He was one to talk about drink; and I had no thoughts of saucy Winchester wenches. I would be riding south with a perfect specimen of womanhood, who drove all thoughts of others out of my head. We set off, two by two, on horseback with mules behind us carrying our possessions. Four Gascon cavalrymen rode at the head of the column, and four at the rear, and four rode up and down the column as we jogged along. The road was busy with revellers from Robin’s great feast making their way slowly back to their lives. Many looked the worse for wear, but, at first, there was a carnival atmosphere as we made our way down the highway. I rode next to my Marie-Anne, taking my role of bodyguard very seriously; Bernard and Goody rode behind. Bernard looked like a rotten cheese; badly hung-over, eyes bloodshot, his face saggy and grey. Goody, on the other hand, was in irrepressible high spirits. She felt we were going on an exciting adventure with a glittering prize at the end of the journey. And she kept pestering Bernard with questions about what a royal court was like and how we should be treated when we arrived. Most of the time he merely grunted in reply.
In the late afternoon, the weather turned cold and a storm began to brew in the south. The merry revellers seemed to have disappeared and I couldn’t shake the feeling in my gut that we were riding into trouble.
As we trotted along, wrapped in our warmest clothes against the chill wind, I began to ask my lady about her life when she was away from Robin’s band. ‘As you know,’ she said, ‘I am a royal ward. I became one when my father, the Earl of Locksley, died several years ago. Ranulph de Glanville sent some of his men with a letter from the King, claiming me as his ward. The Locksley lands are rich and wide, and the King wishes to have control over who marries me and becomes the new Earl. They said it was for my own protection, of course, but they lied. It is to enrich the King. Whoever wishes to marry me — and I pray with all my heart that it will be my Robin — must pay the King a fat price for that honour. I sometimes feel like a prize cow at market, up for auction to the highest bidder.’ She laughed but her mirth had a touch of bitterness in it. ‘Even so, Robin cannot buy me at the cow auction. King Henry would never allow me be married to an outlaw. He would always look for some advantageous match; or I might well become a way to reward a faithful servant. And that would certainly rule out Robin.’
She sounded so sad that I felt a pang of guilt about my jealousy. I said quietly, though the words choked in my throat: ‘You must love him very much.’
‘Very much. And I know that he loves me. I have always loved him, since we first met ten years ago. He came to stay at my father’s house when I was just a girl — but I loved him from the first day. He was kind, he was funny and handsome. He made time to listen to my foolish prattling. He did not love me then, the way that he does now; how could he? I was just a child, barely out of my mother’s apron strings. But he was kind to me. And that is the quality that I find most attractive in a man.
‘As we grew older, his feelings changed towards me and he became more ardent. He would ride over to visit me from his home in Edwinstowe and bring fresh flowers and ripe fruit, and tell me wonderful stories about our future together, how we would be so happily married and live in a great castle and have dozens of children, and laugh and love all the days of our lives until one day, we would die together, of extreme old age, at exactly the same moment, hand in hand.’ She smiled at me, a sad, mocking smile, as if to say, ‘Ah, the folly of youth’. Then, after a pause while we negotiated our horses around a muddy pothole in the road, she continued.
‘But when Robin was declared outlaw, everything changed. My father, who was ill by then, would not allow him to enter the castle. When I told my father I loved Robin, he threatened to raise his tenants, arm them, and hunt Robin down. Not that he could have managed it, the drunken old fool. My mother was useless; she just told me to listen to my father.
‘But Robin still came to visit me, even though he risked capture and death every time we met. We would take secret rides together in Sherwood: once, it was on my seventeenth birthday, he organised a midnight banquet for me deep in the forest, even attended by some of my friends. There was a long table laid out, garlanded with wild flowers and laid with rich exotic food in a clearing in the middle of nowhere; with musicians, jugglers and servants pouring wine and bringing platter upon platter of roasted meats. Heaven knows where they cooked the food. And, that night, he asked me to marry him.
‘I said yes, of course, but we both knew it could never be while he was an outlaw. So we became betrothed in secret. Robin wanted us to lie together, to seal the bargain with our bodies. But I would not. I had vowed to my mother that I would keep my maidenhood until marriage. Robin was disappointed, very disappointed, but he respected my wishes. And I have kept my vow, despite what some in Robin’s band might think.’ She gave me a sideways glance, and I blushed. Like almost all the other outlaws, I had assumed that Robin and she were as intimate as any other couple, married or unmarried. I could see that Marie-Anne was blushing, too, and so I prompted her to continue the story.
‘My father died soon after,’ Marie-Anne said. ‘He grew thinner and thinner until there was almost nothing left of him. By the end, I could have picked him up with one hand. And it wasn’t long until my mother followed him. I think she died of loneliness; I mean that I think she willed herself to die, to be with him. She had always said she could not bear to be parted from him. And I pray they are together now in Heaven.’
I mumbled something about my being sure of it. A rabbit darted from under our horses’ hooves and away into the woodland and we took a minute or two to control the startled mounts. Then Marie-Anne picked up her story again.
‘The day after my father’s death, while the whole household was in mourning, a local knight called Roger of Bakewell came to pay his respects. After my father had been laid to rest in the churchyard, Sir Roger took me aside and tried to kiss me; his breath smelled of onions. When I refused, he told me that he would marry me, that he had made an arrangement with my father and paid him half a pound of silver to seal the bargain for my hand. I was shocked, but I believed he spoke the truth. My father might well have done such a thing. He would have considered it the right thing to do, to ensure that I had a strong husband to protect me and safeguard the earldom.
‘But, you know Alan, from that day on I never spoke to the man Roger ever again. In fact, for ever afterwards he always tried his hardest to avoid me. Once, in Nottingham, after I had become a royal ward, I bumped into him in the market place. He was mounted and I was afoot. The minute he saw me, he wheeled his horse and galloped — literally galloped — through the market throng to get away from me. The brief glimpse that I had of his face showed me that he was terrified. Terrified of me.
‘Of course, I discovered later that Robin had paid him a visit. And he had taken big John Nailor with him. The story goes that they broke into his castle at night, broke into his bedchamber, and while John stood over the man with his great axe, Robin made him eat half a pound of silver, a hundred and twenty silver pennies, one penny at a time. Robin explained to Sir Roger, very quietly and reasonably, that he had now been repaid the money he was owed for my hand, and that if he ever tried to press his suit with me again, there would be very unpleasant consequences. “She is under my protection,” he told Sir Roger. “And anyone who troubles her will feel my displeasure.”’
I still was laughing at the image of a proud knight being forced to eat a big bag of metal, when Marie-Anne said: ‘It can make for a lonely existence, though, being under Robin’s protection. Men are wary even of speaking to me. And that is why I am so enjoying talking to you, my handsome bodyguard.’ She smiled at me. I stopped laughing and imagined I could feel a cold wind blowing on my neck. I wondered what Robin would do to me if he knew some of the thoughts I had had about Marie-Anne.