Disclaimer: If you recognise it, it's not mine.
…Et Filii, Et Spiritus Sancti
I call him Robin now. We all do. And it didn't take long, either; only a couple of days of Robert, Robert, and – Robin – when we'd all turn away, be silent, just stop for a moment because. The one who said it would stop. And maybe feel worse than the rest.
But it didn't last long, and even I do it now. I say – Robin – and he smiles warmly at me, fair and optimistic, still, not hardened yet to what this is.
Now, I expect nothing else. Not sunlight dappling down on his dark head, his eyes far away until my voice calls him back.
He never gets any older, in my mind. Robin is stuck for me in a handful of moments – in winter, in spring, in May every year. I can see him so young, when we started. His hair changes length. We're huddled in a tumble of blankets with wood smoke and the thin bare branches overhead. Dark, we can barely see our breath hanging in the air.
It's high summer and we're laughing, we are always laughing, playing like children with the others, our friends. I always thought a husband would be an old knight, a person I'd endure, whose household I'd manage – as whose widow I'd finally be free. But my young husband teaches me to climb trees, laughs with me, runs with me free as the deer through the forest, his kingdom. He gives me apples and his eyes are the colour of leaves.
The arrow is ablaze and as I draw, hold, the warmth comes to my fingers, and it hurts. It's my wedding day. He crowns me with flowers and there are flowers everywhere. Robin is new to me, and I am so alive in this moment, knowing him and not knowing him.
Later I tried to imagine us growing old, but I couldn't.
The arrow is ablaze and as I draw, hold, the warmth comes to my fingers, and it hurts. In the cold water the arrows all expire, one after another. I am so alive in this moment that I want to follow them.
Later I tried to imagine us dying together, but I couldn't.
I saw the Hooded Man that day for the last time. I say that because I thought it was him for a moment – we all did. That figure, for me, is neither Loxley nor Huntingdon. It's a ghost, or a god, or the point where they meet. It's Herne's Son.
And I think of it often, now. Because I was the last one to call him by his old name, the last of us, I mean. And when I said it – Robin – he looked at me and I think he saw what it cost me to do it. It hurt that first time. And then it hurt again, days later, when for the first time I called out to him in my dreams and it wasn't my husband who answered. Because I knew, then.
"Some things are better forgotten," his father said, when they thought it was all over. "They're saying it's Robin Hood, back from the dead," my father said, when it all started happening again. But I knew both of them were wrong. Nothing's forgotten, least of all Robin Hood – Robin of Loxley, Robert of Huntingdon. Nothing's ever forgotten.
Robin exists for me in a series of moments, and day by day there are more.
I am consumed with loathing for Gisburne and I turn away, turn, and come to the earl's son. He smiles at me and I turn, turn, moving around him so easily because I am so very aware of him. Robert. He has fought Clun – the same night, the first time – and he smiles up at me, blowing on his burnt fingers. His eyes are full of things he can't say to me. He fights like someone else, but his smile is all his own. The earl's son. Robert.
Robin is standing in my room, candlelight caught in his fair hair, and I am offering him Albion. He won't accept it yet, but knows he's staring at his destiny.
And so do I.