Jennifer Roberson - [Robin Hood 01]

by Lady of the Forest

  Marian recalled Locksley’s earlier concern for proprieties. She had told him the truth as she saw it: the preservation of her life was more important than the preservation of her reputation. But her life, now, was changed, its path to lifelong security obliterated by Will Scarlet’s bid for freedom.

  Nonetheless, for all her blithe dismissal of his concern, the considerations he had raised were real. Then, she had dismissed them. Now she could not. They had stopped for the night. Now it stood before her, freed by a heartless darkness, like a beast born of childhood nightmare.

  I wish my father were here. There. It was said.

  She would not complain; there was no room for complaint. She would not speak of it, either, even in passing; Locksley—Robin—would undoubtedly blame himself for failing to find her sooner, in the daylight, when the sun diminished taint, and the whisper of dishonor. For his sake, not her own, because instinct told her it mattered, she would keep her mouth closed on anguish, on apprehension, and deal with it privately.

  Marian shut her eyes. Let me be strong enough.

  Sound intruded. Robin, with only a meat-knife, cut tender, leafy branches, intending to make her a bed.

  Marian sighed carefully, so he would not hear. She was damp, aching, hungry, and weary to the bone. Her eyes burned. I’ll never sleep tonight, no matter how good the bedding. I’m wet and cold, and my head is too full of things. ... But she did not tell him that. It would be rude and tactless in the midst of his work, and she very much desired not to task him with anything more.

  “It’s done,” he said at last.

  She turned, suppressing a wince of pain as her bruised knee protested. He stood next to the pitiful mound of decaying and newborn leaves heaped to form a bed and lashed together with green sapling boughs. Moonlight was kind to his battered face, leeching it of bruises, gilding the marvelous symmetry in the clean architecture of bone: cheeks, nose, and chin, in striking chiaroscuro. The wash of hair, now dry, was bleached nearly white. She could see little of his eyes beneath the smooth arched bone of brow.

  I made him kiss me, once, beneath the mistletoe.

  It was a thought she banished at once, abruptly hot with shame. Saying nothing, she went to the bed he had devised and lay down upon it stiffly, settling a hip carefully as she turned onto her side. Leaves compressed. Twigs crackled. She lay very still, eyes squinched closed, jaws clenched, trying to breathe normally and hoping shadow shielded her face.

  Silence.

  “Well?” he asked at last. “It would be better with a cloak thrown over it, but we have none. I left it with the horse.”

  She smelled dampness, sap, and earth. She would not tell him the truth: even a cloak over the bedding would offer her little comfort. “It will do,” she said quietly, tucking a leaf down from her mouth.

  He nodded. “Get up.”

  “But I only just—”

  “Please.”

  She got up, as requested, picking leaves and twigs from her hair and kirtle. Mutely she watched as he lay down in her place, testing the bed.

  He was silent. Then, with infinite irony, “You are polite.”

  She clasped hands in her kirtle demurely. “My father taught me to be so.”

  “Did your father also teach you to lie?”

  Surprised, she made no immediate answer. Then she grinned slowly, delighted by the tone. Urgency was banished, as was the mask. It pleased her immeasurably. “I learned that for myself.”

  He did not move, and yet twigs cracked. “This is the most uncomfortable bed I have ever set head upon.”

  “Yes,” she agreed, laughing.

  “And that includes the hard ground of the Holy Land, where the sand comes alive at night to creep between toes and eyelids.” He sat up, shaking back hair made lucent by the moon. “A poor night, I fear, with neither of us sleeping.”

  Now she could tell him the truth. “I am too weary to sleep. My head is—too busy.”

  Locksley nodded, irony gone. “It makes the nights very long.” He rose, saying nothing more, but she wondered what kind of nights they had been, so far and so different from England.

  She wanted to say something. Anything. She wanted to hear him speak. So she asked a simple question she thought most appropriate. “Did you see Jerusalem?”

  Utter immobility. Robert of Locksley was stone.

  “Forgive me,” she blurted, alarmed. “If I said something wrong ... I didn’t mean... I’m sorry—” She made it worse by repeated protestations, so she cut them off abruptly. Humiliated, she fell into awkward silence.

  The mask replaced the face. Marian saw nothing in the flesh, nothing at all in the eyes, that told her he was alive. Even his voice was dead. “I did not see Jerusalem.”

  Hands linked behind his back, William deLacey paced the length of the hall with an eye toward finding fault. There was none. Walter had done precisely as he asked. Candles of good quality filled even the corners with light.

  He paused near the screen dividing the kitchens from the hall and turned to look at the dais beyond the fire trench. “Better,” he murmured. “Much better.”

  A man came to stand nearby, mail glinting dully. “My lord.” It was Archambault, the castellan, garbed in the sheriff’s blue livery.

  DeLacey spared him a brief glance, continuing his meticulous assessment of the hall. He nodded thoughtfully, then began the slow walk back to the dais. A slight gesture indicated Archaumbault was to follow.

  The sheriff said nothing as he walked, paying no attention to the soldier who paced abreast. He waited until he had reached the dais, climbed it, then sat down in his great chair. Like a cat, deLacey stretched, then gestured briefly with a single finger.

  “My lord.” The veteran soldier inclined his head slightly. “I am resolved once morning comes that we shall locate this Scarlet very soon—”

  “Morning?” deLacey inquired, cutting off the preamble with delicate precision. “Then you have not found them.”

  Archaumbault hesitated only an instant, then continued steadfastly. “Not as yet, my lord, but—”

  “Evening has fallen, yet Will Scarlet still roams free with the Lady Marian?”

  Archaumbault, comprehending his lord’s mood at last, had the grace to blanch. Then he fell silent.

  “Ah.” DeLacey nodded. “I see you understand.”

  Archaumbault tried again. “In the morning we will return again to the forest—”

  “And discover—what?” The sheriff leaned forward intently. “Do tell me, Archaumbault ... what exactly will you discover?”

  “My lord, the outlaw—”

  “And the Lady Marian?”

  “—and the lady, yes, of course... the Lady Marian—”

  Delacey’s voice whip-cracked. “In what state, Archaumbault?”

  Archaumbault drew in a deep breath. “As to the lady’s state, we will of course take every precaution to protect her—”

  DeLacey clutched the arms of the chair. “From what, Archaumbault? What is there left to protect the lady from? By morning, every outlaw in Sherwood may well have been beneath her skirts!”

  It echoed in the hall. Archaumbault opened his mouth, shut it, then made the attempt. “Lord Sheriff, if our prayers are answered—”

  “I’ve never known a man yet who was held from pleasure by prayers.”

  Archaumbault’s voice was low. “No, my lord.”

  I doubt Archaumbault himself was ever held from pleasure by a woman’s prayers. Delacey sat back again. He assessed his castellan. He has no imagination, which makes him a poor conniver, but a better soldier, withal, And I still need him. “She is special to me, Archaumbault. Her father, Sir Hugh, and I were very good friends.” He arched one brow. “Do you know what it is like to live with the knowledge that because you failed your duty, a beautiful young woman’s life has been destroyed?”

  The skin of Archaumbault’s face was pulled taut over bones. “If they don’t kill her—”

  “She will likely kill hers
elf.”

  Archaumbault crossed himself. “God forbid such a sin, my lord—”

  “Yes, yes.” Delacey waved a dismissive hand. “God forbid, indeed ... nonetheless, there is an alternative.”

  Archaumbault considered it, then nodded. “The Church, my lord.”

  “Indeed. But if she turns to the Church...” He chewed thoughtfully at his lip, letting the sentence die. If she turns to the Church, her lands go with her. DeLacey smiled grimly. “If she turned to the Church, she gives up that which is most precious to a woman like Lady Marian. Freedom, Archaumbault.” He exuded sincerity. “No. That would be travesty. I think it is for me to care for the daughter of my dearest friend in the moment of greatest need.” He smiled warmly. “Find her, Archaumbault, and bring her here to me. No matter what she may say, bring her here to me.”

  “My lord, she may wish first—”

  “She will be understandably devastated, Archaumbault, as a lady of gentle birth has every right to be. Certainly my daughter has suffered from a similar happenstance.” DeLacey smiled sadly. “I have had some experience with this unfortunate circumstance. Bring her here, Archaumbault ... I will tend her welfare as her father would desire it.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  The sheriff waved his hand. The soldier bowed briefly, then turned and departed the hall, mail glittering.

  DeLacey slumped back again. “Here,” he repeated softly, “where I can impress upon her the magnitude of disgrace that befalls a despoiled woman.” He rubbed thoughtfully at his lip. “And then comfort her most tenderly in the nadir of her pain.”

  Marian had, by the simple act of asking an innocent question, conjured memory again. Locksley found himself unexpectedly vulnerable, trapped in recollection.

  “Forgive me,” she blurted, clearly alarmed by his withdrawal, the rigidity of the features he had trained to ward his soul. “If I said something wrong... I didn’t mean... I’m sorry—” She broke it off at last, letting the silence be loud between them.

  She had not meant it. She was sorry. And he knew it. But it was fresh all over again, reawakened here in England: the sun, the heat, the sand; and the stink of newly spilled blood undiscerning of its origins in Saracen flesh or Christian.

  Or even in his own.

  The shame and guilt were renewed. It was all he could do not to shout. “I did not see Jerusalem.”

  Her face was pale beneath dirt and welts and bruises. “It is private,” she managed tightly.

  “Yes.” It was all he could manage.

  Marian nodded stiffly, eyes fixed hard on the ground, and made her way in silence two steps past him to the rude bed he had fashioned from leaves and boughs. It was horribly uncomfortable, even for all his effort, but he sensed she would lie on it to punish herself for her tactlessness.

  She had every right to ask, and he every right not to answer.

  Marian lay down once again, making no effort to be comfortable. He watched her a moment, knowing he had hurt her without knowing why; knowing also she deserved more than to see his private pain, but he had nothing else to give, save the truth of experience, and that was most painful of all.

  She lay on her back, very still, eyes closed. He doubted she would sleep. He knew he would not.

  He turned away and sought his own place nearby, sitting down at the base of a tree with his back against the trunk. Two paces separated their bodies. Much more than that their minds.

  She should know. But he could not tell her.

  Above all she should know, yet to tell her the whole of it would give her unbearable pain. Tell her only a part. But he shied away from that, aware of his own pain, that he himself could not bear. Who do you protect? Marian-or yourself?

  Conscience spoke again. “Someone should be told

  Someone had been told. But Richard now lay in a dungeon—or did they treat him better than that, knowing him for a king?

  He looked again at FitzWalter’s daughter lying stiffly on the ground, ill-cushioned by his attempt to make her comfortable. The father’s voice was loud in the battered chamber of his skull. And please to tell her, I pray you, how very much I love her.

  “Robin.” Her voice was soft. “I have a right to know.”

  Robin. Like his mother. But Marian FitzWalter was not and never could be anything like his mother.

  Nor was it his mother he wanted, looking across the two short paces to the woman in the darkness with moonlight’s wealth upon her face.

  Arousal, unknown so long, locked away where it could not invite abuse, was painfully abrupt. The intensity made him breathless. “No—” She would misunderstand, of course, thinking he denied her; and he did, in his own way, though for a far different reason from the refusal to tell her the truth of her father’s death. He denied her on both counts, in speech and in carnal congress, or even the contemplation, because to allow himself the freedom to consider the repercussions of either would result in complete loss of self-control: emotionally, physically, spiritually.

  No, he told himself, and beat at desire with words, though none of them aloud. Self-contempt warred with self-hatred, conquering a traitorous body too long denied release, too weak to insist upon it when faced with determination honed by the enemy.

  Locksley gritted his teeth. What would the father say to know the man in whose place he died desired to lie with his daughter?

  What would Richard say?

  Thirty-One

  Will Scarlet lay flat on his back, staring up at the leaf-screened night sky. Through the latticework of limbs he saw the stars, the moon, and his future. Meggie, he mourned, ’tisn’t what we wanted. ’Tisn’t what we planned.

  But there was nothing for it. Too much had simply happened to change his life forever. He was what he had been made by those who thought themselves better, but the time for change had come, albeit harshly and painfully. No more was he compliant. No more was he respectful in the face of unfair treatment. It was his turn now to shape what he would be.

  Thief, he said in silence, seeing how it felt.

  Emptiness answered him.

  Not what he had wanted. Not what he had planned. The worm of shame was painful, eating its way into his spirit.

  He drew in a heavy breath and blew it out again, hearing it hiss through swollen lips. His head felt packed and thick, his front teeth loose, and his offended nose enormous.

  Sudden tears at the back of his throat made it hard to swallow. I wish you were here, my Meggie. By God, I wish you were.

  But Meggie was gone forever.

  Marian drew in a trembling breath, suppressing the desire to shout at Robert of Locksley. He was not the only one who grieved, who knew the pain and confusion of loss and sudden change. I shouldn’t be any with him. Yet another part asked, Why not?

  Evenly, she repeated, “I have the right to know.”

  “He’s dead,” Locksley said roughly. “Is that not enough?”

  It was, but she continued anyway because she had to know. Because she wanted to make him speak, to share with her the knowledge that drove him so mercilessly. “You said he died in your place.”

  Colorlessly, “Yes.”

  “That the Saracens had caught you.”

  “Yes. So I said.”

  Marian shut her eyes tightly, aware she walked the precipice of her own design. “Men say things... people say things, dependent upon their own vision of what is right. Even if what they recall is different from the truth.” She hoped it was enough, without being too much.

  His first words divulged he understood her completely, even her intent. Even the suggestion, couched in subtlety. “I failed him. He died.”

  No more than that. No extended excuses, no pleas for understanding, no cry for forgiveness from the dead man’s daughter.

  Five simple words. Because of the first three, her father was dead.

  She expected the pain to renew itself, the intensity of grief to overpower her.

  Quietly, she said, “Men die in war. My father knew that
very well; he said it often enough, when I asked him if he’d come back.” She did not look at him but lay very still, staring dry-eyed at the sky. “He was a knight all my life. Each time he rode away—when I was old enough—I asked him to come back. He said if he could, he would.”

  Locksley was mute.

  “Men die,” she repeated. “I miss him, I mourn him—I would give anything to have him back again—but how can I blame myself because I wasn’t enough to make him stay behind?” She paused. “How can you blame yourself for being more fortunate than he? You lived, he died. Short of dealing the deathblow yourself, what can you blame yourself for?”

  His voice was rusty. “You are not a priest.”

  “And therefore I cannot perform a formal absolution?” Were it not so poignant, Marian would have laughed. “But that is why you came. The sheriff didn’t send you—he wouldn’t; you’re a threat, and he’s embarrassed and humiliated by Eleanor’s behavior, which he believes cost him a match with the Earl of Huntington’s son.” It was obvious to her, every bit if it; it occurred to her, but only in passing, to wonder why it mattered, and why she cared so much that he be freed of self-contempt. “No, you came for another reason. You came to expunge your guilt, and to petition a different source, a far more appropriate source, for the absolution you require.” She drew in a steadying breath. “Were I not FitzWalter’s daughter, you would still be in Nottingham.”

  A noisy silence. Then, “Don’t,” he said, by way of admission.

  I have to make him see. Marian was unrelenting. “I forgive you, Robert of Locksley. I absolve you of it. And I, not a priest, am the only one who can.”

  When he made no answer, she looked at him. His face divulged nothing because it was hidden from her, pressed against upraised knees with hands splayed across his bowed head.

  It hurt very badly to see it. “Don’t,” she whispered raggedly, echoing his own plea.

  At last, he lifted his head. The mask had shattered utterly, betraying the inner turmoil, the boy behind the man, so vulnerable in his pain. “It—was bearable,” he said. “Bearable, because it had to be, because a man grows accustomed—he must, if he is to live.” His face was ravaged. “Death is death, no more; a body is nothing but that, meat rotting on the ground. Because if you think about it—if you allow it into your sleep ...” He drew in a deep breath. “It was bearable. It was forgotten, in the first days after my capture... I spared no thought for him, because all I could think of was me, the white-haired pet of the Lionheart—” he broke it off stiffly, thumping his head against the tree as shoulders slackened. “When I thought of it again, I could not stop thinking of it. He was more than a dead man. More than a body. More than a piece of meat rotting on the ground. He had given me a task—he had told me of his daughter, and his hopes for that daughter, and his plans for that daughter... don’t you see? He made me see the man, not the knight. He made me see the father. ...”He shivered once, in the cold, still damp from his fight with the giant. “And I came back at last, came home—and there she was. Sir Hugh FitzWalter’s daughter, standing there before me, breathing there before me, not dead, but so alive... the last remnant of the man who died at Richard’s side, because I wasn’t in my place. Because I had failed my duty.”