Everything is a Choice

Chapter 15

I had everything I wanted – almost everything.  With my father long dead there was no one to tell me what to do and were it not for Thornton and, to a lesser degree, Much, I might well have joked and pranked my way through life.  Yes, I had everything I wanted – everything except Marian.

Our tree; the biggest oak in the forest. It’s where I first tried to kiss her.  Marian had wanted to talk and I, as usual, wasn’t listening.  She wanted to talk about injustices that were occurring even before Vaisey came along and turned our world upside down. Because there will always be injustices in the world and even at that tender age she understood these things, was already the Marian I came to know and love. 

Eventually, I did pay her heed.  So much so, that when the call to arms came, I ignored her silent plea for me to stay, failed to recognise her needs above my own and left to go and change the world.  And, yes, I did want glory and adventure; no one re-invents himself overnight and I still had a lot to learn.  But I went a step too far in trying to prove myself to her and I lost her because of it.

~

I clutch the ring in my dirty, bleeding hand. 

That’s where I’m going to take you, Marian, I think.  Back to our tree, in Sherwood. Back to The Kissing Tree.  

I turn towards Gisborne.  He is staring in the direction the girl had run, his back to me.

“We’re going home, to Nottingham,” I tell him. “You and me.  I’m going to keep my promise to Marian and finish what we started.  And you’re going to help me.”

He grunts in acknowledgement, but makes no move to turn around and face me.

“You are the way we can get to Prince John,” I continue.  “He trusts you, thinks you’re on his side.  You’re going to be our man on the inside, our spy.”

“I can’t—”

“No excuses, Gisborne.  If you want to come with me, then you play by my rules.”

“You’re going to use me?” he says, still facing away from me.

“I think it’s the least you can do.”

“And when it’s over?” he asks.

I brush away the bits of grass in my hair and on my clothes, replacing them instead with streaks of soil and blood. “I haven’t decided yet.”

Gisborne turns to face me. He’s crying. Now it is my turn to stare in bewildered fascination.    

“You should kill me,” he says, “when it’s over, when you have what you want, because I don’t have the courage to do it myself.” He walks to his sword, picks it up and sheathes it. Then he walks to the spot where the girl had stood, bends and picks up the grasses she’d been holding.

I watch as he sinks to his knees, rolling the crudely woven plait of grass between his hands and muttering something under his breath, something in the tongue of the little girl, in the tongue of his mother. Then he says something else, in English, directed at me.

“I didn’t want to...I didn’t mean to—” He falters.

“What?” I ask.

“I didn’t mean to kill her. I just wanted to stop her saying the things she was saying.”

“I know,” I tell him, recalling Richard’s blow-by-blow account of Guy and Marian’s exchange of words.  

Standing, he wipes his face and begins walking towards the farmhouse, the woven grasses still gripped in his sword hand.