled the contents into his palm.

“Robin!”

His tone was peculiar. “I am turned thief, Marian: I crept into his treasury early this morning to see if there were truth to his claim of penury, and found there was little. He kept back his own jewels, while he sold my mother’s.” Robin turned over a cloak brooch of heavy-worked gold. “He stole from my mother what would have been yours, to build this stone monstrosity rearing over our heads . . . now I steal from him to buy a king his freedom.”

What would have been yours
... He meant more, then, than this; or had. Before. Her fingers trembled as she touched the gem-weighted rings. “When he learns what you have done—”

“Who but a fool would question an action done in the name of the king?” He smiled, pouring his father’s wealth back into the purse. “Arrangements have been made.... I will send this to a man in Nottingham, who will send it to another. And then on to Germany, to ransom the Lionheart.”

Her protest was immediate. “You cannot be expected to assume so much of the burden—”

He cut her off. “And I do not. The Jews have already done much, and everyone else in England; are the taxes not ruinous, and more frequent than usual?” He nodded even as she did. “I assume no more than I am willing to carry. Others carry more. This is a token merely, but perhaps it will help. When added to everything else, it may prove enough to satisfy German Henry.”

She would not ignore the truth, not even for a king. “
Thievery,
Robin. Such men are executed.”

“Many of them are not. Many of them live
there
, not so far from Locksley.”

Marian followed his finger as he indicated the vistas lying beyond the window. “Sherwood Forest.”

“It is something,” he told her. “And worth it, for a king.”

 

DeLacey did not permit himself the luxury another man might require after a night of too much wine. He dressed, broke his fast, called for a horse to be saddled, and summoned Philip de la Barre to attend him in the great hall.

“Tell me of Roger,” he invited.

De la Barre drew himself up, helm clasped in the crook of his elbow. “An ignorant man, my lord, but not altogether lacking in wit. He is sullen and much given to complaint, so much so that other serfs dislike him heartily, which adds to his sorry state. He is most unhappy with his lot, and believes without doubt that if he could go elsewhere that lot would be improved.”

“To another manor?” The sheriff shook his head. “Anyone other than Lady Marian would have flogged him to the bone.”

De la Barre allowed the faintest hint of contempt to sully his otherwise correct tone. “Saxons always believe what they cannot have is better.”

“Indeed.” DeLacey hid a smile; he knew of few men, Saxon or otherwise, who did not want more than what they had. But he forbore to mention it to de la Barre; a young Norman that close-minded would make an excellent aide. “What do you think of Jews, de la Barre?”

The soldier blinked. “Jews?”

“Do you admire them?”

De la Barre was at a loss. “
No
, my lord—they are Jews!”

It was enough for now. DeLacey returned to Roger. “Does the villein’s discontent have to do with Normans, or with his present lot?”

“My lord, I believe nothing would satisfy him. He is a man who resents others no matter who they are.”

“But he accepted Norman coin from the hand of a Norman soldier.”

De la Barre’s tone was dry. “With excessive haste.”

DeLacey smiled coolly. “Have a troop assembled, de la Barre. I have a duty for you in the city.”

 

No longer was Much a stranger in the Jewish Quarter, but a frequent visitor to the house of Abraham. He had learned the routine of the family so as not to disturb their privacy, and never stayed longer than required to deliver a purse to the aged moneylender. Abraham once suggested he wait and bring his findings all together, instead of one at a time, but Much remained unconvinced. He knew better than to be caught,
if
he were caught, with more then one purse in his possession; maiming he could survive, but they hanged habitual thieves.

At midday, in Market Square, he cut a third purse, and went immediately to the Jewish Quarter to deliver it to Abraham. There he found the streets entirely empty of Jews, and Abraham’s house full of Normans.

He ducked back swiftly into a deep-cut doorway, sliding down to squat in the shadow, and watched in wary alertness. One man held the horses to keep them from being stolen—too many for him, Much knew; he would surely be caught and hanged—even though no Jew would touch a Norman possession for fear of retribution far greater than ordinary. One by one he chewed off his broken fingernails.

When the soldiers were done they filled the street once again, laughing and trading jests in Norman French as they sorted out their horses, put things into saddle wallets, then mounted and rode away. From the open doorway of Abraham’s house came the sound of a woman’s keening.

Much waited to see if the Normans would come back; they did that sometimes, to discover if the one they wanted was being brought out of hiding. But these Normans did not return, and Much at last rose and hurried to Abraham’s house, where he found the front door shattered and the common room filled with wreckage. A young woman mourned broken things while an older one tended Abraham, who bled from a cut on his head.

Much stood in the doorway watching mutely. When the old man at last saw him, he knew the hope was gone. “Ah Much, here you are ...
this
coin they will not have.” He beckoned the boy in, fussing testily at the woman who pressed a damp cloth against his head. “Woman, I will heal—let me speak to the boy.” When she made no reply but remained stolidly in her place, he sighed and beckoned again. “Here, Much—you must take a message to Robin.”

“Robin,” the woman muttered. “Why is
he
not here? He lets an old man risk himself, while he remains unknown.”

“Silence, woman . . . what’s done is done. Esther! Stop your wailing, girl ... broken crockery can be replaced, and other things repaired.”

The girl collecting bits and pieces shut her mouth on her mourning, but her face was unrepentant. Tears ran down her cheeks.

Much stood before the old man and took the purse from his tunic. “Lionheart,” he said.

The older woman clucked her tongue in contempt. “Lionheart, indeed! What has he done for us? He goes to take Jerusalem while Jews suffer here in England.”

“Sarah, hold your tongue.” Abraham accepted the purse. “I thank you, Much. With this we begin again. But you must carry word to Robin that the sheriff’s men took it
all.”
His dark eyes were dull with pain. “Do you understand? Not just the tax money, but the king’s money as well; as you see, we could not stop them.” Abraham sighed. “They thought we merely cheated the sheriff, nothing more, so our intent remains safe. But there is nothing left save this.” He held up the leather purse.

Sarah stroked his blood-matted hair. “And what will this Robin
do?
Go to the sheriff himself and demand the money back?” Her face was strained; Much sensed fear for what might become of an old, ailing man. “Better he keeps his own coin. Better he keeps his own counsel.”

“Go, Much,” Abraham said wearily. “His father is the Earl of Huntington; he’ll likely be found there.”

Sarah inhaled sharply.
“Huntington’s
son? This thief who steals for a king?”

“Go,” Abraham said.

Much turned and ran out of the house.

 

They found him in the chapel concluding morning prayers. Tuck smiled at them tremulously, hideously self-conscious. He had spent the night in the hall on two benches shoved together, but he knew she had not. It was a sin they committed, carnal love with no sacrament, and yet he could not damn them for it. Better for her the man she loved than a man who would trick her to bed.
And that very thought is a sin. I require a priest myself.

He slipped hands into wide sleeves. They were dressed for weather, and riding. Tuck was not surprised; the hall was full of gossip regarding the earl and his rebellious son, and the woman with whom he had passed the night. Tuck knew without asking that Marian would not stay beneath the earl’s roof, and that Robin would see her to safety.