FOREVER
Disclaimer: This is a fan fiction about one of my favorite movies: Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves; it is an amateur work, without any profit; the film and the characters do not belong to me, but they are property of Morgan Creek Productions.
Do you remember the woman in the coach robbed by Robin? I have often thought that she was not insensitive to him.. even looking at the difference between him and her husband, sitting near her in the coach! So, I have imagined her unrequited love for him, an unrequited love which made her unhappy, until the decision to commit suicide. Tell me if you like it!
I have chosen.
I have decided.
I have decided to die.
Because I cannot bear the pain anymore.
The pity.
The shame.
I cannot bear the sight of you anymore, knowing that you will never be able to be mine.
Mine, mine, mine!
This crazy desire of mine, which, since the first moment I saw you, has been taking my mind, destroying my will and my rationality's shreds.
As though love was a rational thing!
I was just one of many English noble girls, forced to marry a so-older-than-me nobleman, whom I felt nothing more than a deep esteem for. He was my father's old friend, I had known him for time immemorial. As years went by, I had seen his face become older, always severe and never smiling; I used to call him "the uncle", because he used to bring me a doll or something else. That's why when, at the age of fifteen, I was told to marry him, I thought it was a joke!
But my father's face was very little joking, in that moment.
It was an order, simple and plain.
And I was able only to obey.
It had always been done like this, and it would always have been done like this: it was custom.
Just I was not able to escape, one of England's most distinguished families' daughter!
But I have to say that I was lucky enough.
My husband did not impose himself on me, like a master. He did not force me to consummate our marriage, until I felt ready to do it.
He behaved with me in a polite and cold way, the way he had always done, since he knew me as a child.
Apart from twenty years of difference between us, I was able to tell I was gratified.
I was not in love with him.. but what mattered? Marriages among us noble people are never done for love!
Or almost never..
I understood it, when I knew him.
Since that day, when he deprived me of my so showy as useless ring, instilling at the same time inside my heart a sweet poison.
A woman of your beauty has no need for such decorations(1), he said.
His big, green eyes crossed my pale-blue ones, just for a moment: a moment, that was a so great wrench for me, as an entire life.
At that time, he was only an outlaw.
Then, when he exposed the sheriff's plot to kill the king, and killed the sheriff, becoming one of England's most famous and loved lords, his name was known by everyone.
Robin of Locksley.
One of the king's most trustworthy vassals.
England's most handsome man.
He married Lady Marion, king's cousin and my best friend.
All English nobility made itself closer to him: he was powerful, highly esteemed, envied.
A very good result for an ex-outlaw!
Everyone found about him something of extraordinary: the big castle where he lived in, his stable full of expensive stud-horses, his crowd of servants, his very charming position in the court.
I thought extraordinary his marriage: a love marriage. More unique than rare, between two nobles.
Robin e Marian married for love, and were happy: anyone was able to see it.
I envied deeply Marian, my friend, for her fortune.
She had been able to choose her husband.
And not only for this reason.
I envied her because she had him.
The green-eyed angel, who had stolen my heart, together with my ring, on a day of some years before.
I had never believed a love marriage could be; but when I saw his eyes into mine, I understood I was wrong.
Those eyes had fired my soul. They had taken my heart.
Oh, how I would have wanted to be in Marian's shoes!
But, at the same time, what a despair in haunting my friend: I loved her husband!
He and my husband had become friends, so we used often to go to their castle, to have the dinner together.
What a torture for me, seeing him always in front of my eyes, and not to be able to skim along him!
I had to be only a good friend for both of them: I was not able to injure Marian!
And I was not able to allow that my husband understood the truth.
What a torture to be forced to pretend, to dissimulate my feelings towards him!
Why, even after my husband's death, I was forced to continue pretending?
I was a widow, finally.. and owner of a castle and a title of nobility. I was free.
But I was lonely.
Without him.
Gone-by years with a false mourning on me, looking at their happiness from so far..
They, always together.
England's most admired couple.
When even Marian died, I found the courage to disclose my love to him.
I fell at his feet, crying, confessing my love to him, and begging him to stay with me, in an afternoon, when he had come to search this old friend widow's consolation, some days after his wife's funeral.
But he answered he would always have loved only his wife's memory, he would always have stayed faithful to her.
Marian had won once more, even as a dead. Incredible to tell.
He left me, lowered on my floor of pain, meanwhile I was drowning into my tears.
But it was not finished there, no.
The worst had to arrive, still.
One waitress of mine had seen everything, hidden; and she did not hesitate to tell it to her work-mates; these ones talked about it with their colleagues, in service at other mansions.
And in a little time, all England's nobility knew about my shame.
I will never be able to forget that evening, at court.. the evening when I came in into that hall, suddenly become chilly and hostile.. a sea of faces, with grotesque expressions like masks, ready to sentence and to mock with no mercy. It seemed to me to advance along a corridor, flanked by statues of nameless chilly monsters.
I was not able to bear it: I escaped, far away from there, feeling those giggles hitting my back, so sharp as knives.(2)
And in the following months, the shame pushed on me, closed into my castle, on me the lying mourning for my dead best friend.
No noble person wanted to pay a visit to me anymore, everyone avoided me as a plague. Haunting me meant falling into disgrace, covering themselves with my same shame. I was ever more lonely.
Those giggles.. oh, how I was able to hear them, in my always closed castle's silence, become my golden prison!
They appeared to me into the darkness, like ghosts deformed by their leers of mockery, torturing my sleepless nights.
And he was far away.
He had not become victim of the same injury.
After all, it wasn't him, who had lowered in front of me.. the contrary had happened!
His image had stayed untouched in its purity, the purity of an husband, faithful to his wife's memory.
It had been me, who lowered myself. In front of him. For him.
It is me, who is not worth of living.
Just me.
Because I cannot bear the pain anymore.
I cannot bear the shame anymore.
Yes, it is right I will pass by.
Just few moments, and everything will be finished.
My shame.
My loneliness.
My pain.
Maybe, one day you will think of me, Robin.
If it will be like this, I will look at you, from everywhere I will have come.
But not now.
Now there is only her for you.
Or her memory, perfect.
For me, instead, there is only my desperate love. Who will last forever, since now.
I hope that this laudanum will operate soon…
(1)Taken from the movie.
(2)Yes, I know that scenes like this were more consonant with pre-revolutionary Versailles, than with medieval Windsor, but here it seemed to me to be perfect: please, forgive me!