Beyond, he heard the hounds, most eloquent in their yearning to answer unreasoning instinct, born and bred; the duty trained into them: to find and rend the boar. And their handlers, remonstrating, pulling the dogs away, to sate them with other flesh.
“Robert,” someone said sharply. The earl, Gisbourne realized, who went pushing through vines and foliage to locate the man—his son?—who had shouted whatever it was he had shouted, in the moment of victory.
The beast is dead. Relieved, Gisbourne levered himself to an elbow to inspect what the boar had done.
“Sir Guy?” Marian FitzWalter, come back to see how he fared.
“Jesu—” he croaked. “Lady—no—” But she was there, slotted between two men, all blue-eyed, black-haired, and white-faced, perfectly still in shock as she looked upon his wound.
“Cautery,” someone said.
“It’ll have to come off.” Someone else.
“No!” he cried. “No—”
A hound yelped. Someone murmured something. The crowd around him stirred, muttering, then someone said something imperatively, and everyone but the men kneeling at his side and the woman clutching a blood-splattered mantle fell back, giving precedence to the newcomer.
Prince John paced to Gisbourne and looked down upon the man. In one hand he held a cup. The wine it contained was as red as the blood spilling from Gisbourne’s leg.
The dark eyes were oddly avid, strangely amused. “I gave first thrust to you,” he drawled, “but it appears the boar was quicker.”
Gisbourne wanted to laugh, even as others did; it was what John expected. But all he could do was whimper as they began to wrap his leg.
“A wagon,” someone said.
And someone else, less charitable, “He’ll be dead before we get back.”
No, Gisbourne thought, as pain at last blossomed. The last things he saw were Marian’s eyes gazing fixedly at his face, merciless in their pity.
The earl tore aside vines and beat back bracken fern as he made his way beyond Gisbourne and the clutch of men around him. Only dimly was he aware of the man’s pain, and the fact that the sheriffs steward still might die, if he was not dead already. For the earl, Gisbourne was a casualty whose fate did not concern him. Whose fate did concern him was his son’s.
Above the constricted wheeze of breath expelled from aged lungs, he heard the distress of the injured horse. But the horse didn’t matter, either.
His mantle fouled on a bough. The earl felt it catch and slapped at it, then tore it free when the fabric remained hooked. Cloth ripped. He cursed it and went on, clawing aside the vines, cursing age and helplessness, promising God a monument if his son remained alive. “One son,” he husked. “Do not rob me of that... I ask for so very little—”
He broke free of vines and close-grown bracken, staggering so badly he fetched up against a tree, and there, clinging, gasping, he saw his only son, wet head to foot with blood as he knelt over the boar.
“Robert—” Not much issued from his throat. A thready exhalation, relief and inquiry. And then, in shock: “Robert—?”
Locksley, with only a knife, methodically sawed off the boar’s head. From the gaping wound in the neck he cut and hacked and sawed his way around the neck, murmuring beneath his breath, paying no heed to his father, or the dying horse behind him, or to anything at all, save the task that consumed him.
Through gristle, muscle, and flesh he cut, peeling aside the hide, until the head was completely severed from powerful, bristled shoulders. Once he scrubbed at his eyes, smearing blood across his face. And then, as methodically, he cut each leg from the boar’s body.
“Robert?” the earl whispered.
Locksley at last looked up. He hunched over the dismembered carcass, one haunch clutched in his hand. His eyes, Huntington saw, were black instead of hazel.
The old voice trembled. “Is this—necessary?”
His son stared back, unmoving. And then did move, slowly, looking down at the haunch in his hand; at the remains of the boar. At the knife still gripped in the other hand, dripping blood.
He started to speak. The harsh words were unintelligible. He stopped. Frowned. Tried again. This time in English, so the earl could understand. “This is what you do,” he said hoarsely. “In war.”
“But—” The earl passed a trembling hand over his face. “Robert—you are home. In England. This is England. There is no war here. The beast you have killed is a boar.”
A shudder wracked Locksley’s hunched body. “He wasn’t.”
“He was.” The earl drew in a deep breath, meticulously rearranging the folds of his soiled mantle because it was something he could comprehend. “Robert—he was a boar.”
“He wasn’t,” Locksley repeated stolidly. “They said he was, but he wasn’t.”
There is no time for this. The earl walked very carefully and deliberately around the dismembered carcass to stand at his son’s side. He reached down, shut a gnarled hand on Locksley’s shoulder and gripped with surprising strength. “Robert—come away. At once. Do as I say. I’ll send someone back to tend to the horse.”
“Ya Allah,” Locksley murmured. And then, with a trace of desperation, “No—I mean, God.”
The earl’s tone was definitive, the words explicit. “Do as I say.”
Stiffly, Locksley rose. The once-green tunic and hosen were stained a muddy red-brown as the blood began to crust.
The earl assessed his condition. His mouth thinned a moment, hardening. “Robert ...” But the lips loosened fractionally. There were the others to think of. “It was well done, Robert. The others will hail you a hero.”
“No,” Locksley rasped. “What was done was—butchery.”
Huntington gave a coarse laugh. “It’s what you do to boars!”
His son stared down at the carcass. “But not what you do to men.”
Twelve
The hand closing firmly on Marian’s shoulder snapped her out of her reverie. “Come,” the sheriff said quietly, pulling her away. “There is no need for you to stay with him. The wagon will take him back to the castle.”
It disturbed her that he cared so little for his own man. “Perhaps I could aid him ... comfort him, somehow—” She felt it was important, as if she were to blame.
“How? And why? He is nothing to you.” DeLacey grasped her by both shoulders and steered her easily away from the men clustered around Gisbourne. “What good can you do him?”
But Marian had fastened onto an earlier sentence. “Nothing to me? But he is—it was for me he confronted the boar—”
He laughed gently. “I think not. Surely not. I believe he felt challenged by the others ... I confess to a weakness, Marian. Men will do unbelievable things if their pride is brought into it ... and Gisbourne is not a common sort of knight.”
Shock gave way to anger. Perhaps Eleanor is right—he is harder than I thought. Marian hitched both shoulders convulsively and shrugged off his hands, swinging to face him. “An uncommon knight, Sheriff? Surpassing brave, is he not?”
The disarming smile faded, replaced with a more attentive assessment of her reaction. She saw the lines in his face deepen, the brown eyes harden. “He is my steward. An able man, withal—as it concerns tending a household. But not what any man, even Gisbourne himself, would claim particularly brave. Not as knights are measured, lady. Not as your father was.”
It infuriated her. “We will leave my father out of this!”
“Your father died in battle against men, Marian. Not against beasts.”
It shocked her. “Do you count Gisbourne’s act less significant because it was a beast? What if it had harmed me? What if I had fallen, and it had threatened me?”
“He should not have dismounted.” The tone was cool, clipped; and then he once more took her arm and turned her away, ignoring her inarticulate, murmured protest. “I applaud his intent, Marian. But it was foolhardiness, no more. Now. Let us speak of something else—”
“What if he dies?�
�
“If God hears our prayers, he will not.”
“Don’t you want to return with him?”
“Of course. Even now my horse is brought, and yours. Do you think I mean to spirit you away into the forest?” The sheriff laughed. “No, Marian. I mean for us both to accompany him back to the castle. The hunt is quite completed—not what anyone anticipated, perhaps, but certainly finished. Now allow me to help you mount ...”
Before she could speak he caught her up and pressed her into the saddle. Marian found her seat and caught up the reins the horseboy offered as the sheriff mounted his own horse. She thought to protest, but didn’t. He was a man, he was older, he was her father’s friend, due respect and courtesy—
But what had Eleanor said? She couldn’t say no to the man?
It annoyed Marian intensely that her spirit was judged so lacking by a woman who hardly knew her. Grow a spine, she told herself sternly. “My lord Sheriff—” She meant to tell him he was being too high-handed with her, that he had no right to order her around, to force her this way and that, as if she were wife, or servant. She meant to tell him that perhaps his youngest daughter judged him more accurately than he knew, stripping away the facade to bare the true man underneath.
But the words died away. She said nothing after all, looking beyond the sheriff entirely as he readied to mount, because Robert of Locksley, with the earl, had come into the clearing as the others labored with Gisbourne.
The front of his clothing was soaked. White-blond hair hung lankly on his shoulders, weighted by ruddy ribbons. His face, a blood-smeared mask but moments before, had been scrubbed haphazardly by a forearm.
The rough ministration left him no less bloody, no less barbaric. No less than what he had been as he had cut open the boar’s throat.
Grimly, as the earl spoke to someone, Locksley looked across the clearing and found her watching him. She saw him go very still. Transfixed, he stared blankly at her for a long, arrested moment—and then the face beneath the blood blanched into deathly white.
Alan frowned over his fretwork, oblivious to the servants as they worked around him, carrying out soiled rushes and replacing them with fresh. Racks were checked for spent candles. Clean linen was spread on the tables and silver polished again. He had moved twice already, muttering irritation, and now took residence on a stool near the chair reserved for the earl.
The tune was coming along well, if he could master the fingering necessary. A jammed finger the year before had rendered him less than what he had been when it came to certain chords. He had labored for months to recover strength and flexibility, but as yet hadn’t recaptured it. And now, most decidedly, it interfered with his intent.
“Alain!” The hall echoed his name.
He glanced up, head still full of notes, and saw her rushing toward him, kirtle and mantle pulled awry so as not to foul her steps.
Alan rose hastily to catch her before she could harm his lute. She flung herself into his arms, albeit one was occupied, and trapped his mouth with her own.
“Fairest Eleanor,” he gasped, when at last she loosed his mouth. “I—had not anticipated your return so quickly.” In fact he had forgotten about her entirely in the need to capture the burgeoning song, thinking of lyrics and other things, far from Eleanor’s sturdy arms. He recalled her promise to return, and his words of encouragement; both now came back to haunt him. He had believed he had more time.
Eleanor giggled huskily, working at the drawstring of his hosen. “I let nothing delay me when my appetite is so engaged.”
He caught her questing hand. “Not here, I pray—”
She was impatient, which might have excited him once. “Then a chamber, and hurry. We have time, but not so much that I wish to forgo a moment.”
The night before it had been of his choosing. He had tumbled her once, finding her appetite intriguing. Now the sport had palled. There was new music to discover; he knew her, now, too well. “Eleanor—”
“A room,” she urged. “Or I will take you here and now.”
It whetted his appetite, making her more attractive. But he knew better. They dared not risk so much. Not on a second bedding; the first, well, that was different. Risk during a first encounter made the bedding that much more exciting.
Not here, then. But he knew she would not give up. So Alan laughed, kissed Eleanor back, took her and his lute to the first chamber he could think of, so close to the hall’s entrance. A small, private room. It lacked a bed, but that didn’t matter. The floor would do just as well.
It had gone wrong, deLacey knew. He was a man who understood nuances, the shifts in the tones of mood, the fleeting expressions in face and eyes, and the posture of the body. Instinctively, he knew it: he had handled Marian badly. She was not Eleanor, to be ordered this way and that because it was the only way to control her. She was Marian, and worth far more time and care. It had been a mistake, though not entirely his fault. The meeting with Prince John had shaken him badly, and that in itself was disturbing. He was long used to meeting even unpleasant surprises with calmness and self-control; he was usually quick-witted enough to turn aside even the worst of setbacks.
But John was different. John was dangerous. And now deLacey had entangled himself so deeply he doubted there was an escape, short of finding it in the grave. He dared not misplay the prince, or his life was surely forfeit; by the same token, if John’s bid for control of England failed, and King Richard was ransomed, the sheriff gave not a single penny for his own future. If John fell, he would fall. But if he aided John, and John became king ...?
A chill touched his spine. Such thoughts were treasonous. Better he think of something else.
He chanced a sidelong glance. Marian’s head was bowed as she rode, her flawless profile pensive. No doubt she thought him too harsh, too autocratic, and he didn’t blame her for that. He had miscalculated, allowing concern for John’s intentions to override his plan for her. He wanted to woo her into his bed, not command her there; to win her regard if he could, because what she thought mattered to him. No other woman had mattered, not even his first two wives. They had briefly entertained him, even given him children—daughters!—and had aided his rise in the world. But they had not loved him, and he had not loved them. The marriages had been expedient, no more. And though this one would also benefit his coffers, gain was not the sole reason he wanted FitzWalter’s daughter. There was the girl herself.
Inwardly, he marveled. He had watched her grow up, in a patchwork sort of way. It allowed him better judgment in the matter of her maturing. A mother or father, seeing a daughter daily, was unaware of the changes. But another man, seeing a girl but occasionally, was alert to her sudden leaps in growth.
She had been a plain, coltish, ungainly girl, all awkward limbs and tangled hair. FitzWalter had allowed her too much freedom once her mother died. He was too indulgent to guide her hoydenish habits into properly womanly ways. But that had changed in the last year, as she mourned her father. Grief had become the threshold of adulthood, and she had crossed it with colors flying.
She was exquisite. He knew of no better word. And he knew of no man better than he to give her the life she deserved.
To teach her what bodies were for.
Locksley rode Gisbourne’s horse because his own was dead. He was sticky with drying blood. The smell clung to him like a shroud, filling his head with recollections he had no wish to recall.
Any more than recall the expression on Marian FitzWalter’s face, when he had told her her father’s message regarding William deLacey.
Or when she had seen him dismember the boar.
He had meant only to kill it. That it had attacked Sir Guy of Gisbourne, he knew; he had come upon the scene, judged the boar’s line of retreat, and moved to cut it off. He hadn’t counted on the girl being in the way. He had intended merely to kill it before it did more harm. An enraged boar, possibly wounded, was a highly dangerous beast.
And then she had been there, in th
e boar’s path, leaving him with only one option.
He had not planned to hunt at all, riding out only because his father expected it, had ordered it, and he was not yet disposed to refuse his father’s wishes. It was easiest to give in. Captivity had taught him that.
He was weary. Used up. He had been weary for months, for more than a year. In that weariness, in the exhaustion of his spirit, lay the seed of what he was; of what he had become. Of what they had made him, Saladin’s men, and all the others as well. Even his own kind.
She had cried out for him to beware, when his horse had been hurt, and fallen. And again when he’d stabbed into the boar’s throat. He recalled it clearly: “Be careful!” she had cried. “Oh my lord, take care!” But nothing else, past that. Because with the cries of his horse in his head, and the stench of blood in his nostrils, what he killed was no longer a boar. What he was, was no longer a man, but a body, mind, and spirit remade on the anvil of war, remixed in the terrible crucible of a holy insanity.
He pulled the horse up short, clutching the reins clutching the pommel, wracked by guilt and self-contempt. He wanted to heave it out, like a man spewing vomit. He wanted to bleed it out, like a surgeon releasing impurities by cutting into rotting flesh.
He wanted to tell the girl exactly how her father had died, so he was no longer alone.
He had used the boar to show her. But knew he could never tell her.
Eleanor clutched at the minstrel’s buttocks, digging nails into bare flesh. He was not enough, not enough—
She swore at him, then released taut flesh to grip his hair as she arched hips up from the floor, trying to capture more of him. She heard him panting, murmuring, saying things against her throat, her breasts, but his words were unimportant. She wanted more of him, not the practiced jongleur’s phrases.
“Where is your lance?” she gasped. “Where is your sword, ma petite? Where are you hiding yourself?”
Alan was incoherent.
Jennifer Roberson - [Robin Hood 01] Page 13
