Maid Marian (31 page)

“I have every right, Lady Pernelle, which birth and breeding are able to give. Sir Thomas, my regent, I dismiss you now from your duties to Denby, for I am of age and am fully prepared to take up the rule of this land for myself. If that displeases you”—I sneered, just a tad, at Lady Pernelle—“you may take up your case before the queen—although I must warn you, you may not find her to be the ally she once was. I have reason to think her loyalties may have shifted.”

These words had their desired effect. Lady Pernelle, now white-faced and gasping, went into a fit of such turbulent rage that she had to be held back by Sir Thomas, or she might have attempted to strike at us both. As it was she gripped and clawed at the air and screamed out her anger in a downpour of curses, each aimed at my head. Robin and I stayed back in silence, doing our best to keep from snickering, allowing her fury to run its course.

At last she calmed enough to stand between Sir Thomas’s meaty hands and pant at us, feral as a mountain cat caught in a trap.

“I shall call up every last man of Sencaster to rain like fire against your walls, believe me in this, Marian Fitzwater. I shall not rest until I see your bones burned in the pyre and your every last field salted and stoned. This land will be mine by whatever means I need to take it, and if you request a war between us, I am more than happy to oblige.”

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible, Mother.” Stephen’s voice came from behind the curtain where he had been hiding, biding his time. He now flung back the broad piece of linen and showed his face, eyeing his mother as the raptor eyes the baby chick, seeing not a young bird but his day’s main meal.

“Stephen!” she gasped, barely making a sound. She struggled, I could see, to retain her composure even in the face of such great terror as she must be feeling. For her eyes showed clearly that she thought Stephen must be a phantom returned from the dead, perhaps come to claim her soul. “Stephen, how? Stephen!”

The lad himself stepped forward, as strong now as he had ever been pale and still beforehand.

“I did not die when you poisoned me, Mother, is that not apparent? I was merely sleeping beneath a mask of death for a long, still night, and when morning came I awoke again and knew what you had done to me. You, woman, are no more a mother than the harlot is a virgin, and I declare this moment that you shall never again set foot in Sencaster, not so long as I rule there.” He stood before her, tall and resolute at age fifteen, as full a man as any young king taking up his own crown for the first time.

Lady Pernelle’s face melted at his words, seeping into heaps of limp flesh as she tried, foolishly, to placate her child.

“But Stephen, my love, my own darling boy, how can you say such things to your mother? I who bore you, who raised you up from a weaning babe?”

But her son was in no temper to hear her, and he silenced her tongue with a flick of his hand. “Say no more of such things, woman, or I shall be forced to raise the matter of my brother, your firstborn, Hugh, the first of your children you had murdered. Do not think the eyes of heaven will look upon you with sympathy. For what you have done there is no forgiveness, no redemption, no escape.”

As we watched, she turned to tears, fading before us like a shade in the mist. But even as she wept, I saw her clever eyes work from Stephen to me, retracing my duplicity far enough to see how she had been led so far wrong. Her loyal Kate was now undone, for I sat here in her place, the very viper at the breast.

S
TEPHEN DECLARED
his own ascendance to the rule of Sencaster that day and lost little time in alerting the guards of this change in fortune. These in an instant became his men, and in the odd spin which the wheel of fortune will sometimes take, they were instructed to take as prisoner the very woman they had so long served. Lady Pernelle and Sir Thomas were bound and packed with their goods and treasures and driven in carts to the edge of Denby, where they were released to fend as they would.

To satisfy his thirst for vengeance, which knew no bounds, Stephen sent word to Queen Eleanor that as they no longer had lands to rule, Lady Pernelle and Sir Thomas Lanois were ideal candidates to sail to Germany as hostages for our dear King Richard. Not many months later we heard that she had seized on this plan and bid them farewell at the coast town of Dover, as pleased to find nobles to trade for her son as Stephen was to be rid of them.

Denby and Sencaster from that time on have been the strongest of allies in the midcountry, each hastening to the support of the other even in the dark days of King John’s rule. Stephen proved an able leader, swift and firm in his decisions, although he became nearly the stuff of legend among his people. Rumors flew that he’d once died and still lived on, or perhaps had been buried alive, and this made him seem a shining phantasm in the eyes of the local laborers. But I am pleased to say that he suffered no lasting effects of body or of mind and that, once married, he and his lady lived out their days in relative harmony.

Left to ourselves, Robin and I made our new places public, passing with fanfare through every town of Denby to announce to the people the names of their newfound lord and lady. The name of Fitzwater aided us in every place, for we were met with cheers wherever we went. No one knew Robert of Locksley, but even so rumors spread that Robin Hood might reign in the manor, for he took down a hart faster than any and could still split a pole at fifty paces.

Our good fortune may have been aided as well by our forgiveness of the incoming tallage, the tax that is owed when a new lord takes a manor from an old one. Nay, I declared that as Sir Thomas had acted merely as my regent, no tallage was owed, and this gained me every support that might have otherwise been lacking.

In Thetbury I stopped to visit the Tamworths, to praise them for their care for me and to sooth John and Meg’s upset and confusion. They were deeply distressed—John that he’d spoken so gruffly at times to Lady Marian Fitzwater herself, and Meg at having shared her poor house with the great lady of Denby. I did my best to reassure them, to remind John that I’d been Mary Cox when I lived with them, and as such was grateful for their every kindness. But Meg proved more difficult, and it was many hours before I was able to put her at ease and assure her that she’d cared for me as if I’d been a child of her breast.

“I can’t think how you must have suffered here, Mary—my lady, I mean,” Meg whispered to me. “Sleeping in rough straw, toiling away in the barn and the yard, doing field work! ’Tis a shame on our house that we made you do it, noble lady as you are.”

“Nay, Meg,” I said, grasping her hand in an effort to persuade her. “Do not chastise yourself. For is it not true that every mouth must find grain to eat, whether it speaks in Saxon or Norman? You took me into your home and hearth when I’d no roof to sleep beneath. You should take pride in the warmth of your heart, Meg, for you alone saved me when I was lost. You’ve been a mother to me, Meg, and I shall always honor you for it.”

This caused her to blush and shake her head over the odd ways of the world. “Well ’tis a shock, that’s for certain. Who’d have thought when you strode off together that you’d return as lord and lady? And you, a Fitzwater underneath! This much I may say, at least, my lady: You may have been a sorrowful maid when you were here, but you’ve nothing of sorrow about you now. It warms my heart to see you so merry.”

I left the Tamworths with a stack of silver to excuse the expense they’d laid out for me, since I now proved to be no niece, and offered Matthew and Janey employment at the manor if they ever should choose it. Matthew then told me he was set to be married and would soon begin a new household in Thetbury, so we left him two oxen as our marriage gift and our every wish for joy and happiness. With Meg I sat a bit longer in tears, recalling more of our time together, while she told me I looked much as my mother once had in earlier days.

Strangely, seeing Meg put me in mind of Queen Eleanor, perhaps because they were so dissimilar. I was reminded in a glance and a blink of the night she shook me so rudely awake, bearing the sorrowful news of Hugh. What pity I feel for that Marian now, how my heart aches for her! ’Tis as though she is a foreign being, one who lives in memory only, for I feel no connection between my soul and that which lived in Warwick Castle. Nay, I feel a greatly altered being and my every fiber sighs in relief for it.

T
HE VERY DAY
of our last encounter with Lady Pernelle, Robin and I had bade Clym travel back to Wodesley village to ask if Annie would come to us here, to work beside me as she’d always done. I knew there was now a chance she would decline, for she and Clym might choose to start some cottage life of their very own. And so when she arrived with Clym at her side, I was more grateful than I might have been and felt all the strength of the honor she did me. I quickly declared my joy at seeing her so happily settled, and she broke into a laugh and told me about Clym’s heartfelt courtship and how she’d fallen so sweetly in love.

We now faced each other as wedded women, maids no more, and as such I think my love for her was more tender than it had ever been. Together we had faced many trials and much uncertainty, but we now stood surrounded by love, prepared to face a new day of our own making. Annie and Clym both settled into permanent positions at Denby Manor, and Annie, with her broom, lost no time in scurrying off to the lowest chambers, clucking bitterly at the dust she’d seen there when we last visited, six years prior.

I placed her in charge of a fleet of serving women, and from time to time I passed them working and heard her telling the entire flock some tales of Robin Hood and his band, and the bonny Maid Marian who was his love.

F
OR WEEKS,
Annie led the cleaning crew on a rampage of action, polishing every floor and bedpost from cellar to eaves. Late one day in midwinter, as Robin and I sat brooding over some issue of murrain disease in the northeast quarter, she dashed in at a wild clip, bearing with her two wooden carvings, ovals done with faces in relief, which she placed before me with a triumphal sound.

“What are they, Annie?”

“See for yourself, Lady Marian,” she cried, pointing at the faces as if their titles were stamped right upon them.

I looked and compared and saw with a shock that what lay before me were the carved profiles of my own parents, the former Fitzwaters of Denby Manor. For a long time I stared, gauging the shape of mouth, eye, and nose and comparing it with what I knew of mine. These, then, were my long-sought parents, appearing before me when, at last, I had ceased to look for them.

“They resemble you, Marian,” Robin said clearly, taking his first glance at the wooden faces. “Your parents?”

I nodded, saying nothing. But as I sat in muted thought, he took them up and placed them above the hearth mantel. “There,” he said, adjusting their placement, “now we may see them every day. I suppose I ought to be thankful—your father looks like he had a fiery streak in him, just there, about the chin. He probably wouldn’t have thought much of me.” He looked again, then turned to shine his catching smile upon my face. “Sure they would have doted on you, though, little Miss Lucy.”