Lady of Sherwood

by Jennifer Roberson

  She was cold. Deadly cold. And well beyond anger. “Surely,” she said, “the blood you spilled for King Richard was cleaner than this.”

  He was unruffled. “I spill no blood here.”

  “Swear it,” she challenged, trembling, “by that cross on your shoulder. That you will spill no blood for this whoreson, nor abet him in revenge.”

  Mercardier said, “This is not my war.”

  “It will be,” she told him. “That man will make it so.”

  Huntington, standing on the hall steps of his own castle, watched his son come up from the kitchen gardens. His head was slightly bowed, his posture tentative. The earl had not seen him so in years. Robert was nothing if not stubborn, and content within his body when declaiming his convictions.

  It gave him hope. He cared not at all for the concerns his son might have, the regrets; if Robert joined them, his presence was well worth a bit of temper, even a certain petulance. That, the earl could deal with. It was the quiet implacability, the commitment to his unpredictably wayward conscience, that tested Huntington’s patience.

  But Geoffrey de Mandeville had gone to speak with him, and Huntington held great hope that at last his son had been made to see reason, to comprehend the need. Essex would convince him. Essex had exerted no small measure of control over the Lionheart.

  Robert came up to the hall, deep in thought. The hair, now dried of its washing, fell loosely against his shoulders, and Huntington abruptly was put in mind of his late wife. There was nothing effeminate about Robert, but the same feyness, the same cool apartness, echoed what in his mother the earl had found incomprehensible. But the woman had borne him a trinity of healthy sons, and he had found it simpler to let her withdraw into her fancies and fantasies. When she took Robert with her, the earl at first protested, but he had never liked the boy; and William and Henry had been enough.

  The earl saw himself noticed. Robert halted at once. His expression, oddly, was irresolute. “Well?” Huntington asked.

  “My lord?”

  “Has Essex made you see sense?”

  “Sense?” His son’s smile ghosted briefly across his face, was gone. “I think . . . yes.”

  “Ah.” An upsurge of satisfaction lent a lilt to the earl’s voice. “Then you will join us.”

  No answer was offered.

  Alarm replaced satisfaction. “Robert—you do mean to join us!”

  “I mean to marry,” Robert said, “and where I desire.”

  This was not what the earl had expected. “Her?”

  “Her.”

  “But—she has no role in this! We are speaking of England, of the future of a realm, of putting a boy upon the throne in place of a man, and you speak of marrying a whore?”

  Robert sighed. “I came here to tell you my decision, as I promised. I mean to marry her.”

  “She can bear no children!”

  “That is her grief,” he said steadily, “and mine. And be certain it is genuine. But it does not concern you.”

  “Grandchildren,” the earl snapped. “That is my concern. You deny me grandchildren.” His chest ached as if a blade pierced his vitals. Futility, utter and absolute. “I should have disinherited you five years ago,” he blurted hoarsely. “Indeed, I should have done so!”

  Robert shut his eyes a moment. “I am going home,” he said softly.

  “This is your home!”

  “It never was. Huntington Hall was my home. You razed it to build this monstrosity.”

  “Robert—”

  “I am going home,” he repeated. “To Ravenskeep.”

  “To her home.”

  “Yes.”

  “Robert.” His throat ached with it. “Robert, I beg you—”

  “No.”

  The tentativeness, the irresoluteness, was gone. In its place was the man the earl could not begin to fathom. Only the anger, the immense frustration, that he could not have the ordering of his own son.

  “I shall do it,” he said, as a roaring came into his ears. “I shall. And Ralph shall bear witness. No lands, no title, no money, no power. Nothing from me. Nothing from any of us who were your ancestors.”

  Robert said nothing.

  “No honor. No respect. No peerage.”

  In silence, Robert bore it.

  The pain was tangible, but he would not retreat. “I will have it known what you are: disinherited. Attendre.”

  Beneath the white-blond hair, hazel eyes, fixed wide as if he scribed the words on his soul, were unblinking.

  “I shall have Ralph write it up and deliver it to you at the whore’s hall.” He took pleasure in calling her that: whore. Because he and his son had gone beyond such things as even bland, false civilities. “You had best go now,” Huntington said thickly. “Nothing here is yours, nor will anything of mine be at your behest. If you desire a horse, I suggest you retrieve the one you stole.”

  Robert made as if to mount the steps, to move past him. The earl’s abrupt gesture stopped him short. “My clothing,” he explained. “I will change out of these and take back what I came in.”

  A cough threatened to burst from the earl’s chest. “No,” he said with as much contempt as was in him to employ. “It is a parting gift I make you: keep what you wear in memory of your mother.”

  That pierced the armor as nothing else had. The flesh of the face thinned to translucency, went pale as fine-worked parchment. All the bones were visible in a stark, bitter bleakness.

  And so he understands. Huntington said, “All that you knew, all that you had, is denied to you.” And as Robert made to turn away, he asked, “What will you call yourself?”

  Again, he stopped short. “My lord?”

  “Robert of Huntington?—but no; I deny it you. Robert of Locksley? —but no; those lands, the village, the name, I also deny you, who gave them to you. So I ask, whom shall you be?”

  In a sere tone of winter, the man said: “Ravenskeep.”

  Twenty-Five

  On the ride back Marian had cried tears of outrage, tears of futility. Her heart and spirit could no longer contain the bitter welter of emotions she refused to exhibit before deLacey and Mercardier. Now she was done with weeping, with all such things as grief, disbelief, denial. All that remained was to do, not to weep, not to wish things might be different. Because for all the wishes in the world, perhaps even prayers, nothing at all would be changed unless she herself changed it.

  In Ravenskeep’s courtyard Marian jumped down from her horse, pressed reins into Hal’s hands, and took herself directly into her hall, her mind fixed on how best to proceed. But she was brought up short even as she entered. Tuck was back.

  He sat hunched upon one of the benches at the trestle table, picking at food. That he had not already devoured what lay on his hard-crusted trencher, that he but played with food as if he could not eat, betrayed more of his state than any explanation.

  Marian frowned. Tuck and the others had been sent away, sent to what they had supposed was safety at Locksley. But somehow they had fallen afoul of Adam Bell and his men, and Robin had gone to ransom them back. Questions piled one atop another: Why would Tuck be back at Ravenskeep when it was so dangerous; why would Tuck be alone at table when they should be celebrating their freedom; why would Tuck be in such obvious poor spirits? And where was Robin?

  She asked sharply, “What has happened?”

  He started, then heaved himself around on the bench to face her. “Lady!”

  She felt a flicker of foreboding. “What has happened, Tuck?”

  He told her. The whole of it.

  It was astonishing. “Adam Bell took Robin captive?”

  Tuck nodded. “He intended to, yes. Just as he did us.”

  “Then it was a ploy all along,” she said bitterly. “He baited the trap with all of you to capture Robin, so they could demand ransom of the earl.”

  Tuck agreed. “Though the earl refuses to pay.”

  The world was turning too fast; she could not keep up with it.
Robin taken by outlaws, Ravenskeep in peril, Much imprisoned in Nottingham Castle. She had to find a way to stop the world, to make it do her bidding instead of the sheriff’s, the outlaws’, or England’s new king. “Where are the others?”

  Tuck seemed puzzled. “Locksley Village, aren’t they? ’Tis where they were bound. Bell only sent me to the Earl of Huntington.”

  Marian shook her head. “No. That’s where the sheriff’s men captured Much. They would be gone from there already.”

  Tuck was horrified. “Much is taken?”

  “And will forfeit both hands in a fortnight if we don’t find a way to free him.” Her thoughts worked swiftly. “We need Robin,” she said, “and we need the others. We know they were not taken or the sheriff would not have beaten Much for information. They will be in Sherwood.” She nodded, then looked at Tuck. “Do you know where they would go?”

  Tuck was crossing himself as he murmured a prayer for Much. “In Sherwood?” He shrugged heavy shoulders beneath black wool and shook his head.

  “Away from Locksley,” she said, thinking it through. “Too close to the sheriff. The only home they know—together—is Ravenskeep.”

  “But the sheriff would know that, too,” Tuck protested.

  “Oh, they won’t come here,” she said, “nor should you be here; it’s far too dangerous.” Though even as she said it, she thought it unlikely deLacey would come again looking for them. “But near here, yes. Somewhere close by, in Sherwood.”

  Tuck watched in startled amazement as she strode to the stairs. “Lady—?”

  She paused with one foot on the bottom tread. “I must change clothes,” she said. “And then we are going into Sherwood, you and I, to find the others, and then we shall find Robin and free him, and then we shall all of us go and rescue Much.”

  “But—you can’t!” Tuck cried. “You dare not, Lady Marian! A woman alone in Sherwood?”

  “I won’t be alone, Tuck. You will be with me.”

  He gestured futility. “What aid am I?”

  Marian smiled briefly. “As much as I need.”

  Tuck, refusing to be wooed, shook his head lugubriously. “Robin would never let you.”

  “Robin,” Marian said dryly, “requires rescuing.”

  He scowled as much as he was capable of scowling, with his kind, gentle face. “If you mean to hide that you are a woman, I have told you before ’tisn’t possible. And I told you why.”

  Indeed he had, and at some pains to explain that while he was himself supposedly inured to such things as a woman’s appeal to a man’s baser senses, he knew very well that no manner of masculine disguise would hide her gender.

  She laughed at him. “I promise, I am not changing clothes in order to be a man. Only so I may walk like a man. You wear ‘skirts’ of a sort now, Brother Tuck, and once wore hosen—which garb would you recommend for wading through a forest?”

  Tuck, giving up the battle, merely sighed, sat himself down upon the bench, and took up his meat-knife as Marian ran up the stairs.

  The Earl of Huntington was not a man much given to religious observances, nor to prayer, nor to vouchsafing his welfare to an inchoate deity whose influence with kings, despite their posturing in His name, seemed decidedly absent. But neither did he altogether ignore his duty as a Christian; he tithed, allowed mendicant priests to take lodging in the castle from time to time, accorded the noble-born clergy their influential places in the ordering of the realm, and had even sent off his only remaining son to the Crusade in an effort to win back Jerusalem. Therefore he had certainly not skimped in having a chapel built even as the castle was built.

  He went there now, for no reason he could discern save that no one would think to seek him in such a place.

  Inside the door he halted, distractedly aware of soaring arches and ribs, vaults in place of columns, all designed to remove from the chapel the appearance of crypt, undercroft, or dungeon. The masons had done a fine job—apparently they were religious, even if he was not—and his eye could appreciate the symmetry of the chapel even if his soul saw no reason for it.

  The altar beckoned. Huntington lingered in the doorway, body responding to the long-dormant urge to genuflect. After a moment he gave in, bent stiff and trembling knees, sketched a cross athwart his breast. He felt slightly ludicrous doing so, but the moment passed and he was himself again.

  Himself, without an heir.

  He did not go to the altar, to kneel before it, to pray, to seek solace or guidance. Instead, he made his way to the nearest bench, collapsed upon it, and stared unseeingly into the distance.

  When he spoke, it was with the subtle rasp of vermin stirring in brittle rushes. “I have no son.”

  The Lord Christ, hanging upon his cross, gazed equally unseeing into his own death.

  “I have no heir.”

  Nor did God; at least, an heir upon the earth in fleshly form.

  “It began, and ends with me.”

  Alpha, and omega.

  But he regretted no portion of the words he had spoken to Robert. Only that Henry and William had died. Only that his wife had ruined the youngest son. Only that such wealth and power as he had inherited, retained, and amplified through all the years of his life would, in lieu of living and legal heirs, revert to the Crown.

  “Arthur,” he said. “Let the boy in Brittany have it all. Let John have none of it.”

  Nor Robert. Sir Robert of—nothing.

  The earl bowed his head. He did not pray.

  He wept.

  The horse borrowed from Gisbourne was missing—likely it had been found by one of Huntington’s serfs and brought down to the castle—and so Robin walked to Locksley. Once there he called together the reeve and the couple who tended the hall, and explained that he was no longer their lord; that they now should look to the earl. All rents once again were payable to Huntington, in coin and such provender as could be raised, grown, and made in the year.

  He saw startlement in them as well as dismay. It touched him, if distantly; he was numb just now to such things as how others felt, lest there be more pain than expected. But a lord was a lord; their lives would not change because he was gone from the village. Serfs and tenant farmers, peasants and yeomen had no such changeable portion of the world as lords, knights, and kings.

  He answered their questions as best he could, but in no way informed them what had occasioned the change. He believed they knew, or would work it out. It had never been any secret that the earl and his only surviving son were not often in accord. In fact, Robin suspected the question asked most often would have nothing to do with why it had happened, and everything to do with wondering why it had not happened long before.

  There were things he valued in the hall, but nothing he cherished as what his mother or Marian had given him, and those were at Ravenskeep. And so he remained outside, explaining matters, and did not go in again, not even to bid the hall farewell. It had been his, but never truly a home. Huntington Hall, razed for stone and wood, had held that place in his heart. The castle was his father’s folly. Locksley Village had provided income and a measure of stature, but he had never been a man who needed the latter. As for the former, well . . .

  It struck him then that he was entirely dependent on Marian.

  As he stood there before the hall, before folk who had served the earl, then the earl’s son, and now the earl again, he realized abruptly he was two men. One was truly free, unencumbered by the duties and expectations of childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, by the needs of a village working in his name. He was wholly himself at last. Wholly a man at last.

  But there was also the disinherited man. The dishonored man. Shameful words to attach to a soul. They weighed much among other words, shackled a body with the knowledge of failure, of folly. Of a father’s futility equal to his own, if for different reasons.

  Disinheritance was his freedom. And yet he took no joy in it, no pleasure, no relief.

  Perhaps tomorrow.

  Or per
haps an hour from now.

  Only himself to please. Only himself to serve. Only the dictates of a conscience now freed of the need for explanations to a man who could not, would not comprehend what lived in his son’s soul, what whims and wishes stirred his heart to joy, to happiness, to deep satisfaction and commensurate contentment.

  Still standing before the hall, before the reeve and the couple but hearing nothing they said, Robin knew himself reborn. No more a son living beneath his father’s roof. No more a soldier earning the king’s coin and confidence. No more a landowner living on the rents paid by tenant-farmers.

  He was utterly penniless, powerless, and without prospects.

  Except for outlawry, which the Earl of Essex supported in the name of Arthur of Brittany.

  After all, the father embarked on actions that could be construed as treason, depending on who was king at the end of the dance. Why should the son not dally equally with thievery until the music stopped?

  A spark of dry humor lit the darkness of his thoughts. Adam Bell styled himself King of Sherwood. Surely there was room enough left over for a lord.

  Essex would approve, no doubt. But Robin abhorred politics, the conspiracies of his father and men like him, even the otherwise admirable de Mandeville himself. Certainly there was no need for him to turn to outlawry for any reason, now that the Lionheart was dead; there was no kidnapped king, no ransom requiring ruthless one-time methods. Huntington Castle was denied him, Locksley Village was again his father’s holding, but there was still Ravenskeep. Still a home beneath Marian’s roof.

  Bestirring himself from reverie, Robin thanked the reeve, the couple who tended the hall, bid them farewell, and took himself off his father’s lands. In such finery as he had not worn in five years, certainly not appropriate apparel for a man walking the road, Robin struck a pace that would have him home at Ravenskeep, with Marian, before sundown.

  Marian strode out of the hall into the courtyard and was delighted to see how she stunned everyone there: Hal, Sim, Joan—even Tuck himself, who had known what she intended. But she supposed even imagining a thing was not so akin to truly seeing it; she might, she decided whimsically, be every bit as shocked if Robin appeared wearing one of her gowns.