Everlasting Love by Rosa17
I sigh, my life has not panned out the way I planned it, whose life does? Marian didn't plan to die in the Holy Land. We had planned to defeat the Sheriff, bring the King home and get married. That was two decade's ago. Little John keeps telling me I have become an embittered old man. Not on the outside to those I meet, to those to whom I am Lord and Master, but to love.
I love, I love my wife. Marian. They, the gang kept telling me I would find someone else to take her place and if not to take her place then at least to love in a different way. I did not. I didn't want to at first, even the thought repelled me to an extent which made me physically ill and now perhaps time and love has passed me by. I want none of the pretty lasses who still flutter their eyelashes in my direction for I know although they may fall in love with me I will never hold their hearts in mine. That privilege alone belongs to my wife, Marian.
Marian she will forever be young in my heart, my memories and my soul. Beautiful, beautiful Marian. Brave, strong courageous to the point at times of being foolhardy in her mission to help the poor and gain justice in England. Justice came and went, now John is King things are as bad as when Richard was in the Holy Land and this time there is no one to fall back on to save the kingdom, except perhaps God. I know my people would say me and I say that without conceit and pride, just with the truth.
Twenty years ago today I lost my wife to Gisbourne's hand in one blind blow of fury. He killed the woman he thought he loved, the woman I did in a bitter fit of jealously or so the King spoke about later. We never really knew what happened at the time except she saved the life of the King. I would do anything to go back and live that part of my life again. To have given her a weapon with which to defend herself. I still do not know to this day how Marian remained weaponless in the abandoned city. When faced with saving the King she used the only weapon she had, herself and our love against Sir Guy of Gisbourne. He is dead now like Vasey, dead and forgotten, except on days like this when I remember Marian dying in my arms and the man who caused such an unforgivable event to occur.
Lots of my friends have died. Allan a Dale. Carter. Thornton. Djaq. I name them one by one, remembering them personally with a fondness which borders on brotherly love. Now I live in Locksley with Much, Will and Little John who reside close by. Much never did quite get the hang of living in Bonchurch and lives in a cottage on the Locksley estate, a free man. He never quite got used to that either and still frequently refers to me as his 'master'. He married five years after Marian died and produced a son, an heir for the Bonchurch estate. Funny that he has an heir and I have no one. John lives with little little John and John's wife and three grandchildren in Locksley. Will returned from the Holy Land three years ago when Djaq died bringing their son along with him, they too live in the village so I am not alone not really not even in my heart.
I often longed to travel back to the Holy Land, just to be closer to her, but what good would that do now? Now I know that it doesn't matter where I am, Marian is with me. Marian is my waking thought and my last thought at night. She is the air that I breathe and the dreams that I dream. As I walk through the forest, or down the street of Nottingham she is there walking beside me and I can almost feel her hand in mine. Urging me on to live one day more without her, for one day more without her here on earth means one day closer to spending eternity by her side in heaven and that is what I live for.
Marian has helped me through these long and lonely years I have endured, years that I had dreamed of a life with her as my wife, living, fighting and loving each other. Perhaps bringing our children up in a way which we believed in. But no there are no children for me, not if Marian was not to be their Mother. No children to watch me grow old, take care of an old man in his dotage. I smile in regret; there are so many things I regret in this life but most of all I regret going to war in the first place. Marian and I could have had it all and I left it behind for fame, for glory, to be loved by everyone and not just one woman and I found out too late that I should not have gone. Not have left her in a world that was corrupt from the top down.
She told me as we shared our marriage vows that she would love and cherish me in heaven and I know she does. I feel it everyday with the breath of the breeze on my face. The heralding of the sunrise, the glowing of the sunset. The summer rain and the winter snowflake, the rainbow after the storm and lastly in the faces of children and adults who look to me for guidance and protection. I feel her heart still beating with mine. I know the power of our love which crosses time and eternity and space will remain part of us forever. Today on the twentieth anniversary of our marriage and her death, I know my future lies only with her, in love, in life and in death.
The End