by Sue Wilson
Nothing Thea had seen as a woman convinced her it was a false one.
She had lived her entire life in Sherwood's shadow on a remnant of a once great Saxon holding. Thur-leah, it was called then. Thor's meadow.
The arable land was gone now, usurped by the Crown after the Conquest and maintained as part of the royal hunting preserve. Her father's kin had been left with only a ridge of rocky meadow. They were never certain whether the generosity of the invading forces was meant as a kindness or merely as additional insult. It was impossible to farm the remaining perches, as generations of her family had discovered, for a wide striation of stone lay just below the surface soil.
By the time the acreage had passed to Thea's father, Ruhleah Aelredson had abandoned any hope of eking a prosperous living from the earth. He lived out his life reminiscing about the injustices done to his family and partaking in an excess of mead some said was his undoing.
Only her mother's will had preserved the land for her. She showed Thea that amidst the boulders and rubble grew calamint and feverfew, and revealed to her that even stinging nettles had their uses. In time, Thea realized that the land her father presumed so valueless flourished with its own wealth, and if their meadow was but a small parcel, there was also the forest, rife with herbal specimens.
She discovered the merits of coltsfoot and mallow, the phases of the moon and hours of the day or night for gathering, the herbs that would ensure fidelity and those that would drive out witches. She memorized the recipes for decoctions and infusions in rhyme, and through experimentation grew skilled in devising simples and nostrums.
The art of herbal healing, laced liberally with prayer and incantation, gave her something far more precious than material wealth: respect for the gifts of the earth and rare self-sufficiency; knowledge that could not be robbed from her when land was; a trade and mastery over the world around her at a time when power and authority belonged to a privileged few.
Her mother died when Thea was fifteen. A year later come Twelfthtide, Thea laid her husband in Edwinstowe churchyard's frozen sod. Poor, gentle Brand, gifted with a carpenter's skill for shaping wood, and filled with the wild, foolish notions of a dreamer, born to the forest. Taken from her too soon, unfairly, in Sherwood's silent, oaken depths.
She comforted herself with the only constants she knew: the scent of lily hanging in the air; the knowledge that betony still had power over evil spirits; the truth that knapwort took bruising from the skin, if not the soul. She clung to the changeless rhythms of the earth, of seeding and flowering and harvest.
There had been times in the years since when she had longed for the companionship of her mother on her gathering journeys or missed the comfort of Brand's shy, awkward embraces, but there had never been a time when she had been afraid to be alone.
Until today.
Thea hastened home, the eerie half-light of dusk on her heels. She wanted nothing more than to be inside her cottage, to let her encounter with Guy of Gisborne pass, along with the imminent storm. Yet she had no sooner cleared the top of the last hill when she stopped and looked in dismay at the tiny hut nestled in the vale below. Even from a distance, she could see she had been visited by the Sheriff's minion and his men.
The low wall that marked her acreage had been breached in several places. Layers of unmortared fieldstone had been knocked away, as if the men, for sport, had made slipshod jumps across the wall's breadth. The trailing rosemary that spilled over the wall lay crushed beneath the debris; the air was filled with the strong, piney scent of its resin.
Thea started forward again more cautiously, moving toward the small, single-room dwelling in stunned silence. The gate stood open; she latched it behind her. The meticulously arranged fieldstones that lined the path to her door had been scattered, the border of lavender crushed. The lemon balm, hyssop, tansy, and purple basil that grew around the cottage in colorful profusion had been trampled and-Thea knelt to touch the fallen plants tenderly-deliberately sliced at ground level. Images of Gisborne and his deft swordplay came to mind, and Thea pressed her lips together in a grim line.
She looked at the wattle and daub walls and the steeply pitched roof and said a quick prayer of thanksgiving that her crime-whatever it had been-had not provoked the soldiers to fire the thatch. Her home had been invaded, but it was intact. Far too many others had suffered a worse fate for less cause.
The door was ajar, and Thea sidled into the cottage with care, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dim light before entering fully. It would be like Gisborne to leave a man lying in wait for her, she thought, touching the dagger at her hip for reassurance.
The interior of the cottage felt unfamiliar, defiled, full of the indistinct shapes of overturned furniture. She braved another step, one bare foot exploring the hard earthen floor. Her heart sank as she looked around. Gisborne's swath of destruction had not ended at her door.
Her cupboard and shelves had been randomly emptied, crockery broken, one of her stools smashed into kindling, and the straw stuffing of her bedding strewn across the floor. Even the ashes of the central open hearth had been stirred viciously; a fine dusting of gray powder had settled over every surface and the odor of woodsmoke hung in the air.
"There ye are, sweet lass. Where have ye been hiding yerself since this morn?"
The male voice caused her heart to lurch wildly, and with lightning reflex, she slid the dagger from its sheath. Before she could turn toward the intruder, a large log of an arm circled her from behind, squeezing the breath from her body and pinning her arms helplessly at her sides.
Thea felt herself crushed back against a massive figure. A man's rigid form insinuated itself into the length of her spine and the curve of her hips. Wiry-bearded lips scratched a kiss into the soft flesh of her neck.
She cried out, a rasp of hysteria giving way to indignation, and kicked behind her, fighting the woolen skirts of her kirtle. Her resistance met with nothing but air and a tightening of muscle and sinew around her ribs as the man behind her shifted his hold to gain better purchase. One hand released its grip on her midriff, came near to stroke her tangle of hair, nearer to touch her face.
Thea twisted, squirmed, and sank her teeth into the skin of the man's fist.
"God's blood, lass! Be still, will ye? I have no wish to wrestle with a wild Celt!"
"John?"
The arms loosened about her, and she swirled around, dizzy with the return of air to her lungs. A giant shadow separated from the dimness, a lumbering bear of a man. The last yellowed light of day fell across his features.
"Aye, what's left of me. Damn ye, lass. Ye bit me clean through to the bone! Now how do ye suppose I can spar with Scathlocke, my knuckles naught but a bloody pulp?"
Relief poured through Thea, making her feel ridiculously weak, as if her muscles suddenly refused to hold her body together. Had Gisborne truly frightened her so much that she did not recognize the one man of such height and girth who would enter her cottage unannounced, whose bass-timbre'd voice would address her with such familiarity?
"Damn you, John Little," she said, quaking voice pretending at outrage. "What were you thinking, sneaking up on me like that?"
The dagger dropped to the floor, and she let herself be cradled in his iron-thewed arms. She clutched his doeskin tunic and rested her head wearily against the hard muscles of his chest, reassuring herself with the faint scent of him-leather and evergreen, like the forest.
"I was thinking to visit with ye, lass," he crooned, the rhythm of his heart thumping against her cheek like a soothing lullaby. He touched his lips to the spill of roan curls at her temple, and Thea pushed herself away slightly, hands splayed over his wide chest.
"A foolish idea, John, in the best of times. You take no care."
"I was bringing ye word of-" John's voice dropped suddenly as, for the first time, he saw in the gloaming the chaos of the cottage. "God's blood, Thea! What happened here?"
"The Sheriff's men, I suppose." She turned from hi
s embrace, surveying the room with a growing sense of violation. Her clothes lay in a pathetic heap at her feet, dirtied, trampled upon, but oddly still folded, as if someone had cleared her shelves with a mighty sweep. Nothing appeared to have been examined closely, not her clothes, not her herbs or medicines. The house had not been methodically searched by soldiers in need of information or incriminating evidence; it had been vandalized, ransacked for the entertainment of the Sheriff's men, and probably for Gisborne's amusement as well.
"Clearly I have annoyed his soldiers past their limits for well-reasoned behavior," she said sarcastically, bending to pick a woolen tunic from the floor.
"Annoyed the Sheriff's men, have ye? Aye, well that makes all the sense in the world. And there I was, thinking ye a sane and cautious woman. Have ye turned she-wolf with the full moon, or is there some other reason ye've brought the Sheriff's pet dogs down on yer head?"
Thea folded the garment over her arm and looked up into the giant's face. His skin, what was visible beneath the scruffy beard and untamed hair, was tanned, the cheeks weathered with the crimson flush of one who lived at the mercy of the earth and elements.
"They suspect me, John," she said simply.
"Aye, lass." He grinned. "But of what? Feistiness and bad temper? Poor judgment, mayhap?"
Thea stabbed his chest meaningfully with her finger. "Of tending Much, their latest wanted criminal."
"Ah...um..." The crimson flush deepened, and John ducked his head to his chest. His weight shifted from one foot to the other, and he ran a roughened hand through his unruly mat of hair, visibly searching for a reply.
"And how is the lad?" Thea said, almost enjoying his discomfiture. "Safe?"
"Aye...well...there's the very reason I came to see ye, lass. To let ye know-" The fumble of words stopped the minute he looked into Thea's disapproving glare. "Aye, the lad's safe, safer than he's a right to be. I'd wring his neck myself if it would put one whit of sense in his fool head."
"You would?" Thea asked doubtfully.
"The thing is, he was right proud of it, lass. Waving the bloody purse under my nose, under Robin's. Could hardly have taken that away from him, could I?" John's face glowed with excitement, and there was no keeping a grin from crinkling the corners of his eyes.
Thea crossed her arms in front of her. The man was incorrigible. The whole lot of them.
He cleared his throat, and cocked his head sheepishly to one side. "Of course, I should've given him a good walloping, I should've, right then and there."
"You should've stopped him," Thea said, her voice low and serious.
"Well, lass, the boy wouldn't listen-"
"Wouldn't he, John? He listens right enough when it's you or Will or Robin bragging on yourselves, running on as you do with your tales."
"Ye're saying I put him up to it?"
"I'm saying your talk put him up to it. These idiotic risks you've been taking lately-and for what?"
John drew himself up to full height and knitted his brows together sternly. "Fer King Richard's ransom, lass."
"Is it, John?" she challenged. "I mean, it wouldn't be for the thrill of it? For the adventure?"
"Now, lass-"
"Honestly, John, you don't know what you're stirring up from one day to the next." Thea sighed heavily.
"Ye worry too much, lass. To be sure, it's serious business we do. I'll not lie to ye. But Much knows it. Oh, don't be jerking yer chin at me. He does. So it was a risk. Nottingham Square and all! The boy craves an audience, don't he? And so if it was just a few silver pence. It was fine work, and even ye can't deny that. Stealing the Sheriff's pretty purse and his pride, as well. Not a bad take fer a morning's work."
"You're defending him!" she said. "John, you encouraged him!"
"The little bugger don't need encouragement from the likes of me."
"But he's a child!" she insisted. "He knows nothing of the danger, the subtleties, the precautions-"
"No? Why, lass, he outran Nottingham's guards clean past the city gates and into Sherwood. He's born to it. The thieving just comes natural to him."
"John-"
The tall woodsman took the woolen tunic from her hands and laid it aside, then turned her toward him. "He's one of us, lass. Same as you and me." Something final in his words and tone stole the argument from her lips. His large hand closed gently around her shoulder, and he put two fingers beneath her chin and tilted her head up until Thea had no choice but to look at him.
"And not because we force him," he continued. "Much chooses. To be sure, he can't count the coin he steals, but loyalty he understands right enough. Loyalty to Robin. There's no question there. Ye just need to stop fretting, lass. Stop mothering the lad. Let him go. Sherwood takes care of her own."
How she wished that were true! For Much...for John... Dark lashes swept closed over her eyes for the merest fraction of a second. For Brand...
She swallowed hard and willed the burning tears to dry. In a distant place in her mind, she wondered how long the tears would be there, springing forth unbidden from a well of pain she thought she'd cried dry months ago. Why now? Why today did the mere mention of Sherwood call forth images of danger and dread and not the peaceful, majestic sanctuary she knew it to be?
It was Gisborne, of course. Gisborne, damn him, who had set her fears on edge, made her remember Brand and forget John and his fierce protection and concern.
"That was a clumsy remark, lass," John was saying, his eyes full of remorse. He shook his woolly head and scuffed one battered boot toe along the ground. "I'm sorry. I meant ye no harm. I'll have a word with the boy, if it'll ease yer mind."
He touched her face lightly, as if he were afraid the feel of his roughened fingers would bring her more pain, and when he spoke, there was something of penance paid in his voice.
Thea's heart tightened, and for a moment, she did not trust herself to speak.
"'Tis a fool's tongue I have, always getting the best of me," he concluded.
"And I, as much to blame, I'm sure," she said, knowing it was not John or his clumsy-sweet ways that had unsettled her so. John was good. John was brave. And in his own way, John was noble-if thieves and outlaws could be noble. She felt a smile tug at the corners of her lips. Damn Gisborne. He was nothing. Nothing.
"I didn't mean to go on so about Much," she said. "I don't suppose there is any stopping him, now he has the taste for it, and you, John, puffing up with pride over his antics. But I do worry about him, about all of you. It's the Sheriff's men. Made me throw my wits to the wind, I fear. But John, if you could have seen them. And I-trying so hard to be their match. Pray it wasn't my tongue that hangs us all."
John looked at her blankly. "Ye saw them, lass? The Sheriff's dogs? In the flesh?"
"Yes-"
"But I thought-I thought," he stammered. "God's bones!" He kicked the wooden scrap of a stool aside and paced the length of the room. "Why did ye not tell me, lass? I thought the bloody rascals just came here to spy on ye, with ye safely away." At the end of the room, he pivoted and bounded back to her in three long strides. "And ye saw them? Where, lass? Here?"
"Nay, John, nay," she assured him. "They must've come looking for me here, but, nay. They found me in the lea."
"And?"
"Questioned me, that's all. About Much. About Sherwood."
John scraped a callused hand over his face, digging his fingers into the scruff of cinnamon whiskers. "And you told them-?"
"I told them the truth, John. That I have a way with herbs and charms and simples. That the villagers know of me and come to me from time to time. Nothing they did not already know."
"And about Much?"
"That I dabbed the wound of a boy...but I did not know him to be a thief." Thea saw his face darken, and knew he believed her honesty to be mistaken, at best. "Well, it was the truth at the time," she said defensively.
John looked heavenward as if pleading for patience. The oath he muttered was not as heaven-inspired. "So ye admit to
helping Much, and plead ignorance to the Sheriff."
"Innocence, John," she replied firmly. "Innocence."
"Aye, well, that's a fine defense, lass. I'm sure the Sheriff will be more'n fair with yer sentence for having confessed so neatly."
"It won't come to that," she promised, wishing she could be so certain herself. "Besides, they weren't interested in answers, just in getting back to Nottingham before the storm blew in, and in devising some excuse why they chased their suspect no further than Sherwood's oaks. I was but a distraction."
John looked at her sharply, the tenderness in his face subtly altered. His comprehension shattered the playful camaraderie she'd spent months erecting between them.
"A danger unto itself, lass," he said gruffly.
She looked away, uncomfortable with the meaning implied in his words, with the low, private resonance of his voice, too intense to be mistaken for mere friendship. Her fingers twisted in her tunic, then suddenly she turned to right the trestle table, wanting nothing more than to ignore his remark. She dragged the remaining stool over beside the table, sat, and pulled the muddied kerchief from her throat.
John moved to her side, nimble and surprisingly quick for a man of his size, but now he made his giant's strength known. "Come with us. With me, lass," he said, bracing one palm on the table beside her as he leaned close. "Maybe it's time, with all this going on and ye deeper in it than is wise. At least in Sherwood, there'll be no harm come to ye. On my oath-"
She could not face this today, this persistence as large and unrelenting as the man himself. She rested her head in her hands for a long moment, soft words and gentle rebuffs eluding her.
John brushed aside the curtain of hair that fell across her shoulder. Determined she could not let him continue in this mad fantasy of his, Thea lifted her head. Her lips curved into a careworn smile too forced and bright to be anything but refusal.
