Everything I Do: a Robin Hood romance (Rosa Fitzwalter Book 1) (2 page)

“If I told you about everything that has lead me here, you would truly believe me. Only, you see… you have been my hero for years. I have admired you and thanked God for you and now I saw you face to face for the first time and you are even more magnificent than you appeared from afar.” The boy paused to take a deep breath. “But then you don’t even believe me. I understand you cannot be too trusting, but I had hoped that all the evil you fight against has not robbed you of being human yourself. So I will not say anything that will force you to give credit to my sayings. I am sure you will find a way to save those people from serious danger, if only you want to. You have the information and you have seen my face as I gave it to you. You judge for yourself what my reasons were for coming to you.”

Before Robin could even begin to take in everything Stuart had told him, the boy had disappeared. Robin looked for a glimpse of the lad’s grey horse among the thick leaves but it seemed the few moments that he had been lost in contemplation were enough for him to gallop soundlessly into the night.

Robin snorted and turned his horse around. He arrived back at the camp shortly, and his meal had already been warmed for him, most of the men having eaten and sitting back to rest. He sat down and brought the cup to his lips, but for once he didn’t even taste the delicious meat.

Instead, his mind was rapidly going over what the boy with the alluring eyes had told him.

…

Rosa Fitzwalter walked cautiously down the narrow hall that lead to the stairs. She had quickly changed from her boyish clothes in the stables, but still her appearance was quite disheveled and she didn’t want to run into anyone looking like this -especially not her father. For when the Sheriff of Nottingham was not planning for ways to accumulate more gold coins or to use his already existing wealth to enlarge his stomach, he was looking for clues to prove her treachery.

Not that he didn’t have good enough reasons to suspect her loyalties of lying with his greatest enemy, the outlaw Robin Hood already.

Rosa Fitzwalter, princess by birth and heritage, and daughter to the great Sheriff of Nottingham, was nearing her eighteenth year on this earth. Until a year and a half ago she had led a quite unexceptional existence, going about her duties and receiving lessons in decorum from a lady hired right from his Majesty’s court for that express purpose. Bored to the point of madness by her mindless daily activities in the Sheriff’s castle and becoming increasingly disturbed by her father’s show of abuse to the townspeople, she had found an ideal in the rumors of an outlaw who still believed in England’s true king. She had then taken to spending her days dreaming of him, without ever having laid eyes on the man, and hoping against hope and experience, that he wouldn’t prove as unworthy a dream as every other that had disappointed her.

She had been born in the midst of great sorrow and had known pain from an extremely early age, but for years now the obscure details of her infanthood had been hidden from her, and this well-ordered if inane existence was all she knew for many years.

And then, eighteen months ago, everything changed.

She had somehow managed to persuade her father that the accident that had nearly cost her her life had been pure chance, a tragic misfortune. Yet she could tell he didn’t fully believe her. For one thing he’d started hating her, for she was the reason his greatest enemy was alive. If it hadn’t been for her, the Sheriff’s knife would be rotting in the outlaw’s chest, along with him, five feet below the ground.

Rosa had felt, since her childhood, a coldness, a resentment from her father, something she had always strived to overcome with kindness, but never succeeded. Now, however, his feelings bordered on pure hatred. Whether he still blamed her for the outlaw’s very existence or he suspected her of merely being loyal to him in her heart, she couldn’t tell. All she knew was that she had to be very careful, since he’d made it clear to her that he didn’t consider the dungeons too good a place for his own daughter if she was proven guilty of treason.

Now Robin Hood was another matter entirely.

He almost certainly
should
know that that long-ago incident had been anything but an accident; but thankfully, in the midst of all the commotion he hadn’t taken a good enough look at her, so as to be able to recognize her if he saw her again. It was probably stupid not to have told him it was she that had saved him from certain death, especially since he had practically asked her to give him a reason to trust her. Or him, for she’d been a boy a few hours ago, when she had parted from him.

However, she had this insane wish, namely that he should trust her, or ‘Stuart’, because he’d met her and seen her and talked to her and not because she had given him proof of her devotion. There was no way now that the poor people of Lewes would be rescued, and her heart ached at this thought as much as at the memory of the outlaw laughing to her face.

She’d taken her fate in her own hands when she decided to sneak to the forest to warn Robin of her father’s plans. Now it was done, and, Robin’s disbelief aside, she could not find it in her heart to regret it.

Now she felt really exhausted and hurried as quietly as she could to her rooms upstairs.

But she wasn’t to be left in peace just yet.

“Daughter!” her father’s voice boomed across the hall.

“I am here, father.”

He was seated in front of a generous fire, a couple of council men around him, their eyes gleaming with snobbery and greed. Rosa was grateful for the darkness, as the dull glow of the fire was not enough for them to take notice of her strange appearance. Her stomach turned with disgust at all those eyes ogling her figure, but she tried to appear calm and brave.

“What have you been about?” her father began. “While we have been discussing serious matters of the country, you are sneaking out in traitorous quests, is that it? Oh, sweet mother Mary, why have I been cursed with such a useless daughter?”

Rosa turned her face away, so that he wouldn’t see her expression. Her father always included holy names in his speeches, for he thought it endeared him to the people. Even now, in the same sentence that called his daughter a curse.

“I only took a stroll in the gardens”, she said innocently but firmly. “I am fatigued now and will leave you good sirs to conclude your business.”

No one stopped her and she practically ran to her chamber. She opened the west window and tried to discern the fringes of the Sherwood Forest among the darkness. It had contained all her hopes for a long time. It also contained an outlaw whose eyes nightly haunted her dreams, but who had just this evening crushed all of them, with just a toss of his handsome head and an enchanting laugh that still rang in her ears.

A tear trickled down her cheek, but she didn’t notice.

Morning came much too soon after a restless night. Rosa woke before dawn, and, wrapping a warm quilt around her shoulders she sat quiet and still in the coldness of the early light, thinking. A few hours later her maidservant came in to announce that her father had gone hunting.

That was what she’d been waiting for. Immediately, without stopping to get properly dressed, Rosa leaped up and ran up the stairs to the terrace, taking with her a spyglass she had pilfered a few days previously from her father’s desk. Her naked feet slapped the cold, hard floor, but her cheeks were burning red with excitement, her heart beating like a drum. She lifted her gaze in the direction of the small village of Lewes and waited in dismay for the thin column of smoke to tell her that her father’s business in it had been successful. A cold breeze ruffled her hair, and her nightgown flapped behind her in the wind, but she concentrated on not turning her eyes to the forest that stood in the distance, proud and lush and green, right ahead.

A few long minutes passed, however, and she saw nothing. Helena, her maid, called to her several times to come inside or she would catch her death, but she waited another hour or so, and still no sign of fire met her anxious gaze. Chilled, she decided to come down and ask if there had been any news from town. She had never remembered her father ever taking so long once he had made up his mind. Usually, the village was burnt to the ground almost as soon as his missionaries got there.

Downstairs, chaos greeted her. Servants were hurrying about, carrying water and other utensils, some of them running in panic down the stairs that led to the Sheriff’s large bedchamber, where the Sheriff himself could be heard, shouting profanities and throwing things every which way. Rosa quickly stepped out of the way for her favorite maid Helena was rushing to her father’s room, carrying white cloths. Helena gave her a look that told her things were bad right now, but she would explain afterwards.

Suddenly, Rosa understood.

This scene had been played out many times of late in her father’s castle.

Whenever the Sheriff returned from similar expeditions, or even from an outing in the forest, he would invariably come back wounded or humiliated or thwarted -most frequently all three. And the reason was one man. One man, outlawed and hunted, one man and his band of merry men.

Rosa could barely contain her delight and happiness. She raised a hand to still her racing heart, but she couldn’t suppress the wide smile that spread across her face. He had believed her after all!

“I knew your heart would win out in the end, sweet Robin”, she whispered, as her eyes misted.

…

After the foiled raid at Lewes, Robin Hood and Rosa became some sort of partners. Rosa would ride out in the forest at twilight, exchange information and warnings with him, and perhaps a cup of golden ale.

By and by she learned a bit more about Robin Hood: a man who, in another lifetime, under a different name, had been a young lad about to inherit his father’s lands and titles, for he was descended from no less noble a line than her own. But then, the true kind of England gone, his father’s life was cut short by a savage sword, men under the orders of  Prince John usurping his lands. Robin was given the choice of staying on with the new lord, as his son and heir, but he didn’t take it. Instead, he took a knife in his hand and spilt his father’s murderer’s blood.

He didn’t wait for the Sheriff’s guards to come arrest him; instead he fled, his weary footsteps soon bringing him to a green forest gleaming with shadows like a paradise in the slanting rays of the sun. Once there he was suddenly ravenously hungry, for sorrow and anger had deprived him of an appetite for many a day.

The canopy of soft leaves that enclosed him gave him his first glimpse of peace in a long time. Deep silence enveloped him and soothed his troubled spirit. Then, a pair of antlers rustled the dry twigs in the distance.

And that was how, by killing one of the Sheriff’s deer for his lunch, Robin Hood became officially an outlaw when he was already one in his heart.

A few days hence he discovered three men, one of them a giant, survivors of the Sheriff’s wrath which had claimed their families and homes. He became their leader, and had been so for almost five years now. Two years ago, he’d taken to robbing fat abbots of their stolen goods and thus slowly amassing a rather respectable amount of wealth. The gold was sacred to his men, for it was meant to ransom the true king of England, a prisoner of the infidels these several years -or so it was rumored. Robin had no hope of it ever coming to anything of import, however as the months passed it appeared that the coffers of the kingdom were little by little drained by greedy priests who could well have used a portion of their ill-begotten wealth towards freeing their beloved king. And so it came to pass that more and more of this gold was gradually being held hostage in Robin’s camp, as he sought to remedy this evil, among others, and his men loved him all the more for it.

He was in his twenty-second year, but his men respected him as they would their own fathers, for he inspired in them a loyalty and a love fierce beyond the fear the Sheriff’s torture threatened.

…

The most exciting day for Rosa was the day she overheard of her father’s plans to set a trap for him at the forest: he planned on injuring a young girl on purpose and leaving her to cry for help for hours on end. Rosa had ridden to the forest and warned him about it the night before, and it took all of Robin Hood’s willpower not to answer those heart-wrenching cries, but he was assured the girl’s wounds were not of a serious nature, so he gritted his teeth and waited the wailing out.

Eventually night fell and the Sheriff’s men had to come out of their hiding and carry a crying, thrashing about child all the way to her indignant mother. Robin’s men kept watch all day, finally arriving back at the camp to report the Sheriff’s men’s failure with much laughter and slapping of shoulders.

“The lad was right, Chief,” Much the Miller’s son told him. “There were more than twenty men hid behind the trees all around the babe. If you, or any of us had come to the child’s aid, we would for certain be meat in their hands right now.”

Robin turned his eyes to the direction of the castle and, with a smile, sent Stuart a silent word of thanks.

They talked about it two evenings hence, and he thanked ‘Stuart’ personally for his aid. The same happened many more times, until the seasons changed and the forest bloomed green and blue with the promise of spring.