"Have you heard about Locksley?"
Marian's head lifted slightly as she strained to hear her father and Roger Longchamp across the room. They had been discussing the otherwise boring news of the court, their estates, and their shared belief that they were good and great men, while Marian embroidered yet another handkerchief. Her mind had been wandering to thoughts of escape, her favorite pastime in cold and lonely Knighton. It was a house, but not a home for her. She could never feel at home in a place she had outgrown. Most days she felt as though whatever light she had inside was being snuffed out by a world entirely indifferent to her existence, but today she was grateful to be nobody. She wanted to hear more.
"He only has himself to blame," Longchamp said.
"I'm sorry to have known him."
"He's a coward, if you ask me. Returns to England and runs off to the forest."
Marian stood up abruptly and left the room.
He's out there, she thought. Alone in Sherwood.
She tried to imagine it.
The truth was Robin of Locksley, Earl of Huntington, had indeed taken up residence in Sherwood Forest, but he was not alone. Word spread across the shire in whispers. By the time Marian heard of him again, Locksley was Robin Hood. Anyone who knew him as an earl chose to play dumb, but the servants in Knighton could talk of nothing else. One day he robbed the Sheriff's storehouse in broad daylight. The next day he held up a tax wagon and its twelve guards without showing his face. He was everywhere and nowhere. But it quickly became clear to Marian—he was never coming back to Locksley. He was gone for good—again. She had seen the faintest glimmer of hope for herself when he returned, but there was only emptiness.
The days blurred together. Another morning and more clouds. Marian longed for the sun and the clarity that came from a canopy of blue overhead. Instead, she was gazing up at the branches of the old oak in what was once her mother's garden, wondering how she could survive another morning and more clouds. The sky was white, but everything was dark.
Marian had known what she was going to do for weeks, letting herself languish in a drawn out period of mourning for her own self. Her father had promised her in marriage to his friend, the old nobleman Roger Longchamp. He was a creaking relic with a crumbling castle to the north, the real prize. Her father had traded her for a heap of stones.
She had long assumed she was doomed to be someone's wife, but staring down that fate, in truth, was worse than she imagined. She knew what she was going to do, but couldn't settle on the moment to do it. Her bleary-eyed contemplation of yet another cloudy morning persuaded her that now might be the time. She didn't consider herself afraid. And yet, deep in her heart, she trembled at the terrifying void that overwhelmed her.