by Sue Wilson
A wry smile twisted his lips. "I like them caged and cornered."
"She is hardly a wench to be underestimated. At least it would be wise to know her more thoroughly."
The Sheriff nodded. "So it would. And I trust you could accomplish that?"
He strode toward Gisborne and snaked an arm around his lieutenant's shoulders. His voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. "Travel tonight to Edwinstowe and ask after her. Seek out a garrulous villager or two and buy their knowledge with a tankard of ale to loosen their tongues. And a tuppence afterward to keep them silent. You'd be wise to keep your identity to yourself and your sword sheathed. These people are notorious in their loyalty to Locksley. You'll get nothing for your trouble if they suspect you."
The Sheriff paused a moment, strategy forming like a dark cloud in his mind. "Then to her house. Have your men pack her things and bring them here. Plants, roots, bowls-whatever it is she uses-and whatever else seems of import. You do understand, do you not? I want her place searched, thoroughly, not a stone left unturned. I want information. I want to know who the devil she is!"
Gisborne lifted himself off the table and tossed the apple core into the fireplace. A sizzle of steam rose and was quickly extinguished. "I can tell you who she is," he said nonchalantly. "She's a liar."
"Then prove it."
Gisborne raised a skeptical brow. "A careful liar," he amended.
"Come now, Cousin. Espionage is your strong suit. Care. Attention. The right people bought with the right coin. If there's anything to find-"
"I'll find it," Gisborne finished for him.
"Precisely." The Sheriff grimaced slightly, his hand moving instinctively toward the dull ache of his half-mended side. He preferred bed and the oblivion of a bottomless cup of dark ale, but there was the capture of Monteforte's attackers to consider.
And Thea, somehow, still to be reckoned with.
Suddenly, he knew he could not face her, could not look upon the contempt in her eyes or feel her flinch beneath his touch. He was torn between his attraction to her, which was simple, elemental, and, yes, dangerous, and the more critical need to obliterate all trace and memory of her.
"And remove her things," he decided. "I've finished with her for now, and I don't care to be hovered over. No more cups of her vile brew shoved in my face; no more of her over-solicitous attention to how well I'm covered against the chill of my own castle, and her absolute refusal to warm me in any agreeable fashion. Tell me, Cousin, what possible use is she?"
"Apparently, in a weaker moment, you've made her your surgeon."
"Was I a fool?" Nottingham did not expect an answer and knew Gisborne dared not provide him with an opinion. The thin, ragged kerchief Thea had worn lay draped across the back of a chair. He picked it up and crushed its worn fabric.
"A final thing," he added, brandishing the scarf with a faint look of disgust. "You needn't bother with her clothes. She's a member of my household, and I'll not have her in peasant rags. See to it she has something more suitable to her new station, and procure whatever other personal items she may require."
"And where would my Lord Sheriff wish me to bring these...personal items?" Gisborne asked boldly, his voice a raw insinuation.
"She is not a concubine," Nottingham vowed sternly. "She is to have her own chamber with a room adjacent to it for her work. It would be convenient if it were close by," he added as an afterthought. "That is understood, is it not?"
"Not a concubine," Gisborne repeated, thoroughly unconvinced. He pushed against the door with his booted foot, leaving a mutter behind as he exited. "Just a liar. Caged and cornered."
~*~
"Well?"
Gisborne's stare swept slowly in the direction of the honeyed voice, and his mouth widened into a full-lipped grin as he spotted her. Aelwynn had spread herself, belly-down, across the bearskin rug that lay in front of his hearth.
There was something infinitely fitting in the way she had arranged herself there, auburn hair loosed and wild, her golden eyes as feral as an animal's. He'd slain the bear himself, his best kill with crossbow, and paid dearly to have it artfully preserved, giant maw open in a perpetual, silent roar. Aelwynn cushioned her chin on the beast's mighty head and toyed absently with its long, ivory teeth. Her naked skin made delightful contrast against the black pelt of fur.
Gisborne wondered if she realized the wantonness of her posture astride the beast, the way the fire played in a teasing, flickering dance over her bare backside, and the images and possibilities evoked in his mind. Laughing lightly, he stripped his finely embroidered samite tunic over his head and tossed it aside.
Of course, Aelwynn had that witchery in her, that utterly confounding ability to beget frustration as easily as desire. A sennight of the woman's undivided attention and varied repertoire, and he was still not completely satisfied.
"Well?" Her purr sharpened into a catlike mew, demanding his attention.
"You have competition."
Her eyes narrowed and darkened from yellow-gold to bronze, dark brows winged upward in scornful disbelief. "What?" she said in a tone at once piqued and derisive. "From that fleaspeck?"
Gisborne shrugged and pulled off his boots. "The fleaspeck appears to be staying. And at his request."
"Impossible. She is nothing."
"She bears watching." He crouched beside her and smoothed his hand down her back and over the plump rise of her buttocks. His cousin's desire for reconnaissance would have to wait. Aelwynn desperately needed someone to lick her wounded vanity, and he-
"I've cast the runes," she continued petulantly, dismissing the situation with a shake of her dark, fiery hair. "She doesn't even appear."
He slid his hands beneath her, parting her thighs, as he lowered himself against the welcome satin of her skin. No time for preliminaries. No need. He entered her with a grunt of pleasure, his breath fanning the hair at her neck.
"Check again," he growled.
~*~
"Here you are, wench. A place for you, safe and sound for the night."
"Or fortnight, more's like." The guard who gripped her upper arms shoved her ahead of him, through the open door. "If you last it."
"You can't do this! I'm his surgeon-he said-"
"You're done with the Monteforte whelp, are you not?"
"Aye, but-"
"Well, you're done for the day, then." The guard laughed throatily. "We've got our orders. Fight if you'd like. You're not going anywhere."
"I'll not be locked away, damn you!"
The door of iron-banded planks shuddered solidly into place, drowning Thea in darkness. The blackness swallowed even sound, muffling the metallic clank of the lock being turned and the boot kick aimed against unyielding oak that punctuated her captivity. She could barely hear the blanketed conversation from outside, but clearly the soldiers were not moving from her door.
"A wager then?"
"Dice?"
"The wench. How long ere she's dangling at the end of the Sheriff's hanging rope? A tuppence in my palm if she's drawing breath past tomorrow's sundown."
"Fool! Pay me now, for I've a wiser bet." Choked laughter. "How long ere she's on her back in the Sheriff's bed?"
Thea bit back the curse on her lips and swirled around in the suffocating closeness of the night. Lying bastard! Lying, deceitful, traitorous bastard! Why could she not have slain him when she had the chance? It would have been so simple, so temptingly simple! Now she could not even warn John that the watch for him had doubled, as had the bounty the Sheriff had promised to whoever could bring him in.
Of course, John could not have killed Hugh Monteforte. Not that he was incapable of murder; John Little was no saint, and his companions no less wayward. But he was neither brutal nor ruthless. What did he want of life save dozing beneath Sherwood's oaks on a summer's day, a freshly roasted haunch of venison and an endless cup of mead upon awakening? He was a loving rogue, a rascal, true, but he had little inclination for sustained malice and non
e for unprovoked manslaughter.
In all the months since indebtedness had forced him to abandon his smithy and flee his village on peril of arrest, John had done nothing more than pilfer a few purses from those least likely to miss them. Perhaps, if the woodsmen were lucky and word arrived in time, and if the guards few enough, the men could waylay the rare tax wagon, but that was done more by trickery and wit than violence, and never for personal gain. Outlawry for John, for them all, was only for survival and the need to secure King Richard's ransom. And that they would do by any means.
By any means...? Did that mean cold, calculated attacks on innocent travelers? Did it mean murder?
She drove the very idea away with a shake of her head. No, it was the Sheriff and his men who killed senselessly, without compassion for the poor. If any crime existed, it was here, in this castle, where a cruel, self-obsessed lord ruled without thought of the people he was sworn to protect.
Thea turned on her heel, crunching stale rushes under her foot, and paced the confines of her room. She hated this helpless feeling, the waiting, the futile spinning of thoughts in her head, the utter powerlessness. If there was a way to escape-
She walked to the stone embrasure below the single window and pushed aside the oiled hide draped across the opening.
The wall of the keep plummeted to a lush canopy of trees below, where the masonry of the castle merged with the steep rock that thrust up from the earth. Beyond the castle rock, moonlight reflected off the mirrored ribbon of the River Trent. It was a glorious sight, but it was clearly a stronghold from which escape was impossible.
Her cell-there was no other word for it, in description or in purpose-was spacious enough, far larger than her own one-room cottage. But there the amenities ended.
The fireplace contained remnants of charred wood and bones burned white and clean, and an assortment of leftovers from a long ago supper. The floor had not seen a change of rushes in a season, maybe two, and the reeds were sodden and moldy near the window where rain had poured in. Whatever herbs had been scattered about had long since lost their power to sweeten the air. The stale, musty odor of smoke mingled with that of decay, a foul cesspit somewhere nearby, and the sure smell of mice.
Twilight became evening. The Sheriff did not summon her, nor was she visited by any of the castle staff. She was offered no candle, no firewood, no blanket, no meal, and no companion save her own gloomy thoughts. So much for the honor of being named the Sheriff's surgeon. In Nottingham, it seemed, a healer was only chattel-and not particularly valued chattel at that.
Thea closed the window covering, shivered from the night air, and drew her feet beneath her skirts for warmth. The bloodless face of Monteforte's dead son haunted the brief snatches of sleep that claimed her, and in the blurred space between sleeping and waking, the image transformed into the weathered, lifeless features of John Little.
She started, awoke, and huddled against the cold, listening to the muted, drunken laughter of her guards. Then she drifted fitfully to sleep again, imagining her blade as it sliced each carefully knotted stitch in the Sheriff's gut. One by one.
~*~
Guy of Gisborne leaned back, one slim hip balanced against the trestle table, and scraped his hand over the stubble of beard that marred the sharp edge of his jaw and chin.
He had given too much time to this inane quest. A half-day of hard riding. An evening gulping bitter ale with loose-tongued idiots at a succession of inns and drinking houses. Now he had lost the best part of another day searching the wench's cottage. And for what purpose?
He had gained nothing he needed in the way of true evidence against the woman. The citizenry of Edwinstowe, despite the avaricious gleam in their eyes for the silver coins Gisborne flashed, traded only useless information.
They had sung the healer's praises until it sickened him. She was tireless and would come when called upon-day or night. Sweet-tempered with children, gentle with the aged, strong enough to lend a hand come winnowing time, and a veritable salvation at lambing and calving. All this and with a comeliness matched only by her virtue.
It was nothing short of a holy mystery that the good folk of Sherwood had not petitioned the Church for Thea Aelredson's sainthood.
Gisborne gnashed his teeth against a strained grunt of frustration. Let the peasants think what they would. There was far more to the woman than their tales revealed. Simple-minded creatures that they were, with hearts and heads that could be turned easily enough by the wench's witching ways-what did they know of her covert allegiances? And, Gisborne mused, what were they likely to confess if they did know?
No, the woman was more than she seemed. He had known that the moment he encountered her in the lea. Lying without conscience, stepping around his questions with graceful ease, she betrayed nothing with those darkly brooding blue eyes and defiant chin. And if she were afraid of him, she hid it well, her indignation, the sunburned pink of her cheeks hiding any flush of anger-or guilt.
Gisborne looked around the murky interior of her cottage. The woman's belongings were as thoughtfully ordered as her deceit-every bottle, bowl, and jar arranged with care and precision. He nodded in the direction of the apothecary, and a soldier swept the whole of it into a barrel.
Gisborne pushed away from the table and wandered through the cottage, sword tip probing. He slid the length of steel between layers of neatly folded clothes and plucked out several garments. The Sheriff had said it was needless to retrieve the worn, faded kirtles. Doubtless he preferred his surgeon in silk or samite. Or nothing at all. But this-
Gisborne dangled a man's linen shirt from the tip of his sword.
Perhaps the Sheriff would be more interested in this.
A look of distaste drew Gisborne's face into a tight scowl as he recalled the one, surprising disclosure he had uncovered in Edwinstowe. The woman had a husband, dead more than three years.
The men gathered in the village's wayside tavern had revealed that much without reluctance. Indeed, one and all seemed to boast on the tale, as if it were a favorite bit of regional lore-one of their own, caught in Sherwood, felled by a crossbow quarrel loosed by Nottingham soldiers. The death of the man they called simply Brand had become a rallying point for peasant distrust and hatred of authority, and Brand's young widow, an innocent soul to be protected and held in outspoken regard.
"Aye, and she loved the man," the blacksmith had said, "for all he was simple folk. A good carpenter, but Brand knew more with his hands than with his head."
"Aye, or why else would the lad be about Sherwood with his bow?"
"Good Christ, Edmund! He was starvin', like all of us. And it bein' winter and nothing to be had for weeks to come. You'd be in Sherwood yourself, and you know it. The forest law be damned when your belly's hollow for a sennight."
"Was he an outlaw?" Gisborne had asked with shrewd curiosity, sinking his full upper lip into the brew's brown froth.
"Brand? By the saints, no! Unless you count huntin' for a deer on Richard's land a crime."
"It is a crime," Gisborne had said with feigned indifference.
"Aye, stranger, for those what have guts full from feastin'. For the rest of us-well, 'tis not safe, but 'tis done."
"And if it be criminal, 'tis nothing to takin' a man's life. And someone done that to Brand. One of the Sheriff's hounds with a fool-lucky shot."
Deep voices chorused assent and cups lifted, before the blacksmith continued more grimly. "Ripped his life from the poor bastard for no more'n tryin' to feed his young bride."
"And she grievin' for him even now, so hard the loss hit her."
"Made worse because she could do naught to save him. Think of it. Her, with all her learnin' and wisdom, doin' all for us and our kin, and nothin' she could do for her own."
"And he didn't go easy, some say. Ravin' like a madman at the end. Thrashin' about. Fever eatin' at him from the inside out. Cursin' God and the Sheriff in one breath."
"She stood it all, stone-still and brave and ne
ver ceasin' her efforts to save him, 'though 'twas all for naught. He breathed his last, was buried, and if the lass has shed a tear since, there be no witnesses. Took all of what she felt and locked it away and just kept on goin'. Was out birthin' Maud's babe only the day after they put poor Brand in the sod."
"But you said she grieved?" Gisborne asked.
"Aye, and that she does, even now, but in a private way. Somethin' of the light went out of her eyes, and somethin' of her hatred for the Sheriff gave a hard edge to ways what were soft before. You could just tell. That, and she will take no other man."
"Truth," another villager agreed, "not freeman or serf or stranger like yourself. And plenty of those 'round here have tried."
"Yourself, Stephen?"
The flame-haired carter ducked his head sheepishly, cheeks burning like the locks of untamed hair that dropped across his forehead.
"Nay, and she'll die that way, most is supposin'. Holdin' to what she remembers of her husband and to her hatred for the bleedin' Sheriff."
"Aye, she hates the bastard for sure. And her havin' every right."
"We all havin' every right."
The men nodded by the meager light of the tallow candles, swallowing their grumbles with hearty swigs of dark ale. Gisborne had waited to break their silence.
"And is the healer about her cottage now?"
"Nay, I don't think so. Edmund, you haven't seen her, have you? Must've been called out. Been gone a few days now."
"Is that unusual? For her to leave suddenly, I mean. Stay away several nights."
"'Tis not uncommon," the carter said. "She'll go if she's needed. The lass'll think nothin' of headin' for Worksop if there's call, and stayin' on till all's well. Have you need of a simple then? You could wait, or then there's Brother Timothy."
Gisborne had deftly turned the conversation, confident none of the men suspected him for any more than a passing pilgrim. He could gain no help from the praise the men of Edwinstowe had heaped upon the wench for her devotion. And help was one thing he desperately needed.
