“Do you, now?” The smirk had returned to Johan’s face. “That’s not what young Much tells me.”
Much was the newest addition to their retinue. Eager to advance himself, he was youngest of five sons to the local miller, adequately explaining the change of trade. What could that one have to say?
“I had him follow you yester’s morn. You went north, took your ease at a serf’s cottage—”
They aren’t serfs, Gamelyn’s mind gave foolish protest even as every nerve ending shrieked, I’m caught. Bugger and piss, I’m caught.
He’d learned, quite well, how to swear under Rob’s tutelage. He had also learned, beneath Johan’s tutelage, that to give away any reaction whatsoever was to court further penalty. Nevertheless, Gamelyn nearly fell over in sheer surprise as Johan gave a sudden bark of laughter and gave him a clout on the shoulder.
It seemed almost—friendly.
“So you’ve a slut on the side!” Johan was still chuckling. “Frankly, lad, I didn’t think you had it in you.”
Several conflicts reared themselves within Gamelyn. One was, Slut? What in hell are you talking about? Then, He had me followed, followed, and what all did they see? Then, a slow burn of anger: Merciful Heaven, he’s talking about Marion.
“She is not a—!” Just in time, Gamelyn throttled the words down in his chest where they roiled, burning.
“Of course. They never are,” Johan agreed with a smirk. “Even when they are.” With a sudden, swift motion, Johan moved close and laid a heavy arm across his shoulders. Control or no, Gamelyn couldn’t help but tense.
“We were worried after you, wandering about,” Johan said, eminently reasonable. “But don’t worry, I didn’t tell Papa about the girl. He’s old-fashioned, he won’t understand. At least you’re occupying yourself with a man’s business for a change, and not mooning about the chapel. All that praying only makes for sore knees and a foul temper. Better you sore your knees in another fashion, eh?” Another laugh, and Johan snugged him closer, all man-to-man solidarity. It almost made Gamelyn want to respond.
Almost.
His instincts were proven right mere seconds later. Johan leaned in.
“But if she comes to our gates with any bastards?” Johan’s voice tickled his ear, went very soft. Dangerous. “She’ll wish the little worm had never been born.” Another snug, this one cruelly tight, and Johan’s breath tickled his ear, humid threat. “Mind that, petit lapin.”
And Gamelyn was released, hot and cold all over, and Johan was striding from his chambers, boot heels clicking against the stones.
“I’ll send Ricardo to you here on the morrow.” Johan’s voice drifted back. “As Papa wishes. I suggest you take this opportunity seriously.”
The wooden door slammed, echoing into the hallway with the sound of those boots. They faded into the heavy silence of the armaments lobby.
Gamelyn took his practice sword over to the wall, hung it in its place. As he drew his hands back, he realized he was shaking. Wondered if he was going to be sick.
He turned on one heel, went to the narrow, open window against the far wall. The wind had indeed risen, sending small spatters of rain against his burning cheeks. He took a small, shallow breath, then another, deeper. He sought out the thick buttress of Blyth, glowered at the wall as if it was the slimed and filthy wall of a gaol.
You coward! some tiny, furious voice behind his eyes lashed out. You should have… should have….
Should have what? Protested? Told the truth? Given Johan a right hook?
You should have at least defended Marion!
Fear abruptly crystallized into a rage so abrupt and fierce that he thought he was going to hurl his guts out onto the cobbles below. Instead Gamelyn gripped the stones of the sill, clenching his teeth until angry white flares throbbed at his temples. He winced, put a questing hand to where Johan had backhanded him. Sticky, and when he pulled his hand back, blood smeared his fingertips.
And more blood in his mouth. Running an experimental tongue across his teeth, Gamelyn found a jagged corner off one molar. Aye, and it could have been worse. He’d need to find some wood spirit and myrrh, pack it well to ensure it wouldn’t grow angry with any rot. He was no more impressed with a barber-surgeon’s tools than Marion had been.
He closed up the shutters against the gathering clouds and retreated to the opposite corner, where there was always a hogshead filled with water. Gamelyn grimaced at the scum floating on the surface—more to blame on the warm, humid weather—and instead turned to peer in the polished surface of a shield hanging on the wall. Johan’s mailed fist had done adequate damage. Gamelyn’s face was abraded from his chin to up over his cheekbone, and his face was already beginning to swell. Particularly his jaw, which sported an ugly, finger-long slash.
With a resigned sigh, Gamelyn went to the hogshead, dunked his entire head, and came up sputtering.
Defending Marion would have betrayed her. If Johan thought that Gamelyn was keeping company with a family of peasants for any other reason than having his “rights” with that family’s daughter?
He would suffer, yes. But he had seen, since his father’s illness, how those with much less power than Gamelyn himself held could suffer if they crossed Johan.
Gamelyn turned, put his back to the stone walls. A shiver, not altogether from the cool, damp stone, claimed him.
He’d never fully considered the gravity of what he’d been doing. Never considered that the consequences of discovery could reach out beyond himself. It had been a lark, nothing more.
No, that wasn’t true. It had been much, much more. An escape from an ill father, a brother’s intimidations, a tiny chapel that was the only connection, cold and empty, with a mother he had never known. A dream, really: a never-ending summer’s warmth of simple dreams, aspirations, approval.
And now, at the thought of those things in danger?
He should not return to Loxley.
The thought rent a slow, desolate fissure in his chest. Gamelyn put a hand to his breastbone, almost expecting to feel the warmth of laid-open flesh and blood set to seep.
The hot spurt of tears behind his eyes was real enough.
It had been over a month since he’d been able to visit Loxley, and it was passing strange how the previous day’s visit had felt incomplete, somehow, without Adam’s calm presence, or Rob’s… well, whatever it was that Rob had.
Perhaps it was fear, again. Neither Adam nor Eluned were serfs. Adam was a king’s forester, a skilled archer, a yeoman with more rights than many.
“No fear, Gamelyn,” he whispered. But it was Rob’s voice he echoed, Rob whom he heard in his mind. A much lower register than it had been the first time they’d met, but still with that lilt and brass, shiny as polished metal. Fear does y’ no good. You show throat, they’ll only sense it, and then you’re nowt to ’em.
Rob had been talking about the outlier wolf they had run across on one of their forest jaunts. Gamelyn had started to back away—surely a sensible move, when faced with a wolf with his jaws full of fresh-killed rabbit—but Rob’s slender, callused hand had shot out, tangled in Gamelyn’s tunic, stayed him. And damned if Rob hadn’t just stood there, shoulders squared, nostrils flared, peering with flat eyes from beneath his brows. The wolf had bristled, growled, and stared back. Then, after the longest moments of Gamelyn’s life, the wolf had snarled, relinquished the rabbit, and slunk away.
Fine, then. No fear. He’d just been given the best excuse of all to continue his journeys: a dalliance with a peasant girl, expected for someone of his age and status.
And even more, reason to heed the utmost of cautions.
VI
THE FOREST seemed to moan around them as they emerged from it and onto the main road, a pitch of not-quite-sorrow that echoed the wind. Adam straightened in his saddle and halted just past the crossroads. He cocked his bare, brown head this way and that, as if testing the wind, the foothills, and the fens.
Beside Adam, his lieutena
nt, George Scathelock, took the rein in his teeth and unbuckled his crossbow from its harness. Rob, mounted beside Will, exchanged uncomfortable glances with his friend.
“Da?” Will put hand to his own shortbow, athwart his back.
“No worries, lads,” George said easily, hefting his crossbow and watching Adam as he knelt and put ear to the ground.
A gust of wind tugged at Rob’s dark curls and fluttered at the fur over his father’s shoulders.
“Brr,” George said. “From muggy enough to sweat yourself sick to this. The wind’s turned all chill t’ sudden, eh, lads?” Then, as Adam stood: “Is sommat wrong?”
“Nay.”
But they all heard the unspoken: Not that I can put my finger to.
Rob watched his father, frowning. They were here as courtesy, a forester’s escort to see a cavalcade through their territory of Barnsdale and the Peak Forest. Many travelers chose to have a good man of the forest as traveling companion. And no doubt Adam would receive a goodly tip to share with his companions. It was a normal and easy enough obligation, yet Adam seemed ill at ease.
Aye, very strange. Rob was starting to sense it as well. It sent prickles over his arms and a hum… nay, more a vibration… was shimmying its way all slow up the back of Rob’s neck. Between his legs, black Arawn crabstepped, as if also feeling it. Not for the first time, Rob missed Willow’s steadfast presence. Arawn was more fit for both Rob’s leggy height and new station, but was young and often lived up to his name—not necessarily bad by nature but aloof, and sometime unpredictable as any lord of the otherworld’s darkling realm.
And Adam watched Rob—when he thought Rob wasn’t heeding him. Adam had always kept a careful eye upon Rob, in truth, but since Rob had ventured into Cernun’s caverns and come out to be crowned with the Hunter’s wreath, it had turned even more piercing, more… apprehensive. As if when Rob had gone down into the Seeking and taken hold of things he still was fighting to grasp, Adam too had found existence tenuous. His father had taken on a weight, somehow, and Rob couldn’t help the wondering: was it a weight that was meant to be his own?
There was fear, now, in Adam. Rob could all but scent it. Yet he didn’t know how to classify it, what to do with it other than turn his head from it, discomfited.
“They’re coming. The ground echoes. It’s quite a body of horse, for a church retinue.” Adam’s frown swept over his companions as he remounted.
“And the other?” George pressed. He was Adam’s assistant forester, but he was also of the covenant; he knew something was… off.
Adam shrugged. “Probably the coming storm, nowt more.”
The words grated, somehow, opened within Rob a fissure of that deep, ancient place—the one that could issue the same tiny tendril of fear in his own heart that had taken root in his father’s soul.
The coming storm. Nothing more, and nothing less.
They unslung their bows, mere show if that approaching company was indeed large and heavily armed, and set themselves to the wait. Soon a group of blue-clad soldiers, some on foot and some a-horse, straggled over the north-most rise and spilled down the dirt road. They were followed by two wagons and more soldiers. Bannermen marched fore and aft—or in this case, bannerwomen. Nuns in black gowns, dusty from the road, in a dutiful and grim march amidst the sheriff’s soldiers, carrying the colors of their allegiance—a crimson so black it looked like old blood. The first wagon was overlarge, pulled by a team of cold-bred horses, while the other was drawn by a light team.
“Prosperous,” remarked George.
“You don’t invest a new abbess with sackcloth,” Adam said, wry, then rode forward, hand held up in greeting.
The soldiers had already grouped together in defense. One, obviously the captain, rode forward on his high-mettled horse, sword prominent at his hip and head defiantly bare. Several others flanked him, helmeted and a-horse, to surround the party of foresters. George and Will went rigid, both ready. The tension was sudden, palpable.
One never knew what would happen when strangers collided upon the roads. Friend—or foe? Outlaw—or gamekeeper?
“I demand recognition,” the captain demanded, “in the name of Her Most Reverend Lady Elizabeth, Abbess of Worksop.”
Adam inclined his head courteously, but did not relax his guard for a second. “I am Adam of Loxley, king’s forester. We were requested by the Lord High Sheriff of Yorkshire, Brian de Lisle, to provide escort through our territories of Barnsdale and t’ Peak Wode. It is my honor to serve.”
“And mine to take your service.” The captain also gave an amiable tilt of his head. “Please, ride with us. We were expecting you and welcome your knowledge of this place. I am Colin Stutely, guard-captain to Sheriff de Lisle.”
“Has manners,” George murmured to Rob and Will. “Must be English.”
Will smirked at Rob, who wanted to smile but couldn’t. The odd drone purling beneath the wind had gotten louder with every step the party had taken, ramping up into a throb behind his ears. He was desperately afraid he was going to be sick, and this only his third foray at his father’s side for something so important.
Behind the mannerly guard captain, the soldiers parted, revealing a black-veiled rider. The Abbess—it must be—was dressed like to the lesser nuns afoot, her voluminous skirts made of the same wool serge. Her veil, however, drifted on the wind in the manner only silk had, and her pectoral cross was large and set with gems. It winked against black, off and on catching the wind-tossed light.
Adam ducked his head respectfully, as did Will and George in quick secondary tandem. Rob disguised a heavy lean against Arawn’s neck as obeisance, but his eyes did not give way. They were snared to the Abbess.
Or rather, to the cross upon her breast. It was a lavish thing, unique, inlaid with enamel, set with sapphires and rubies in gold and hanging from links of finest silver.
He had seen it before.
Dreamed it before, dangling over his head while he lay bleeding, breathing sharp and shallow, dying….
“Lower your gaze, boy!” A sudden, sharp blow to his temple knocked Rob sideways in his saddle. Head ringing, eyes watering, he yanked himself back upward and flung a flat, furious snarl at the soldier who had ridden up and struck him.
“Don’t you dare raise that insolent look to me, you—!” And the next blow knocked Rob out of the saddle and to the ground.
It had all happened so quick and brutal, in a furious almost-silence, and Rob was unable to hear anything further for a smattering of seconds. He half lay, sprawled on the ground with ears ringing and head spinning, hoofs dancing altogether close to his head.
Suddenly, he heard shouts, saw another body hit the ground on the other side of his horse. He barely rolled aside in time to avoid Arawn’s sideways spook.
“Will!”
“Stop him!”
A feminine voice, imperious. “Stop it, stop it this instant!”
Then his father’s voice, rising above the rest and setting the earth beneath Rob pulsing with its power. “Enough of this! Captain!”
And the captain’s voice, shouting orders.
Arawn had settled down; Rob reached up, grabbed at his stirrup and dragged himself gingerly to his feet. Thankfully, Arawn stood like a rock, for Rob still felt as if sparks from a very large fire were scattering and popping off the inside of his skull. He peered over Arawn’s withers to see a soldier holding one of their own—Rob assumed it was the one who’d struck him—they all looked alike in their ridiculous helmets. George was holding back Will, who was snarling silent curses toward their antagonist, and several soldiers were ringed around them.
Adam was still mounted, and while Rob knew his father would never entangle himself with the authorities for any reason, this time it bit deep and bitter.
After all, his son had just been whacked off his horse, and his underforesters were cornered.
“What in Hell is going on here?” The captain had dismounted, was stalking over. To Rob’s surprise, he ve
nted his ire not on Will or George, but the soldier who had struck Rob down. “You there! By what rights do you abuse our escort?”
“That boy villein”—a gesture over to where Rob was still clinging to his saddle—“gave my lady an unseemly gaze, Captain!” Neither was the soldier backing down.
“You pu—!” Will’s growl turned into a muffled snort as George clapped a hand over his mouth, gave a terse order into his son’s ear.
The Abbess, meanwhile, had dismounted and come forward. Her eyes were as a burning brand into Rob’s skin. Blood pounding in his ears, he met her gaze, unable to help himself. A hand came heavily onto his shoulder, and his father’s voice murmured in his ear.
Gritting his teeth, Rob looked away. Pulled away. His father’s breath hitched, troubled; it seemed another, deeper breath exhaled about them. As if something had been avoided, just barely, but not averted.
“Rob, are you all right?”
No thanks to you, it was on his tongue to say, his own disappointment raw and angry. Instead he murmured, “Aye. I’ll live.”
“Let me help you back up—”
“I’ll do it m’self—”
The Abbess’s voice broke the silence, soft but underlain with steel. “Joubert. Your diligence is valued, but you misconstrue. He is but a boy and needs forbearance, not harsh admonition. Come away.”
Rob looked up to see the soldier—Joubert—nod curtly. He obeyed his mistress without another word.
“And as to that lad, he merely rose to the defense of his friend. An honorable trait in any man or woman. Release him.”
The Abbess had charm—and Will was, as always, susceptible to a lovely woman. The fact that this particular one was a professional virgin merely roused his spirit. He bowed, very low, and her lips quirked, as if she knew exactly what he was about. “He is your son?” This to George.
“Aye, Reverend Lady. And more temper than brains, most days.”
She smiled, dipped her head, and turned from them. Arawn shifted; Rob hissed a hoarse-slurred, “Be still, you nappy bugger,” and the gelding quieted.
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