Jennifer Roberson - [Robin Hood 01]

by Lady of the Forest

  “It would seem so, my lord.”

  Huntington looked at the quiet, capable, graying man who had served his household for more than twenty years. “What do you see in him?”

  Ralph was a medium man of no outstanding features and no discernable ambition, save to serve his lord, and was therefore ideally suited to his position. He performed his duties quietly even amidst high turmoil, then withdrew without earning notice. He was often invisible to those so accustomed to servants and excellent service they only noticed when things went wrong.

  Ralph smiled a little. “I see his mother in him.”

  The earl’s mouth hardened. “Then you would agree he lacks a certain maturity of character.”

  The servant’s answer was framed carefully. “No, my lord. If you will permit me, I would say the opposite is true.”

  “Would you?” Huntington’s brows arched. “He has always seemed soft to me. And you must concur, if you see his mother in him. She was a well-meaning woman, but decidedly too soft, too frail of spirit—she dwelt entirely too often in daydreams. There were times I despaired for her sanity—” He broke it off. Such things were not discussed even with longtime, loyal servants. “You see otherwise, in my son?”

  “My lord, he was always a fanciful boy. How many times were we servants dispatched to hunt for him, when all the while he had made a snug place somewhere in the old hall, or wandered in the woods?” Ralph smiled. “He was very like his lady mother ... but there is you in him, also.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, my lord. He has come home—different. Harder.”

  “Has he?” The earl consumed a grape, thinking his way through Ralph’s observation. “I suppose that is true, if one considers his unwillingness to receive guests properly ... and his discourtesy in riding out of this castle without a word to me.” He spat the pips into a silver bowl. “But that is to be expected, is it not?—he has been to war, and I doubt not there are things he will do that I cannot understand.” He ate the last grape thoughtfully. “Nonetheless, he must see that I have requirements of him, now that he is home. He is my heir—and I am no longer young. It is time he was married with sons of his own, so I may go to my grave satisfied I have done the proper thing by my descendents.” He cast a satisfied glance around the room. “He will inherit a great castle, far greater than most in England. I will expect him to administer it properly.”

  Ralph’s tone was deferential. “My lord, he has always been mindful of duty.”

  The earl made a distinctly skeptical sound. “Once he is made to see I insist upon it, yes. His mother coddled him, encouraging him to waste time on bootless dreams. Had any of the girls lived, she would have had them on which to practice such ridiculous things, but there was only Robert. He spent far too much time with her in idle pursuits, and not enough in learning his role ...” He frowned, remembering. “Although I do believe the beatings helped. Eventually he forbore to speak of such useless imaginings, so I must assume he outgrew them—or perhaps he merely saw the necessity of my strictness, and began to honor me for it.” He sighed, thinking back on the past. “Five children dead, and two proper sons in the ground ... well, Robert will have to be made to understand that his responsibilities as heir to Huntington require specific things, even sacrifices, which I believe strengthen a soul.” Huntington looked at Ralph. “He must put behind him the follies of youth and recall it is time he conducted himself as a man worthy of my name.”

  “My lord.” Ralph’s tone was exquisitely neutral. “I believe he has more than proved himself on Crusade.”

  Pride surged through Huntington’s breast, replacing doubt. He gripped the arms of his chair. “You are right, Ralph. I should not suspect him of being what he once was. He has come home a new man, and I should respect that.” He laughed breathily, an unfamiliar sound. “I can hardly order him beaten now ... if he spends an evening with a woman, I should not chide him for it—so long as he recalls there is better in the offing.” He sank back into the chair once again, stroking his jaw. “John’s daughter,” he mused. “How high may we aspire?”

  Marian sat on the three-legged stool next to the bed, working at knots in her hair. For a long time she had sat idle, willing him to get well, but eventually she gave in to common sense and admitted that the fever would not break because she wished it to, and the best thing for it was to do whatever she could to make him comfortable and simply wait out the illness. Meanwhile, she might as well comb her hair.

  She needed a bath desperately, but she would not leave Robin’s bedside. He was restless and delirious; who knew what sort of nonsense he might mouth? It would not do for the servants to hear of private things.

  The knots in her hair were stubborn. Marian feared she would have to cut most of them out. But as she split the tangles first with her fingers, then worked each matted lock until the comb ran freely, she began to think she might keep her hair after all.

  What I want is to comb his hair—Marian broke it off, astonished that she would dare to think such a thing ... and then she thought, oddly, of Eleanor deLacey, who said women had the same sort of urges men did and deserved to act on them, too; and Marian berated herself for refusing to acknowledge the truth of that, when she knew precisely how she felt, and had felt since she had seen him standing on the torchlighted dais.

  I do want to comb his hair. I want to comb it, to put my hands in it, to feel the texture and smell the smell, to brush it against my lips—Marian dropped the comb. Humiliated by her forwardness, she hunched on the stool and covered her face with both hands, trying to will herself to forget the impulses and the wishes, the hunger in her spirit that made her want to touch him, and go on touching him until he awoke so he could touch her.

  Forty One

  It was hot, so horribly hot, but the Lionheart did not appear to notice. While other mail-clad men wilted beneath the fierce sun, Richard, King of the English, did not so much as sweat.

  “Hah! Robin, do you see? The walls of Acre before us, just waiting for my kisses ... what do you think, my Robin? Shall we bring the walls down with horns as Joshua did Jericho? Or use wits and might instead?” The king was a bluff, vulgar, roistering man whose manners were his to mind, and who did not give leave to anyone to suggest he lower his voice. “Well, what say you, my Robin?”

  His Robin stood on the barren, scoured plain, staring up at the creamy brick that defied usurpation. Behind it lay a city that was a key to Jerusalem, for if Acre ever fell the Crusade was sure to succeed.

  “Well? What say you?” The king slung a thickly muscled arm around Robin’s neck. “Do you say they will fall, or no?”

  Robin smiled. “The walls will fall, my lord. As to Joshua—why not order horns blown as we set seige so the Saracens will believe our God is on our side?”

  Richard grinned. His russet hair burned molten gold in the brilliant sun. “Well said, my Robin! We’ll have the cursed Infidels tearing down the walls themselves!” He unhooked his arm and turned back toward his field pavilion, striding purposefully. Richard went nowhere slowly, nor wasted time on deliberation. “Now—come. There are plans to be laid and wine to be drunk ... where is Blondel? Blondel!”

  Robin watched idly as the minstrel appeared from around the colorful pavilion marked as Richard’s by the pennon hung atop it and the shield beside the door-flap: three English lions on a field of scarlet. Blondel looked sleepy, scrubbing absently at his mouth with the sleeve of a once-fine tunic. He was slender, elegant, well-spoken, with the hands and hair of a woman, pale and very fine. Blondel was very much his own man in everything save when it came to the king, whom he worshipped. Few in the army liked the minstrel because the king liked him so well.

  “Blondel! We’ll have music with supper. Bring your lute, boy ... or have you lost it again?”

  Blondel duly smiled the sweet, boyish smile that lighted up his blue eyes. “No, Sire. It lives in your tent now, so it has no mind to wander.”

  It was a joke in the army that Blondel’s idle
dreaming had cost him his lute; it was restored only when the king commanded it to be. Robin knew from camp gossip that the lute had been purposely stolen merely to tax the minstrel, but no one told the king that. No one breathed a word of Blondel’s reputation, nor the army’s determination to part the king from king’s favorite.

  A chill touched Robin, cooling the day briefly. Will they say the same of me? Some do already—if they succeed in turning the king from his beloved lute-player, will they then look to me?

  “Robin!” Richard shouted. “You will broil your brains in the sun—come in and sup with me! I’ll have my matched boys, if you please.”

  They were not so alike as that, but it was Richard’s conceit that they balance one another in every respect. Robin was taller and heavier, but no one noticed that. They saw a wealth of fair hair bleached whiter by the sun; that and royal favor marked them forever inseparable in the cynical eyes of the army.

  “Robin!”

  Men would kill to sup with the human heart of the Crusade. Robin went into the tent as Blondel tuned his lute.

  Sir Guy of Gisbourne levered himself against the bolsters, trying to inch himself upward without setting his leg to complaining. Then with great care he stretched out his arm, grasped the empty mug, and hurled it against the door. A moment later the empty bowl with the damp cloth followed it. “Here!” Gisborne shouted. “Where is that cursed barber?”

  Through the door he heard voices raised and a scuffle of feet. Then the latch was lifted and the cursed barber entered hastily. “Stop your noise!” he hissed. “Would you wake the earl himself?”

  Gisbourne gritted his teeth. “I’d wake the king himself if it got me what I wanted.”

  The barber glared. “What do you want?”

  “Fresh linens,” Gisbourne grated. “ ’Tis past time you changed the bandages. And water, too, damn you. Am I a prisoner or a guest?”

  The barber sniffed. “What you are is a clumsy fool who got himself stuck by the boar. Don’t you know you’re supposed to stick it?”

  Gisbourne regretted mightily there was nothing left to throw. Sweat broke out on his face as he labored to pull himself upright yet again. “Damn your eyes,” he said weakly. “Just because I saw fit not to let you hack off my leg—”

  “I meant to save your life,” the barber declared. “But now you’ll die of the rot, and all I’ll have for my trouble is the body to dispose of.”

  “I’m not going to die. I’m going to live, damn you, so I can marry the Lady Marian.”

  “Ah, sits the wind in that quarter!” The barber grinned. “Then you’ll be fighting the sheriff for her.”

  Gisbourne went very still. The room was abruptly cold.

  “It’s all over the castle,” the barber continued. “They say he’s settled on her, but there’s the lady to ask first.”

  “Indeed,” Gisbourne remarked.

  “Indeed, yes. Since he can’t wed his daughter to Sir Robert—which I doubt would have happened anyway, knowing the earl—” the barber smirked; he counted himself higher because of his lord’s rank, “now he looks to himself.”

  “Does he?” Gisbourne said grimly.

  “Indeed, yes.” The barber flapped a hand. “Sit still, then, will you?—I’ll fetch clean linen and water, so you won’t wake up the earl with your yammering. As to the lady, I wish you joy of her. She’s a sharp tongue in her head.” He pulled the door behind him.

  Drenched in sweat, Gisbourne breathed audibly through clenched teeth. His wound ached abominably, but he managed a sickly smile. “Fight the sheriff?” he asked. “No, I think not—not if Prince John pays my price.” He even laughed a little. “Meanwhile the sheriff will be wed to that fat old North Country beldame!”

  Robin spoke of walls, and horns, and many other things Marian could not decipher. She understood little of his speech, wracked as it was by weakness and delirium, but what stood out most distinctly was that he didn’t always speak English. She heard again the tangled sentences she had heard during the boar hunt, when he’d brought the beast down. She understood them no better now, knowing only that he twitched restlessly with some inner need, and sweated against the pillows. His hair was wet with it, and his face deeply flushed.

  Marian did not doubt for a moment that the Crusade had touched them all with its harshness, regardless of its bounty in the glorification of God. She had heard stories of men coming home with one leg, or no legs at all, or arms; she’d heard of sicknesses that reduced grown men to children who lapped weakly at spooned gruel. It was possible he was very ill indeed, but Robin himself had said he’d had the fever more than once, that the king had also, and did not seem concerned for the fact that he would fall ill, other than to wish it to happen out of her company.

  She dipped a soft cloth into the bowl of cool water and carefully sponged his face, wiping it clean of sweat only to have it bead up again until it ran from brow to temples, wetting hair and staining pillows. He was hot to the touch, yet he shivered.

  “Insh’Allah,” he muttered, twisting against the mattress. And then a spate of foreign words.

  He subsided, and his jaw muscles clenched briefly, then slackened. The tilt of his chin displayed the jagged scar twining like a serpent along the bone. There was another scar also, an ugly gouge at his hairline that she had not seen before.

  How many more? she wondered. Or should I merely be thankful you have all your limbs in place and not ask what else was done to you?

  Marian swabbed his face again and blotted the sweat from his neck where it soaked into his tunic. Dry lips moved briefly, but issued no sound. “Hush,” she said gently. “Don’t waste yourself on words. Sleep will do you more good.”

  Pale lashes stirred, then the eyelids cracked open. She saw the feverish glint in his hazel eyes, dilated dark. “My lord ...” he murmured.

  She grinned, suppressing laughter. “No. Lady will do. Or, perhaps better: Marian.”

  “My lord,” he said plainly, staring glassy-eyed at her, “without you, the Crusade will fail . . . let Leopold go if you must, but you cannot lose heart—”

  “Shhhh,” she said, wondering how ill he was if he mistook her for a lord. “You are in England, Robin. England. You are home. You are safe. You are home.”

  Brows knitted briefly. “Richard ...” Tentatively, then with more conviction, as if getting used to the name, “Richard—I’m sorry ...” His eyes closed as he swallowed convulsively. “—sorry ...”

  He meant the king, of course: Richard Coeur de Lion. She had heard him say the Christian name before, as if it were his to use freely in whatever way he wished, when everyone else knew titles. What puzzled her were the nuances she heard in his tone: desperation, affection, admiration, the faintest suggestion of regret.

  He stirred, twitching restlessly. She blotted his face again, murmuring inanities meant only to quiet him. The sound of his breathing altered, and she knew he slept deeply once more.

  Marian stared fixedly at him for so long a time her vision blurred. And then she shut her eyes and clenched her teeth together until she thought they might shatter. She wadded the cloth tightly in both hands, sinking her nails into the weave. “It just isn’t fair.”

  The chamber was silent save for the even breathing of the man in the bed.

  Marian shook her head slowly, deliberately, aware of a slow-rising desperation tempered with resentment. It wasn’t fair, any of it; she wanted to shout it at him.

  She lurched to her feet and strode toward the door, intending to vacate the chamber and send a serving woman to nurse him. But as her fingers touched the latch, she stopped. She muttered a curse she had heard her father use once in extremity. It had been forbidden to her, but just now the circumstances warranted such words.

  Marian swung around, her spine against the door. “It isn’t fair,” she declared, challenging the man.

  Robert of Locksley offered her no answer.

  Doubt flickered a moment. I should go ... leave him to Joan. She won’t
think of such things.

  No. Joan wouldn’t. She couldn’t. She did not recall, as her lady did quite clearly, the first time Robert of Locksley had entered Marian’s life, nor each time thereafter: in the hall of Ravenskeep, beneath the mistletoe; on the dais in Huntington Castle; in the streets of Nottingham; in the shadows of Sherwood Forest.

  And now. Marian laughed very softly. She thought it was time she told him.

  “I was a girl.” Purposely she employed the conversational tone of a grandmother telling a child a story, so as to keep emotions out of it; what was required was a simple, concise, straightforward recitation. “And you not so much older ... but very aware of yourself. Very cool, distinctly aloof, keeping well clear of the games until even my mother noticed, and tried to draw you in. But you withstood her; you withstood my mother ... who understood you in that moment far better than anyone else.”

  She folded her arms beneath her breasts. “I saw a quiet, watchful boy whose hair caught the candlelight and made him look like an angel ... or so I fancied him, just for a moment—I was ten years old.” Her smile faded. “Then I decided you were not a Christmas angel because you never smiled, nor looked with any favor on anything we did ... and so I decided to make you smile, no matter what it took.”

  Marian paused for a moment, then went on. “So—I went to you and caught your hands, and dragged you beneath the mistletoe, trying to make you smile. Every man smiled when he kissed a lady beneath the mistletoe. And so I kissed you.” She laughed and shook her head. “But you never once smiled.” She watched the rise and fall of his chest, making certain he breathed. “I told my mother the next day, when you and your father had gone. She said your mother was dead but six months and your father very strict—that you were a lonely young man who needed to be loved. So—I decided to love you.”

  His eyes remained closed, his breathing even. He had heard none of it, but then she had not really intended him to. She had intended only to say it out loud for the first time in her life, every bit of it, as much to explain it to herself as to anyone else.