There is a handprint on the stone of the wall just in front of Robin. A bright red hand print, fresh blood in moonlight. Robin lets out a breath and looks side to side before stepping closer, before studying the perfect marks of four fingers, a thumb, a palm painted so horrifically in front of him. The hand is smaller than his when he raises his hand before the print to compare.
"What is it?" John hisses from down the hall as he turns slightly to look at Robin. The bag across John's back clinks; he's straining with the weight of the gold in that pack. John's frown is prominent and his glare is sharp with his impatience. He is afraid.
Robin adjusts the straps of his own bag. He grimaces when the noise is more then he'd like, the clinking of gold too loud for his liking. He is afraid too.
"Come here," Robin whispers. He steps away from the haunting red handprint. He calls with a soft voice and walks with soft footfalls; the light and practiced footfalls of an accomplished thief is silent, but the bag on his back clinks once more.
Little John looks at the blood as he quickly heeds Robin's plea and the man's frown deepens. "We have to go," John hisses insistently.
Robin nods, but looks down the hall still. He steps away from John and has his fingers ghosting along the stone, and there, not five paces away, is more blood. The streak of it on the stone has Robin thinking that whoever is bleeding, it's a woman, a small woman with small hands, had steadied themselves against the wall but kept moving, had kept their hand on the wall for three, perhaps four, steps before pushing themselves off.
"Robin," John whispers as he stands still by the awful fresh bloody handprint. There's exasperation on the large man's face and anxiety in every line of his frame as he has watchful eyes in constant vigilance.
They are in King Leopold's Spring castle, and Robin knows King Leopold is rumored to be a kind King (though he lets his poor starve like any other), but even a kind King would not take thieves in his home lightly. It's not death that would await Robin and John if they are caught, but for certain they would lose their hands.
Robin is led to a door by the awful trail he'd followed down the hall. He stares at the knob as he waves John after him. He stares at the blood that coats the metal, fresh blood. A person is bleeding, a woman, a small woman; Robin gives one look to John, an apology in his look as John comes to stand beside him before the door, because Robin can't let this go, can't leave this blood unfollowed, can't leave a person in need.
John heaves a quiet sigh and nods in obvious reluctance as Robin pushes the not fully closed door open wide. The pair scurry through before closing the heavy wooden door behind them. A washroom greets them, an opulent and large room with only one stained glass window filtering the moon's light in tinted reds, and blues, and greens. Robin shakes his head at the rubies that decorate the ornate mirrors, he shakes his head at the decadence of this place, this castle, he shakes his head at the gilded feet of the huge tub, he shakes his- wait, he stops and looks closer. The red on the tub, red he was about to mistake for rubies to match those on the mirrors; he walks closer because it is blood, blood to match the handprint. It takes him four steps to be able to see over the lip of the porcelain tub, and for a moment Robin is frozen, can only stare, mouth opening, at the sight of a woman lying there.
John rushes past Robin and bends to check on the figure on her back inside the huge basin. He straightens quickly though when a golden goblet with diamonds glittering at its foot falls from the top of the overflowing and not quite closed pack on his back. The goblet goes crashing into the tub, CLANG CLANK , as it hits the porcelain edge before landing on the bloody girl.
She lets out a noise at the strike, a startled, sharp little sound, the goblet hitting her middle before rolling to the side off of her and landing finally with a CLUNK.
Robin cringes at the sound as his legs finally move him forward.
Her white gown, soft white like the most carefree of clouds, is soaked with blood at her bottom half, the material of her skirt clinging to her thighs. There are tiny pearls, rows of them, dangling from the high waist of the gown, but under them is blood, streaks of blood like she'd tried to wipe her hands clean there.
Robin joins John at the side of the tub, his pack off his back before he even knows what he's doing.
Her eyes open, first in slits, and then very, very wide, dark eyes that scream her pain so loudly to Robin that he nearly doubles over from the intensity. Her body trembles, bloody hands lifting and futilely scrabbling at the steep walls of the porcelain prison she'd chosen to lay in- did she hope to wash the blood away? Does she mean to run from them now? Robin thinks that must be so, both must be so. But she isn't strong enough to leave the tub. Her bleary, uncomprehending, wide, wide eyes, those huge dark eyes in her lovely face, they finally turn to regard John and Robin fully. Panic seems to leave her, her gaze sweeps over them both as they look down at her, and as she studies them Robin kneels beside the tub, his hands clenched on the lip of it after he tries to touch her and she flinches back, cringing back from him, but still with that thoughtful expression on her face.
"M'lady," Robin whispers, because even now he doesn't need unwanted ears hearing him, not when he has a sack of gold beside him, "you're bleeding, what injury have you suffered?"
To get help for her, help she so obviously needs, would mean alerting the castle to the presence of two thieves. Suddenly Robin understands John's hesitation in following the blood trail.
Her eyes narrow and sharpen with a little more comprehension; her eyes slowly turn down to the goblet that rests beside her. She reaches for the goblet, one hand attempting to grab it in the heavy way that speaks of incoordination and there's a head injury, Robin thinks, as she makes a grab for the goblet that is farther from her hand then she thought. She finally snags it and lifts it. She holds it with trembling limbs.
"Are you thieves?" she asks.
John had been dancing from foot to foot in nerves behind Robin, but now John stills.
"Where are you injured?" Robin pleads.
She tips the golden goblet as her head sinks down to the porcelain. Her hair dark contrasts sharply against the gleaming white tub, it curls about her shoulders and behind her head, it looks to be the softest cushion she could hope for.
"I've seen your face, thief," she says. Her eyes close, and her hand goes suddenly limp, it and the goblet within its grasp falling to the side of the tub. Robin snatches at her hand before the goblet can fall and make another echoing noise. The blood is beginning to tack on her skin. At his touch she jolts and her eyes open as she cringes further away from them. There is a glare on her face now. "I know your faces now." The corner of her mouth tips up in an incongruous and strange grin that does not match the glare.
John dances from foot to foot again, restless, head spinning to the door. "We must go," he hisses.
Robin softly lands the goblet by his crouching knees on the floor and waves John off. "You're bleeding," Robin says.
She shifts and moon light catches her better as a grimace interupts her glare for just a moment. Fierce hot anger burns in Robin's veins as he catches sight of her wounded neck; there are vivid bruises growing on the graceful column of sinew. She shifts again and the frayed edges of the gown ripped violently nearly down her entire torso reveals more wounded skin. The ripped dress exposes her now, her breasts, nipples tightened in the cool air free to the eye, but that isn't what Robin truly sees, his sight is devoted and enraged by a deep obvious bite at the top of her right breast, blood still seeping from the injury.
Bile rises in Robin's throat. She had been violated.
She coughs softly. "You'll have to kill me then, because I've seen you, I know you," she finally concludes as her eyes close again. The urge to touch her, to comfort her, rushes over Robin and he stomps it down, twice he's tried to touch her, and each time she'd flinched.
Politeness, honor even, demands that Robin look away from her nakedness, but his eyes burn and burn, staring at that bleeding bite upon her breast. "We're going to help you," Robin growls.
She puffs out a weak attempt at derisive laughter. "Help me?" she echoes. She lays in that tub of porcelain, in her ripped gown soaked with blood and clinging to her body, he'd asked her where she was injured, but the blood is at her thighs, her wrists are swelling, and that bite on her, Robin can paint the picture for himself easily, it has him blinded with rage. "Then help me," she says, as if it's a joke they have shared, "and set me free," she whispers brokenly. Tears escape from the corners of her closed eyes and drip down her temples and into that dark hair.
"Freedom is what you wish for?" Robin says. He rises up from his knees. He lands a hand against either side of the tub, hovering over her form, this stranger, this girl in the castle of the kind King, this stranger covered in blood. She doesn't answer, and he says it again, louder, John whines a warning to be quiet, because he surely thinks they have lingered too long and the pack of gold will be heavy on John's back.
"I wanna be free," she says. She is sobbing now, so softly, her strength is exhausted. She sobs the words again desperately, as if she pictures in her delirious mind being as free as a bird with strong wings. She loses consciousness quickly after that.
Robin licks his lips and turns to John, and John seems to already know what Robin plans.
"The gold, Robin!" John seethes and gestures at the pack Robin had discarded as soon as he came to her side. "You can't carry both!" John's hand gestures at her, then at the gold, as if the gold and the girl are both just burdens, as if it is any choice at all.
Robin turns away from his friend. He bends down and lifts the girl's arms softly so they cross over her stomach, and then he gently, gently, an arm behind her shoulders and another under her knees, extracts her from the tub.
"You cannot intend to take her from this place?" John asks incredulously as he follows Robin as he strides towards the door. Robin never once looks back at the bag of gold he has left behind. It was no choice at all.
"That is exactly what I intend," Robin counters. At Robin's scolding tone John immediately takes a breath. The scolding is gone though in Robin's next question, in its place is only honest and distraught curiosity. "Do you truly ask me to choose gold over a life?"
Robin can see John is shamed by this question. Color grows under John's fierce beard, but- "Look at the extravagance of her gown, Robin. She's a noble," John hisses, as if it damns her, "obviously rich and highly valued."
Robin spins to face John fully, one of her arms slips from over her stomach, it swings lazily in an arc as Robin turns to glare at John. "Oh yes, so highly valued, look at the string of sapphires at her neck, John." Robin speaks of the bruises quickly forming, he speaks of those vivid marks on her. John turns his eyes away, as he is unable to look at the purpling of her smooth skin. Her swollen red wrist hangs there between them, lifeless, fingers softly curling.
"She wears a wedding ring," John says as Robin is already turning back to the hall.
That makes Robin stop again. "Is it not wrong of any man, husband or no, to do this," the girl trembles in Robin's arms, trembles because Robin is shaking he is so angry, "to a woman?"
John rears back, offended, he has not hurt a woman in all his days. He begins to splutter just so, Robin is sure, when Robin walks once more.
"She asked for our help," Robin says. His decision is made, and he is the leader, his decision is hard and immovable, his mind will not be swayed. "She wants freedom and she will receive it."
"What foolery! What treasure is most dear?" a voice calls from the dark. It is the watcher for the camp. Robin doesn't stop his hurried steps, though his arms are aching, and sweat has soaked down his back.
Robin shouts out the completion of passcode, so his men will know it is him and no other. "I wear no jewelry! My friends I treasure more than gold," he yells. He is bad tempered and still filled with awful anger. The girls blood is now on him, staining his sleeves, the front of his tunic and his trousers, the feel of it, slick and terrible against his skin, fills him with a feeling of utter helplessness. "Go," he calls into the woods, into the dark, "have Friar Tuck ready his herbs, I have a wounded woman."
A rustle, and it must be Simon who runs towards the camp, because the boy has no grace and Robin can hear every branch he slams against until the boy is too far ahead to track by ear.
John huffs and puffs beside Robin, his burden bouncing on his back and clinking and clanking at every step. "That boy," he gasps, "needs to learn his steps or he will certainly be the end of us."
Simon is panting at Friar Tuck's elbow when Robin makes it to the tents. They stand beside the roaring fire and the fat man makes the sign of the cross over his chest when the fire illuminates the woman in Robin's arms. There's awful sorrow on the Friar's face, but decidedness too, as he urges Robin into the largest tent the camp has, Robin's own, his herbs and books laid out already.
Marian stands just inside the flap with hair bed tousled and a blanket wrapped around her nightgown clad form. This has woken her from a probably peaceful sleep. An apology nearly makes it past Robin's lips, but before he can utter it she lays a gentle hand on Robin's straining arm as he passes. Sweet Marian, she smiles at him with confusion and worry in her eyes- until she sees the face of the girl, the woman, Robin corrects, in the bright light and warmth of the camp the woman looks to be about Robin's own age and no longer seems the broken child he'd seen in the dim and cold castle washroom, Marian gasps at the woman's face.
"Oh, god," Marian gasps. Her hand falls away as Robin steps towards the bedding. He calls a concerned query over his shoulder at his wife as he lowers his charge to the padded softness of quilts upon quilts. With Marian beside him he suddenly feels the need to censure his thoughts, but there is no denying that the beauty he saw illuminated by stained glass colors was only a trifle to the beauty of this woman's face in candlelight.
"Robin, what have you done?" Marian asks with dread crawling up her voice. When Robin turns his eyes from the woman, tears his eyes violently away because it's the only way to achieve it, Marian has her hands over her mouth with hunched shoulders. He knows his new wife well enough to know she is terrified and terribly so. "That's the Queen," Marian whispers.
Robin's jaw drops in shock. "You know this?" he asks.
Marian nods.
King Leopold's wife was always said to be beautiful, Robin finds himself thinking. He turns away from Marian's wide eyes, he turns back to the dark haired beauty laid out on his own quilts. He looks at her with his jaw still loose as Friar Tuck checks her pulse and pulls an eyelid back to see her eyes. Robin can say for a certainty that all the tales of this young wife are true.
Friar Tuck has his hands running over her head gently, fingers digging through her hair until he hisses through his teeth, he retracts his questing digits, blood on his fingertips, he has found the head wound Robin suspected. Tuck's eyes close with a shake of his head, he's praying softly, praying to the God he'd sworn to serve, Robin guesses, the God he says is kind, it's after the prayer is done and the Friar's eyes open that Robin speaks.
"How will she fare?" Robin asks. Concern swells his throat, and he should not think of her beauty when she lies bleeding. Robin's eyes invariably return to the bite upon her breast, her torn gown exposing more than before, exposing soft skin, exposing her entire right breast and half of the other, the pert full breasts of a young woman, but Robin can only focus on the bite, she was marked, viciously marked, marked as deftly as a herder would mark a newly purchased cow. Robin's rage is a physical weight on him, inside him, I will kill the King, the thought burns like a draft of homemade brew down Robin's throat. Robin's hand has landed on the Queen, resting gently over a bicep, his fingers flexing in the white softness of her gown, I will kill him.
"She will heal with time and with care, as all do," Friar Tuck answers him and throws him a look. The man is so often jolly, filled with mirth and song (and wine), singing of his God's love, but it's darkness on him now, solemn and sad, grief on his heavy features. Tuck follows Robin's gaze, follows it to the bite, to the breast, the Friar leans forward and fixes the neckline of her gown as best he can, no judgment on his face as he does so, but he hides her breasts from Robin's eyes, hides the bleeding mark as well, the action wakes Robin from his burning stupor. Tuck gestures at the exit, "Go, Robin, I need hot water and clean rags," he says as he is already turning away, unaware of the affect his words have had on Robin.
Go? Robin doesn't think he can.
Marian's hand lands on Robin's shoulder, a comforting touch Robin didn't know he needed so badly until it was offered to him. Robin rises with her aid, his wife's hand sliding from his shoulder to around his back as he goes. "The Queen looks about the same size as Delilah," Marian says as her dark eyes look over the Queen's prone form. "After the hot water and the rags are collected, please, find proper coverings for her?"
Had she noticed how hotly his gaze had looked at the Queen's unasked for indecency? But there is only care on Marian's face, care and concern, he still needs her to know that he is no letch, that it was- "the bite," he stumbles out, he gestures towards his own chest, "how cruel must a man-"
She shakes her head softly to stop his halting words. "Go" she urges, "help the others." Her tone is calming.
Robin nods and swallows down his churning feelings, but Marian sees the turmoil. When she stands on bare tiptoes to kiss him softly, he takes her comfort and draws strength from it. There's an itching in his stomach though, as he kisses his wife in the same tent as the bleeding Queen. Marian smiles softly, with sad eyes, as she returns to the Friar's side. The blanket about her shoulders slips.
"Help me with this, my child," Friar Tuck asks Marian as Robin turns from the sight. He turns away from the pair with their hands untying the Queen's soft white gown soaked with blood.
As Robin exits the canvas structure it's to the sight of Little John already placing pots of water over the fire. Robin snags Simon and asks the boy to find Delilah; he tells the boy to ask her what clothes she has to spare. And then that's all he can do, the rags are being fetched, and the water is slow to heat over the blazing fire. Uselessness descends on him, he could sit, but can't. Robin fears the uselessness would become even more pronounced if he sat, so he paces around his tent, and around the fire, a ceaseless figure eight.
The water is hot and inside the tent it goes.
Clean rags are harder to come by, but they are found and they too disappear into the tent.
Robin keeps on his figure eight with his brow deeply knitted and his thoughts wild, but one is recycled time and again, I will kill the King he thinks. He has never found such violent thoughts so tireless in his mind before this; the bite upon her flashes in his eyes. Robin stays at the edges of the fires light, sheltering himself in the anonymity of the darkness, but his men know his foot falls; they leave him to his pacing. I will kill the King, he thinks and thinks of the weight of the Queen in his arms, at first easy to hold, every step finding her more and more heavy, his arms not strong enough, I will kill the kind King, on and on until Marian exits the tent.
The horror that was there before, at the sight of the Queen in Robin's arms, unconscious and bruised, that horror in Marian's eyes has grown tenfold. "Someone fetch Caline! Have her bring her kit!" Marian calls. Dunstan shoots from his seat and heeds her as soon as she's done speaking. Marian is drawing in shaky breaths, and it is shaky steps she takes towards Robin as he steps out of the darkness and into her sight.
"Why do you need Caline?" Robin asks as he raises his hands to rub along her shaking arms.
That horror on her pretty face has Robin's heart beat hitching. "The Queen is torn apart," Marian says, those words, the image they create in his mind, it has Robin's rage growing, growing so much he will drown in the flood. Robin's hands have stilled on Marian's arms, she does not seem to notice, though nor does he. "There's so much blood, it won't stop," Marian whispers. "Friar Tuck fears there are wounds within her we cannot see-" She shakes her head. Her voice is breathy, as if she's about to faint. She shakes her head slowly, numbly- just a while ago she was Robin's strength, his comfort, but that was before the skirt of the gown soaked with blood was lifted. "She'll need to be sewn to rights, but Tuck's hands are unsteady, and I'm useless with a needle," Marian says. Her hands grab at Robin's chest and she clenches the fabric she finds between her fists.
"It's not right to think of myself in this moment," Marian gasps. She licks her lips and looks up at Robin desperately, looks at him thankfully. "Robin, if you had not given me the courage to escape the Sheriff, to escape the arrangement, I fear this fate would have been my own."
Robin pulls her into his arms and his eyes close softly as he holds her. She is right; this is the fate of an unhappy wife with a powerful husband, this is the fate that would have awaited her if she had not run. Marian had run and saved herself from this horror. Robin wishes in this moment, with every fiber of his self, that time could be rewritten, and that the Queen could escape the horror too.
Marian returns to the tent as Caline arrives. The old woman is bleary eyed, but she very quickly wakes as the job before her is detailed out. The old woman swallows with her thin lips quivering and she enters the tent holding her needle and thread like a Knight with blade and shield.
Marian does not leave the tent again. Caline leaves hours after entering, with red rimmed eyes still leaking tears. The old woman wears the same numbness that was on Marian as she passes the fire and heads out to the tents.
The beginning of dawn is stretching across the horizon when Tuck exits. Robin has not slept at all and is the only one now near the fire; Robin has poked at it through the cold hours to keep it alive. Tuck sits by Robin's side and starts to lean back upon the log until he nearly falls over backwards; he nearly falls for how tired he is. Robin had been wrapped up in his thoughts as he watched the pink and gentle oranges take over the sky.
Robin remembers the celebrations in the kingdom years ago when the King took his new wife, but that's all he remembers. He does not remember her name, or which Lord's house she belonged to before marrying into the royal family. He remembers though, one celebration at a tavern in a thriving town (that found itself short a fair amount of gold that night). Robin remembers ducking a guard and finding himself in a dirty tavern. He'd bought a drink to stave off suspicion. Robin remembers the barmaid frowning and shaking her head as she poured him his ale. "Nobles marry them off so young!" the woman had said.
"She yet lives. By God's grace, she lives," the Friar tells him.
"Was it God's grace that put such horror on her too?" Robin bites. He wishes he hadn't have snapped as soon as he's done so. "Forgive me," Robin sighs and rubs at his itchy eyes. His rage has pulled back, but it lurks in him though, like a feral dog contained by but a flimsy rope.
A whisper, as if the wind, caresses Robin's thoughts, I will kill the King.
Tuck looks at the fire with tired eyes. He has nothing to say to Robin's snap or his apology. As dawn stretches above them the camp starts back to life. They hear voices of those awakening and the sizzling of bacon from another fire.
"Do you know the Queen's name?" Robin asks.
"Regina," Tuck answers with his face turned towards the horizon peeking between the trees.
Regina, Robin thinks. He rolls the syllables in his mind and concludes that the name is as lovely as its bearer.