Alan sat in the dark and gingerly tested his split lip, first with a careful tongue, then with his fingertip. They had not chained him or bound him. He was simply confined in an otherwise empty pocket lying deep beneath the supports of the castle. Far over his head the trapdoor was closed and bolted. The guards had, of course, withdrawn the ladder as soon as he’d descended.
It was cool and damp, even in spring; in winter it must be very cold. Another small thing for which to be grateful.
He shut his eyes a moment, trying to quell the sudden surge of panic. It did not please him to know himself the inaugural inhabitant of Huntington Castle’s dungeon. It pleased him less to know he deserved no part of the treatment. But he was wise enough to hold his tongue in front of Eleanor, in front of Eleanor’s father, because accusing the sheriffs daughter of wantonness before witnesses would earn him more than the single blow deLacey had meted out.
Better he speak to the earl, were he allowed to do so. Huntington did not strike him as a fool, and it was possible he might be able to convince the earl that while indeed he and Eleanor had made the beast with two backs, it had been a willing liaison. Huntington was powerful; surely he would have some influence with the sheriff.
Unless, of course, the earl felt his courtesy had been sorely abused by a traveling minstrel, and made no move to suggest leniency.
Alan drew up his legs and hugged rigid knees, pressing his brow against them as if the pressure might chase away the seriousness of his situation. He had run the risk before, aware that were he ever caught by husband or betrothed, he might well be beaten to death on the spot. But risk was a part of the enjoyment, a fillip to the encounter; he had never seriously considered the consequences.
Now he considered them. Apprehension made him sweat.
He lifted his head and stared wide-eyed into darkness, digging fingernails through hose into the flesh of his shins. If he could speak to Eleanor ... if he could speak to her, and convince her to go to her father, to tell the truth, to explain what had happened ...
But futility swamped the thought. He doubted she’d recant. He’d never known a daughter willing to tell her father the truth about her sexual experience when a lie would improve her state.
It wouldn’t be death, would it? Would they kill him for such a thing? Would Eleanor allow it?
He slumped against the wall as the dragon of speculation moved sluggishly in his bowels. The shudder that wracked his body had nothing to do with cold, damp stone.
“God,” he begged aloud, “please don’t let me die. Please don’t let them kill me—”
It did not occur to Alan there were other punishments a musician might find worse.
Marian shut the door behind her with a definitive thump. The sleeping chamber she and others had inhabited the night before was empty of women save the one she most wanted to see. “Tell him the truth,” she said. “Go to your father now and tell him the truth.”
Eleanor’s kirtle was soiled and crumpled. Her unbound brown hair hung lankly on either side of her sallow face. It did not hide the state of her mouth, swollen from Alan’s attentions, or the dusty bruise staining her throat.
She had risen as Marian entered and now stood rigidly five paces away. She was clearly taken aback by the strength of Marian’s determination, but her astonishment altered almost immediately to aggression, as did her posture. One hand rose to strike as Eleanor crossed over to Marian, but Marian quickly moved into the woman, catching her by both shoulders with flattened palms, and stiff-armed her back, knocking her so off balance Eleanor’s feet became entangled with the nearest mattress. Eleanor sat down unceremoniously, staring up in shock and outrage. “How dare you—”
“How dare you?” Marian countered, cutting her off. “Do you expect me to believe the man you were so hot after forced you against your will? Do you expect me to say nothing at all when they haul him out of the dungeon and cut out his tongue?”
“You told my—”
“I told him nothing!” Marian cried. “I honored my promise to you, woman to woman—”
“You went running to him the moment my back was turned—”
“When?” Marian challenged. “You were barely gone from the hunt when Guy of Gisbourne was hurt! Do you think in the midst of that, I took time to beg your father’s indulgence while I told him a little thing about his daughter’s sleeping habits?”
“He wouldn’t have known!” Eleanor retorted. “How could he have come back so soon? How could he have known—”
“He didn’t know,” Marian snapped. “Nobody knew anything at all about you, because I doubt anyone cared. Your father came back—they all came back!—because Gisbourne was badly hurt. Didn’t you see that? Didn’t you see all the blood when they carried him into the chamber?” Eleanor’s expression was stolidly arrogant. Marian wanted to swear. “But no, of course not—you were too busy trying to cover up your nakedness and accusing an innocent man of rape!”
The expression altered from arrogance to anger. Hectic color clouded Eleanor’s cheeks. “You told him. You helped him set a trap. You can lie to me all you want, but I know better. You’re jealous of me. You’ve never slept with a man because you have no spine, and this is how you strike back—”
Marian’s breathy laugh was of disbelief, not amusement. “My God, Eleanor—have you listened to yourself? You sit here before me and spew vile lies—”
Eleanor jumped to her feet. “You’re the one spewing lies! You thought you’d ingratiate yourself with my father, so you went to him and told him about Alan, about me—”
“No.” Marian shook her head. “Oh, I doubt he was surprised to find you rutting with a man in secret, but he didn’t know which one it might be. My God, Eleanor—you heard those women this morning! They knew perfectly well what you were doing. And you took no pains to dissuade them of it!”
Color stained Eleanor’s face. “You’re like all the rest. You lock away your virginity and accuse me of being a whore just because I have the courage to enjoy my body.”
Marian shook her head. “You may sleep wherever you like—I’ll say nothing about it!—but you can’t turn your back on an innocent man. Pay the price, Eleanor. Go to your father and tell him the truth. I doubt he’ll cut out your tongue.”
Eleanor’s eyes glittered. She lifted her chin. “Don’t fool yourself by thinking I’ll forget what you’ve done to me.”
Marian wanted to crack a hand across the smug, self-righteous face. “I don’t care what you think about me. Curse me in your prayers, if it gives you pleasure. But don’t let them mutilate an innocent man.”
Eleanor said nothing.
Desperation was swift-rising and painful. Marian began to realize she was no more capable of convincing the daughter than she was of convincing the father. “Eleanor—please!”
“He raped me.”
“Eleanor—”
“He raped me.”
“Think about what you’re doing!”
With exquisite clarity: “He—raped—me.”
When the cask was at last filled with heated water and the stool placed within it, with soap and towel nearby, Locksley dismissed the servants and stripped out of his soiled garments. He couldn’t stand the smell of himself clothed and crusted in blood. Naked, itching, and bruised from his wrestling match with the boar, he climbed into the cask and sank gratefully onto the stool.
He hissed, holding his breath against the bite of heated water. When his body was sufficiently adjusted to the temperature he slid off the stool and ducked his head beneath the surface, stripping his hair of blood.
It crossed his mind that drowning might be a pleasant way to die, to rid himself of memories and unpleasantries associated with the Crusade. But his breath soon ran out, and the pleasure was less certain.
He came up spewing water and resumed his seat upon the stool, letting his knotted muscles loosen in the heat. With eyes closed, disassociated from his chamber and the trappings of his father’s vanity, he could drift,
forgetting himself entirely. But it was a transitory escape, because with lassitude came recollection. The heat of the water brought back the heat of the Holy Land, the acrid smells of dust and sweat, the tang of unwashed bodies, the effluvia of the marches and campsites, and the stink of rotting bodies.
Locksley tensed upon the stool, locking both hands over the roughhewn edge of the cask that once housed wine. The peace was banished. Teeth set, he stood, taking up the soap, and began to scrub himself violently, concentrating on ridding himself of the remains of the encounter with the boar, and with his own fragility.
“My God, Robert—what did they do to you?”
He spun around, dropping the soap, peripherally aware that the awkward movement had driven a splinter into one foot. But he forgot that quickly enough. His father had entered. His father had seen.
The earl stopped awkwardly just inside the closing door. He gaped in undisguised shock as he gazed upon his son. Then shock became revulsion. The old face was the color of death. “Robert—my God—”
Locksley sat down at once, sinking his shoulders beneath the surface. It was an instinctive retreat, though now much too late.
The earl’s hands clutched his surcoat, crumpling costly fabric. “Robert—Robert—”
Locksley shut his teeth. “You were never to know.”
The old face spasmed. “Why did you say nothing?”
He recoiled. That, he had not expected. It was never contemplated, even envisioned, that he would speak a word of it to his father, his father, who could never understand, never even believe—He expelled the question abruptly, aware of an underlying hostility for the man, any man, who would dare to ask, to intrude. “What would you have me say?”
“But—Robert ...” The earl passed a shaking hand over his face. His pallor lessened, tinged with the first trace of returning color. “They are barbarians!”
The hostility receded. Locksley found it cynically amusing: his father was predictable in his outrage, a man born to wealth and rank and power but above meting out physical abuse save when it benefited discipline. “I think it made no difference whose son I was.”
The earl scrubbed his face with both hands, as if cleansing himself of shock. Blue eyes glittered balefully. “Barbarians, all of them.”
“Yes,” Locksley agreed, and let it go at that. He knew better than to explain. “I didn’t know you wanted me, my lord.” A gentle reprimand, though he doubted the earl would mark it. But that he dared offer one, however subtle, was a new and tentative freedom.
The earl retreated to the bench along the wall beside the door. He sat down, clasped his hands over his knees, and studied his son thoughtfully. The shock was banished, replaced by parental assessment. White brows knitted themselves into a single line across the shelf of his brow.
Am I like him? Locksley wondered. Is that what I will be?
Huntington sighed. “I had not intended to speak to you of this. Not yet. But another has spoken of it to me, and so I bring it to you. You are a man now, as this Crusade—and its treatment of you—has proved.” His elbows collapsed; he interlaced his fingertips across the pleated surcoat. “This is not something to which you must pay immediate attention. I have some comprehension of how you must feel, but newly come home ... there is no need to discuss it in great detail, or make a decision. Not yet. In time.”
“My lord—?” He found it more obscure than his own implied reprimand.
Huntington smiled wryly. “You are much admired, Robert, for many things. Most of which you will know. But foremost among them is your unmarried state.”
Locksley grimaced. It had taken less time than he’d anticipated. “I see he has been at you.”
White brows rose. “Has he spoken to you?”
Locksley shrugged, kicking the soap up from the bottom of the cask so he might begin again to scrub. “He said something of it last night. I gave him no answer. But I thought surely now, after what has happened, there would be no chance of it.”
Huntington frowned. “What happened today that might alter the possibility?”
Locksley considered the question carefully. It was unlike his father to give tacit approval to anything untoward, which certainly the supposed rape of Eleanor deLacey must be considered. “She’s been publicly despoiled, has she not?”
The earl recoiled. “I’ve heard nothing of it!”
Is he so old as that? “You were there, my lord.”
Huntington stared, then expelled a bark of startled laughter. “Good God, Robert! Not deLacey’s daughter—my God, d’you think I’d consider that notorious baggage for you?”
His son nearly smiled. “I didn’t know she was notorious. She wasn’t, when I left.”
“Most certainly notorious. We will not speak of the girl.” The earl’s tone was stern.
“Very well.” Scrapes and scratches stung from the lather. “What of the minstrel, then?”
“The minstrel? He is none of my concern. It is a matter for the sheriff.”
“Isn’t William deLacey somewhat more closely involved in the matter than you might be? She is his daughter.”
Huntington scowled. “Let him deal with the matter, I say. The man was a fool. He will stay the night in the dungeon, then be taken back to Nottingham Castle tomorrow. The sheriff may do with him as he likes. I have no interest in it.”
“Cut out his tongue, I heard.” Locksley’s tone was uninflected.
The earl shrugged. “He’s fortunate not to be killed.”
His son scooped wet hair out of his face. “And if he’s innocent?”
“Innocent! You were there, Robert ... there was no doubt of what they were doing!”
Locksley nearly smiled. Clearly the image made the earl uncomfortable. He was affronted that such goings-on could occur under his roof; that any of his guests would so flagrantly abuse his hospitality. “No doubt of what they were doing, perhaps—but what of the matter of fault? You said yourself Eleanor deLacey is notorious.”
“It doesn’t matter,” the earl retorted. “It isn’t my concern, nor is it yours. We have something far more important to discuss.”
And so the topic was altered. “Marriage,” Locksley agreed. “Pray continue, my lord.”
The earl nodded. “A bastard, but still acknowledged. Certainly royal by-blows have married into fine houses before.”
Locksley stopped scrubbing. “Whose?”
“John’s. Her name is Joanna.” The earl shrugged. “It was mentioned, nothing more. The man’s a consummate conniver, I’ll give him that.” The earl was up, striding around the cask to the far wall, where he peered out the window slot. “He discusses castles as if he has an abiding interest in the dirt and dregs of it, when it’s perfectly obvious he wants to know if I intend to stand against him, now that I have the means.”
Locksley himself wondered that, if in a detached way. He and his father had never discussed policy. He and his father had never discussed much at all. This was the first conversation he could ever recall having that contained fewer commands than opinions and declarations. He doubted his father would change his habits now, but at least he paid lip-service to the fact his son was grown.
Cynicism asserted itself, breaking through lethargy. At least, while it suits him.
Huntington swung back. “He compliments you now, when but yesterday he insulted you by implying unspeakable things. And so he dangles a daughter. A conniver, I say. He knows he’s unpopular with the barons. He knows how badly he needs us. So now he comes calling, like a boy wooing a maid. Faugh! I’d as soon be quit of him before this night is through!” Huntington strode back toward the door. “But I doubt we’d be so fortunate as that. The larder is yet full.” He unlatched and opened the door. “Don’t trouble yourself about this, Robert. I have no doubt he’s using the girl’s name to every baron with an unmarried heir.”
Locksley watched mutely as the earl went out and thudded the door closed behind him. “No,” he said at last. “I won’t trouble myself about i
t.” He had no intention of marrying anyone.
Fourteen
Just after dawn, as the other women in the chamber began to stir sluggishly, Marian yanked her mantle into place over her clothing and met old Matilda’s chiding gaze forthrightly. “We’re not staying another moment,” she declared. “I’ve done what I could to change the sheriff’s mind, but he won’t listen. Neither will his daughter. So, we’re leaving now. We can eat something on the road.”
“The sheriffs riding back to Nottingham today himself. We’d be safer—”
“We’ll be safe enough,” Marian said firmly, cutting her off. “The road to Nottingham is too well-traveled to afford thieves much chance of success, and I have no desire to spend one more moment in that man’s company. We’re going.”
Matilda appealed to propriety as always. “Have you asked the earl’s leave?”
Marian set her teeth. She had neither time nor patience for argument, no matter how well intended. “We’re going, Matilda!” She turned on her heel and marched toward the door, snapping the folds in her skirts and her mantle out of her way as the old nurse, who was stiff and slow in the mornings, followed more carefully.
The door was opened before they reached it. A big-eyed servant-girl bobbed a quick curtsey. “Lady Marian?” At Marian’s nod, she went on hurriedly. “I been sent from the barber. You’re to come and see Sir Guy, if you please, lady. The barber says he’s asking for you.”
It surprised her. “Sir Guy is asking for me?”
“My lady, yes. Will you come?”
Jennifer Roberson - [Robin Hood 01] Page 15
