Previously...
He presses a small, hard object into the palm of my hand. It's a ring. A silver band embossed with alternate stags and wolves on a leafy background. "I once gave a ring to someone I cared for and she put it on her right hand and punched me in the face. I'd be very happy if you didn't do the same."
I slide the ring on the middle finger of my left hand.
Guy says, "A perfect fit. As I hope we'll be." Putting icy fingertips under my chin, he tilts my head so we are eye to eye. "I'm not sure about the beard, but I expect I'll get used to it." He kisses me. Unlike his hands, his lips are warm. I open my mouth slightly and he pushes his tongue past my teeth. I can't taste berries or any other trace of his recent sickness. All I can taste is need and want and maybe even I love you.
A chill blast of rain-drizzly wind cuts across the back of my neck, but, right now, I feel as if I'm basking in sunshine.
Chapter 30
"Robin!" Much drops the pan he is holding and sprints towards me. Wrapping his arms around me, he crushes me into his chest. He smells of animal fat and wood ash. "You're alive and well."
"And why wouldn't I be," I say once he lets me breathe again. "It's not as if this is the first time I've been out in the forest after dark."
"Yes, but when you were a boy you didn't have Gisborne chasing after you, a great big sword at his hip." Much glances past my shoulder, towards the stand of trees that partially obscure the entrance to our camp, his hand reaching for his sword and then dropping to his side when he realises he's not wearing it.
I half turn, following his look, relieved to see that Guy has done as I asked him to and concealed himself.
After a lengthy period of kissing and touching and embarrassed smiles, Guy's and my walk back to the camp had been a near silent one, each of us lost in our own thoughts at the enormity of what we were about to embark upon. When we did speak, it was about whether or not we, meaning I, should tell the gang about us. Guy had insisted it would be a mistake and I had argued that skulking around behind their backs was not something I felt comfortable with. He'd thrown back his head, laughed, and then grabbed me, shoving me back against a tree. "So you'd be more comfortable with them seeing this then, would you?" he asked, after he slid his tongue out my mouth.
"Don't be an idiot," I replied, thinking perhaps I was the idiot for imagining the gang would simply shrug their shoulders and then go about their business as though I'd said nothing more than I'd decided we should all start wearing yellow and call ourselves the sunshine gang. "We'd be discreet."
Guy hadn't pressed the point, deciding to leave the decision up to me. Although he'd warmed to my friends somewhat on the journey across France, Allan in particular, Guy did not regard them as his friends and, I suspect, couldn't give a damn what they think of him or his behaviour. I am the centre of his universe, just as Marian had once been, and, as far as he is concerned, everyone else can go to Hell. If we are to stand a chance of surviving beyond our first night together, Guy must understand that my friends are part of the bargain of having me; I will not give them up for him. Which is why I am standing here now agonising over what to tell them.
"My father and his belt came pretty close, though," I say in response to Much's remark about Guy chasing after me, armed with a sword.
"Your father didn't spend most of his waking life plotting your death though, did he?"
Pushing off the tree he'd been lounging against, Allan saunters over, John and Rowena following. Allan grins. "You look like how I feel after I've spent the night with the buxom Betsy Miller and had a jug too many. What happened? One moment Much is smooching with a dead deer and the next you're taking off and Gisborne is chasing after you, blood running down his face."
Much scowls at Allan. "I fell over and the deer fell on top of me. And I didn't see you contributing to the supper table."
"Robin sent me to Nottingham, you dolt. While you were thinking about your stomach, I was trying to find out if Prince John is busily building us a matching set of gallows with some nice dangly ropes to loop around our necks." Allan gives me one of his penetrating spill-the-beans stares.
"We didn't fight, if that's what you're thinking," I say. "We were talking and Guy was still a bit wobbly after not feeling well and he keeled over and hit his head."
"That still doesn't explain why you took off."
I think of my earlier idea, of telling the gang that having Guy in our camp brought back too many painful memories and that I needed to get a way for a bit, to be alone. I open my mouth and then shut it. Is this to be the first lie of many? Every time I sneak off to be with Guy will I make up some implausible story until the day my lies catch me out, or one of the gang follows me and finds out the shocking truth. Matilda's face, screwed up in disgust and disbelief dances in front of my eyes. Surely telling them the truth, shameful though it is, is better than that.
Rowena, who has been quietly listening, asks, "Did Gisborne catch up with you, then?"
Tell them now, I think. Get it over with. "Yes, he found me, eventually."
John nudges Allan aside, stands in front of me and places a gentle hand on my shoulder. "I know I argued against you killing him, though God knows it pained me to do so. But I want you to know that we forgive you. What he did to Marian was unforgivable and—"
"I didn't kill him, John. For a start, I don't have any weapons on me and secondly..." And secondly, I've just spent a goodly part of the morning kissing him, my hands caressing the back of the neck you've long desired to put your great hands around and squeeze until his lips turn blue.
"And secondly?" John asks.
"Guy," I call, my heart banging in my chest.
As Guy steps out from behind the trees and starts walking towards me, I feel as if all the blood in my body has spilled into my boots, that at any moment I might crumple to the ground, though whether it's from fear of what might happen next or the fact I haven't eaten in ages, I can't say.
I take a couple of steadying breaths and turn back to the gang. "Guy is not our enemy any more. He is with us. He is...with me."
Without turning around, I motion Guy to come closer, my heart thud, thudding with every mud-squelching, leaf-crunching step he takes. He stops at my side, a half arm's-width away.
Blindly, I reach for and grasp his ungloved hand with my newly ringed one.
"Are you sure?" he asks, half-pulling his hand out of mine, giving me the chance to change my mind.
I grip his fingers.
Despite our long walk back to the camp and the drizzly rain giving way to a weak sun, his hand is still freezing. It's as cold as it was the time he dragged me off my father's back when my father was trying to breathe life into Little Robert; as cold as the time he hauled me back into the rowboat, saving me from drowning; as cold as a short while ago, when he pressed the ring into my hand. No matter what I do and don't know about him, of one thing I am certain: he cares for me and has done so since we were children; I just never saw it, or wanted to see it.
Much is staring at our clasped hands. "I don't remember that ring. Did Marian give it to you?"
"I'm not being funny," Allan says, rolling his eyes at dear, uncomprehending Much, "but what you said, about Guy being with you. You're not just talking about him being part of the gang, are you? What I mean is, if it was a choice between Betsy Miller's generous charms and...er...whatever charms Guy has, you'd take him over her?"
"That's one way of putting it," I say, heat creeping up my neck, my face feeling as though I'm sitting mere inches from the camp's fire.
"Who's Betsy Miller?" Much asks, still clearly missing the point about Guy and me.
"Blimey, Much," Allan says. "You have led a sheltered life. She's that big lass at The Trip. She—"
John slams the end of his staff into the ground, so hard I can almost feel the vibration coursing up my arm. "It's a sin, Robin." He glares at Guy and bares his teeth.
"Is it a sin, to love a fellow man?" Guy asks, his voice remarkably calm despite John looking as though he's about to tear him limb from limb.
"It is if you're talking about that kind of love, you dirty, wicked, perverted—"
"John!" I let go Guy's hand and step in front of him, my fists clenched. "Whatever you say about him in this matter, goes for me too."
John shakes his head from side to side, disbelieving. "No. Not you. Not with him. It can't be."
"John, I'm sorry, but it is." I take a step towards him. "Now, put your weapon down. Hate me if you must, spit on me, call me every nasty name under the sun, but I am pleading with you, no bloodshed." I take another step, arm outstretched for his staff.
John backs away. He raises his staff and holds it horizontally in front of his chest, as if to ward off the Devil.
Tears prick my eyes. "You don't know how I've agonised over telling you this, all of you. But I made up my mind not to lie to you, to go behind your backs. I thought it would be better this way."
"Better," John says, "that he should have drowned, with the sheriff. Better that you had never returned to Nottingham in the first place."
"You don't mean that."
"How can you lie with that...that..." John spits, unable to think of a word bad enough to describe Guy.
Much's jaw drops, his eyes widen. "You mean that Robin and Gisborne...they...they..." He glances at Guy and then at me. "Together?"
"Bleeding heck," Allan says. "Catch up."
Much stares at my ringed hand. His lower lip wobbles.
"We haven't...we haven't done anything yet," I tell him.
Much swallows. "By yet, you mean not yet?"
I don't have the heart to concur with his words.
"But...but...you like girls...you've always liked girls. Remember all the times I used to keep watch while you..." Much looks at Guy, his expression similar to the one he wore in the Holy Land when I'd explained that the stains on my bed sheet had nothing to do with me ignoring the call of nature.
"I'm sorry. I should have told you. But I didn't know, not for sure, not until... Please, don't hate me for it. It doesn't change things, us, our friendship."
Blinking rapidly to clear his tear-filled eyes, Much says, "That's like saying that if John starts wearing dresses and jewellery we'll treat him as we always have. It changes everything, Robin. It...it..." Much sweeps his skullcap off his head, chucks it on the ground and turns his back on me.
Guy touches my arm. "I told you they wouldn't understand."
I think if he'd sounded smug about it, I might have hit him, upset and frustrated as I am. But he doesn't. If anything, he seems genuinely sorry that things have not gone the way I hoped they might go.
He is right. I had expected too much from my friends. Only Rowena, standing calmly, arms folded across her small bosom, seems at ease with my revelation. Perhaps she already guessed, even before Guy and I held hands. Women do seem to have this uncanny knack of knowing things before us men do. Then again, perhaps it's because she has not known me as long as my friends have so is less shocked by the fact I want to bed a man.
"Well, I don't know about you lot," Allan says, running a hand through his hair and rubbing his face as if he's just woken from some strange dream, "but I could do with a drink, or two, or three. Perhaps spend a bit of time sampling Betsy's delights. Much, you up for it? Betsy's not averse to threesomes, so I've heard."
Much shakes his head, tells Allan he'd sooner poke his own eyes out with a stick than partake in such wantonness. The look he gives me straight after he's spoken leaves me in no doubt that I should consider doing the same. I'm sure if I handed John a couple of sticks, he'd be happy to oblige.
"Suit yourself," Allan says. Then to me, "I'll take one of the horses, if that's all right?" Without waiting for my leave, Allan helps himself to the mare I rode from Portsmouth on, easily the best of our horses. He swings into the saddle and canters off in the direction of Nottingham, tossing the words, "Don't wait up," over his shoulder.
"Eggs," Much mumbles, scooping up his skullcap, a leaf clinging to it, and ramming it on his head. "I need eggs." He walks a few paces, stops, shakes his head at his absentmindedness, spins around and heads towards his pots and pans.
With a grunt, John stomps towards our sleeping area, emerging moments later with a sack slung over his shoulder. Without giving me so much as a glance, he strides off into the forest.
"Sorry, Robin," Rowena says, watching John go and not sounding sorry at all, rather that she thinks I deserve John's revulsion, Much's sad dismissal of me and Allan's supposed indifference.
She walks over to Much, who presently has his head buried in a wooden box, no doubt looking for eggs. I watch the sway of her hips, those long legs of hers that, for a brief time, wrapped around me. A pang of regret spikes my chest.
She whispers something in Much's ear and he straightens and nods. Kissing his cheek, she produces a small square of cloth from inside her shirt and hands it to him. Much takes it and blows his nose. Rowena waves it away when he tries to give it back to her. I half-smile at my good and loyal friend who, after today, may no longer be my friend.
After fetching her cloak, water skin and bow and arrows, Rowena makes for the horses. She is leaving. I don't blame her. She made it clear that she did not want me while my heart cried out for another, even though she presumed that other was Marian, my dead wife. But I'm certain she hoped, in time, that I would leave my ghosts behind and be hers completely. It is clear she doesn't want me now.
She chooses the horse she rode to Sherwood on. The horse nickers as she strokes its sleek flank. She mounts and then, clicking her tongue, she heads away from the camp. I have no idea where she's going, perhaps she doesn't either, but she's a resourceful girl and I'm certain she'll be all right. Just before she is out of sight, I sprint after her.
"Take this," I say, untying my money pouch and pressing it into her hand.
After a moment's hesitation, she accepts the purse, tucking it inside her shirt.
"Where will you go?" I ask.
"I have friends in Clun. I will go there, to start with at least. Do not worry about me, Robin. Worry about yourself. Worry about what you're getting into."
She tugs on the reins, moves off. I stand and watch her, wondering if her assurance of having friends in Clun is a lie to make me feel better, feeling guilty that I don't chase after her and press for more details. Moments later, I hear the pounding of hooves as she urges her mount into a gallop and know I have no chance of catching her up.
Guy is still standing where I left him, his ungloved hands fiddling with the fastenings on his doublet, clearly unsure what to do next.
I look across at Much. He wipes his nose with the back of his hand and then starts cracking eggs, smacking them onto the sides of a blackened pan and dropping them in, quite probably shells and all. Licking his lips, he whistles a wobbly tune. He does not fool me. I know he is crying.
Guy lays a placating hand on my back. I shake him off.
I have lost them, all of them.