Previously...
Still reeling from thinking Marian had somehow survived Guy’s blade, I push Much aside and stride towards Allan and the angry mob.
“Get out of my way,” I snarl, in both French and English.
My grief, once immense and unchecked, has since become a steady trickle that ebbs and flows with the days, but now, this act of showing off – for surely that is all it is, no matter how I dress it up – has it ballooning large again.
She isn’t here.
I push and shove my way through the squash of people and animals.
“There are two things that men like to do, Robin,” my father once said to me, “and they both begin with the sixth letter of the alphabet.” When he’d refused to elaborate, I’d asked Gisborne what he meant. One is fight, Gisborne had said, and the other your father does with my mother. The bailiff eventually told me what the word fuck meant.
Someone bashes into my injured arm. Incensed, I whirl around. I don’t care who I hit, as long as I hit someone. However, that someone just happens to be Gisborne.
Chapter 18
“Locksley!” Gisborne massages his jaw, doubtless grateful that I wear no heavy rings that might have added severity to my punch. “I might have known. Only you would have the audacity to try a shot like that.” He points at the target board and then turns back to me.
I simply stare, not only because I’m surprised at seeing Guy here, at the archery contest, but also because he looks so different from the last time I saw him, and I don’t just mean his clothes, black though they still are.
His face has lost its ghostly pallor and his hair, although still long, is clean, untangled and presently tucked behind his ears. In many ways, he reminds me of the Gisborne of old, the same Gisborne who’d once sat arrogantly astride a black-brown mare as I walked into Locksley village after five years of living hell in the Holy Land. The same Gisborne who declared himself the new lord of Locksley, advising me that my services were, as he put it, no longer required.
“I thought you’d left us,” I say. “Gone back on the deal we made about being our spy back in England.”
“I changed my mind.” He turns away quickly, as though he wishes to leave it at that. “So, what have you started here?” He nods towards the angry, milling crowd.
I point at Allan, presently trading blows with a couple of irate Frenchmen.
“I might have known a-Dale had something to do with it,” he says. “He can smell coin a mile off, that one.”
“Are you definitely with us?” I ask, pushing my way through the mass of swearing, gesticulating, fist-swinging men and women.
“If you’ll have me,” he says, following in my wake.
To be honest, I’m sure how I feel about having Guy back in our midst despite my earlier hope of finding him in Le Havre. However, now is not the time to dwell on it.
For a handful of heartbeats, I lose sight of Allan. When I spot him again, I see that Dumont has changed his mind about attacking him personally. Perhaps John’s great staff, Much’s upraised sword and shield, or my deadly aim had put him off. Either way, he is presently standing on the dais, cursing my name and yanking my arrows from the centre of the target board. The dark-haired woman I’d fleetingly mistaken for a raised from the dead Marian has vanished, along with the silver-haired gentleman and the rest of the seated nobles, doubtless deciding to let the rabble get on with it.
I continue to press through the throng, trying to get to Allan and the others. Something hard, like an iron bar, bashes into my injured arm. I spin round and, without looking at the culprit, slam my fist into a lad who doesn’t look old enough to trim whiskers let alone take part in a bloody punch up. Howling, he drops the pitchfork he’d been holding, the one that had undoubtedly collided with my arm.
“What was it your father used to say?” Guy says, appearing at my elbow.
I pick up the pitchfork and offer it to the boy with a quick apology. Guy repeats the apology in the boy’s own tongue, further shaming me. Giving Guy a quick nod of acceptance and me a rude hand gesture, the boy scurries away.
“Sixth letter of the alphabet, wasn’t it?” Guy says.
“I would,” I say, amazed Guy has remembered a conversation from our childhood and that one in particular, “but I’m busy fighting right now.” I put up my fists as a broad-chested Frenchman wearing a white cravat and a deep purple waistcoat barrels towards me, red of face, lips curled in anger. I can only guess that my win might have cost him more than a set of smart clothes.
Guy throws his head back and laughs. “Now that’s what I like about you, Locksley.” He raises his black-gloved hands and together we make short work of my well-dressed adversary.
~
By now, the fight has turned into a disorganised brawl, with kinsmen fighting each other, my win and Allan’s profiteering all but forgotten in the thrill of fisticuffs and mayhem.
I can no longer see Allan, or John and Much, and sincerely hope they can’t see me either; I can be a nasty piece of work when I want to be. In the Holy Land, I had to be; it was the nature of war. But on arriving home, I’d always done my best to keep that side of me under control. Only once had I unleashed it – when I’d discovered Gisborne’s tattoo and had begged the gang to let me kill him. But here, in this place, my viciousness is totally unwarranted. I’m simply taking out my anger on people who’ve done me no wrong because I thought I’d seen Marian and because I am happy about Guy finding me when I know I shouldn’t be.
These sobering thoughts effectively stop me in my tracks and, as quickly as the potent need to lash out spiked me, so I now want nothing more than to walk away.
I turn to tell Guy it is time to get out of here, but he’s gone, swallowed up in the sea of raucous brawlers.
Between flying fists and various bits of weaponry, including belts, boots and even a wheel of cheese, I catch sight of the florid face of Dumont, doubly puce with rage as his kinsmen, doubtless angry that he’d lost them their hard-earned coin, drag him from the dais. Desperate to point the finger of blame elsewhere, Dumont waves an arm in my direction. Seeing a body of men, brandishing both weapons and fists, heading towards me, clinches my decision to leave the fighting behind and make my escape.
Weaving and ducking, I wend my way through the mob. A flailing hand catches me on the forehead and an unseen object smacks into my back. I keep my feet and push on. Dumont is shouting, “Follow him. Catch him.” He bellows other words too, sorcery among them, no doubt referring to my miraculous arrow-splitting win.
I dash down a shadowy alleyway, only to find I have made a mistake and it is a dead end.
Someone shouts, “He went down there.”
I scan the immediate area, looking for a way to get onto the rooftops, but there are no roof supports, beams or trellises. Without my bow or blade, I cannot hope to fight my way out of it and I have no idea whether Guy or the gang noticed which way I went.
Desperate, I turn and rattle a door-latch. The door opens and I slip inside, latching it behind me. Someone gasps. I turn to find a young woman, clutching a baby to her chest.
“It’s all right,” I assure her. “I won’t hurt you.”
She gives me a puzzled look and I correct my mistake, repeating my placations in French, and holding up my hands to show I have no weapon.
“You are hurt?” she says.
She points and I touch my mouth.
Shaking her head no, she touches her forehead, and I mirror her action. My fingers come away bloody. I guess the flailing hand that struck me must have been wearing a studded ring or something similar.
The baby starts to wail and she strokes its bald little head, reducing demanding cries to a whimper.
“What are you doing here?” she asks. “What do you want?”
I quickly explain my predicament. Satisfied I am not going to hurt her or the child, she beckons me farther into the room.
“Here,” she says, pulling a piece of cloth from her shoulder and handing it to me. The material is warm and smells milky sweet. She smiles apologetically and I smile back, dabbing at my forehead. Rather stupidly, I hand the bloody cloth back to the girl.
Hesitantly, she touches my arm, asks if I would like some water or ale. I am keen to find the gang, but reckon that my pursuers may still be scouring the alleyways for me and it might be prudent to keep out of sight for a while. I tell her that would be most welcome and she settles the baby in its crib and sets about fetching and pouring me a mug of ale.
“Dumont is not used to losing,” she says, handing me the drink.
“Neither am I,” I say.
The baby starts to cry and she goes to change its smallclothes while I sup my ale.
I glance around the room. It is sparsely furnished but what furnishings there are, although worn, look comfortable. The room smells of lavender and pot roast and the slightly less pleasing smell of the baby’s soiled clothing. I guess the girl to be about six and ten years, though I am not good when it comes to judging ages. Certainly, she is younger than Marian is – was. She is thinner, too. Green eyes instead of blue. Brown-blond hair, down to her waist.
Marian had been disinclined to have a child at such a young age, perhaps one of the reasons why she remained free when I returned from Palestine. She would have deemed it a curtailment to pastimes more often considered suitable for men – riding, fighting, bow skills, of which she not only managed to do well in, but to excel. However, had we had more time, I’m sure we would have had a child together. It was what we both wanted, or at least what I wanted. I never had the chance to find out how Marian felt about having children. I never had the chance to find out many things about Marian.
The girl picks up the baby, turns and stares at me, while rocking the infant in her arms, swaying from side to side the way all new mothers seem to. I stare back. Only the baby’s sudden jerk and subsequent cry embarrasses me out of my audaciousness.
Mumbling an apology, the girl unlaces the bodice of her dress and guides the infant’s head to an exposed nipple. Immediately, he or she latches on and quietens.
I want this. I want this humble abode and the mother of my child feeding our baby, while I am busy at some honest labour. But I will never have it, can never have it. Not while I am still Robin Hood and craving the arms of my dead wife.
“I should go,” I say, placing my empty mug on a table.
“Be careful,” she says, glancing from her feeding infant to me. “Dumont has a terrible temper.”
I back out the door, not caring that I might fall straight into the clutches of the men who had been chasing me. Thankfully, I am alone.
I walk to the end of the alleyway, check the coast is clear and then slump against a nearby wall. The ground is damp, but I pay it no mind. I am thinking about the girl and her baby.
Marian would not want me to live out the rest of my days alone. She would want me to be happy, to fulfil the dreams we must have had, but never dared speak of. And even if I fail in that respect and simply lurch from one female to another for those basest of reasons, she would understand and forgive. But I will not. I cannot. So where does that leave me?
“Robin?”
It is Guy. He is holding my bow.
“Dumont got hold of it,” he says. Crouching, he places the ruined weapon in my hands. “I’m sorry I wasn’t quick enough to stop him. Perhaps it can be fixed.”
I clutch the splintered pieces of bow to my chest, the way I had after my race with Gisborne in Locksley pond, after my father had whipped me and sent me to my room.
“No.” I raise my eyes to meet his. “It can’t.”
He holds my gaze. I feel as if he can see into my very soul. I think of Marian and experience a sudden yearning for I know not what.
Guy places a hand on my shoulder in a gesture of understanding. I turn and stare at his long, slim fingers with impossibly clean nails, resting on my worn and filthy shirt.
I should swat his hand away. I don’t want his pity. But I don’t. Instead, something akin to desire swoops low in my stomach. How can this be? I think, sickened. A memory of a terrible time dances in front of my eyes when, drunk and grieving, I had listened to something I would rather not have heard coming from the cabin next to Much’s and mine. Yet, even as I have this thought, and as Guy’s hand slides from my shoulder, the want does not go away.
“Can I come with you?” he asks.
I know what he means. He means back to England, to Nottingham, but, right now, I cannot help but wonder if I am on the road to Hell.