Lady of Sherwood Read online

  “So it would, my lord.”

  Attention recaptured by the colorless tone, deLacey studied his steward. Gisbourne was being more down-mouthed than usual. “Is this something I should concern myself with?”

  Dark eyes flickered. “No, my lord.”

  “Eleanor, is it?”

  Gisbourne was startled that his business was so obvious, but hid it instantly. “The child is ill, my lord.”

  “Which one?”

  “The girl.”

  Gisbourne’s daughter. Or the girl presumed to be Gisbourne’s daughter; the sheriff was well aware Eleanor was more than indiscriminate when it came to her pleasures. Rumor had it Gisbourne had sired neither the girl nor boy, though Gisbourne himself claimed them.

  “Will she live?”

  “The chirurgeon believes so, my lord.”

  “Well, then. Tend my business, Gisbourne, and the chirurgeon will tend his.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  William deLacey let himself out of the cell, resolving to visit the mews. He had acquired a young hawk from the Earl of Huntington, and wished to see how its training progressed.

  Mercardier gave Marian and Robin little enough time to exchange farewells. The mercenary, already mounted, waited at the opened gate. He said nothing, but the intensity of his stare and the grimness of his mouth made it plain further delay would not be tolerated. As Robin led his horse toward the gate, Marian walked with him.

  Conscious of the king’s man, they exchanged a chaste kiss, though Robin’s hand lingered a moment in her hair; and then he was mounting, gathering rein as he swung a leg across the saddle. She had packed him clothing, adding to it a wrapped parcel of cheese and bread; Robin had strapped on dagger and sword. There was nothing left to be done save leave.

  “I will be home as soon as may be,” Robin told her, gripping her hand a moment, and then he rode out.

  She watched them go: one large, mail-clad mercenary atop a huge bay horse, a younger, slighter knight in simple leather and wool, mounted on a gray. The latter wore no mail, but was no less competent, she knew—or less dangerous—than the mercenary captain he rode with. Robert of Locksley had been soldier, Crusader, and king’s man also, in the days before the Turks had captured him on the same field where her father died. Before he had come home to England much older in spirit than when he left, if only two years greater in age.

  Sim closed and latched the gate. The sound of hooves against courtyard cobbles altered into silence beyond the gate, where stone became dirt track. She would not see or hear him again until he returned.

  Until a king was dead.

  Marian turned abruptly and strode across the bailey to the hall. Inside there was warmth, food, companionship. Even music; Alan was playing his lute. The melody was simple, his tenor voice pure in accompaniment. She paid little enough attention to the lyrics. Instead, she took her seat at the head of the table, intending to eat and drink—but discovered a sudden inability to move.

  The table was no longer empty. Men gathered at it now, the men she had expected to gather at it two hours before, when she had supervised the placing of platters and tankards, the treasured bowl of salt. All men save one, who now rode to France.

  It was Will Scarlet who poured a pewter goblet of ale and thumped it down upon the table next to her hand. “Drink,” he said. “ ‘Twill put color back in your face.”

  She had not known she lacked it.

  “Eat.” That was Little John, shoving a platter of pork in her direction. The pile was already denuded, ravaged by male appetites. “ ‘Tisn’t a war, is it? He won’t die.”

  Marian looked at them all. At Scarlet, scowling in perplexion; he did not understand her mood. At Little John, with a bush of red beard concealing half his face, but not the blue eyes that were, she saw, plainly worried. For her. At Much, working on a bulging mouthful of cheese—he would never learn proper manners—and at Tuck, whose plate was full of food yet untouched. Alan she gave the merest glance; his head was bent over his lute as he fingered the strings.

  “What happens,” she asked, “when the king dies?”

  Will Scarlet grunted. “They name a new one, don’t they?”

  “A son,” Marian said. “The eldest son, as Richard himself was the eldest of Henry’s surviving sons.”

  Tuck’s expression suggested he understood the implications better than the others. “But Richard Plantagenet has no sons.”

  “Aye, well.” Little John looked from Tuck to Marian, shrugging massive shoulders. “They’ll find someone.”

  “The Count of Mortain,” she said. “Prince John.”

  “D’ye think it matters to us?” Will asked roughly. “This king, that king . . . means naught to folk like us.” He paused, grimacing. “To you, maybe.” She was a knight’s daughter, while they were all of them so far below that as to be nonexistent.

  Marian drew breath. “Five years ago,” she said, “you robbed a tax shipment.”

  “For the king’s ransom,” Scarlet declared. “And ’twas Robin’s idea, wasn’t it? The son of an earl!” He shook his head, lifting a tankard to down a gulp of ale. “Naught to us. The king forgave us all our sins.” He grinned at Tuck. “Like a priest.”

  “That king,” Marian agreed, even as Tuck murmured that he was a friar, not a priest, “who may be dead even as we speak.”

  Scarlet fixed her with a scowl. “D’ye think after five years Prince John would recall a thing about us?”

  “Not Prince John.” It was Alan, stilling his strings to look at them all. “The sheriff. He will remember.”

  Scarlet hooted briefly. “You, maybe—you tupped his daughter and got caught for the pleasure. But he’s naught to do with the rest of us.”

  “He would have hanged you,” Marian said, “for murdering those Normans—”

  “They murdered my wife!” he cried, red-faced in sudden anger.

  She raised her voice. “—and Tuck was nearly excommunicated because of the sheriff. Much nearly lost a hand to him, for picking pockets—”

  “Teach him to be better at it, then,” Scarlet muttered, still angry.

  “And Alan he would have hanged, too, for certain—indiscretions.” The minstrel grinned, amused by her word choice. “And me . . .” She sighed. “Me he would have married.”

  “Hanging’s worse,” Little John declared, then colored as she fixed him with a scowl. “Well . . . ’tis. With the one, you’re dead—”

  “—and with the other, you might as well be,” Marian finished glumly, taking up the tankard Scarlet had given to her.

  “And it may not be Prince John named at all.” Alan smiled blandly as they turned to stare at him. “There’s Arthur.”

  “Who?” Scarlet demanded.

  “Arthur of Brittany. Geoffrey’s son.” The minstrel shrugged. “Traveling as I do, I hear things. And since the king has never sired an heir, nor named one, there are those who whisper we might be better off with Arthur.”

  “He’s but a boy,” Tuck protested.

  “But he has his grandmother.” Alan fingered a flurry of brief notes. “Eleanor of Aquitaine. ’Tis one way to be Queen of England again.”

  “She’s an old woman,” Scarlet declared, clearly dismissing the possibility.

  Marian smiled. “Eleanor of Aquitaine is not a woman to let age keep her from anything she wishes.”

  “Then you believe she will fight John?” Tuck inquired.

  She thought about it. “One is her son, one is her grandson. Blood means something.”

  “Blood never kept the Plantagenets from fighting amongst themselves before,” Alan observed lightly. “Old King Henry might have had his sons killed any number of times, for their . . .” He paused, savoring it. “Political ‘indiscretions.’”

  Scarlet shook his head lugubriously. “Has naught to do with us, does it? They are royal folk.”

  “Look beyond yourself,” Marian suggested sharply. “Look beyond the immediate world. The sheriff was Prince John’
s man before—”

  “The sheriff is his own man,” Tuck interrupted forthrightly. He should know; he had been in William de Lacey’s service five years before. “He serves himself.”

  Alan asked, “And if serving himself suggests he should serve Prince John?”

  Marian glanced sharply at the minstrel. She had always believed Alan of the Dales a feckless if handsome man, full of charm because it was a coin he could spend with impunity, never beggaring himself. But he had said it earlier: he heard things, traveling. And though feckless, she doubted he was a fool. Not beneath the charm wielded with such skill.

  Much spoke for the first time. “Pardon.”

  It silenced them all. Much had grown out of boyhood into awkward adolescence, gaining inches if not flesh and conversation, but he remained odd and unpredictable. And yet there were times Marian believed he understood far more than any credited him.

  Scarlet hawked and spat into rushes, then had the grace to color as Marian cast him a pointed glance of annoyance. “ ’Twas the Lionheart’s pardon,” he said. “The sheriff has let us be.”

  “While the king lived,” Tuck said uneasily.

  “What, d’ye think the pardon dies with the king?” Little John asked in alarm.

  “Would even Prince John dishonor his revered elder brother’s memory?” Alan asked mockingly.

  Marian, who had herself been subject to Prince John’s lewdness and temper, knew better than to answer. Not if she didn’t want half the men at her table to spend the rest of the night in disputation.

  She caught Much’s expectant eyes on her, waiting for her to assure him his world would remain intact. And moved to comfort, as she so often was with him, she fell back on something Will Scarlet had said. “Likely no one will think of us,” she said. “They are royal folk, and we are not part of their world.”

  Scarlet grunted vindication. Little John’s eyes brightened and he reached for his goblet. Much shoved more cheese into his mouth. Tuck began to eat at last, cutting into a meat pie, but his expression suggested he had not yet settled the question for himself. Alan of the Dales, eloquent hands gentle on his lute, merely shook his head slightly.

  Marian avoided his glance. She did not wish to see the irony in his eyes. Instead, she reached for and began to tear apart a chunk of bread, knowing she would get little sleep that night. Robin was gone, the king was dying, and whether the Sheriff of Nottingham served Prince John, Arthur of Brittany, or the Lionheart’s memory, he would, as Tuck suggested, always first serve himself.

  Three

  “God’s Rump,” the king swore. “but you’re a canny, brave fighter for all you’re no more than a stripling youth!” Robin staggered under the Lionheart’s friendly embrace. “Crashing your horse through fallen walls, trampling the Infidel, lopping off Saracen heads—Jesu, but you’ll make a man of it Robin!”

  He had made a man of it already, but compared to the king he was a stripling youth; most of them were, measured against Coeur de Lion. Robin, helm tucked under left arm and mail coif slipped, grinned as the king grinned back, then laughed aloud in sheer exultation as Richard cuffed his skull as a father might a son. Even Mercardier’s glowering expression could not suppress his high spirits. He had fought for his God, his king, his country, and come out of it alive.

  Alive, intact—and clearly the king’s latest favorite.

  He had not looked for it, had not asked for it, had in no way invited it. But the king’s exuberant affection for those he liked was as instant and overwhelming as Greek fire; no one stood in its way, nor attempted to beat it back. One simply gave way—and let it burn itself out.

  But the King was abruptly distracted, called away by others to tend to royal matters, and Robin was left to himself. Horseless now, he stood upon a pile of shattered stone, aware of victory and justified satisfaction. Acre’s walls were broken, its Saracen soldiers defeated, its people engulfed by the armies of the Third Crusade. In his right hand he gripped his bloodied sword. He recalled it might be needed again, for Acre was only the first victory: Jerusalem yet lay before them.

  Robin knelt, set down his helm, then wrapped the edge of a dead man’s robe around his bloodied blade, tending it assiduously so it might serve him again.

  Behind him, the bulk of Mercardier blocked the sun. “He will knight you for this.”

  Still kneeling, Robin twisted to look at the captain of the king’s mercenaries. He felt intensely vulnerable, crouched upon the stones with his spine inviting attack. Broken stonework gritted beneath his boots.

  But Mercardier did not attack. He simply spat blood, shook his head slightly, and moved away.

  Knighted. By the king. In honor of courage, of skill, of victory.

  Robert of Huntington, titled Locksley in honor of the manor and holdings bestowed upon him by his father, the earl, as he departed on Crusade, shivered under the glare of the Saracen sun. He had dreamed of it. And now it would be true.

  He gathered helm again and rose, unsullied steel blade glinting. All around him Infidel bodies lay tumbled, embraced by blocks of fallen stone. Smoke drifted on the air, mingling with the moans of the wounded, the wailing of the women, the crying and shrieking of children. Beneath his sherte, padded gambeson, mail, and surcoat, he sweated. Itched. Longed for a river in which he might cool himself, cleanse himself, but the only rivers within reach were those of blood.

  “He will knight you for this,” Mercardier had said.

  What more might a man ask in this life?

  “Wine,” Mercardier said, and tossed the goatskin at him.

  Blinking away the dazzle of flames and memory, Robin gathered up the skin bag. He lifted it in a brief salute of gratitude to the mercenary, then unstoppered it. The wine was thin and sour, but served to wash down the cheese and bread Marian had packed.

  They had ridden until the forest encroached so vigorously that moonlight dimmed, shielded from the track by a lattice of arching limbs. It had left them with no choice but to stop for the night, and so they had, settling in among the trees with horses groomed, grained, and hobbled. He and Mercardier had not yet managed to find the peace of sleep. Instead, they shared the meager fire, food and wine, silence.

  And the knowledge that a man they served, a man they each worshiped, was dying.

  “Unfair,” Robin murmured.

  In shadow, Mercardier’s face was expressionless. “That you have no bed? No woman?”

  Tension crept into his shoulders. “That a man such as he should be taken from us when we need him so badly.”

  Mercardier grunted. “He believed the treasure at Châlus would provide the means to mount another crusade.”

  “Is there treasure?”

  For a moment the mercenary was silent. When he spoke again, his harsh voice scraped. “The man is the greater treasure.”

  No one doubted that. “And the Lionheart’s captain? What becomes of him?”

  “My disposition,” Mercardier said, “is at the whim of the king.”

  “And if, dying, he makes none?”

  “He will.”

  Robin took a pull from the skin, then stoppered it and tossed it back. “And what of England? What disposition does he make for her?”

  Mercardier laughed softly, though there was little enough of humor in it. “That I know of . . . none.”

  It startled him. “None?”

  “None before I left him.”

  “None?”

  “Surely he will. When he must.”

  “When he must,” Robin echoed.

  “And whom he must,” Mercardier said.

  “And will that be whim as well?”

  In Norman French—which Robin understood perfectly; and which Mercardier knew—the mercenary cursed him and the day of his birth.

  “It matters,” Robin said sharply. “England is not your country, Mercardier. But she is mine. And it matters.”

  Mercardier, Aquitaine-born, spat. “John will not have you in his bed.”

  Tension redou
bled. It seemed rumor become issue would not be set to rest. Not in six years or sixty. With effort, Robin forced irony into his tone. “Nor was I in Richard’s.”

  “He would have put you there!”

  Knowing the man’s devotion to the service and comfort of his king, Robin was not certain if the mercenary hated him for being wanted, or for not answering the summons. “He gave me leave to make a choice.”

  Mercardier swore. “And the minstrel?”

  “Blondel chose one way. I, the other.”

  “Matched boys, he called you. He said it even as I was sent to England to find you.”

  “And so we were,” Robin agreed: both young, both slender, both so fair as to be nearly white-haired beneath the pitiless glare of a sun much fiercer than that of England. “But even if Blondel and I had been sons of the same womb instead of merely of happenstance, our inclinations were very different.”

  “Therefore?”

  “Therefore I served the king as well as I might in all things.” Robin paused. “Save his bed.”

  Mercardier expelled breath through his nose with all the vigor of doubt. “If that is true, why did you let it be said?”

  He shrugged, feeling the scrape of bark beneath his cloak and clothing. “A man may hear the falsehood, and believe it. A man may also hear the truth, and disbelieve it.”

  “And a man might put his sword to another’s throat to convince him to believe.”

  “What—should I do so to you? Here and now?” Robin laughed softly, careful not to indicate the sheathed sword lest the motion be misconstrued. “And a man might die for it.”

  “But you are a knight!” Mercardier said it with a contemptuous flourish. “A knight, the son of an earl, a Crusader in the king’s army. Surely if the Turks could not kill you in battle—or in captivity—no one else may.”

  He had found ways to live in battle and regretted none of them. He had found ways to survive captivity and regretted all of them. But the latter he would speak of to no one, save Marian. “You would have preferred I died?”