by Sue Wilson
The Sheriff stopped abruptly and pulled the soldier upright. "The peasant healing woman," he said, eyes narrowing with memory. "Gisborne's problem. From the other day. Damn it, Morgan! You were with him. You know the one!"
The soldier's body was racked with coughing. Black-blood spittle dyed his lips and bubbled with each gasping breath. "Aye," he managed, grimacing. "Know the one. But, my lord, not her. She's not to be trusted. Gisborne thinks-"
"Where is she?"
"Too far," Morgan gasped. "Leagues from here."
"Where?"
The words gurgled in the soldier's throat. "Her cottage...in the high lea...hard by the crags at the wood's edge." He swallowed convulsively, wheezing blood and air, choking on both.
The Sheriff nodded, pretending to understand.
Morgan shook his head, and his hand tightened around the Sheriff's forearm as if to detain him. "My lord," he whispered hoarsely. "Don't."
The man's eyes opened wide, as if describing some unseen threat or unspeakable terror, but he voiced no protest save the fingers that clutched the Sheriff's arm and buried themselves in the mail sleeve. Then the man's face froze, mouth open in silent warning, and the eyes dulled. Nottingham felt the slight shudder of life departing and the stiffening stillness that remained in his arms. He did not bother to cross himself.
He did not know how long he knelt there, cradling the corpse, listening to the solitary rasp of his own breathing. His mind whirled in eddies of thought. Of Sherwood. And he, the Sheriff, condemned to ceaseless combat to secure it. How utterly useless to battle this monster of oak and moss and bracken, this giant in sleepy disguise, this dragon who blew forth mist and fog from its nostrils and made obeisance only to outlaws. To one outlaw.
The squawk of scavenger ravens circling overhead put to death the whirlpool of dismal thoughts. He looked up sharply, daring the birds to light. "Sherwood will take nothing more from me today!"
The snuffling of a nearby horse heartened him, and he resolved not to feel the stab of pain as he drew in breath and whistled softly to the animal.
"Gisborne's traitor-wench will have to suffice, my dead friend," he muttered as he pried the archer's fingers from their adamant grip on his sleeve. With effort, he pulled himself to his feet and embraced the trunk of an oak for support.
The bay stallion, still unnerved from the ambush, picked a timorous path through the debris of battle until the Sheriff reached out and grabbed the reins.
Not his midnight-hued warhorse, not Chimera, Nottingham realized with keen regret, not even a particularly well-trained beast. He let his weight sag against the sturdy strength of the horse's flank and grasped a hank of mane as he gathered himself to mount.
"But alive," he murmured, and hauled himself up into the saddle. "At least until we encounter this woman and her physic of the wood." Damn Gisborne for his piecemeal knowledge-enough to find the wench, not enough to convict her. And damn Locksley for making him needful of her in the first place!
"Some Druid priestess," he said aloud, knowing Gisborne's penchant for the arcane beliefs of the native people. "Dabbling in the forbidden, and he's stumbled upon her-"
His words slurred into one another, but speaking aloud kept consciousness from leaving him. "Disturbed her...and now she's intent on nothing less than human sacrifice." His laugh was surly, humorless. "In which case, you, my equine friend, are quite safe. And I..."
He did not finish the sentence, but put heels to the bay, dismissing the viscous warmth that spread across his belly. He was a despised officer of the crown, alone in the land of the enemy. What Fate was not set against him?
CHAPTER THREE
The knock at her door was faint, obscured by the drone of the wind; the metal cacophony of armor and sword and the neigh of a horse shattered her sleep. Thea sat up at once, heart hammering.
The hour was late, and the weather outside had turned foul and treacherous. Who would be about on such a night without urgent cause? John? She shook her head free of dreams and confusion. No, John was far too skilled at stealthy approaches to raise such a clamor, and too poor for mail or mount.
Gisborne, then. With time to have made his report, received orders-
She felt a stab of alarm that left her thoroughly awake. "Come for my arrest," she murmured aloud. He, with his allegations based on nothing but suspicion, and she, without a single, tenable defense.
She threw aside the woolen blanket, gathered her legs beneath her, and pushed herself up from the straw pallet where she slept. He'd not see panic, she determined, scraping her palms against the thin fabric of her shift. Take her if he must, but not John, not Robin-
"Open! In the name of the Lord High Sheriff of Nottingham! Open!"
Not the dreaded guttural of Gisborne's voice, but an order nonetheless, rasping between the rise and fall of the wind. With the last word, the voice broke, its forcefulness edged in pain. Thea hurried to the door and flung it open.
Wind and rain rushed inward, plastering her shift wetly against her body and lifting a storm of errant curls about her face. Mail-covered flesh collapsed into her arms, and she staggered under a man's full weight. She saw little in that instant of confusion-mesh of armor that covered sprawling arms and torso, the cowl lowered from a shock of hair as dark as the night. Heavily booted feet planted themselves in a wide stance, and his hands gripped her shoulders as he struggled for balance.
This was not a man accustomed to accepting help, she guessed, even less accustomed to asking for it. He pushed away from her, demanding to stand on his own.
His hands left bloodied stains on her shoulders, and her shift turned red and mud-streaked from his unseen injury. Yet in the firelight, Thea saw only one thing: a line of thick gold links draped from shoulder to shoulder, hung askew across a broad chest laboring to draw breath.
She looked from the noble chain of office to the man's face and knew him instantly.
Hatred curled her hands into tight fists at her side, and a hundred curses filled her mouth gone suddenly dry.
"You are a healer, are you not? Tell me now, for I'll have no outlaw's bitch with a blade in my belly."
She could feel her body heating with the slow, dizzying drip of some nameless venom.
"I will pay, damn you-gold-tell me what you want!"
She met him with silence.
"For Christ's sake, woman! I am injured!" His slim-fingered hand strayed to his side and hovered above a gap in the mail where broken metal rings gleamed with a dark, spreading stain. His knees buckled slightly, and a grimace tore at his features.
She caught him before he fell, instinctively offering him the brace of her body. "You need a surgeon."
"Yes, and I would have one, were he not spilling his lifeblood on Sherwood's floor."
An accusation couched in ambiguity.
She hesitated, mind racing with thoughts for John's safety. "I am no-"
"I have heard what you are, wench."
He glanced around the dim interior of her cottage, peering suspiciously into its unlighted recesses, as wary as a wounded animal, cornered, with no visible means of escape. Finally, his search fell back on Thea. She felt him silently weighing the seriousness of his predicament against the unfamiliar surroundings, measuring his trust against the possibility of treachery.
She met his review with an unwavering assessment of her own.
His eyes shone with the brilliance of jet, and sweat already stippled his high forehead, both evidence of pain and precursors of the fever that would likely follow were his wound left untended.
"Am I safe here?"
"Safer than in Sherwood at midnight," she replied under her breath.
He fixed her with a penetrating stare, a gaze that promised danger despite his injury, and Thea immediately regretted her foolish quip. She bit her lip and let the quiet stand solidly between them.
"Ah, silence-an honest, if somewhat less than reassuring, answer." He stepped past her into the room, his mind made up. "Close the door, befo
re you have every ruffian in the wood following me here."
Thea paused, then barred the door and turned toward her intruder. "If you are safe enough to be here, you are certainly safe enough to be unarmed." She nodded toward his sword.
Reluctance and distrust warred in his eyes.
She drew a deep breath. "I have no traffick with outlaws, my lord, despite what you must have heard. I am, myself, without weapon. If my word is not enough-"
He unbuckled the leather strap that held his sheathed sword. "Gisborne says you are a liar."
"Yes. And the woman whose cow I could not deliver of a breech calf calls me a witch. Listen to whatever tales you wish."
With a barely masked hiss of effort, he held out the sword in surrender.
Thea took the weapon and quickly laid it aside. She lit the lantern she kept at her bedside and raised the horn slat until a thin beam of light shone in the darkness.
The Sheriff had unclasped his fur-lined cloak and dropped it carelessly to the floor. She did not wait for him to divest himself of armor, but set about the task of unbuckling and removing the heavy hauberk. The quilted tunic beneath was sodden with rain and blood, rent below the ribs where an arrow had penetrated. She freed him from the garment until only a black shirt remained slicked against his skin. Laced at the throat, there was only one easy way to remove it.
"Greyfeathers," he said the word like a curse. "Damned English longbows. Can't even see your enemy. Arrows pouring out of the air like rain. Do you know the penalty for such lawlessness, woman?"
Thea took a small knife and slit the shirt from neck to hem. The rending of cloth and the proximity of razor-sharpness to his belly silenced the Sheriff's rambling discourse. In reflex, the hard plane of muscles in his abdomen contracted, away from her blade. "One hears you favor hanging," she said.
He gathered his decorum again and glowered at her. "Only when the offense warrants it. Desertion. Treason. Crimes against the Crown." He caught her wrist and brought the knife between their shared line of vision. "Careless surgical practices." His voice, for all his pain, was low, melodic, and oddly seductive.
A muscle in her jaw tensed. "Lie by the light then, and release my hand. I'd like to avoid your dungeon."
"A tongue as sharp as any blade," he muttered. He dropped her wrist, his face suddenly haggard, and stretched out on the straw-stuffed mattress.
The wound was crusted with blood, but oozed fresh rivulets from the Sheriff's stubborn exertions. She swabbed it with scraps of cloth soaked in a boiled solution of golden seal and powdered iris root and probed the area around the torn skin. The rib below seemed miraculously intact, but she could detect the buried shard of metal beneath her fingertips. The Sheriff tried in vain to smother a quick, indrawn breath.
When she looked up, he was watching her, his eyes like flint. She could tell he knew full well the extent of his injury. She had seen men die of less. Doubtless so had he.
"Mortal?"
"I cannot tell," she answered honestly. "Are you shriven?"
His face darkened into a scowl, as if the question were as much a barb as the arrow's head. "I need no priest, woman. Just someone sufficiently skilled in field surgery."
"Then permit me to go and fetch someone-"
His hand closed around her wrist immediately, crushing it in a hot steel circle. "You'll send for no one! No man of the cloth. No villager." He paused and rose up on one elbow, oblivious to the red stream that poured afresh from his wound. "And no woodsmen," he added, words pushed out between clenched teeth. "Keep your illegal assortment of night visitors away from this door, and tend the wound yourself."
"I cannot promise success, my lord. Your wound is serious-too deep-and I haven't the skill."
"You are adequate."
It was a brief argument, quickly ended. Thea felt tangled in the irony of the situation-the Sheriff, forced to entrust his life to someone whose loyalty he had not earned, or bought; she, alone with the man, given the opportunity to take his life, or let it ebb from him as it might if she did nothing.
She said nothing more, but looked down deliberately at the hand which held her until he released her abruptly. A bruise was already settling in a dark bracelet around her wrist.
He lay back, the action eliciting no more than a stifled moan, and appeared to study the rafters of the ceiling.
Whatever the Sheriff's intentions for the night-a clandestine excursion into the woodsmen's domain, a foray into some luckless village to relieve its denizens of their material goods, or an assault of a more amorous nature-it was clear his expectations did not include being felled by an unwelcome arrow. Thea did not ask the name of the poor marksman who lodged the piece of metal beneath Nottingham's rib.
She turned to her medicines and selected those she would need. Neither she nor the Sheriff spoke as she went through the ritual of grinding mandrake root to make a soporific brew, but Thea knew he watched her. His dark eyes followed every movement of her hands as she measured herbs, steeped them in liquid, and strained the contents into a wooden cup.
"Mandrake ale," she said, though he'd asked nothing of her. "Had I wine, the taste would be more palatable." She approached him with the cup still steaming and placed it against his lips.
"I prefer to be conscious," he demanded.
"I prefer that you sleep."
His face was an odd mixture of arrogance and vulnerability. Perspiration stood out clearly on his forehead and cheekbones. His full lips thinned into a tight line of resistance.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, it occurred to her that she should be frightened of this man. He might appear vulnerable because of his wound, but Thea imagined not even the arrow's point would prevent the Sheriff's swift action if he chose to challenge her. And what of later? What if he suffered too greatly, healed too slowly, or scarred too badly? What if he died?
She was on the verge of withdrawing the cup when Nottingham opened his mouth and let the drugged liquid seep between his lips. He never moved his gaze from hers, not even as he gulped the last bitter dregs of the potion.
"You haven't slain me with some poisonous 'remedy'?" he asked, his eyes mocking her in a caustic way. "Most wish they had when given the chance."
"Yes," she said, "but I've no need of poison."
He started, and Thea could not help but derive a moment's satisfaction from the fear that crossed his unguarded face.
"You've entrusted your life to an unskilled village herb woman, whose practice extends to farmers with blisters on their hands and not altogether successful midwifery for cows. The surgery will probably kill you."
"I am not a cow," he grunted, "and I doubt you are as unskilled as you profess. Besides, I intend to live to see the morrow, if only to prove you the liar Gisborne says you are."
His voice resonated in the small space between them. She could not tell if his words were declaration or warning, but already they were softly slurred.
"And come morn-" The Sheriff seized Thea's hand and pressed the bruised flesh of her wrist against his still damp lips. His other hand brushed the threadbare linen above her breast. Weaving his fingers through the crisscrossed ribbons of her shift, he drew her forward. "You will show me who you really are...."
Thea gasped, her composure shattered in a single breath. She had expected his abruptness, his harshness, his utter indifference to all but his own needs. She had even expected violence if it suited his purpose. She had not expected this, this threat couched equally in accusation and enticement. Least of all did she expect the spear of forgotten sensation that shot from her breast to her belly and lay coiled there, stinging.
Holding her breath, she cursed him soundly in her mind and willed the sleep inducer to take effect, willed away the unwanted pressure of his fingertips against her flesh. Blessedly, his hold on her slackened, and his lids drooped over his dark eyes.
"You will tell me...all...."
She removed his hand from her laces and laid it by his side, then pushed herself a safe dista
nce from the bed.
In his drowsiness, he muttered a final word.
"Witch..."
~*~
Thea took a step away from the thin, straw-ticked pallet. The Sheriff breathed evenly through slightly parted lips, no threat. Powerless, really. How easy it would be to slide her blade beneath his heart or stifle his breath with her pillow! Her hands itched to do so. Wouldn't that be justice, at least? For John? For Brand? And if it meant braving the hangman's noose...
She shivered violently and swirled away from the bed, her arms wrapped around herself as if she were holding together the last shreds of resolve. The room seemed cold, and she, chilled to the marrow.
It was the opportunity John and the others had long awaited, a brief opening in the chink of things when they could possibly tip the scale in their favor.
She had tried to avoid viewing the Sheriff apart from his office and renowned ill temper-easier to think of him as the monster he was-but now he was injured, and the mandrake had captured him in a deathly calm.
Thea turned back and knelt beside the spot on the floor where he lay. Something about the stark stillness of the man dared her to look at him, and her gaze traveled the length of his body in slow, tentative increments, as if the beast might awaken at any moment.
He was not as old as she had imagined, perhaps in his early thirties, and he bore no visible assortment of scars or blemishes that made him unbearable to look upon. Nor did he appear softened by the indolence which castle life and his position could well afford him. There was a lean hardness to his form, the definition of musculature found in a man who rode often and was well practiced with the sword.
The lantern lent a soft, burnished glow to the sculpting of muscle across his chest and shoulders. Mud had dried in black streaks down his arms and threatened to disguise the grace of long fingers on a large, well-shaped hand. Although he was smeared with blood, there was nothing of the grotesque knots of muscle and deformity of body that her mind had cursed him with.
