Jennifer Roberson - [Robin Hood 02] (34 page)

“Stealth? In my own home?”

“Marian, either you return to Ravenskeep as chatelaine and risk being arrested—”

“The sheriff doesn’t know I took part in Much’s rescue!”

“—and interrogated,” Robin went on, ignoring the interruption, “so the sheriff might discover where we are hiding; or you must
steal
the tools. And there are those of us better fit for such activity.”

“Aye,” Scarlet agreed morosely. “The one most fit for it is the one who has need of the tools!”

Marian looked at Much. His face was pale and grimy, and deeply bruised. Heavy shackles linked by iron chain weighted arms and ankles. “Then go,” she said abruptly. “One of you. All of you. Just hasten. We need to get Much free.”

“I’ll go at once,” Robin agreed.

“No.” It was Alan, unaccountably. “Let me. Robin—if you were caught, you would pay the highest price.”

“And you wouldn’t?” Scarlet asked.

“Everyone knows it was Robin who challenged the sheriff in his own city,” the minstrel explained. “They saw no one else. I have not been near Nottingham for two years; no one would expect me, and no one would necessarily recognize me. You, Will, are wanted for murder; the soldiers would likely kill you before taking you back.” He shrugged. “I would rather have all of you free to rescue
me,
than Robin caught and in need of us to rescue him. Wouldn’t you?”

Frowning uneasily, Marian glanced into shadows. “Where is John?”

“Hiding?” Tuck asked.

Scarlet scowled. “Still?”

“Never mind John,” Alan said. “He’ll be well enough. But Much needs these shackles cut off.” He glanced at Robin. “I’ll be back before sundown.”

They watched as the minstrel slipped back into the trees. Scarlet shook his head. “I’d never have thought it of him.”

Tuck merely smiled. “God provides courage when it is most needed.”

“Courage?” Scarlet asked skeptically. “Sweet Mary in Heaven, I’d call it stupidity!”

Much held his arms out. “
Off,”
he said, with simple desperation.

Even Will Scarlet had the grace to look abashed.

DeLacey was roused from his contemplative reverie with the arrival of one of his tax collectors. In view of the day’s events, in view of all the wine, he might otherwise have looked on this interruption with disfavor. But money had arrived, and an accounting was always satisfying. This cheered him immensely.

The sheriff personally escorted the man down to the cell, where he stationed two guards for the duration. There he spread the Exchequer cloth and beckoned the tax collector to begin doling out the bags of coins and the various receipt markers. The procedure required time and repetition, but it served to take his mind off Robin Hood.

Until Mercardier arrived.

The mercenary did nothing more than station himself in the doorway, thick arms folded. He said no word, made no sound, merely stood there, like massive statuary. DeLacey found it intensely annoying, and eventually accepted that his concentration was completely destroyed. He excused the tax collector, then glared balefully at the captain. “What is it?”

“Taxes,” Mercardier said briefly. “Was this the last of the collections? May I expect to escort the shipment to the king very soon?”

DeLacey opened his mouth to snap that no, it was not the last of the collections; that the captain had best not expect to go anywhere very soon—but almost immediately changed tack. Perhaps this was the opportunity he had begun hoping for.

“I must have the accounting in order,” he said instead, keeping his tone light, “which requires me to inventory what has just arrived and add it to the rest. This will take time. But I think it possible you may expect to leave tomorrow. Will that satisfy you?”

“It is for my lord king to be satisfied.”

“Of course,” the sheriff acknowledged, making a supreme effort to remain agreeable. “And I am certain he shall be. This will be a positive way to begin his reign, I should think.”With precision he realigned the markers in the Receipt square on the painted cloth. “Tomorrow, Captain. Now, may I return to my work? Delays here will of course delay your departure.”

Mercardier’s expression remained characteristically implacable. He inclined his head slightly in a passable imitation of civility, then turned and left the cell. DeLacey listened to the receding footsteps.

When he was alone again, surrounded by stacks of chests, sealed scrolls, and the table bearing cloth, markers, and payment, he smiled. There was no humor in it. Only grim satisfaction. “By all means,” he said. “Tomorrow.”

Then he began to muster in his mind the men he believed most capable of undertaking and completing the task, the plan he had developed while sitting at the table drinking too much wine, with too much time to think about desperate kings and clever outlaws and unmanipulable mercenaries, all of whom plagued his life beyond the extremes of tolerance.

John would have his taxes. John would be pleased. John would be assured William deLacey was the only man for the office in Nottinghamshire.

John would
not
be pleased to learn that his late brother’s prized captain of mercenaries was incompetent.

 

As they took up various places to await Alan’s return, Marian realized that Robin had the right of it: the borrowed—or, rather, “purchased”—skirt and shawl had imparted a pungent and unpleasant odor to her hair, tunic, and hosen. In the tension of escape she hadn’t noticed; now she could notice nothing else. She shed both skirt and shawl with alacrity, caring little that it was in the middle of the clearing in front of everyone else—after all, she still wore hosen, tunic, and hooded capelet—and hooked both upon the broken ends of tree limbs. Then she took herself as far from the stench as possible.

“Better they be burnt,” she muttered, “had we a fire.”

Will Scarlet, leaning against a downed trunk with legs outstretched, snorted. “There’s many I know as would be grateful for such clothing.”

Marian wrinkled her nose. “And welcome to them!”

He shrugged. “Peasants wear what they can. Smell don’t matter, does it, when ’tis warmth you’re after.”

She opened her mouth to retort, then realized she had none.

“Aye,” Scarlet said knowingly. “ ’Tis hard for a lady to understand.”

“Well,” Robin said lightly, as he leaned against the saddle and pad he had taken from Charlemagne’s back, “I was raised an earl’s son, and there were times when
I
stank.”

“When?” Will challenged. “You, with serfs to clean and mend your tunics?”

“In the Holy Land,” Robin said, “there was sun without surcease. Water, when we found it, was for drinking. Most of the army was ill much of the time with the flux, and other things even the physicians didn’t recognize. The Germans ate a spiced food they called
sausage,
the entrails of pigs stuffed with ground meat and—other things. They hung them from their saddlebows and carved off chunks as they went. In armor, leather, and mail, we never stopped sweating. It ran from our faces, down our spines, chafed our thighs. After a battle, there was the blood. And worse.” He shrugged. “I daresay none of you would have desired to be anywhere near me then. Certainly the first thing the Turks did when they took me was have me bathed.”

Scarlet’s mouth dropped open. “
Bathed?”

Tuck, seated next to Much, looked baffled. “The enemy had you bathed?”

“They believe in it daily.”

Scarlet was horrified. “They
bathe
every day?”

“Why not? They pray five times a day.”

“To their Infidel god!” Scarlet expostulated.

“Allah, Robin said. “
Insh’Allah.
‘In Allah’s—God’s—name.’ ”

“Allah,” Much mimicked.

“Don’t teach him that,” Tuck said, scandalized. “Let the boy pray to
our
God, the Christian God!”

But Scarlet was far less concerned with religion. “Whyever would they bathe you?”

“They said I stank. At least, at the time I assumed that was what they meant, since I was dumped into a tiled pool almost immediately upon reaching the city. Later I learned the words for it.”

By his expression, Will still could not comprehend why the enemy would bathe a prisoner. Marian, amused, sat down next to Robin. “I imagine men in battle pray to God more than five times a day.”

“Five times an
hour,”
Robin agreed, reaching out to rub her back, “once battle is joined. It was part of the din . . . every man praying to his own God in his own language—and therefore begging the same thing at any given moment.”

“Same thing?” Tuck asked skeptically. “Christians and Saracens?”

“English, Norman, German, French, Moslem and Christian. We prayed for the things all soldiers pray for: glory, bravery, victory—and worthiness.” He shrugged. “If we die worthy, then there is release into a better world. For Christians it’s Heaven. For the Moslems, Paradise.”

Scarlet grunted. “What’s this Paradise like? Full of people bathing?”

Robin smiled. “How would I know, Will? I’m a thrice-damned Christian pig.”

Marian laughed, luxuriating in his touch.

Tuck, however, was horrified. “Don’t say such a thing!”

“To
them,”
Robin clarified dryly, eyes alight. “Do you know, we have the same name for one another? ‘Infidel.’ To us, they are the Infidel. To them, we are.”

“Oh, I have a name for ’em,” Scarlet said vehemently, but never got a chance to announce what it was as Robin sat bolt upright and gestured him into silence.

They were all on their feet as the crashing sound approached, grabbing up bows and nocking arrows. But there was no need for defense: the noisy arrival was no enemy, but Little John.

“Soldiers,” he said succinctly, out of breath. “On the road just outside of Nottingham. Gisbourne leads them.”

“Did they see you?” Robin asked.

The red-haired giant shook his head. “I hid myself.”

“How many?”

Little John told them. “But they’re well behind me. Gisbourne had them all halted in the road, telling which lot to go where.”

Robin nodded. “They’ll divide. Some for Locksley Village, no doubt. Some Ravenskeep. The rest likely for Sherwood.”

“Makes sense,” Scarlet agreed. “And easier for us. Fewer in the forest.”

Little John looked at Marian, then dug a pouch from under his belt. “Here,” he said diffidently, and put it into her hands.

She stared down at it, feeling the weight. “John—what is it?”

Under the tangled ruddy thatch hanging over blue eyes, his face colored. “For you,” he said. “For your taxes.”

“Taxes!” She unloosened the thong, then upended the pouch into her palm. Coins chimed against flesh.

“Not much,” John said with regret. “ ’Twas all he had.”

Marian looked at him. “All
who
had?”

“The peddler.”

“Peddler!”

Will Scarlet let out a shout of laughter. “You robbed a peddler?”

Little John looked only at her. “We’ll not let you lose your home to the sheriff.”

It took her breath away. Rendered her speechless. All she could do was stare, like a lackwit.

Scarlet grinned. “Stealing’s easier than earning it, aye?”

“John,” Robin said mildly, “was he a wealthy peddler?”

The big man shrugged. “Wealthy as a peddler can be, I guess, from the look of his wagon and horse. No sense in robbing a poor one, is there? No money to be had.”

“Indeed,” Robin murmured. He had removed the arrow from the bow. Now he set the broadhead against the back of his neck and began idly to scratch—gently—beneath his hair. He smiled at Marian, lopsidedly. “You yourself suggested the answer once. You and a man who was once Justiciar of England. We had to stop King John, you said, you and the Earl of Essex. To take the tax shipments from deLacey so that John would not have the money to pay his lapdogs, such as our beloved sheriff. Do you recall, Marian?”

She recalled it. She had said it. She had not known someone else had suggested the same. But today they had committed themselves to outlawry in front of all of Nottingham, and such things as she had suggested on impulse in the depths of a night now were tangible. Had been acted on. It stunned her into silence.

“You said,” Robin continued, “that as he would likely hang me anyway, I may as well give him reason.”

“I would just as soon you
didn’t
hang,” she said sharply, finding her tongue again. “But that had nothing to do with peddlers. I never meant you should rob innocent people of their wages, only deLacey of the taxes.”

“And the king,” he said dryly.

Marian flushed as the others laughed.

“You did say it.”

“I said it,” she affirmed. “I was angry with the sheriff, after what he did to Ravenskeep. I wanted to hurt him. And to stop King John from taxing us all to death.”

“We
are angry with the sheriff,” Little John pointed out.

Scarlet nodded. “And
we
would like to hurt him.” Then he added casually, “And you already shot his horse.”

That stung. “The horse was an accident!”

He shrugged. “How do you know he wouldn’t hang you for killing his horse? Because you’re a woman? Last time he meant to have you burned as a witch just because you wouldn’t marry him.”

Tuck nodded. “And he took your name off the tax rolls.”

“And near destroyed your manor.” That from Little John.

Much said softly, startling them all, “No friend to you.”

No. He was not. Nor had been for years.

The world, she realized with a jolt of painful clarity, had changed for them forever. Because a man who was king had died. And such things as this moment, this comprehension of it, changed them further, even as happenstance and tragedy formed endings and beginnings for a man who knew how to seize them, to shape them in his image to further his own goals.

A chill coursed over her flesh. “He has been waiting for this,” she said aloud. “This, or something like. For opportunity.”

“Probably,” Tuck agreed, who had worked for the sheriff, albeit reluctantly. “He is a patient man.”

“I am also thinking,” Robin went on, intent, she realized, on a wholly different beginning, “that soldiers will be entering Sherwood in search of us, and that they cannot possibly remain bunched together because of the terrain, but will end up separating from one another.”

“Lone targets,” Scarlet observed, “make better targets.”

It was decided, she knew. Without her. Because of her. In spite of her. Nothing she said would alter it.

Little John nodded. “One by one. We’ll have their swords,
and
their money.”

“Better soldiers than innocent men,” Robin said lightly, slanting a glance at Marian.

“Like peddlers?” she retorted, wanting to shock them into common sense instead of dangerous fancy. And yet she understood. She knew why it appealed.

“A
wealthy
peddler,” Little John shot back. “ ’Twouldn’t do to steal from a poor one.”

Will Scathlocke, now known as Scarlet, laughed. “That makes it all right, then, aye? Steal only from the wealthy, never from the poor.”

“But it still makes you outlaws,” Marian said dryly. “Merely discriminating.”

Robin’s glance was level. “We were outlaws five years ago. We became so again the day Richard died.”

She meant to protest that, to deny it to them all; surely not the
very
day King Richard died. But something entirely different issued from her mouth: Recognition. Acknowledgment. Even acceptance. “And today we reaffirmed it before all of Nottingham.”

Scarlet grunted. “Should have killed the sheriff, lady, instead of his horse.”

“No,” Robin declared. “We will not kill William deLacey. Why should we? Making him look the incompetent fool and getting him dismissed from office is far more effective a punishment than killing the man. Because if he is dead, he cannot be made to suffer the public humiliation we shall bestow upon him. He is a king’s toady. Being dismissed by the king would ruin his ambition, and in turn destroy his life.” He looked at Marian. “Would that suffice you, lady? To embarrass him, humiliate him, and have him turned out of office? So that he could not strike off any names from the tax rolls ever again?”