Author's Note - Final draft. I promise. I'm writing this as a prequel to Once More, With Feeling, but hopefully you'll understand even if you haven't read it. Anyway, enjoy and review, pretty, pretty please with sugar and icing on top.

Once Upon A Time

What's the point of telling a story everyone already knows, and most people couldn't care less about hearing? The point is that you don't know it, because nobody ever got it right - yes, you've heard this before, too - but this is the first time you've ever been told everything. From the only person who knows everything...almost everything, anyway. And I should, being there and all. Eight hundred years ago, more or less, when I was quite literally a different girl. If you don't believe in reincarnation...well, good for you, I'm probobaly crazy and I'm not saying I'm not...because that would be a bit stupid, given how I'm about to tell you all about the good old days being Maid Marian.

The short story is that I was Marian Fitzwarren (yeah that one), the infamous outlaw Robin Hood's lover. The long story is this:

London 1193

If you've ever had you're head down a crap-infested toilet on a hot June afternoon (incidently I have, in a completely unrelated annecdote involoving annorexia and a ham sandwhich being unwilling to flush) you're about half-way to imagining what medieval London smelt like. I was fifteen when I first saw it, and truly alone for the first time in my life. In true historical-novel cliche, my mother had died in childbirth, or at least shortly after, probobaly of an infection, leaving my loving but drunk father to raise me and my brother (they had other children, all of whom had grown up by the time I was born, and all very dull, except my brother Fulk, who did a similiar thing to Rob and is still a local hero in Sussex, or somewhere). Anyway, Papa was a good person, in that he always did what we expected of him, which was to get drunk and more-or-less leave us to our own devices. When I was about seven he enlisted that nursemaid that seems to have stuck in every Hollywood and literature adaption ever, who seems to be around much more in fiction than I ever remember her being in real life. Actually, her name was Agnes and she was one of those darling middle-aged women you call Aunt even if they're not related. (I say middle-aged, she was probobaly about twenty-eight, but people wore down faster back then, I think). I liked her, being the only person who was ever told me off, or told me strories...or noticed I was there, really.

And then there was Robin, the archetypal brother-figure who teases you until you get tits and then flirts like it's 1199. He was my brother's squire, and went away with him to the Holy Land, which broke my melodramatic fifteen year old heart. But then I was carted off to London and I was distracted by the fear and excitement of finding myself in an exotic world that smelt of shit and spice.

At home, everything had been somehow rustic and practical and simple - now I was in a mad world of glamourous courtesans and princes (well. One prince. And he was my cousin, so I'd known him since I was born anyway) - where everything was shiny and new.

Which was, a pyschologist would probobaly tell me, why I was so attracted to William, him being the only half-familliar thing in the whole city. That and he was gorgeous, with his sandy hair and blue eyes, and allegedly the richest bachelor in England, other than the prince and some repulsive old man from Surrey - which was odd, because he was only a sheriff, and didn't even have a propper title (the rumour was that he was iliigitmate but I didn't entertain that thought for a second). And the only guy in medieval London who actually seemed to be able to see me. To this day I hope that wasn't anything personal about my looks, but the fact that court was brimming with richer, hotter, less wallflowery girls.

By the time I ran into William, the situation was getting desperate. In the six months I'd been at court I'd seen seven girls my age find suitors and get married. And so far the only men who'd even spoken to me were kind elderly uncles (by truly alone in the world, I'm talking about a very inbred period of history)...and the prince, obviously, but that was almost always to point out how utterly rubbish I was - he wasn't fond of me because of an unpleasant episode of his childhood in which I put a grassnake down his tunic. The moral there being 1) don't fondle snakes and 2) don't fondle snakes down the tunics of the future king. Even if he smells funny.

Actually it was John who properly introduced me to William. Which I swear to this day was an act of unforgivable spite. But maybe I'm just paranoid, and my darling cousin really did think he was just a nice rich guy... I doubt it, though.

Usually, works of genius take years, decades, or even lifetimes of agonising preperation, contemplation and forward planning, and still there are only half-chances it will come out as the intended masterpiece. Sometimes, though, you just get lucky. This was one of those times:

"Shall we dance?"

I made a quick sweep of the battlefield: a plump blonde, a girl badly hiding a pregnancy, a stunning redhead with a charming Irish ambassador, the only visibly unmarried women interweaving the intricate steps of the dance. To say yes would to admit that I hadn't been asked before - that I was either avalible or about to join a convent. To say no would mean having to rush one of those uncles and hope he didn't protest too much. "Why not?"

"You don't seem at all like the other girls here at court."

"I try, my lord."

"No, I meant it as a compliment...the women here," (an elderly duchess in a purple gown sent him an air-kiss and he waved in reply) "bore me, they're so shallow and vain. You don't seem to be like that at all."

Which, if anything, reccomends me as a damn fine actress. "Like I said," of course I'd flirted before, but for my innocent self, this was taking it to a new extreme, "I try, my lord.

"In my experience, the only people who need to try are hiding something."

"Everyone's hiding something."

"Are they now?" I'd actually caught his attention. Surprised at my luck, I allowed myself to relax a fraction. "And what are you hiding, my lady?"

That I was in love with my family's stable boy, who may or may not be dead in some dessert in the Holy Land, that if I didn't get married soon we'd have to sell off half our land to pay my dead father's debt, that I'd lost my pearl necklace and if I didn't find it I'd be murdered by Aunt Agnes, that my father was new money...

What I wasn't hiding, William, would have fit into your mother's thimble with room to spare.

I looked into the crowed, planned my escape, and met his eyes again. "Find out for yourself."

And in an expertly timed move fitting perfectly with the dance, I merged with the crowed behind me, and dissapeared completely from his sight. Which I'm still somewhat proud of. (What I actually did was duck between people, wriggled out of a semi-open door and went to hide in the yard until I saw him leave.)

A month later we'd stand on that courtyard under a beautiful new moon, and once again my life would change forever.

"Do you even realise how beautiful you are?" It wasn't often that I'd allow myself to be alone with a man, let alone let him stroke my hair, (this was when that sort of thing could get you burnt at the stake, thank you very much) but for William I made an exception. He was like a suitor and favourite uncle - what with the constant supply of expensive gifts - all rolled into one. "I know I don't have your brother's permission - not yet, anyway - but, Marian, will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?"

I swear, even then, that was an old fashioned thing to say.

But at the time, I looked up at the new moon - a sign that everything was suddenly bright and new again, that anything was possible - and then into William's gorgeous blue eyes. Cartoon dollar signs flashed.

"Yes. Yes, I'll marry you."

Which will go down in the top ten stupidest things ever said by anyone. In the history of the world. Ever.