Title: The Verge of the World
Author: Elliott Silver
They came to the forest on the feast of St Cuthbert, on a day that was blowing rain sideways through the dark trees. They came wet, cold, and hungry, battle-sore, broken, and desperate. They came on a day of black looks from common villagers, from raised shouts, from roustabouts hoping to retrieve the precious bounty on his head. They came because they had nowhere else to go.
She was the first to suggest it, to lead him there on narrow bracken tracks, then on dark woodland paths, when the king closed all other places of refuge to them, the king who has ordered his arrest, that arrogant dark-haired turncoat bastard. John had even engaged the sheriff to snare him, and after a vicious run-in, it was Marion who took him through the rain into the great dark heart of the wood, that secret place men – but not boys – feared to tread.
Their appearance was sudden, but not unwelcome, and in the many days that have followed, he, Robin, has taught the boys how to spy out the mounted patrols of heavy horse that sometimes peek at the edges of the wood, and they in turn have taught him the secret ways of the forest. Some days the soldiers get closer than others, but they will never range farther than they can see, for fear of becoming lost in the maze that is Sherwood, for fear of the malignant spirits that linger there. Old legends die hard, and it is not hard to understand their mistrust of this wild place.
Still, he does not fear spirits, but every day he fears that Marion cannot be here, that she cannot be safe as long as she is with him. He has loved her ever since he saw her, her long flame-burning hair bound up as she washed her calloused and muddy feet in front of him. He wants a life with her, but in all his dreams this was not it. He wants her to have more than he can even imagine, everything she deserves, golden brocades, glowing books, warm stone rooms and vibrant tapestries, someone who can look after her, who is not wanted for death by their sovereign, who is not living on the green verge of the world. Every day he prays to God to make him a better man, to let her go or send her away. And then, in his weakness, he prays to God for the courage to ask her if she will take him for a husband.
For she has taken to the forest better than he has, this green strange land he only half-remembers from his youth, that short time before he served in Richard's campaigns. He likes the greenwood, is grateful for its shelter, but there is something about the darkness of leaves he does not trust after the open sands of Palestine, the bright skies flaring ever outward. There is something about rain now, and distant sunshine, that he cannot reconcile with the blaze of heat at the center of the world, the kindling and tinderbox that is Jerusalem. Coming here, coming home, has been as much a revelation as a shock, not least because of her, Marion.
She seems impervious to his many worries, and even to the rain itself sometimes, water seeping through her clothes as she goes about camp, drawing them tight against her figure as she moves. She was the first to shoot a deer, though she claimed, darkly, that it was not her first, and she had turned to him then, flushed but calm, and said, Now I am also an outlaw. It seems she can adapt to anything, as if she has been doing that her whole life, and when he remembers Robert and Pepperharrow, he thinks perhaps she has. But she is so self-sufficient that it sometimes seems she needs nothing, or very little, and that makes him feel lost in the wake of her, tumbling in her undertow. He thinks if they'd had her in Richard's armies, they'd never have gone cold or hungry in camp, or perhaps they'd never have been defeated or ever been there at all. He marvels.
She knows the boys by their Christian names and can name the maker of any given whistle, laugh, or petty blasphemy without turning her back, the last of which she is sharp and quick to correct, which, alas, he knows as well. She knows their favorite meals and the names, each one, of their ponies, Starshine, Fleetfeet, Rosebay. She has learned how to mend a leaking thatch, stew a rabbit, bank glowing coals for cold mornings. She can feel out lameness in the horses, and the way a tiny fillip of goosefeather will make an arrow fly astray. She knows that wolfsbane will kill fleas in the pallets and that a tincture of meadow-wort soothes an upset stomach. She knows he likes fish, that he hasn't named the king's great white charger, and that he sings the bawdy songs that the boys later copy. She knows he favors sleeping on his left side and that his old wounds hurt more when it rains, and when it is cold she rolls closer to him in her sleep, twines herself to him like a morning glory. She seems to have settled here, as if it was easy.
But he worries because she doesn't wear blue anymore, not after he saved her from drowning. If she has water in her spirit now, she doesn't show it, not even to him. She wears brown today, like nutmeat, like firewood, sustenance and burn. She is both, for him, as he reaches for her and pulls her with him under the sheltering leaves of the tall oak when rain leaks from the sky where summer birds had flown only moments before. The brown of her dress is speckled now, like a sparrow's egg, water droplets soaking into her neckline, trickling down the ends of her hair to the curls of her spine. They sit together as the rain pounds down, and then miraculously, lets up just as quickly. She makes no move to go, and he realizes her hand is still twined within his. They get up slowly, as others bustle around the camp, around them, as if they together are solid and immovable as moorstones, as waymakers. Their eyes meet, intensely, as he doesn't let go, as she doesn't move away, as they both want more.
In the night he wakes and finds her gone. His heart rushes and he breaks into a cold sweat as if he was still at war, until he remembers he is, though it is a new one. He slips through the camp on silent feet, testing its boundaries and finally crossing back into the world outside its deep rootedness. Then he treads through bracken and branch until he finds her. Against the darkness, she is sitting alone on a large stone near the break between forest and meadow, between dark and light, her knees tucked up to her chin like a child. She is sitting on the edge of the world, their world, as if she might suddenly fall off it, run from its self-imposed boundaries back to all that was common and familiar, comforting.
In the hollow land, farm buildings lie dark and silent and only the thin smoke from stone fires marks any inhabitance but their own. Beyond that vale, over two rises, lies what was once Pepperharrow, the life that was once hers and is no longer. But as he watches her, she does not seem sad and this is all he can hope.
He goes to her.
Stars light the sky above them, sprinkled between scudding clouds.
They are silent for a long time, the rushes of their breath the only sound in the night, save for a nightbird's call against the sky.
"Why did you come here," he finally asks her.
"Because you are my husband," she answers simply and immediately. She doesn't hesitate.
"Only in fiction."
"You are, in my heart."
In darkness, he says, "I want to marry you." He thinks he is speaking to God again, but she answers.
"Then ask."
He wants to ask her, but how. She has a thimble full of noble blood, but he is only a soldier of fortune, an archer become outlaw. This is not an upward trajectory of mobility. He may have stood before kings, but he did not impress them, exactly. He can't imagine how he should have such thoughts, such fervent hope.
So he answers the only way he can, he holds her close, takes her breath away and replaces it with his own. It is like magic, like sin. Of all things in the world, it is right.
"Yes," she whispers against him as they move together. "Yes."
Her skin is pale like Persian silk, like cathedral stone. She is warm under his hands, as his fingers trace patterns over her flesh, spiraling lower until she gasps into his mouth, until their bodies merge, and at last they hold each other in the blinding enormity of it all. They stay on the stone until morning, until the rest of the world moves on without them.
As they move back into the forest, he realizes that he can't imagine being here without her. The thought is sharp, like the point of a sword, and perhaps that says it all. He is not certain, but he thinks that without her he would have confronted this lump of a sheriff, likely killed him, and ploughed a path of anger straight towards the man that made him an outlaw, the man who denied the people's charter, ignores their God-given rights. He can't know what might have happened if he had done so, but his confrontations with kings has once ended him in the stocks.
But he wants, perhaps needs, to act, to right these misplaced wrongs, and when his chance comes, it is sudden and swift. They discover a royal caravan is heading south from the Northern lands, carrying tax money back to London on its annual, brutal swing through the country. As dusk falls on frothy wings, they creep through the shadows of ancient roots and branches. The drunken sounds of soldiers' rough singing echoes throughout the usually still wood, sap popping from a smoky, sputtering fire. There is no question these are hardened men, men from the Crusades as he was, though he feels no guilt when his sword slices life from them. But he takes no pleasure in taking the life of Englishmen, men who should not be his enemy. It is a strange world where things have come to this.
They take the silver coins in the locked caskets, these ingots that belong less to the sovereign than they do to his subjects. The boys may be enchanted with the way so much silver flashes in their hands like lightning against a dark sky, but how many years was Pepperharrow in arrears, with consequence more than the simple withholding of a king's ring for service? What better way to right this topsy-turvy state of affairs, than to give a people back their dignity if not their country.
He tells her this at night, away from camp and dry-wood fires, when he cannot clearly see her face, where no one else can hear what he says. He waits for her to say he is mad, but she doesn't. She only says, "Yes." And then again, "Yes."
He can feel her words against his face, against his lips as she kisses him, and feels her certainty now more plainly than if he could see it. She knows this is war and he cannot love her more, or know how much she loves him, than when she agrees. Of all the wars he has fought, and there have been many, this is the one he cannot lose. He will win to keep her safe.
They spend the weeks afterward edging out of their protective haven, merging far beyond Marion's rock boundary and back into the poor villages and towns, distributing the bounty of the forest and the king's "charity." The black looks he received only months ago are now replaced by grateful cheers, by genuine thanks, by the tearing down of the sheriff's notices. If these people have hope, how can he not?
He knows now, and he goes to her through the darkness that night. She wakes to his touch and follows him, wading through moonlight, clear and sharp as church bells. Darkness melts around her, rather than she fading into darkness. She is the only one he knows who can do that, who can be miracles.
When they reach her rock, he says only, "come with me." She does and they ride through dark pathways he now knows so well.
She does not know where they are going until they arrive and Tuck is waiting, hooded and silent as a statue. They go into the stone church and in the heavy dark, he hears the hum of bees, sweet as a hymn. The interior is cool and bathed with insistence he can feel against his skin as he presses forward, passing the rough-hewn seats. He can smell the sap still rising into the air as he falls to his knees on the cold stone.
Tuck lights a tallow candle, setting the flickering light on the altar. It casts shadows, alive and vibrant against the damp walls.
He prays and when she joins him on the floor, he knows surely God has answered. She sinks beside him in the slow and certain and graceful way that angels must fall.
"Will you take me as your husband," he asks.
"Yes," she answers as he holds her hands in his. "Yes."
She has been answering him long before he asked, and now she leans towards him and he meets her, their mouths joining. He kisses her deeply, their bodies sinking into each other, finding again how they fit together. They rise only as Tuck comes to the altar, as he opens the worn Bible in his large hands and recites the Latin blessing. He hears the friar speak, but the words fade in his feelings for her, the way candlelight catches the angles of her face, the curling of her lips as she tries not to smile, the willow-length of her body. It is nearly dawn when Tuck binds their hands together with a strip of blue silk, sealing them together, as if all tangled knotted things can be beautiful.
Tuck leaves them bound together, with the clatter of doors and a prayer of blessing, and he knows in whatever may come, though there may be much yet, that there are some things like legends and love the world cannot dissolve.