Jennifer Roberson - [Robin Hood 01] (13 page)

“Robert?” the earl whispered.

Locksley at last looked up. He hunched over the dismembered carcass, one haunch clutched in his hand. His eyes, Huntington saw, were black instead of hazel.

The old voice trembled. “Is this—necessary?”

His son stared back, unmoving. And then did move, slowly, looking down at the haunch in his hand; at the remains of the boar. At the knife still gripped in the other hand, dripping blood.

He started to speak. The harsh words were unintelligible. He stopped. Frowned. Tried again. This time in English, so the earl could understand. “This is what you do,” he said hoarsely. “In war.”

“But—” The earl passed a trembling hand over his face. “Robert—you are home. In England. This is England. There is no war here. The beast you have killed is a boar.”

A shudder wracked Locksley’s hunched body. “He wasn’t.”

“He was.” The earl drew in a deep breath, meticulously rearranging the folds of his soiled mantle because it was something he could comprehend. “Robert—he was a
boar.”

“He wasn’t,” Locksley repeated stolidly. “They said he was, but he wasn’t.”

There is no time for this.
The earl walked very carefully and deliberately around the dismembered carcass to stand at his son’s side. He reached down, shut a gnarled hand on Locksley’s shoulder and gripped with surprising strength. “Robert—come away. At once. Do as I say. I’ll send someone back to tend to the horse.”

“Ya Allah,”
Locksley murmured. And then, with a trace of desperation, “No—I mean,
God.”

The earl’s tone was definitive, the words explicit. “Do as I say.”

Stiffly, Locksley rose. The once-green tunic and hosen were stained a muddy red-brown as the blood began to crust.

The earl assessed his condition. His mouth thinned a moment, hardening. “Robert ...” But the lips loosened fractionally. There were the others to think of. “It was well done, Robert. The others will hail you a hero.”

“No,” Locksley rasped. “What was done was—butchery.”

Huntington gave a coarse laugh. “It’s what you do to boars!”

His son stared down at the carcass. “But not what you do to men.”

The hand closing firmly on Marian’s shoulder snapped her out of her reverie. “Come,” the sheriff said quietly, pulling her away. “There is no need for you to stay with him. The wagon will take him back to the castle.”

It disturbed her that he cared so little for his own man. “Perhaps I could aid him ... comfort him, somehow—” She felt it was important, as if she were to blame.

“How? And why? He is nothing to you.” DeLacey grasped her by both shoulders and steered her easily away from the men clustered around Gisbourne. “What good can you do him?”

But Marian had fastened onto an earlier sentence. “Nothing to me? But he
is—
it was for me he confronted the boar—”

He laughed gently. “I think not. Surely not. I believe he felt challenged by the others ... I confess to a weakness, Marian. Men will do unbelievable things if their pride is brought into it ... and Gisbourne is not a common sort of knight.”

Shock gave way to anger.
Perhaps Eleanor is right
—
he is harder than I thought.
Marian hitched both shoulders convulsively and shrugged off his hands, swinging to face him. “An
uncommon
knight, Sheriff? Surpassing brave, is he not?”

The disarming smile faded, replaced with a more attentive assessment of her reaction. She saw the lines in his face deepen, the brown eyes harden. “He is my steward. An able man, withal—as it concerns tending a household. But not what any man, even Gisbourne himself, would claim particularly brave. Not as knights are measured, lady. Not as your father was.”

It infuriated her. “We will leave my father out of this!”

“Your father died in battle against men, Marian. Not against beasts.”

It shocked her. “Do you count Gisbourne’s act less significant because it was a beast? What if it had harmed me? What if I had fallen, and it had threatened me?”

“He should not have dismounted.” The tone was cool, clipped; and then he once more took her arm and turned her away, ignoring her inarticulate, murmured protest. “I applaud his intent, Marian. But it was foolhardiness, no more. Now. Let us speak of something else—”

“What if he dies?”

“If God hears our prayers, he will not.”

“Don’t you want to return with him?”

“Of course. Even now my horse is brought, and yours. Do you think I mean to spirit you away into the forest?” The sheriff laughed. “No, Marian. I mean for us both to accompany him back to the castle. The hunt is quite completed—not what anyone anticipated, perhaps, but certainly finished. Now allow me to help you mount ...”

Before she could speak he caught her up and pressed her into the saddle. Marian found her seat and caught up the reins the horseboy offered as the sheriff mounted his own horse. She thought to protest, but didn’t. He was a man, he was older, he was her father’s friend, due respect and courtesy—

But what had Eleanor said? She couldn’t say no to the man?

It annoyed Marian intensely that her spirit was judged so lacking by a woman who hardly knew her.
Grow a spine,
she told herself sternly. “My lord Sheriff—” She meant to tell him he was being too high-handed with her, that he had no right to order her around, to force her this way and that, as if she were wife, or servant. She meant to tell him that perhaps his youngest daughter judged him more accurately than he knew, stripping away the facade to bare the true man underneath.

But the words died away. She said nothing after all, looking beyond the sheriff entirely as he readied to mount, because Robert of Locksley, with the earl, had come into the clearing as the others labored with Gisbourne.

The front of his clothing was soaked. White-blond hair hung lankly on his shoulders, weighted by ruddy ribbons. His face, a blood-smeared mask but moments before, had been scrubbed haphazardly by a forearm.

The rough ministration left him no less bloody, no less barbaric. No less than what he had been as he had cut open the boar’s throat.

Grimly, as the earl spoke to someone, Locksley looked across the clearing and found her watching him. She saw him go very still. Transfixed, he stared blankly at her for a long, arrested moment—and then the face beneath the blood blanched into deathly white.

 

Alan frowned over his fretwork, oblivious to the servants as they worked around him, carrying out soiled rushes and replacing them with fresh. Racks were checked for spent candles. Clean linen was spread on the tables and silver polished again. He had moved twice already, muttering irritation, and now took residence on a stool near the chair reserved for the earl.

The tune was coming along well, if he could master the fingering necessary. A jammed finger the year before had rendered him less than what he had been when it came to certain chords. He had labored for months to recover strength and flexibility, but as yet hadn’t recaptured it. And now, most decidedly, it interfered with his intent.

“Alain!” The hall echoed his name.

He glanced up, head still full of notes, and saw her rushing toward him, kirtle and mantle pulled awry so as not to foul her steps.

Alan rose hastily to catch her before she could harm his lute. She flung herself into his arms, albeit one was occupied, and trapped his mouth with her own.

“Fairest Eleanor,” he gasped, when at last she loosed his mouth. “I—had not anticipated your return so quickly.” In fact he had forgotten about her entirely in the need to capture the burgeoning song, thinking of lyrics and other things, far from Eleanor’s sturdy arms. He recalled her promise to return, and his words of encouragement; both now came back to haunt him. He had believed he had more time.

Eleanor giggled huskily, working at the drawstring of his hosen. “I let nothing delay me when my appetite is so engaged.”

He caught her questing hand. “Not here, I pray—”

She was impatient, which might have excited him once. “Then a chamber, and hurry. We have time, but not so much that I wish to forgo a moment.”

The night before it had been of his choosing. He had tumbled her once, finding her appetite intriguing. Now the sport had palled. There was new music to discover; he knew her, now, too well. “Eleanor—”

“A
room,”
she urged. “Or I will take you here and now.”

It whetted his appetite, making her more attractive. But he knew better. They dared not risk so much. Not on a second bedding; the first, well, that was different. Risk during a first encounter made the bedding that much more exciting.

Not here, then. But he knew she would not give up. So Alan laughed, kissed Eleanor back, took her and his lute to the first chamber he could think of, so close to the hall’s entrance. A small, private room. It lacked a bed, but that didn’t matter. The floor would do just as well.

 

It had gone wrong, deLacey knew. He was a man who understood nuances, the shifts in the tones of mood, the fleeting expressions in face and eyes, and the posture of the body. Instinctively, he knew it: he had handled Marian badly. She was not Eleanor, to be ordered this way and that because it was the only way to control her. She was Marian, and worth far more time and care. It had been a mistake, though not entirely his fault. The meeting with Prince John had shaken him badly, and that in itself was disturbing. He was long used to meeting even unpleasant surprises with calmness and self-control; he was usually quick-witted enough to turn aside even the worst of setbacks.

But John was different. John was dangerous. And now deLacey had entangled himself so deeply he doubted there was an escape, short of finding it in the grave. He dared not misplay the prince, or his life was surely forfeit; by the same token, if John’s bid for control of England failed, and King Richard was ransomed, the sheriff gave not a single penny for his own future. If John fell, he would fall. But if he aided John, and John became king ...?

A chill touched his spine. Such thoughts were treasonous. Better he think of something else.

He chanced a sidelong glance. Marian’s head was bowed as she rode, her flawless profile pensive. No doubt she thought him too harsh, too autocratic, and he didn’t blame her for that. He had miscalculated, allowing concern for John’s intentions to override his plan for her. He wanted to woo her into his bed, not command her there; to win her regard if he could, because what she thought mattered to him. No other woman had mattered, not even his first two wives. They had briefly entertained him, even given him children—
daughters!
—and had aided his rise in the world. But they had not loved him, and he had not loved them. The marriages had been expedient, no more. And though this one would also benefit his coffers, gain was not the sole reason he wanted FitzWalter’s daughter. There was the girl herself.

Inwardly, he marveled. He had watched her grow up, in a patchwork sort of way. It allowed him better judgment in the matter of her maturing. A mother or father, seeing a daughter daily, was unaware of the changes. But another man, seeing a girl but occasionally, was alert to her sudden leaps in growth.

She had been a plain, coltish, ungainly girl, all awkward limbs and tangled hair. FitzWalter had allowed her too much freedom once her mother died. He was too indulgent to guide her hoydenish habits into properly womanly ways. But that had changed in the last year, as she mourned her father. Grief had become the threshold of adulthood, and she had crossed it with colors flying.

She was exquisite. He knew of no better word. And he knew of no man better than he to give her the life she deserved.

To teach her what bodies were for.

 

Locksley rode Gisbourne’s horse because his own was dead. He was sticky with drying blood. The smell clung to him like a shroud, filling his head with recollections he had no wish to recall.

Any more than recall the expression on Marian FitzWalter’s face, when he had told her her father’s message regarding William deLacey.

Or when she had seen him dismember the boar.

He had meant only to kill it. That it had attacked Sir Guy of Gisbourne, he knew; he had come upon the scene, judged the boar’s line of retreat, and moved to cut it off. He hadn’t counted on the girl being in the way. He had intended merely to kill it before it did more harm. An enraged boar, possibly wounded, was a highly dangerous beast.

And then she had been there, in the boar’s path, leaving him with only one option.

He had not planned to hunt at all, riding out only because his father expected it, had
ordered
it, and he was not yet disposed to refuse his father’s wishes. It was easiest to give in. Captivity had taught him that.

He was weary. Used up. He had been weary for months, for more than a year. In that weariness, in the exhaustion of his spirit, lay the seed of what he was; of what he had become. Of what they had made him, Saladin’s men, and all the others as well. Even his own kind.

She had cried out for him to beware, when his horse had been hurt, and fallen. And again when he’d stabbed into the boar’s throat. He recalled it clearly:
“Be careful!”
she had cried.
“Oh my lord, take care!”
But nothing else, past that. Because with the cries of his horse in his head, and the stench of blood in his nostrils, what he killed was no longer a boar. What he was, was no longer a man, but a body, mind, and spirit remade on the anvil of war, remixed in the terrible crucible of a holy insanity.

He pulled the horse up short, clutching the reins clutching the pommel, wracked by guilt and self-contempt. He wanted to heave it out, like a man spewing vomit. He wanted to
bleed
it out, like a surgeon releasing impurities by cutting into rotting flesh.

He wanted to tell the girl exactly
how
her father had died, so he was no longer alone.

He had used the boar to show her. But knew he could never tell her.

 

Eleanor clutched at the minstrel’s buttocks, digging nails into bare flesh. He was not enough, not
enough—

She swore at him, then released taut flesh to grip his hair as she arched hips up from the floor, trying to capture more of him. She heard him panting, murmuring, saying things against her throat, her breasts, but his words were unimportant. She wanted more of
him,
not the practiced jongleur’s phrases.

“Where is your lance?” she gasped. “Where is your sword,
ma petite?
Where are you hiding yourself?”

Alan was incoherent.

“Hold nothing back,” she commanded. “Give it all to me—”

He gave her as much as he could.

“—to
me—”
Eleanor cried.

And the door to the chamber burst open.

 

The earl gestured sharply as he led the way inside the hall to the door just off the entry. “That door—
there
. Take him inside and put him down
...you
there—open that door!” He swung to face another servant. “Have the surgeon summoned. Bring linen and water, and blankets for bedding. We’ll put him here for now, until the surgeon is done with him.”

The door was unlatched and shoved open, even as the men bearing Gisbourne shouldered into the chamber. Behind them came the earl, his son, the sheriff... and Prince John, but lately arrived, asking pettishly for more wine.

“Over there,” the earl ordered, gesturing toward a corner. And then, in shock, “My
God—”

Save for Gisbourne’s moan of pain, the chamber was utterly silent.

Eleanor deLacey, clad in little save tumbled hair, burst into noisy tears. “He
forced
me!” she cried, hunching as she knelt. Then displayed a livid mark on the flesh of one hair-shrouded breast. “See what he did to me?”

Alan, bare-flanked and flaccid as he stood against the wall, opened his mouth to protest, to deny the wailed words. But as the sheriff advanced upon him, white of face and black of eyes, he knew for once in his life a nimble tongue wouldn’t save him.