by Sue Wilson
"Then you did not find the vault of silver."
Thea bowed her head. A discomfiting shame crept over her, not the shame of having failed, but the failure of not having tried. How could she justify that? How could she explain that she, who had always known her own mind, had been reduced to wavering indecision by a man she called enemy? That even now she struggled with loyalties she would never have questioned a season ago?
Right and wrong seemed so simple then. She cursed the day she'd met the man who'd taught her otherwise, who had put an end to certainty.
"Please, John, go ahead and bellow at me. I'd feel better if you'd just rant and roar a while and make a tally of my incompetence. I'll even start the list for you, if you'd like. It was a foolish idea, and I'm a poor spy. Much, for all his clumsiness and dull wit, would have found answers with more cunning, would have found the silver, would have come back unscathed with a handful of coin stuffed in each stocking and grinning from ear to ear. I am useless. Worse. A risk to you all."
Words and frustration poured from her. Confession would be next. She shut her mouth hard and turned away. Taking the skins, she knelt by the creek and let the rushing water swell them full.
John took his time to reply, as if waiting to string the right words together. She could see him out of the corner of her eye, hip hoisted onto a fallen tree trunk, pretending to study the buffed wood of his quarterstaff. With a deep breath, he looked off into the woods where early morning's light slanted through the stand of trees.
"If ye must know, I'm glad you're back," he said at last. "Robin's plan-aye. 'Tis a fine plan. Full of courage and daring. Heroic stuff what will bring King Richard back to us. Just the sort of plan Robin would dream up and make work. But lass-lass, if anything in Robin's fine scheme meant that harm would come to you-"
His gaze darted to hers, trapped her with a searing glance before she could look away. His words had gone swiftly from soft-spoken deliberation to stubborn, strong-willed passion; his face was full of it.
"Robin can't know-none of them can-the price I paid when I agreed to your plan. Oh, I boasted on ye, sure, on your fine ideas and bravery, but there was no resting easy in my skin, thinking what would happen to ye, were you found out. You cannot know how it tore at me to leave ye with that devil-how it-how I-God's oath, Thea!"
He flung the quarterstaff aside and dropped to his knees beside her, pulling her into a bruising embrace. Thea felt the water skins slip from her fingers, heard the brook capture and churn them in the current as it carried them downstream. John pressed her close, one hand fisted in the hair at the nape of her neck as he covered her mouth with his.
She had no time to think, or breathe, and now she could do neither. Patience and protection and comfort and all the things John meant to her vanished. In their place, a bold hunger drove his kiss deeper. Nothing lazy or indolent, like the sleepy forest giant she had known. Nothing of sweetness and play she remembered.
Thorough, insistent, his lips swept over hers, thick bristle of beard abrading her cheek. "There," he said, mouth still touching her, voice raw, husky. "That is the way of it, lass."
"John-"
"There be naught in Robin's plan worth this, lass. The feel of you in my arms. Safe. By the saints, you are sweet, sweeter than mead...warmer...hotter...."
"John, stop-"
"Shush, lass." He laid a large stub of a finger across her lips. "It's not a matter we need speak of."
She circled his wrist and drew his hand away. "But it is, John. It is."
"Then what would ye have me say? That I love you? There. That my heart is full of you? That I ache for wanting ye day and night? That I've feared for ye? That I despise myself for letting you stay there, with him?" His brows thundered down and his head jerked in the direction of Nottingham's keep.
"Don't ye think I started to come for ye a hundred times? To say, blast Robin and Richard and the whole bleeding mess and carry you away from there to somewhere deep in Sherwood, away from the Sheriff, away from Robin, where even God Hisself couldn't find us? Do ye not think I struggle with that, even now, looking at you like-like-" He reached for her...
"John, don't-"
And let his hand drop.
"Aye. Ye see? It's not a thing to speak of. I can see you flinching at my very words."
Thea shook her head. "There is something between us, John. There has always been. You've looked after me, cared for me, been there for me when there was no one else. I would've called it friendship."
"And you would've been content?"
"I was content!"
"And I was not."
Thea did not know what to say. His forthrightness forbade any kindness or gentleness that might give him false hope. "I'm sorry," she said. "It just cannot be, John. Not the way you want it."
She pushed away from him and rose, struggling with her skirts and the quivering in her knees. How could she begin to explain?
"I've lost the water skins. If I follow the creek downstream, back to the camp..." Her voice trailed off as she turned and walked away.
She had retraced most of her steps when she heard the muffled thud of John's footsteps behind her, a lengthening stride breaking into a run. He reached out, grabbed her upper arm, and pulled her to a stop at the perimeter of the camp.
"You're in love with him."
Her head snapped up, shock washing her face free of expression. "No!"
"Aye, Thea. You are. It's in your eyes, in your words, what ye say and what ye don't."
"John, that's mad! How could I-?"
"How, indeed, when he's a soulless, black-hearted bastard without thought or feeling in the whole of him?"
"That's not true!"
"You defend him quick enough."
She wrenched her arm away and pushed through the last of the trees and bracken that camouflaged the outlaws' meeting place.
"You're defending him, Thea! Tell me the reason in that."
She stopped abruptly and turned, skirts swishing in the carpet of dried leaves. "You don't know him, John. No, it's not that-I can't say I know him myself. But I do have an advantage. I've seen him-"
"Been with him?"
Thea bristled at the accusation. She had never lied to John, until today. Now she found herself stumbling over half-truths. "I've not been with him-not-not in the way you think. I told you. I do not love the man. I only know him in a different way because I've seen him when he was weak and tormented and confused, and I swear to you, there was no evil in him then."
"God's oath, Thea! The beast was steeped in evil in his mother's womb, suckled on it, grown strong on it, till there's naught he knows but foul deed, naught he wants but treachery and murder. You'd make yourself more useful to us all if you'd fetch yourself back to Nottingham and slay the bastard outright."
"John-"
"Take your bleeding herbs, some poison ye know to twist his gut, quick and lethal-"
"John!"
"Damn it, Thea, do it!"
The roar of his voice thundered up through the oaks. It seemed that the leaves quaked at the sound. The commotion of the camp settled to an uneasy hush. Men who had discreetly turned a deaf ear to their earlier conversation stopped their work and glanced awkwardly from John to Thea, then to one another.
Thea felt their trust crumbling into judgment, then censure, but nothing could penetrate the numbness that shrouded her. She lifted her face to John, bewildered at the change in him. Sorrow closed around her heart.
He was the same giant hulk of a man he'd always been. Same red-grizzled hair and beard. Same weather-beaten hands and cheeks. And yet she did not know this stranger, did not know the words to say to this gentlest of creatures grown mad with the need for retaliation.
He said he loved her. Was this what love did to a man?
Stunned, she took a step away from him, then another.
"Thea, don't-"
John's hand shot out, seized her skirt and nerveless fingers in one bone-crushing grip. She had not thought to flee,
had not thought at all, but she pulled away reflexively. Penitence slipped over his worn features, obscuring anger, then he bent his head to his chest, unable to meet her eyes.
"I didn't mean it-I wouldn't ask it of ye," he stammered, fingers twisting nervously between hers. "I swear, lass. I don't know what came over me. Good Christ, I wouldn't want ye back there if it meant death to Lackland hisself and the whole bleeding lot of his baron-vultures. You're home. You're safe. You're not going back to the Sheriff or his kind-"
"I cannot kill him." Thea forced the words belatedly through lips grown cold. The strength in her voice surprised her, for she did not know where she had found such conviction or sentiment.
John stopped his rambling apology and peered down at her.
"You think me weak, I know," Thea said. "Or a failure. Or merely that the Sheriff's affected me somehow and I am as mad as he. But I have given you my help. Before. From the first, after Brand died and you sent for me to come for Will-a man I did not know except he was an outlaw of the wood, and hurt, and still I came, without question."
"That you did, lass."
"And I would again, John, without question. Not because you braved Nottingham's soldiers to bring Brand back to me when he was hurt and dying. That debt I've repaid many times over. Not even because it was Brand's dying wish. But because Will was a human being, and it would have violated everything I knew to let him suffer. Or to let your men go untended when you called me again."
"But the Sheriff-"
"Don't you see? He is no different, John."
"He is our enemy-yours-!"
"He is still a man, and I've no right to take his life."
"But ye seen what he did in our village, to take my smithy, to fire Duncan's crops-"
"I saw what his soldiers did, at Gisborne's command."
"Our homes gone, our fields torched, our livestock butchered-"
"Homes can be built again, and the time for sowing comes each year, but taking a life-John, that is a loss no one can replace. Hasn't there been enough already? Have we not lost too many babes to famine and children to pestilence and aged to hardship? Do we truly wish to invite a bloodbath of vengeance upon ourselves?"
"The man must be stopped."
"Then stop him another way."
John scraped at the scruff of beard furring his jaw. "There is no other way, lass."
"The man can reason as well as you or I."
"Aye, a twisted reason, perverted to meet his own ends."
"If you appeal to what he wants-order in his shire-"
"The man wants order? Him with his soldiers running like rats through our villages, making no place safe for us save Sherwood?" Frustration gnarled his features into a frown. "Aye, and he'd hang us for being here, too, if there was silver enough to bribe his cowardly troops to come get us."
Thea looked from John to the men who had begun to gather in a loose semi-circle around him. Hardened men, all of them. Many-most-had lost far more than she. Families. Freedom. Hope.
She had gained their trust, and a few short months ago, she could have recited a list of the Sheriff's offenses to best any of theirs, would have felt her skin crawl and stomach curdle at the mere mention of his name. And now-
The irony slammed through her. She had left Nottingham for fear of betraying these men, yet here she stood, betraying them in sentiment, if not in deed. Worse, she could see no solution. Their plight was intolerable, but Nottingham was far too entrenched in his own obsession. As long as highwaymen lived and flourished along the Great North Road and attacks on his soldiers continued, the Sheriff would never seek a peaceful solution.
"There is so much you don't understand about him," she said finally. "So much you won't let yourself understand."
"Thea-"
"You're at a stalemate, John-you on one side, as stubborn and thick-headed as ever a man was, and he on the other, determined to best you. You've pinned all your hatred on him-one man alone-not on the wars that have bled the country dry, or famine, or disease, but on one fallible man. And he is no better. He knows soldiering and little more, and would sooner cling to some simple idea that if he takes his sword and rids Sherwood of its bandits, he will have won. He can't bear to face the rest: the plagues of poverty and the disillusionment of his people. They are not things he can fight. They are not things he can control. So you make war with each other, skirmish after skirmish, each more deadly and hate-filled than the last, because you are both too small-minded to admit that there is precious little you can do about the real injustices in this land. The only solution you can see is to do more harm."
She stared down the men in turn, waiting, hoping to see some flicker of understanding in their faces. One by one, the outlaws turned away, some shame-faced, some with resignation, some with only a shrug and a curse. Only John remained, grim face focused on the toe of his boot as he scuffed patterns through the fallen leaves. He waited until all the others had dispersed and resumed their morning tasks about the camp.
"Ye never was shy about speaking your mind," he said, then glanced at her. "I loved that about ye from the first."
Thea looked away, purposely avoiding the appraisal in his eyes. Easier to deal with John in a blustering rage, ranting like a fool, than this. "We've come full circle, it seems."
"Aye." He sounded no happier than she.
"I don't want you hurt, any of you. You must believe that."
"And him?"
She waited a long time before answering. "No. No, John. I don't want him hurt either. Not if there is any way to prevent it."
He nodded, then stared back down at the small pile of leaves he'd scraped together at his feet. "He's not deserving of ye, lass."
"John-"
"He's not," he stated with utter certainty. "Of course, few of us are. The thing I fear though-and, lass, it'll happen, despite your words and wishes-the thing I fear is what will happen to ye when he's gone. Because they hate him-" He nodded toward the men. "And one day someone will get to him. His life is not worth tuppence. Not here in Sherwood. Not even in his own bed. He's written the execution order hisself with his own bleeding meanness, and there is nothing you can to do save him. God's blood, Thea, I'm not wanting to see ye hurt twice."
He looked up at her then, eyes full of dark meaning. Something in her heart tore, some tender place that had hurt all along from the minute she and John first clashed. She bled inside, grief and loss welling up, with defeat larger than either because she felt so powerless to change anything.
"I do not love him, John," was all she could say.
"Aye," he answered. "And I'd be selling my soul to feel from ye what you're not calling love."
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Thea tugged on the reins and sat back in the saddle. To her surprise and relief, the black warhorse heeded her untrained instructions. She leaned forward over his neck and planted a grateful kiss on his long, silky mane.
A decided improvement in the beast's attitude, she thought, straightening again and gazing out over the valley below. Or perhaps she was gaining some mastery over him after all.
As if to prove her wrong, the stallion pawed the ground with his giant hooves and shook his head mightily, snorting hot vapor into the cooling afternoon air. She all but ignored his protest. There in the distance, her tiny wattle-and-daub cottage nestled in the hollow of the meadow's rocky hills.
It was just as she remembered it, Gisborne's damage notwithstanding. Rosemary still climbed over the stone fence. The thatch roof still rose steeply, opening to the central smoke-hole. The last seasonal blooms of herbs and flowers spread a palette of muted color at her doorstep. The wooden door still hung straight on its hinges, shut snugly into its frame.
She smiled as she thought of that door-Brand's silly boasting on how it was a door to withstand anything. "They'll not get in here, love," he had said. "Not wind nor weather nor none of the fletcher's rowdy sons what hang 'round here, hoping to gain a glimpse of you."
Thea's eyes filled with wi
stful tears. Quickly, she dashed them aside with the back of her hand. Brand was gone. Even John had looked at her differently when they parted. She doubted she would ever lose his bittersweet affection; John was not one to give his feelings lightly or to snatch them back simply because they were unrequited. But this time he had looked at her, touched her hair and cheek, and hefted her up into Chimera's saddle with begrudging finality.
So much had happened, little of it reflected by her hut's serene, unchanging stillness. She wondered if she could ever put things to right again, wondered if she even knew what right was, if she could ever dispel the soreness lodged in her heart. She missed him. Terribly.
And it wasn't Brand she thought of. Or John.
Before she could stop herself, she conjured up the image she'd carried with her all the way home, of the Sheriff sprawled on their leaf-bed, moonlight silvering his ebony hair, the crumpled indentation in the leaves at his side where she had lain, curled in his warmth.
How had this happened? In him, she had found something-someone-who opened her world in ways she had never dreamed, who evoked feelings within her she had never felt, who gave her a glimpse of life and laughter and passion.
And yet she had turned her back on it all. On him.
She ached more than she ever remembered aching for Brand, with a yearning so keen that it hurt to breathe and think of him at once. She half-turned in the saddle, looking over her shoulder at the dark green fringe of Sherwood's trees, tempted to go back and lie down with him among the leaves and moss and forget the loyalties that tore them apart. Even now he beckoned her, as if he were the palliative to her pain, and not the cause.
Damn Nottingham! What had he given her but longing and a history of too many things left unfinished and unsaid?
She twisted back around, letting the wind whip through her hair and across her face, washing her with resolve. She had left him and come back here to still those very feelings that clamored to be heard. She could not afford to listen to them now. Home lay just ahead. Peace, finally. If not in the wood, then at least in her heart.
