Jennifer Roberson - [Robin Hood 01] (24 page)

Marian yanked at kirtle, undertunic, and mantle, cursing her missing slipper, and dug in her toes as she leaped away from Scarlet.

Two strides, and he had her by the cloak. So easily,
too
easily; Marian cried out incoherently as the cloak-band tightened abruptly, snugged up against her throat. She tore at it, trying to rip it over her head before he could use it to pull her in like a fish. The tine of cloak brooch bent. Fabric stretched and tore.

Let it go.
She bolted, worrying at the cloak, trying to keep her footing against the hardships of too much fabric, too much foliage, too little knowledge of where to go. Branches slapped her face, snagged her arms, rapped her on stocking-clad ankles.

He jerked her off-stride easily, using the cloak, then was on her in a leap. Arms locked around her hips. She fell, as did he, twisting as she went down, trying to snag bough or rock with two clawing, grasping hands. “No—” A stick. She hammered at him with it and saw it break up like pottery.
“No
—” She clawed now at the hands that caught gouts of kirtle.

“Let be!” he snapped. “Let
be
—
”

She caught up handfuls of crumbled leaves and damp soil, scooping up clots of mold and mud, and hurled it all at his face. “Let me
go
—”

“Let be!” he shouted.

His hands were on her waist, all tangled in kirtle folds. He was sprawled across her legs, imprisoning her lower body with nothing more than superior weight. Marian dug elbows into the ground and tried to lever herself up, twisting against his grasp.

A rock. A small rock. Not enough to batter him senseless, but
something
... She shut it up in one hand, twisted to gain more room, hurled it hard as she could at his exposed face.
An eye,
she begged.
Let it be an eye
—

It struck cheekbone, leaving behind a clot of mud. She saw his shock, his warped mouth as he swore; the bristled pallor of his face. She scooped up more dirt and debris and threw it into his eyes and mouth. One knee was partially free: she hooked it upward as hard as she could, hoping to hit something vital.

“Little whore—” he spat.

“I’m not
anybody’s
whore—”

“Let be!” he hissed. “D’ye want me to kill you?” He ducked the hurled stone, then lunged forward toward her face, coming down atop her hips. His weight nearly crushed her. “Let be, little whore, or I’ll show you what I can do—”

She battered at him with fists, aware of rage, both cold and hot, the wild anger that lent her strength in the place of fear. She acknowledged it and drew upon it, using its power in place of her own.

The flesh beneath her fists was stubbled, dirty, slack. She saw the lips moving, mouthing curses and complaints, but she listened to none of them. The only thing she thought about was breaking free from him, no matter what it took.

His hands now were in her hair. Marian twisted her head and tried to close her teeth in his flesh.

He caught her by her braid and the fabric of her clothing, handfuls of it, dragging her up from the ground as he lurched to his feet. He stood her there, like a rag doll, staring at her in grim fury. A trickle of blood dribbled down his face from the cut on his cheekbone.

Marian kicked and caught a shinbone, bruising bare toes in the process. He caught her up instantly, jerking her into the air completely off her feet, and slammed her full length into the nearest tree trunk. Her head thumped dully on wood.

Marian sucked noisily at the air, wishing her vision would settle.

“Listen here—” he said. “Best do as I say, little whore—” But he didn’t wait for the protest she couldn’t make, still breathless against the tree. He simply yanked her free and dumped her down again, hard, sending arms and legs awry as she landed flat on her back, then sat fully upon her as she sprawled across the ground. His weight was oppressive. “Now,” he said, “I’ll do what I should have done first. . . .”

She thrashed once, weakly. “I’m not who you think I am—”

“Doesn’t matter, does it? You’ll do.” Grimly he jerked the meat-knife from her girdle, then cut strips of wool from her mantle.

“I’m Marian FitzWalt—”

“Doesn’t matter, I said.” One strip for her mouth, tied so tightly it cut into the corners of her mouth even as she tried to tongue it away. Then he lifted from her, flipped her over and sat again, grinding her facedown into the damp, moldy earth. Another length of wool bound her wrists behind her.

Marian thrashed again, wriggling against the ground. He tied off the knots, stood and pulled her up, then spun her to face him, locking one hand into the hip-length weave of her braid.

“I’ve two strong hands,” he rasped. “Don’t make me use them.”

Through gag and nose she wheezed.
Don’t let him see you’re afraid.
But she was. Reaction made her tremble violently, much as she hated it. She breathed heavily against the gag, trying to fill her heaving lungs, and stared back at the man.

She wanted to scream at him, to shout that he was wrong, he was a fool; couldn’t he listen to her? Couldn’t he believe her? She wasn’t the sheriffs woman. She wasn’t a
Norman
woman. She was of good, sound English stock, just like his own.

He tore the mantle from her, snapping the band at last. “Too bright,” he muttered.

If I could break free and run
—

Dark eyes were malignant. “Walk,” he said only, and began to beat his way through the forest, dragging her by the braid like a balky cow on a rope.

Nottingham’s keep was far older than the modern one at Huntington, without ostentation or amenities to soften its angled, sharp-edged harshness. It was utilitarian both in nature and presentation; William deLacey, its latest tenant, wasted neither effort nor expense at making it anything else. It was, he had said, to be a castle boasting strength, impregnability, and something that suggested a powerful, brooding malevolence, so as to remind its visitors—honestly met or captured—exactly what it stood for: justice and retribution.

The hall therefore was nothing more than that: a high-beamed masonry cavern, lacking wall hangings, painted plaster, or tapestries, as well as adequate light. One end was screened to provide a walkway between the adjoining kitchens, pantry, and buttery. The other end boasted a low dais with a massive fixed table and one equally massive chair, meant to inspire awe as the sheriff made decisions and issued pronouncements.

The hall was always a trifle dark, with an overriding chilly dankness that helped to crush the spirits of those fools stupid enough to fall foul of the law. That it was no more hospitable to its inhabitants, including the sheriff himself, was something no one mentioned. Sir Guy of Gisbourne, in his zeal to save money, had decreed a cutting back of household expenditures, a measure which included candles, torches, and lamps.

Eleanor deLacey glanced up as her father entered the main hall, striding through one of the doorways into wan candlelight. She had ensconced herself in
his
chair in
his
hall behind
his
table. She didn’t move as he entered. She simply sat back and waited for his protest. He was a proprietary man who guarded his possessions as well as his pride and his office.

But he made no protest. Grim-faced, he merely shouted for wine at the first servant who appeared, and tore his cloak free of brooches without unpinning them as he strode the length of the trench.

He is out of temper.
Eleanor’s smile reflected an odd contentment. “Let me guess,” she said lightly. “Someone called you a bad name.”

The malignant glance DeLacey shot her, which displayed his mood, also informed him that she had usurped his place in the hall. Yet he said nothing. He merely flung the cloak across the table and began to pace before the dais, kicking aside rushes and the remains of an earlier meal. The Sheriff of Nottingham did not countenance dogs, so the rushes were worse than most.

The wine came. DeLacey drank down the goblet’s contents, thrust it out for more, then waved off the hovering servant. The pacing began once more. This time he drank in less haste.

Eleanor smiled more widely, aware of an intense, almost sexual pleasure, and sat back in the massive chair. Quietly she tapped bitten fingernails against the scarred wooden tabletop. It was amusing
and
intriguing to see her father so discomposed; generally he kept such black moods to himself altogether, or contained them in the privacy of family quarters rather than the hall.

Something has set him off . . .
“Someone spat upon you,” she suggested. “Or dumped a nightpot on top of your head.”

He spun, slopping blood-colored wine over the rim of the goblet. His sibilants were harsh in the shadowed hall. “I sent you to your chambers.”

She lifted a single eloquent shoulder, a premeditated gesture she’d learned from him. “You were gone. I came out.” Eleanor displayed a triumphant smile, along with her overbite. “Would you expect anything else?”

He glowered at her, creases deepening around his eyes. The fleshy pouches beneath, she saw, were heavier than they had been the year before. “Do you realize that between your wantonness and the actions of a murderer, my plans are well-nigh ruined?”

Too bad.
Eleanor arched eyebrows plucked thin. “Is someone dead?”

“No. Why?”

“You mentioned a murderer.”

“He was due to hang this morning, but the task couldn’t be done because I was at Huntington Castle.” He scowled and drank more wine. His tone was thick. “And now he’s escaped, taking Marian with him.”

“Marian ...” Eleanor’s attention sharpened. She sat rigidly upright in the chair, rapping out her question in thinly disguised alertness. “Do you mean that little black-haired bitch from Ravenskeep?”

DeLacey spoke through his teeth. “That ‘little black-haired bitch,’ as you call her, has more beauty and grace in her smallest toe than you in your whole body.”

It hurt, as he meant it to, but the pain faded because she made it fade. It was a test, a purposeful provocation, and therefore unimportant; they had spent years gibing at one another. No. What
was
important was that the other implications of his remark.

Eleanor lurched to her feet. “And you want her for yourself. Is that it? You want her in
your
bed, and he’s stolen her for his.”

“More than that,” he growled.

“More than that?” she echoed, faintly alarmed. “There is no more than that. You want her for your whore, and someone’s taken her from you.”

“I want her for my wife.”

Eleanor gaped. It was worse, far worse than she had anticipated. Shock left her breathless.

“Yes,” he said quietly, seeing her expression, “you may well hold your tongue. But it is what I intended.”

“To marry—
her?”

“Yes. You for Robert of Locksley, Marian for me. A fitting dual pairing, wouldn’t you say?—except now you’re ruined.” His glare was baleful. “Not much is left to you, now.”

But for the first time in her life, Eleanor didn’t care about herself. “You wanted FitzWalter’s daughter?”

DeLacey drank wine. The silence between them was loud.

He couldn’t mean it
...
this is sheerest folly, designed merely to annoy me
. . .

It had to be. There had been no mention of a third wife for as long as she could remember, certainly since she was old enough to understand what a wife was. One by one her sisters had married, leaving only her. Eleanor had long played the part of chatelaine, more recently coexisting intemperately with Sir Guy, and had accustomed herself to doing much as she wished in spite of her unmarried state, even to the point of deciding a husband was unnecessary; that in fact one might prove more than a little difficult in the face of her vigorous and fickle physical tastes.

A new wife would require things, because new wives always did. New wives
changed
things, to make the old place new. To put their mark upon a man, his hall, his holdings. A new wife would usurp a daughter’s role and much of her freedom, even as the daughter usurped her father’s chair.

Eleanor collapsed into that chair, clutching the edge of the table. “But—she’s ruined, too. Don’t you see? You can’t have her. You
can’t have her
—
”

“Enough,” he said.

“Don’t you see?” Eleanor laughed out loud. “If some man’s carried her off, she’s as ruined as I am!”

DeLacey’s tone was deadly. “You forget yourself,” he said softly. “A man may accept whatever affronts to his pride, honor, and name he decides to accept. In your case, neither the earl nor Locksley would have you . . . but I would have
her.
By
God,
I’d still have her . . . so long as she’ll have me.” His expression was grim.
“If
she will have me, in spite of what has happened.”

Desperation made her strident. “But if he’s raped her—”

“As the minstrel raped you?” DeLacey arched one brow. “Ah, but I forget myself . . . it was the other way around, was it not? You were the aggressor, not Alan of the Dales.”

Heat stung her face. “I told you what happened—”

“You told me what you wanted to tell me, before all those others, to save whatever shred of dignity still clings to your name.” His contempt was plain. “I should send you to a nunnery. Or marry you off to a wild Welshman, to teach you humility.”

Eleanor bared her overbite. “I hope he rapes her so many times she’ll not let a man touch her—”

“Be silent!” he roared. “By God, I wonder if you’re mine! I wonder if your mother didn’t lie beneath the sheets with a common, lowborn herdsman . . . your manners are no better.”

Eleanor glared back, hating herself for the film of tears in her eyes. “I am what you have made me.”

“But your mother had no taste for bedding at all, be it human or animal.” He slammed the goblet down on the table, splashing wine. “I will have her,” he declared. “Be certain of that, Eleanor. Jab at me all you like, but I will have the woman.”

She swallowed painfully. “What will
I
have, then? What is left to me?”

He eyed her with undisguised disgust. “Nothing of virginity. To that I will attest.”

It was easier to be angry than to show him vulnerability. “Neither will she!” she spat. “Neither will
she
have any!”

DeLacey laughed. “Ah, but you forget. Provided she survives, by the time he is done with her—or if we rescue her beforehand—she will be properly grateful. Her disgrace will be mitigated by my willingness to marry a woman who’s lost her virginity. She will be widely pitied, and I as widely admired.”

Eleanor gritted her teeth. “If she doesn’t kill herself from shame.”

Her father smiled faintly. “Not Marian. Too much of her father in her for that. As for you, well . . .” He shrugged. “One can always hope.”

 

The mantle was a puddle of blood on the ground: bright, brilliant, new blood, welling up through leaves and deadfall. Frowning consternation, Little John knelt and touched it almost hesitantly, marking shredded cloak-band and a hole torn in the weaving. Something glittery fell as he pulled a crimson fold from the ground. He scooped it up and cradled it in his palm: a round, elaborate silver brooch in the knotted Celtic pattern.

For a long moment he stared at it, transfixed not so much by the brooch as by what it suggested of its wearer’s fate. Less than an hour before she had been watching the wrestling match with everyone else. And now, but a short time later, she was being dragged into Sherwood Forest by a killer already sentenced to hang.

Little John’s generous mouth became a grim, flat line in the midst of his fiery beard.

He shut his hand over the brooch, warming the raised pattern of elaborate knotwork against his palm. Wiry russet hairs bristled from beneath the sleeve of his soiled tunic to the big knuckles on his massive hands. They were very soft, his hands, from dealing with the wool. It made them sensitive to textures, in fabric and in metal.

“She’ll be wanting this,” he murmured, and tucked the brooch into the pouch that swung from his hosen drawstring.

He heard it then, in the distance, moving away from him. Going deeper into the trees. The sound of grass, leaves, and foliage, as well as deadfall and detritus, all being disturbed by the hasty passing of two people.

Once, it had been easy to ignore the plight of others, turning his face away from the abuses heaped upon serfs and lowborn wretches like himself. But now his sheer size could make a difference. All he had to do was summon the courage to do it, then stand by his convictions. As he had before the sheriff.

He knelt there listening, puzzling out their direction. When he was very certain, he set off in soft pursuit. He took great pains to be quiet. For a man his size, he was very quiet indeed.

 

Scarlet broke a passage as best he could through the foliage. The task was difficult. Sherwood was no park tamed by verderers, but a forest in full glory, deep and dark and tangled about with fern and vines and creepers. The thick-boled, spreading trees themselves were no friendlier, closing ranks against interlopers.

He slapped aside branches, broke through limbs that threatened to snag his clothing, or worse, to snag hers. He at least wore tunic and hosen, while she was wholly encumbered by layers of kirtle and undertunic.

The thick braid gripped in one hand proved a superior rope, exerting control with the faintest snap of a wrist. It forced her to walk with her head at an awkward angle, but he found it appropriate. That she made no protest as he jerked her this way and that, pulling her through the forest, was a function of the gag. He knew very well that if he took it off, she would curdle his blood with her screams.

Though she hadn’t screamed before. All she’d done was call him names, hurl dirt and rocks, and try to batter him blue.

Like Meggie did with them
—He cut the thought off abruptly.

Not that he blamed this woman for it. She wanted free of him as much as he wanted free of
them;
the difference was, he intended no real harm to her. They would hang him.

If they didn’t do worse first.

It was enough to harden his resolve, no matter how sorry her state. She was the sheriffs woman; she was, therefore, valuable. He could use her to buy his way free, be it from the sheriff’s men, the sheriff himself, or even Sherwood Forest. They said outlaws lived here, hidden among the trees, footpads and brigands who worked the forest tracks stealing goods—and lives.

She tripped often, stumbling over rocks and logs and deadfall, because she couldn’t hold up her skirts. It was obvious that she was weary, exhausted by her labor to go where he bid her to go, but he dared not cut her hands free. She’d proven her mettle already.
Likely she’d look for the first full-blown limb to batter my head to bits.

Scarlet stopped short, breaking through high bracken onto the grassy bank of a fast-running stream. Spring rains had thickened it, giving weight to its usual presence, so that it splashed out of its course onto the rags and strips of leather masquerading as his shoes.

The woman stopped next to him as he guided her by the braid, and tottered briefly a moment, on the verge of falling in. He jerked her back with a curse, which made her stagger against him, then lurch away awkwardly.