Robin Hood Trilogy Page 2

  Less than ten paces from the longboat they went down under a slapping wall of black water. Coughing and spluttering oaths, Lucien struggled upright again, managing to maintain his grip on Servanne, sodden clothes and all.

  One of the two shadowy outlines crouched in the gunwales of the boat vaulted over the side and began swimming toward the labouring couple. The other figure, tall and slender as a reed, her short-cropped hair glinting red in the moonlight, nocked an ashwood arrow into a tautly strung longbow and calmly began to return the fire of the guardsmen who were now running in a parallel line along the shore. At intervals they paused to fit their stubby quarrels into their crossbows and knelt to release the triggers. The need to remain in one place long enough to rearm their clumsy and cumbersome weapons gave ample opportunity to the lithe shadow in the longboat to choose her targets carefully and with deadly accuracy. Many of the guards heard the singsong hiss of arrows arcing gracefully out of the darkness toward them and did not rise from the shale again. Others ran for the cover of nearby rocks along the shore and dove behind them to escape the quivering fff-thunk of the steel arrowhead punching through surcoat and armour. But they were still well within the ideal range for firing their own weapons and they did so continually, their rage fueling and improving their aim.

  Servanne heard a cry and glanced over Lucien’s shoulder in time to see Alaric slew sidelong into the water, an iron-tipped bolt embedded in his upper chest. Lucien shouted and released her, shoving her toward the longboat before he started back to where he had seen Alaric go under. Servanne’s scream of warning went unheeded. One of De Gournay’s knights, running along the shore close to where Lucien thrashed through the water, took aim with his crossbow and fired, the bolt tearing a ribbon of raw flesh from Lucien’s right temple.

  Stunned, he heeled sideways, the pain and blood blinding him even as his feet continued to chum toward Alaric. The knight armed his bow a second time, but before he could fire, he heard a thud and felt the hot sting of an arrow pierce cleanly through his leather breastplate. The arrowhead burst his heart and split through the vertebrae of his spine, killing him before he had time to roar his surprise.

  The dead knight was no sooner swept into the foaming wash of the surf than another stepped boldly forward to take his place, seeming to rise like a Goliath out of nowhere. His sword was drawn and his face, catching a stray beam of moonlight, was a mask of pure, malevolent hatred.

  Recognizing both the face and the intent in the slitted eyes, Servanne screamed again, this time to beat away the determined arm that had snaked around her waist and was dragging her toward the longboat.

  “No!” she screamed. “No, let me go! Let me go to him! Lucien! Lucien … behind you!”

  The arm remained fast around her waist even though she kicked and writhed and fought to be set free. Salt water was in her eyes, blurring her vision; her hair was a sodden mass wrapped around her throat, choking her. Her hands, flailing wildly about, tried to strike at the unseen force that was carrying her away from her love, her life, and smashed into something solid and wooden—the boat! A streak of white-hot pain lanced up her arm, causing her to temporarily cease her struggling and to look at the man holding her.

  It was Eduard! Eduard, so badly wounded himself, yet straining valiantly to lift her into the violently rocking longboat. He grunted in agony as his wounded leg was driven by the current to smash against the leaded keel. Servanne felt his grip loosen, saw him claw desperately for a hold on the gunwale, lose it, and begin to slide under the rolling waves. Instinctively she reached out to help him … and screamed again.

  It had not been the side of the boat her hand had struck. Rather, she was the one who had been struck, and not by a wooden plank, but by a twelve-inch-long crossbow bolt. The barbed iron head had split through the padding of flesh between her thumb and forefinger and embedded itself in the wooden side of the boat, pinning her there helplessly.

  A wave washed over her head, filling her eyes, nose, and mouth with salt water. Without the strength or ability to resist, she was swept along with the boat as it was pushed relentlessly toward the waiting danger on the shore. The sandy bottom fell away from beneath her feet and she was dragged downward by the current, sucked into a void of muted sound and roiling darkness. Before the pain and numbness overtook her completely, a moment of absolute clarity flung her back through time, back to where it had all begun … the heaven … the hell …

  CHAPTER ONE

  Her eyes were green and bright and perfectly round. Her body was squat and somewhat ungainly compared to her more streamlined relatives, but she had speed and cunning, a predator’s vision keen enough to detect the slightest movement in the carpet of trees hundreds of feet below. The air was crisp and clean, drenched in the pungent musk of spring. Her wings, stretching to a span of over four feet when put-thrust, carried her through the blue vault of the sky with an effortless grace that left the less blessed of God’s creatures gaping upward in envy.

  Soaring, gliding, testing the flow of the currents, the hawk banked into a steep left turn, and pitched into a swift spiral that brushed her so close to the tops of the trees, the slow-moving column of humans below was startled by the faint hiss of wind on her wings. The hawk had seen them long before the sharpest of their sentry’s eyes could have detected the black speck in the sky. Curiosity, scorn, amusement bade her swoop low across their path; a sense of haughty superiority made her stiffen her wings and arch her hooded head as if to mock their very earthbound inadequacies.

  “Blood of Christ,” someone grunted, catching the splatted evidence of greenish-white disdain smack on the back of a leather-gauntleted hand. He flicked off as much of the slime as he could and wiped what remained on the pale blue saddlecloth. One of ten knights and thirty men-at-arms, he rode escort for the cavalcade that was wending its miserably slow way through the forest.

  The knights all wore full armour—dull gray hoods and hauberks of oiled chain mail, the iron links closely fitted to resemble snakeskin. Overtop lay a gypon—a sleeveless tunic of sky blue embroidered with the Wardieu crest and coat of arms, identifiable at a glance by the rearing dragon and wolf locked in mortal combat. Leather belts cinched the bulky layers at the waist and held scabbards for both the long-sword and the short, wickedly sharp poniard. Each man wore the conical Norman helm with the steel nasal descending almost to the top of the uniformly grim lips. Half rode with their flowing blue mantles slung back over one shoulder to reveal crossbows held across their laps, the weapons armed and cocked. The other half formed the protective inner guard for the bright splashes of colour who rode securely in their midst.

  “So this is the fearsome forest of Lincoln we have heard so much about,” one of the bolder maidservants giggled. “Imagine: grown men ready to shoot at every leaf or branch that rustles lest there be devils lurking behind. How many skewered trees do you count now, my lady? Ten? Twenty?”

  The captain of the guard ignored the comment and its tinkling reply. He would have liked to turn around and address the insolent dabchicks, but the tightness of the formation on this narrow stretch of road, combined with the stiffness of his mail and armour prevented him from offering more than a grinding clench of jaws.

  Half the royal forests in England seethed with villains and outlaws, none of whom were laughing matters. With King Richard crusading in the Holy Land, and his brother Prince John taking full advantage of his absence, the country had fallen to lawlessness and disorder. Bands of renegade foresters were springing up everywhere. Thieves, cutpurses, traitors, and murderers alike were congealing together in pockets of scabrous vermin to challenge the rash of levies and taxes the prince had instigated. Parties of ten, twenty, even thirty knights were necessary to escort travelers safely from one point to another, and at times even so blatant a threat did not discourage a reckless attack. Only a month ago, in these very woods, a bishop and his party, traveling under the protection of Onfroi de la Haye, Lord High Sheriff of Lincoln, was waylaid, ten good men k
illed, another half dozen wounded, and the rest stripped of their weapons and armour and tied to their saddles like sacks of grain. The bishop, third cousin to the king himself, was relieved of the gold he was carrying to the abbey at Sleaford and, together with fourteen of his priests and acolytes, was sent on his way in a hardly less humiliating condition than his guard.

  Nothing and no one was sacred to these thieves and wolf’s heads. Any and all were fair game, and—the guard risked a glance over his shoulder as another burst of laughter echoed off the treetops to announce their presence—the fairer the game, the more determined the predators. But it was not only the threat from outlaws that caused the skin to shrink around the ballocks of Bayard of Northumbria at every unnecessary shout or feminine exclamation. Harm to one stray hair belonging to Servanne de Briscourt, recent widow of Sir Hubert de Briscourt, and intended bride of the powerful Lord Lucien Wardieu would mean a slow and agonizing death to the men responsible for her safe arrival at Blood-moor Keep.

  The object of the captain’s pointed observation, oblivious to his concerns for her welfare—and his own—sat very straight and slim upon the back of her snow white palfrey. Awed by the pure, quiet stillness of the greenwood surrounding them, her startling blue eyes moved constantly this way and that, drinking in the beauty and majesty of the tall oak trees, some of which measured a full twenty feet around the base. A tilt of her lovely chin followed the streaking rays of flickering sunlight to their source high above where branches were tangled together in a thick basket-weave, their leaves a still higher suggestion of misty green. The sun broke through in sporadic bursts, the beams splintering into a thousand foggy darts of light that shimmered to shades of palest green in the darker, musty shadows below.

  How the captain of the guards would cringe if he knew what was passing through the mind of the future baroness. How shocked he would be if she dared give way to her urge to spur her mare into a caracole, to dance and prance along the earthen road to the end of the forest—if indeed there ever was an end to it. Moreover, she longed to remove the linen wimple that demurely covered her head, ached to shake her long golden hair free of its braids and confining pins, and feel the wind tug and pull at its thickness. As well, she wished she could fling aside the stiff, encumbering surcoat of samite she wore over her gown. Six depths of sky blue silk had gone into the weaving of the rich cloth, but to Servanne, who was uncomfortable from so many long hours in the saddle, it felt more like armour than the chain links worn by the guards. If she attempted to alter the positioning of her legs and rump, or shift more comfortably in the saddle, it was done without the cooperation of the heavy outer garment. If she turned too hastily, she was nearly choked by the stiff collar, which did not budge and threatened her with an awkward loss of balance.

  Still, she endured the discomfort in silence. She was eager to reach her destination, eager for the first time in her eighteen years to see what the future had hidden around the next corner.

  Orphaned as a child, Servanne had been placed under the wardship of England’s great golden King Richard, known by the soldiers who loved him as Lionheart. When his obsession with the Holy Wars had forced him to look beyond the limits of the strained royal purse for financing, Servanne had been married off to the aging Sir Hubert de Briscourt for a substantial consideration. Barely fifteen at the time, wed to a man fifty years her senior, the succeeding three years had been a trial of boredom, loneliness, and frustration. It was not that Sir Hubert was mean or miserly—indeed, near the end, she had acquired a genuine affection for the gallant old knight—it was just that, well, she was young and full of life, and impatient to do more than spin and sew and weave and be attendant upon her lord in his twilight years. His death had been a terrible blow, and she had truly mourned his loss. And when the missive had arrived bearing the king’s seal, she had broken it with grave apprehension, guessing correctly that she had once again been sold in marriage to the highest bidder.

  The name of the prospective groom had leapt from the page like a bolt of lightning. Lucien Wardieu! Young, handsome, virile … the kind of husband one dreamed about and envisioned behind tightly closed eyelids while a lesser truth fumbled and groped about in the dark.

  Shivering deliciously, Servanne glanced down at the jewelled broach pinned to the front of her mantle. Blood-red rubies delineated the body of a dragon rampant, emeralds and diamonds marked the snarling body of the wolf. A betrothal gift from the groom, it branded her as his property and she wore it proudly for all the world to see.

  “Biddy, tell me again what you have heard of my lord the baron,” she whispered under her breath. “I fear, as the miles shrink between us and the hours to our meeting grow fewer and fewer, my nerves grow ever less steady.”

  The elderly woman who rode by her side had been nurse and maid to Servanne’s mother, fiercely protective guardian to the orphaned daughter through the subsequent years. A face as round as a cherub’s and as softly crinkled as an overripe peach turned to Servanne with a feigned look of surprise. “Surely your memory has gone the way of your morning ablutions, for did I not spend most of the hours after Prime reciting the long litany of your betrothed’s accomplishments—both in the tourney lists and in the widows’ beds? It grows tiresome, child, to have to repeat every gasp and gurgle you yourself uttered when you first saw the man, let alone recall the exaggerations and imaginations of every weak-limbed fancy who crossed his path.”

  Servanne blushed scarlet, warming under the smothered round of laughter her maids could not quite contain.

  “I have heard,” one of them tittered bawdily “that as a lover, Lord Lucien is inexhaustible, often going days and days without a pause for food or drink or … or anything!”

  “I saw him once.” The youngest attendant in the group gave a sigh so plaintive it caused the captain of the guard to roll his eyes and exchange a smirk with the knight who rode alongside. “In all of Christendom,” she continued, “there cannot be a taller, handsomer knight. Even Helvise admitted that to see him standing beside our glorious liege lord, King Richard, a maiden would be hard-pressed to choose between the two as to which one was the more godlike in countenance and bearing.”

  “I said that?” a dark-eyed companion asked with a frown.

  “You most certainly did,” the accuser, Giselle, said earnestly. “Do you not remember? The very same night you said it, you said you also had to take two of Sir Hubert’s guardsmen and—”

  “Never mind! I remember,” Helvise snapped, aware of the sudden attentiveness of the nearby guards.

  Servanne’s flush was still high on her cheeks, even though she was no longer the focus of the good-natured jesting. If anything she had grown warmer knowing she had not been the only one left with a searing impression of power and animal maleness. True, she had only glimpsed her betrothed across a crowded hall, and true the lone glimpse had occurred many months ago, but what healthy, warm-blooded woman could not have recalled his every stunning attribute, down to the last thread of flaxen hair, on much less than a half-stolen glance? Eyes the bold azure of a turbulent sea; a face that was lean and finely chiselled; a body splendidly proportioned from the incredible breadth of his shoulders to the trim waist and long, tautly muscled legs. One of the king’s champions, Lord Lucien had never been bested in the lists, never emerged from any tournament less than overall victor. His skill with lance and sword was legendary; his exploits in Europe and on the Crusades had earned him the respect of kings, and wealth beyond any mere knight-errant’s wildest dreams.

  Comparing Lucien Wardieu to Sir Hubert de Briscourt was like comparing a gold, jewel-encrusted sceptre to a charred stick. Servanne was under no illusions as to why he had petitioned the king for her hand—indeed, she thanked God with every breath that a portion of the vast fiefdom she had inherited upon Sir Hubert’s death, was coveted arable adjoining the baron’s own landholdings in Lincoln. To him she was undoubtedly just a name and faceless entity; a pawn in the game of politics and economics. He would ha
ve petitioned for her hand even if she were fat, balding, and prone to passing wind from both ends simultaneously. And did she care? Not one whit! If it was her lot in life to serve as cat’s-paw to the king’s obsession, it was a much easier task to suffer in the arms of a golden champion than in the bed of a feeble old man.

  Servanne stroked the neck of her beautiful mare, Undine, and smiled. Her mount had been among the many extravagant gifts sent to her by Lord Lucien by way of offering apologies that he could not ride to meet her himself. He was forgiven. Besides her own snow white palfrey, there were three pairs of matching roans to carry her maids. All were furbished with white trappings, the saddles bleached to bone-coloured leather, trimmed with silver bosses and tassels that glittered like fringes of diamonds. Blue silk ribbons were braided into the manes and tails; plumes dyed to the same sky-blue shade danced on silver headpieces. The Wardieu dragon and wolf were emblazoned on saddlecloths, shields, and pennants; the Wardieu colours of blue and silver rippled from one end of the cavalcade to the other.

  In the rear, flanked by the servants and pages who traveled on foot, were three wagons groaning under their burden of chests containing silks, velvets, and samites woven in every shade of the rainbow; brocades so stiffly embroidered they were unbendable; pelts of ermine, fox, and sable for trimming cloaks and gowns. There were stockings of sheer, gauzelike silk from the East, girdles crusted with gold and silver, slippers to match any whim, pearls of the finest size and colour strung on threads of pure gold. Three dressmakers accompanied the cortege. They had worked day and night for two weeks to prepare the bridal clothes and even now, as the miles and hours to their destination diminished, their hands moved in a blur with needle and thread at each rest called by the captain of the guard.