Lord of the Forest Read online

And he’d have her dowry, should his inheritance not materialize. Had her father no idea this man was as keen to get his hands on that money as he was to win her? The dowry was a small one, as Clairbourne hadn’t prospered of late. Of course, Father wouldn’t have told him that. Both men were as bad as each other. She rolled her eyes.

  Walter hadn’t finished his list of attributes. “You, with your skills at huswifery, will enable me to entertain lavishly at Emborough—when ’tis mine. Your beauty, too, will attract the interest of gentlemen, and many will come to enjoy your playing and singing, which I’m told are superlative.”

  So, that was the crux of it. He thought she’d be an asset in helping him to better himself. But what if she didn’t want to be viewed as his tropaeum uxor—his trophy wife?

  “You haven’t touched on what advantage I will get from that, sir.”

  He rose to his feet, his face darkening. “Do not all women want to be the center of attention, to be courted, flattered, and fawned over?”

  “Only those with no wit. I should like to go to court and wait upon the queen. That would be the best use of my talents, as far as I can see.” After Simeon’s death, it had been the only thing that had stopped her drowning in sorrow. She had to keep that dream alive.

  De Glanville seized her wrist again, and she went rigid.

  “You think much too highly of yourself, Mistress Clemence. You need a husband to tame that pride of yours. I see it—your father sees it, too. Make sure not to deny me for too long, or you may live to regret it.”

  She shook—partly in anger, partly in fear. There was an expression in de Glanville’s hazel eyes she’d never seen before. His lips were pushed back from his teeth, making him look like a mad dog. She tensed with the urge to run. But no—they were in the rose arbor at Clairbourne Manor, her home, in full view of the house. What harm could he, would he do to her here? Yet she read that unspoken message in his eyes, daring her to test his wrath, to try his resolve.

  Her temper rose to her rescue. With her free hand, she dealt him a sharp blow across his stubbly cheek, then yanked her captive wrist free. “Sir, you go too far. This unmannerly behavior is more likely to drive me from your side than attract me. Our discourse is at an end.”

  Picking up her skirts, she swirled away from him and headed for the safety of the house as fast as she could.

  “Lady—no one strikes me without a reckoning. Yours will come sooner than you expect.”

  She heard no footsteps crunching on gravel to indicate he was coming after her, thank heavens. But his parting words shot a shard of ice into her soul. She’d just made an enemy of Walter de Glanville. And she knew from the tone of his voice that he had no intention of letting her get away unpunished.

  Chapter Two

  Lancelot let the holly bough swing back into place behind him. It caught his arm, widening a tear in his shirt. Cursing, he pulled the garment off—come winter, he’d regret not having taken more care to preserve it.

  He’d have to kill something large and skin it so he could make himself a cloak. Maybe several somethings. He’d learned by spying on the villagers how to skin a deer and preserve its hide—though it would mean having to harvest enough stout branches to make a frame. He could use sinew from the deer’s legs to stretch the hide, but would one skin be big enough?

  He was slimmer than when he’d first arrived in the forest, for his tattered hose were continually trying to slide down his hips. Nonetheless, when he took his measure against that of the peasants upon whom he spied—and from whom he stole—he knew he was a large man. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and well-muscled. He might need a cow’s hide. An ox hide, even?

  Tugging at his beard, he settled down on the tree stump he used as a seat. The beard was getting long again, starting to catch in the leaves and branches of the holly trees within which he hid from the world. He must sharpen his knife and cut the beard, or tie it up with some nettle string, to keep it out of the way. His hair needed similar attention, but it wasn’t easy to see what one was doing with only a forest pool for a mirror. One slip with the knife would draw blood, and infection was the last thing a man needed when living like an outlaw away from his fellows.

  A bat flitted overhead, chasing the dancing midges that spiraled around the oak trees overshadowing the grove. It would soon be dark enough for him to light a fire and cook the cony he’d caught.

  Unsheathing his knife, he set about skinning and gutting the animal. He’d keep one of the feet for luck, as he always did, and offer another to the forest gods, who kept him safe and provided him with their bounty. He’d save the cony’s skin, too, to make new mittens for the winter. Life was hard without hearth, home, and human company—but he knew instinctively that if any man were to catch a glimpse of him, the consequences could prove fatal. If only he could remember why.

  Kneeling, he washed his hands in the brook that ran through the grove. The river feeding this watercourse was the one which had delivered him to the forest in the very beginning—how long ago had it been now? He remembered the pain, the cold, the sickness that had taken him for many days, filling his body with alternate chills and fever, wearing him down until death offered a welcome release.

  Yet somehow, he’d survived. Aye, it must have been at least three years—he could remember two winters before the last. One never forgot the winters. It had been well-nigh impossible to manage them. The villagers left nothing much out in the lowest season of the year, except their woodpiles, and the livestock were herded into byres. Thus, he’d learned to help himself to what he needed in high season—when there was so much plenty—and dry what meat he could to store for winter. In summer, the loss of a chicken or two, or a piglet, might be put down to misfortune rather than theft.

  Standing, Lancelot flexed his muscles and yawned. Mayhap it was time to huddle down into the pile of furze he’d collected for bedding, and rest. Like the owls, he did most of his hunting and scavenging at twilight.

  First, he emptied his bladder into the latrine pit, then threw soil into it with the ox shoulder blade he used as a shovel. Then, as he always did, he scaled the ancient oak at the center of the holly grove, to ensure no enemies were nigh.

  Stopping below the crown, which was too slender to hold his weight, he’d just started scanning the treetops when he heard a noise at the western edge of the forest. Listening intently, he stared in that direction but could see naught. When the sound came again, it was swiftly cut off.

  He scoured his memory—what little remained of it—and identified the noise as a woman’s scream. A woman frightened or distressed. What could be out there on this balmy summer’s evening to wrench forth such a cry?

  His namesake, Sir Lancelot du Lac, would have hurtled through the trees on his charger, helm down and broadsword at the ready, keen to fight the foe and rescue the damsel. But not he. Slowly, he inched his way back down the tree, careful not to disturb the leaves as he made his way silently from branch to branch. The scream had come from the direction of the road, a place he avoided like the plague.

  If a female was screaming on the road, it was no wild boar that had alarmed her, no huntsman’s trap into which she had fallen. The only danger that haunted the highway was human. He hadn’t come face-to-face with another person in all the time he’d been in the forest and was perfectly content to keep it that way.

  He’d reached the safety of the clearing now, but his heart refused to ease its frantic beating. An irresistible force was pulling him toward the road to investigate that cry of anguish, but he fought it with all his strength. Involvement in other people’s affairs was the last thing he needed.

  He failed. The urge to help was too strong. Before he knew what he was doing, he’d thrust himself between the holly bushes and was racing like a hunted deer toward the west. Pigeons clacked out of the canopy as he sped past, and small creatures, just coming out for the night, darted out of his way. He only slowed when he came nigh the highway, and he could feel the trampled mud of its margins
beneath his bare feet.

  Staring south, toward the hollow way leading to the village, he saw nothing. He gazed north, toward terra incognita, and spotted a shape swaying off into the distance. That must be from whence the scream had come. But it was too late to act now. Whatever had happened to the damsel in distress was done, and she was nowhere to be seen—mayhap she’d been taken off in the wheeled vehicle trundling away into the distance.

  A cart. That’s what it was called. He’d been so separated from everyday life, he’d forgotten the names of many things, and their purpose. A wagon—or cart—was for the transportation of objects and people.

  Cursing himself for his heroic folly, he set off in pursuit, keeping to the verge to avoid the painful cobbles and ankle-turning potholes of the roadway. Even with his speed and strength, he had no idea if he could outrun a horse-drawn vehicle, but a fundamental sense of urgency insisted he try.

  The driver of the cart seemed to be having some difficulty. Lancelot could see the horse weaving from side to side, looking decidedly skittish. From what he could remember of horses, it wouldn’t have liked those feminine screams.

  Lungs aching, he eventually drew level with the cart and saw a man and a woman in the back, engaged in a desperate struggle. So—it was an abduction, was it? Like Queen Guinevere, stolen by the evil knight Meliagrance. A pox-marked man with a grizzled beard sat at the front, reins in hand.

  Wasting not a moment, Lancelot threw himself onto the tail of the cart, grasped the woman’s attacker by the shoulders, and threw him bodily onto the highway. The horse let out a frightened whinny, so he hurled the driver of the cart onto the roadway as well, and seized the reins.

  “Whoa, boy.” His voice came out as a croak, startling him. He spoke so rarely that he’d almost forgotten how he sounded. Fortunately, the animal responded to the commanding tug on its reins and clattered to a halt.

  There was a moment of stillness, during which nothing could be heard save the jingle of harness as the horse steadied itself, and the exacerbated huff of its breathing. Then the evening air was severed by another scream, right by Lancelot’s head.

  “They’re coming after us. Pray, help me, sir!”

  The woman, who had wrestled free of the cloak in which her abductor had been attempting to subdue her, pointed back the way they’d come. “We must make haste. My home is that way. Can you drive us thither?”

  He wasn’t taking this cart anywhere. The last thing he wanted to do was show his face at someone’s house.

  “Nay.” His voice was a crude grunt. He’d rescued the woman but still needed to deal with the two men. Lifting her over the side of the cart, he set her down, jumped after her and waited, arms folded across his bare chest.

  The bandits bore down on him, red-faced with fury, one of them with blood pouring from a cut above his eye. Neither man paused to consider Lancelot’s shape or size—which was exceedingly foolish of them. He seized one by the collar, virtually strangling him, and used him as a battering ram to knock the other over. Then, while keeping the downed man immobile with a foot on his throat, he gave the other a blow to the side of the head. The man measured his length on the ground, knocked out cold.

  The other fellow, arms and legs waving like a cockroach on its back, choked and gurgled as Lancelot pulled him to his feet and subjected him to the same treatment.

  With both assailants collapsed on the roadway, he licked his sore knuckles and permitted himself a small smile of triumph. Gazing around to make sure no one else was about, he climbed into the cart to see if it contained anything worth scavenging.

  Some empty sacks. He took those—useful for carrying and storage. He could stuff some of his bedding into them to stop it moving around too much. There was an old cloak also, which would make a fine coverlet, once he’d cleansed it in the brook. There was naught else—not even some ancient neep that had rolled, forgotten, into a corner. It would have made a welcome change to have neep in his cony stew, rather than just roots and herbs.

  “Ahem.”

  Ah, yes, the woman. He leaped down and faced her.

  “Aren’t you going to take me home?”

  She was quite young and much prettier than the village girls he was used to seeing. She wore some kind of headdress, which had been knocked askew in the struggle. A cloud of light hair had escaped from it, though he couldn’t tell its color in the encroaching gloom.

  “No.” He stepped past her and strode back toward the forest.

  “What?” She sounded outraged. He could hear the patter of her dainty feet as she tried to keep up with him.

  “Drive yourself home. I’ll have naught to do with it.”

  There. That was the longest pronouncement he’d made in years. It proved he could still speak—assuming, of course, that what he was saying made sense. It didn’t seem to make any difference, though. She was still trotting along behind him.

  “What makes you think I can drive, you great oaf? Do you really mean to leave me here, to be picked off by any vagabond or bandit who happens along? Why bother to rescue me if you’re just going to abandon me again?”

  She talked too much. Shrugging his shoulders, Lancelot veered off beneath the shadow of the oak trees. She wouldn’t follow him into the forest—she’d think it too full of threats. She’d lose her way in no time, especially if he picked up his pace and left her behind.

  “No, wait. I didn’t mean to call you an oaf. I just don’t understand. Please, wait, sir. I don’t want to walk home alone, and I want to recover my basket.”

  He pulled to a halt. If she stayed on the road, in the open, would he end up having to rescue her all over again? The less fuss that was made, the lower the risk of anyone seeing him.

  “I’ll get your basket.” His voice was a growl. “And then you must spend the night with me.”

  “What? I’ll do no such thing—I shall get my basket, and walk back home alone since you have so little gallantry. It would do no harm to admit you don’t know how to manage a cart. I’d think no less of you for it. I can even overlook the fact you are undressed—though I cannot imagine why you would be at this hour of the day.”

  He almost laughed. That was something else he hadn’t done in many a moon—there was little amusement to be had living like a hermit in the forest, with only the trees and the creatures for company.

  He started walking again and, as before, she followed him. Behind them, in the distance, he could hear the slow clip-clop of hooves as the puzzled carthorse continued on its way alone. His ears were finely attuned to sound now, and the racket his female companion made was loud enough to wake the dead. Hadn’t she learned not to step on dry twigs, or walk right through piles of last year’s leaves? As soon as those ruffians recovered their senses, they’d be on them in no time.

  Stopping once more, he stared at her serious, determined face. Words were hard to find but, eventually, he said, “Make a bargain. Do as I say, and I’ll get your basket and take you to a safe place. Then help you home, on the morrow.” Finally, he attempted a smile, hoping it didn’t look too terrifying. “I promise to do you no harm.”

  She chewed at her lip, lowering her eyes. Why should she trust him, indeed? She’d just been abducted by two men and was probably loath to trust anyone. Little did she know he was in far more danger from her than she was from him.

  She raised her eyes and stared at him for a long moment. “Very well. If you swear, I will do as you ask.”

  “Good.” He scanned her clothing and saw she wore a kerchief, tucked into the low neckline of her gown.

  “I cannot show you where we go.” Before she could object, he tugged the kerchief out, rolled it, and knotted it at the back of her head, blindfolding her. She sucked in a breath, but fearing she was about to scream again, he seized her and clamped a hand over her mouth. She was warm and soft in his arms, delicate and fine-boned, and she smelled of the sweetest, most exotic scent he’d ever experienced. Or could remember having experienced. Nestling his head against her
s, he inhaled deeply, and stroked a hand from her chin to her neck, reveling in the softness of her skin. What an unexpected delight! Danger came in the most tempting of forms.

  A sudden pain in his toe brought him back to his senses.

  “Did you just stamp on me?”

  “Insolent dog. How dare you maul me like that! A fine Sir Galahad you’ve turned out to be.”

  “Lancelot,” he corrected her.

  “Lancelot?” She froze in surprise. “That’s your name?”

  “I know not.” In truth, he didn’t. But he’d read Malory, and although most of his other memories were gone, some of the stories and characters from the book remained. Lancelot had wandered in the wilderness, out of his wits. He had done the same; therefore, he was Lancelot, also.

  He didn’t really need a name. It just felt right to have one. It was certainly better than being called a “great oaf”.

  “I’ll try to avoid doing anything you don’t like.” He’d been out of human society for so long that it was impossible to anticipate others’ needs and wants.

  “I should hope not. Now, which way do we go? How may I avoid walking into trees and falling flat on my face?”

  Speaking was tiring him. He didn’t know the right things to say. Did not, in fact, care for speech at all. Instead, he lifted her up and threw her over his shoulders, much as he’d carry a deer carcass.

  She didn’t appreciate it. “You’ll kill me. This is like being tortured on the rack. Crashing. Into trees. Would be. Preferable.”

  They’d reached an uneven piece of ground—each bounce cut off her words. He was tempted to run, which would silence her altogether.

  “Put. Me. Down.”

  If he ran, they would arrive at the holly grove far quicker. Then he could remove her basket from the roadway and hide all sign she’d ever been there. Once night fell, he’d take her to the village, then melt back into the forest—if he could trust her not to give away his existence. For once the villagers knew their occasional livestock losses were no accident, and that their vegetables had not been grubbed up by wild boar or badgers, his life would be impossible. How long would it take him to find another sanctuary as good as the holly grove?