Lady Marian

Chapter 29

I sat in the cave kneading bread dough and watching wild meat sizzle on its spit over the open fire. I had been sent back to keep house while the men buried the soldiers. Willing and weary, I returned brooding.

I turned the bread beneath my fists, pounding the innocent dough in lieu of beating the sheriff upon the wheel. One thought lingered in the back of my mind; I had not strength to fully contemplate it. Had my father played a role in the demise of the Earl of Huntingdon, God rest his soul? Had he still purposed for his daughter to be installed at Huntingdon, no matter the great house's master? Yet, if I were at Huntingdon, I could not be at court. The treacheries of my father confused me so, his motives and actions shifted before me.

"The bread will turn out hard if you keep beating it like that," Sarah cautioned.

I set aside my dough, letting her take over forming the loaf. The men's voices creeped up the ladder before them.

"Little John, do you remember the time you beat off the wolves?" Much asked with a false cheerfulness. "Remember how they circled our campfire that winter? I thought we would be eaten alive."

"If you are trying to lighten the mood, that story will not do," Little John answered before his body took up the full space of the cave entrance. The men entered in a single file line.

Will leaned both his swords against a corner of the cave, our "armoury" as he termed it. "Then you are not as brave as our Lady Marian, who fought as well as any man today."

I watched as Robin reclined on the skin of a stag, occupying himself by whittling shafts for new arrows.

"And since when have you, cousin Will, become such a man?" Sarah cajoled.

"Such a man? Why, I am one of the merriest, and being merry I must be a Merry Man."

The banter faded. I placed my misshapen loaf on a stone to bake before the fire. I sought something else to do with my hands. The men seemed in the same state as me.

Robin snapped a new shaft in half, striding down the corridor. The scraping of the ladder against sandstone told that he had disappeared back into the night.

"What is one to do?" Much asked, "The sheriff killed his father."

"The sheriff has killed a good many fathers through the gallows, through a starving gut." Little John nodded in Will's direction, "but to burn a man, and to watch him suffer through the flames. I saw an old witch once..."

"To think of the lengths a man will go to fulfill his ambition," Tuck mused. "Just because Earl Huntingdon was sheriff, and Sir Guy wanted to have the position—and the finer lands, and the finest lady in the land in with the bargain."

"Did we not already suspect that the sheriff killed his father?" Will interjected.

"We may have suspected, but to know for sure," Little John added.

"What shall Robin do now?" Much asked. "Will he kill the sheriff?"

The eyes of the Merry Men all looked in my direction. I had no answer. Under their gaze I escaped into the quickening night, seeking the direction Robin had fled.

I found him sitting on the riverbank, resting his elbows on his knees as he skipped stones across river. Soon the river would freeze over, as cold as Sir Guy's heart. Robin should have let me kill him.

I approached Robin from behind. He seemed to sense my presence and started to speak.

"When I left, I knew there was a chance I should never see my father nor mother again. Mother had always been frail—I never remember her not being so. She seemed like a sunbeam, cheerful and bright, but ready to melt if you touched her. Father was a good man." Robin's voice faltered.

I folded my skirts beneath me and sat on the riverbed beside Robin. I brushed a lock of dark hair out of his eyes.

"Father was a kind man. He was good. He sought to do good to those around him. Aye, some said he was too lenient as sheriff. I wondered it myself a very long time ago. He said his conscience would not allow him to punish a man so he could not feed his family. He said that was the one true right of a man, and to take it away was a greater crime. He spoke of it as his duty, that King Richard knew his thoughts the day he had appointed him sheriff of Nottingham." Robin hurled another stone into the river.

"He would be very proud of you," I said.

"I have never gone to battle without thinking that I might die. Did you know it, sweet Marian? I warrant you I have not. In the sand or in the forest, two images have been constantly before me—you and death. I have never held my bow nor my sword without thinking that the weapons I am using may be used by a stronger man against me. I fight because I don't mind dying for something right. I fight ready to die for justice. I would—at least not before today—I would not even have minded dying at the hands of Sir Guy if I but knew I died for a better cause."

"You are better living for that cause," I whispered, circling my arms around Robin, "than to die for it, if you can help it."

"But to count the times I had it in my power to kill Sir Guy. How I have ignored the ease it would be to send an arrow through his liver, or to drop my bow and fight him hand to hand. I have ignored the urge to rip him to shreds. How I have believed that Prince John would appoint a worse man if Sir Guy were not his puppet! But oh, Marian. Sir Guy is the devil himself. And he manufactured a false hell to kill my father in." With one motion Robin grasped the Saint Sebastian medallion from around his neck and cast it into the river.

I wrapped my arms closer around Robin, easing his weeping head against my chest. We sat there until more than the first stars appeared in the black sky, the great hunter with his dogs barking at his feet shining down upon us, watching Robin rocking in my arms like a babe.