"Get out!" Isabella ordered, sneering triumphantly at Robin, Allan, and Marian.
Robin was furious. His first impulse was to dive from the open window into the moat after Marian's earrings, but he knew it would be impossible, even for him, to recover them in the thick sludge surrounding the castle.
"Gladly," he fumed back, his teeth clenched in anger.
"Gladly, Your Majesty," Isabella corrected, snidely. "Say it."
After a brief struggle within himself, he managed to mockingly echo, "Gladly, Your Majesty."
Isabella smiled, her small, sly, satisfied, catlike smile. "Now, kneel, all three of you, and say it in unison."
Allan was the first one down on one knee, able to laugh this off, remembering the time he'd tumbled her. Marian shortly followed, her eyes blazing with hatred. But Robin wouldn't kneel, not until Marian reached for his arm and pulled him to his knees.
"Gladly, Your Majesty."
"Good." Isabella's smile turned to a sneer. "Now, go! STOP!"
At the queen's command, Robin stopped in his tracks. In his hurry to put as much distance as possible between himself and Isabella, he'd quickly risen, helped Marian to her feet, then steered her toward the door without looking back, all before Allan had stood lazily back up.
"Now what?" Marian hissed, for Robin's ears alone.
"Turn around," Isabella ordered, enjoying playing the puppeteer, with Robin and Marian her marionettes. Even the term fit, at least for Robin's goody goody wife.
After they'd done so, Isabella ordered, "Now, exit backwards, keeping your faces to me, bowing and scraping all the way out the door. I'll teach you to show me the respect due me!"
Marian was proud, but she knew they had no choice. "Just do it," she whispered to Robin. "Whatever it takes, just get me out of here!"
Looking deeply into her eyes, Robin gave a sharp nod of his head, then began his backwards departure, dragging Marian along with his long strides designed to get away sooner. Allan lazily sauntered out behind them, whistling.
Still within Her Majesty's chambers, Annora couldn't believe her eyes. Why hadn't he rescued her? Why had he come at all? She gasped out loud as a new thought struck her. He'd only come to see her again, in the jewels he'd given her! Uttering a squeal of excitement, she drew the queen's attention.
Now that Robin had gone, Isabella's triumph turned sour. "Go," she bitterly told the chancellor's wife, almost sorry she'd tossed away the earrings. It would have been so much more fun to continue taunting Lord and Lady Locksley by parading herself with them glittering in her ears!
...
"Well, that wasn't too bad," Allan announced, earning him Robin and Marian's glares. "Oi! Could of been worse!"
Robin looked distraught, finding it difficult to encounter failure.
"It's alright, dear," Marian told him, squeezing his arm. "They're only earrings."
"I'll buy you another pair," he vowed.
"No. I have so much more already."
Allan knew his time had come to go, already feeling an unwelcome third when they were gushing so lovingly toward one another.
"It's been fun," he told them, shedding his guard uniform. "Like old times, 'cept without Much complaining. But I gotta get back to work. Horse fair's in town, and the Trip's gonna be buzzing with thirsty customers."
"Thank you, Allan," Robin told him, sincerely.
"Horse fair?" Marian asked eagerly.
"Yeah. Just outside the town walls. You didn't know?"
She shook her head, and Robin broke into a grin.
"Any chance you can change your clothes, Wren, and be my lady at the fair?"
Marian's smile matched his own. "I changed in our carriage," she told him. "Let me just go back there, and I'll be ready."
Robin grinned approval, his heart suddenly light.
After bidding Allan goodbye and escorting Marian to their carriage, Robin hastened through the castle's outer bailey, looking for a place to stow the guard uniforms. What he saw there made him take in his breath.
"What's this?" he asked a man who was busily engaged hanging a noose upon a newly erected gibbet. "I wasn't told there was a prisoner due to hang."
"It just happened, my lord," the man explained. "The king's barber. Seems King John wasn't happy with his haircut, so..." He finished explaining by gesturing his neck in a noose. "He's set to hang tomorrow."
Robin's eyes burned with fury. "Where is he?" he asked, knowing he couldn't allow the execution to happen.
The man pointed to a window above. "Locked in the keep. Dungeon's full of cutpurses, with the fair in town."
Robin slowly smiled, a plan already springing to life in his mind. Looked like he'd have to secretly be back in Nottingham again tonight, to rescue the king's barber. But first, he intended to show his wife a good time at the horse fair, and maybe even teach the cold hearted Chancellor Fitzhugh a lesson!