GREENWOOD

by Sue Wilson

  Thea suffered the bite of his sarcasm without blinking. "An unlikely event. I am a little-known herb woman-"

  "You are a liar." The accusation was cold and toneless. His frigid stare did not waver. "You were sent here by them to-"

  "Your cousin brought me here, my lord, and I came unwillingly."

  "Did you, Thea? Do you stay...unwillingly?" He caressed the word with import.

  "I stay because your offer is not enough to tempt me."

  "Is that it? Or could your reluctance to leave mean something more? Perhaps your errand for Locksley is not ended or-" his lips hooked into an amused smile, "-you are staying in hope the Sheriff will visit your bed again. As I said, you are a mystery, a riddle. I can only think it must be part of your scheme. After all, most wenches have had more than their fill of him in a single night, but you-"

  He stroked the wiry brush of teasel against her throat. "You seem to have that peasant stamina for fighting back, for ploys like struggling and biting and scratching and writhing amidst the sheets that women intend as resistance and men take merely as enticement." He dipped the teasel into the valley of her breasts, and Thea snatched the offending herb from his hand.

  "I've neither time nor cause to listen to your prattle," she said and turned abruptly on her heel.

  His arms snaked around her, circling her ribs and crushing her backward. Her slippered feet left the ground as he lifted her against him. The hot moisture of his breath stirred the sweat-dampened tendrils of hair against her neck. "You had best listen to me, witch. I am all that stands between you and a traitor's death."

  Thea jerked away from him, but he grabbed her again, arms tightening around her waist.

  "Struggle, dearling," he murmured against her. "I favor a rowdy wench as much as he."

  She kicked at him helplessly, clawed at the iron-sinewed forearm that pinned her against his hard belly.

  "If you were to cry out, Thea, who would you cry out for? Your companions of the wood? Go ahead. Call them. You may be useful as bait if nothing else."

  He laughed and shifted her in his arms until she faced him. He reached up, fingers digging into her jaw as he pulled her toward him and covered her mouth with his. Thea twisted her head aside, bruising her skin as she tore herself from his grasp. His hand shot out and he recaptured her within his rough embrace.

  "Or perhaps you would call for him? Are you that taken with my cousin that you cannot share yourself? Does the bastard have such a claim on you as that?"

  Fingers raked through her hair, pulling her head back, back, until she thought her neck would snap. He groped at the bodice of her chainse, baring her breasts, and buried his head against her. The abrasion of days' old beard and his laughter, hot and rumbling, chafed her skin.

  "You noxious toad of a man! You stinking Norman cur! You whoreson bastard!"

  His face hovered above hers, brow arced above his milky eyes, grin like a death-grimace revealing a sharp line of yellowed teeth. "Such a modest, virtuous creature. A noble lady with the voice of a lark. Tell me, sweeting, do you raise him with your tongue as well as your words?"

  "Bastard!"

  "Yes, the name does fit him, but does it excite him? Is it what you call out in your moment of ecstasy?" He cupped her breast, kneading it with strong, ungentle fingers, and lowered his head to her.

  "No!" She pushed against his face with her hands, leaving smears of dirt, and dragged her nails in troughs through his flesh.

  With a yelp of surprise, he released her, hands flying to the red rivulets her nails had opened in his cheeks. "Damn you for the witch you are," he growled, shoving her away.

  Thea stumbled in the dirt, but in an instant he was over her again, eyes dark with unforgiving rage. She scrabbled backward, gravel filling her soft slippers, scraping her palms. He hauled her up by her bodice.

  "Must I have my men here to hold you?"

  He swallowed her shriek of protest with his mouth, one hand spread across the back of her skull, the other like an iron manacle trapping her wrists behind her back. He pried her lips apart with his tongue and filled her mouth again and again, forcing sobs to clog in her throat until she gagged at the depth of his plundering. Day gave way to night around her as he suffocated her with his kisses, sucking the air from her with his mouth, giving her only his foul breath in return. She sagged into a swirling vortex of gray and yellow. Only then did he release her.

  "Don't think to make him yours, Thea. Try as you might, your considerable charms are worth nothing compared to the prince's favor. He would as soon barter you as bed you, I'm sure."

  His voice came from far away, through the roar of blood pounding in her ears and the rasp of her breathing. His fingers bit into her chin as he tilted her head back. The swimming sea of vertigo parted. He leaned over her again, his hand still fisted in her bodice, and dropped his voice to a menacing whisper. "Think of it. A new plaything he can dangle before his liege lord-a spirited pagan nymph plucked out of the wild wood for the royal bed, as fitting a Yuletide gift for the prince's appetite as the tax silver in the castle vault."

  "You lie-"

  "Do I? Can you know him as well as that?" He released her suddenly, sent her sprawling against the vine-covered wall. "How hard do you think it would be for him to part with you? A common piece of peasant trash with a coarse mouth and traitorous intentions-imagine what he stands to gain for such a small price."

  "Imagine your head staked above the city gate," said a voice behind him.

  Gisborne wheeled around, mouth agape.

  "Ah, Mildthryth." His features went limp with relief, and he was, at once, cool composure, inclining his head in the direction of the old servant who stood like a forbidding mountain of stone at the garden gate. His grin curved lopsided in his face. "Keeper of the cage. Beware. Your charge is loose, and sharpening her claws on the innocent citizenry of Nottingham."

  "Has he hurt you?" Mildthryth spoke past the lieutenant.

  Thea shook her head, resisting the urge to humiliate herself further by turning and retching into the vines.

  Mildthryth faced Gisborne. "Then leave while you still have your manhood to boast about, for I'll not be reluctant to geld you myself if you come within ten paces of her again."

  Gisborne's shoulders shook with silent laughter as he walked past the maidservant. "You'd deprive her of the joys of the flesh, Mildthryth, simply because no one's dared tup you lately? God spare me, but if it's a requirement, I could probably work up the appetite."

  Mildthryth did not bother herself with a backward glance as he sauntered from the garden. She was beside Thea in the space of a heartbeat, warm, fleshy hands prodding her for possible injury. Thea winced as Mildthryth touched her ribs, and again as the old woman laid her hand alongside her jaw where tender skin had already given way to distinct fingerprinted bruises. Thea shook her head at Mildthryth's look of concern and gritted her teeth as the woman helped her to stand.

  "He's a dreadful canker of a man," the maidservant said, "an oozing sore, a boil, a vile mixture of phlegm and wrath, a-"

  "Nothing a dose of hemlock will not cure," Thea said under her breath.

  "'Tis not a matter to make light of. He is the Sheriff's cousin, his second in command, and while it makes not a whit of sense to me, Nottingham abides the man when any other soul would have flung him from the ramparts. Gisborne is not a man to cross, no more than the Sheriff himself."

  "Gisborne is a fool."

  "Nay, lamb. You may think so, he may even want you to think so, but 'tis no more than a guise. That man has the cunning of a fox, sly, watchful. There's not a thing in this castle or the whole of Nottingham that escapes those eyes. And watch he does. And learn, he does that too, until there are no secrets save those he carries inside his black heart."

  "This is the Sheriff's trusted henchman, his devoted minion?"

  "Aye." Mildthryth nodded. "If there's one thing you should know, lamb, 'tis that the two of them are loyal, each to the other, tied beyond blood and ins
eparable in a dark way I cannot fathom. You cannot spear one but what the other bleeds."

  Thea shook the dirt from her chainse and removed her gravel-filled slippers. Her hands shook fiercely, and outrage prevented her from saying more. She did not care about Gisborne, did not, in fact, care about his cousin. They were cut from the same vile cloth; one filled her with revulsion as easily as the other.

  She clenched her jaw and lifted her chin. At least Gisborne's tongue was useful for more than making her lose her wits. He had spilled one of his secrets without even realizing it, given her the first piece in the puzzle of information she could relay to Robin.

  Prince John was coming to Nottingham at Christmastide.

  ~*~

  Only a few days passed before she was able to pass on what she had learned.

  "It's a poor disguise, John. If the guards of Nottingham Castle were half-awake or less bleary-eyed from last night's drink, you'd be on your way to the dungeon this very moment. For pity's sake, keep your cowl lifted, unless you want me to fetch a razor and give you a proper tonsure."

  Thea grabbed his hand and tugged him toward a more private corner of the garden, cloistered by ivy and hawthorn. She could hardly imagine the ruse he pulled to make it this far. Either the guards were taking her presence in the garden more for granted or they assumed she was sorely in need of spiritual consolation.

  "Ye dash my hopes, lass," John said. "Poor Friar Tuck was instructing me hours on end, hoping to lend me the proper attitude of humility."

  "Well, then, that is why the disguise fails. Tuck has no humility to lend." She tried to smile, but the corners of her mouth quivered, and she bit into her lower lip to forestall tears.

  "There, lass. I told ye I'd not abandon ye." He held her at arm's length, eyes the color of sea foam gathering her in. He raised a furry, speculative brow and scratched his gingered beard in consternation. "Is that what they're wearing in Nottingham these days? Gowns too close to the bone to be moving in and lacing what lets a man peek at your bare skin?"

  Thea glanced down at the pale blue chainse. Its silver-blue ribbons laced sleeves to bodice and crisscrossed beneath her arms, down her sides, to the swell of her hips. Could it be that in the last few weeks she had stopped questioning such fashion? Suddenly she saw herself as the Sheriff saw her, as John saw her now. The outlaw's eyes glinted with a strange mixture of disapproval and unpriestly delight. Thea would've swapped every length of silk and fine linen the Sheriff had given her for the modesty of an honest, home-woven tunic.

  "God's blood, lass, you're a feast for the eyes...was there any eyes in the whole of Nottingham I'd trust to be feasting on ye. I've a mind to take ye right this very minute and-"

  "Bless me, Father?" Her splayed hand met the coarse, scratchy wool of his cassock and she warned him with a meaningful look at his own frock.

  "Aye," John grumbled. "Well, it's not hard to see I'm unfit fer the priesthood. No bleeding call to celibacy."

  "I did miss you, John," Thea admitted quietly, and knew it for truth. She took his weathered hand and brought scraped knuckles to her lips.

  "Then you've reconsidered your mission? Are ye ready to come back with me?"

  Thea shook her head.

  The giant's face mixed longing with disappointment. She watched him battle both with a frown and a gruff demeanor. "Could ye not keep your hair covered at least?"

  She sank onto a stone bench and studied the fat, uncovered braid that hung over her shoulder and spilled into her blue-silk lap. For a moment she fingered the braid and the shiny ribbons woven through it, wrestling with the information she carried, knowing that, if she told him, it would be the beginning of something she could not stop. "I've heard something," she said, before she could let her doubts stop her.

  John folded his bulk onto the bench beside her, hovering close. "Go on."

  "Gisborne is a loose-tongued fool. He confirmed that the tax silver is secreted away, awaiting the arrival of Prince John."

  "So it's just as ye thought. Your bleeding Sheriff has robbed what the people gave toward King Richard's ransom to put Lackland on the throne. And him beside it."

  "There's more. Prince John is expected to visit Nottingham at Christmas. I suppose the transfer will take place then."

  John's posture straightened, full of urgency at her message. "That gives us time, then."

  "Time for what?"

  "To thwart the bastard's plan, lass." He leaned toward her, drawing her hands into his lap. "We'll start by finding the vault."

  Thea drew a deep breath. "The castle is riddled with passages, cellars, caves. I don't want any of you inside, especially not you, John. Priest's robe or not, if they catch you below...I'll do it."

  "Nay, lass, I can't be having that. Besides, you're guarded, such as the half-wits are."

  "It won't be for long. And we have time. I'll find the vault and graven the path to it in my mind. There'll be some tunnel to the outside, as well. Something like the connection that leads from the Trip, where they bring up the ale."

  "You cannot do this-"

  "Aye, John, I can. I've been slipping in and out of Sherwood under the Sheriff's nose for years. Learning the castle's underground will be no more difficult than marking a new trail through the wood or finding a shortcut from Papplewyck to Blidworth."

  "'Twould be too dangerous." He stopped, his expression grave. "You're better off not knowing. I don't want ye more involved."

  "I'm already involved!"

  "Aye, against my wishes."

  "Your wishes?"

  "Do ye not know what they do to traitors, Thea? You'll be drawn and quartered! This is Lackland's scheme, and he'll not go easy on ye, woman or no."

  "But I can do this!"

  "I said no! You don't know what you're doing. You're playing at this as if it were just so much mischief, underestimating the Sheriff's menace and Lackland's determination-"

  "And you, John, are underestimating me." Unaccustomed sternness laced her voice. "I am one of you, and you have no right to prevent me-"

  "I have every right! 'Twas me who promised Brand to protect ye, and I'll not see you taking risks you say are for him. Thea, your husband is dead! Ye cannot save him with your fool spying or your stubbornness to bring the Sheriff down single-handedly. Think, lass, what he would say to ye were he here." He reached for her, gentle eyes filled with anguish.

  She slapped his hands away and shoved against his chest. "Don't!" she warned. "Don't try to change my mind. I am entitled to my own revenge!"

  "Not if it kills ye! You are my responsibility!"

  Anger boiled up at the proprietary tone of his voice. "Damn you, John. Damn you to hell! Don't try to tell me what I cannot do!" She turned and ran blindly, nearly stumbling into the path of a young boy who had entered the garden and waited just inside the gate.

  "Would you be Mistress Aelredson?"

  "What?" She tried to calm her ragged breathing, tried to recover from the shock of having been seen in a loud, unruly argument with a man of the cloth.

  "Mistress Aelredson, the healing woman?"

  "Yes, child. I am."

  He reached up and grabbed her sleeve with small, dirty fingers. "Then you must come directly! Please, hurry. In the stable!" Frantic gray eyes pleaded with her; he jerked impatiently on her sleeve. "Come!"

  Thea looked back over her shoulder at John, wishing there were some way to mend the breach between them with the silence of a single look, too furious to speak whatever healing words were necessary.

  He had not moved from his position on the bench, and his expression was fraught with distress no priest should feel. "Thea, you'll heed my words?"

  Her lips tightened along with her resolve. How could he know? Her determination to do this thing was as necessary as breath to her. If the Sheriff could not be stopped, there was no protection for her. Her betrayal of Brand would be complete.

  She swallowed hard in an effort to keep burning tears from falling on her cheeks. "Go with God, Father
."

  Folding her fingers around the young boy's hand, she turned and walked with him toward the gate. "Show me, child. What has happened in the stable?"

  ~*~

  "You brought me here to tend a horse," she said again. Belief sank in slowly.

  "Not just any horse, Mistress. Chimera, the Sheriff's horse, who was gone and feared lost in the battle."

  Thea slid her leather-soled slipper a step closer and looked the monster in the eye.

  Black as pitch, without a marking on him, the stallion reared up on his hind legs, then thundered down, striking the earth with his hooves. Dust and straw puffed into the air around him.

  She dared not glance away from the animal to the child who'd come to fetch her and was babbling in breathless, imperative half-sentences, who spoke the horse's name with reverence and had elevated the ambush in Sherwood to battle status. The boy grabbed one of the twin tethers that stable hands had looped about the stallion's neck and pitted his own stringy muscles against the beast's fury.

  "He's fair wild, Mistress, as you can see." Pride swelled the stable boy's chest where any other child would have been quaking with trepidation, where she was quaking with trepidation and no small amount of reluctance to make acquaintance with her patient. "Been this way since he showed up at the postern gate just past Nones. Won't be calmed for nothing. Donald called the priest 'cause he thought it was elves."

  "Elves." Thea looked for confirmation from the stable hand who held the other tether and received a silent shrug in reply.

  "You know, Mistress," the boy said. "On account of Chimera was lost in the forest."

  The horse shook his mighty head furiously, rippling the long drape of mane like a wave of ebony silk, and without warning he reared and cut sharply to the right. The lad grimaced as the rope burned through his hand and whirled to the floor as if it had a life of its own. Before Thea's gasp had died, he dodged beneath the flashing hooves to retrieve it. A fearless, foolish lad. She would kill him herself if this crazed beast did not do it for her.

  The boy gripped the tether in two determined hands. "I had to come for you. They applied the usual remedy, and nothing worked."