Please be forewarned, this is not a cheerful piece. Nor is it a Robin/Marian romance. Forgive Zaedah this sidestep and enjoy all the same.
Valiant Splinters
There are splinters.
Guarding the window frame with tiny swords raised against my invasion, several shoots of aged wood are crushed under my weight. Heavy clothing shields me from the worst of their valiant defenses and I steal into her room essentially unhindered. The late autumn winds whisper that I shouldn't be here. I hear their grieving moans as they circle the property, whimpering sighs for a lost son. I can be nowhere else. The other knows this, lighting a candle before I slip inside.
Betrayal comes in many guises; the worst is the cover of friendship. Hours could be spent dissecting the event, its missed clues and the impending, long-reaching results. However, my mind has retained only enough function to send the body below it to her bed. Beaten by treachery, faith has surrendered to craven, carnal impulses. She does not refuse me, displaying such eagerness to participate in my own betrayal of all who put confidence in my righteousness.
I am no stranger to the descent into base passions. The Holy Land offered such variety of indecent activities that even the chastest Crusader succumbed to the call of heathen lusts. The foreign pleasures presented mindless refuge from the undefined battlefields and fresh horrors that surfaced daily and lingered like rancid incense. Blood, that most life-bearing of human liquids, left stains that sanctified water cannot cleanse. Pleading penance in the abandoned temples works no miracles on the soul, for the blood of others mingles with my own to convince me of my sins.
Much warned of the evils, but those exotic women of Jerusalem could coax and tease me into a moment of forgetting; a temporary gift punctuating the spilling of blood. I entered into death there. I feel no more alive here.
Returning to the land of my ancestors purged none of the pulsing needs that strike in combination with harsh events. I foolishly hoped that beholding my family home, the grasses and sky and villages, would abate the tidal waters of wickedness. Nightmares drove me from my father's house that first night and into her ready arms. A different physical expression took place between us than the fumbling teenage explorations I remembered. Once banished to the forest, the frequency of visits only increased with any new disappointments, each near-disaster and every night terror. I have never arrived in joy or celebration. My selfish reasons become her purpose, attempting to heal as a physician might.
Blessedly discreet, she is a liberator seeking no reward. My depravity resides in her secret haven, locked in a box only she can locate. Gnawing mistrust of the world is left outside her window, snagged and held by the very splinters that bade me return to the forest. Safety of trees and loyalty of men, both so recently fickle, cannot contend with her steady skill; alternately gentle and aggressive in response to the moment. Forgetting is the goal, whether achieved in tender caress or violent coupling. We are never made one in the process, forgoing the traditional view of a union of souls when bodies meet. And we never kiss. That sweet gesture is reserved for another.
Looking upon Marian in the light of day, I see such an independent flame tempered by choking innocence. It suffocates me more than her. She is not ready to receive the burden of my soul, singed by the fire of Jerusalem. Maid Fitzwater has my heart, the heart that wears the form of a younger Locksley. The window's owner has my body, the body tinted in a soldier's murderous red. The other is not threatened by Marian's place in my life, knowing she supplies a service the noble woman could not.
Tonight she waits by the light of a rapidly fading candle to erase the fury of a friend's disloyalty. Tomorrow the benefit will be as a tornado; an invisible force evidenced only by the remaining destruction. For my spirit shreds a little more with each visit.
She sees our dark acts as a statement to those who oppress. Clearing the rebellion leader's mind with a freely given gift is her contribution to the cause. If this is true, then my cause is lost. How can I hope to defeat those who abuse the populace while stealing virtue from one of its daughters? Who dares to appear the knight and savior of those whose eyes cannot see the savage impurity under the armor of pretense?
When splinters are all that protest the arrival, what power of resistance can be summoned by a desperate man? I desecrate her tonight and she screams her bliss at the defilement. I am indeed dead, for the sound, like the howl of the devil, blesses me with its gift.