DeLacey’s gaze was speculative. Then he inclined his head. “If you will excuse me, Robert.”
It wasn’t a question. Thoughtfully, Locksley watched the sheriff go, knowing he’d given the man cause to temporarily cut off—only temporarily. Locksley anticipated a siege—his overture concerning the daughter made that clear. Not in words, perhaps. Nothing in what was said. But in what he hadn’t said.
Whatever deLacey was—ambitious, opportunistic; no different from the others—clearly he wasn’t a fool.
Locksley gripped and rubbed a forearm, aware of a vague disquietude because he didn’t know the cause for the conviction nagging at him. Too light. No weight.
And then the answer arrived, cloaked in memory.
They had stripped him of his mail, there on the battlefield before his compatriots. He’d never worn it again.
Though Richard had offered him new.
Eight
At cockcrow Marian awoke. She lay very still, contemplating her state: she was abed with Matilda, her old nurse, and countless other women all tangled amidst shared covers and rustling straw-filled mattresses put down to soften the floor. A draft touched knee and elbow; she had slept at the end nearest the corner and therefore suffered more than others the whims of fickle covers.
Marian hunched, pulling knee and elbow back into scratchy warmth, and squinted somewhat resentfully into the dim, mote-filled daylight. I should go home.
It was as definitive as abrupt, shocking her out of lassitude into total wakefulness. Her disquiet passed into painful recollection: all too vividly she remembered John’s actions and the sick humiliation that had followed. Marian gritted her teeth. She wanted nothing more to do with John, or her host, or her host’s son; most certainly she wanted nothing more to do with William deLacey.
But why? her conscience asked. Better to marry him, whom you know, than a decrepit old stranger. Yet Marian was not at all certain. Each time she thought of the sheriff she thought also of his manner, the underlying suggestiveness and secrecy she was beginning to see too clearly. And after talking with his daughter—
Eleanor was perhaps not the most unbiased of observers. Better she judge for herself.
Should I marry him? Or, perhaps a better question, why should I not marry him? Her father clearly wished it. He had sent the message with the earl’s son, which indicated he knew himself likely to die and Locksley likely to live.
Because he was Huntington’s son?
It’s too early to think of such things. She flung back covers and was rewarded by grumbles from Matilda, who hitched a heavy hip so it jutted roofward and yanked the covers back over a substantial shoulder.
Marian smiled briefly. Then amusement and fondness were replaced with determination. “I’m going,” she muttered. “That is that; it’s decided.” On knees, she shook her sleeping-braid free of straw and tried valiantly to tame the escaping locks so she could tuck everything away into her linen coif. Then, having smoothed the rucked-up kirtle and undershift, she was all bound up inside and out, wanting to flee Huntington Castle but hating herself for cowardice.
Courtesy required she find her host and beg his leave to go, but probably the earl wouldn’t miss her if she simply slipped away. I doubt he knows I was here . . . Marian staggered to her feet, picked a last bit of straw from her hair, turned toward the door.
Through it came Eleanor deLacey, pale, with dark-circled eyes aglitter. Lank brown hair was mussed, falling free of her stained, lopsided coif; the saffron kirtle was soiled, and a rose-hued smudge of a bruise stained the side of her neck. Briefly she touched it as she saw Marian’s gaze, then drew her hand away with a grimace. A flick of fingers pulled her hair close to hide it.
Outside in the bailey someone shouted an order. A second shout answered it. Eleanor sighed deeply, thumping the door closed. “Damn him,” she said evenly. “Damn him and his hunt!” She squinted the length of the room, marking the swaddled women still under coverlets. A few were stirring; one slurred a complaint about the inconsiderately loud talking. Eleanor merely laughed. “If you think I’m talking too loudly, what will you say to the hounds?”
Another woman peeled back the bedclothes, scowling blackly. “What hounds, Eleanor? Or do you mean the men gathering at your heels?”
But the gibe went wide. Eleanor merely laughed again, unperturbed by the discourtesy or the edged tone. “And don’t you wish you had a few, Joanna . . . or even one.” She paused, tilting her head, as the shouting beyond the wall was joined by a chorus of hounds answering the winding of a horn. “There. The oliphant; what did I tell you? The count has decreed it, and now the poor earl must roust out his huntsmen without giving them proper time.” Eleanor raised her voice. “Nor us, I might add; we’re all to accompany John.”
The last was met by groans, murmured prayers, noisy sighs of resignation. But no one said she would not join the hunt.
Irresolute, Marian scowled toward the door. Eleanor, lingering there, arched her eyebrows. “Did you not sleep well?”
Marian shrugged. “Well enough.”
The sheriff’s daughter smiled. “And I not at all.”
Upon reflection, Marian wondered why Eleanor had entreated her the night before not to reveal the assignation with the jongleur. Here, before all the others, Eleanor made no secret of her behavior, nor did the other women appear to be ignorant of her habits. If anything, Eleanor appeared to enjoy it . . . and yet the night before Marian would have sworn Eleanor did care; that perhaps she cared too much.
On the other side of the wall the oliphant sounded again. The women in the chamber answered the summons with less enthusiasm than the hounds, but with no less attention to duty.
The Earl of Huntington was a wealthy man and a powerful peer who enjoyed the privileges of his rank. His family had been granted vert and venison, which gave the Earls of Huntington and subsequent heirs the right to hold and hunt private chases, portions of the forest given over by the king. The Forest Laws set out by the Conqueror and codified by Henry II did not apply unless the earl chose to apply them. He was free to hire his own wardens and foresters, and did; to hold his own forest court so as to administer the law, which he did twice a year; and to dispose of poachers and trespassers in the manner he desired. The earl believed in leniency; he usually sentenced poachers to imprisonment lasting no longer than a year and a day.
The chases of Huntington were thickly wooded and as thickly inhabited. Prince John, aware of the reputation the earl’s estate enjoyed, declared himself much taken with the idea of hunting boar. It bothered him not in the least that boar was winter sport; he professed himself weary of stag and falconry and desirous of hardier game.
The earl, weary of John, nonetheless bade his huntsmen do their work, and waited in resignation as the kennels were emptied of hounds, the stables of horses, his kitchens and larders of bread, wine, and ale.
And his castle of bleary-eyed guests.
Locksley lay abed even after the oliphant sounded, seriously considering remaining there the better part of the day. He was lethargic and unexpectedly wan-spirited, though he had done little more the day before than listen to his father discussing plans for the feast. That done, he had intended to ride to the village of Locksley and the surrounding lands. He felt it only just he pay heed at long last to his namesake holdings, which he had never visited.
He had drunk little but watered wine with the meal, taking his leave of the festivities before many of the guests. Unlike others he would suffer neither for too much wine nor too little sleep. Yet now, uncharacteristically, he lay sprawled beneath covers in his huge curtained bed and hoped against hope no servant would come to rouse him. He wanted nothing to do with the hunt, nothing to do with his father, nothing to do with Prince John, William deLacey, or deLacey’s faceless daughter.
He frowned. Was she faceless? Nameless, no; the sheriff had seen to that. Eleanor, for the queen—except Eleanor of Aquitaine no longer was queen. That title had passed to Berengaria of Navarre
, once Richard had married her—and yet Locksley knew some might argue the poor Spanish princess was no queen at all, deprived of the title even as she was deprived of husbandly attentions to the extent that she could not even be called a wife.
He stirred. Lethargy evaporated, replaced by frustration and a vague, annoying disquiet. He rolled over onto his belly and pressed his face into the pillow, damning Richard and John and dead King Henry—and even Berengaria, who was hardly to be blamed.
Aloud he muttered, “Faceless Eleanor . . .” He could recall no particular woman. Many of them, yes, but all now were blurred: fair-haired, dark-haired, even one or two with red, and myriad Norman kirtles and girdles belting waists both large and small, hips both sprung and tight.
Except for FitzWalter’s daughter. Her he remembered if for no other reason than the knowledge of who she was: the only surviving heir of the man who’d died in his place.
Beyond his chamber, echoing off masonry walls, the oliphant sounded again, followed by a chorus of hounds. Locksley swore, covered his ears, and felt the pull of scar tissue across spine and shoulders. Because of it and other scars he slept in a fine-worked Norman bliaut. He wanted no servant to see. He wanted no questions asked.
A knock at the door, followed hard by inquiry. “My lord?”
He shut his teeth together and stared with some determination into murky day, counting motes on a shaft of newborn sunlight.
The voice was unrepentant. “My lord—your father the earl requests you attend him. Prince John has called for a hunt.” It was muffled by thick wood, but clear enough for comprehension.
Locksley considered a succinct, pointed comment that as he was not deaf he knew very well there was to be a hunt. But he said nothing, knowing it would mark him churlish and ill-tempered—he was not that, usually—and it was unnecessary to chide a servant for merely doing what he was supposed to.
Locksley twisted his head across a shoulder, stirring his shock of near-white hair. He pitched his voice to carry. “Tell my lord father I will attend him directly.”
It was enough to content the servant; nothing more was heard from the other side of the door.
Locksley swore again, mixing Arabic with English, then scrubbed his face with a splay-fingered hand, scratching stubble so fair as to be invisible. He abjured the oliphant to cease its winding, then absented the bed and groped for fresh clothing. Plain, unadorned clothing, less ostentatious than those he’d worn the night before.
But green again, nonetheless, the better to hide in foliage if the hunt offered an opportunity to slip away unnoticed.
Marian was adamant even as gray-haired, gray-robed Matilda remonstrated. “He won’t even know,” she declared. “All we have to do is go one way when the hunt goes the other.”
“ ‘Tisn’t right,” the woman declared, putting voluminous clothing into order with short, spatulate fingers. “You’re to ask the earl’s leave.”
It was said as forthrightly as a mother would to a daughter, rather than servant to lady. Matilda was a mother to her and had been for years, and she was due equal courtesy. With effort Marian held her tongue from harsh words. Matilda was aging, far too fat, and her joints ached in the morning. It was not Marian’s choice that the nurse accompany her on longer journeys, but Matilda said she had sworn an oath to Sir Hugh that required her presence; it mattered little there were other, younger women who could accompany Marian. She had nursed her from a babe, and would go on until she died.
Marian forbore from reminding Matilda that one unnecessary journey could well contribute to that death. Refusing the woman would merely make Matilda feel unworthy and useless.
She wrapped the dark blue woolen mantle over her shoulder, suggesting Matilda do the same with her own. “We’ll go down,” she said, arranging the folds deftly. “If the earl is free, I’ll ask his leave—but if he’s busy with Prince John or the like, we’ll simply go.” Knowing he would be busy; it was what she counted on.
Matilda’s brown eyes narrowed into rolls and creases. “And no breakfast first?”
Her charge proposed a compromise. “I’ll ask for bread. We can eat on the way.” Before Matilda could comment Marian bundled the old nurse into her mantle and aimed her toward the door.
Alan, in the musicians’ gallery overlooking the great hall, watched the men and women of England’s nobility rouse themselves from rushes and cowpats of cloth, even as others spilled into the hall from stairs, then out again through doors to the morning light beyond. He leaned his elbows against wooden balustrade, lute strapped over his back, and smiled in idle amusement; they were, he thought, less men and women than children, scrambling to keep a short-tempered father from shouting with impatience, then resorting to a buffet on this pair of ears or that.
“King of England,” he murmured. “Or near to being, anyway—unless the Lionheart comes home.”
Richard Coeur de Lion. The lute-player’s callused fingers twitched; there was music in the name. A chord entered his head, then another and another, and a title, melody, and lyrics, tumbling over one another in the rush toward creation. Sometimes they came too fast, and were lost. Or sometimes too slow, while he despaired of pleasing his Muse. If he could catch this one . . .
He straightened, reaching to unhook the lute—then stopped, arrested. The others had all gone out, answering the horn. One now came late—no, two. But the second one didn’t matter.
The coif was slightly askew, as if she hastened, baring much of a milky brow. Braided black hair spilled free of containment, falling over a shoulder to dangle below a breast. She paused at the bottom of the stair, extended a slender arm, and put out a hand to her companion—an old, fat, stiff-moving woman, not worthy of his time—then glanced quickly around the hall.
She did not look up, only around. And Alan, somewhat abruptly, wanted her to look up. He leaned down, gripping wood, and whistled as for a hound.
Once. A soft sound that nonetheless carried. She heard it, followed it, glanced up, mouth parting, clearly startled. He saw the pure piquancy of features and the clarity of bone, the tilted set of wide blue eyes, the slant of crow-black, upswept brows beneath the white band of coif.
Their eyes met. Color bloomed in her face. She turned quickly, caught at the old woman, and hastened her out of the hall.
Alan clutched the balustrade. He had known the night before that she was beautiful. He had known the night before she was fodder for a song. But now, seeing her caught in midstride, swaddled in summer mantle, obviously in flight—Daphne from Apollo—he found his Muse even more demanding than before. She was made for a song.
“You will be late,” a voice said.
Alan jerked upright and turned stiffly to face the man. What struck him first was the change from darkness to daylight: the face, the eyes, the hair . . . fair, so very fair, while she was blackest black . . . Knowledge flowed sluggishly in. God, it is the earl’s son. He nearly stammered. “My lord?”
“You will be late.” A clear baritone, hiding nuance with matter-of-factness.
Alan tugged at his tunic, feeling the weight of lute hung belly-heavy and somewhat haphazardly aslant his spine. “I had not intended to go.”
One fair brow arched beneath pale hair. “Why not? Does the count not require music when he breaks his fast?”
Alan gestured deprecation. “Nothing was said, my lord—” And then hope surged. If he were able to go after all, doubtless there would be more reward in it. “Do you require it?”
Robert of Locksley, dressed in uncompromising dark green and a touch of brown—tunic, leather jerkin, hosen—shrugged negligently. But the eyes were not so compliant, nor entirely there. “What I require has little to do with music.”
I don’t follow him . . . But Alan dismissed it, summoning his notorious charm, meaning to hold Locksley until an invitation was extended. He had done it many times, with men and women alike. Men as well as women were helpless before unfettered flattery and the unmatched skill of a practiced minstrel.
Immune, Locksley did not so much as smile. “I leave that to you.”
It was decisive, providing no room for maneuvering. Short of grasping Locksley’s arm, Alan could do nothing but give way gracefully. And so he did, stepping aside as Locksley moved by him. He inclined his head briefly in tribute to the other’s rank, but lifted it almost immediately to watch the earl’s son go. When Locksley was out of sight, the minstrel swore softly. Nothing for it, today, but to wait for the hunt to end.
“Is he gone?”
Alan turned swiftly and rearranged his expression. “Fairest Eleanor!” Just the right tone, he thought; color surged into her face.
“Dearest Alain.” She was dressed unremarkably, with bundled hair hidden by linen. The sallow, plain features underscored the clarity and beauty of the other coif-rimmed face he’d seen. “Dearest Alain—I must go on the hunt. But given the first opportunity, I will slip away and come back to you.”
“Here?” And then cursed himself for his laggardness; of course she meant here. He smiled, took the outstretched hand, pressed a kiss upon it. “Fairest Eleanor, I shall be counting the hours as I wait.”
The smile was intensely suggestive. “Don’t count so many—I’ll come straight back as soon as I break off. It shouldn’t take too long.... My father will be much too busy trying to impress the earl or the count—or possibly both at once, if he can contrive it—and won’t even notice when I leave.” She impressed her body upon his own and reached between his legs, unmindful of the openness of the narrow, unscreened gallery stretching across the hall. “Make me a song,” she whispered. “Make one just for me.”
Jennifer Roberson - [Robin Hood 01] Page 9
