Part 29

I thought perhaps to lighten the moment…. to share with her as if we were alone, the words she uttered when she stitched me up after the incident at Clun, she remembered, she replied as I had done that day. It meant a lot, the knowledge, in that split second, that she, held in her heart the day at Clun as much as I did.

I can still feel her hand tighten around mine as the needle pierced her body, even that brought tears to my eyes. Fresh tears, I was already full from seeing her in pain, hurt, by the hand of Gisborne. It made me feel sick. I could barely stand by and watch….yet how could I not? How could I leave her when she needed me so badly?

Perhaps it was grief, perhaps it was fear but still I lashed out at her with words I did not mean, words which left her shouting after me, words which left her in more than physical pain. When I had calmed down and retuned to the cave she was sleeping fitfully. I sat down on the jutting out rock. I had to be by her side, no matter what our last words had been. I needed to feel her close to me….but more than that I needed her to survive.

I thought letting her sleep would facilitate her recovery….she needed to be well…I needed her to be well….I could not live without her….or so I thought…here I am sitting above my home….alone…after all.. It was only when Djaq told me I could not let Marian sleep that I knew the damage was far more serious than any of us had first imagined.

My heart constricted in pain, to think that I might actually lose her…forever, that she might die….that she was dying, with the knowledge that the only person who could save her was Djaq. Marian made me listen while she spoke of things which had been unsaid between us…things which I did not want to face…things which tore my heart strings, which bore into my soul. To know that I could be losing her, that she could die….in my mind my former words of not many hours since….haunted my soul…that the Nightwatchman's actions might be the very reason she would die.

Marian forced me to listen, her words penetrating my muddled brain, my arms wanted to embrace her and never let her go. I knew I had to tell her that to go to the Holy Land had been the biggest mistake of my life…that leaving her had perhaps been my downfall, that without her I was nothing. I held her hand in mine and heard the words which I needed to hear…the words that she forgave me for leaving her and running off to a quest thousands of miles away…..I wanted to say so much more, but there was not time. Instead I felt her soft palm caress my neck in one final touch before she became almost unconscious from the pain of the most primitive surgery and I felt the agony….holding her down as Djaq did what she needed to do. The tears held in my eyes…I did not let them fall not in front of Djaq….I could not and would not cry…not just then.

I felt my life crumble before me when Djaq said she was sorry, sorry Marian was dead. Even getting Pitts and putting not just my own but everyone's else's life at risk had not been enough to save her. To save the woman I loved. The words in my heart went unspoken for too long…now perhaps forever, as I told her I loved her…but she could not hear me…she was and had been announced dead and I think I died a little too…. what was there left for me without her, after all?…………..