was a welcome diversion for Marian.
“Aye, he attempted a robbery of my wagons,” Marian replied.
“What was Robin Hood like? Was he as handsome as they say?” asked another of the ladies, who introduced herself as Catherine.
“He was friendly for a bandit,” Marian replied, noticing that some of the other nearby gentry had turned to listen. “No one was hurt, and he was quite gallant.” What else could she say? She wasn’t about to admit that he’d swept her up on his horse and stolen a kiss.
“And handsome?” Catherine pressed, her eyes dancing as though she knew something Marian didn’t.
“Quite handsome,” Marian replied, smiling back. She happened to look toward the front of the hall at that moment, and her whole body froze. It chilled, then suddenly exploded into unpleasant heat in her cheeks.
Prince John was looking at her. Not merely looking at her, but pinning her with hooded dark eyes as though he wished to be doing so with his hands. . or something else. Marian pulled her gaze away from his and felt her heart pounding rampantly. Her stomach suddenly felt unpleasantly heavy and disrupted.
“Is it true that the sheriff rescued you and his men chased off the bandits?” ventured another of the ladies.
Marian swallowed back the churning in her stomach that threatened to bubble up her throat. “The sheriff did arrive quite fortuitously,” she said, and was unable to keep from glancing back at the high table.
John was still watching her, slipping a chunk of food into his mouth and masticating as though he meant to be feeding on her rather than the food. The expression was unmistakable. Marian tore her eyes away again and they skittered over the prince’s companion, who, this time, was facing the front of the hall. Her throat dried again.
She hadn’t recognized him before, or perhaps she hadn’t looked closely enough. But ’twas most definitely Will there, sharing the most prominent seat in the hall with the prince as though he was his closest crony.
He, at the least, wasn’t looking at her. Instead, he leaned closer to John and spoke intimately to him while lifting a chunk of meat to his mouth on a small eating knife. Even from here, she saw the tension and harshness in a face tanned the color of deer hide, and made even more shadowy by the dark hair that brushed against it. And then the sudden gleam of a humorless smile.
“Why does he sit with the prince?” she asked. “In such a place of honor?”
“Oh,” said the lady who’d asked about him in the first place, and whose name Marian had forgotten, “he and the prince are inseparable companions.”
“Indeed,” Marian said, feeling her brows draw together in a frown. “Does the sheriff seek favor from the prince, then?”
“Nay, ’tis not so much that he seeks boons from the prince, but that the prince finds him amusing,” replied Sir Roderick, who had barely taken his eyes from Marian since she sat across from him. “The prince must include de Wendeval in all his amusements and activities or he is displeased by his absence.”
Will and Prince John? She looked again at the acquaintance of her youth and his royal companion. The depravity and lust shone unabashedly in John’s eyes, and though Will’s face was half-turned away, she recognized anew the hardness there. Unrelieved and stoic. Emotionless.
’Twas most definitely not the young man she’d known. If he and John had become constant companions, he must no longer be merely quiet and brooding, but as brutal and cruel as the unloved prince.
“The sheriff has not been able to capture Robin Hood,” Marian said, wondering about those two men. As children, they’d been rivals of a sort. Had that rivalry grown into something more ominous? Will was charged with catching, sentencing, and, if necessary, executing bandits such as Robin. “I trow the prince cannot be happy with that lack.”
“Nay, but the prince himself has been witness to Robin Hood’s cleverness. John and Nottingham have plotted many traps for the bandit, each one more dangerous than the last. And Robin Hood seems always to slip through the smallest crack and to make his escape. The sheriff was to execute a boy for treason. Hang him on the dais in the Ludlow bailey, in front of all who wished to watch. He intended to make an example of the poor boy.”
“Treason? ’Tis a serious offense.” And must be punished if law and order were to be kept. But a boy?
“Aye. The boy claimed he took only a deer that was already dead from the forest, in order to feed his family.”
Marian felt a little pang in her middle. It was treason to steal from the king, indeed, but. . “Surely the beast was examined. It would be no hardship to determine if it had been freshly slaughtered.”
Sir Roderick shrugged. “Aye, and there were those who claimed the deer had not been recently killed. But the sheriff meant to hang him anyway, the boy. Merely fourteen winters he was, and if it weren’t for Robin Hood, the boy would have been swaying in the breeze.”
“Robin Hood?”
“Aye. He rescued him right off the scaffolding, whilst the sheriff could do naught but look on furiously.”
Fourteen. That was the same age Will and Robin had been that last summer spent at Mead’s Vale. Hardly boys, but not quite men.
Again she wondered about their rivalry. Even that short moment in the clearing, before she’d recognized Will, the antipathy between the men had been palpable.
Was it possible that they hadn’t recognized each other?
Nay, of course not. She had recognized Robin immediately; surely Will had done so. But Robin could not claim innocence. He was an outlaw.
And it was Will’s duty to punish outlaws.
Duty.
Marian felt her mouth tighten. Oh, she knew well of duty, for ’twas duty that brought her here, into the court of the cruel and lustful John Angevin. Duty to her king, by way of his mother.
She loved Eleanor as much as one could love a strong-willed liege-particularly one of the lesser gender, but who moved among men as if one of them-but Marian was not ignorant of the queen’s faults. It would be no surprise to her if Eleanor hadn’t picked her for this task purposely, knowing that Marian would catch John’s eye. For, in Eleanor’s mind, one must make sacrifices, and one must use whatever skills and advantages one had in order to complete the task. She herself had done so, and expected those whom she trusted to do the same.
Marian was one whom Eleanor trusted, and as she felt the heavy salaciousness of John’s gaze on her, she shivered deep inside. Perhaps it was no boon to be a favorite of Eleanor’s after all.
Yet, what choice did she have? Duty. She would do her duty, regardless of what she must endure.
Though she feared it was too late to escape the prince’s attention, Marian spent the remainder of the meal with her back angled away from the high table and as close to the wall as possible. Perhaps some other fresh face would attract him in her stead. Alys, who was much more beautiful with her spun-gold hair and big blue eyes, was safe from the prince, as she was the heiress to Clervillieres, one of Eleanor’s strongest vassals in Aquitaine. She was still a virgin, due to the fact that her betrothed, a lord eight years younger than she, had recently died before they were wed. Even John dare not sully her maidenhead.
When the interminable meal ended after six courses, plus a round of jongleurs’ entertainment, Marian thought to make her escape to the small chamber that had been put aside for her and Ethelberga. That she had a private chamber was in itself a sign of the queen’s influence.
Making her excuses and slipping past the eager smile of Sir Roderick, Marian edged along the stone wall. She took care not to brush against it, for it was covered with smoke and other grime. One of the pleasures-few as there had been-of being sent to Ludlow was that she’d been able to prepare a new wardrobe. In retrospect, Marian wondered if mayhap she wouldn’t have attracted the prince’s attention if she’d been wearing less-fine clothing. Tonight, her floor-length undergown, fitted from throat to hip and with sleeves laced from wrist to shoulder, was the color of butter. The burnished-gold overtunic-a sleeveless shift-had been embroidered with gold-shot thread and tiny amber beads along the hems and neckline.
Marian knew that the combination of yellow, gold, and amber made her fiery hair appear brighter, her green eyes sharper, and her skin color warm and peachlike. . and at that moment she bewailed her choice. Vanity. Would it be her undoing?
Just then, she felt a presence behind her, too close. She felt the hair at the back of her neck prickle, and she whirled around.
“Leaving so soon, Lady Marian?” William de Wendeval loomed over her.
