Chapter twenty-two:
Marian's POV:
The world work in cruel ways. I knew I told Much I would talk to Robin the next time I saw him, but I didn't think it would be so soon!
What was I going to say to him? What was here even doing here? How did he get in, past all of the guards?
"Robin?" Still on top of him, I whispered, before climbing off.
"Uhh, hi to you too," he chuckled, standing up.
"Yeah, sorry about that, it's just I didn't know it was you and…"
"And if you knew it was me, would you have done any differently?"
"What?! I- Robin…"
He looked at the floor, knowing that I wasn't sure what to say.
"Why won't you look me in the eyes, Marian? Is it something I did? For the life of me, I just can't figure it o-"
"For all I knew, you were dead" the words came out before I could stop them.
Assuming he was dead, was a selfish way of me tricking my brain into letting me get on with my life. Without having to think about the boy I loved started loving when I was twelve!
When I first arrived at the castle, thoughts of Robin were the only thing the kept me going. I knew becoming that reliable on someone other than myself for joy and happiness was a very unhealthy habit which I needed to break. So, day by day, month by month, thoughts of the boy I loved disappeared out of my head. They would come back every so often, but were more like a distant dream, more than a reality. After four years, and not a single word from him (he wouldn't have known I had moved anyway, but I always sent Sarah to ask the messengers if they had heard anything), I came up with the conclusion the he must have passed away. From fighting or disease, it was the way most crusaders met their fate.
But here he was.
The ghost from my past, standing right before my eyes. His face gaunt, and bright, green eyes widened in surprise.
"I knew things would be different between us, Marian. But I want us to talk about them, instead of walking on egg shells around each other. We need to get everything out in the open, that way we can figure out where to go from there." He was looking me in the eyes this time, he was being fair at least. He was right, really, I had been childish and I needed to grow up and face the music.
Robin was here, now.
"Okay, you're right. Let's talk, about everything that happened while and after you left." I began to move over to my bed, and sat down on one corner. "Take a seat," I motioned to the opposite corner, which he took.
"Where do you want me to start?" Fiddling with a lock of my hair, I asked him.
"Why don't you fill me in on what happened right after I left?"
"Okay," my throat closed up, and I felt really hot. This was going to be harder than I'd thought, I hadn't told anybody what really happened. In full detail, anyway. "I don't think there's a word to even begin to describe the way I felt that day you and Much left for the war. It was a sort of numbness, like I felt both everything and nothing at once."
My fingers began to shake, so I hid the in my lap.
"The next day, Sir Gregory of Gisborne came to my home." Robin's eyes widened slightly at that, he never liked him as a child, and I could say I blamed him.
"What was he doing there?" Robin's eyes were filled with concern.
"He claimed he had a secret about my father, that needed to be shared." I explained up until the point where I returned home to find my parents in a stand-off with Gisborne.
"Guy's father had my mother, and he was holding a dagger to her throat. My father was trying to calm him down, but it was no use. Gregory kept shouting, all about how he loved my mother and how my father always acted superior to him."
"Gregory loved your mother?"
"He claimed father "took" her away from him. Then, father made him really angry, which only made things worse. Mother was pleading for Gregory to let her go, and finally, he did…" my throat closed up on that last part. Tears welled up in my eyes and I had to grip my bed sheets, for some tie to this time I was in now. I had to remember that I was here, and not watching my mother die before my eyes.
"Marian? Are you okay?" Robin's eyes were filled with concern and even a little glassy from his own tears.
"Just… give me a… a minute," I closed my eyes, and took some deep breaths. It helped slightly.
"My mother, she's…she's dea-" a big flood of tears cut me off at that point. The dam holding them back broke, and my breathing turned into depressed sobbing.
"Hey, hey, it's okay, Marian," I felt Robin move closer to me, and wrap his warm arms around me.
At first, I thought about rejecting him and pulling back, but his arms were so warm, and comforting. He smelled like fire and Sherwood Forest, and he was stroking my hair soothingly. Just when I was about to completely melt into a puddle of memories, and emotion, there was a loud knock at my door.
Pulling away from each other quickly, we both stood and frantically looked around the room, for a place he could hide.
A second knock sounded, whoever it was wasn't going away.
Then it caught my eye, my chest at the of my bed! He could hide in there for the time being, while I told whoever was on the other side of the door to go away. It was perfect!
Motioning to move quickly with my hand, I opened the lid of the chest, and pointed with my finger from Robin to the chest. He gave me a pleading look for a few second, but gave up and climbed in soon after. Closing the lid carefully, so as not to hit his head, I looked quickly under the door, to see a pair of shiny, black boots.
Oh no! Not him, not now!
I should have known it was him! Katy would have barged in after the first knock, and servant would have just walked away, but of course, not him. Despite dredging the conversation, I was about to have, inevitably about where I was taken to and who by, I opened the door, nevertheless.
Just as I had thought, standing there, with a wrapped box in his hands, was Guy "the gorilla" of Gisborne.
Robin's POV:
Marian's mother was dead?!
It was no wonder that she didn't want to talk about it! Pulling Marian into an embrace, which I wasn't sure she wouldn't pull out of, I tried to soothe her weeping. To my complete and utter surprise, she didn't pull away, she just leaned in and buried her head into my chest.
This would have been a really sentimental moment, the first one Marian and I had shared in four, long years, if a loud knock hadn't interrupted it. We both pulled away and stood up immediately.
Where the hell was I going to hide?!
Her eyes caught on the large storage chest at the end of her bed, she hurried over to it and motioned for me to get inside! It would have been okay for her; her legs weren't as long as mine! Despite this, I climbed in and watched through a small crack in the lid as she approached the door. Whoever it was, was definitely committed to seeing her.
Whatever I was sitting on was very uncomfortable, and I pulled it from underneath me. It felt like fabric, or clothes of some kind, but there was still something there. After a little more rummaging, I grabbed hold of something hard. The cold, metal handle of it bit into my skin. Pulling it up so I could see it in the little bit of light shining through the crack in the lid. It reflected the light, like a mirror, but it was too thing to be one. Curious, I carefully felt the edge of it with my finger, which came back bloody.
It was a sword!
Why did she have a sword and why was it hidden under clothes?
Realising that I got too distracted, I pulled my attention away from the deadly weapon and focused on who was at the door.
From what I could see from the person's shadow cast onto the floor from the light in the hall, it was a tall man. His voice was gruff and deep, but it sounded like he was trying to make it sound deeper than it naturally was. He told something of a joke, which Marian fake-laughed at, I could tell because it wasn't her usual cute howl of laughter, it was a delicate giggle. That defiantly wasn't like her! Not that she wasn't delicate, but she didn't hold back from really laughing if she found something funny.
She now had a wrapped box under her arm, it had an envelope attached, with something written on it.
Who was he?
Marian was obviously trying to get him to go away, but he wanted to come inside. Being as brilliant as she is, she faked a cough and claimed she caught a cold from spending too much time outside yesterday. This at least made him waver a little bit. I heard their last few parting words, and then his heavy footsteps grew gradually quieter.
Next, I heard a thump of something being dumped on her bed, a deep sigh of relief, and then the light of day was cast into my eyes.
Marian was standing above me, one hand holding the lid of the chest from falling down on me, the other reached into the box waiting to pull me out. She was in front of a window, the fresh morning light eliminated her hair, and made her appear like an angel, descended from heaven.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" She asked, laughter coating her tone.
What I wanted to say was that she looked like an angel, who had come to take me to heaven. But I just took her hand, stood up and shrugged.
"And why are you holding my sword?" She raised her eyebrow at this, and gave me a pointed look.
"To be completely honest, it was digging into my backside!" She really did laugh at that, the sound was music to my ears, after being deaf for so long.
The box not sitting on my bed now caught my attention. The note attached was a hand's reach away. Stepping out of the chest, I went to grab it, but stopped when Marian held her hand out.
"Something on there you don't want little-old-me reading, huh?" I couldn't help myself.
"It's not really that, it's just… when you see who it's from… you won't like it," she sat down and opened the box.
A pair of shoes lay inside, they were dark blue, with delicate, gold lace. They were stunning, and matched her dress perfectly.
He must have payed a lot of attention to her dress, to know that these would match.
"C'mon, Marian! Who is it?" I asked, playfully grabbing the card.
"I'm telling you now, you wont like it!"
"Oh please, I'm not a little child anymo-"
The card read:
"Please accept this gift as an apology for what happened to you last night.
Yours sincerely,
Guy"