SHERWOOD FOREST
Marian felt cheap.
She felt cheap and used, like a piece of meat, one who had been weighed up and looked over without even having realised it.
They were all sat up now, still tied at the wrists and ankles.
The four of them were around the fire like four points of compass.
She turned furious eyes on Robin.
"You knew?" She demanded and almost spat.
"I found out." He said firmly.
"You knew that our marriage was arranged and you never said?"
"You knew that we were matched…" He defended coldly.
Her voice rose to a shout.
"That is different I did not think that there was a document!"
"It was just a piece of paper, I never even read it."
"You didn't have to!" She cried, "You enough to know that when I got to be fifteen you had to get down on one knee."
"I asked you for myself." Robin snapped, "I did not want you to do it because it was your duty."
"It does not matter does it; after your father signed it I had no choice."
"And what happened to everything being a choice?" He demanded, "And what you mean my father? Your father signed it too."
"You heard from the story that he was in two minds and that your father pressured him!"
"Well it did not seem to take much effort did it?" Robin snapped.
Marian raised both her eyebrows high and scoffed, looking away from him before looking back.
The croaky voice cut over them as they glared at one another.
"You were once set to wed someone else..." The hooded figure turned slightly towards Guisborne.
"Wasn't she Guy?"
FRANCE 1181
"I regret to inform you that an arrangement has been reached by myself and the earl of Huntingdon regarding my daughters matrimony in the future,' what kind of response is that?"
Roger if Guisborne threw the parchment down on the table in their small manor in the poorest part of France as he paced.
"Who does Edward think he is anyway?" He demanded as he stalked about, "I have met Malcolm Locksley, the scheming creeping Royal worshiper; his son will be no different, as spineless as his father." He glared at the flames in the fire pit and spoke to his wife, who was sat in a chair beside the table doing embroidery.
"I mean you and Kate were friends!" Roger cried, incensed at having so little when everyone else seemed to get more.
"Does that not count for anything, when he makes plans to wed his daughter to other nobles, when I am scrabbling around here for futures for our children?"
Roger of Guisborne had watched many of his holdings be list by the royals, and was furious at Edward of Knighton, who had always alluded to the fact that his daughter would marry his son, in honour of their mother's friendship when at court in London.
"Do not let your hate for Malcolm of Locksley trouble you." His wife said, her voice laced with the French accent that accompanied her beauty to make her mysterious and dark.
Her eyes did not even lift from her embroidery.
"Guy will find a wife when he is good and ready, and he shall take over the manor when we have taken our turn on earth."
"I know." Roger folded his arms to snap at the fire, "But still… if Edward's daughter…"
"Marian." His wife corrected, feeling a twinge of grief for Kate, the young girl's mother, who had been taken so young in childbirth. Kate and Yslaine had struck up a form of friendship during those early years and few meetings at court.
"If Marian," Roger stressed, "Is half the woman her mother was Malcolm will have out done himself, no doubt they will have ten children and had land in half of England within a few years, I suppose he has it all planned out, and Edward will have been sucked in by it…"
"Roger enough please." Yslaine funnily looked up, "what is done is done; Malcolm and Edward have decided that their children will Marry and we must look to other suitors for our own."
Roger of Guisborne only grunted in response.
Yslaine looked over her shoulder slightly as Isabella, like her mother in many ways, but stirring her father's temper within her, walked in from the tiny village their manor sat in.
Roger was tired of picking off of scraps that the other nobles left behind.
His children's marriages were what would get their family out of this desolate corner of France, he was sure of it.
"Isabella." Yslaine said as her husband churned inside.
"Où est votre frère de mon enfant?" She asked.
Isabella looked over her shoulders towards the stables where she could see Guy walking inside out of the summer rain.
She looked back to her mother, knowing that the truth about her brother's dark interior would crush her.
"He went riding mother." She said and smiled, before walking upstairs.
She glanced out of one window to look at the stables, watching as her brother emerged, glancing back inside as a woman with light hair and dressed in rich finery emerged to look up at him.
"I do not think I can wait Guy." She touched his chest, her French accent making her shine in his eyes.
Would his father not be pleased?
The king of France's niece, what a triumph for their family.
Although his mother would deem it improper, as though they were reaching too high.
"Why can we not tell them?" She was asking, "Why can we not be together, I love you."
"I know." Guy cupped her cheek.
He loved her, he knew he did.
She saw him as her lord, and that was what Guy thought love was, entirely the same as possession and stature.
"I will talk to my father, and then we shall go and see your uncle."
"Together?" She asked, the boy before her.
Aged twelve to his fifteen years, she felt his knowledge was infinite compared to hers.
It was the way she had always been made to think regarding men when at her uncles court.
Guy nodded, "I shall ask him for your hand in marriage, and then we shall be together."
She smiled, "Really?"
He nodded and leant closer, pressing his lips to her cheek.
"Soon we shall not have to live in secret, for fear of what people might think."
"Why should it matter what they think?" She challenged, "You are noble and so am I…"
"You are royal."
Stature was everything.
"Perhaps, but a royal or not, It is you I want, not another pompous arrogant suitor like they found for my sister."
"I shall ride and find our son!"
From the volume of his father's voice Guy could tell that he was not happy, and that someone needed to be said between them, or there was something his father wanted to tell him.
He leant forwards to whisper in the girl's ear before rushing back towards the manor.
"Good day Minetta."
NOTTINGHAM CASTLE
Minetta stood staring at her wedding ring in her hands.
Despite all she had been wanted and promised when she had been younger, she had been parcelled up and sold like a piece of meat in an exchange over land with a man she had never met.
She had married her husband just days after the wax had dried on the dowry pact.
What did her marriage mean, apart from being a stamp on a piece of land?
That was why she had run to England, not that anyone bar her uncle had noticed.
Her husband certainly had not.
She had come to England because here she could find someone to love her for who she was a person, not who she was in relation to other royals and stature and status.
There was a knock on her door and she looked up to see the abbess enter.
She sighed and shut the ring away in a box.
"What do you want?"
"Your husband is riding north to meet with the other black knights." The abbess said.
She had watched the young girl grow into a woman on her visits to England, either on her own or with members of the French clergy who came to visit.
She wanted to help her, like with all living people; she did not want to see her suffer.
"No." Minetta gasped, "No how could he know I was here?"
Her heart started to hammer.
"He does not know." The abbess corrected, "He is coming to exchange money and plans with the black knights, nothing more, which is why if you leave now you can avoid him, seek refuge in another abbey, he need never know you were here."
Minetta spun to look at the woman.
"Leave?" She gasped, she could not leave the man she loved to run from a man she hated, could she?
Could she leave Matthew to save herself?
"Fake an illness, say you have been summoned by Phillip, your uncle, king of France if needs be." The abbess was pressing.
"Why not tell him the truth?" Minetta demanded coldly, "he loves me surely he would leave with me we could seek annulment."
The abbess shook her head coldly.
"You would be putting yourself in danger of his temper. He is like his uncle in more ways than one, and it is not only the rung on his finger that mirrors the sheriff Min." The fond nickname seemed flat and hollow after following the warning.
Minetta straightened.
"He loves me."
The abbess shook her head, keeping Min's eyes.
"The knowledge that you are married and the betrayal that will course through him will make sure that that is not enough."