Jennifer Roberson - [Robin Hood 01] (2 page)

 

Marian smiled crookedly.
This place transforms Ravenskeep into a hovel.

It did not, quite; her beloved manor was a worthy enough residence, and far better than a serf’s hovel. But Huntington Castle, in its towered and portcullised grandeur,
was
hugely imposing as well as exquisitely new, boasting the latest improvements in architecture and defenses. The keep was surrounded by a newfangled curtain-wall replete with ornate defense machicolations and murder-holes, but Marian was less overwhelmed by the size and sheer massiveness than by its master’s ambition and wealth.

The great hall itself was no less impressive, if a trifle intimidating, with its fashionably massive masonry walls intermittently shielded behind painted cloth hangings. The hall was awash in candle- and lamplight, painting ochre and umber shadows in corners, cracks, and crannies. Lute-song was an underscore to the warmth of so many bodies, the odors of sweetmeats, spice, strong wine; to the animated discussions swirling throughout the hall. Marian was aware of them all, if distantly, thinking instead of the reason she and the others—even those uninvited—had attended.

He will not remember me.
He could not, of course; why should he? He was an earl’s son, and she a knight’s daughter. That they had met once, as children, would mean nothing to him.
I wish—
But she cut it off. There was no purpose in it.

Lute-song drifted to her through a break in the crowd. Marian glanced idly at its source. The handsome minstrel—some might call him pretty—she had seen upon arrival, marking him as true to type in bright-eyed, eloquent discourses designed to snare a female audience before he played a note. The rapidity of his success made her smile, but not fall victim; an answering glint in long-lashed blue eyes told her he marked
her
as something more than a simple, immediate conquest. But she had not entered the game for more than one reason: she was not disposed to play, and she had come for Robert of Locksley, Huntington’s heir.

Something pinched her stomach.
This is wrong. I know it is. I shouldn’t tax him with this; simply because he’s from the same shire, I can’t expect him to know anything more than I do.
She drew a deep breath.
But I’m here now; it’s done. I’ll approach him anyway. What harm in the asking?

No harm at all in the asking ... if he deigned to answer. If he even knew who she was, or what her father had been.

She knew of no one else, no one at all. Men came home from Crusade nearly every day now, but she knew none of them.
No more than I know Locksley ... but at least I can ask—
Marian bit her lip.
No harm in asking, is there?

She stared hard at the empty dais. Irritation flickered minutely. Marian sought and rekindled it, aware of guilty relief; it was far simpler to be annoyed than to dwell on flagging self-confidence.
No doubt he holds back merely to make an impressive entrance.

 

Robert of Locksley, heir to vast wealth, an ancient title, and his father’s brand-new castle, sat very quietly on the edge of the chair, holding himself perfectly still. If he didn’t move, if he did not so much as twitch, the chair wouldn’t break.

Through the studded oak door, carefully closed and latched for privacy, noise crept into awareness: echoes muted by wood, by stone, by distance; warped by perceptions, by interpretations shaped of circumstances now lodged in the past, yet oddly still part of his present. He wondered in a detached, negligent way if the selfsame echoes would also shape his future. He heard so many, now. Even those that were not real.

Shoulders and neck were set stiffly, unyielding to quiet protests of aching muscle and tendon. He sat with meticulous precision on the edge of the heavy chair, banishing the tremors of too-taut sinews, allowing himself no slackening of knotted muscles, no tranquility of his spirit. Listening to the noise.

A lute, clear and sweet, notes interspersed with women’s laughter, and girlish giggles. Lute and women, he thought distantly, were requirements of one another, if only to fulfill the fashion of Romance as dictated by a queen: Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard’s indomitable mother.

Richard.
He closed his eyes. Hands, splayed slackly across bunched thighs, flexed spasmodically, then doubled into fists, scraping nails against hosen fabric. A tremor shook his rigidity, then died. He sealed his traitorous eyes with all the strength he could muster.
If I refuse to hear—

But the lute-song and the laughter beyond the door transmuted themselves without effort. The noise now was screaming—

And the Lionheart’s lusty laughter, no more inhibited by decorum than his appetites by rank.

 

For the thousandth time, Marian let her fingers examine the seating of narrow silver fillet over the linen coif and sheer veil covering her head and hair, and the double-tied embroidered girdle binding her waist and hips. Huntington’s great hall was filled with a significant portion of England’s nobility, men and women of great Saxon houses, and those of the newer Norman regime who had replaced the English tongue with French, so that the earl’s hall was replete with bilinguality. Marian, too, spoke both languages, as one was required; the other, older language, shaped by Norse invaders, was considered impolitic where business was conducted. Peasants spoke it primarily, while those desiring to rise resorted to English only among themselves, or when ordering villeins about.

Even the lute-player sang in French, though Marian supposed it was required. French was the language of legend and love, according to the Dowager Queen Eleanor’s dictates, and troubadours who reveled in the traditions of the storied Courts of Love inevitably sang of both, relegating the more ordinary day-to-day concerns to the reality they attempted to obscure.

She was distantly aware of the music, but was no more interested in it than she was in the conversation between four old beldams clustered before her. They spoke of nothing but the earl’s wealth, his influence, his unflagging support of King Richard, who would doubtless reward such loyalty, once his release from Henry was procured, and thereby render the earl yet more powerful and wealthy. Marian found such talk tedious; she was interested in the earl’s
son,
not in the earl himself. She disliked even more her own consciousness that the heir to one of England’s most preeminent barons would most likely find her question disrespectful and impudent.

He will brush it off like a passing impertinence, then have me dismissed before the nobility of England.
Marian shut her eyes, hearing lute-song and conversation.
Give me the courage to ask. It isn’t so very much.

 

Locksley twitched as someone called out his name. Blind eyes snapped open. He fought his way to the surface, groping for comprehension. Surely the voice was one he knew ... But the latch, quickly lifted, became the sound of a trebuchet crank as they readied to loft the stone—

—
hurtling through the dry, dust-swathed air, crashing into the wall, pulping the flesh caught beneath—

Wood boomed on stone: a door against a wall.
Wood,
not stone on stone, or flesh, or bone, nor men to die from its force.

The voice: inflections of impatience, awkwardness, austere authority wary of preemption by concerns that could not be known, and dared not be questioned. “Robert—” More quietly now, but with no less pointed query, “will you keep my guests waiting all night?”

With effort Locksley roused and recalled himself from Holy Crusade to the war of wills now fought more subtly within the halls of his father’s castle. He rose, aware of deep-seated fatigue, and back-palmed the dampness on his brow beneath a shock of pale hair. Physically he was sound. The journey home had allowed him time to recover most of his former vigor, as well as the weight he’d lost. But what his father desired was nothing he wanted to do. Better to stop it now, to refuse quietly and politely, before the travesty went forward.

He turned, summoning courtesy, intending to say it plainly, so as to offer no room for misinterpretation. His father stood poised before the door. Beyond it milled the multitudes of English nobility, of whom Richard I, called Lionheart, was sovereign.

Self-control slipped into place, schooled to expected courtesy. “Forgive me.” He kept his tone very civil. “Had you asked, I would have told you not to bother. With—
that.
” A hand gestured briefly, eloquently, indicating the world beyond the door. “I would sooner go to bed.”

The earl nearly gaped at his unexpectedly recalcitrant heir. Then astonishment altered into autocracy, reshaping eyes, nostrils, jaw. Clearly the refusal, however politely couched, was not to be borne, nor could its understated plea be acknowledged. “By God—you will come out. At once. Everyone was invited. Everyone has come. Everyone is
expecting
—”

The residue of memories overlaying the present thinned, tore, then faded. Locksley had learned to adopt a quiet intransigence others viewed as self-confidence, though he himself knew better. Stubbornness, perhaps. Defiance, more like.

He kept his tone soft, but firm. The fleeting plea was banished. “It is none of my concern what everyone expects. You gave them leave to expect it without consulting me.”

The earl closed the door with the force of damaged authority and a desire to mend it at once. “By God, Robert, I am your father. It is for me to plan what I will plan, with or without consultation.” And then the thunderous expression faded. The earl crossed the shadowy chamber to clap both hands on his son’s arms. “Ah Robert, let this go. Why must we argue now, and about such a trivial matter? I thought you
dead
—and yet here you stand before me, full-fleshed and larger than life....” Blue eyes shone; the smile was a mixture of wonder and intense pleasure. “By God, all those prayers answered at last ...”

Locksley gritted teeth. When his jaw protested he relaxed the tension with effort.
Let him have it,
he told himself.
Let him have this moment. For all I know it
was
the strength of his prayers.

“Come now, Robert—you must admit your return is worthy of celebration! The Earl of Huntington’s only son back from Crusade with King Richard himself? I
want them to know,
Robert! By God, I want them to
know!
”

“They know,” his son replied quietly. “You have seen to that.”

“And do you blame me? Do you?” Bluffness dismissed, the earl now was intent, albeit underscored by parental impatience. “I believed my son dead. I was
told
my son was dead, killed at the Lionheart’s side ... and yet a year and a half later that son comes to my castle, close-mouthed and dry-eyed, saying little of such things save the stories lied. ‘Not dead,’ he says. ‘Captured by the Saracens’ ...” The earl’s blue eyes filled. “By
God,
Robert!—no father alive could resist a celebration.”

Very quietly, with infinite respect no less distinct for its resoluteness, Locksley suggested, “Had you consulted me—”

“Back to that, are we?” The earl scrubbed his clean-shaven, furrowed face with both hands, mussing clipped white hair, then gripped the top of the nearest chair and shut his hands upon it, leaning toward his son to emphasize his declaration. In muted light, crease-couched blue eyes were now nearly black. “Two years on Crusade may have grown the boy to manhood, but
I
am still the father. You will do as I say.”

Age had dog-eared the edges, but the tone was well-known. It was one to be obeyed, one to be feared, presaging punishment.

But that had been in boyhood. Save for the scratchiness the tone was unchanged, and so was the expectation of instant obedience, but the son who heard it was not the same individual.

Something odd and indefinable moved in the son’s eyes. Had the earl been as adept at judging his own flesh and blood as he was at judging most people, he would have seen the brief interplay between duty and desire, the pale glint of desperation quickly banished and replaced by grim comprehension.

To the earl, his son was a hero returned from battle and captivity, companion to the king. Above all, his son was his son. That superseded all other knowledge, all other judgments. But Robert of Locksley now was far more than an earl’s son, and, by his own lights, far less than a free man.

The earl’s belligerence faded as he gazed at his silent son, and the tight-clenched line of his jaw weakened until the flesh sagged minutely. The arch of the proud nose, stripped of youthful padding, pierced the air more keenly. He was, unexpectedly, an old man. The Earl of Huntington had always been strong and vigorous. Yet now the muted tone was rough-textured and unsteady, thickened by emotion. “By God, Robert, let me be proud of you,” he begged. “Let me show you off to those who will deal with you when
I
am in the tomb.”

Locksley’s belly clenched. He had recalled, while on Crusade, all of the earl’s strength of will, his inflexibility, his autocratic authority. Never had there been softness; better yet, a soften
ing,
in memories or daydreams. Yet his father, now, was old.

I am all he has left ... unless one counts this castle.
The thought was answered by a flicker of self-reproach, that he could be cynical in the face of his father’s pride.
I perhaps do him an injustice—what immortality does a father have, save for begetting sons? And I am his
only
son ... I am more costly than most.