by Sue Wilson
"I'm afraid to ask."
"The priest sang masses over sorrel seed and put holy water to it. Then Donald took the eye of a broken needle and pricked Chimera's arse."
"I see." She ventured a peek at the lad, and saw by the doubt sketched on his face that she could be no healer worth her salt if she did not know the common prescription for an elf-infected warhorse.
"Please, Mistress, you must do something. With the Sheriff gone, there's no one."
The stallion's raven ears angled back flat against his head; his nostrils flared, open and shut and open again like a smithy's bellows. She wondered if he could smell her fear, felt certain he could.
Sleek, midnight coat overlaid powerful muscles that shimmered like a black, bottomless pool in sunlight. Beast or not, he was magnificent. He towered over her, tossing his head, hooves pawing the air, lunging this way and that seeking freedom, his neigh the piercing cry of a savage cruelly forced into captivity. For a moment, she could do nothing more than stare at him in awe, wondering at his terrible beauty and raw force of will.
With a start, Chimera tore the tether loose from the other stable hand who held him. The man rubbed blistered palms against his thighs and swore violently. "Cursed beast! Warhorse or no, I say we put him down before he tramples the lot of us."
"No!" Thea cried without thinking.
"Out of the way, wench!" he snarled. "This devil's made kindling of two of my stalls and mincemeat of my hands."
"And Nottingham will do far worse than that if you harm his animal."
The stable hand grunted. "He thinks the beast is dead. I think it came back, straight from hell and Satan himself!"
The animal rested, gathering steam for the next assault. "He is no demon," Thea said quietly, her eyes still locked with the horse's. "And if he were, still he does not belong to you to dispense with at your convenience. God help you, sir, if you have overseen the Sheriff's stables and still do not know that."
She stooped down, watching the horse with wary caution, and groped for the loose tether amidst the straw. Shaking fingers closed round the leather rein. "So you are Chimera, the Sheriff's warhorse."
She stood and approached the animal, keenly aware of the rumble of comment from the ring of stunned onlookers that had gathered. No doubt they were exchanging bets on the time of the horse's imminent retaliation and Thea's own certain demise. Standing on her toes, she reached for the stallion's quivering muzzle and let her hand hover in the air above his nostrils, praying the horse did not decide to rear at the foreign scent.
"No, he's not here," she crooned softly and dared to lay her hand on the warm velvet. The horse blew hot air into her palm. "Would that he were, Chimera, for I know naught about warhorses. You can smell it on me, I know. Perhaps we can both be a little afraid of one another."
"Fool woman."
"Sh-sh!"
Thea ignored the voices behind her, although she was inclined to agree with their assessment of her.
"Chimera, proud, Chimera," she continued, her voice low and smoky-smooth. "Be gentle for me, Chimera. I know you want him here." She did not say the rest aloud, but she thought it-thought the words and was horrified at the truth of them. She wanted him here, too. Now would be not a moment too soon.
She braved a look in the boy's direction. His dirt-streaked face grinned approval from ear to ear.
"Boy," she said, "what is your name?"
"Simeon, Mistress."
"Well, Simeon, I have a task for you."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Sheriff held up his hand for his party to halt and squinted into the sunlit distance. Behind him, his men waited on restless mounts, the jangle of reins and mail and the flapping of pennons stirring the afternoon air.
"Why have you stopped?" Baron Monteforte, his bloated face red with the exertion of the ride, pulled his horse up alongside the Sheriff. With the back of an ermine-trimmed sleeve, he swiped at the trickle of sweat that caught in his silver brows. "For God's sake, Sheriff, enough of your caution. At this pace, it will be nightfall before we reach Nottingham."
"Caution saw you through Sherwood, dear Baron," the Sheriff replied, gaze trained on the ridge in the distance. "And there, if you'll but glance toward the last rise of hills, is the castle keep."
"Where, by God? Where?" The baron leaned forward over his gray gelding, thick neck craning.
The Sheriff stifled a groan. He had not been pleased to have the man accompany him back to Nottingham. For all he cared, Monteforte's business in town could be accomplished just as easily from the inn as from the castle. He chafed to think that his responsibilities in hostelry could not be so easily dismissed, even for the likes of Monteforte. God curse the day that had brought him under Monteforte's thumb, and every other land-holding idiot in Nottinghamshire. Fools, all of them, ruling the realm with coin and title instead of common sense.
God, he was weary! He had been gone too long, seen too much, heard too many excuses for the lessened revenues in the Michaelmas audit. One after another, the manor lords bleated that the lambing had gone poorly in the spring or the harvest had suffered in autumn. He heard caterwauling about untimely storms and the bother of famine-weakened peasants, of grain left standing in flooded fields with no hands to gather it. He listened to endless reports that the meager harvest, winnowed and milled, was of too poor quality to bring more than a pittance at the market.
He had returned two runaway serfs to their masters, certain the fleet-footed villains would bolt again if their lords weren't less free with the lash. He had settled a string of disputes between merchants who honked and bellowed and cursed each other over sums so paltry that he was less inclined to arbitrate than to crack their dense skulls together like walnuts. And he had sentenced four to hang, the last a poxy whoremonger who had tasted his own wares with his meat dagger.
He was saddle-weary and sore and had not slept in a comfortable bed in manor house or inn or abbey. The ale he drank was weak-bodied, the wine bitter, the meat overdone and tasteless, and the wench Lord deGavnay had sent to warm his bed was not a day over fourteen, nor less than four months' breeding. He sent her away without sampling her, forced to part with a piece of silver to ensure her discretion should she be tempted to tell how the Lord Sheriff of Nottingham refused to be satisfied.
He would sell his soul this very day for his own feather mattress and furs, for the poorly cooked victuals from his own kitchen, for silence and no mockery of justice to dispense.
For Thea to greet him at the gate, in the bailey, in his chamber-the place was unimportant save that she be there, waiting on him with but a fraction of the anticipation he felt at the thought of her. If she would welcome him home, into her arms, and raise her soft, fragrant lips to his-
A fool's dream.
He drew his hand into a fist and struck his thigh, driving the notion away. Then he turned in his saddle and forced a smile at Monteforte, his voice tight with pretended hospitality.
"A wench to warm you before Vesper's prayers, Baron. That I promise. But for the moment, another matter." He pointed in the direction of the figure running down the hill, a black fleaspeck, unhorsed, gaining momentum and shouting unintelligibly as if the wind and the Furies themselves were at his back. "There. In the distance. If I'm not in error, that is Simeon, my stable boy."
A seven-year-old posted as lookout? What had the castle become in his absence? He waited as the lad neared, heels kicking up behind him, arms flailing.
"Mother of God, someone ought to take a hand to that boy," came the bailiff's decided opinion as he struggled to control his mare, unsettled by the child's wild approach.
The horses pranced nervously, skittered sideways, circling, pulling against reins at the sudden commotion.
"Whatever possessed you to put him in the stable?" Monteforte grumbled.
Simeon exploded into their midst, thin chest heaving. He bent double, trying to fill his lungs with air.
Nottingham's lip turned down at the corner as he rei
ned the bay back from the puffing child. "What is it, boy? Are we under siege?"
A chorus of laughter erupted from the circle of soldiers and travelers.
"No-n-no, my lord," the boy panted.
"Then speak. Surely you have some reason for ambushing my party like a barbarian Celt."
Another round of laughter.
Simeon turned his face up to the Sheriff, and Nottingham's throat tightened.
Lightly tanned skin, sunburned across the bridge of his nose, clear gray eyes wide with excitement, a shock of raven hair too willful to do more than fall across the child's forehead and tangle in his black lashes. The Sheriff had never given the lad more than a cursory glance, but suddenly he was struck by the resemblance. Damn it all! It was like looking at himself at that age-undisciplined, ruled by the unrestrained exuberance of childhood, grimy face, and the muck of the stables between bare toes.
The boy reached up and laid an adoring hand on the stallion's neck.
Long, sensitive fingers, broken nails encrusted with dirt. Soiled, tattered tunic. Baggy leggings, knees worn out.
Like looking at himself-or a son.
"Sir," the youthful voice piped, reed-thin like the boy himself, "'tis Chimera. He's home."
The Sheriff's thoughts scattered. Numbly, his lips repeated the name. "Chimera? How could this be?"
The boy shook his dark mop of hair. "I swear I don't know, my lord. But he's back. Came straight to the postern gate like he knew 'twas where he was supposed to be. And looking no worse for his absence. Lean, for sure-'twas the way with him even before-but not rib thin, and still with all his wild ways. 'Tis a proud, beautiful beast, and not a thing your surgeon can do to hold him. Broke loose from the tethers twice, he did, while I was there, and Mistress Aelredson-my lord, was there ever a surgeon more afraid of horses?-well, she calmed him for a time. Then Chimera, he made up his mind to have none of her. When I left, he and the Mistress were nigh ready to come to blows over how he nipped her skirts and played at tug-o-war till she landed on her arse in the dirt. Said he would be stew ere the evening be done, she did."
The Sheriff's lips twitched into an amused grin as he glanced past the boy to the castle in the distance. "God protect Chimera from the likes of Mistress Aelredson. She has a most unforgiving bedside manner."
"She sent me to watch for you, my lord, with instructions to fetch you to her as soon as you arrived. Likely she needs rescuing far worse than the horse."
"Then we should go, of course. And promptly. I can't be forever replacing surgeons."
"Trouble, Sheriff?" Monteforte asked.
"Not at all," Nottingham replied. It surprised him that it was not a lie. The troubles of the past fortnight melted into insignificance, and he felt filled to bursting with some vague, undefined good will, something so uncharacteristic it made his heart race. God, what a glorious day! He lifted his head and let the breeze thread through his hair. Was there a better homecoming than a cloudless September sky, Chimera, his prodigal stallion returned to greet him...
And Mistress Aelredson on her lovely arse on the stable floor?
~*~
"By the saints, Chimera. Is it any wonder you've such a foul temper? What was your master thinking, giving you a female's name?"
Thea had made progress, Nottingham noted. The horse was haltered and lapping up the last bit of apple from her flattened palm. Most of the other stable hands were back at their respective chores, with but an occasional glance in the direction of the surgeon and the animal she gentled.
Donald thrust his pitchfork into a rick of hay and straightened, opening his mouth to address his newly arrived lord, but the Sheriff laid a finger aside his bearded lips, begging silence. He had not left his traveling party in the bailey and come to the stable on foot to have his stealth so undermined. Likely as not, he would hear of the impropriety of his unorthodox behavior over a monotonous dinner with Monteforte in the great hall tonight. For the moment, he wanted nothing more than to watch Thea, unobserved, to gather up a secret memory of her for the lonely evenings ahead when she would undoubtedly revert to rejecting him.
He frowned at the vision of her. Where was the anger he had felt when he left Nottingham Castle a fortnight ago? The rage that had filled him with strength and purpose? The certainty that he would bend her to his will when he returned, no matter what determined, headstrong devices she conjured to resist him?
In a flash, he recalled their last evening together, and the abysmal failure of his seduction. He waited for humiliation to crawl up from his gut, but it was as absent as the rage he thought he should feel. What he felt now was not anger or strength or certainty at all, but hunger, keen and persistent, and a begrudging admiration that the woman he wanted possessed a will equal to his own. Perhaps, in some manner, surpassing it.
She had never looked lovelier or more enticing. The pale blue chainse she wore made the blue of her eyes as dark as lapis lazuli by contrast. Its crinkled linen clung to her narrow waist, to the length of her arms from the lacing at her wrists to the ribbons that affixed the sleeves to the bodice. He imagined what it would be like to unthread those laces, one by one, and let the garment sag off the curves of her shoulders, imagined loosening the ribbons at her sides and slipping his hands through to caress the small of her back where it flared into the lush swell of her buttocks.
There was nothing of the noblewomen he knew in Thea, no cold hauteur or pretense of demure innocence, certainly not the soft, flaccid form of most pampered titled ladies. She was strong from work, a peasant tigress disguised in a noble's delicate gown, as much a pretender to nobility as he.
Dirt streaked the back of her blue skirt and dusted over her cheeks, almost obscuring the heightened blush of her exhaustive struggle with his stallion. Bits of hay clung to her gown and to the untidy lengths of braid unraveling down her back. Nottingham could not prevent the grin that spread across his lips or the exhilaration that washed through him.
"A woman's name," she was cooing to the animal, smoothing her hand over the destrier's satin mane, "and that of a she-monster, too. Had he gone simple, do you think?"
"Not simple, my lady. The Sheriff was but a poor student of Greek." He stepped behind her, his hands gentle on her waist.
She drew in a sharp breath and turned in his arms.
"Well met, Thea," he murmured.
Her eyes darted to his, deep twilight blue, open wide with surprise at his return, and in an instant he saw she was replaying the same passion-filled evening he had called to mind just moments earlier. Her cheeks darkened and she looked away, lashes hiding the truth of her feelings. The memory stood between them, its presence solid, disturbing.
She placed her slim hand against his chest, and although he longed to cover it with his own and press it to him, he knew she meant no welcome by the gesture. Her affections had not turned to him in his absence. She was as cool, careful, and icily distant as she had ever pretended to be before. His hands dropped from her waist and he stepped away from her. He cursed himself for the fool he had been, calling her a healer, forgetting too easily the wounds she could make.
"You've done well by my horse," he said, clearing the unbidden gruffness from his voice.
"Yes-yes, of course." She turned back to the animal.
God in heaven, what had he done that she would not even look at him?
"And you are quite right. The name was an oversight. I thought it rather appropriate at first, Chimera being the product of breeding between Flemish stock and an Arabian brought back from Crusade." He shrugged. "My Latin is not as polished either, if you must know. And by the time I realized my mistake, Chimera's training was far too advanced to change his name at whim. I decided it was a fortuitous error, that perhaps being forced to bear a woman's name might provoke him in some way, make him more battle-hungry."
He watched her battle with herself, first peeking over her shoulder at him, then turning around, hesitant and full of disbelief, if not at his story then at his benign neutralit
y when they both knew he wanted nothing more than to take her to the hay-strewn stable floor and finish what he had started a fortnight ago.
It surprised him that he did not. He was not generally given to so much self-restraint. It seemed to surprise Thea as well. His face grew warm under her wavering regard as boldness warred with distrust, and won out at last.
"Well, provoke him you did-you have-someone did." She stumbled over herself to speak, and he smiled, feeling that if she hadn't forgiven him the trespasses of their last meeting, she had at least put his sins aside to consider later. "He was nigh impossible to calm. Donald and Ned had a time of it."
"Donald and Ned?"
"Your stable hands," she reminded him. "Are you always this bad with names?"
Only effort contained his broad smile from breaking into laughter. "No, of course not. Donald, Ned-" And because she expected it, because he knew she was remembering it, he bent close to her and whispered, "Agatha. You see, I do remember."
She glared at him, her eyes fiery blue with some silent vindictive oath she longed to fling at him. Ah, the drought of indifference was over. And maybe she had forgiven him, at that.
"Chimera went wild the moment the tethers went round his neck," one of the stable hands interjected. "Had a mind to trample us all...till the Mistress crooned at him."
The Sheriff's brow winged into the black comma of hair falling across his forehead. His eyes never left Thea's. "Crooned to him?"
"Oh, aye, my lord. Whispered sweet words to him like he was a babe. Or a lover."
"Indeed?" His voice lowered; his next words were for her ears only. "I would not have guessed you capable of it. Was this before or after he put you on your arse?"
Her cheeks and the bridge of her nose flooded with color. A slight victory, for she blushed easily. Beautifully. And now he wanted her more than ever.
"Your stable hand is too free with his comments," she said, turning her back on him again. "And Simeon, as well. I would expect a mount of yours to be wild and headstrong."
