Jennifer Roberson - [Robin Hood 01] (31 page)

He turned back to her sharply. “What?”

She held her tone steady. “We had best stay here.”

A damp lock of hair fell beside an eyebrow. “Through the night.” Not so much a question as tactful disbelief.

“Till dawn,” Marian said. “When there is light to see by, we’ll find the track, and the horse.”

His face was battered as her own, though with new bruises in place of welts, but she saw past the transitory mask to the more permanent one he had constructed himself. The edges of it were fraying like brittle, decaying parchment. “I can’t let you—”

“You can, and you will,” she said firmly. “My behavior and decisions are no more governed by you than by the sheriff.”

The mask remained impenetrable. Then it slipped minutely, displaying perhaps more than he wished to, even as eyes glinted in faint amusement. Dryly he suggested, “William deLacey will be somewhat discomfited to hear of your reasoning.”

She dared it finally, in the context of the issue, because it gave her the chance to address the other issue, the thing she felt beginning. “Are you?”

“I am—surprised.” He side-stepped it entirely, circumventing the dance. “A woman is so careful of proprieties.”

“I think such things are not as important as the preservation of our lives.”

He was quietly skeptical. “Few women would agree.”

Eleanor deLacey might.
“Few women have been hauled off into the depths of Sherwood Forest by a condemned murderer,” she retorted. “It gives me some measure of perspective.”

His frown was nearly imperceptible as he evaluated her conviction. “I think perhaps you underestimate the repercussions—”

“I underestimate nothing.” The light of sunset dimmed, casting wan amber light across one scraped cheekbone stained dark by the Holy Land’s sun. He was aging gold and tarnished silver in the day’s fading luminescence. “What you so gallantly refuse to speak of, relying on assumption, is the state of my reputation.”

Above the scraped cheek, a tiny muscle twitched.

I am become like Eleanor, though not by my design.
Marian drew in a breath. “I thank you for your concern, but I believe there is no place left,
now,
in my life for such things as reputation. They will think what they like to think. They will believe as they wish to believe. It is what people
do. ”
She shrugged, aware of regret even as she condemned those who would condemn her. “Nothing I say will change it.”

His tone was rusty. “There is no need to bury yourself just yet.”

It was a bone, which she accepted because to ignore it or dismiss it was discourteous. He meant only to help, to offer a shred of decency, though all now was banished. “Of course not. You will take me back to Ravenskeep—”

He interrupted. “I meant to take you to Nottingham.”

It was completely unexpected. “To the sheriff? After what I told you?” She didn’t know why, but it hurt. “I beg you, take me instead to Ravenskeep.”

A drop of water from still-wet hair trickled down his temple. “He will expect me to bring you to him.”

Marian’s teeth clenched. “He may expect whatever he likes. I am neither his wife, nor his ward, nor his daughter.” She swallowed heavily, aware of newborn pain where she had expected none. “That misconception has already cost me dearly ... would you have me pay more yet?”

His face was white and taut, donning the favored mask. For a moment only the eyes were alive, burning in the angles and hollows of a face thrown into relief by the play of light and shadow. She thought he would withdraw, saying nothing, making no effort at all. But she was wrong.

He reached out his hand. In disbelief she saw the fingers tremble, if minutely, and then still. He waited.

She thought of her father’s hand, so often outstretched to her.
But he is not my father.

“This way,” he said, as her fingers touched his own. “The track is not much farther, if I recall it right. We will go at least that far—”

“There is no need.” She offered escape because she knew without knowing why that she needed it herself. “I told you, it doesn’t matter—”

The grip on her hand tightened, banishing retreat as much as misunderstanding. “There is need,” he declared harshly, fervent as a zealot.

It struck her dumb. She stared at him, marking the starkness in expression; the bleakness in his hazel eyes. Comprehension was abrupt.
It isn’t for me he does this. He does this for
—
himself?

“This way,” he said.

Marian let him lead her.

Little John squatted beside Will Scarlet’s unconscious body. Fading daylight no longer was softly suggestive. Sherwood Forest assumed the lurid guise of a full-blown seductress promising darkness soon, thick and damp and impenetrable, with no taste for subtlety. The warmth of a spring day was usurped by evening’s chill.

He felt poor in spirit and sick at heart. Only a matter of hours before he had stood in the wrestling ring at Nottingham Fair taking on all comers, luring would-be opponents, jesting with passers-by, simply going about the business of upholding his reputation as the undefeated Hathersage Giant. Once the fair was over he’d intended, as always, to return to his sheep, leaving behind the encumbrances of less satisfying toil.

“Doesn’t have to be different,” he murmured, digging thick fingers into his ruddy beard to tame an annoying itch. “If Robin goes to the sheriff and speaks for me—”

But Will Scarlet’s words came back, shaped in the fires of hatred, saying Little John was an outlaw now, a man with no future. He owned only his name, if Scarlet were right, and he was fair game for any who caught him for the price upon his head. That there was as yet no price upon that head did not matter; it would take but a moment for the sheriff to learn the red-haired giant had aided Will Scarlet, and to declare his capture worth the same as a wolf’s bounty: he would become, summarily, another Saxon “wolf’s-head,” a proscribed man without recourse to the protection of English—or Norman—laws.

He looked harshly on Will Scarlet. The man lay slackly against the ground, ankles tipped outward. His feet were partially bare, wrapped in leather scraps and woolen bindings. He was altogether filthy, stinking of the dungeon, with ropes of sinew corroding the skin in place of well-fed flesh. His face was the worst of all, forming sinkholes at cheeks and eye-sockets, with a crusted coverlet of blood, stubble, and grime.

“Wolf’s-head,” Little John muttered. “What becomes of you now?”

The voice came from nearby foliage. “Depending on disposition, he may be joining us.”

Startled half out of his head, Little John reached to snatch up the quarterstaff Marian had let fall and lurched upright hastily, dropping into readiness. “Come out!” he roared, using sheer volume to compensate for the regrettable fright to which he would rather not admit. “I’ll not be fighting shadows when there’s a man behind it all.”

Silence. Then, “Peace,” the voice urged, sounding amused. “You’ll be fighting no one. I’ve archers with me—can you ward off an arrow with naught but a quarterstaff”

Little John could not, but did not relax his vigilance. “Come out of there and prove it.”

Again, silence. Then three men stepped out of the shadows. Two of them indeed held bows at the ready, cloth-yard arrows nocked. They wore dark, unremarkable clothing fit for a proper peasant: tunics bound with leather belts, hosen upon their legs, crude leather boots. Entirely unremarkable in attire as well as expression, lowborn Englishmen very far from a proper village, and therefore tending to business likely other than lawful.

The man who wore a meat-knife at his belt also had a longbow hooked over his back, and a quiver. He crossed wool-clad arms nonchalantly and grinned at Little John. “What brings you into our home?”

Little John adjusted grip and stance, wary of a rearguard attack. “Your home?”

“Sherwood Forest. ’Twasn’t our first choice—we had true homes, once, till the Normans hounded us from them—but it serves us well enough now.” He glanced briefly at Will Scarlet. “You called him a wolf’s-head. Why?”

“ ’Tis what he is.” Little John tried in vain to hear if anyone approached from behind without leaving his front vulnerable. “Meant to hang at the sheriffs word.”

The expression on the man’s face did not alter. “Then why didn’t he?”

I need a diversion.
Little John wet his lips. “A long story,” he declared. “Worth telling over ale.”

“Ah, but we have none here.” The unarmed man was dark as a Welshman, slight, and quietly alert. His light brown eyes and quick movements put Little John in mind of a fox. “What we have here is ourselves, and a yearning to know the truth. You’ve come to
our
home... why have you left yours?”

Maybe later, not now...
Little John sighed. He told them as much as he knew of himself; as little of Will Scarlet, whom he knew not at all save by reputation.

It was enough for the others. The dark man nodded. “Not so different a story from others we’ve heard.” He made a slight gesture and bow strings were slackened. “My two friends are Clym of the Clough, and William of Cloudisley. My name is Adam Bell.”

Little John started. “Adam Bell—? But—
I’ve
heard of you. You’re outlaws. Wanted men.”

The archers traded glances. “Wolf’s-heads,” Adam Bell said lightly. “Once we were naught but peasants. Now we’re kings in Sherwood Forest, feasting on the Lionheart’s deer.”

Little John looked at the other two: sandy-haired Clym of the Clough, with a squint in one blue eye and a small finger missing; and dark-maned William of Cloudisley, much younger than the others, smiling sweetly as a girl.

From the ground Will Scarlet stirred, coughing and spitting. “Kings, are you?” he rasped. “I see no jewels or coin.”

Two bows rose, two arrows were nocked. Adam Bell merely shrugged. “We’re not fools, are we, to weigh ourselves down while hunting?”

“Hunting what?” Scarlet asked. “Me for the price on my head?”

Adam Bell grinned. “You but newly outlawed? Don’t flatter yourself. I’m a sight older than you, and worth more than that. Oh, I don’t say we haven’t sold men before, but only if they prove unwilling.”

It made Little John wary. “Unwilling?”

“Aye.” Bell hitched a shoulder. “It costs to cross our land.”

Little John nodded once, understanding all too well. “And if we have no coin?”

“Better men than you have tried that gambit.” Bell glanced briefly at his companions. “We don’t ask much. Pittance, no more. Enough to buy Cloudisley’s wife a pretty trinket.”

Sweet-smiling William of Cloudisley nodded. “I’m bound for Carlisle in two days. A ribbon’ll do her fine.”

Scarlet sat up slowly, gingerly feeling his nose. “I’ve naught,” he said flatly. “I had naught
before
the sheriff; d’ye think he gave me a penny for guesting in his dungeon?”

Adam Bell merely shrugged. “Then you’ll be stealing it.”

 

Marian stood in the clearing, head tipped back onto sore shoulders as she watched the moon climb above treetops. Better than half a moon, but not yet full. Its light glowed silver-gilt, painting trunks and branches and leaves, creeping steadily lower to trespass across the ground.
I wish—
But she broke it off, refusing to speak it even in her mind.

Marian hugged herself hard, hands clasping elbows, aware of a brittle, unwanted fragility usurping the resolution she had relied on throughout the day. She had not, in her time with Will Scarlet, foreseen what might happen, nor had she allowed herself even to contemplate it, to waste her will on too-vivid imaginings that had plagued her since childhood. She had been wholly consumed by the acknowledgment of captivity and the need for escape. She had forbidden her thoughts to go further.

Now she stood beneath a moon-washed sky, duly rescued from crazed Will Scarlet, whose wife had been raped to death, and thought instead of the moment in which she lived and of the night that lay before her.

A single night, no more, and yet it reeked of one hundred endings, in spirit if not in life; in the future, if not the present. One night only—spent unattended by a woman while in the company of a man—would forever destroy her chance for a normal, circumspect life ignorant of disasters such as Scarlet’s impetuous act.

This must be what it was to William deLacey, knowing his careful plans for Eleanor utterly destroyed in but a moment’s feckless pleasure ... I could not see it, could not begin to understand it.
She did not condone his methods; they had nearly maimed a man innocent of the crime. But now she could comprehend.

Marian bit into her bottom lip.
I would rather not comprehend.
But it was done, and she did. All too well. Innocence was banished, vanquished by the new reality Will Scarlet had created.

She had no choice, of course. To go farther was to risk getting lost or worse, falling prey to the human beasts who stalked others in Sherwood’s shadows. They halted now because they had to.

Marian recalled Locksley’s earlier concern for proprieties. She had told him the truth as she saw it: the preservation of her life was more important than the preservation of her reputation. But her life, now, was changed, its path to lifelong security obliterated by Will Scarlet’s bid for freedom.

Nonetheless, for all her blithe dismissal of his concern, the considerations he had raised were real. Then, she had dismissed them. Now she could not. They had stopped for the night. Now it stood before her, freed by a heartless darkness, like a beast born of childhood nightmare.

I wish my father were here.
There. It was said.

She would not complain; there was no room for complaint. She would not speak of it, either, even in passing; Locksley—
Robin
—would undoubtedly blame himself for failing to find her sooner, in the daylight, when the sun diminished taint, and the whisper of dishonor. For his sake, not her own, because instinct told her it mattered, she would keep her mouth closed on anguish, on apprehension, and deal with it privately.

Marian shut her eyes.
Let me be strong enough.

Sound intruded. Robin, with only a meat-knife, cut tender, leafy branches, intending to make her a bed.

Marian sighed carefully, so he would not hear. She was damp, aching, hungry, and weary to the bone. Her eyes burned.
I’ll never sleep tonight, no matter how good the bedding. I’m wet and cold, and my head is too full of things.
... But she did not tell him that. It would be rude and tactless in the midst of his work, and she very much desired not to task him with anything more.

“It’s done,” he said at last.

She turned, suppressing a wince of pain as her bruised knee protested. He stood next to the pitiful mound of decaying and newborn leaves heaped to form a bed and lashed together with green sapling boughs. Moonlight was kind to his battered face, leeching it of bruises, gilding the marvelous symmetry in the clean architecture of bone: cheeks, nose, and chin, in striking chiaroscuro. The wash of hair, now dry, was bleached nearly white. She could see little of his eyes beneath the smooth arched bone of brow.

It was a thought she banished at once, abruptly hot with shame. Saying nothing, she went to the bed he had devised and lay down upon it stiffly, settling a hip carefully as she turned onto her side. Leaves compressed. Twigs crackled. She lay very still, eyes squinched closed, jaws clenched, trying to breathe normally and hoping shadow shielded her face.

Silence.

“Well?” he asked at last. “It would be better with a cloak thrown over it, but we have none. I left it with the horse.”

She smelled dampness, sap, and earth. She would not tell him the truth: even a cloak over the bedding would offer her little comfort. “It will do,” she said quietly, tucking a leaf down from her mouth.

He nodded. “Get up.”

“But I only just—”

“Please.”

She got up, as requested, picking leaves and twigs from her hair and kirtle. Mutely she watched as he lay down in her place, testing the bed.

He was silent. Then, with infinite irony, “You are polite.”

She clasped hands in her kirtle demurely. “My father taught me to be so.”

“Did your father also teach you to lie?”

Surprised, she made no immediate answer. Then she grinned slowly, delighted by the tone. Urgency was banished, as was the mask. It pleased her immeasurably. “I learned that for myself.”

He did not move, and yet twigs cracked. “This is the most uncomfortable bed I have ever set head upon.”

“Yes,” she agreed, laughing.

“And that includes the hard ground of the Holy Land, where the sand comes alive at night to creep between toes and eyelids.” He sat up, shaking back hair made lucent by the moon. “A poor night, I fear, with neither of us sleeping.”

Now she could tell him the truth. “I am too weary to sleep. My head is—too busy.”

Locksley nodded, irony gone. “It makes the nights very long.” He rose, saying nothing more, but she wondered what kind of nights they had been, so far and so different from England.

She wanted to say something. Anything. She wanted to hear him speak. So she asked a simple question she thought most appropriate. “Did you see Jerusalem?”

Utter immobility. Robert of Locksley was stone.

“Forgive me,” she blurted, alarmed. “If I said something wrong ... I didn’t mean... I’m sorry—” She made it worse by repeated protestations, so she cut them off abruptly. Humiliated, she fell into awkward silence.

The mask replaced the face. Marian saw nothing in the flesh, nothing at all in the eyes, that told her he was alive. Even his voice was dead. “I did not see Jerusalem.”

 

Hands linked behind his back, William deLacey paced the length of the hall with an eye toward finding fault. There was none. Walter had done precisely as he asked. Candles of good quality filled even the corners with light.

He paused near the screen dividing the kitchens from the hall and turned to look at the dais beyond the fire trench. “Better,” he murmured. “Much better.”

A man came to stand nearby, mail glinting dully. “My lord.” It was Archambault, the castellan, garbed in the sheriff’s blue livery.

DeLacey spared him a brief glance, continuing his meticulous assessment of the hall. He nodded thoughtfully, then began the slow walk back to the dais. A slight gesture indicated Archaumbault was to follow.