Men of Sherwood (A Rogue's Tale Book 1) Read online

  He chuckled at the name. “Well, that’s better than Robert of Loxley, Earl of Huntingdon.”

  “Promise me you won’t leave when I start singing for my supper once again,” I demanded.

  “I can make that promise, Will Scarlett, but no others.”

  In order to pick up my lyre I needed to lean across Robin, and as I did so, I faced him and paused for a moment, our lips almost touching, the heat between our bodies making his eyes widen. I smiled, knowing I’d made my conquest at last. I stared into those blue eyes and licked my lips. He watched in fascination and a low growl came out of his throat.

  “Deal,” I whispered.

  I broke the moment, catching up my lyre and standing in one fluid movement, leaving Robin on the small settle while I strummed and made up lewd ditties about the different patrons of the bar. The entire time I felt the weight of Robin’s gaze on my back. When I turned to the bar I saw Bess smiling at me and she winked. The woman would protect me while I made this happen, and a small nod confirmed her loyalty in my conspiracy. The entire thing sent me over the edge into complete and dazed happiness – I sang for my supper and I was spectacular.

  7

  DURING THE LATE PART of the evening I managed to tell Robin my room was the last one on the left, overlooking the stables, and I watched him vanish upstairs with a bottle of wine and two horn cups placed in his hands by Bess. I saw the look of surprise on his face, and his grin when I winked at him. I rushed through some more songs, collected my money from the drunk and happy patrons, then began clearing up with Malcom.

  Bess smacked my hands when I started wiping down tables. “Stop it, boy. Go to your room and get some rest,” she said.

  I started moving before she even managed to finish her sentence. I took the stairs two at a time, convinced Robin wouldn’t be in the room when I reached it and I was being a child. By the time I managed to pass the five other rooms on the second floor I’d gone from giddy excitement to sick anticipation. What if I couldn’t do this? What if he expected someone who knew what they were doing? What if this wasn’t what I really wanted – would he stop?

  I reached for the latch on the room I used to share with Tuck when we were boys, the smallest in the inn, and my hand shook.

  “If you stay out there much longer you’ll turn into a troll,” Robin’s rough growl came through the door.

  I cursed, faked a confident smile and pushed the door open. The smile faded. Robin had made himself at home. He’d removed his boots, surcoat and tunic, and was standing in hose, braies and shirt. He’d built up the fire in the grate and lit the candles. The light threw shadows through the fine linen of his shirt, outlining his muscular chest and flat stomach, the narrowing of his hips.

  I swallowed hard. “Hello,” I said – great minstrel that I am.

  He grinned. “Hello, Will Scarlett.”

  I really wished he wouldn’t breathe my name like that, it made my insides turn to water. “I saw you bring wine up.”

  “You deserve a drink after tonight. You play a room well, I hope they reciprocated.”

  I nodded. “They paid me well enough to buy Tuck some new clothes.”

  “You going to try to get him out of those bloody robes?” Robin asked, handing me a cup of wine. Our fingers touched and the burn up my arm forced my breathing to notch up.

  “You don’t have much time for the Church do you?” I asked.

  “None.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  He ran a finger down the scar on his face. “I’ve seen what their words can do to a man and an enemy when they see fit.”

  “What happened to you?” I asked without thinking about it.

  Robin grunted. “I’m here for one thing, Will. I’m happy to talk about the weather if you like but I’ve no intention of creating something that could be misunderstood.”

  His eyes were hard, his body tense and I realised something terrible. I couldn’t do this.

  I’d never been with a man without some violence being involved. After everything that had happened to me, I didn’t really understand why I wanted men over women anyway, but I did, so I stood there, frozen to the spot and unable to reconcile the warring conflict of different desires. God’s Teeth, I just wanted to be safe.

  I placed the horn cup down carefully on the table and straightened. “I’m sorry, Robin. You’re welcome to the room but I…” I sucked in a breath. “I cannot join you. I made a mistake. You’re right, I will want more than you can give and I need it before we do this –” I waved at the bed but couldn’t look at it. I felt sick and my palms sweated. Why had I flirted? Why did I think things could be different with Robin? Why was I doomed to be alone because of fear?

  I turned towards the door before I felt a hand on my lower back. “Who gave you those scars, Will?” he asked, flexing his fingers against the top of my pelvis, where the largest cluster remained as a permanent reminder of my past.

  The narrow long marks, all of them flat across my skin, some a little farther up, smattering over my waist and some he hadn’t seen on the backs of my thighs, felt real and new for a moment. I touched the leather braces I wore over my wrists and closed my eyes, banishing the dark thoughts with practiced effort.

  “We all have scars, Robin. I just want to share mine with someone who cares. I’ve never done this before. I know I should have told you, that you were expecting an experienced man to be here, so you can relieve your passion and leave, but I’m not that man and I should never have given you the wrong impression. I am sorry.” I didn’t turn to speak to him and he didn’t drop his hand from my back.

  “Just tell me, Will,” he whispered.

  I heaved in a breath so heavy my shoulders ached with the effort. I wanted this, I wanted an honest companion, someone to share my life with and I really wanted to turn around and feel that hand on my stomach. “It’s a long story.”

  “We have time.”

  I glanced over my shoulder. “That’s not what you came here for.”

  “I’m not sure what I came here for if I’m honest,” he said.

  I frowned. “I thought –”

  Robin’s hand dropped away as did his gaze. He returned to the fire and sat down on the small chair. I followed, picked up my cup once again and sat on the edge of the bed.

  “I was married once, long ago. She died in childbirth which is why I ended up going on the Crusade. I left my sister in my father’s care, our mother already dead, and rode off with his finest horse, sword and armour to become a noble knight, not just low born.” The bitterness in his words held me captive and the pain drew his shoulders tight. “With a Saxon grandmother and a half Saxon father our family has not been blessed by the Angevin kings. We lost almost everything to Hastings and Stephen’s bloody war with his cousin. Maud would have made a fine queen.”

  I remained silent. The ways of kings and queens were not really my area of expertise beyond singing about their romantic silliness.

  “The trip to the Holy Land was terrible. So many died from thirst and hunger. The men under my command, once I’d proved myself, worked hard to keep the men alive but it wasn’t easy.” Robin’s eyes were distant, remembering a place I’d never see. “And when we reached Acre…” His voice trailed off. “Some things are best left to nights you want to have a horror story.” He looked at me and smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I fell in love, Will. Probably for the first time if I am honest with the ghost of my poor wife.”

  “A man?” I asked with soft understanding.

  He nodded. “And a Muslim to boot.”

  I felt my mouth drop open but Robin was lost to his memories and didn’t notice.

  “Ghaalib, he was a physician, younger than me and so well educated. I never understood what he saw in me but I’d been badly hurt in the battle for Acre and he took me into his house to heal my wounds. It took months, and over that time I fell in love.”

  We were silent for a long time and I watched him as he studied his memories in the g
low of the fire. “He, we, became lovers, but someone reported us. His people and mine came for us at dawn, they ripped him from my arms and the knights I’d fought beside held me as I watched them stone him to death in the street for being a sodomite. They dragged me, half out of my mind, and threw me into a cell, where I waited for my trial.” His words finished on a snarl and I guessed it wouldn’t have been much of a trial. “Then Saladin attacked and suddenly there was this almighty hole in the wall of my cell.”

  “What?” I asked, confused and caught in his tragic tale.

  “The attack had blown a hole in the wall and my cell was in the wall. I still don’t know how I survived beyond some stones hitting me as they collapsed at my feet while my back was pressed against the bars of my cage. I hadn’t eaten or drunk anything in days. I was close to death and mourning Ghaalib. I had no wish to survive but my body is stronger than my mind and I scrambled out of that hole and found myself outside of Acre. The soldiers of Islam were everywhere but I found a dead one and stole his robes, covering my blond hair. I’d learned some of their language thanks to Ghaalib so I blended right in and moved through the ranks, fighting when necessary against Christians and Muslims though not killing. I managed to find clean water, a little food, and finally I was at the port. I boarded a ship, made it seem like I was a sailor and then Palestine was gone.”

  I had the feeling it was a bit more complicated than that but Robin was talking and it’s what I wanted to hear so I kept my mouth shut for a change.

  “There’s a gentle strength to you that reminds me of him. I don’t mean you’re him, don’t get me wrong, Will, but you share some of the same qualities and I am drawn to you like I was him.”

  “That’s why you ran from the cave?” I asked.

  He nodded and finished his wine. “I loved him, but not enough to leave when I knew it was dangerous for us to be together. I loved him and I convinced him we could be a couple. That they would never notice, either of our people. I cost him his life and even as the stones broke his beautiful body he never once called out to me or cursed me in his Prophet’s name. I can’t ever let that happen again. I cannot be the reason a man suffers. A lover suffers. Because I am selfish and I know one night with you won’t be enough but more than that and I risk your life, Will. You have seen what my anger does. I cannot be trusted.”

  “You didn’t throw me in a fire, Robin. I tripped as you pushed and we landed in the fire. It was an unhappy coincidence.”

  “I cannot do this,” he whispered, running his fingers through his thick dark blond hair. “I just want to fuck and be done but I can’t even manage that. I should have let you walk away but I can’t…”

  I drew in a breath and began my confession. “My father beat me after my mother died. Said I was too pretty to be a boy so he’d treat me like a daughter and he expected wifely duties to be performed. He would beat me with a cane, those are the marks, and chain me to the wall before fucking me. Eventually he let his friends do the same for coin. Tuck was in the monastery. I think my mother worried it might happen and sent her youngest child out of the house to protect him. It didn’t work. The monks of Rufford were not good to the youngest and prettiest member of their order. I think Tuck had it far worse than me, by the time I bought him out of the abbey he could barely form a sentence that wasn’t Biblical and his eyes had this terrible glassy stare…”

  “I’ve seen it in the eyes of women and children when soldiers have lost control,” Robin said.

  “I’ve never told him this, never told anyone.” I couldn’t look at him now but I needed this man to understand everything. If we were going to confess our deepest secrets I had to give them to him, all of them. I felt bile rise in my throat and I allowed a broken memory to surface. The press of the words on my tongue became too heavy; I needed someone in this world to bear witness to the worst parts of me. “I murdered our father.”

  “Will…”

  “He beat me bad, so bad I couldn’t move off the floor. He was drunk, he’d raped me, I was bleeding from… I was bleeding from there, I could feel it and…” I felt Robin’s hands close over mine and realised he’d moved from the chair to kneel in front of me. I had my elbows on my knees and my head hung.

  “I’m here,” he murmured, tucking a stray hair behind my ear.

  “He was asleep and he’d forgotten to chain me up. He always chained me up afterwards. He knew I wanted to run but I couldn’t. I had nothing, no money, no skills, he wouldn’t make me an apprentice – I was fifteen winters old. Tuck was twelve. I managed to lever myself off the ground, knelt in front of him, bodily fluids pooling under me and I knew then, I knew I would rather die than let him hurt me again. I took his knife from his belt, so very gently, and I stabbed him in the throat.”

  I looked into Robin’s face. “There was so much blood, Robin. So much blood. It went everywhere…” I saw it, clear and bright, that red against the grey stone of the floor, the white of the walls, covering the dark furniture and my father’s body, covering me. The smell, copper rich, warm to start with, then cold and tacky. There is not another smell like that of a body’s insides coming outside be it deer, sheep or man.

  Robin’s hands rubbed mine and travelled up my arms, compassion in his gaze and touch. “You’ve gone very cold, Will. Come and lie down, let me hold you.”

  He stripped off my shoes, removed my clothing, but left my braies and shirt, then tucked me under in the bed Tuck and I had shared as children. It wasn’t really big enough for two men but Robin pulled me to his chest.

  “Tell me the rest, Will.”

  “It was high summer so I knew I had to get rid of his body quickly. I waited for the blood to stop, then I scraped it up and dug it into the soil of our garden outside. Then I scrubbed the floor until you couldn’t see a stain. Next came his body. I cut it up into moveable pieces, it took me three days. I only slept when I had to and I didn’t eat. I didn’t wash. I didn’t dress. I wrapped up each piece and at night, for many nights, I took his body to my neighbour’s pigs. They were always hungry and they ate him.”

  “You fed your father to the pigs?”

  I nodded against his chest, feeling his chest rising and falling. “When that was done I felt a great deal stronger. I slept, I ate, I washed. I became Will Scarlett. I sold everything he owned, a sizeable clothing business and went to find Tuck to tell him our family had reduced in size once more. When I arrived at the monastery and I saw him, I knew, I just knew what they’d done. I could see it written large on his face. He was so fucking frail, a puff of wind could have snapped him in two. I bribed the abbot into letting him go. It cost me everything we had, and we left. We made our way to Nottingham, I hoped to find work, but no one wanted me and I thought we would starve on the streets. I couldn’t go to the Church for alms, because when I tried Tuck would scream. I couldn’t leave him long enough to do a day’s service anywhere and he wasn’t strong enough to help. That’s when Bess and Malcom found us, I was going through their bins outside the kitchen, looking for scraps. They took us in and found the children they’d always wanted. I found the parents I needed and so did Tuck.”

  “But you’ve never been with a man?” Robin asked.

  “I’ve been attracted to them but the act scares me, you’re the closest I’ve managed to get and I’m almost twenty-six now.”

  Robin’s lips brushed over my hair. “An old man indeed.”

  I looked up. “I’m a murderer and a sodomite.”

  Robin gripped my chin. “I need you to never, ever, use that word again. Whatever does or doesn’t happen between us we are not that because people use that word to hurt us and I will not allow it. As for ‘murderer’. You are a survivor, Will Scarlett, not a murderer.”

  “There was so much blood.”

  His thumb wiped over my cheek and it was then I realised I’d been crying. “I’ll teach you to kill without making that kind of mess.”

  “I’m not sure that’ll help,” I said.

  “It will
help me because I’ll know you will be safe,” he said.

  “Not the night I had planned, Robin.”

  “Maybe it’s the night we needed,” he said. “Sleep now, Will and we’ll see what tomorrow brings us.”

  I stretched upwards a little and grazed my lips over his, and a hand tightened on my back where Robin held me close. “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “Not sure how much but…” I willed him to understand even if I didn’t.

  He cupped the back of my head, tangling his fingers in my dark curls and his lips pressed against mine. They were so soft, full, slightly chapped from the cold day but warm. A gentle caress of his lips against mine. I sighed when he pulled back.

  “I think you should sleep. We have traded such terrible secrets tonight, Will. I’ve told you things no other living person knows and I don’t understand why I’ve told you, why it’s you in my arms, why I cannot simply walk away. I’ve sought my pleasure with men and women in recent years, to relieve the ache of loneliness for a few hours but nothing like this.” He spoke to the top of my head because I lay my ear against his strong heart, listening to its steady beat. “Why can’t I walk away?” he asked.

  I laced my fingers through his. “I don’t know, Robin. I don’t know.”

  8

  WHEN I WOKE THE next morning I woke alone, sprawled over the bed. I did not feel surprise or shock, just a terrible sense of inevitability. In all the time I’d been free of my father, I couldn’t free myself of the memories his actions left inside me and that meant I couldn’t just hand myself over to a man I wanted, I had to make it a bloody drama. I’d driven him away. Everything felt heavy as I rose and dressed, and it seemed to take forever for my fingers to manage the ties on my hose.

  When I made it to the bar Bess smiled. “Well, is he staying for breakfast?”

  “He left, you didn’t see him leave?” I asked.

  Her happiness vanished. “Oh, Will, I’m sorry. He looked at you with such…”