Such men as peasants and outcast monks, charming minstrels and simpleton pickpockets would not enjoy the same privilege.
Robin, who had ordered no one killed and had been present during the robbery, knew William deLacey himself had murdered his own guard. But there was no proof. Even his word as the son of the Earl of Huntington was suspect: he had distanced himself from his noble father to reside with an unwed woman and a pack of pardoned outlaws. Perception, again, was all.
The wind of his passage whipped Robin’s cloak over his back, tugging at the heavy silver brooch pinning his right shoulder. His clothing was liberally daubed with mud. Already one eye had suffered its share of clogging insult; he scrubbed an arm across the side of his face to rid himself of the worst of the mud. He tasted it now, gritting in his teeth. Eyes watering, he leaned to spit—and saw the trunk of a tree fallen across the track.
“Ya Allah—” The horse gathered himself powerfully, leaped the trunk and the shattered spears of broken limbs. Robin, half blinded but well versed in horsemanship since childhood, rode the effort well enough for a man taken unawares. It was only as the rope came singing up from the ground into thrumming tautness that he recognized the trap. Retreating from Arabic into stolid Anglo-Saxon English, he cursed the men who had set it.
He was taller than they had planned for. The rope, instead of cutting into his throat, caught him across chest and shoulders. It canted him awkwardly and abruptly backward in the saddle, tangling cloak and hair. Stripped instantly from the saddle as if he weighed no more than a dandelion stalk, Robin was unhappily aware of air, of the horse running out from under him; that the cloak now blinded him utterly—and that his landing was going to hurt.
He came down flat and hard onto muddy track and tree. A limb dug hungrily into his back, another jabbed into one shoulder. Then his skull and tree trunk collided with an audible thud.
Stunned and completely bereft of breath, he lay sprawled slackly, seeing darkness and sparks of light. His lungs labored but offered no air. He was aware of vagueness, of senselessness teasing at the edges of consciousness, and panic. He could not breathe—
—and then he felt hands upon him, cruel and ruthless hands, and knew he could do nothing to prevent them from commiting whatever indignity they wished to commit.
In this case, the hands worked swiftly and neatly. His purse was cut away, the brooch jerked from his cloak, his sword and knife appropriated. The hands had no care for him beyond what he offered; the tugging at his hips when they pulled the sword from its sheath was not gentle. By the time he had air in his lungs again, by the time he could do more than lie sprawled helplessly and inelegantly across the ground with his head against the tree, gulping wool-barriered air through the cloak wound around his head, the hands were gone.
He heard shouting: something about his horse. Charlemagne—? Robin assayed sight again, and freedom, by dragging the enfolding cloak away from his face and shoulders, and discovered as he levered himself hastily up on one elbow that the thieves had not departed. He froze, tantalized by the view of the tip of his own sword drifting perilously near his throat.
He wheezed then as lungs spasmed at last into normal activity. He felt the prick of blade, the cut, the trickle of blood. He raised one hand a matter of inches, wanting to block the blade, but realized the folly in that instantly as a second prick of honed steel drew additional blood.
Men surrounded him. All carried longbows, though the foremost among them gripped Robin’s sword. Two of them spilled out the contents of his purse into ready hands, anticipating coin; a third tossed the heavy silver brooch into the air repeatedly as if estimating its weight and worth.
He knew these men.
And now that he was unwrapped from the cloak, they knew him.
Adam Bell smiled broadly. “Locksley,” he said in surprise, then broke into laughter. “Well met!”
The others came closer. William of Cloudisley, with his mane of brown hair; Clym of the Clough, sandy-haired, a squint in one blue eye; even Wat One-Hand, who had, from muttered complaints of recalcitrant horses, lost the gray entirely.
Robin stared up at Adam Bell. Now that he could breathe again, he could also speak. But he would offer them nothing of fear, of hesitance. Only casual courage; it would do more to annoy them. “The sword, if you please?”
“Ah. Forgive me.” Bell, slight and dark as a Welshman, though his eyes were pale brown, moved the tip aside and grounded the blade next to his own booted foot even as his mouth twitched. “Come and have a cup of ale with us.”
Robin sat up, frowning ferociously as he picked dollops of mud out of the vicinity of his right eye. “No time,” he said, wincing as muscles protested the importunance of tree limbs; he would be badly bruised before morning. “I must go on to Ravenskeep.” He gazed balefully at Wat One-Hand, summoning the tones of his noble father. “You have lost me my horse when I have the most need of him.”
Clym of the Clough, never friendly and frequently openly hostile, was predictably outraged. “And d’ye think we’ll let you leave us so soon?”
“Why not?” Robin countered. “You have my purse, my brooch, and my weapons. Have I not paid my toll?”
“I think not,” Clym retorted, in heavy good humor since he had the upper hand. “You’ve a father who’s an earl, d’ye not? You may not be worth the ransom paid for King Richard, but you’ll bring us a silver mark or twenty.”
Robin, affronted, looked at Adam Bell. “You would not.”
The outlaw shrugged.
Robin surged to his feet, then stilled abruptly as longbow strings were swiftly drawn. “In God’s name, we broke bread together at my hall! We robbed three lords together!” Three lords who were, in fact, his father’s friends, and men he knew well. “We were brothers in arms!”
“And you robbed the sheriff of the tax shipment.” Adam Bell nodded; Sir Robert of Locksley, knighted by the king, had become Robin Hood, outlaw, in the name of that king. “But you were pardoned, aye? We were not.”
“You’re not one of us,” Clym declared. “Never were.”
Handsome Cloudisley smiled winningly. “The earl will pay a considerable amount for his only son.”
“There is no time,” Robin said sharply, dismissing elaborate dances. “I must get to Ravenskeep and warn the others.”
“Warn the others?” Wat echoed, baffled.
“What others?” Clym growled.
Alarmed, Cloudisley demanded, “Warn them about what?”
Adam Bell, who gazed steadily at Robin for a long moment, without further comment returned his sword and knife.
The others were plainly shocked. And, as plainly, disagreed with Bell’s decision, making loud complaint.
Robin sheathed the weapons at once, safing the sword and settling the belt so the weight hung properly. “There is a messenger coming,” he said crisply. “A king’s courier. Let him pass unmolested.”
That earned him additional enmity from Clym. “Why should we do any such thing? Because you say so?” He spat into leaves. “You’re naught to us, Locksley.”
“Because the word he carries will alter the realm,” Robin answered plainly, slipping again into the tone of command. “The king is dead in France. We will have a new king—once they sort out who it is to be.” He knew better than to ask for purse or brooch back; they would be kept as toll. “My task now is to reach Marian and the others to warn them, to give them time before the sheriff is told.”
Bell’s eyes were knowing. “The pardon.”
“King Richard’s,” Robin said only; nothing more was required.
Adam Bell nodded thoughtfully. Clym of the Clough, eventually comprehending the implications, began to laugh, displaying poor teeth.
Cloudisley’s arched brows rose high onto his forehead. “He’ll have you yet, will he, our lord high sheriff?”
“Not him,” Clym declared, laughter spent. “He’s a father, hasn’t he, who’ll pay for another pardon.”
One-handed Wat
watched Robin speculatively. “Why should it matter to you what becomes of the others?”
Bell wanted other information. “How did the king come to die?”
Robin opened his mouth to answer, then could not prevent the brief gust of air that escaped in wry acknowledgment of irony. “During a siege,” he said to the four outlaws, “to capture treasure from a French castle.”
It struck all of them dumb, that the King of England might be killed even as they might be killed, laying claim to wealth belonging to another man. Robin saw startled looks exchanged, flickers of disbelief, and then the slow shaking of heads. Adam Bell, once a respectable yeoman, jerked his mouth sideways. “He’d have done better to die in battle against the Saracen.”
“Or in England,” Clym muttered.
“Who’s to be king?” Cloudisley asked.
Bell said, frowning, “Likely John, aye?”
“Or Arthur,” Robin answered. “Whichever of them can claim and hold England against the other, accepted and acknowledged by the barons, anointed in London.” He looked at Adam Bell. “Do you see now why I cannot waste more time?”
Bell did. “Go,” he said, gesturing for the others to let him pass.
Robin took two long steps upon the track, then, struck by inspiration, paused and turned back. “The courier carries news of the king’s death and should not be molested,” he said casually. “But now that I am afoot, I should not be averse if he were delayed somewhat.”
Adam Bell grinned and bowed with a flourish. “You may depend upon it, my lord.”
That much time bought, Robin set out at a steady, swift pace.
Seven
Marian adored Ravenskeep. It was not a castle such as the Earl of Huntington had caused to be built, nor a lavish manor such as those owned by the titled and truly wealthy, but it was a comfortable and familiar home. The lands were lush and green, the livestock well tended, the two-story, half-timbered house kept as snug as possible against the cold and damp, and its larders well provisioned. It was not a vast holding, but enough to comfortably support a few tenants and servants, a man, his wife, a son and a daughter, and to pay tribute to the Crown in the form of one knight, a horse, and appropriate equipage. The knight, his wife, and his son were now dead, leaving only the daughter, but she was determined to see that Ravenskeep remained what it had been in her father’s day.
As Marian rode up the muddy lane toward the walled courtyard and manor house, she grimly recalled the sheriff’s words: ‘Unmarried daughters of dead knights may have their lands—and their hands—claimed by the Crown.’
It was said as coy observation, but also implication and as much for threat. She knew better, now, than to trust deLacey, no matter what the issue. He was liar, manipulator, ruthless opportunist.
Marian laughed briefly, curtly, aware of the startled glance Joan cast her. No. It wasn’t true she could never trust deLacey. There was indeed one thing about him into which she could place complete and unwavering trust: that he would always serve himself.
And so I am become what I dislike in him: a manipulator. For she would use William deLacey as and how she must—just as she now used the Earl of Huntington—to keep Robin safe, her lands, and even the others who would likely never thank her, for they would as likely never realize the nature of their danger.
Alan, she thought. Alan would. A man such as he, a minstrel wholly dependent on the tastes and tantrums of others, who knew how to charm and seduce women—and who had himself been used by Eleanor deLacey to his detriment—would fully understand the seriousness of their circumstances.
The sheriff had also said, ‘Pardons may be revoked.’
It was time, Marian feared as she approached the thick-planked gate, that she sent away from Ravenskeep the very people she most wished to remain.
He was not, Robin discovered to his annoyance and chagrin, currently disposed physically or temperamentally to walk the remaining miles to Ravenskeep. The abrupt and forced departure from his saddle and the resultant collision with the tree and its pernicious limbs had accounted for any number of offenses to flesh, muscle, and bone. His skull throbbed, the backs of his ribs and thighs were bruised and abraded, and his spine appeared to have been twisted in some way either in midair or upon landing, because he believed he might do better without one altogether than with the spine he currently had.
It would have been worse, he knew, had the ground been packed hard, but while the mud had somewhat softened his landing and prevented him from shattering into bits, it had not precluded him from bringing with him a share of its presence. Mud clung liberally to cloak and clothing; what did not coat his clothing adhered stickily to boots, accumulating additional clumps and layers until he could not feel his footing.
Robin slipped, slid, cursed, stopped to kick off clumps, cursed some more, then squished his way off the track to seek a deadfall limb that would serve to break the suction and free his boots of weight. He tried skirting the track along the narrow verge between vegetation and roadway, but the grass was too thin to provide purchase and the growth too thick to permit passage.
When, after several more steps, using a stick did not prove sufficiently effective—the heavy mud sheathing merely renewed itself—he attempted to scrape off the coating against a deadfall tree. And while the efforts allowed him the opportunity to walk unimpeded for perhaps six steps, the pauses to rid himself of mud took more time than actually walking in it.
Sourly, Robin reflected he might do better to depart the road and retreat into Sherwood to try the deer trails used by outlaws, but he had not himself been an outlaw in Sherwood long enough to learn them. And having already made the acquaintanceship of such ruthless folk once this day, Robin did not relish the risk of repeating it.
He stopped again, scowling back along the track the way he had come. Mercardier was gone, bound for France and his dead king. Short of Adam Bell holding the king’s messenger overnight, which was unlikely, Robin thought it probable no enforced delay would keep Gerard and his news from reaching the earl and sheriff first. Which left him with but one solution. And that solution presented itself in the guise of a man on horseback.
Robin, standing along the verge as the man—likely bound from Nottingham and for Lincoln—approached, considered his predicament and the possibilities.
He had no coin with which to buy the horse, even if the man were willing to sell it; which was, Robin felt, a supremely unlikely event in view of the condition of the road, quite apart from the business that put the man on the road. Additionally, he no longer claimed a cloak brooch that might be presented in lieu of or as promise of payment, and wore no rings. His sword and knife were quite plain; but he could never surrender the weapons the king himself had presented upon Robin’s release from the Saracens. Lastly, his word as the son of an earl, which he did not wish to offer, would be doubted even if he did so; sons of earls did not generally walk on muddy roads. Heirs of Huntington most assuredly did not. And nothing about him suggested he might be believed if he did claim to be an earl’s son and heir, even Huntington’s: he was filthy, bruised, and—he felt gingerly at his throat where his swordtip had cut—probably smeared with dried blood.
Of course, he could tell the truth. I was accosted by outlaws and robbed . . . whereupon the man might briefly commiserate but would no doubt be on his way hastily in hopes of escaping the same fate, thus leaving Robin still horseless and still afoot and the royal messenger still bound for individuals Robin did not wish him to reach.
I was accosted by outlaws and robbed—and now I must reach men who were once declared outlaws themselves so that I may keep them from being declared so again.
Sighing, Robin allowed the rider to pass with only brief nods exchanged—a merchant, he thought, not a fighting man—and then he picked up from the side of the road the fist-size stone he had already marked in his mind as best.
Thinking regretfully of such historic paragons as Alexander, Roland, and Charlemagne, whom he had idolized in childhood,
he squinted at the stone. “This is not particularly heroic—” He aimed for the meat of the man’s back so as not to crack open his skull, and let fly. “Or knightly,” he added, wincing sympathetically as the stone found its target. “But it ought nonetheless to be effective . . .”
The man, upon being thunked in the back by a hurled stone, cried out in shock and outrage and immediately wheeled his horse around. Robin had already discounted a sword: the merchant had none. But he did have the horse. Howling his fury, the aggrieved victim set heels to his mount and rode Robin down.
At the last moment Robin leaped aside—but only after he caught the reins and yanked the horse offstride. The horse, vigorously protesting such rude handling, jerked his head aside.
Robin, slipping and sliding and cursing again, withstood the tension in his overstretched arm, set his weight, and jerked back. Whereupon the horse, as insulted now as its rider, embarked on a vigorous tug-of-war in the middle of the muck-laden road.
The horse would win, of course; short of using a sword or ax to hack the animal’s legs to bits, no man could win such a lopsided confrontation, especially in such poor footing. But in the meantime the merchant was utterly nonplussed by the turnabout of affairs—he had clearly expected to knock his attacker down, not place control of his mount into the attacker’s hands. He leaned haphazardly forward in an attempt to yank the reins out of Robin’s hands, and thereby conveniently changed the distribution of weight in the saddle and altered his center of balance.
Robin, winding rein around one wrist and praying the horse would not bolt, caught hold of the merchant’s nearest ankle and thrust the leg upward. Hard.
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