Maid Marian (20 page)

She’d altered little since I’d last seen her. Her brows were now fully brushed with gray and she’d lost a tooth or two, but the face and eyes remained the same. The eyes were fast upon me now, bluer than frost on a frozen lake, so chilling I shuddered where I stood.

“So you see, Lady Marian,” she declared, “you cannot defeat me. I shall always triumph, for I am the queen, and you are no more than a female vassal. You attempted to fool me once before, to trick me into believing you dead, but I was not fooled—I have never been fooled. And now you shall pay for having sought to deceive me, wicked girl.” She waved her arm and from the shadows that ranged behind her stepped Robin. He too was bound and had clearly been beaten, for his right eye was so swollen it oozed black tears, and his left hand could not form a fist.

“Robin!” I screamed. “What do you want of him?”

“The same that I want from you and your companions—to fulfill your fates. But I’d waste little sympathy on this brigand, Marian. He has ignored your advice and the oath he swore. Just like a Saxon,” she hissed, “crude and vulgar. I doubt such a man will find his way to the gates of heaven—I suspect you won’t see this one again.”

“But I don’t care!” I cried, straining against the ropes that held me. “I don’t care if he won’t hear my counsel or if he is crude at times. I wish to love and to live, not cower in fear!”

The queen turned her chilling eyes upon me, so beautiful, firm, like polished silver. “Listen to me, Lady Marian. If you wish to survive you will heed my words. Cut loose this thieving mongrel. His ignorant ways will make an end for you, an ugly end of pain and heartbreak. Turn him off and get you hence before his deception carries you past saving.”

With that I woke, gulping air and grasping the blankets. I feared waking Annie, feared telling her anything of my dream, for while she knew enough of Queen Eleanor to dislike her greatly, she was unaware of my personal hatred. So out I slipped, stumbling badly as I left the bower so that I fell against a stump and cracked my knee on its woody face. I sank to the ground there, deep in dirt, and grasped at my knee like a child, not a full-grown woman of nineteen years.

I
WORKED THAT MORNING
to distract myself, but I could not shake the cloak of dread the dream had tossed upon my shoulders. It lay too heavy to ignore, a great dead weight, the compilation of my darkest thoughts and hopeless visions. But one thing, I thought, could cheer me, and that was to see my Robin’s face, earnest and smiling and full of comfort.

He arrived before the sun had risen past the tops of the dogwood trees. I sighed to see him, certain that my time of worry had ended and that laughter and merriment lay before me. But when he stooped to greet and kiss me, a chill grew in my arms and shoulders. Something was altered in his manner, something changed, for he gave the smile I so longed for, but it lacked conviction. A germ of falsehood had touched his face, and it made my eyes recoil from him.

“I must be off again, my love,” he whispered. “I’ve something brewing that could be grand.” He was animated, even more than usual, with his cheeks in high color and his eyes bright and roving.

“What is it, Robin?” I hissed at his ear, for ’twas clear he wished the others to know nothing of our conversation. “What has happened?”

“Not now, sweet. Let me be off—I’ll tell you all when I return.”

“But Robin,” I breathed, standing to better grasp at his tunic, “I fear something grave has happened. You seem so strange!”

“Something has happened, but I dare to hope it will not be grave in the least. It may be the making of us, Marian. The bold step I spoke of before.”

“Or it may be our death!” I cried, clutching his tunic front with both hands. Edmund Gray, a boy of twelve who sat nearby, turned in alarm to watch us. Robin saw him and reached to pluck my hands away.

“I cannot discuss this now, Marian. I must away!”

“Hold, Robin! Do not expect me to wait here for word that you’ve been caught and captured. You do not know the torture of it! I die a dozen deaths at once each time I envision you set to hang. Have mercy, Robin, and pray, do nothing foolish! Silver is nothing—think of your safety!”

“I’ve little care for that, Marian,” he said with a hollow, soulless laugh. And I knew then for the first time that he valued his life as dearly as I. He too was frightened, and seeing this made my panic rise higher than before. It seemed the forest was ablaze around us, and I stood impotent. I could not quench the flames myself; I could not persuade Robin to do it. My only recourse was to flee.

He left me there with my hands clenched tightly in effort to warm them, feeling as if I might be ill. ’Twas then that I spied his traveling companions, for he had not returned to the forest alone. They stood in a mass, well clad in stiff boots and leather doublet, but when I moved closer to get a clear view, a tight pain jabbed against my lungs. These were no outlaws, no yeomen of Needwood or Plompton Forest, but the very captain of the king’s guard and Queen Eleanor’s personal page. Her page I recognized by his face, the captain by his garments only, but these things combined were enough to convince me of what Robin had done. He had gone to London, to the bear’s own cave, and struck a bargain with the queen.

My heart went cold when I thought of it, considered what peril he’d placed himself in—and purposefully too—after all his promises to shy from danger. I knew by the captain’s presence here that Robin meant to arrest John’s men, the very things we’d discussed and agreed would be foolish! All this risk to raise some silver for the band’s coffers—it made me heartsick.

I knew as deep as the soles of my feet that the queen would make no bargains she couldn’t get the best of. Robin might produce the mercenaries—at what cost to his own men, I shuddered to think—and Eleanor might pay him his due. But a known outlaw such as he would never be allowed to flee to the woodland. He would be seized, of that I was certain, and if he were seized he would surely hang.

I crept a little closer to the page’s horse, for I was determined to know the worst. There I saw a plump bag of coins hanging from his saddle horn, and my stomach went weak with dread. I saw the future spread before my eyes, saw Robin swinging from the gallows, heard my own wailing cries. The queen’s voice as I’d heard it in slumber lilted through my memory now. “Cut loose the thieving mongrel,” she’d said. His deception would be my ruin. His deception—

In another instant I was stumbling forward, racing for the empty bower. Lies and trickery seemed fast on my heels, woven into Robin’s face, dripping from the leaves of the oaks. I thought of the emptiness in his eyes, in the stiff vibrations of his laugh, and nearly choked for tears. In him I forgave many things and overlooked a thousand faults, but I would not stand duplicity, not between our two hearts.

I felt a great sore had erupted on our once bright and polished love. A blackened lesion that stank and oozed and grew with each passing breath. It would envelop his heart and mine, and it would defeat us as no external threat could do. I could not stay to see it pass—I would not. I felt in my bones a need to flee, to take myself from all this madness and find, for once, somewhere safe.

Our Greenwood tree, once noble and lovely, now seemed the stuff of gallows ropes. My sight turned hazy, the earth slipped sideways, and I felt fear as a weight, a burden, an affliction from which I could not escape.

A
N ODD BURST OF BIRDSONG
far off in the wood altered the spell, and I found I had feet and limbs and hands—all the tools of my salvation. Without further thought I ran to my bower and gathered some things into a sack, scarcely noticing the tears that fell on my hands as they snatched and shoved. When I came across a scrap of parchment, I wrote a hasty note to Annie, telling her simply in words she could read not to worry, that I would be fine, but I could not remain to see my friends taken by Queen Eleanor’s hand.

My bag was full, and I turned to go. But as I went my eye fell on the faded tunic and suit of hose I’d been using to size Allan a Dale’s new set of clothes. In a flash it was on me, for Allan was small, and my own gown and kerchief were stuffed into my sack.

I eased from the bower with careful steps, but I needn’t have worried. The camp was empty. They had all gone to do Robin’s folly, even the captain and the queen’s page. Annie and Ellen were at Retford market, and for once the cold fires stood unattended. I wiped off a tear as I left the place and turned my feet for the River Trent road.

Chapter Seventeen

A
S
I
WALKED,
I seemed to pass through moods as clearly as I went through scenes, first of pine woods, then of fields, then of marsh or fallow land. In the pines came anger, which blinded me so that I saw neither trees nor the path before me. How could he, I cried out, have dealt with the queen when I had told him all I knew of her? How could he have been so foolish, when I had been there to steer him right? What madness was it, I asked myself, that caused a man to ignore his love and believe her powers of thought to be weak and not worth heeding? All the crimes of stupidity and perverseness were there attributed to Robin Hood, and nothing more than a change of view from forest to fields could save him from my mental lashings.

But when fields stretched on either side, expanding for miles up valley and down, my anger cooled. My footsteps slowed to match the tears that slipped so constantly from my eyes. At times I stopped and sobbed in my sleeve, grateful that none passed me on the road, for it would not do for any to see a young boy in green weeping in the dirt. I did my best to remain conscious of my attire and the disguise I wore, but at times my heartache was so great, I could honestly think of nothing else.

At last I paused and sank to the earth at the side of the road, wondering over what I had done. I wept and shuddered and muttered my love’s name into the dust, but as I sat I began to think, and the anger that was cooled and steaming rose to the boiling point once more. My fury gave my limbs new life, and I rose once more with resurrected purpose.

The wind was fresh and it calmed my mind enough to consider other matters. I strongly regretted having left Annie, for I knew she would worry over me. But what could I do? I would not turn back now, would not drive myself back to a tangle of falsehoods. I marched past deep grasslands and as I stepped, I considered that, were I in Robin’s stead, I would not have played false by him. I would have told him my every thought, would have been transparency itself. And had he, with all the power of conviction, advised me against doing a deed, I should not have done it, even if prodded by knifepoint.

Had he a sworn enemy, a bloodthirsty foe, I would never have taken myself into his camp to barter our lives against sacks of coin. And had I done so, I would have confessed it all to Robin, for thus ran the boundaries of my mind. Falsehoods I might tell by the dozen, but neither to Robin nor to Annie. With these two I strove for honesty always, whatever I might fabricate for the world.

This was the pact, unspoken and silent, that Robin had severed. And so, I thought, he had severed me also, sliced me clean like an unwanted limb, which he could not reclaim even had he wished. These heated thoughts fueled my stride, and I walked on in hopes of exhausting my mind along with my body.

A
FTER A MILE
or maybe more of steady breathing and dry eyes, I began to look about me, to see the birds settled in the marsh and watch them fish for frogs and dragonflies. I had staggered into unfarmed lands, too wet for the plow and too deep for oxen. This place reminded me of a land I’d heard my tutor describe in my youth, in the east of England. ’Twas called the Fens, a land of salt marsh, and I imagined it smelled as this marsh did, of honey and salt, sulfur and wheatgrass.

Where was I going? At first I took little time to wonder, but as the marsh air cleared my mind, I began to turn my thoughts to it. I approached a crossroads and headed east, deciding on impulse to travel to Denby. I knew not why it appealed to me, for I was better acquainted with Warwick and London, but I had a queer notion that my raw heart would be best mended in my native land. I did not question this fancy of mine, but turned my steps along the River Trent and went to see what my fortunes would bear.

I
T TOOK ME THREE DAYS
to reach Denby, in part the result of losing my way and in part because I bided my time. At nights I found a patch of wood and curled up in my cloak to sleep, waking at every hoot of an owl, my cudgel gripped and ready to strike. Each morning I woke with a crick in my neck, my body aching from a night spent shivering against the cold.

On the second day what had been anger changed to sadness, for I began to acknowledge what I had done and to realize that I might not see Robin Hood again. This set me low, for I missed him greatly, even after this short space. I had not gone a full day from camp, and yet I felt my heart should wilt if it did not see him soon. And so I wept, for loss and sorrow and for self-pity. But most of all I wept for Robin, for I felt so certain he would hang that my mind drew a crystalline image of it, and I saw his face, blue and swollen, dangling from the hanging rope.

This image haunted me and would not go no matter how I worked to shake it. I had seen hangings in Warwick as a girl, and ’tis a vision that, once seen, is impossible to forget. Even then I had shuddered at the sight and had nightmares after of jerking feet and twitching hands. So clearly did I now see Robin suspended in the sickly air that I came to believe it had happened, and this caused me to wail all the more, grasping at the rocks and dirt and losing my breakfast in the drainage ditch.

My mode of travel served me well, for, as a young man, strangers did not speak to me and rarely gave me a second glance. So long as my hair stayed tight in my hood, I had no worries and strode along unperturbed, but for the tortured state of my heart. I’ve repeatedly said ’twas my heart that ached, but in truth the pain was somewhat lower than I believe my heart to be. ’Twould be better described as a painful constricting of my ribs, so that every organ housed within whimpered from noon to night in agony. As the days went by I became accustomed to this feeling and also to the tight sensation behind my eyes—the threat of tears—and I began to believe I might live this way.

My pennies held out while I traveled and bought me bread and cheese to eat, though I had little appetite for them. By the time I reached the Denby region I’d grown quite protective of those pennies, for by then I had three shillings, four pennies remaining in my purse, and I knew those would not buy my bread for many more days.

I am proud to say that at no point on my journey did I ever consider returning to Warwick or attempting to reclaim my noble status. It might seem that I would, since I had turned my toes toward my own lands, but my only thought was to live there as a common laborer; I never once thought of Denby Manor or the title that I once held. Nor did I regret my own decision of leaving Sherwood, for the memory of Robin’s frightened face remained impressed on my mind, filling me with disgust and scorn. I remembered my vow to watch for myself, and visions of the queen’s stern face pushed me forward. She would not triumph while I had wits and strength of spirit. I swore she would not.

U
PON REACHING THE
D
ENBY SOIL,
my motivation faltered, and I wandered aimlessly. What had I thought I would do here? I asked myself a thousand times. Where would I live and with whom? What work could I do to earn my bread? The panicky feeling began once again to bubble and steep; I felt my throat close and my knees grow weak. Once again the gears of fate turned, and I had no plan to save myself from them—I who so prided myself on planning! I had run blindly, knowing far too little of the ways of the world, and now I found myself frightened and lost.

This feeling of terror lasted till noon, when I spent one of my pennies on a loaf of bread, which brightened my mood and helped me push away my sorrow. I would have to rally my every spirit to gain a roof above my head—all thoughts of Robin would have to wait. So at the first opportunity I dashed to a grove of oaks and changed my clothes, for I was suddenly sure that more pity would be given to a maid alone than to a young boy with a blackthorn cudgel. I left my dear quarterstaff there with a kiss, knowing as I went that I left behind the last thing I bore that Robin had given me.

F
ROM THAT GROVE
I went forth in my shift and homespun, my hair flowing loose, unbound by a kerchief, for I wished to appear as young as I could to rouse more sympathy. Dressed and ready, I summoned all the courage I had in my bones and made my way to the market stalls where the townswomen gathered.

“Good day, auntie,” I said to each face that glanced my way. Some returned my greeting, some did not, and to all who gave me a word or two more I made some comment on the weather. If our conversation went further than that, I asked if they knew anyone in need of a helper, for, I said, I went in search of employment. Most said nay, they knew of none, but a few pointed me on to women who might stop to speak with me. And so I passed the main of the day, wandering from table to table in the market, smiling at all but receiving, truly, little encouragement.

’Twas getting late when I met with a woman selling turnips and cabbages. As the market day was over, she was packing her wares in a spacious reed basket. I offered to help her, and she accepted with pleasure, for it seemed she had sold little of what she had brought in the morning.