Jennifer Roberson - [Robin Hood 02] Read Online Free

“and nothing is the same.”
    Marian bent and retrieved a sherte from the floor. “I will do this,” she told him. “Go and eat what you can before that soldier sees to it you never eat again.”
    “Mercardier.” His voice was less drugged, more distinct. As was the dryness of irony. “Not a duty he would cherish, this. Fetching me?” His mouth twitched briefly, then stilled. “But he would see to it where another man might speak of failure, not wanting to set eyes on my face again.”
    Marian gathered up other clothing, began to place it on the bed so she might select what was needed. “What is he to the king?”
    “Captain of his mercenaries, bought men from Aquitaine. But more. They are brothers in many ways, Richard and his captain. More so than ever Geoffrey was, and certainly than John. They are very like in their taste for battle, in the ordering of war.”
    “And he hates you,” Marian said. “Why?”
    He was silent a long moment. “Because one day, at Richard’s insistence, I wrestled the king. And defeated him. Mercardier has never forgiven me.”
    She knew better. “There is more than that.”
    Robin sighed deeply. “Of course. There is always more.” He moved at last, to stop her from sorting his clothing. To touch her hand, to grip it, to pull her close. To set a stiff face into her hair as he embraced her. “One moment,” he said, “and the world is forever changed. But there is one constancy in my life that I will never allow to change. You.”
    Marian, offering assuagement in the warmth of her body, the tightness of her arms wrapped around his neck, thought of how she had been certain, upon Mercardier’s arrival, that she had lost yet another she loved. And how in that moment the world had turned itself inside out.
    But in this moment, as they clung to one another, the world did not move at all. Time was theirs to rule.
    Too briefly, Marian reflected. But better one moment than none.
     
    William deLacey, Lord High Sheriff of Nottingham, had sentenced himself this day to his own dungeon. But he was in no danger of being executed or of remaining imprisoned; he inhabited the dungeon cell because it contained money.
    The chests of coin were of varying sizes, wood bound by brass, and locked. The sheriff had seen to it that only two men had keys: himself, and his seneschal, Sir Guy of Gisbourne. Who had, five years before, become more than merely steward of Nottingham Castle, but also the sheriff’s son-in-law, by marrying Eleanor, the last and least of deLacey’s daughters.
    Just this moment the sheriff was unconcerned with the chests, stacked into uneven columns against damp stone walls, and equally unconcerned with Gisbourne and Eleanor. His attention was wholly commanded by a large cloth he had unrolled from its oiled casing and spread upon the one piece of furniture in the cell: a crude oak table. The cloth itself was unprepossessing, neither of lustrous silk or fine-woven linen, but it represented everything of his shire that was vital to the realm, so that England, embodied by her sovereign, might thrive.
    The cloth was Nottinghamshire’s Exchequer, divided like a chessboard into painted squares. Parchment writs served as vouchers for expenses, and wooden tally pieces were placed into an area called the receipt, representative of tax payments made to the sheriff. Twice a year it was his responsibility to make an accurate accounting of his shire, and to carry that accounting—and all collected monies—to the Royal Exchequer via Lincoln to London. A preliminary session took place after Easter each year, and it was this session which concerned the sheriff now.
    At Michaelmas, in late September, he would be required to square up his account, to give a final summary of the expenses and profits of Nottinghamshire by indicating various squares on the Exchequer and explaining what had been done about money—coin spent, and coin collected—in the king’s name. It was an exhaustive