Robin Hood (19 page)

When they had drawn even with the men, Gaffer Tom took off his hat.

“Welcome home, sir!” he called.

Paul raised a gnarled knuckle to his forehead. “An honor, sir!”

Robin nodded back to the men, and as they returned to their labors, Robin and Marion continued their ride. She told him more about the history of the land and the Loxley family. Robin listened, trying to hang on to every bit of information she offered. All the while, they kept to the hill, so that every few moments Robin was offered a different perspective on the town below and fields around them. Eventually, Marion's narrative came around to her own story.

“I was an old maid when Robert courted me,” she told him with a smile. “Twenty-four! And ripe for a nunnery. The daughter of a respectable widow with”—she held her thumb and forefinger just a little bit apart—“a thimbleful of noble blood. He saw me in church at Ely and I was betrothed in a week. A week later, he was seduced by King Richard to join ship for France and Jerusalem. So we were wed, and he left at daybreak to ride south. That was my married life, with a man I hardly knew.”

“A good knight,” Robin said, thinking of what it must have been like for Sir Robert to leave his new bride the morning after his wedding.

“Short, but oh, so sweet,” Marion said, staring off over the fields.

It took Robin a moment. “No,” he said, trying to keep from laughing. “A good—”

“Oh!” Marion said, raising a hand to her mouth, her face coloring.

Robin grinned. “A knight-in-arms. A brave soldier.”

He had to give her credit; she recovered quickly, making the best of her embarrassment. “My knight-in-arms even so,” she said, smiling as well. “And I in his.” She looked at him sidelong. “And you?”

Robin shrugged looking straight ahead. “I am what I am: an archer as soon as I could bend a bow and, ever since, on the march for pay, with nothing to offer a woman.”

The words sounded harsh and bitter to his own ears, and he smiled at her to soften what he had said.

“Least of all a lady,” he continued. “I barely spoke English before I learned to speak French. I was brought up by strangers among olive groves in Southern France. I can't remember my mother or my father.”

Saying this, his thoughts turned once more to the promise Sir Walter had made the night before. Somehow, the old man knew the secrets of his past. It seemed Marion's thoughts had taken a similar turn. She looked at him, a question in her eyes.

Robin met and held her gaze. “I think when Robert Loxley gave me his sword, it was not for the sword's destiny, but for mine.”

Marion opened her mouth to say something, but at that moment, they heard a commotion coming from near the mill house in the distance. They spurred their mounts forward and soon came to a good-sized bog. Several women stood along the edge of the water, trying to reach a ram that had wandered
in and gotten itself stuck. The creature bleated piteously and thrashed about, desperate to keep its head above the rank water. Mill weed floated at the surface of the bog and Robin could see from how the animal struggled that the bottom was heavy with mud and muck. The women were trying to get a rope around the animal's neck in order to pull it to safety. But the creature fought them as well as the bog, making matters worse for itself by the moment.

“Stop!” Marion shouted at the women, riding to the edge of the water. “You'll break its neck!”

She leaped off her horse, started to step into the bog, but stopped herself. She searched around the water's edge, and soon spotted a hoe. Taking hold of it, she hiked up her skirt so that her legs were bare to the thighs. She waded into the water, using the hoe to test the bottom of the bog before each step. Slowly, she made her way toward the bleating ram.

Robin had halted his horse beside Marion's and watched her as she sank deeper and deeper into the bog, heedless of her clothes and of exposing her legs. He wasn't sure whether to be amused or impressed, and in the end decided that he could be both. He certainly understood why Loxley had been so taken with the woman upon seeing her in that church in Ely. Robin had never met anyone quite like her.

In the next moment, though, matters took a turn for the worse. Marion had nearly reached the ram, which was sinking faster and faster. But as she tested the bottom in front of her, the hoe suddenly plunged all the way into the mud, and it nearly took Marion with it. She pinwheeled her arms to keep from falling forward and managed to right herself. But the hoe was lost, and the ram nearly so. The creature thrashed
ever more wildly, and now Marion was helpless to do anything about it.

Robin threw himself off his horse and grabbed a rope as he ran toward the water's edge.

As he ran past the village women, he shouted for them to take hold of the other end of the rope.

He didn't pause to see if they had done as he asked. Reaching the bog he launched himself into the water, landing knee-deep in the mud and wading toward where Marion still stood.

“I'm on the edge of the shelf,” she called to him.

“Go back to the side.”

She shook her head. “I can't move my legs.”

That was an unfortunate complication. But looking at Marion, Robin could see that she was all right. She didn't appear to be in any danger of sinking deeper into the mud, and while she no longer had the hoe, he knew that she could go back to the edge without difficulty when eventually she freed her legs.

She smiled at him, clearly relieved to see him coming toward her. She held out her arm to him so that he could pull her out.

“Thank you, my—”

Robin continued past her toward the ram.

Her face fell. “—lord…”

He pitched himself forward, diving headlong toward the ram, his arms outstretched. The creature gave one last terrified cry and then went under, disappearing from view save for its horns. Robin grabbed for them and managed to grip one and then the other. He felt tension in the rope and hoped it meant that the women had a firm grip on it. He shouted to them to pull.

At first nothing happened, and Robin realized that he was starting to sink along with the animal, which

continued to flail about in the muck. But then he felt a tug on the rope and a moment later he was being pulled back from the deepest part of the bog. Holding fast to the ram, he got its head above water again and dragged it along with him. Soon, he was back on the shelf. Getting his feet under him, Robin stood. He let go of the ram, which was free of the mud now. The creature made its way to the safety of the edge, heaved itself out of the water and ran back to join its flock.

“Thank you, my lord,” Marion said archly, though with a smile. “Is it my turn now?”

Robin waded back to where she was standing, still waist deep in the water. He took her hands in his and pulled her toward him.

“Hold tight,” he told her.

She wrapped her arms around him.

Once more he called for the villagers to pull on the rope, and once more he felt himself being tugged back toward the water's edge. This time he pulled Marion with him. Within moments they were out of the bog and back on solid ground. Marion released him, though not before looking up into his eyes for just the briefest moment.

Robin dropped the rope.

As he did, he heard someone clapping behind him. Turning, he saw a bearded man sitting a large bay. He wore a cloak with a broad furred collar and studded riding breeches. His hair was long and unruly, and though he wore a smile, there was something unpleasant about the man's expression.

The women, who but a moment before had been chattering excitedly about Robin and Marion's rescue of the ram, had fallen silent at the sight of this man. Marion, who had walked back to her horse, didn't
appear pleased to see him either. She regarded him with poorly concealed distaste and then looked to Robin, a warning in her eyes.

“Nicely done, sir!” the man said to Robin, smiling still.

Marion remounted, holding her boots in her hand, her skirt bunched up so that some of her leg was still bared.

The man, Robin noticed, leered at her in a manner that would have made even a dead husband jealous.

“And to see Lady Marion Loxley's legs naked to the breeze was beyond my hopes this morning.”

Robin looked to Marion, his eyebrows up, as if to ask if he had her permission to punch this lout in the mouth.

He thought she would be scowling at the man, but really she seemed quite amused as she said, “I think you do not know my husband, Sir Robert.” She turned to Robin. “Allow me, my lord, to present the Sheriff of Nottingham.”

Robin swung himself back into his saddle, so that when he faced the sheriff again, they were eye-to-eye. On most occasions Robin was not given to snap judgments about any man, but he had taken an effortless dislike to the sheriff. He had met men like this one countless times before—in the army, on ships, in taverns. All of them were the same, and none was worth a damn. This sheriff had already shown himself to be boorish; that he reeked of arrogance and ambition, of selfishness and pride, came as no surprise. Robin had never understood how men of this sort always managed to land themselves in positions of power, but he'd seen it happen too many times to think it a coincidence.

Holding the man's gaze, Robin offered a slight nod by way of acknowledgment, which the sheriff returned with a sneer, apparently no more taken with Robin than Robin was with him.

“I had the honor of succeeding to this office not long after you left for the Holy Land,” the man said. “Welcome home, Sir Robert. You make your mark quickly, saving the king's ram from drowning.”

“What is this?” Marion demanded, her eyes blazing.

An unctuous smile curled the sheriff's lips. “What is owed in coin I have the right to take in goods or livestock in King Richard's name.”

“King Richard died a soldier,” Robin said. “King John is our master now.”

The sheriff seemed surprised by these tidings, though he showed no sign of being moved by them. “That's news indeed. Long live the king.”

“Aye,” Robin said, remembering his encounter with the new king, and thinking that John and the sheriff deserved each other. “If God wills it.”

He reached back into a pouch than hung from his saddle and pulled out a coin. He held it up for the sheriff to see and then tossed it to the man the way he might have thrown alms to a common beggar. The sheriff caught it and looked at it.

“Here's a ram's worth of tax for the exchequer.”

The sheriff glared at him.

“We'll meet again, Sheriff of Nottingham.” Robin smiled thinly. “I'll not forget your compliment to Lady Marion.”

Robin turned his horse, and Marion did the same alongside. As she did, Robin glanced down at her legs. “Beyond my hopes this morning, too …” he murmured, just loud enough for her to hear.

She followed the line of his gaze and then shot him a look that would have kindled damp wood. Husband or no, apparently there were certain lines he wasn't yet allowed to cross. Hiding a grin, Robin followed her away from the bog and the sheriff.

T
HE SHERIFF WATCHED
Lady Marion and her husband ride off, his sword hand itching. Without taking his eyes off the couple he bit down on the coin Loxley had given him. It seemed real enough. He pocketed it and took hold of his reins, his hands trembling with rage.

Loxley might have been a soldier, he might have been a lord, but that didn't give the man the right to speak to him that way. He was the king's man— whichever king. This was his bailiwick, and no crusader could change that.

He had met men like Loxley before: superior, disdainful, utterly convinced of their own infallibility. He had also brought down bigger men than Loxley, with the law if he could, with a blade if he had to. This one would be no different.