Jennifer Roberson - [Robin Hood 02] (4 page)

“What happens,” she asked, “when the king dies?”

Will Scarlet grunted. “They name a new one, don’t they?”

“A son,” Marian said. “The eldest son, as Richard himself was the eldest of Henry’s surviving sons.”

Tuck’s expression suggested he understood the implications better than the others. “But Richard Plantagenet has no sons.”

“Aye, well.” Little John looked from Tuck to Marian, shrugging massive shoulders. “They’ll find someone.”

“The Count of Mortain,” she said. “Prince John.”

“D’ye think it matters to us?” Will asked roughly. “This king, that king . . . means naught to folk like us.” He paused, grimacing. “To you, maybe.” She was a knight’s daughter, while they were all of them so far below that as to be nonexistent.

Marian drew breath. “Five years ago,” she said, “you robbed a tax shipment.”

“For the king’s ransom,” Scarlet declared. “And ’twas Robin’s idea, wasn’t it? The son of an earl!” He shook his head, lifting a tankard to down a gulp of ale. “Naught to us. The king forgave us all our sins.” He grinned at Tuck. “Like a priest.”

“That king,” Marian agreed, even as Tuck murmured that he was a friar, not a priest, “who may be dead even as we speak.”

Scarlet fixed her with a scowl. “D’ye think after five years Prince John would recall a thing about us?”

“Not Prince John.” It was Alan, stilling his strings to look at them all. “The sheriff. He will remember.”

Scarlet hooted briefly. “
You,
maybe—you tupped his daughter and got caught for the pleasure. But he’s naught to do with the rest of us.”

“He would have hanged you,” Marian said, “for murdering those Normans—”

“They murdered my wife!” he cried, red-faced in sudden anger.

She raised her voice. “—and Tuck was nearly excommunicated because of the sheriff. Much nearly lost a hand to him, for picking pockets—”

“Teach him to be better at it, then,” Scarlet muttered, still angry.

“And Alan he would have hanged, too, for certain—indiscretions.” The minstrel grinned, amused by her word choice. “And me . . .” She sighed. “Me he would have married.”

“Hanging’s worse,” Little John declared, then colored as she fixed him with a scowl. “Well . . . ’tis. With the one, you’re dead—”

“—and with the other, you might as well be,” Marian finished glumly, taking up the tankard Scarlet had given to her.

“And it may not be Prince John named at all.” Alan smiled blandly as they turned to stare at him. “There’s Arthur.”

“Who?” Scarlet demanded.

“Arthur of Brittany. Geoffrey’s son.” The minstrel shrugged. “Traveling as I do, I hear things. And since the king has never sired an heir, nor named one, there are those who whisper we might be better off with Arthur.”

“He’s but a boy,” Tuck protested.

“But he has his grandmother.” Alan fingered a flurry of brief notes. “Eleanor of Aquitaine. ’Tis one way to be Queen of England again.”

“She’s an old woman,” Scarlet declared, clearly dismissing the possibility.

Marian smiled. “Eleanor of Aquitaine is not a woman to let age keep her from anything she wishes.”

“Then you believe she will fight John?” Tuck inquired.

She thought about it. “One is her son, one is her grandson. Blood means something.”

“Blood never kept the Plantagenets from fighting amongst themselves before,” Alan observed lightly. “Old King Henry might have had his sons killed any number of times, for their . . .” He paused, savoring it. “Political ‘indiscretions.’”

Scarlet shook his head lugubriously. “Has naught to do with us, does it? They are
royal
folk.”

“Look beyond yourself,” Marian suggested sharply. “Look beyond the immediate world. The sheriff was Prince John’s man before—”

“The sheriff is his
own
man,” Tuck interrupted forthrightly. He should know; he had been in William de Lacey’s service five years before. “He serves himself.”

Alan asked, “And if serving himself suggests he should serve Prince John?”

Marian glanced sharply at the minstrel. She had always believed Alan of the Dales a feckless if handsome man, full of charm because it was a coin he could spend with impunity, never beggaring himself. But he had said it earlier: he heard things, traveling. And though feckless, she doubted he was a fool. Not beneath the charm wielded with such skill.

Much spoke for the first time. “Pardon.”

It silenced them all. Much had grown out of boyhood into awkward adolescence, gaining inches if not flesh and conversation, but he remained odd and unpredictable. And yet there were times Marian believed he understood far more than any credited him.

Scarlet hawked and spat into rushes, then had the grace to color as Marian cast him a pointed glance of annoyance. “ ’Twas the Lionheart’s pardon,” he said. “The sheriff has let us be.”

“While the king lived,” Tuck said uneasily.

“What, d’ye think the pardon dies with the king?” Little John asked in alarm.

“Would even Prince John dishonor his revered elder brother’s memory?” Alan asked mockingly.

Marian, who had herself been subject to Prince John’s lewdness and temper, knew better than to answer. Not if she didn’t want half the men at her table to spend the rest of the night in disputation.

She caught Much’s expectant eyes on her, waiting for her to assure him his world would remain intact. And moved to comfort, as she so often was with him, she fell back on something Will Scarlet had said. “Likely no one will think of us,” she said. “They are royal folk, and we are not part of their world.”

Scarlet grunted vindication. Little John’s eyes brightened and he reached for his goblet. Much shoved more cheese into his mouth. Tuck began to eat at last, cutting into a meat pie, but his expression suggested he had not yet settled the question for himself. Alan of the Dales, eloquent hands gentle on his lute, merely shook his head slightly.

Marian avoided his glance. She did not wish to see the irony in his eyes. Instead, she reached for and began to tear apart a chunk of bread, knowing she would get little sleep that night. Robin was gone, the king was dying, and whether the Sheriff of Nottingham served Prince John, Arthur of Brittany, or the Lionheart’s memory, he would, as Tuck suggested, always first serve himself.

“
God’s Rump,
”
the king swore.
“
but you’re a canny, brave fighter for all you’re no more than a stripling youth!
”
Robin staggered under the Lionheart’s friendly embrace.
“
Crashing your horse through fallen walls, trampling the Infidel, lopping off Saracen heads—Jesu, but you’ll make a man of it Robin!
”

He had made a man of it already, but compared to the king he
was
a stripling youth; most of them were, measured against Coeur de Lion. Robin, helm tucked under left arm and mail coif slipped, grinned as the king grinned back, then laughed aloud in sheer exultation as Richard cuffed his skull as a father might a son. Even Mercardier’s glowering expression could not suppress his high spirits. He had fought for his God, his king, his country, and come out of it alive.

Behind him, the bulk of Mercardier blocked the sun.
“
He will knight you for this.
”

“
He will knight you for this,
”
Mercardier had said.

“Wine,” Mercardier said, and tossed the goatskin at him.

Blinking away the dazzle of flames and memory, Robin gathered up the skin bag. He lifted it in a brief salute of gratitude to the mercenary, then unstoppered it. The wine was thin and sour, but served to wash down the cheese and bread Marian had packed.

They had ridden until the forest encroached so vigorously that moonlight dimmed, shielded from the track by a lattice of arching limbs. It had left them with no choice but to stop for the night, and so they had, settling in among the trees with horses groomed, grained, and hobbled. He and Mercardier had not yet managed to find the peace of sleep. Instead, they shared the meager fire, food and wine, silence.

And the knowledge that a man they served, a man they each worshiped, was dying.

“Unfair,” Robin murmured.

In shadow, Mercardier’s face was expressionless. “That you have no bed? No woman?”

Tension crept into his shoulders. “That a man such as he should be taken from us when we need him so badly.”

Mercardier grunted. “He believed the treasure at Châlus would provide the means to mount another crusade.”

“
Is
there treasure?”

For a moment the mercenary was silent. When he spoke again, his harsh voice scraped. “The man is the greater treasure.”

No one doubted that. “And the Lionheart’s captain? What becomes of him?”

“My disposition,” Mercardier said, “is at the whim of the king.”

“And if, dying, he makes none?”

“He will.”

Robin took a pull from the skin, then stoppered it and tossed it back. “And what of England? What disposition does he make for her?”

Mercardier laughed softly, though there was little enough of humor in it. “That I know of . . . none.”

It startled him. “None?”

“None before I left him.”

“
None?
”

“Surely he will. When he must.”

“When he must,” Robin echoed.

“And whom he must,” Mercardier said.

“And will that be whim as well?”

In Norman French—which Robin understood perfectly; and which Mercardier knew—the mercenary cursed him and the day of his birth.

“It matters,” Robin said sharply. “England is not your country, Mercardier. But she is mine. And it matters.”

Mercardier, Aquitaine-born, spat. “John will not have you in his bed.”

Tension redoubled. It seemed rumor become issue would not be set to rest. Not in six years or sixty. With effort, Robin forced irony into his tone. “Nor was I in Richard’s.”

“He would have put you there!”

Knowing the man’s devotion to the service and comfort of his king, Robin was not certain if the mercenary hated him for being wanted, or for not answering the summons. “He gave me leave to make a choice.”

Mercardier swore. “And the minstrel?”

“Blondel chose one way. I, the other.”

“Matched boys, he called you. He said it even as I was sent to England to find you.”

“And so we were,” Robin agreed: both young, both slender, both so fair as to be nearly white-haired beneath the pitiless glare of a sun much fiercer than that of England. “But even if Blondel and I had been sons of the same womb instead of merely of happenstance, our inclinations were very different.”

“Therefore?”

“Therefore I served the king as well as I might in all things.” Robin paused. “Save his bed.”

Mercardier expelled breath through his nose with all the vigor of doubt. “If that is true, why did you let it be said?”

He shrugged, feeling the scrape of bark beneath his cloak and clothing. “A man may hear the falsehood, and believe it. A man may also hear the truth, and disbelieve it.”

“And a man might put his sword to another’s throat to convince him to believe.”

“What—should I do so to you? Here and now?” Robin laughed softly, careful not to indicate the sheathed sword lest the motion be misconstrued. “And a man might die for it.”

“But you are a knight!” Mercardier said it with a contemptuous flourish. “A knight, the son of an earl, a Crusader in the king’s army. Surely if the Turks could not kill you in battle—or in captivity—no one else may.”

He had found ways to live in battle and regretted none of them. He had found ways to survive captivity and regretted all of them. But the latter he would speak of to no one, save Marian. “You would have preferred I died?”

“Than to have the king waste money on you?
Ah, oui,
so I would.”

“And if you had been the captive?”

“I would have died before I could be,” Mercardier declared. “They would never have taken me.”

Robin believed that assertion very likely, in view of the mercenary’s sheer physical power and military experience. “The king would have ransomed you.”

The captain spat. “I am not an earl’s son.”

“You are the king’s boon companion,” Robin said. “Brothers in arms, and temperament. No man in the army was closer to him than you.”

Mercardier’s expression remained masked by shadow. “But I am not a nobleman. Only a soldier.”

“And that means far more to the king than noble birth. You know that to be true, Mercardier.”

“In war.” The tone was rough. “But in peace, what am I? What need is there for such as I?”

And so the truth, and fear, was known. Robin wondered if Mercardier realized he had betrayed himself. And it was a valid thought: what place
was
there for a soldier who lost his king and commander? Noblemen, men of consequence because of wealth and holdings, returned home, as he had, to take up other duties. Men like Mercardier fought for coin, went where coin was offered. But men like Mercardier also occasionally found leaders they served out of respect and admiration, out of a kinship in spirit, as the captain served Coeur de Lion.

“If it be John,” Robin said, thinking it through. “If it be John, there will still be a war to fight. Against the King of France.”

Mercardier shrugged massive shoulders. “Philip is a fool.”

“But a rich fool, and wiser perhaps than John.” Robin frowned into the dying firelight. “Wiser in the ways of the world than Arthur of Brittany.”

“And do you say I should go to France? To serve Philip?”

With care, Robin ventured, “It is a possibility.”

Mercardier grunted deep in his throat. “So, is there a possibility I may kill you before dawn.”

Robin said dryly, “Then I shall have to pray I do not startle you in your sleep.”

Mercardier’s tone, surprisingly, was equally dry. “Keep yourself out of my bed, and I shall not be startled.”

Robin was surprised into sudden laughter; it was not like Mercardier to wield the weapon of irony in conversation, least of all in threat. Perhaps after all the rumor was set to rest, and hostility in abeyance. “Given a choice, I would be home in a proper bed, and with the woman who shares it.”

“Some of us,” the captain retorted, “are not so fortunate as to have a home, a proper bed, and a woman in it.”

Locksley, grinning, wrapped his cloak around himself and stretched out on the ground near the fading fire. No one, he reflected, was as fortunate as he. Because no one else had Marian.

 

Come morning, the kitchen was the most popular place in the household. Marian had long grown accustomed to seeing nearly everyone who lived and worked at Ravenskeep coming into the big room to break their fast only to linger near the warmth of the huge hearth; occasionally she had to shoo them out again if the morning was particularly cold, so they might begin their work. This morning the day was not so chill, the kitchen not so crowded.

Until the messenger came into it and gave her his news.

He was young, slim, ruddy-haired, clad in a doublet bearing the triple leopards of the king. He came from Huntington Castle, he said; sent by the earl, he said. His task was to find Sir Robert of Locksley, and he had gone to where he believed Locksley was: at his father’s castle. The messenger had the next morning been sent on to Ravenskeep, for the earl had made it abundantly clear his son did not keep to castles, but to the manor house and bed of a wanton woman. Which the messenger was required to state with
precision;
it was his price for being hosted the night at Huntington Castle.

Shocked, Marian stared. She was aware of the hush in the kitchen as Cook and the others waited to hear her response.

After a moment of pain commingled with anger, she carefully set down the mug of steaming cider, incongruously aware of the scent of cloves and cinnamon, so she would not hurl it at the man.

The messenger colored and lowered his eyes, shamed. “Lady,” he said, clearly wanting to complete his business and leave before she
could
hurl the cider at him, “I am sent to bring word to Sir Robert that he is to attend the king in France.”

She would give him no cause to think of her as anything but what she was: the daughter of a respectable knight, who had died fighting for his king, his country, and his God in the land of the Infidel. She knew well what the earl thought of her; what no doubt the residents of Nottingham believed of her: a woman who lived with a man outside of wedlock. Surely she tarnished her father’s memory with such lewd behavior.

But her comportment was her own to tend—she had lost her reputation five years before, when Will Scarlet abducted her from Nottingham and carried her away into Sherwood Forest—and she would see to it the royal messenger had no just cause to speak of her as a woman lacking courtesy. “Will you break your fast with us?”

He ducked his head in brief salute. “My thanks, lady, but I was given food at the castle.”

Of course. The earl would want him to say his reception lacked for nothing.

“Your message was brought last night,” she said. “By a king’s man called Mercardier.”

It startled the messenger. “Mercardier? Here? But then—” He broke it off, alarmed. “The
king—
”

“The king is dying,” Marian said. And added, very gently, “Mercardier apparently knew how best to find Sir Robert.”

It was a rebuke, and he acknowledged it with a flicker of brown eyes. His face reddened again.

“They left for France last night,” she said.

“Then if you will excuse me, lady, I shall take my leave as well.” He bowed, turned as if to leave, then paused. “Lady,” he said diffidently, “perhaps there is explanation in that the earl is ill.”

“Explanation?”

“For—what he said. And bade me say.”