Watching re-runs of the third series is putting me in a bit of a fic-writing mood. I'm not sure what to say about this one, other than that I wanted to write Djaq's point of view on the destruction she would have found if she and Will came back to England. People always want to go and see the sites where disasters happened. They want to see a little bit of history. Unfortunately, they often for get what happened right where they're standing.
Disclaimer: Don't own it, not profiting, et cetera, et cetera.
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It has been a long, long time since what happened here happened. The first we heard of it—the first we saw of it—was when we returned, and so much time has passed that already the land is beginning to heal from what was described to us as "a most terrible explosion". By all accounts Nottingham castle burst like a pig bladder, the ground shook and quaked so violently that chimneys of cottages tumbled down as far away as Clun; the surrounding town was utterly obliterated along with it, the explosion and collapse of the castle sending a shower of stone and wood, splinters, beams and mortar. For many months afterward people travelling through the forest and people in neighbouring towns were finding pieces of what was once Nottingham on the ground and in their fields.
It must have been awesome to behold. As a human being I shudder at the terrible loss of life involved, but as a scientist I cannot help but wonder what such an amazingly enormous explosion would look like, sound like, feel like, smell like.
Other things were showered on the land, too, I'm told. Nobody is sure how many people were still left inside the castle and town when they went up; nobody knows how many of the people left inside were already dead when it happened or how many of them died in the Byzantine fire. Everyone was told to leave, rushed out, but some stubbornly stayed, either to fight or in the mistaken belief that they could wait out the battle in hiding.
All that's known is that some people were left and that those people were scattered along the serene countryside for miles along with the debris. People made gristly discoveries—a hand, a foot, part of a skull, part of a leg. Unidentifiable body parts, blown to bits and charred and flung great distances. People held funerals for the pieces they found. There are coffins and graves for small body parts, remnants from the great battle of Nottingham.
But that's all that was found. Little pieces. Shreds of humanity. The rest remains here, and will remain forever. Innocent people, innocent bystanders, victims, confused and frightened and not knowing what to do or where to go. People who worked in the castle, the people who fought for Robin and died for him and his cause. People who had no idea what was about to happen, who led quiet lives and would have had no business fighting here or anywhere else; the members of a mercenary army who were following orders and earning their bread, and passing travellers who stopped at the wrong time in the wrong place, none of whom had even heard of Nottingham before and would never have come here otherwise.
They all died here. They'll all stay here.
This is where they are buried.
This is a cemetery.
People still talk of it, mourn for the losses, even as the land itself begins to heal and grow anew. There's grass growing already, I was surprised to notice. The hunks of stone too heavy to be shot across Sherwood have become covered in moss. The land is healing. The people will, too.
All except for the immense crater in the centre of what was once the castle. It is at least ten foot deep and charred and oily and black from the fire. No moss grows in the crater. Nothing will ever again be able to stand here.
Nothing should stand here, I think.
It is, after all, a cemetery. To build something on top of it would be profoundly disrespectful.
It is sacred ground.
In Acre, and beyond where the fighting was still going on, my people and the nomads of the desert found the bodies of the fallen littered all over their once-beautiful desert. The victims of battles, the fallen soldiers, left to rot. In death they are no longer enemies. In death they are simply the dead, the fallen, the victims. It never mattered if they were white men, Saracen men, or that curious in-between that hail from the south along the sea. They were young men, young boys, often barely old enough to have fuzz on their chins, baby-soldiers and peasants who were lured away from their homes with the promise of freedom; people who had never heard of the places they were sent—Acre, Antioch, Mecca—and would never have had anything to do with those places were it not for the Crusades. It was there that they died, and there that they would stay forever. They were dead and deserved respect, so those who found the abandoned battlefields would do what they could to honour their deaths.
People dug trenches, mass graves, and lay the men in them and covered their faces and prayed for them and buried them. They treated them with respect in death that they never showed one another in life.
They treated that land with respect, too. Because people died there. People were buried there. And the land itself became a graveyard.
The desert became a cemetery.
There are cemeteries everywhere. The churchyards of England and Europe are littered with them, headstones marking the graves. There are cemeteries in Acre, too, much the same. People honour the dead there. People show respect. People show reverence.
Cemeteries—whether they are for God or for Yahweh or for Allah—are holy. They are hallowed, sacred ground and all must be treated as such.
The first time Will and I came to see what was left of the castle, to see where Robin had given his all for his England and everything he had ever believed in, we were not the only ones who were coming to look. Other people came, sometimes from far away, to see for themselves and perhaps see a little bit of what is certain to become history. Pilgrims, of sorts, to visit this hallowed place.
Locals were offering to show them around the grounds and tell the story. Some of them had obviously done so before, telling well-rehearsed and dramatic renditions of Robin Hood and his band of outlaws who lived in the forest and fought for King Richard. They must have been doing this a long time, I remember thinking.
John said that they started coming right away, before the ground was even cold and the earth was still damp with the blood of the slain. To pay respects, to offer help, but mostly just to come and look and see and hear. There was a story in this place, and the world wanted to know what it was.
I wonder if they behaved then as they behaved when I came to see it—how they behave now. People walk all over the ruins. Some people pick up pieces to take with them. Relics of their pilgrimage. A little tiny tangible piece of Robin Hood's fight. I never say anything and neither does anybody else—there is too much money to be made, after all, for innkeepers and farmers who sell their rooms and their meals to the pilgrims who come here—but I find it appalling that this place is treated this way. They should be silent. They should show respect. They should tread carefully. They forget they're treading on a final resting place. People died here. People are buried in this place.
On this sacred ground.
In this cemetery.
The people keep coming. Often they are well-meaning, coming to leave flowers and pray and thank the people who stood and fought and died here for them, for England, for their freedom. But they are also careless. They step carelessly and listen to the stories and make jokes and let their children climb on the mossy rocks. Even in the desert, where the sand eventually claims the graves once and for all and there is no evidence of the bodies, people try to remember where the spots are and avoid them. Caravans of goats, camels, horses, people—whole armies—will divert their paths away from them in an effort to show one last shred of respect to the dead. People try not to step on those graves.
It is the least they can do.
Nobody will ever remember where all of the desert graves are. There are simply too many. In time, when the sands blow away and the desert reclaims the land, the individual sites will be forgotten. In my time I have seen the trenches, the graves, the cemeteries vanish. But we always remember what the desert holds, what lies beneath the sand.
The sand—the desert—is a final resting place. Nobody forgets that.
In time, the land here, too, will reclaim what is left of the castle. Eventually the great crater will start to turn green again as the grasses and flowers come back. The moss will consume the stone left of the castle. The small pieces, flung miles away, will all sooner or later be found and carted away and nothing else will remain of the explosion. The town will be rebuilt. The dead will be mourned, and then their names lost to time. The people themselves will go on with their lives and become further and further removed from the great battle that happened here. The story will be passed from one generation to another, each time becoming a little more faint, a little more distant.
But the people will still come, I imagine. As the pilgrims leave they take stories with them. Their children will one day make the trip to this little corner of England to see it for themselves, to hear the stories from people who claim to have witnessed it. Then their children will make the trip. And their children, too—people who weren't even born yet when Robin Hood fought for England.
They will come here. They will walk on the grounds. They will hear the stories. But to them it will just be a story; it will not mean to them what it meant to us, what it meant to the people who knew Robin Hood and lived and fought alongside him. They will not be pilgrims anymore—they will simply be visitors coming to look.
For their sake, I hope their world and their lives are less troubled than ours. I hope they will never know the pain of big trench graves, or Crusades, or exploding castles, or tyrannical princes and sheriffs. I hope they remember to show a little bit of respect for the people who died here in hopes of securing a fair future for others, and for the place itself, where they are buried.
Because this is a cemetery.
This is sacred ground.
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The end. I really don't know what Djaq would think about the ruins when she got back to England, but I hope this is in-character enough. It sounds like her voice in my head. I figure, with the end of the third series in the US, it needed a tribute. I hope it made you think. I need to start working on happier stuff.