Men of Sherwood (A Rogue's Tale Book 1)

by Sarah Luddington

  We reached the part of the forest I knew best and I tried to relax as he brought the horse to a walk. A warm hand covered mine and he murmured, “Almost there, Will.”

  “Thank you for looking after me,” I whispered.

  His fingers tightened on mine for a moment and I sighed in easy contentment. The pain in my back had eased and to be honest I’d known far worse. We used the narrow path he’d found a few days before and soon I felt his fingers untying my wrists.

  “You’re cold,” he said over his shoulder.

  “Only bits of me,” I said.

  He smiled, his blue eyes shining with brightness for a moment before Tuck appeared leading my grey mare. Robin’s eyes closed down and he dismounted without another word, holding my waist as I slid off after him. In the process we were so close together I could see the faint scars covering his lower jaw, through the short beard, that were obviously part of the larger one covering his right eye. I looked up at him and his breathing hitched, and for my part I couldn’t think for the desire thrumming in my blood. I opened my mouth a little to try to breathe and licked my lips, a small sound of pain escaped him as he watched.

  “Will,” he whispered. “I have to leave. You know that don’t you…? I have a job to do and it doesn’t involve you.”

  Half question, half statement and impossible to answer in that moment. I wanted to ask what job he spoke of, but he’d already turned and those strong fingers relaxed their grip on me, a grip so tight I knew I’d be bruised.

  “I’ll see to the horses, Tuck. Help your brother,” he growled, grabbing the black’s bridle and striding away from me.

  Tears pricked the backs of my eyes and my chest tightened while I watched him leave me, for those few hours on the back of that horse I’d felt safe, a rare commodity in my life and one I wanted back with a sad desperation.

  “Come on,” Tuck said, taking my elbow and leading me towards the cave. My legs were shaking and my back hurt now I lacked Robin’s comfort. We slid through the small opening and I breathed in the familiar scent of the herbs Tuck spent the summer collecting.

  “Let’s get you settled down,” he said.

  With tender care he pulled off my surcoat, cote, undertunic and my leggings. He left me the braies and I pottered off to our reredorter. Raised voices made me return at a hobbling run.

  “What’s wrong now?” I asked, leaning against the cave’s wall.

  Robin’s eyes widened at the sight of me, more than half naked and wet where there weren’t bandages. I watched his chest rise and fall against a weight I could not see. “I have to leave,” he said.

  “The Lord needs men who are willing to do His work –” Tuck said, his exasperation making him shout.

  “Fuck off,” Robin snapped at him. He grabbed his bedroll and strode to the cave’s entrance. “I am sorry for any pain I have given you, Will Scarlett. Good luck with the mad monk.”

  “No, Robin, wait,” I said, reaching out with weak and useless intent as he vanished through the hole and out into the world. Moments later I heard hooves clunk against rock and knew he’d gone.

  “What did you do?” I asked Tuck.

  He shook his head. “Nothing, I promise. I think his place is with us, just not with you, but he won’t listen. The man’s deeply troubled, Will.”

  He wasn’t the only one. A wave of exhaustion smacked me in the chest and I slumped. “I don’t care,” I decided. I reached my small bed and sat down, then lay on my side and in moments I’d left the world’s troubles to someone else for a change.

  6

  I MISSED RETURNING TO Nottingham the following day. Marion would worry but I couldn’t make the busy market day of that week. I also missed Robin, who didn’t return, and I missed moving without pain for four days. By day five I lost my temper with the whole thing and made Tuck let me out of the cave. Day six saw me walk away from the cave with my lyre strapped to my almost healed back and stride off to Nottingham.

  The horses remained with Tuck and I left him in the cave with promises I’d be home in a few days. We needed supplies, coin and information about the next tax collection we had to intercept. I joined the long queue of people and animals heading into Nottingham while a fine drizzle drifted from the leaden sky. This market would be even busier than normal, the one closest to All Hallows Eve and I should be able to sing for more than my supper and a dry bed. The heavily turreted curtain wall of the city rose from the muddy fields, stubble long gone from the summer’s harvest, and I could see the vast castle and the cathedral both majestic and threatening towering over the homes and businesses of the people who paid for their building and upkeep with blood and sacrifice. I had learned early in life what it meant to be poor and to have no value to society.

  I made it past the city guard on the gate and started to weave my way through the heavy traffic and mucky streets. Some were paved, which made the going easier but most were just a morass of mud and shit. The shouting of local merchants rivalled that of travellers selling their wares, and the general commotion of too many heaving people in one place. My nose had become so accustomed to the fresh air of our isolated and beautiful home that this place was like entering into a circle of Hell. People bumped me, shouted in my ear about sweetmeats and fresh fish, horses shouldered everyone aside and the guards were everywhere. Women sold themselves openly and the local clergy weren’t the only ones taking them up on their offers of Heaven on Earth.

  With my head tucked down and my lyre held close to my chest, my purse clutched just as tightly, I made my way to the Rising Sun tavern. When I reached the familiar door I thanked all the saints and angels before I opened the heavy oak and stumbled inside.

  “Will Scarlett, well I live and breathe we did miss you!” came the instant welcome the moment I stepped over the threshold.

  “Malcom, my old friend,” I said in greeting before finding myself gasping for breath from a bear hug set to break bones. “Steady there I’m hurt and I can’t sing with broken ribs.”

  The man laughed. He laughed a great deal and I grinned up at him before preparing myself for the next hug from Bess, his wife. When she finished and stepped back to examine me I drew a small gift for her from my purse.

  “I don’t have a chain for it, but I did make a thong,” I said. “I hope you like it.”

  “Oh, Will, it’s beautiful,” she declared and I watched her ruddy cheeks grow brighter.

  Bess and Malcom had become family years before when they’d found a thin starving man-child trying to provide for a younger brother, so utterly traumatised he didn’t speak for days at a time except for his obsessive praying. They’d taken us into their home and their hearts and I owed them everything. Malcom stood tall and broad with a belly a little too fond of his own beer and his wife’s cooking. He had a shock of white hair and a white beard, both neatly trimmed and sparkling dark eyes far more used to laughing than crying. Bess stood the height of a small pony and was almost as round. Their ruddy complexions matched, but Bess had long red hair and no beard.

  She showed my gift to Malcom and he gasped. “Will, this is amazing you should sell it, not give it away.” He stepped back behind his long oak bar and poured me a tankard of thick dark ale.

  “It’s for Bess’s birthday, which I know we both missed and I’m sorry,” I said.

  I’d carved her a heart from willow and engraved a tiny sun on it mirroring the sun on the inn’s sign, the detail had taken days of painstaking work and I’d placed her name and Malcom’s on the back.

  I received another bone crushing hug. “How is Tuck?” she asked.

  I hated the slight tension she always held in her eyes when she spoke about Tuck. I’d been damaged when they’d found us, but Tuck had been broken and Bess worried about him all the time because of his obsessions.

  “He’s doing well. He’s in good humour and we continue to travel around Sherwood so he can tend to the souls of the villeins and freemen.” I didn’t look at her as I lied, well, it was a half-truth and
I didn’t regret keeping the fighting, murder, burning and meeting Robert Loxley from my adopted family. Worrying Malcom and Bess was very low on my list of priorities.

  “I’m glad he’s well, we’ll come and visit soon if he feels he cannot come to Nottingham,” she said. I kissed her hair and she vanished to the kitchen to find me food.

  “So what news from the wildwood?” asked Malcom.

  I sat on one of the bar’s high stools and drank my ale, revelling in the familiar and pungent taste. “It’s not good to be honest.”

  “How so?” Malcom asked, wiping the bar and adding to the shine.

  “Winter is coming, the taxes are taking everything, livestock, grain, it’s affecting morale, and there is evidence of starvation beginning. People are going to start hunting the king’s deer and we all know where that leads.”

  “The hangman,” Malcom muttered.

  “No talk of politics, boys. It’s time to eat,” Bess said. She carried through a plated up ham, cheese and pickled vegetables with bread which still steamed from the oven. My brain emptied of all thought and a small whimper escaped my control.

  Bess chuckled. “Eat, Will. You’re too thin. I thought I taught your brother to cook so he could look after you.”

  In an effort to help Tuck readjust to life outside the monastery Bess had made Tuck her apprentice in the kitchen and kept him running about the immaculate space from dawn to dusk while he quoted Bible verses and told her how sin worked. She’d simply pat him on the head and make him peel more swede.

  I grinned at her around the bread I was busy stuffing into my mouth. “He cooks well but you will always be better.” A flush of pleasure coloured her cheeks.

  “How long are you staying?” Malcom asked.

  “A few days. Tuck is safe in the forest and I need some supplies,” I said.

  “There’s talk of more attacks in the forest on the High Sheriff’s men. Some of them have vanished completely, no bodies to be found and the last lot were stripped of goods and clothing. You hear anything about that, Will? Couldn’t be far from where you’re staying.”

  I fought the instinct to look away and managed a shrug. “Didn’t see anything or hear anything.”

  I watched Malcom’s jaw tick in response to my lies. I would not cave into the pressure and merely stared at him while trying to control my rising panic. Endangering these people would destroy the promises I’d made when I agreed to Tuck’s plan. We attacked Philip Marc’s people and stole what we could but we did it alone and the only other person involved would be Marion, who had a cleric under her care. They fed us the information we needed to know, like when to attack. No one else in Nottingham must know of our crimes so when we were caught – which had to happen eventually – we’d be alone on the scaffold.

  Malcom dropped his gaze but his large hand came out and grabbed mine. “Just be careful, Will. The High Sheriff grows more angry with each attack. He will seek retribution at some point and I fear innocents will be caught up in the savagery.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind,” I said, biting into an apple and enjoying the sharp taste.

  We moved off the subject of the High Sheriff and onto local gossip, which was far more entertaining, and I laughed at the antics of young lovers from rival butcher’s families trying to meet while hiding their passion from their fathers.

  “And you, Will. Have you met anyone special?” Bess asked, joining us for a moment.

  I almost choked on the soft cheese. “Erm, no. Bit tricky out in those woods.”

  “Not many girls like sleeping in wet leaves, huh?” asked Malcom, rising and retreating to his bar to serve a customer.

  “Or a boy,” Bess said in a hushed voice. She patted my hand and smiled. I smiled back but the press of tears made my eyes sting. “Oh, poppet, you’ll meet the right man someday, you’ll see.”

  “I think I have, Bess,” I confessed.

  Her eyes widened. “Really?”

  I nodded. “He…” I glanced at Malcom. Bess had known about my preferences for male company for years but we didn’t discuss it in front of Malcom. It wasn’t the sort of thing a father should worry about, Bess had told me when she saved me from an unfortunate choice one night. “I don’t think I’ll see him again, but just to know, for those brief moments, I am not alone with my desires made the world a bit brighter.”

  “You’re not alone, Will, but it’s dangerous so if you find this man again, be careful, he might not be what you think he is and then you’ll be in a world of pain,” she said. “Caution will always be needed.”

  I nodded, the loneliness of my life surging over me. When we were in the forest I didn’t feel the isolation of my desires, but here, among people who could love in the open I felt it burn a hole inside me. It wasn’t unknown for men to live together in love, so long as they were discreet, but for whatever reason, the Church had taken it upon itself to preach it was yet another sin over recent years. I suspected too many men in places of true power were not providing the heirs Church and State needed, our warmongering king among them.

  After I’d finished eating I gave Bess a hand in the kitchen and started serving behind the bar while Malcom went about his duties in the busy city. When lunchtime started to get close more staff turned up and I found a new barmaid was working. She began flirting with me once Bess explained who I was, but soon gave up when I didn’t react. I found it the best way with women. I couldn’t explain why I didn’t want them, so I gave them the cold shoulder if they showed interest, then tried to build a friendship once we had the silliness out of the way. It usually worked but I found it exhausting that day and I wished I could retreat to try and understand why I felt so off kilter and alone.

  By the time evening came I’d been on my feet for most of the day and the bar was full of patrons who needed entertaining. The big weekly market would begin tomorrow and I hoped to see Marion but for now I needed to raise some much-needed money that would go on the things Tuck and I had to have for winter. Tuck relied on me being the practical one, even if he didn’t know it most of the time.

  I picked up my lyre from behind the bar and settled near the fire, and began weaving my magic, starting the evening with a funny story about a monk and donkey. The crowd enjoyed it so I followed up with one about a lord and a stubborn pig.

  The door opened and closed but I became lost in the audience and my craft, until I felt a prickle up my back as my voice soared to describe a lost love in the battles of the civil war fought when the old king was a child. I focused on the bar and saw a man in the shadows wearing a hooded cloak. He kept the hood up despite the warmth and I smiled. My heart fluttered as I watched him raise a tankard in my direction in salute. There would be dark and stormy blue eyes inside that hood and a scar marring the perfection of a strong face.

  When I finished the romance I begged off another song and told everyone I needed a break. Coins were thrown into my bowl and someone brought me a drink. I smiled and thanked everyone as they turned back to their tables and friends to continue their evening without me for a while. The figure at the bar pushed off and came towards me. The pounding of my heart made my hands tremble and with great care I placed my lyre down, facing away from the heat of the fire.

  “May I?” he asked, indicating the other half of the small bench I occupied.

  I nodded. He sat and our thighs touched. The same feeling I’d had on the horse, my thigh tucked behind his, swept over me. “Hello, Robin.”

  “Hello, Will. How are you?” he asked.

  “Well, I’ve healed well, so you don’t have to worry,” I said.

  He nodded inside the hood, the firelight and candles making those eyes of his glitter. “I am glad. How are you in this inn?”

  “My adopted family own it,” I said. “They took Tuck and I in when we had no one else.”

  “Of course they did,” he almost whispered. “It seems there is no escape from you.” He drew circles in the spilled beer Malcom hadn’t cleaned yet. The resigned sadness hu
rt me.

  Anger stirred to beat back the grief. “Is that why you left the cave? To escape me?”

  Robin’s large hands pressed over his leather clad knees, his boots high. “I left to protect you.”

  “From?” I asked. I felt like we were forming our own bubble inside the busy bar, just he and I, our voices low, our bodies intimate and yet hardly touching, my entire being was strung tight, waiting for his next words. He slowly pushed back his hood, revealing his handsome face.

  “From this…” he said, staring at me. His eyes flickered to my mouth and rose again to my eyes. “Will, I…” He frowned, struggling for words. He heaved in a breath. “I should leave. I bring with me complications you cannot understand.”

  “My room is upstairs. You can stay. The rest of Nottingham will be booked solid with the fair, you won’t find a hayloft to use tonight.” The surge of desperation made my words tumble, a rushing stream bouncing off rocks of haste.

  He blinked. “It is not wise, Will. I am too old, too broken, too used to being alone.”

  “And I am young and full of hope for a future I cannot have,” I said. “But maybe tonight we can just be two people who want to find a little peace in each other.”

  He smiled and I felt his fingers brush over mine. “A little peace is not all you want is it?”

  “If it is all you can give…” I let the words hang, that cursed hope squeaking in discordant harmonies against the knowledge Robin would break my heart.

  “It is all I can ever give, Will. Please, remember that at all times. You…” His fingers strayed to my side and brushed up between our bodies, unseen by those around us. “You want something that cannot exist between us. My life is not my own. Not really.”

  I shivered in anticipation of exactly that, time with Robin, the rest was just noise. “You have no idea what I want,” I said. “You didn’t stick around long enough to find out but I have you trapped now, Robin of the Hood.”