Wow, this got incredibly long without my realizing it! This is Djaq as she appears from John's point of view, about mid-way through the first season (but definitely before the episode "Dead Man Walking." The second part of this fic is a little unusual - I hope it works out for you. Also, many of the herbal remedies that I list here are definitely not to be taken as gospel - please don't think that I'm any kind of expert on the matter.
Eye of the Beholder: John
He knew it was a mistake right from the beginning. Even if she did look like a boy, putting a woman in the middle of a forest with four young men who hadn't had any female contact for months was like throwing a bone to a pack of hungry dogs and expecting them to ignore it.
He knew it from the moment Robin had asked if anyone minded a woman being in the group. He may as well have asked whether anyone minded getting handed a hot steaming meal on a plate. Or soft bed with plumped pillows and warm blankets.
Will already had a little smirk on his face, and he'd seen Robin's appraising once-over. She'd provided Much with food, which was probably reason enough for him to propose marriage, and it was only a matter of time before the black root wore off and then Allan would be all over her too.
It could only mean more work for him in the attempt to keep all of them in check, and he prepared himself for the new responsibility. Yet secretly, after he'd given it some thought, he found he didn't mind so much. Sometimes he forgot she even was female, and when glancing at her from the back, he once momentarily mistook her for a child. It was easy to suppose that she was some Higher Power's way of granting him another chance: to protect a diminutive woman in repayment for so utterly failing in his duties toward his own wife and child.
And yet he soon realised that such protection was neither needed nor wanted, and as she slowly integrated herself into the team, his fears began to subside. She was so tiny, and his natural impulse to shield living things smaller than himself from harm (which was almost everything, really) was difficult to curb, but having seen and judged the sharp gleam of pride in her eyes, he knew that molly-coddling her was unthinkable. So he looked out for her in other, more discreet ways, such as keeping an eye on the sleeping arrangements and making sure all the men were present and accounted for when she slipped down to the river to bathe.
He'd noticed her one day, poking about on the forest floor, gazing closely at various plants with a frown of concentration on her face.
"Everything is different here," she sighed when she saw him approach.
"What do you mean?"
"My father was a physician," she said. "And he taught me the ways of medicinal herbs. But here, I do not recognise anything. And those that look familiar are known by different names. Allan asked me if I had come across any goat-weed. What is goat-weed?"
John refrained from telling her, realising that Allan's question was a clear indicator that he'd finally realised she was female.
"Never mind that," he said, and crouched down next to her in front of the tuft of greenery she'd been peering at, pulling a few of its yellow flowers free.
"This here is St John's Wort," he told her, holding the flowers under her nose for her to sniff experimentally. "We use it in tonics for headaches. And that over there…" he pointed at the clump of white flowers bobbing like tiny heads in the breeze "…that's feverfew. They're for bringing-"
"A fever under control," she interrupted swiftly, and he hid a smile. Clearly she didn't quite like the idea of not being the sole authority on herbal remedies.
For the rest of the afternoon he introduced her to the flora and fauna of the forest, watching as she examined, sniffed, crushed or gingerly tasted the specimens he handed to her. He told her what was edible, and what wasn't, how the herbs were prepared and treated, and dredged out of his memory every conceivable nickname that woodsmen used for the variety of plants around them. There were lime flowers from the linden tree for coughs and colds, dock-leaves to relieve stinging nettles, comfrey, or "knitbone" for bone ailments, and dandelions…she looked confused for a moment when he held it under her chin, and then mildly exasperated when he explained that if the flower turned one's skin a shade of yellow, it meant that someone was sweet on her.
They had found a clearing that blushed red with the sweep of poppies, a flower that she knew in her own land as khash khaash, and stopped to cultivate some of the seeds from the swollen seed-pods. She was optimistic that a tonic made from the crushed seeds might relieve Robin of his nightmares. Leaning against the trunk of an old birch tree, John sat and watched her work. He'd often found himself doing this over the past few weeks – though not as obviously as Will did – in the attempt to quietly pick up bits and pieces of who she was. She was an interesting wee thing, that much was certain. Deft fingers, thoughtful eyes, and a sharp, quick mind – you could almost hear it working, though he couldn't fathom what it might be thinking. He knew she prayed frequently (at least, that was what he assumed the daily crouching and chanting was all about) and her piety impressed him. He knew she was scrupulously modest, heading into the trees and away from prying eyes even for something as simple as changing into the new pair of boots that Robin had bought back from Nottingham for her. And she never drank ale, not even when they offered it to her, and the one time Allan tried to add a splash of something stronger than water into her cup, she'd responded by returning it straight to his face.
For a moment it was hard to say which one was more stunned at what she'd done as the frothy liquid dripped down Allan's face, but their twin expressions of shock must have triggered some shared appreciation for the absurd. They were still chortling like idiots twenty minutes later, and Allan hadn't been able to disguise the dawning expression of gob-smacked realisation as the unmistakeably feminine laughter rang out over the camp. Later that night John heard him mutter to Will: "Why didn't someone tell me?"
Goat-weed, he thought darkly to himself. He'd have to give Allan a cuff around the ear for that when he saw him next.
His eyes were closed and his mind drifting away into dreamy slumber when he felt a light touch on the back of his hand and glanced down to see Djaq brushing her fingers over his wedding ring, twisted on his finger like a band of metal around an oak stump.
"Are you married?" There was something in her inflection that suggested she already knew the answer, and was asking in the attempt to learn more.
"Yes," he said shortly, and after a lengthy pause in which he realised that it was hardly fair to deny her knowledge of him when he'd been busy accumulating knowledge of her, he elaborated. "Her name is Alice. She lives with my…my son in Locksley."
She turned back to her work, grounding the poppy seeds into a fine paste between a flat-topped rock and a round stone. The silence was inviting.
"I had to leave Alice when I became an outlaw," he continued. "I did not even know she was with child at the time. I thought it would be best, you see. Safer for her if I lived in the forest. They couldn't…use her against me if they all thought I was dead."
Djaq added more seeds to the gloopy mess between the rocks, and continued to grind away at them.
"I saw my son John for the first time just a month or so before you came to us. He walked with a limp and didn't recognise me. But then, why would he?"
Djaq carefully scraped the crushed seeds into a small square of leather that she then tied up in a pouch, and asked:
"How did you meet your wife?"
"I didn't meet her. I've always known her. Can't remember a time when I didn't. We grew up together in Edwinstowe. She was a few years younger than me, and I was best friends with her older brother. I used to run around with Peter, and she was always tagging along. It was rather amusing to see her trying to keep up with us. She was just a tiny thing…you'd loose sight of her in a paddock of tall grass…"
He bit his tongue, realising that his anecdote might be cutting a little too close to Djaq's situation for her liking, but she simply nodded serenely, and he carried on.
"We did everything we could to avoid her. But then one day…I saw her in the fields, helping with the harvest. She had her hair loose and her sleeves rolled up and she looked…different."
He stopped again, lost in the memory of that day. Djaq had stopped work and was gazing, not at him, but at the light of the sun, just dimming over the edge of the forest trees. He came back to himself and sighed.
"Anyway…I don't go to see them. Too dangerous. They both still think I'm dead."
Djaq seemed fascinated with this idea, and he wondered briefly if she was imagining that her own family was still out there somewhere, alive and well, and watching her from afar. But with a shake of her head, he saw her cast the wistful thought aside, and she looked back at him with a strange sort of smile on her face.
"At least they are alive," she said, but the words were spoken without self-pity. "You may yet be reunited with them in this life."
They returned back to the campsite in silence.
It seemed odd in hindsight, but he couldn't remember exactly who it was that had started the tradition. It could have been Much. Maybe Robin. Or perhaps she'd started it herself in an attempt to keep the two of them from sniping at each other every evening. In any case, once they'd discovered she was a veritable treasure trove of stories, there was a constant demand for them once night had fallen and they were gathered around the campfire.
Robin and Much had heard many of the stories before, often interrupting with their own variations of events, and Will usually listened while tinkering with some woodwork project of his. John secretly loved her strange, exotic stories; listening as he did whilst wrapped in his blankets, nursing a mug of warmed ale by the fire. Robin preferred the heroic stories; tales of rescues and escapes, swordfights and battles, and the more tragically magnificent the hero was, the more he seemed to enjoy them. Much was partial to stories about food, naturally enough, and as Djaq was innately talented in describing the aroma and flavour of sumptuous dishes, she often sent him into an ecstasy of moaning, "I know how he feels," he groaned after hearing the tale of Tantalus and his terrible punishment, seated forever at a banquet he could only look at, but never taste.
But John's own favourite was the voyage of Odysseus, a tale so long that Djaq had had to stretch it out over several nights. He was appalled to find his eyes burning with tears at its conclusion, when the seafaring man finally returned home to discover that faithful Penelope had waited, and was glad for the darkness of night and the excuse that smoke from the fire was getting in his eyes.
Allan had been blasé about the whole thing at first, listening from his usual sprawled-out position outside the ring of the campfire, carelessly flicking a coin through his fingers. But as the nights went on, John noted his change his expression in a way that amused him even as it put him on edge. By the time Djaq started on the Arabian Nights, she commanded Allan's rapt attention, and he'd listen in utter fascination, as engrossed as a child in what she had to say. It was the story of Aladdin that had really rendered him helpless: after the legendary thief had had stolen a magic lamp, conned a palace, tricked a magician and married a princess, Allan was all but sitting in her lap.
"And was the princess he married a Saracen princess?" he asked suggestively, a grin wedged across his face. "I bet she was."
She pushed him away with a coy smile. John was mindful enough of her own intelligence to know that she'd probably realised the potential threat that Allan posed toward her virtue (or any woman's virtue,) but after an entire week of Allan requesting that she retell that particular story, he had to threaten him with a menacing wave of his staff.
The night that followed the afternoon in which he'd introduced her to the forest, she was quiet at the time she usually began her narration.
"Ahem," Much finally prompted.
"Be quiet Much, I'm thinking of one," she replied, her eyes fixed on the fire.
John settled back, waiting patiently. Looking at her now as the firelight danced over her Saracen features, he pondered as he often did, as to how unreal her presence among them really was. Her circumstances in life seemed so improbable; a cruel chain of events that had left her suddenly deposited in the outlaws' equally misplaced lives…To be honest, she made him a little nervous sometimes. He'd nearly died of fright when he'd awoken at the base of that mine shaft, looking into the face of an imp waving a foul-smelling concoction under his nose. He'd never seen a Saracen before – either male or female – and everything he knew about them came from terrifying stories from the Holy Land, in which Saracens fought with the strength of giants, drank the blood of their enemies, and could carry on living for days after loosing an arm or a leg. When he'd seen her fight for the first time, he believed every word. Often when she spoke of genies and demons and ghostly apparitions, he found himself watching her carefully in the firelight, half believing that she herself was a spirit conjured out of one of her own stories.
Suddenly, she began:
"This story is about a king who lived with his wife and child in a large castle by the sea. He was a fair and just man, and was loved by his subjects and his family alike. But one day, a terrible darkness settled upon the kingdom, and while the king and his young son were wandering in the castle orchard, the king was struck down by a terrible curse and turned into a large black bear.
"The castle guards, not recognising their liege, immediately attacked him with sword and spear in defence of their young prince. The king had no choice but to flee, for his attempt to speak only resulted in terrible roars and snarls. He was driven from his own home, and took refuge in the forest, learning to survive on berries and roots from the trees, and fish from the rivers.
"Meanwhile, his queen and young son mourned for the loss of their beloved husband and father, and soon found themselves under the mercy of a charismatic but cruel wizard clad from head to toe in black robes; the very wizard who had placed the evil spell upon the king. But the queen was not to know this – all she had been told was that her husband had been devoured by a terrible bear. And that now an unwanted suitor was pressing for her hand in marriage.
"She resisted his advances for as long as she could, but when the wizard finally threatened to murder her son if she did not oblige him, she knew had had to make her escape. She fixed a sleeping draught for her son so that he would not awake during the journey, dressed herself in the clothes of a chamber-maid, and stole from the castle in the dead of night, her sleeping son in her arms."
"If only it were that easy to get women out of castles," they heard Robin sigh to himself.
"She journeyed back to the cottage where she'd been born – a homely fisherman's hut by the sea. She had lived there in the years before the king had seen her one summer morning when out riding.
"Here she dwelt in hiding with her son, surviving on the fish that they netted from the ocean waves. One day the young prince was wandering along the shore, collecting oysters for his hungry mother, when he saw a great black bear in the water, catching up fish in the crashing waves. When the bear noticed him and turned to stare, the boy took fright and raced for his home, not stopping for breath until he had reached his mother's arms. He had not recognised his own father.
The queen warned her son not to stray too far from the house, but the following morning, was surprised to find a pile of food outside her front door: freshly slaughtered rabbits, fish still gleaming with saltwater, and the hind leg of a deer."
Much gave a quivering little moan of longing.
"She and her son had not feasted so well since the banquets at the castle. Every morning after, their doorstep was covered in bounty from the ocean and the forest, and every day the queen wondered where it had all come from.
"While the royal family were banished to poverty and beast-hood, the evil wizard had taken over the kingdom. But a throne that is stolen is one that is easily snatched away again, and the wizard wanted to find the queen and so secure his rule. His spies crawled throughout the land and finally one of them came to him with news of a woman and her small son living on the shore. Certain it was them, the wizard gathered all his evil powers to him, and landed on the front step of the humble shack, tearing the door from its hinges with black magic. He strode into the room with a naked sword, determined to slaughter the innocent boy and take the queen by force, but as he approached, a dark shadow filled the doorframe.
"The queen screamed, at both the sight of her terrible enemy, and the massive bear that shouldered its way into the house, breaking down the walls as it did so. The wizard did not even have time to raise his sword before one swipe of the bear's mighty paw removed his head from his shoulders and sent it bouncing into a corner."
"Blimey," Allan muttered.
"For a moment the queen and her son looked at the bear, and the bear looked back. Then, gazing into his dark eyes, the queen recognised him for who he was and called out her husband's name. With that, the spell was broken, and the king reverted back to human form, free to leave the forest and return to his castle with his wife and son. And that is the end."
As always, there was a long silence among the other outlaws as they digested her story as one would digest a hearty meal.
"That was a good one," Will said eventually, the knife and block of wood in his hands having been dropped to the forest floor some time ago.
Then Robin spoke: "That didn't sound like an Eastern story. More like an English one. But I've never heard it before."
"No," she replied. "I made that one up myself."
John sighed softly to himself. If she was a spirit, she was a benevolent one.
Just to clarify, the "goat-weed" that Allan asks Djaq to find is also called "horny goat-weed" and is considered an aphrodesiac. So...yeah. I couldn't resist. Next chapter will be Much.