Invictus ch 1
This is my newly rewritten Ch1 for Invictus, an original Robin Hood novel. Comments welcome.
“Loxley.”
I stopped, not by choice. They’d hustled in front of me, three young men in silks gaudy even in the firelight, blocking my path as Joanna moved ahead to greet her sister.
“Thomas.” I knew the one in front, slightly. Thomas de Beaudet, whose father would have whipped him eight years ago for addressing a baron so much his senior so casually. Those rules didn’t apply any more, and the boys were out for some fun. I didn’t know the other two, didn’t need to; youths like this had always been the same. Baiting the outsider; sport for a dull gathering, all the more exciting because they feared me a little.
“My friends and I have a dispute about hunting, and you’re just the man to answer it.”
“Unlikely. I keep neither hawk nor hound.” No way to step past them. They weren’t dangerous, just irritating.
“But no-one’s hunted the King’s deer more often than you. Isn’t that right?” The rings on the boy’s fingers would keep us fed through a couple of winters. A long time ago I’d have taken them.
“Not for many years.” Where was this going? If they thought my past shamed me, they were wrong.
“My friends think that the penalty for poaching deer in Richard’s day was death. But I said no, surely it’s the grant of a couple of acres of piss-poor land and the space between a lady’s legs. What do you think, Loxley?”
I was forty years old. I didn’t brawl with lads half my age over unoriginal insults, not least because I couldn’t afford to. I was here on sufferance, lowborn, titular Baron with confiscated lands. It was the daughter of the Earl of Huntingdon who merited invitation to the night’s entertainment. Joanna, my farmer’s wife, who would not appreciate any move I made to defend her honour right now.
“Introduce me to your friends, Thomas.”
The boy frowned, confused. Slow, this one. “Why?”
“I know their faces. I might have a use for their names, someday.”
The threat was hollow. I’d no power to harm them. They laughed at me, mocking, a touch uncertain, but when I started walking again they let me through.
I didn’t look round, even when the last gibe came.
“Everyone know that it wasn’t Richard’s deer that got you Loxley. It was Richard’s arse.”
An old slander, and one no-one believed. These boys would have been young children when King Richard returned to England but the story of how I’d seized the opportunity to settle old scores with Nottingham’s traitors had been told everywhere. Richard’s gratitude had been unexpected and lavish; a pardon, a baronage, an estate, but he’d used my reputation shamelessly to the benefit of his own in return.
I’d stayed a favoured vassal long enough to woo and wed a second time, to father a child who looked likely to inherit Huntingdon’s great estates, to get used to the comforts of the manor at Loxley, even to learn enough French to get by in company like this. Then a crossbow bolt somewhere across the Channel had changed everything again.
More voices behind me now, lower, older and annoyed. No-one here, with the possible exception of a couple of my in-laws, cared whether I was insulted or not, but there were ladies present. Thomas’ lewd accusation had been a little too loud.
Joanna showed no signs of having heard; she was smiling as I slid a hand about her slim waist and bowed to her sister Elisabet, one courtesy I was always glad to make.
The older man with them nodded at me, and I greeted him civilly.
“My lord Philip.” The Earl’s wealth and status earned him nothing from me, but as my father-in-law he was due respect. At least until he started talking.
“Robin.” Not ‘Loxley’ tonight. A temporary thaw, then.
“Is the boy here?” The reason for the improvement in relations. I’d finally let Dickon go to his grandfather a few months back, when the end of Elisabet’s childless marriage left him as Philip’s likely heir. We missed him but he seemed to be thriving at Lichfield. Seeing him was the only benefit that I could imagine from being here at all tonight.
“He’s around somewhere. Getting into trouble, no doubt.” Philip sounded fond but I knew he was strict enough. “He could do with his mother’s presence.”
I snorted, annoyed at the blatant attempt at manipulation. “He’s ten years old, Philip, not an infant. And Joanna is free to return to Lichfield at any time that she chooses.”
“Which she doesn’t.” Joanna’s firm voice came to my support. “My place is with my husband, Father.”
“Not when he can’t support you.”
The goodwill was falling away as the old argument recommenced. Philip’s reputation was as an easy tempered man, a born diplomat, but he and I managed to quarrel most times that we met.
“I support my wife.”
The farm supported us both; in all these years we’d neither starved, quite, nor taken Philip’s charity. No money for gowns or jewels or palfreys, certainly, but Joanna needed none of those; she was content with a farmer’s wool and linen. Her old silk gown, much altered as fashions changed, came out only for events like these. She’d ridden pillion on the plough horse to get to Brom Legge tonight.
Fortunately Dickon chose this time to appear from out of the crush of people, bright eyed and with a playmate close behind. The lad suffered my rough embrace impatiently and his mother's longer one with a little more grace. His livery matched Joanna's gown; it was no doubt wrong to say to a boy conscious of his dignity, but I thought again how like they looked.
“Stay with us.” Philip directed him, not harshly. “There are people I want to introduce you to.” Dull for the boy, I imagined, but Philip would make sure that his grandson was making the right connections, even at this age.
“Who’s here, Father?” Elisabet seized on the change of topic with obvious relief. I knew that she worried about her younger sister as much as Philip did, but Elisabet respected our choices. Widowed and back living with her father, she was near a second mother to Dickon and we were both grateful.
The evening was a celebration of the birth of a local noble’s first grandchild. Maybe a hundred people were milling around inside the ring of blazing cookfires, churning the damp ground into mire, but it was difficult to recognise anyone from more than a few feet away in the smoke and darkness. It was a provincial gathering; Philip was here as friend of the host and as the major landowner in the Midlands but I didn’t expect anyone else of any great importance, just the usual local knights and a handful of barons. And one farmer and his wife.
“Marten tells me that de Viche arrived a short time ago.” Philip’s voice had lowered a little.
“Guy de Viche?” I took very little notice of politics or power these days, but I’d heard of de Viche, long pre-eminent among the mercenary captains that John favoured over his English nobles for his French campaigns.
“Lord de Viche, now. Did you ever meet him, Robin?” Philip’s temper seemed to have subsided. Politics was his passion and amusement both.
“After my time.” I had been a captain of archers for Richard for as short a time as I could get away with; months only, many years back. “Why’s he here?” The Royal court was half of England away, and France much further.
“I suspect he’s here to exert a little pressure on me about funding for the latest French campaign. His reputation is the devil, but he has John’s ear like few others. Dickon would do well to meet him, once, in decent company."
Hard to find anyone in this crowd, but Philip would put a word or two out and someone would bring the two of them together. I should make myself scarce, for Dickon’s sake; my name wasn’t popular with John’s friends, even now.
Leaving Philip to seek his political opponent and Joanna to happily play mother again in his wake, I elected to find myself some food. Ox and pig were both roasting; I cut a large hunk of pork, took some bread, stood at the edge of the gathering to eat and watch men and women go by. I knew maybe a quarter of them, if that; the edge of Loxley lands had been thirty miles from here at least.
There was de Beaudet again, with his father this time. His eyes skipped off mine awkwardly. A man with no reason to like me; well, there were enough of those. I wasn’t going to fret over an addition to the list so unimpressive.
A man in his fifties walked near me, gave a jerk as he saw me up close, made a fast turn back into the crowd. His face was slightly familiar; I placed it eventually with some amusement. I couldn’t remember what his name was, or what he’d given me with my knife at his throat; no doubt he could have told me precisely, if he wasn’t in so much of a hurry to go the other way. A rare encounter these days. After Richard gave me Loxley I had become used to awkward second introductions to men I’d met once already under Sherwood’s branches, but times and people changed fast.
That had cheered me, anyway. I liked to think myself not completely forgotten. I found a flagon of wine, went back to seek Joanna. Philip and Dickon were nowhere to be seen but my wife looked round as I joined her.
“Robin! I've been talking to Lord Guy de Viche; he claims you as an old acquaintance.” Her eyes were sparkling in the firelight.
I smiled. Doubtless a husband who knew the King's recent general would impress Elisabet. Pity I'd never met the man. I nodded to the tall figure.
“My Lord. I'm not sure that I've had the pleasure...”
I looked Guy de Viche full in the face, and the world stopped.
Chapter 2
“Loxley.”
I stopped, not by choice. They’d hustled in front of me, three young men in silks gaudy even in the firelight, blocking my path as Joanna moved ahead to greet her sister.
“Thomas.” I knew the one in front, slightly. Thomas de Beaudet, whose father would have whipped him eight years ago for addressing a baron so much his senior so casually. Those rules didn’t apply any more, and the boys were out for some fun. I didn’t know the other two, didn’t need to; youths like this had always been the same. Baiting the outsider; sport for a dull gathering, all the more exciting because they feared me a little.
“My friends and I have a dispute about hunting, and you’re just the man to answer it.”
“Unlikely. I keep neither hawk nor hound.” No way to step past them. They weren’t dangerous, just irritating.
“But no-one’s hunted the King’s deer more often than you. Isn’t that right?” The rings on the boy’s fingers would keep us fed through a couple of winters. A long time ago I’d have taken them.
“Not for many years.” Where was this going? If they thought my past shamed me, they were wrong.
“My friends think that the penalty for poaching deer in Richard’s day was death. But I said no, surely it’s the grant of a couple of acres of piss-poor land and the space between a lady’s legs. What do you think, Loxley?”
I was forty years old. I didn’t brawl with lads half my age over unoriginal insults, not least because I couldn’t afford to. I was here on sufferance, lowborn, titular Baron with confiscated lands. It was the daughter of the Earl of Huntingdon who merited invitation to the night’s entertainment. Joanna, my farmer’s wife, who would not appreciate any move I made to defend her honour right now.
“Introduce me to your friends, Thomas.”
The boy frowned, confused. Slow, this one. “Why?”
“I know their faces. I might have a use for their names, someday.”
The threat was hollow. I’d no power to harm them. They laughed at me, mocking, a touch uncertain, but when I started walking again they let me through.
I didn’t look round, even when the last gibe came.
“Everyone know that it wasn’t Richard’s deer that got you Loxley. It was Richard’s arse.”
An old slander, and one no-one believed. These boys would have been young children when King Richard returned to England but the story of how I’d seized the opportunity to settle old scores with Nottingham’s traitors had been told everywhere. Richard’s gratitude had been unexpected and lavish; a pardon, a baronage, an estate, but he’d used my reputation shamelessly to the benefit of his own in return.
I’d stayed a favoured vassal long enough to woo and wed a second time, to father a child who looked likely to inherit Huntingdon’s great estates, to get used to the comforts of the manor at Loxley, even to learn enough French to get by in company like this. Then a crossbow bolt somewhere across the Channel had changed everything again.
More voices behind me now, lower, older and annoyed. No-one here, with the possible exception of a couple of my in-laws, cared whether I was insulted or not, but there were ladies present. Thomas’ lewd accusation had been a little too loud.
Joanna showed no signs of having heard; she was smiling as I slid a hand about her slim waist and bowed to her sister Elisabet, one courtesy I was always glad to make.
The older man with them nodded at me, and I greeted him civilly.
“My lord Philip.” The Earl’s wealth and status earned him nothing from me, but as my father-in-law he was due respect. At least until he started talking.
“Robin.” Not ‘Loxley’ tonight. A temporary thaw, then.
“Is the boy here?” The reason for the improvement in relations. I’d finally let Dickon go to his grandfather a few months back, when the end of Elisabet’s childless marriage left him as Philip’s likely heir. We missed him but he seemed to be thriving at Lichfield. Seeing him was the only benefit that I could imagine from being here at all tonight.
“He’s around somewhere. Getting into trouble, no doubt.” Philip sounded fond but I knew he was strict enough. “He could do with his mother’s presence.”
I snorted, annoyed at the blatant attempt at manipulation. “He’s ten years old, Philip, not an infant. And Joanna is free to return to Lichfield at any time that she chooses.”
“Which she doesn’t.” Joanna’s firm voice came to my support. “My place is with my husband, Father.”
“Not when he can’t support you.”
The goodwill was falling away as the old argument recommenced. Philip’s reputation was as an easy tempered man, a born diplomat, but he and I managed to quarrel most times that we met.
“I support my wife.”
The farm supported us both; in all these years we’d neither starved, quite, nor taken Philip’s charity. No money for gowns or jewels or palfreys, certainly, but Joanna needed none of those; she was content with a farmer’s wool and linen. Her old silk gown, much altered as fashions changed, came out only for events like these. She’d ridden pillion on the plough horse to get to Brom Legge tonight.
Fortunately Dickon chose this time to appear from out of the crush of people, bright eyed and with a playmate close behind. The lad suffered my rough embrace impatiently and his mother's longer one with a little more grace. His livery matched Joanna's gown; it was no doubt wrong to say to a boy conscious of his dignity, but I thought again how like they looked.
“Stay with us.” Philip directed him, not harshly. “There are people I want to introduce you to.” Dull for the boy, I imagined, but Philip would make sure that his grandson was making the right connections, even at this age.
“Who’s here, Father?” Elisabet seized on the change of topic with obvious relief. I knew that she worried about her younger sister as much as Philip did, but Elisabet respected our choices. Widowed and back living with her father, she was near a second mother to Dickon and we were both grateful.
The evening was a celebration of the birth of a local noble’s first grandchild. Maybe a hundred people were milling around inside the ring of blazing cookfires, churning the damp ground into mire, but it was difficult to recognise anyone from more than a few feet away in the smoke and darkness. It was a provincial gathering; Philip was here as friend of the host and as the major landowner in the Midlands but I didn’t expect anyone else of any great importance, just the usual local knights and a handful of barons. And one farmer and his wife.
“Marten tells me that de Viche arrived a short time ago.” Philip’s voice had lowered a little.
“Guy de Viche?” I took very little notice of politics or power these days, but I’d heard of de Viche, long pre-eminent among the mercenary captains that John favoured over his English nobles for his French campaigns.
“Lord de Viche, now. Did you ever meet him, Robin?” Philip’s temper seemed to have subsided. Politics was his passion and amusement both.
“After my time.” I had been a captain of archers for Richard for as short a time as I could get away with; months only, many years back. “Why’s he here?” The Royal court was half of England away, and France much further.
“I suspect he’s here to exert a little pressure on me about funding for the latest French campaign. His reputation is the devil, but he has John’s ear like few others. Dickon would do well to meet him, once, in decent company."
Hard to find anyone in this crowd, but Philip would put a word or two out and someone would bring the two of them together. I should make myself scarce, for Dickon’s sake; my name wasn’t popular with John’s friends, even now.
Leaving Philip to seek his political opponent and Joanna to happily play mother again in his wake, I elected to find myself some food. Ox and pig were both roasting; I cut a large hunk of pork, took some bread, stood at the edge of the gathering to eat and watch men and women go by. I knew maybe a quarter of them, if that; the edge of Loxley lands had been thirty miles from here at least.
There was de Beaudet again, with his father this time. His eyes skipped off mine awkwardly. A man with no reason to like me; well, there were enough of those. I wasn’t going to fret over an addition to the list so unimpressive.
A man in his fifties walked near me, gave a jerk as he saw me up close, made a fast turn back into the crowd. His face was slightly familiar; I placed it eventually with some amusement. I couldn’t remember what his name was, or what he’d given me with my knife at his throat; no doubt he could have told me precisely, if he wasn’t in so much of a hurry to go the other way. A rare encounter these days. After Richard gave me Loxley I had become used to awkward second introductions to men I’d met once already under Sherwood’s branches, but times and people changed fast.
That had cheered me, anyway. I liked to think myself not completely forgotten. I found a flagon of wine, went back to seek Joanna. Philip and Dickon were nowhere to be seen but my wife looked round as I joined her.
“Robin! I've been talking to Lord Guy de Viche; he claims you as an old acquaintance.” Her eyes were sparkling in the firelight.
I smiled. Doubtless a husband who knew the King's recent general would impress Elisabet. Pity I'd never met the man. I nodded to the tall figure.
“My Lord. I'm not sure that I've had the pleasure...”
I looked Guy de Viche full in the face, and the world stopped.
Chapter 2