Page 20 of An Earl for the Archeress

A brook bubbled by, trickling down the hill and pooling beneath them. She dismounted and brought her beast alongside his.

“South. Toward London town.”

“Southwest then. Better plan on two days of my desirable company instead.” He smirked.

…

Wonderful. She unstrapped her packs and rolled her eyes.

She moved opposite the fire ring from him, plopping down against a log in the secluded campsite. Where had he gotten the logs from? It seemed as if he withdrew them from under a tarp, though it was too difficult to determine in the sheltered darkness of the trees. Robert squatted and struck his flints until the sparks ignited a piece of kindling, the ensuing fire making light and shadows lap at the surrounding tree trunks. She examined him in the dimness of the light, noticing how the earl, so pampered in his estates and riches, seemed not only at ease with the mundane activities of a commoner, but actually seemed expert, as if he always camped in the woods with nothing but a bedroll. In fact, he looked rugged on his splayed knees in the dirt, with his jerkin creaking, his hands dirty, and his disheveled hair falling around his face.

“Are you hungry?” he asked, reaching for a pack and dragging it to him. He pulled out a pouch of dried meat and jammed a chunk into his mouth.

She shook her head. She had made a point to eat her fill every day of her recovery and was stuffed. “My thanks, but no.”

“Ah, manners,” he teased, dropping to his rear and extending his legs, crossing them. “You have them.” She scowled at him. “So tell me, since we’re in each other’s company. What prompted the Beast of Ayr’s daughter to flee?”

“Why should I tell you? You’re practically his peer. Since I’m nay your prisoner, you surely have nay considered sending a missive to tell him of my capture. The less information I give anyone, the better. I intend to never let him get his hands on me again.”

The teasing in Robert’s expression vanished, replaced by gentleness. “I haven’t written your father, and I won’t, if that’s your wish. I’m not escorting you to keep my eye on you in some conspiracy to return you to your father, despite what you might think,” he replied. He was looking at her intently, and she shifted under his scrutiny. “I don’t know what life was like for you in your father’s charge, and I believe that property laws pertaining to women are antiquated. But I can imagine that if living with him was anything like living with my father, he ruled with a heavy hand.

“I know your father, though I was the son on the occasion he visited, not the earl. Your father and mine became friends after King Richard left for the Holy Land.” Silence lingered and he averted his eyes from her, toward the inky blackness of Huntington Forest. “The Sheriff of Nottingham introduced them at the request of Ranulf de Blondeville. They seemed very much alike.”

Mariel pondered his words before gentling herself. “Did your father raise you with a heavy hand?”

“Me? No,” Robert replied, still looking away and tearing off another bite before folding his arms. “No, I was the favored son. His heir. Any siblings I had died at childbirth. But my mother, yes. I once begged him to hit me instead, on an occasion when he was particularly angry at her, for as a lad of five and ten I was certain I was tough enough to take it. He just laughed and told me a husband needed to guide his wife with an ‘iron fist’ when necessary.” Mariel shivered at his description, thinking on the words her father had spoken to her about her betrothal. “She died a week later,” Robert added. “Supposedly she hit her head on the bedpost whilst stumbling in the night for the chamber pot, but in sooth, I never saw her after that moment with my father. I know he killed her.”

“I’m sorry,” Mariel whispered, covering her mouth at his bluntness.

He shrugged, looking into the fire, but didn’t look up. She thought on his confession, how freely he had given it with no concern for appearing soft. And yet, oh, to have been a son and not a daughter. She would have been the favored heir, too, instead of loathed for her gender. She cleared her throat. Robert’s confession threatened to soften her anger.

“’Tis clever, this camp, how you have hidden a supply of firewood.” She changed the subject.

He welcomed the diversion. “I keep track of who’s on my land. I started the scheme a few months ago when my father was finally too weak to give orders. It provides ready supplies for when I, or a handful of my men, are in need,” he said cryptically. “There are other necessities here, too, hidden to the naked eye.”

“Why do you tell me secrets such as this? Surely it’s a breach in your security.”

Robert shrugged again, eyeing her with a secret she could tell he wished to share. “I know I can trust you.”

“Why is that? I might be prepared to tell all about your strategy.”

His lips curled up knowingly. “But you won’t. Because I’m not a horrible urchin. You like me, and you have a particular disdain for authority…and it’s not as though you know exactly where my stashes of firewood are hidden, now do you?”

What arrogant assumptions to make, except they were true. All of them. “I suppose I don’t. I, eh, I did not mean any ill by stealing your hare. I’m sorry.”

He waved his hand dismissively and seemed to smile at her Scottish brogue. “I never would have apprehended you. I would have bid you enjoy it, at least, invited you to my hall, at most. My men are adapting to my change of philosophy toward the poor. Wesley, however, is as determined to prove I will drain my father’s coffers as Noah was of building the ark. Yet my wealth only continues to grow. Why is that?”

She shrugged. “Though he is a pompous arse, I would agree that his concern is real.”

“Most would.” Robert nodded. “But you see, my idea is novel and seems to be working. It breaks the normal convention that people are born into an impoverished station to serve as lowly serfs and that they deserve no respect. If I ensure that the poor beggar that ends up on my doorstep knows charity, he is more inclined to stay in my village.”

“Which again might be a drain on resources, food supplies and such, for your lands have not grown, but now your population has,” Mariel replied.

“And that is the typical concern. But you see”—Robert shook his finger at nothing in particular for emphasis—“every person can be industrious. And if that person can cultivate and farm one more field, well, that is several bushels more of corn, barley, and such. And since I have a surplus, once the castle stores are filled, the rest can go to market to bring in more coin. And if it doesn’t sell, it can be given to Barking Abbey in place of my annual tributes made in coin.

“But say that beggar is a skilled weaver, or smith, or woodworker, or perhaps though not skilled, is inclined to learn. For example, I give you a family that came to me as my father lay dying. The husband is a skilled leatherworker, and his craft brought in a fair price at the tourney. He keeps most and pays a contribution to me as fealty. Both of us have benefited. That, and his wife has a particularly green thumb. She is now in charge of the herb garden behind the kitchens.

“People want to be productive, all of us in some way. We wish to know that we matter, and hard work gives us a sense of worth. Some, through tragedy or accident of birth, end up lowly. But I am of the opinion that it’s not what station a man is born into that defines his worth. So far, my ways seem to be working. Their industriousness brings in more coin over the long run, which balances out what is given in charity now, and if they should stay on, the more men, the merrier.”