Another re-written chapter, I'm sorry the story won't make sense for a while! I hope you enjoy these editings, please review and tell me what you think/yell at me to do it faster because bits are missing!
It was later that night, when Marian had gone to bed, that she heard shuffling in the yard beneath the window of her bower. She had retired early that evening, but had woken after only few hours. She had tossed and turned to no avail, and now lay awake, staring out at the dark sky. Her ears straining hard, she listened for another sound, not sure if she had imagined the first. She heard it again. Now she was in no doubt that someone, or something, was in the yard below. She threw aside her blankets and crept over to the window. As she looked out, she could see nothing, only the dark outline of the stables below. It must have been some sort of animal, she thought, a sheep or cow that had escaped from the fenced pastures that surrounded the house. As she turned to cross the room back to her bed, she saw a figure emerging from the stables, leading a horse. He was carrying a small lantern, and as he turned his face towards her, she saw that it was Harry, and her jaw dropped in shock.
He must have heard her move suddenly back from the window, for he looked up, and seeing her stood there, his face broke out into one of his trademark smiles, and he beckoned for her to come down.
'What are you doing?' she hissed as she opened the window.
'I've something to show you!' he whispered back. 'Come down, but quickly!'
Hastily, Marian threw on her hidden breeches and boots, and threw her cloak round her shoulders before stealing out of her room and down the stairs. Harry was waiting for her outside the door.
'Here,' he said handing her the reins to her horse, 'I've something to show you. Follow me.'
He helped Marian into her saddle and led her around the other side of the stable where there was another horse waiting for him. She followed him away from the manor, and from the village, towards the road that lead to Nottingham.
'Do we ride to Nottingham?' she asked as he quickened the pace to a lively trot.
'Aye,' he said, 'for I've something there to show you.'
When they reached the main road, he increased the speed again, and, determined not to be shown up, she matched his pace with ease.
After a while, the black shadow of the town loomed ahead of them, silhouetted against the midnight sky like an ominous black thunder cloud. It looked vaguely frightening at night, Marian, who had only ever been to the town during the day, thought, with its pointed roofs sticking up beyond the high stone walls.
They rode, at last, through the city gates. Harry told her to keep back and out of the way while he spoke to the guards, for he said that she would attract a fair bit of attention dressed in men's clothes, though if she pulled the hood of the cloak over her long hair, you could not easily tell she was a girl. She did what Harry told her, and waited back in the shadows of the walls as he told the guards that they wished to stay at the inn. Thankfully, the sleepy guards did not question this tale much, and let them pass through without much as a glance in Marian's direction.
The town was deserted; obviously everyone was safely tucked up in their houses for the night. They made their way at a much slower pace to the Road to Jerusalem Inn, and Harry asked a man who waited there for stabling, handing their horses to him and tossing him a coin. However, it was not for the door of the inn that he made, but he dragged Marian back out of the yard, and towards the walls of the castle bailey. Curious, she followed him as he shrank into the shadows of the towering walls, and, motioning for her to be silent, they crept light-footedly to the gate.
As they neared the entrance, Harry stooped to the ground and scooped up a handful of fallen stones. Marian was puzzled until he threw the rocks into a street opposite, and she realised what he was doing. She heard a gruff male voice curse violently, and two guards emerged from a hole in the wall near the bailey gate, where they had apparently been keeping watch. Grumbling, they left their posts and went to examine the source of the noise of Harry's stones.
Once they were out of sight, Harry immediately dashed to the gate, dragging Marian with him, and darted through. Her heart was beating as fast as a hare's as it is chased by dogs as Harry led her through more, unguarded courtyards, saying nothing to her, but always scanning their surroundings and peering into the darkness, making sure they stayed in the shadows. Eventually, he stopped outside some old, decaying outbuilding that looked like it had been in disuse for years.
The stones were chipped and crumbling away, and in places, there were small gaps between them. The tiles of the roof were also in great disrepair and looked almost in danger of caving in.
'Why have you brought me here?' she asked, wrinkling her nose at the faint smell of decay. 'What is this dingy place?'
'This dingy place, as you call it, hides the Sheriff's fortune,' he told her.
Marian recoiled in shock? Keep his money in this dirty old grain house that had not seen use for decades? The Sheriff had surely gone mad. Why on earth would he keep in unguarded and unacknowledged?
'It's to throw people off guard,' Harry told her when she voiced her concerns. 'The Sheriff is very jealous of his collection, I believe he has a room inside the castle where many think the fortune lies. It is a decoy, it is the last place anyone would look, and unguarded so as not to attract attention.'
'Then how do you know about it?' she asked him, brimming with curiosity. Harry had suddenly become a lot more interesting.
'A friend,' he said simply with a wink.
He seized the heavy, and surprisingly well oiled door, and Marian saw that the lock had been broken. Harry, however, did not seem surprised to see this.
'Another friend?' she asked, nodding to the twisted metal and splintered wood.
He merely smiled and held open the door for her. She stepped into the cool interior of the stone hut and waited for her eyes to adjust to the new level of darkness, but she began to see black mounds heaped on the floor, and as Harry hauled the door wide open, she gasped as the silver moonlight reflected off the glinting coins spilling out of the sacks.
Marian's eyes widened with shock and surprise. Never before had she seen so much money in one place. Her father had money, of course, but he was a mere peasant, scratching a living off the land compared to this vast haul of wealth.
'Quite a sight, isn't it?' Harry said, his low voice brining her back to the present.
'There's so much of it!' Marian breathed, slightly awe-struck. But then, the injustice of it all came flooding in. 'Yet, even in Nottingham there are people starving in the gaol because they have no money with which to pay their taxes.'
'This is probably the money collected from the people,' Harry told her, echoing her distaste.
'Why have you brought me to see this?' she asked, turning to him.
'To show you that the system is corrupt,' he replied.
'I know it's corrupt! This money is just sitting here! The Sheriff does not spend it, or send it away to the King as he should.'
Marian was growing angry. The ragged beggars and their skinny children that camped by the side of the roads crept into her mind, their starvation and plight showing in their dull eyes. These were the people who had been forced out of their homes because they could not pay their taxes, and the bailiffs had been ordered to burn down their houses and had taken whatever possessions the families could not escape with. Her eyes stung with emotion every time she had to pass their wretched camps, and they stung now as she regarded the heaps of shining coins that had been stolen from them.
Marian tried to do everything she could to insure those in her father's care would not have to lose their homes and end up sleeping by the side of the dusty roads with little more than a cloak over their heads. Every time she had left a parcel of gifts, she felt a sense of relief that this was another family safe from that terrible fate for a little while longer.
But here, here was enough money to feed all those families for many winters to come, and it was just sitting in sacks in a disused corner of Nottingham Castle.
Suddenly, an idea flashed into her mind, and she made to grab one of the sacks.
'What are you doing?' Harry hissed at her.
'There is enough money here to feed the poor of Nottingham for years!' she whispered excitedly. 'Why don't we take it, now!'
'No!' Harry whispered urgently. 'You cannot! Not now!'
'Why not?' she asked, ignoring the hands that tried to pull her back.
'We do not have a proper plan! There is nobody to cover us, nobody to hold the guards up, and how would we get past them again at the gate?' he asked furiously, still attempting to pull her off the sacks. 'I can do it empty handed, but not laden with stolen sacks of the Sheriff's silver!'
'But it is here, now!' she spat at him as he wrenched the sacks away from her. 'Think of all the people we could save with this! People are dying of starvation, we could feed them all! Save them all! And you would have us calmly walk away from the finest opportunity to help people we will ever likely come across? We would be no better than them asleep up there in their fine feather beds!' she gestured madly up towards where she guessed the castle was.
She was furious. How could he be so selfish, when he had, that very morning, lectured her and admired her for her kind charity? She had the chance to end their misery, but this fool, this selfish, cowardly, stupid fool was stopping her!
Suddenly, Harry froze, but Marian, who was pulsing with mad, hot anger, did not see this, and continued to laden her arms with sacks of coins.
'Shh!' Harry grabbed her arm in a vice like grip, but she wrenched it free.
'Let me go, you blaggard!' she cried, and then suddenly stopped, painfully aware of all the noise she must have been making, hardly daring to breath.
To her horror, she heard voices sound outside in the courtyard.
A powerful sense of dread crept upon her as she realised how foolish she had been with all her shouting and raging. And now she had alerted the guards to their presence; there was no way that she had not been overheard.
'Run,' Harry hissed in her ear.
'What?' Marian echoed stupidly. All of her senses seemed to have left her as she stood there listening to the voices outside.
'Go! Run, hide!' he shoved her in the direction of the door.
Somehow, her feet unfroze and she stumbled towards the opening. She considered running back through the courtyard, the way that they had come, but she suddenly spotted a small gap between an outbuilding and the high castle wall. She darted inside at once, jamming herself there.
As she stood there, heart pounding, hardly daring to even draw breath, she could see nothing except the cold black stone. She heard Harry's footsteps hurriedly running across the courtyard, and found herself hoping with all her might that he would make it unseen. What plan he had, Marian did not know, but she had no choice but to trust him. Suddenly, a shout rang out through the night; he had been seen.
There were more shouts, and the sound of scuffling feet as the guards descended upon him. Despite the sound of her heart beating wildly in her ears, Marian strained for any clue that might hint that Harry had managed to free himself and sped off through the streets of the town to safety. All her hopes were crushed when she heard a harsh voice give a triumphant cry.
'Take him to the dungeons!'
The order was followed by more shouts and scuffles; evidently, Harry was still putting up a fight, and resisting all attempts to be dragged off.
'He'll not keep still!' someone cried. 'All of us go, 'tis the only way to keep a hold on him. I'll send for someone to guard this place!'
At once, Marian saw her opening, possibly the only chance she would get to escape her hiding place. She realised that this must have been Harry's intention from the off. He had caused the guards so much hassle that they had no other choice but to leave the scene unprotected, and therefore had given her a clear escape route.
She drew a great breath, humbled by his actions, but she had no time to dwell on his gallantry. She needed to leave the place before the additional guard arrived. She strained her ears again for any noise, but heard nothing. The calm and quiet of the night had been restored, with no hint that anything out of the ordinary had occurred.
Slowly and carefully, she edged her way out of her narrow hide-out. To her great relief the coast was clear, and, holding her breath, she crept along the walls, careful to stay in the shadows, and retraced their steps back to the castle bailey. She stopped briefly to scoop a handful of stones from the floor, in case she needed to trick the guards that stood by the gate, but, luckily, they had gone, no doubt drawn away by the sounds of the fight. She still clung onto the handful of stones with a fierce grip, just in case she should need them again.
Once she was clear of the gates, she ran as fast as she dared back to the stables of the inn, her heart beating wildly and fighting to hold back the tears of fright that welled behind her eyes. She slowed before she reached the yard; she could not arise suspicion. Remembering in time that she was supposed to be a lad, she pulled up the hood of her cloak to hide her fair hair.
With a steady, deep voice, Marian asked for the horse she had stabled earlier, hoping that the man would not notice her trembling fingers as she handed over a few of the coins she had stuffed in her jerkin.
Prompted by the offering of the coins, he sent a stable boy ahead to alert the gates, so she need not be hindered there, and she thanked him, still using her pseudo voice.
Once she was mounted, she rode hard, never stopping or looking back, the tears of guilt and fear finally cascading down her cheeks. It was all her fault, this mess she'd landed them in. And she cursed herself with the fiercest words she knew.
By the time she had reached her home, she had resolved to rescue him. She knew she owed it to him, she had to try. She did not like to think of what would happen if she was caught, but, she reasoned, whatever it was, she would deserve it.