Jennifer Roberson - [Robin Hood 02] (15 page)

“I would assume,” the earl said acidly, “that the boy’s mother would prefer to keep him with her. That I understand; I permitted your mother far more latitude with you than with Henry and William. I am not suggesting the woman surrender the child at birth! Merely that he be raised as my heir, to know who and what he is, and what he shall be. What his reponsibilities are to his country, his king—”

Icily he asked, “Which king, my lord father?”

Huntington glared. “Do not interrupt.”

Robin’s smile was ghastly. “And I suppose you have the mother selected already? The proper brood mare for the stallion?”

The earl’s gaze was pitying. “The woman ruined you.”

“Who did? Marian?”

“Your mother. She raised you to believe in love, in chivalry, in
romance.”

Robin’s smile now was genuine. “Praise God.”

“It is unrealistic, Robert. The world does not improve itself in the name of romance.”

“But it may decline in the name of ambition.”

The earl scowled. “I have named my price. Now you must name yours.”

Robin sat back against the chair, relaxing for the first time since he’d entered the room. Anger was banished, detachment dissipated. Something within rejoiced: he would defeat his father soundly and win this war. “Marian. As wife. As mother. Received by you properly, publicly—
and
privately—and openly accorded by you all the honor and respect due her as my wife.”

A glint of triumph kindled in Huntington’s eyes. “Impossible.”

Robin thrust himself from the chair so quickly he overset it, ignoring the myriad protests from bruises and stiff muscles. The chair thumped behind him as he stood stiffly, staring in outrage at his father. “How dare you? How dare you attempt to
buy
an heir but insult the woman I would have be his mother?”

“But I do not,” the earl said simply. “I would readily accede to all the points you have set me, even to having that woman under my roof, but the terms could never be met.”

“How not?”

“Because there must be a child,” the earl said. “And she herself has told me she cannot bear one.”

Huntington saw the color run out of his son’s face. With pale hair and paler face, Robert suddenly put the earl in mind of a corpse. And then he saw the rage kindling in the hazel eyes.

“She told me!” the earl blurted. “This is not a lie—”

“How would I know?
Ya Allah,
but you twist the truth to make it suit your purposes—”

“The woman
told
me!”

“Why should she tell you and not me?”

“Ask her,” the earl suggested, aware how constricted his chest felt. “Go to her and ask her. She will tell you the truth of it, Robert: she came here to me and told me there will be no children.”

“Why?”

“Ask
her!” he repeated, at pains to make his son understand this was not his doing. “But she said she would not stand in your way if you wished to come back.”

“Come back,” Robert echoed.

“To me,” the earl elaborated. “She said it was your right to choose.” He clutched the coverlet, uncertain why it was so vital Robert understand he had not arranged this, nor made it up. “And so it is. And so I ask you to do so.”

Robert’s breath ran ragged in his throat. “Choose? Between you and Marian?”

“Between an earldom and a knight’s portion, Robert. Between the vast lands of our family and the lesser lands of hers. Between a title, and none—”

“None save the knighthood bestowed upon me by the king himself!”

The earl grasped and wielded the weapon. “Between a woman and no children, and a woman who can bear them.”

There was no response, just a fixed, mute stare.

“Robert.” The earl disliked the tentativeness of his tone and firmed it. “Robert, I do so swear: I asked her for nothing.
She
came to me.
She
told me this.
She
said you should have the right to choose.
She
said she would not stand in your way, nor interfere with me.”

“Easily confirmed.” Robert’s voice was rusty. “As easily refuted.”

Huntington nodded eagerly. “You have only to go to her for that confirmation.”

Coldly, “So I shall.”

“But—come back.” The earl stiffened as his son began to turn away toward the door. He wanted to reach out; with great effort he curtailed the gesture. “Robert, do come back. Whatever your choice.”

“Whatever my choice?” He turned. “You would have me stand before you, body and soul, and swear I will have no part of the earldom, no part of vast lands, no part of politics?”

Huntington raised his head, employing his nose as a shield. “You will tell me yourself. Whatever your decision. On your honor as a knight and Crusader.”

“Very well,” Robert said grimly. “You shall have it as you wish.”

“When you have made your choice.”

“And how do you know I have not made it yet?”

“Because everything in you cries out to see the woman first,” Huntington said crisply. “At this moment the only thing on your mind is to go to her, to question her; what I say here and now means little to you. Do so, Robert. Go to her. Talk with her. See that I have told you the truth. And then,
then,
come back to tell me your choice.” He clenched his hands in an attempt to still their trembling; he would not have his son see such frailty. “Predicate nothing on lies, Robert, or incorrect assumptions. Go to her, speak to her, learn the truth. Make your choice then with knowledge as your tutor, not emotion.”

“That you will accept?”

“I will.”

After a moment Robert said, “Of anyone else I would ask how he would respond, were he in my place, if only to make him consider the issue more keenly. But there is no need with you. I know. To you an heir is everything.” He paused and made it telling. “A
proper
heir.”

“An heir to whom I may trust all that I have worked to preserve in the name of my ancestors. That is the sum of a man’s life, Robert. To preserve what his antecedents have also preserved, and to entrust them to an heir.” He spread his hands in direct appeal. “What else is there? A man is born, lives, dies. But he may know immortality only in his sons.”

“Then I share your sorrow that I am, now, the only one you have.”

“Robert—”

“Does England not play a role?”

“Of course England plays a role! Why do you think I work now to keep the realm whole? The wrong sovereign could destroy her.”

“Your
vision of England.”

“As you cherished Richard’s vision,” the earl declared. “Do you see, Robert—it is so with every man. He makes his choices. None is easy, and he need not always agree with them. But he makes them, because to fail those choices is to fail himself, his name, his family, his country.”

“I am going to Marian,” Robert said. “That is my choice.”

“Go to her,” Huntington agreed. “But make your choice only after you have seen her.”

“You know what my choice is.” He paused, inserting irony. “My lord father.”

“If you make it now, before seeing her, you do her a vast disservice.”

“Disservice!” Robert shouted. “I do
her
a ‘vast disservice’? In God’s Holy Name, I have tried to do her every service at my disposal!”

“Then allow her a role in this,” the earl said. “Make no choice without asking her what she thinks of it. To do less reduces her to what you believe
I
reduce her to.”

Robert came close again. His tone was bitter. “You never gave my mother the right to make a choice. You never permitted my mother any role but the one you defined for her.”

Huntington said with devastating simplicity, “Then I ask the son not to make the same mistake the father did.”

And he knew his battle—
this
battle,
this
moment—was won. It remained to be seen if he would yet win the war.

Unfortunately, he had the distinct feeling the final arbiter would be Marion of Ravenskeep.

“Damn her,” he murmured as his son departed the room. “Has she any wisdom at all, she will tell him it is folly to surrender everything I have—and will bequeath him—for a woman who can bear no children.”

But he knew there remained another element. He had said it himself: his wife had raised the youngest of his sons to believe desperately in love, in chivalry, in romance.

“One must be
practical,”
he said with some vehemence. “One cannot have the ordering of his life based on romantic ideals. The world puts no trust in such things!”

But Robert did.

“Damn
him,”
he said.

 

Marian heard Much’s warning of the sheriff’s approach with a sense of calm she didn’t understand. Surely she should be frightened, possibly even panicked. But there was no time for such folly now; they were all of them in danger. She simply nodded once and told Much to do what they had all decided was best for him to do.

And so the others would be gathered in secret, and the others would depart. Alan already was gone. Much would tell Will Scarlet and Little John, and they would go. She would tell Tuck—except she saw there was no need. Tuck was coming in the front door, his normally kind and placid face taut with concern. So, Much had met him on the way out.

“It is now,” she said.

“Lady, I might remain here.”

“No,” she said flatly. “I thank you, Tuck, but it us unnecessary. You he will arrest, along with the others.” She smiled grimly. “Me he will merely threaten.”

“But—”

“Go
now,”
she said, using the subtle inflection of command she had learned from Robin. “Take the food we have set aside, and go on at once to Locksley. If you are caught, you endanger all of us.”

Tuck’s expression was mutinous, but he nodded. “God be with you, Lady Marian!”

She watched him turn back in a swirl of black cassock, and felt the first pang of loss. It was happening so fast. They had expected it, planned for it, and it had come; but now circumstances moved out of their control, colored by the random whim of such men as Prince John, and the malicious revenge of William deLacey.

Marian turned her left palm up. With grave deliberation she picked at the bandage knots and, once undone, freed her hand of the linen. There was no stitching, no blood, no wound. Merely a lurid and very tender purple welt cutting across creases. Will had said in time the scar would pale to silvery white.

“What would a fortune-teller make of this?” she wondered absently, then smiled. “Ah, but I make my own.”

And Marian of Ravenskeep went up to her room under the eaves to ready herself for the enemy.

 

DeLacey led his men down the lane toward Ravenskeep at a steady long-trot designed to cover ground quickly. Dust floured the air, rising in clouds; the days were warm now, the rain past. Sunlight bathed him in a sheen of polished steel, from the fine mail shirt to the helm warding his head. The two-handed Norman broadsword rode at his belt, weighting one hip. He felt grimly jubilant that now,
now,
he could act with impunity and do what he had wished to do for the past five years.

As they rode toward the closed gates, deLacey lifted a mailed hand. One of the soldiers bellowed for the gates to be opened in the name of the Lord High Sheriff of Nottingham.

It was.

At the head of his troop, William deLacey clattered into the cobbled courtyard. Iron rang on stone, bridle fittings chimed; horses stomped, snorted wetly, chewed noisily on severe bits. As ordered, the soldiers formed themselves into a loose semicircle. All wore mail beneath blue tabards, faces hidden behind the dehumanizing nasals of Norman helms. Weaponry included swords, shields, crossbows, and a fierce determination to succeed at their task.

DeLacey reined in his horse and gazed down upon the lone courtyard inhabitant, who stood upon the top step in front of her hall clad in a crimson chemise. A fine golden girdle was double-wrapped around a slender waist to hang low upon her hips, and a golden fillet bound her brow. She wore no coif, and only the merest wisp of veil covered thick braids hanging to her waist. But then, Marian of Ravenskeep had long ago given up any pretensions to modesty.

It annoyed him to be struck first by her beauty, when he had come to disrupt every portion of her life, anticipating the pleasure of it. And there still would be pleasure of it, he knew; but the moment was somewhat tarnished when everything about him responded to her as a woman, not an opponent. He was reminded all over again how she had rebuffed him, despite knowing her father had hoped they would make a match. But that father had reckoned without Robert of Locksley, and without Marian herself, who had grown uncommonly headstrong in her father’s absence. She was worse after he’d died in the Holy Land, deLacey reflected. Once upon a time she’d been a malleable soul.

No longer. Now she stood before her hall, which had been the outright gift of King Richard five years before, who had held her and her lands in wardship following her father’s death, and wore an expression of such serene confidence that the sheriff wanted to spit.

Instead, he raised his voice so that all of his men would hear—and everyone else in the hall. “Search it. Every room, every cupboard, every garderobe hole; search the barn, the outbuildings, the cow-byre, the henhouse; search the lady’s clothespress, if you will, and be certain she has hidden no man among her smallclothes.”

It was crude insinuation, and Marian did not miss it. She was ordinarily quite fair of complexion, but now her cheeks burned red.

He smiled faintly. “When you have found any man I have named to you, bring him out, bind him, tie him behind your horse, and take him to Nottingham Castle. Drag him if you must.”

He watched her expression, particularly the eloquent eyes. She was furious that he would order his men to such duty in such rude fashion, but not surprised. Nor was she even slightly concerned about what they might find, which meant she expected them to find nothing.

“Roll casks aside,” he said sharply. “Unstopper the wine, unstack the hay, uproot the hearthstones. If there be wooden planking, tear it out. If there be a fire laid, put it out and stir amongst the ashes. Open every chest, every basket. Let
no place
large enough to hold a man be overlooked.” He glanced briefly sideways in each direction, then jerked his hand in command.

Two of the soldiers rode their horses up the hall steps toward the open door. Marian, crying out in startled outrage, leaped after each of them. She caught the reins of one, but released it immediately, hissing in pain; she had used her wounded hand. Now the men and their mounts were inside the hall, while others jumped down from their saddles and set about following orders.

DeLacey, still mounted, leaned forward in his saddle and rested the palms of his hands one atop the other over the high pommel, stretching mail-weighted shoulders as he smiled. “Good day to you, Lady Marian.”

Her face was white as she cradled the aching hand. “They will find nothing.”

“So be it.”

“They will destory my hall and my possessions
for nothing.”

“So be it.”

“This is no more than childish revenge!”

“Untrue,” he said calmly, rejoicing at her anger. “This is a duty I was given by my sovereign.”

“Sovereign?”

From the sleeve of the mail shirt he pulled a folded parchment. With great deliberation he unfolded it, smoothed it, displayed it to her. “A letter,” he said, “from Prince John, Count of Mortain, who has claimed the crown as sole heir of his late royal brother.”

In angry disbelief she asked, “A letter ordering you to destroy my hall?”

“Authority,” he answered, “to do whatever is in my power to secure the realm for John.”

“Oh, of course!” she said. “This hall provides a true threat to Prince John!”

“Indeed,” he said silkily. “It has harbored criminals.”