Jennifer Roberson - [Robin Hood 02] (27 page)

“Jesu,”
Joan blurted, then crossed herself hastily with a sidelong glance at Tuck.

The Benedictine blinked astonishment, not bothering to rebuke her. Hal and Sim, who had, respectively, brought up two horses and Marian’s bow and quiver, gaped like pimple-faced boys spying their first naked woman.

She smiled sweetly, spreading her arms so they might examine her more closely. “Do I make a comely lad?”

“Jesu,”
Joan said again. “ ’Tis your brother, when he was a boy.”

Marian’s smile departed so instantly she felt her face collapse.

“Aye,” Hal said hoarsely, who had taught that brother to ride. Sim, clutching the bow and quiver, merely nodded, white of face.

She had not thought of any such thing. He had been dead too long, drowned in her childhood. Thirteen years had separated them—five dead babies between the living firstborn and the last—and she was too young when he died for her to recall him as anything but a young man, never a boy. She hadn’t been old enough.

She did, so she had been told, resemble her mother. But that was expected of a girl of identical coloring: black hair, blue eyes, and white, white skin. Her brother claimed it also; but he was long dead by the time she was old enough to be considered a woman, and so they recalled the mother when they studied her, never the brother.

Until now.

First her brother, then her mother. Lastly her father, but five years before. And all those stillborn brothers and sisters.

She was the last. With her, the line ended.

And her own children lost before she even knew they existed.

Marian, as stiff in movement as the leather of belt and boots, looked at Tuck, then shook her head at Hal. “We walk,” she said. “Horses invite thievery, and mark us different.” Joan began to protest, but a glance silenced her. “We will be safer this way,” Marian explained.

Tuck was no more happy than Hal or Sim, but he marked her expression, the tone of her voice, and agreed: they had best go afoot. Monks did not ride, and Marian should not call attention to herself by riding a quality mount.

Not even, Hal asked hopefully, one of the plowhorses?

“If we go crashing through the forest aboard such a horse,” she pointed out, “every outlaw within a league will come to spy out the noise.”

“ ’Tis near sundown,” Sim observed with an overly careful lack of censure in his tone.

Marian had already noted the sun’s position and the quality of light. “We have time,” she said. “And no, I do not intend for us to spend the night beneath a tree in a bed of ferns . . . if we cannot find them before sunset, we shall return.”

“To begin again in the morning.” Joan did not ask it. She knew better.

“Of course,” Marian said. “Until we find them.”

“Pray then that they are found quickly,” Joan said glumly.

Tuck smiled; that much he could endorse. “Yes, please. Do pray.”

The woman was no more pleased that he sounded content. She raised her strong chin. “And if you don’t come back?”

“We shall,” Marian declared. “Joan, they cannot be far . . . we mean only to go across the road and into the edge of the forest. Not to search the heart of it.”

“Black
heart,” Joan muttered. “Men die in Sherwood.”

“Men die anywhere,” Marian said sharply. “Even boys in castle dungeons.”

As she intended, that shut Joan’s mouth on further protest. Marian took the bow and quiver from Sim, then nodded at Tuck.

It was quite true: she did not intend to go far into Sherwood. Only far enough to find Will, and Alan, and Little John. And then Robin, followed by Much.

She needed to gather what providence and coincidence had conspired to make her family. They were all she would ever have.

William deLacey’s shadow bloomed against the stone wall of the cell as he inspected the Exchequer cloth, the stacks of caskets full of coin, and the cases of rolled parchments.
Marian made a mess of things . . .
light flickered as movement guttered the torch; leather creaked, metal fittings chimed faintly. He glanced up briefly as a man entered the cell, prepared to order him out again. But it was Mercardier, and the sheriff did no such thing.

Anticipation kindled; Mercardier had been present as Marian inspected the tax rolls. “So,” deLacey said, “was she as angry as I expected?”

The big mercenary shrugged. “Say, rather, unsurprised.”

He laughed softly, resettling scroll cases before any could fall. “Marian is not stupid. Only a fool, betimes, in the man she takes to her bed.”

Mercardier made no response to that. “Did she pay her taxes?”

DeLacey arched a brow. “Would it matter to you either way?”

“I am not paid to have a conscience, Sheriff, nor to care one way or the other. But if she did not, she should be made to do so for the sake of the king.” He paused. “Or punished.”

“As I intend,” the sheriff said curtly, annoyed to be told how to do his job. “You heard me, Captain: if in fourteen days she has not paid the taxes, her manor and lands are forfeit.”

“And if she has paid them?”

“Proof is here, if she has.” DeLacey’s quick gesture encompassed the cell. “All taxes come here, all accountings, all receipts, for all of Nottinghamshire. If she paid her taxes, the record is here.” He smiled with delicate irony. “If there is no record, then naturally no proof exists.”

Mercardier offered no comment.

DeLacey sought an indication of the mercenary’s thoughts, but they were well shielded behind the implacable mask of the professional soldier. Still annoyed—did a mercenary presume to judge a sheriff?—he unlatched a casket and tipped the lid back. “This is war as well, Captain. The battlefield is entirely different, but the result is the same. In your sort of wars, you require weapons. Horses. Armor. Well, it is money that
buys
those things, Mercardier. Taxes. Do not for a moment consider what I do here less vital to England’s welfare than what you did on the battlefield we know as the Holy Land.”

“I do have some acquaintainceship with taxes.” The tone was only slightly dry. “Money is what causes me to
take
the battlefield.”

“Ah. Of course. For a moment I mistook you for a nobleman.” DeLacey, frustrated by the man’s immense self-control—he could not manipulate someone who gave no indication of weakness—permitted a trace of contempt to grace his tone. “What was it you wanted, Mercardier?”

“I inquire of you when I may escort the taxes to Lincoln, Lord Sheriff.”

He slammed the casket closed. “When I am done collecting them, Captain. Nottinghamshire is large, and its people uncommon stubborn with regard to paying as they should. You need merely witness the farce presented by Marian FitzWalter.”

“A headstrong woman,” Mercardier observed.

It was the first time the man had offered an opinion. DeLacey, relatching the casket, laughed briefly. “Indeed.”

The tone, despite the accent, was bland. “Such women are dangerous.”

“Dangerous?” The sheriff considered the word. “I should say frustrating and impossibly infuriating, but hardly dangerous.”

“The Duchess of Aquitaine,” Mercardier elaborated. “Frustrating,
oui.
Infuriating,
ah, oui.
But also dangerous. Such women may convince kings to commit war, or halt it; to commence Holy Crusade, or even to carry home the very crown of heaven if she believed, out of vanity, it suited her brow.”

DeLacey grinned, amused and pleased; finally something from the man that he might use. “Ah, but they do tell tales of our fair Eleanor, do they not?”

“And she has earned them all.” Mercardier paused. “Have you her like in Nottinghamshire?”

“Her like . . .” DeLacey blinked. “Do you mean Marian FitzWalter?”

“I have said how a woman might be dangerous. Is she?”

“Good God, Mercardier! Marian?” He laughed in genuine amusement. “She is neither queen nor soldier, Captain; how could she be dangerous?”

“She sleeps with Sir Robert of Locksley.”

The sheriff was completely baffled. “Should that matter?”

“He was,” the mercenary said, “one of King Richard’s most trusted men.”

There was a hint of—
something—
behind the words. “And you did not approve.”

“I hold him in no affection, nor ever did.”

There was promise in this. The sheriff probed deeper. “You believe
him
dangerous.”

“The king did not knight men lacking in skill and courage. And I saw him fight.”

DeLacey nodded. “You believe she might convince him to defy me in the matter of the taxes.”

“Despite suspect morals, Eleanor of Aquitaine married two kings, my lord. She was a most convincing woman.”

He contemplated that, again seeking and again not finding an indication of Mercardier’s thoughts in the plain, pocked face. “Let us say, then, that she does convince Locksley to take her part in this matter of the taxes. Would you defend me against him?”

“You, my lord? No. I would defend the taxes. That is my task.”

The sheriff laughed softly; he began to understand. “So it is. But I see what stirs you to concern: you are aware Locksley stole a tax shipment five years ago.”

“I had the tale of my lord king.”

It was an illuminating thought, that even the Lionheart found amusement in the story of the sheriff’s undoing, in Locksley’s outlawry. But then, Richard had loved him, and pardoned him, and saw no harm in what had been done.

John was an entirely different sort of man.

“You disapprove,” deLacey observed, interest increasing.

Something akin to irony softened Mercardier’s expression. “Had the shipment been my responsibility, it would never have been stolen.”

The shipment had been deLacey’s responsibility. It was censure Mercardier levied, albeit unsaid, and likely something John himself had suggested he point out. Most annoying.

DeLacey scowled. “He claims he did it in Richard’s name.”

“Perhaps he did. He was most devout in Coeur de Lion’s service. But my lord is dead. His brother rules. And my duty now is to protect these taxes against all threats.”

The sheriff refolded the Exchequer cloth and dropped it onto the nearest pile of caskets. “Would you, Mercardier?
Could
you?” He paused, employing irony at his own expense. “That is, if he threatened the taxes.”

“My lord?”

He no longer prevaricated. “Could you kill a man knighted by Coeur de Lion?” He studied the hard face. “Could you kill a man with whom you fought in the name of that king?”

There was no hesitation. “Should he threaten my duty, yes.”

DeLacey smiled, contemplating discovery and an abrupt anticipation of a new kind of battle. Here was answer, here was weapon, here was ally in place of adversary. “Then we have much in common.”

Though Mercardier was mute, the question was implicit.

An enemy,
deLacey declared inwardly. But, “Taxes,” was what he said aloud, “and their defense against threat.” Now he weighted the words with potent implication. “Against
all
threat, offered by any man.”

 

Robin, footsore and decidedly out of sorts when at last he reached Ravenskeep, was more than a little startled by the greeting offered him as he entered the hall. Joan, employed in the ordering of repairs to the damage done by the sheriff’s men, turned at his entrance and promptly blurted, “But she went to
rescue
you!”

Robin limped to the nearest bench and collapsed upon it, levering up a leg so he might jerk the boot from his sore right foot. “Rescue me from what?”

“Outlaws!”

He gritted his teeth as he worked at the boot; flesh stung, which suggested blisters were bleeding. “I rescued myself.”

“But she’s gone after you!”

Complete comprehension arrived abruptly. Blisters no longer mattered. “Where did she go?”

“Sherwood.”

“I told her not to!” Joan cried. “We all did, my lord. But she’s a stubborn head on her shoulders—”

“Alone?”

“With Tuck, my lord.”

Discomfort was forgotten as he stood up. “By all the saints in heaven—”

“We
did
tell her, my lord. That she shouldn’t go. We all did. But—”

“But, being Marian . . .” He sighed, stamping his foot back down into the boot and suppressing a wince. “A woman with a monk. No certainty of safety, that.”

“She went as a man, my lord.”

“She went . . .” He blinked. “As a man?”

“Yes, my lord.”

He was visited by a brief and altogether ludicrous vision of Marian dressed as a man. He could not comprehend it. So he banished it. “Where in Sherwood did she go?”

“Across the road, she said. She said she’d be back by sunset.”

He scowled. “It’s nearly sunset now.”

“Yes, my lord. But she was in some haste because of Much.”

That brought him up short. “What about Much?”

“He’s taken. The sheriff has him.”

Robin swore in three languages. When he could speak in one again with something akin to civility, he asked for the story from start to finish.

Joan told him straightly enough, though near the end she rushed it so as to implore him to find Marian at once. “Because ’tis only my lady and Tuck out there in the forest, my lord, and you know what Sherwood is.”

Oh, indeed, he knew what Sherwood was. And because he did, Robin bid Joan ask Hal for his horse, Sim for his bow and quiver, and ran in all haste up the stairs to the bedroom under the eaves so he might himself fetch his sword.

 

With more than a little trepidation, Marian peeled aside the encroaching branch threatening an eye. They had penetrated the fringes of the forest, and already she was aware of a heaviness in the place, the weight of oppression in its shadows. From the wheeze of Tuck’s quickened breathing, she suspected he felt much the same.

And then she chided herself for falling prey to childish fancies. Sherwood was a
forest,
not a being, not a personality intent upon destruction. Its architecture was such that it favored men who hid, and so men hid in it; but it was men who were dangerous, not the forest itself.

She was no stranger to it. She had spent her life near its skirts. But now she was adult enough to realize the potential for danger, the possibility of harm, should men employ Sherwood to fulfill their own aims, such aims as were not acceptable under the king’s law.

Marian grimaced. Under the Lionheart, law was one thing. Under John, as yet a cipher to his people beyond a reputation for temper tantrums and a lack of martial—and marital—prowess, it might well yet prove another.

Shouting would not do; it would undoubtedly bring down outlaws upon them. And yet what had seemed a fair idea originally—to skirt the fringes and find Alan, Will, and Little John, who should surely be nearby— now seemed impossible, and impossibly dangerous. Either she took the risk of shouting for them anyway, or perhaps never find them. And she did not wish to stay in Sherwood any longer than necessary.

Marian continued to pick her way through vegetation, discovering pockets of darkness in ferns, beneath low-limbed trees, in hollows screened by vines, branches, immense and shattered trunks. A man might make Sherwood his demesne, had he need, to ward his welfare and withstand the sieges of men who lacked woodcraft; and she recalled that indeed Adam Bell had done such a thing, and most successfully. He had evaded capture for years.

Behind her, Tuck stopped. His breathing was audible. Yet when she turned back, fearing to find him stricken with apprehension or stilled by fatigue, she found him instead standing squarely with sandaled feet planted, a face of exaltation turned up to the living lattice arching against the sky.

“This,” he said breathlessly, “this is God’s cathedral!”

It was wholly unexpected. Marian merely stared.

Tuck closed his eyes and murmured in Latin, crossing himself twice before folding his hands in prayer. His expression was beatific.

Marian slowly lifted her gaze from the depths to the heights, marking how the upright trunks formed vaults and pillars of wood, not stone; how the canopy of limbs became living arches and archivolts; how a multiplicity of altars gathered around them in broken trunks and piled stone.

God
’
s cathedral.

Trust Tuck to see Sherwood with the eyes of innocence, of trust and integrity, eyes that sought beauty in place of danger.

Tension broke, foreboding dissipated. Marian laughed, genuinely amused by the dichotomy of opinion. And even as Tuck fumbled for his absent rosary, a red-haired giant thrust himself into the open, leading two other prodigals not to the Promised Land, but surely to reunion.

 

Robin came upon them clustered near the road, gilded ocher and amber in the touch of a lowering sun. It was Little John he spied first, of course, red hair afire; and then Tuck of the rotund, cassocked silhouette. His mind registered the others according to shape and coloring as well: Will, posture stiff and truculent; Alan, negligent in the repose he had honed in high courts, with golden curls somewhat less than clean.

And Marian. It must be. She was the only one left. But even he, who knew her intimately, would never have taken her for a woman. Not from behind. A lad, yes; a slight boy more than twelve and less than eighteen. But never as the woman with whom he shared a bed.

Because relief was a tangible thing now that he saw them whole and unharmed, he could afford to be angry. And so he was, galloping up to them on a high-headed horse whom he barely contained, and let them see it in his face as he glared down upon them.