Robin Hood Trilogy

by Canham, Marsha

  Ariel’s shoulders rounded briefly with relief, then squared again with a return of impatience. “Then what is it? What has you squirting over logs and travelling in the company of … of outlaws?”

  Henry glanced over his sister’s head, but the two Welshmen had either not heard the hissed insult, or, because they were indeed outlaws and deserving of the appellation, decided to ignore it.

  “At home, Ariel,” he insisted grimly. “It will be best if I tell you at home.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The original keep of Pembroke Castle had been built thirty years after the Norman conquest of England, when the death of the great Welsh king Rhys ap Tewdwr had cleared the way for a further invasion into Wales. Initially a single square keep standing on the edge of a promontory of land, successive generations of prudent—and wealthy—lords had added towers and baileys, tall crenellated battlements and barbicans. William of Pembroke’s father-in-law, the immensely powerful warlord known as Strongbow, had used this castle stronghold as his base for the successful invasion of Ireland. Upon his death and the subsequent marriage of his daughter and heir Isabella to William, work had begun on the enormous eighty-foot-tall circular tower that commanded not only the view, but the respect of several square miles of land and sea surrounding the inlet of Milford Haven. Within a hard day’s ride of Pembroke there were other castles that had been raised to defend and hold this important thumb of Wales— Haverford, Tenby, Lewhaden, Stackpole, Narbeth, Martin. But none were as impressive, as important, or as impregnable as Pembroke.

  To the wide-eyed child of four who had first passed beneath its enormous barbican gates, and who had clutched her brother’s hand and stared up in awe at the sharpened teeth of the three separate iron portcullises, the castle had appeared as terrifying and overwhelming as the giant, lion-maned knight who ruled there.

  Ariel de Clare and her brother Henry had been sent into the marshal’s keeping upon the sudden death of Isabella’s half-brother and his wife. Barely wed a year and anticipating the arrival of their own first child, neither the gruff Earl of Pembroke nor his dainty wife knew what to make of the two orphaned children who stood in their grimy, tattered clothing before them. Young Henry, at eight years of age, was fiercely protective of his sister, daring to challenge even the marshal at swordpoint when a casual observation was made concerning the unusual, fiery red colour of her hair. Pembroke was quick to recant, albeit with the hint of a smile lurking behind his twinkling blue eyes, and even quicker to recognize Henry’s potential as a knight and vassal whose loyalty and bravery could be counted upon to the last drop of blood. As a result, the boy had not been fostered out to another household as had been William’s first intent, but became page to the Lady Isabella—a very great and grave honour which he bore with the solemnity of a grown man.

  The tiny Lady Ariel, with her big green eyes flashing and her jaw jutting with determination, let it be known with equal vigor that she was just as impatient to begin her own apprenticeship toward knighthood. She too looked forward to the day when she would earn the right to wear the golden spurs and smite mighty dragons in battle.

  It came, therefore, as a rude and unaccepted shock when she was forced to wear gowns and girdles instead of the more practical garb of jerkins, tunics, and leggings. When Henry turned thirteen and she nine, instead of applauding proudly at his investiture as the lord marshal’s squire, she launched an insurrection in the castle nursery—by then swollen in number with three of the marshal’s natural children—that lasted several months and saw five nurses flee in terror for their lives. No amount of whippings or threats had any lasting effect. It took promises from both Henry and the marshal to finally restore a semblance of peace, with the one agreeing grudgingly to share every scrap of knowledge he gained during his instruction and training for knighthood, and the other agreeing to turn a blind eye to her tutoring, a promise she held her uncle to even some years later when he found her in the stable yards, bruised head to toe, but stubbornly learning how to ride and handle one of the huge warhorses.

  Lady Isabella was openly horrified by the calluses on her niece’s hands and the whip-like leanness of a body that should have been growing round and soft and dainty. She scolded and clucked over torn hose and soiled tunics—patches of which were left clinging to trees and palisades that had been climbed and conquered in the heat of a mock battle. She complained often to her husband, but Ariel had long since managed to wheedle her way into a special place in his heart and he could never quite stop the smile that lit his face each time he confronted her with one of her mischiefs. Moreover, in dangerous times and in dangerous surroundings, he saw no reason why a woman should not be proficient with a sword and bow, and had, on occasion, supplemented Henry’s instructions with a lesson or two of his own.

  The countess, recognizing defeat when she saw it, had thrown up her hands in surrender and concentrated her efforts on grooming her own sweetly natured daughters to be the proper chatelaines and hostesses they were expected to be as Pembroke heiresses. Thus, at age eighteen, when most young women were long married or at the very least, betrothed, Ariel was still tilting at quintains with her cousins, scorning any and all advances by prospective suitors.

  But because she was the niece of the Earl Marshal of England, and because there were a number of modest estates dowered to her through her mother’s will, there was no shortage of two-legged bloodhounds sniffing after her skirts. From the time she came of eligible age at twelve, there was a constant flow of knights, nobles, first sons, second sons passing under those same portcullis gates that had intimidated Ariel as a child. Some erstwhile swains sought only to ally themselves with the House of Pembroke. Some were more intent upon supplementing their holdings in Wales and could not have cared a whit if her teeth were black and her body bloated with suet. Ariel had sent them all riding out again, their ears pinned to their heads and, more often than not, stinging from the vehemence of her rejection.

  The countess had despaired; the earl had supported his niece’s right to choose whom she would or would not marry, although he admittedly grew impatient at times with her various reasons for refusal. One had crossed eyes and breath that stank of dead rats. Another possessed narrow, greedy eyes. Yet another, she claimed, had pissed himself when she had drawn her dagger and offered to defend him from an attacking dog.

  It should not have come as any surprise to hear of this stubbornness finally reaching the king’s ears, since many of those first and second sons would have whined straight to court with news of the insolence of a certain flame-haired heiress. It was also well within the royal right to contract unions between one powerful house and another, and to use such contracted marriages as a means of repaying debts the crown could not otherwise raise from its depleted coffers. The fact that there were not already writs of betrothal for each of the earl’s five daughters and five sons was solely due to King John’s reluctance to rouse the great lion’s wrath. William the Marshal, with his vast estates in Pembroke, Striguil, England, Ireland, and Normandy, was actually a far wealthier man than the king—a point which pricked the crown’s patience as well as his greed. And as his ambition for more wealth, more power, grew, the king’s cunning black eyes turned more and more often to Pembroke.

  “Possibly, because the lord marshal is bogged down in Normandy with these futile negotiations for peace with the French, the king feels safe attempting a small display of his authority this side of the Sleeve.”

  The family was gathered in the great hall. Ariel stood before the hearth, a log blazing brilliantly behind her in the twelve-foot-wide fireplace. Apart from the crackle and snap of burning wood, the hall was a cavern of throbbing silence. The monstrous arched beams overhead might have formed the vaulting of a cathedral; the gloom and chill gave it the atmosphere of a tomb. Not a foot stirred the rushes. No servant or varlet dared to venture near the circle of brighter light; they moved like wraiths in the smoke-hazed shadows, with only their eyes flicking warily toward the yellow glow ar
ound the hearthside.

  Henry, whose neck still stung from the slash he had earned earlier, was keeping a prudent distance from his sister and watched her guardedly each time her agitated pacing took her too near the display of crossed swords mounted along the walls. The Welsh lords, Rhys and Dafydd, maintained a similarly discreet gap between themselves and the immediate family members, although their faces were lit with ill-disguised amusement and intrigue.

  “I do not believe it,” Ariel seethed, the rage keeping her voice as taut as a bowstring. “I will have to see the writ with mine own eyes before I will give credence to this news you bring to Pembroke.”

  Lady Isabella twisted her hands and appealed beseechingly to her handsome nephew for guidance. Petite and showing little signs of aging or plumping in spite of the ten children she had given her lord husband over the happy years of their marriage, the countess was at a complete loss to know how to deal with her niece’s mounting fury. That an explosion of Ariel’s famous temper was imminent, neither she nor Henry doubted. They watched her as they would watch a pane of glass pressed to the verge of shattering, wary of uttering the breath or word that would bring the deed about.

  “De Braose is a fine, respected name,” Isabella offered lamely. “Why, they once held lands in Brednock, Builth … even Limerick. The elder Simon de Braose rode with my own dear father when he fought the Celts.”

  Ariel turned nothing but her head. “Indeed? Was this the same Simon de Braose who fell drunk out of his saddle and was trampled to death under the wheels of a passing dung cart? The same De Braose who squandered every single hectare of land they ever owned in Wales and England? The same De Braoses who were reduced to hiring themselves out like common Brabançons just to retain the right to keep the family coat of arms on their blazons?”

  “Families … fall into hard times,” Isabella said haltingly. “And the current lord has … has performed valued services to the king in his desire to restore his family’s former prominence.”

  Ariel’s eyes narrowed. “Well. He will not be restoring it at my expense. I have seen this poxy son of his. At a distance, mind, for the stench he gave off would have offended a swineherd. The very sight of him would have offended the swine themselves, so pocked and bloated and festered with pustules was he. He could not walk without his finger up his nose and what he found there made for most enjoyable nibblings between meals. His eyes do not look in the same direction, but go every which way as if someone is standing constantly behind him hitting him with a pan. Marry him? Marry Reginald de Braose?” She snorted a fair imitation of a warhorse and whirled back around to face the fire. “I would sooner marry myself to the Church … or to the grave.”

  Lady Isabella fluttered a dainty white hand to her throat and looked hopefully toward Henry. “Perhaps … perhaps there has been some dreadful error in understanding the communication.”

  Henry had been eased of his armour but had not yet been allowed the time to bathe and refresh himself from his travels. His hair stood up in tarnished spikes, glinting gold in the firelight as he sighed wearily and shook his head.

  “There is no mistake. As I told you, we were delayed at Llandaff by heavy rains, and, as it happened, the king’s courier had sought refuge there as well. He readily accepted our offer to share a tankard of ale by the fire, and when we asked if he had any news from Normandy, his tongue began to flap like a codfish thrown aground. Soothly, since he was ignorant of our identity—we four addressing ourselves only as Lord Sedrick or Lord Rhys or Lord Whatnot—he thought it might prickle our humour and tip our flagon more generously to hear how the king had recently taken it upon himself to contract the hand of Pembroke’s niece. A few tankards more bought us the name of the happy groom.”

  “Happy?” Ariel grumbled. “He will be happy with the business end of a pike thrust up his arse.”

  Lady Isabella’s hand fluttered again. “Surely there might be some room for error. There are fully a score of De Braoses in the king’s service. Possibly more than one named Reginald, for they do tend to marry amongst themselves and name sons after fathers and brothers after uncles.”

  “Inbreeding and incest.” Ariel spat contemptuously. “An easy guess by the squinty look of them.”

  “This particular Reginald is certes the son of William de Braose,” Henry continued, ignoring his sister’s japing. “Who, until as recently as five months ago, presided as captain of the guard over the king’s citadel in Rouen.”

  “A prison guard!” Ariel exclaimed. “How charming. The king has pledged me to the son of a common gaoler!”

  “Not just any gaoler,” said Lord Rhys, venturing into the circle of firelight for the first time. Indeed, he showed a certain reckless courage by drawing close enough to Ariel that a stretch of his long arm could have touched her. “Forgive my intrusion, my lady, but I too am familiar with this particular brood of De Braoses. Some of the lands they lost to incompetence and poor defense border our own.”

  Ariel caught a strong drift of leather and lingering wood-scent as Lord Rhys leaned casually close to the fire. Despite the immeasurable fury fomenting within her over the king’s proposed attempt to intervene in her life, she could still spare a portion for the unctuous Welsh princeling.

  She had recognized their names when she had heard them in the forest. The lords Rhys and Dafydd had a third brother, older by some years, who had entered into a pact with King John, granting him recognition as Prince of Gwynedd and giving him power and title over the region of Wales known as Snowdonia. In exchange for this recognition, Llywellyn ap Iorwerth had halted his raids on the border Marches and had pledged fealty to the English king, a reprieve of hostilities which allowed Llywellyn to turn his full attention on the growing power of a distant kinsman, Gwynwynwyn of Powys.

  All titles and holdings were tenuous at the best of times in the wild, mountainous reaches of Wales. Dozens of self-proclaimed princes ruled dozens of self-proclaimed kingdoms, the possession of which changed constantly from one bloody uprising to the next. To contain and control the savagery of these barbaric clans, the English had erected a line of fortified castles along the border, in territory known as the Marches. The barons who ruled these Marches were often as cruel, bloody-minded, and ruthless as the men they sought to defend against, and few lived long enough to ensure the natural succession of their lands into future generations.

  Ariel’s father, Roger de Clare, had once held land along the Marches—land coveted by the ambitious Iorwerths of Gwynedd. A raid had cost Roger and his wife their lives, orphaning their two children into the wardship of the Earl of Pembroke. For this, and other deeds of outlawry over the years, it made anyone associated with the name Iorwerth … including Llywellyn and his brothers Rhys and Dafydd … nothing more than murderers and common thieves in her eyes.

  “You say not just any gaoler as if there were gaolers of high blood and gaolers of low blood.”

  Her voice dripped with icy sarcasm and Lord Rhys smiled. “More like prisoners of high or low blood, I trow. For unless I am mistaken—a rare occurrence, I assure you—the citadel at Rouen was where King John held the young Angevin prince, Arthur of Brittany.”

  “Guarding a prince of royal blood does not turn one’s own blood any richer a hue,” she countered sardonically.

  “No. But if you consider a gaoler has access to a prisoner at any time, day or night, and is perforce the only witness to any … accident … that may or may not have befallen that same prisoner …” Lord Rhys paused and let his eyes rove downward to where the firelight was gilding the outline of firm, round breasts. “Would it not give meaning to the king’s sudden gesture of magnanimity? Surely he could have realized far greater profits by selling your hand to the highest bidder.”

  In the pensive hush that followed, Ariel felt herself drawn into the Welshman’s eyes—eyes that were not black, as she had first supposed, but so deep and dark a brown as to be easily mistaken. They were dangerous eyes, gleaming with secrets that did not offer too cl
ose a scrutiny. The nose dividing them was a straight slash of authority that had somehow escaped the usual damage and breakage of the long years of a misspent youth. The mouth beneath was full and generous, confident of its own sensuality and given to frequent smirks of insolence. His age? Ariel guessed him to be nearing the end of his third decade, although, if he were to scrape away the lush black growth of elflock curls on his jaw, he could scrape away as many as four or five years from that guess … or add as many again by virtue of exposure.

  His brother, on the other hand, was not much older than herself—twenty, perhaps—with large, expressive eyes that gave him the look of an earnest-faced puppy. No doubt he had cultivated his beard in an attempt to add substance to otherwise tender features, although to Ariel’s mind, it only made him look like a wilder puppy.

  “Are you implying, sirrah,” she asked slowly, taking careful measure of the closed expression on Lord Rhys’s face, “that De Braose was in some way responsible for Prince Arthur’s death?”

  “His death has not yet been confirmed,” Rhys replied, treading with equal care into the lure of the emerald green eyes. “His disappearance, however, would seem to match the gaoler’s unexpected turn of good fortune at having his lands around Radnor returned to him.”

  Ariel felt the skin begin to constrict in waves along her spine. He was right. The coincidence was too obvious to dismiss out of hand.

  “Oh, the poor, poor prince,” Lady Isabella said, sinking weakly onto a chair, “if such was indeed his fate. And it is no secret the king rewards his assassins with great prizes.”

  “It is even less of a secret,” Henry said bluntly, “that our valiant king demands hostages from those he suspects of plotting against him. Hostages in the form of brides and grooms wed into households of his choosing.”