Jennifer Roberson - [Robin Hood 01] (26 page)

The giant slapped a massive hand against his chest. The sound was audible. “I’ve done nothing—”

“You have!” Scarlet shouted. “You’ve put hands on a Norman woman,
defiled
a Norman woman—d’ye think he’ll not use that? D’ye think he’ll thank you for this, and invite you in to supper?” Bitterly, Scarlet shook his head. “You’re a fool, John Naylor, to expect good of the man. He’s Norman. He’s the sheriff. She’s his daughter, or his wife, or his woman—does it matter? D’ye think he’ll let you go when he can make an example of you?”

“If she told him the truth—”

“She won’t. She’s a Norman.” Again Scarlet shook his head. “She’ll tell him we both abused her, just to see us hang.”

Desperation was painful. “She’s naught but a
woman.”

Scarlet’s tone was deadly. “So was my wife. They killed her anyway.”

Little John scraped rigid hands through the fiery bush of his hair, tugging at trapped locks as if the violence might ease his mind. He turned away, staring blindly into the forest as he paced away from the man, trying to ward off the words Will Scarlet had used. It was much easier to ignore them. He had learned to ignore so many, from Normans and Saxon alike.

He shut his eyes tightly.
I should have stayed in Nottingham
—
I shouldn’t have come out here . . .
But his conscience told him he’d had to. The look on the woman’s face as Scarlet had captured her—

Little John swung back, glaring balefully. “I’m naught but a shepherd. I wrestle at the fairs.”

Will Scarlet shook his head. “Not anymore.”

“I can tell them the truth. I came here to help the woman.”

“We’ll sell her back to them in exchange for our freedom.”

“Then I
will
be an outlaw!”

“And what will you say when accused of helping me escape?”

Little John nearly gaped. “I had naught to do with that!”

“They’ll think you did. They’ll think we planned it; that even now we conspire in the forest.” Will Scarlet’s mouth was hard. “They’ll say what it pleases them to say.”

The blood had stopped. Little John felt his sore nose gingerly. “Why d’ye tell me this? So there will be two of us hunted?” He leaned and spat, clearing his mouth of blood. “Seems to me you’ve more to lose than I.”

“I can’t stop you,” Scarlet said. “Go back, then, and tell them. Say to them you took the woman back from me. Take
me
back, if you can, along with the woman. Give the Normans what they want.”

The realization came swift and sharp. “You’ll tell them, won’t you?” Little John challenged. “That we planned it, you and me. You’ll see to it I suffer the same fate as you.”

Will Scarlet did not so much as flick an eyelash. “No man wants to die alone.”

Futility seized him. Big hands curled into fists. “I came here for the woman, not for you!”

Scarlet hitched one shoulder. “Too late, now. I’m here, and she isn’t. I’m as good as hanged.”

Little John wanted to smash his fist through Will Scarlet’s grimy face. But that would do nothing to change the truth Scarlet himself had stated so plainly.

Or the falsehood to which he would swear.

This is wrong. This is wrong.
But doubt waxed like the moon. He knew what Normans were. He knew what Normans did. Little John fixed Scarlet with a scowl. “I’ll not have her harmed.”

Will Scarlet folded his arms. “Then bring her back yourself. I’ll wait here for you.”

Little John eyed him. “And what if I find her, and take her back to them after all?”

He shrugged. “I’ll be a free man, safe in Sherwood Forest. You’ll be an honest one, rewarded with Norman justice.” Scarlet’s voice was steady. “Which of those fates offers a Saxon peasant a chance?”

 

The arguing had ceased. Marian sat rigidly behind the felled tree, listening intently. But there was nothing more. Whatever they had argued about no longer was in contention.

She’d heard no outcry, no blurted exclamation. She supposed a man could die in silence, but it seemed unlikely. Surely a man, nearing death, would fight with all his strength, even if he lost.

Her doubled-up legs were nearly asleep, numbed by dampness and tension. Marian rolled onto one hip, slowly straightening out her limbs. Everything ached.
In the morning, it will be worse
—But she cut off the thought. She didn’t like the idea of not knowing where she might be, when night gave way to dawn.

She wiggled her fingers. They felt thick, swollen, useless. The wool cut into her wrists even as it cut into her mouth, chafing the tender skin. Her braid, already littered with debris, picked up more as it dragged the ground, and something had found its way into her left eye. Marian closed it, trying to work the irritant away, but the discomfort worsened. She sat helplessly, letting the tears fill that eye, wondering angrily if she would succumb to womanish weakness. She did not cry easily. She saw no good in it. Swooning would earn her nothing, nor would crying. The only thing that might save her was her own determination.

The eye teared. Marian sniffed, blinking rapidly, trying to see clearly again. She longed to rub her eye, but had no hands with which to do it.

Sound. The faintest hiss and rustle of a body sliding by leaves.

Marian spun, tumbling backward, hitching herself against the bulwark of a fallen tree. A muted wail of fear combined with denial ended at the gag.

The body stepped out of the shadows. Marian blurted a name, but the gag made it indistinguishable.

Much.
The relief was overwhelming. She scrabbled up, lurching forward on her knees, angling her shoulders away from him so he could see her bound wrists.

Much came forward slowly, wary as field warren. Marian waggled her hands and encouraged him with emphatic noises warped by her woolen gag.

His touch was light and hesitant. She felt him work at the knots. His fingers were long, slender, deft, the hands of a talented cutpurse, but the wool was wet and snugged taut. It would take time.

Marian tried to remain still, but she felt herself trembling.
Hurry.
His hands stopped moving. She expected them to fall away, as would the binding. She expected herself to be freed. She intended to rip the gag from her mouth, spitting its foulness away. But her wrists were still tied.

She made a sound of urgent appeal, but Much, transfixed, waited. When the giant came noisily out of the shadows the boy scrambled up and ran.

The giant’s fiery hair stood up in a wild halo around his head. Blood marred his freckled face, as well as his tunic. His nose, already prominent, appeared to be swollen.

His astonishment was plain. “Boy!” he shouted. “No, boy—come back!”

There was nothing to mark Much’s passing save the twitch of a sapling tree.

“Boy—” the giant rasped, reaching out a huge hand. Anguish twisted big features as he looked at Marian.

She stared, transfixed.
He killed Will Scarlet after all
... And now he wanted Much.

“He’ll tell,” the giant whispered. “D’ye see? I’ve no more choice, do I? No choice at all, now.” He bared teeth, flexing his massive hands. “That boy will tell them ’twas me, and what Will Scarlet said will come true!”

Marian scrambled up. Something in his eyes was wild with grief and anguish.

The giant looked at her. “I meant to let you go. I did mean to. But now there’s the boy, and what Scarlet said—” He shook his head in a slow, desperate sorrow. “Now I’ve no choice at all but to do as
he
wants to do.”

It was all she needed to hear. Marian spun on bare heels and lunged toward the shadows where Much had disappeared. He was huge, the giant ... if she could get through, get ahead of him, surely she would be swifter.

But in one stride he had her. Her left shoulder disappeared into the massive hand. Marian tried to wrench free, but he merely hooked a hand under one arm and swung her around.

“I’m sorry.” He touched her briefly with his free hand, tentatively, as if afraid she could burn him. “I’m sorry, lass, I am.” Pale blue eyes were sad as he studied her face. “Poorly used, I know—” And then he cut it off, as if he’d given too much away. The grasp on her arm tightened. “Best come with me,” he told her. “ ‘Twas naught of my idea, but there’s no going back, now. We’ll trade you to the sheriff to buy our way free.”

He was too big, too strong.

The hand tightened again, its tentativeness gone now. “Come along now, lass.”

Marian glared at him, very close to tears. She was wet, weary, bruised, and battered, aching in every bone.
I was so close.
Her fear was abruptly replaced by a furious, desperate anger. With all the strength she could summon, she lowered her head and butted it hard into his belly.

It rocked him but briefly, and that from astonishment alone. Marian meant to twist free as he staggered back, but the giant didn’t stagger. He merely scooped her up easily and hung her over his shoulder.

Marian wanted to scream.
A sack of flour. Again.

Much squatted behind the tree in an agony of indecision. He clutched the shoes in both hands, his traitorous fingers knotting themselves into the flaccid leather.

The opportunity was gone now, and Marian still tied. Still gagged like a common peasant poacher hauled away to forfeit a hand.

He squeezed his eyes shut, biting his lip so hard he felt the teeth cut through and the blood welling into his mouth—punishment for failure.

He leaned toward the tree, pressed his brow into the bark, and he beat his head against it, grunting in despair, battering at skin until the flesh was raw and damp.

His giant had stolen his princess.

What next, then? He was too small to stop him. He was a simpleton: everybody said so. The very best
he
could hope for was to find someone to help. Someone bigger. Someone friendly. Someone who understood.

Should he tell? Should he tell?

But who
was
there to tell?

Not the sheriff. Or his Normans.

Who, then, was left?

His giant had stolen his princess. The fragile perfection of his self-built world was broken.

Much hugged the tree, like a baby clutching a breast discovered unaccountably empty.

He hugged, and rocked, and whimpered.

He’d forgotten to give her the shoes.

 

Will Scarlet, once called Scathlocke, hunched upon the stump. The ringlike, spiked corrugations of what once had been a tree but now was merely a pediment did not dispel the tension, did nor serve in any way to distract him from the acknowledgment of the events he’d set into motion.

“Meggie,” he whispered tightly, then ground the heels of his hands into burning, dust-scoured eyes, red-rimmed and gritty from lack of sleep; from lack of tears, as well.

But Meggie couldn’t help him. Meggie was the
reason.
He had only to think of Meggie, to see her again before him, sprawled upon the ground like a rag doll with shredded limbs, all slack and empty and lifeless.

Trouble was, she’d lived. For a night, and half a day.

Pretty Meggie Scathlocke.

“Mad,” he muttered aloud. “—’s what they say I am. And maybe I
am
mad, to wish I could do it again . . . over again, all of it ... again and again—and
again
—”

It trailed into nothingness, a futile plea for understanding; for a regeneration of his spirit, shrunk down from good Will Scathlocke into murder-mad Will Scarlet: to a tiny, hardened pellet of an irredeemable rage.

Elbows dug into bunched thighs, his legs spread to lend him balance. He leaned his weight upon them, and scoured his face, stretching it out of shape with callused and blood-smeared hands.

Giant’s blood, he knew. Not Norman blood, this time, but that of an Englishman. Spilled in the woman’s defense.

“No.” He said it aloud. Then, viciously, to ward off even the suggestion of guilt, “Little Norman
whore.”
Nothing like his Meggie, reaping naught from rape but death.

Scarlet shut his eyes. Fingers curled around the weapon thrust into the drawstring of his hosen: the Norman whore’s little meat-knife, barely big enough for his hand.

Meggie. Meggie.
Meggie.

He jerked the knife free of hosen, staring at its blade. With infinite, exquisite precision, he set it against his forearm midway to the elbow, where dark hair, blood, and dungeon filth showed through the rent of his sleeve.

“What color is mine?” he rasped, and cut into the flesh of his arm.

 

Little John frowned fiercely as he carried the sheriff’s woman through the dense tangle of undergrowth. She was an exquisitely tiny thing, and as exquisitely fragile. He was absolutely convinced that if he held her too firmly, or bumped her against a tree, she would break into little bits.

It wasn’t right, he knew, but the boy would tell the sheriff.

She was tiny, fragile, and vulnerable, like the smallest of twin-born lambs.
I’m sorry,
he said inside.
I’m sorry, little Norman.
He stumbled, cursing in sudden, jolting panic that he might drop and break her, and she cried out against the gag as he clamped his arm more tightly around kirtle- and shift-bundled thighs.

She was rigid and stiff as wood, bent like a greenwood sapling across his massive shoulder. Her breathing was ragged and noisy, constricted by the wool, but he dared not take it from her. He couldn’t bear to hear the names she would call him, the threats she would hurl, the promises she would make of death by hanging, or worse; of the hands they would chop off, of the tongue they would cut out, of the cautery they would use to keep him from bleeding to death and robbing them of their sport.

He recalled her expression just as he’d scooped her up. Her eyes were alive in her face, reflecting his own fear as it was magnified in the mirror of a transfixed, weary gaze abruptly empty of hope.

It had made his spirit quail, the expression in her eyes. Not hatred, though he’d expect it; but an opaque, futile acknowledgment that nothing she had done, and nothing she could do, would win her the slightest freedom.

Little John strode on again, shredding foliage in his haste.
I’m sorry, little Norman.

But she offered no answer, hearing nothing of his thoughts, and he was glad. He knew how words could cut. He knew how hatred could harm. He knew he deserved it all.

Little John walked on, feeling the beat of her braid as it slapped the back his knee with every step he took.

 

The track was narrow and winding, a skein of umber-brown wool tangled upon the floor. Trees crowded either side in haphazard communion. It was dark in the depths of Sherwood, musty with shadowed dampness. Here spring did not exist, save for the budding and blossoming of flowers scattered through grasses and fern. It was olive and ash and charcoal, and a sullen yellow gone rusty where the sun could not creep through.

Locksley walked easily, boot soles cushioned from dirt by layers of skeletal leaves and decaying ferns left over from winter, soft in place of brittle, crushed quietly into death with no crackle of protest.

The air was heavy and damp. He was alone among the shadows, human interloper within the secretive depths. This was
England,
the heart and blood of the land, so distinctly different from the sand and heat of the Holy Land, where the sun baked a man’s armor so that a new fashion was invented: the brilliantly colored surcoat blazoned with England‘s—and Richard’s—folly, borne forth into senseless battle in the name of Jerusalem.

Then sound, where there had been none. Unexpected intrusion. Locksley halted abruptly, stiffly, swinging gracelessly to face it.

—
the thunder of mounted Saracens riding out to battle the English. The rumble of massive seige engines rolled up to the walls of a city Richard decided would be his
—

Locksley’s breath ran ragged. He felt the pang in his belly, the clenching of his bowels. A glint of sun on mail sent a shudder through his body.
Not here . . . this is England.

And then memory was gone, banished by comprehension. He stepped aside hastily, relinquishing the track to the horsemen riding by, except instead of continuing on they chose to rein in abruptly, setting horses onto haunches, powerful hocks digging into track as iron-shod hooves plowed barren furrows, spraying dirt, debris, and dampness.

Six men. All Normans. Blue-clad sheriffs men, boasting Norman livery, Norman equipage, and Norman arrogance.

He was the son of an earl. His pedigree was impeccable, if anyone cared to inquire. But he was very, very English, Anglo-Saxon to the bone. The Conqueror had altered nearly everything in England, including courtesy, and Locksley was not of the proper blood, Earl’s son though he was.

He moved aside, forsaking the track, not because he was English, nor that they were Norman, nor sheriffs men who believed themselves superior to a common English peasant, but because the six rode
horses;
and any man not a fool gave way were he on foot.

One of the soldiers rode forward, reining his mount close to Locksley, who stood his ground a moment, then moved aside yet again. It was a game he recognized, having seen it played before. He lost nothing at all by giving way easily; if anything, he won much more in the safekeeping of his feet. The Norman’s horse was large, snorting wetly as he stomped. Locksley offered the horse respect, if not the man who rode him.

The Norman gazed down at him from beneath the curving shelf of his conical helm, his eyes shaded by the nasal vertically bisecting the center of his face. In bad English, he said: “A man, and a woman in red.”

Locksley shook his head.

The Norman moved his horse closer yet. “It is necessary to tell the truth.”

Locksley smiled politely, offering no cause for comment, then said in good Norman French, “I have seen no one since I left Nottingham, neither the man they call Scarlet, nor the woman wearing it.”

“But you know them!” Only the tiniest flicker of his eyes betrayed the soldier’s surprise at hearing his own language, and fluently, in the mouth of a man so obviously English, and therefore inferior. “How do you know them? Who are you?”

He hesitated a moment. Then, “Robin,” he said merely.

A rook flew squawking from the foliage beyond. The Norman scowled. The eyes were not dark after all, but gray, shadowed by the nasal. “You have a pretty tongue, for a peasant.”

The insult was not lost upon Locksley, who smiled faintly. “It was necessary to learn the language of the Conquest, lest we
be
mistaken for peasants among those born to the tongue.”

“But you
are
...” The Norman frowned again. The five behind him spoke quietly, murmuring among themselves.

“I am English,” Locksley said, still speaking in Norman French. “You need know no more than that.”

“I know you require education,” the soldier snapped. “We are of the sheriffs personal garrison, out of Nottingham Castle. We pursue a man wanted for murdering four of Prince John’s men. He has stolen a woman.”

“Prince John?”

“The murderer, you fool!” The Norman edged his mount closer yet, imperiling Locksley’s toes. “She is an
English
woman. Would you have one of your own harmed?”

Locksley kept his tone pitched low, to make the man work to listen. “I would have no English woman harmed, nor an English man. Nor would I harm a Norman, save to keep him from harming me or mine. Perhaps that is what the murderer did, in killing Prince John’s men.”

The Norman’s face was stiff. He examined Locksley closely, weighing accent, language, and manner against the clothing he wore, which, being simply made, unadorned garb, marked him as a man of no consequence—save for the other things, which marked him as something else.

“Who are you?” the soldier repeated. “Robin who? Of what village?”

“Locksley,” he answered easily. “Hard by Huntington Castle.”

“The earl’s domain.” The tone was less hostile now; the mention of Huntington and its earl changed matters significantly.

Locksley, who knew it, and why, smiled. “Yes.”

The Norman glanced briefly back at his five compatriots. Very slightly he shook his head, as if admonishing them to say nothing before a man who understood their language—or a man who lived within the protection of the earl. Then he turned back to Locksley, mail glinting in sunlight.

The earl’s son squinted; in the shadows it was blinding.
Norman mail, not Saracen.

“It should mean something to you that he has stolen an English woman,” the soldier declared. “One might believe that you wish some harm to her, were you to hide what you know.”

“I know no more than I have told you.”

The Norman gritted teeth, muttering to himself. “Then we’ll waste no more time with you. Be on about your business.”

Six horses thundered away, throwing damp sod into his face. Methodically Locksley wiped his face clean, then pulled damp grass for his hands, and looked across the track at the foliage beyond. “You may come out now.”

 

Much froze. He clutched at fern and grass. Should he run? Should he flee?

The blond man spoke again. “You have no taste for Normans, or you would have joined us. And since you listened to us, you know I have no more fondness for them than you yourself do.”

Much waited, wishing he could turn invisible and sneak away without the man knowing a thing. But it was too late. He could run, but so could the man. He thought it most unwise to risk yet another beating.

Much rubbed at his flattened bridge, wishing he could breathe. Then crept out from the foliage and stepped onto the track.

Eyebrows arched beneath pale hair, expressing mild surprise. Then the man smiled. “One can hardly see you in the shadows. I know the Normans didn’t. I only knew you were there because of the rook.”

Much stared at him. He knew him. He
knew
the man, from somewhere. The same brown clothing, the same spill of pale hair.

He stiffened, remembering. He knew him now.

The man saw it and crossed the track to catch him by the arm before Much could flee. “Wait.”

Much struggled, trying to break free. But the man didn’t let him go.

“I said, wait. I won’t hurt you. If I meant to, I would have given you to the Normans.” The grip increased. “I won’t hurt you, boy. I promise.”

Much ducked his head, expecting a blow. He hunched one shoulder to protect his left ear. If he said nothing, the man would never know. He’d beat him anyway, but he’d never know for sure.

“Why are you here?” the man asked.

He was so fair that he lit the shadows around them. The wash of pale hair, the arch of blond brows, the equally pale lashes. And yet the flesh, for his fairness, was weathered by a sun much harsher than the one looking down upon them now. And the eyes were not so pale, but a clear, perfect hazel: sometimes green, sometimes brown, changeable as summer weather.