'I saw you were blinded and I knew I had won. So I took what's mine by eternal right, took your soul out into the night.
And love is blind, and that I knew when my heart was blinded by you.'
- James Blunt, Goodbye My Lover
O
- Prologue -
It has been raining every day since my return to Holt. The spring storms have turned the clean dusty roads into mud and unsettled the soil in the fields around the manor and putting the serfs' toil and laboring in the fields to waste. My father despairs that the new seeds will not be sown in time for summer and that traveling merchants will be discouraged by the muddied roads and so will not come.
"It's an ill change of fortune," Cedric said to me the day after I arrived. We were watching the thin drizzle of rain from the window in my chambers, which had been turned into a ladies' solar when I had left. "Holt has known nothing but prosperity since" – and here he cast a knowing glance at me – "they left."
I nodded and said nothing so that we could keep things civil between us. We both knew who he was talking about, even though Father had forbidden any mention of their names under his roof. The Locksley clan. My brother Cedric hated them – hated them not only because they had brought trouble to Holt, but because they had run off, taking me with them.
"It's much quieter here now, Marian," Cedric continued, still looking at me. "Better and happier. You'll see once you'll stay awhile." His voice had become more commanding as he said this though he was only a year younger than I. I knew he was trying to convince me to think the right way, to believe in the things that the rest of my family and all of Nottingham believed. To their eyes I had been hoodwinked by Robin Locksley through magic, for otherwise how could I have willingly rode away with him when he fled?
What they thought couldn't be any farther from the truth. Feeling angry at Cedric, I turned and left the solar without saying a word. Then I left the manor altogether and stepped out into the light rain. I folded my arms protectively over where I knew the child was growing within me.
I made for the stables, to where Marjorie was. She was Robin's own horse that he had let me use to ride back to Holt. He was right proud of Marjorie, calling her the most great-hearted mare that he had ever known. She was wild and stubborn when handled by anyone else, yet docile and sweet-tempered under Robin's hands. I still hadn't managed to control her, clumsy horse-rider that I was, but I coped with her well enough so that she would turn right or left whenever I willed her to.
I found Marjorie in her stall, munching away serenely at the hay bales before her. I brushed her mane with my fingers, allowing peace to return to me and my mind to wander. She was all that I had of Robin's; Father had taken everything else from me that would remind everyone that I was married to an outlaw – the letters Robin wrote me, his longbow and even the gold ring he had given me for the wedding. As far as Father was concerned, the marriage between Robin and I never existed and I was still Marian of Holt, not a wife of Locksley.
For near a fortnight afterwards, it became too painful for me to set my sight upon my family, even upon dear Cecily. I saw in their eyes the hate and revulsion they felt for my husband; eyes and faces that I once loved and held dear. So I spent most of the day outdoors – in the stables to be near Marjorie, by the stream or near the forest.
I mostly think on Robin then, of his brothers and of the things that had come to pass in the winter – so many terrible things that I will not soon forget.
O