"Clayton Emery - Robin & Marian - Dowsing The Demon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emery Clayton)

"Sir, wait!" piped Marian. "We needs look in his eyes!"
But the son clawed closed the thin eyelids. "I can't stand his gaze. As if it were my fault. Had I gotten
here only an hour earlier --" He broke into tears, sobbing.
Robin rubbed his beard as he surveyed the room. Shocking though this macabre spectacle was, he'd
seen worse, though not usually this early in the morning. And his famous curiousity, an itch he could never
scratch, prodded him like an ox goad. His wife, too.
Marian lit a stick of candlewood at the smoldering hearth. Gingerly, she picked across the room, leaned
over the dead mother. She peered deep into the woman's eyes.
"Anything?" Robin asked.
"No," Marian sighed. "Nothing. She must have closed her eyes when the knife struck."
Robin grunted. Something by the fireplace had caught his eye. He stooped, swirled his fingers through
white grit, the only dirt in the room. Streaks of it pointed to the chimney. Feeling around, Robin tugged
loose a stone big as a loaf. Behind it was a cool darkness. Squatting, he mumbled to Marian, "There's a
hole here big enough for my head. Nothing in it, though."
"The hole or the head?" Her lame jest was just something to break the silence. Marian left the dead
mother, put her hand on the red chest against the wall, tried to lift the lid. It clinked and stayed put. "This
chest is locked. My thumbs are pricking, Rob... And look here."
Robin's wife knelt at the fireplace, leaned low and sniffed, picked out some charred scraps of leather that
stained her fingers yellow-brown. "What think you of that?"
"It's not something they had for supper. Let me see this door..."
Waving the crowd back, Robin shoved the battered door shut. It groaned in protest. Twin iron brackets
had held the bar solidly across the posts. One bracket was broken, the fracture gray against blackened
iron. Behind the door, the other bracket was twisted out of shape. The stout bar trailed from it to the
floor. The door itself was oak, thick, and battened so neither wind nor knife blade could infiltrate. It was
dark behind the door but, bending, Robin found jots of yellow gunk smeared on the battens. He scraped
them like old cheese with his fingernails. He sniffed, held his fingers to Marian.
"Why, it's sweet! It's --"
The door slammed Robin in the face as it was kicked open. The outlaw hit the wall. A splinter nicked his
nose and it bled.
"Stand fast, you thieving blackguard! Don't you move!"
Filling the splintered doorway was a sheriff of Lincoln in a red smock and gray hose, with a sword at his
belt as badge of office. He hefted a long club with the head drilled and filled with lead, hoisted it to keep
Robin on the defensive.
At his other hand, Marian shifted. The sheriff whirled on her, then froze when he spotted the bodies on
the floor. "God's teeth and fish!" Behind the sheriff came a younger version of himself, a deputy,
obviously his son. But the lad whirled and dashed into the street to puke. The crowd parted for him.
Still on bloody knees, the young merchant keened. "Witches and demons have descended, murdered my
parents!" He waved his hands around the room. "Smell the brimstone from their passing? Satan's minions
have savaged them and drunk their blood!"
The sheriff commanded the room with his presence, his club, and his broad belly, though his son's
retching spoiled the effect somewhat. He studied the bodies calmly. "If that's so, they didn't drink much.
You're Peter, ain't you, the wool merchant? This couple's son? Well, I'm sorry, lad."
He stretched his club and thumped Robin's breastbone. "And who are you, standing knee-deep in crime
and picking lice out of your beard? I never saw you before. Think you to rob the dead?"
Robin's temper sparked. His hands clenched for the sword he didn't have. He squelched his ire. He and
Marian were in town to buy cloth, both Lincoln green and red, for spring clothes for the Sherwood band.
Too, it was a holiday after a winter cooped up in the Greenwood. They wore disguises plucked from the
common chests in their cave, red woolen smocks and hose and soft round hats, the garb of minor
merchants. Robin felt naked without his sword and longbow, only a long Irish knife.
Robin showed the sheriff the top of his head, hang-dog and humble. "I'm Robert of Farnesfield, sir