Lady of Sherwood

by Jennifer Roberson

  DeLacey closed one hand around the iron door handle. The left he raised to hold Philip de la Barre in place until such time as he gave the signal and jerked the door open, allowing the castellan to move.

  “What am I to do?” Gisbourne asked.

  DeLacey shot him a murderous glare. Locksley and the steward were at the top of the stairs. “Take the steward,” he whispered, keeping an eye on the earl’s door. “Don’t let him interfere.”He gestured Gisbourne to back up, fingers tightening on the handle.

  Footsteps. The steward was saying something. Locksley made no answer. DeLacey tensed.

  Locksley was at the earl’s door: unlatching, pushing it open, and stepping across the threshold all in one motion.

  Now—

  DeLacey jerked the door open wide and sharply gestured de la Barre through.

  Robin lengthened his stride as he approached his father’s bedchamber, moving ahead of Ralph. He was aware of a strange complement of emotions: nervousness, childish apprehension, a trace of fear—would he find his father dead?—a touch of the old resentment; even a desire not to be here at all, to depart immediately so as not to involve himself—if he did not see his father dead, the earl would never truly be dead—and the certainty that the world was about to change again.

  But he wanted to know. Needed to know. Badly.

  Drawing a breath, he unlatched the door, pushed it open, and stepped across the threshold.

  The first impression was of the sour scent of illness and agedness, of spiced wine left sitting too long, of the mustiness of a room with its window shuttered. He saw his father slumped back against pillows and bolsters, eyes closed, mouth parted; heard the thin rasp of shallow inhalations. Not dead yet.

  There was movement behind him; likely Ralph entering. He took another stride into the room—

  —and something hard and heavy slammed across the backs of his knees, dropping him sharply to the floor before he could even cry out. He heard the dull clanging thump of iron landing on carpeted floor; and then hands were on him. His sword was drawn and tossed aside. An arm closed around his throat as he knelt there, raising and twisting his jaw so the throat was bared, arching his spine backward. He felt the cold kiss of edged steel: knife. A quick slice or puncture would open his jugular.

  So quickly. So polished. So well planned.

  Marian had asked if it might be a trap. And he had dismissed it in the face of Ralph’s genuine fear and anxiousness. Ralph had not lied; indeed, his father was dying. It was obvious when one looked upon him. And neither had Ralph arranged this trap. More likely he had merely been used to set and bait it by someone who understood very few could dissemble well enough to fool a man prepared for such.

  Clever, clever trap. Truth used. Opportunity found. Men manipulated who were too distracted by an old man’s dying to consider the consequences of a clever sheriff driven to finding a way to capture a man he could not otherwise catch by ordinary means. Who understood that the best trap of all let the prey put itself in it.

  Inwardly, Robin shook his head. Beautifully played. Almost he could admire it, save he was the prey. And well and truly caught.

  His arms hung heavily from his shoulders, slightly outstretched away from his body. He was not a coward, but neither was he a fool. At the moment there was no opportunity save the chance to live. He did not move. Did not so much as twitch.

  “My lord!” his captor said sharply.

  And then there was commotion in the hall; Ralph was saying something in a raised voice, asking what business they had. The room was abruptly filled with men, armed men, mailed men, helmed soldiers all. Blades were unsheathed. Ralph’s voice rose yet again, outraged, desperate.

  The man who held Robin captive stretched his spine another inch, cranked his jaw up another notch. Robin gritted his teeth, the tension of his throat so taut he could barely swallow. He was fully aware of the vulnerability of the position. His arms were free; he might reach for his captor. But not before the knife would enter his throat. Not before any number of soldiers might introduce the points of their broadswords into his belly and chest.

  William deLacey entered his line of vision. Iron dripped from gloved hands: shackles and chains.

  “Thank you, Philip,” he said lightly, then looked at Robin. “I should welcome you home, save this is not home anymore, is it? The earl told me he has no son, that his title, castle, estates, and wealth shall revert to the Crown. One would not believe the Earl of Huntington should give anything over to John, but there you are. Better to the king than to an outlaw, yes?” He turned slightly toward the corridor and held out the chains, dangling them idly. Shackles clashed. He raised his voice. “Would you care to do the honors, Gisbourne?”

  From out in the corridor Ralph was demanding to be allowed into the room, to see to the earl. And swearing to Robin desperately, whom he could not see, that he hadn’t known it was a trap. By God in Heaven. And so he continued to swear until his voice was abruptly cut off.

  Then Gisbourne was before Robin, seizing the shackles and chains from the sheriff’s hands. His dark eyes were avid with malice. “Hold him,” Gisbourne said sharply, then with great precision and ceremony set the heavy iron shackles around each wrist and locked them into place. The key was returned to deLacey.

  Robin, feeling the weight, the pressure, the finality, was grateful he wore leather bracers. They would protect his flesh.

  “And lo, how the knight is fallen,” deLacey remarked dryly. “Crusader, is it? Coeur de Lion’s well-loved man? But also, as I recall, captive of the Saracen for a year or more. A man who did not die properly in battle serving his king, but a man who yielded to the enemy. A man whose weapons were taken from him. A man who was imprisoned by the Infidel, and yet survived.” He paused. “Tell me, what did you have to do for them in order to buy your life?”

  He had learned among the Saracens how to hold his silence. How to offer nothing to those who would demand it. How to lose himself inside his head. Even when his captor took the knife away and released his throat, albeit only to sink a fist deep into hair and lock his head into place, Robin said nothing.

  The Saracens had been dangerously devious in their punishments. Normans such as deLacey were simply brutal.

  Brutality he could survive.

  DeLacey smiled. “You father should see this, I think.” He turned toward the bed, toward the man buried in covers. “My lord? My lord earl?”

  Had he any breath left to lose, the outrage would have taken it away. Robin stared in disbelief as the sheriff approached the bed. Soldiers moved away, expressions indifferent. There was no noise at all from the corridor.

  Ralph, he thought, was unconscious. Or possibly dead.

  Clever, clever trap. But he had time. His disposition was not in deLacey’s hands. It was for the king to say. John would have to be told; it would require days for a messenger to find him, possibly days for John to receive him. And time for John to make his decision; Robin could hope the king remembered Locksley as the Earl of Huntington’s son. Days for the messenger to return with the king’s answer. Time for him to think, time for Marian and the others to contrive a plan.

  But “accidents” did occur, especially to prisoners.

  “My lord earl, I beg you to waken. There is something you should see.”

  Robin had learned to go away inside himself when he was prey, and prisoner. But this was his father deLacey dallied with. An old, ill, dying man. “Leave him,” he ordered, as if on the battlefield.

  It resulted in a fist tightened in his hair, a head held stiffly motionless, and amusement from deLacey. “But I understood from Ralph you and your father were often at odds. Stubborn men, he called you. Why should you care what this man sees? It was he who bought Ravenskeep away from Marian. He who cast you out. He who is responsible for your straights.”

  Robin held his silence.

  DeLacey turned back to the bed. “My lord earl. There is something you should see.” He leaned over the bed, put a han
d on a shoulder buried in mounds of bedrobe. “Do look, my lord.”

  Breath hissed between Robin’s clenched teeth and stiff lips. “Leave him!”

  “No,” deLacey answered sharply, and grasped the earl by both shoulders. “Wake up, my lord, and witness the downfall of your son.”

  Still on his knees, Robin surged upward, chains ringing, locked shackles clanking. But the man who held him slammed him down again, once more locking a forearm around his throat. Robin raised his chained arms, thrusting them up into the air as if he might grasp for his captor, but Gisbourne was there, Gisbourne who held an iron poker. Gisbourne who planted it deep in Robin’s abdomen.

  Breath whooshed out on a throttled and involuntary outcry. He could not breathe, could not breathe, just hung there with an arm around his throat, body spasming against the outrage of the absence of air.

  “Nicely done,” deLacey observed. “Good my lord, do look!”

  Robin, fighting merely to recapture breath, saw nothing. But he heard the rasp of a voice ruined by coughing, a querulous and broken demand for Ralph’s attendance.

  “Do look at your son, my lord,” deLacey urged. “It may be the last chance you have to see him. I am quite certain the king shall wish him executed.”

  Gone inward, wholly consumed with thawing frozen lungs, Robin saw nothing. But he heard the voice, heard the effort made to question, to understand. And then the thin-voiced, breathless question. “What are you doing to my son?”

  “Ah, but you told me yourself you had no son. This is merely an outlaw, my lord. A man who steals from others. A man destined to hang.”

  Breath was coming back in unpredictable increments. When at last Robin forced his abdomen to expand so that air could get through, he began to see again. And saw his father, fighting to sit upright, to peel back the covers, to exit the bed, his mouth drawn back in a rictus of effort.

  “Leave him,” the earl said, in a weak echo of Robin’s own order.

  “I think not,” deLacey replied. “He is dungeon-bound, this man, to await the king’s pleasure. Be certain I shall acquaint the king with the fact of your disinheritance as well as the exploits of this man: how he stole a prisoner from me, stole horses, delayed a royal messenger, robbed innocent people. In fact, he stole the tax shipment only yesterday; it was our good fortune that we got it back again.”

  Tax shipment? Robin’s glance went sharply to deLacey.

  “My lord earl, you are well rid of this man. You need no part of your memory, your proud name, tainted by this man. We shall remove him from your sight.”

  At a signal Robin’s captor heaved him to his feet. Soldiers closed in around him. Hands were on him. He was pushed and prodded from the chamber, knees and abdomen protesting the abuse they had suffered.

  He would have protested none of it, having learned never to give satisfaction that way. But his father . . . Robin wrenched away, half turned, caught a glimpse of the gray face, the gasping mouth, and then was heaved bodily from the room. He nearly tripped over a man lying on the floor: Ralph. He saw no blood. But that meant nothing.

  In the chamber, the earl was attempting to give orders. William deLacey laughed, then appeared in the doorway. At his nod, Robin was dragged away.

  Behind him, the earl’s trembling voice called weakly for Ralph.

  Huntington swam up from the depths, clutched at covers, pushed them aside. The room had emptied. He was alone.

  “Ralph?”

  Distantly he heard the sound of mailed men tramping away, descending stairs.

  “Ralph?”

  DeLacey was here. DeLacey had his son. DeLacey had Robert. Meant to execute Robert.

  He would permit no such thing.

  “Ralph!”

  The earl pulled his legs out from under the covers. His body was slowed, but his mind continued to work. He could not permit deLacey to shame his name, to shame his house. There was a way . . . he had nothing drafted yet.

  “He is my heir,” he rasped. “All of my land . . . all of my wealth . . . he shall be Huntington”—Where was Ralph? It wanted Ralph. Ralph would write the documents.

  Robert would be heir, Robert would be earl, Robert would be too powerful for small men such as deLacey to plot against. Sheriffs did not dare to conspire against earls.

  “Ralph . . .” He won free of the bed at last. The robe straggled from his frail shoulders, slipped down to his elbows. I shall have the document written . . . he shall be my heir . . . I will have the world back the way it was . . .

  But the world did not wait on such men as were dying. The world moved on, ruthless and cruel, bearing no empathy even for men who were fathers, men who were earls, recanting of their whims.

  “—let him marry the girl—”

  But the world would not wait, would not even pause.

  Ralph—

  But Ralph did not answer. Only Death.

  Forty-Three

  Marian was very nearly done braiding her hair into one tight plait when Alan announced they should move camp. That prompted rude comments from Will Scarlet, and questions from Tuck and Little John.

  “Besides,” Little John said, “Robin will look for us here.”

  “Robin likely won’t be back tonight,” Alan pointed out. “If his father’s that ill, he’ll stay.”

  “Unless the earl throws him out again,” Scarlet muttered.

  “And he’d find us anyway,” the minstrel went on. “This is one of the reasons we’ve got our bird calls worked out, so we can find one another.”

  “I heard none,” Marian put in acerbically. “I rode very quietly, and very carefully, and no one made any bird calls at all. It wasn’t until I imitated a duck that anyone bothered to find me, and that took Much.” She sent an approving glance at the boy. “But perhaps Alan is right. Didn’t you say you brought prisoners here yesterday?”

  “Guests,” Little John clarified. “And we did that, aye. We gave them food and drink, made them pay a toll, and sent them on their way.”

  “Then they would know how to find you again,” she observed, amused by the description.

  Scarlet grunted. “Not likely to. They want that lad in Brittany to be king, and Robin says we’re helping.”

  “That’s where some of the money is going,” Tuck explained.

  “The one was most unhappy,” Alan said. “But ‘tisn’t a bad plan, anyway, to move frequently. ’Twill make it harder for the sheriff to find us.”

  Marian tied off her braid, then bent down and began to gather up belongings. “I think we should go. It will be dark in two hours. Best to move now, while we can see.”

  “And go where?” Scarlet asked.

  Alan was picking up blankets. “Deeper into the forest. Well away from the road, so we can lay a larger fire. I’ve a taste for the king’s venison tonight.”

  “That’s poaching!” Tuck cried. “They can cut off our hands for that!”

  Little John cast him an amused glance. “Before or after they hang us?”

  Much grabbed up his bow and quiver. “I’ll go.”

  “You?” Scarlet demanded.

  “His hands are better than yours, Will,” Alan pointed out. “And his eyes are younger, too.” He shot a glance at Much. “All right, lad, but see to it you bring us home a deer big enough to feed all of us.”

  “Bring back two,” Little John suggested. “I’ll eat one all by myself.”

  Grinning, Much darted off into the forest.

  “Think he can?” Scarlet asked.

  “I do.” Marian had seen the boy shoot. “And now, Will, if you please—get your rump off that blanket and give us a hand.”

  “Oh-ho!” Scarlet grinned. “I see we’re still the high lady despite the lad’s clothing!”

  “Marian,” Tuck offered archly, “would be a lady anywhere.”

  She laughed, appreciating the defense. But amusement died away. Alan was right; Robin likely would under the circumstances stay the night in Huntington. But until he was back, she would
worry regardless. “Tomorrow,” she murmured, tying up her bundle, “midmorning. If he’s not back by then, I’ll go to Huntington myself.”

  Amazement, deLacey decided, best summed up the reaction of the populace. They could not believe what they witnessed: the son of an earl, though dressed like a yeoman, wrists shackled with iron, being made to walk steadily through the streets of Nottingham, striking a fair pace lest he be jerked off his feet and dragged behind the horse. The sheriff had briefly considered taking him in through the city a shorter way, but decided it was best to let the people see him. They knew Robert of Locksley, now Robin Hood, had engineered the rescue of the cutpurse on Market Day; let them comprehend what such actions reaped. Even the son of an earl was subject to the sheriff’s justice, and the king’s pleasure.

  At the moment, however, it was all deLacey’s pleasure.

  He rode calmly at the head of the phalanx of mounted guards. Robin was at the rear, save for the two men riding behind him: Philip de le Barre and Guy of Gisbourne. Their task was to see to it no one approached the prisoner. DeLacey supposed an archer might take them all easily enough, but he was certain none in Nottingham at this moment would attempt it. The trap had been too well constructed, too secretive. None of Locksley’s men knew he was taken. And the sheriff had no intention of bringing him out into Market Square for punishment. He would remain in the castle until King John sent word how he wished the execution to proceed; and, unlike with the boy, this time it would be handled in private, behind the castle walls.