Maid Marian (11 page)

“Ask it, Marian, do not jabber on.”

Chastised, I took a breath and did my best to come to the point. “I wish to appear to have died without in fact having done so. I wish to seem as if I am dead, but for a short time only.”

This caught her attention and again she turned her sharp eye on me. “’Tis a strange request, Mistress Marian. Are ye not a noble lady? How can ye have such a need to deceive as this?”

I let out a sigh of exasperation without meaning to do so. “Everyone assumes that noblewomen have no problems, just because they do not want for bread. ’Tis far the reverse, if I may say so. My need for deception is very great indeed, greater perhaps than a dairy maid’s might ever be.”

She nodded and said nothing, but brought a small bowl of twigs and forest duff and placed it in my hands.

“Cast three pinches into the fire and let me see what there is to see.”

I did as she asked and with each throw the fire leapt up in a cloud of sparks, frightening me, for Dame Selga had leaned so close I feared she might have her nose singed. But when I had finished she sat back in silence, looking no more sooty than she had before.

“I have a powder that ought to be what you seek.” She stood slowly and began to rummage within her chest, examining bottles and vials by the low firelight. “Ye have a wish to remain as Diana, do ye not? Maiden still though ye be of age to be wed?”

Her reference to my favorite character of Ovid’s tales surprised me, but then I supposed she was well versed in every array of god and magic.

“I do not wish to marry one I have not chosen. Surely you see many a maid with that same complaint?”

“Ah, yes, who to marry, who not to marry, ’tis all the young ones seem to think of.”

“Do you not, then, think it so important?”

She paused a moment, tipping her faded face to one side. “Aye, ’tis important, I suppose. But I had never seen a noblewoman with such a complaint before.”

This seemed to catch her fancy, so I tried to explain as I had to Robin Hood that while a farmer’s daughter might decline to marry the man her father chose for her, a noblewoman had no such voice. I spoke at length and told her too of my childhood marriage to Hugh, and by the time I had finished she was seated beside me, clasping a glass bottle between her fingers.

“This is for you to use as ye will,” said her gravelly voice as she pressed the bottle into my hand. “Mix this with water and drink it down, and you will appear cold and breathless for a full night’s passing. But after that time ye will awaken, so plot your work most carefully.”

In all my talking I had somehow forgotten what it was I had come for, and to have it now, in my very hand, filled me with wonder and gratitude.

“Thank you, grandmother,” I whispered to her. “What can I give in exchange for this?”

“Oh, silver, if ye have it,” she laughed, grinning hollowly, for she had very few teeth remaining. “Even an old woman must eat.”

“And smoke a full pipe,” I said with a smile, placing a sack of ten silver pieces onto her lap. “I will keep your secret, grandmother, and tell nary a soul where to find you.”

“Good day, child. Keep your wits sharp about ye.” She turned her face back to her fire, and I left her smoky cottage, a glass bottle now heavy in my purse where my silver marks had been before.

A
NNIE SEEMED CALMER
when I reached her, and we mounted our horses in silence. But after we had ridden barely a mile, she turned to me, her face still pale.

“Just tell me this, Lady Marian. Are ye or are ye not going to kill him?”

“Kill who? Stephen? Oh, Annie, no, no, I shall not.”

“Then . . . ?”

“If I am brave enough to use what Dame Selga has given me, I promise to warn you of it well in advance. And do calm yourself. No one will die from her powder. Its affects are temporary, she assures me.”

My words calmed Annie, but I must admit they did little to settle my nervous heart. I liked Dame Selga and trusted her well, but I was not sure my trust ran deep enough to warrant drinking down her powder. I thought of myself, lying cold and breathless, while lords and ladies gathered round to mourn, and a cold spot opened within my belly which refused to be made warm again. Each time the bottle swung against my side, the cold place deepened, and I wondered if I would have the nerve to drink when the moment came.

But I had gained the powder, I assured myself, and that had been my only goal. The decision that lay before me could be made at any point. I had the powder, but if I chose, I need not drink it, now or ever.

W
E PASSED THAT NIGHT
at the Dog and Partridge, sleeping sound in wide beds, dining on wheat bread and wine. The following day we left for home, preparing to face our angry guards. My lips were already laced with the tale I would tell of having slipped northward on a whim to see Denby’s fields in summer, burdened with their golden bounty.

Riding homeward that day I realized, through the preoccupied state of my mind, that I felt a tremendous relief in the notion of returning to my comfortable room. This journey had been filled with newness at every turn, and while I had tried be at ease in each situation, I had in truth been waddling with the awkward gate of a seafowl placed on land. At last my steps were turned to my own safe inlet, and I welcomed it with a quivery lip and a thirsting heart.

But on my arrival I found, sadly, that home had changed in my absence, or perhaps it was my own eyes that swung now from a different angle, allowed in more color and less light. The chamber I had known from childhood—nay, from babyhood—had become skewed. The bed seemed brighter, the walls more firm and constrained in dimension. My shoes on the floor beat out a new sound, and even Annie, steady Annie, looked suddenly foreign in this place where she had reigned in my eyesight for all of my life.

“How odd these old walls look!” I breathed, knowing my words did little justice to the tumult that I felt.

“Aye, there’s naught like a journey to put a fresh tinge on things,” she said cheerfully, setting to her work with the wisp of a song.

What she said was true, but it did not touch the center of what lay so heavy in my heart. I thought of our beds on the journey, the straw mattress of Wodesley village and the skins and wool of Sherwood Forest. Between those and my box bed seemed a chasm so great I could not see across. Here I lived in my own room with a constant fire and every comfort. What luxury I had always known! How I should hate to exchange this bed for a narrow place on the Bailey straw ticking!

I thought of Annie and the many times she had come from village to castle, leapt across that chasm as if it were but a trifling ditch. And now it seemed that the journey across and back had affected even this place. By traveling in those foreign lands I had hardened the comforts of this world and given their richness a bitter taste, like metal and sulfur, sticking on the tip of my tongue.

Chapter Ten

T
HIS STRANGE SENSE
of dullness, of having tarnished what had been glowing, continued for weeks. I moved through my world like a fish in a pot, not recognizing a single face or feeling that I knew what my hands were doing. With silent eyes and a gaping mouth I marveled over the richness of the very eating knives at mealtime, the opulence with which Lord William cast off meats that were displeasing. I saw with new vision the woven tapestries in the great hall, the masterpiece of scarlet dye that Lord William’s wife had commissioned from across the channel. In my youth it was the first scarlet fabric I had ever seen, and while red-dyed cloth was more common now, it was scarcely less dear. A hanging of that vast dimension would surely trade for a foursome of horses or several cottages of the sort Annie’s family shared.

But what amazed me most in the weeks that followed our return from the wood was the ease with which I took up my old life again, the comfort with which my hand grasped the spoon and lifted the gem-studded goblet to my lips. I knew this world and it was easy; I had encountered another that was far more difficult. Why, then, did I not rejoice to be returned to comfort and ease? Why did I not allow myself to fall back to my earlier ways, as ought to have been simple to do?

At nights I lay in my downy bed and could not banish thoughts of Bess or of fair Ellen and how well they would love to change places with me. By day I saw a youth sporting with his hounds and thought of Riccon; I saw a fine lute and wondered how pleased Allan a Dale would be to own it. Then at last one night as I lay awake I saw that I was feeling guilt for my soft place. For I now knew those who bore a far harder lot, and this tainted the pleasure I was able to feel.

Too, my odd sensation may have had something to do with the uncertainty of my future, an uncertainty that kept me full of dread and allowed no peace. Day and night I forced my weary mind to consider every alternative, search for each hidden option, anything, anything that might keep me from swearing vows with Stephen. I had, for once, leisure to think, but the more I pondered, the more it seemed that I had no choices beyond a wedding or Dame Selga’s white powder.

I could not flee, not on my own, for I had no notion of where I might go or how I might live beyond Warwick’s walls. My every choice seemed to include a loss of Denby, and so, sad at heart as it made me, I began to think of it less as mine and more as some distant fairy land, desired by all but owned by none.

B
EFORE THE LEONINE WINDS
of July had floated to my chamber window, pages from Sencaster and London town brought me notice of my upcoming marriage to Sir Stephen, and a date was set for the wedding service. I was, I found, to have three weeks in which to conjure up some solution, though two weeks passed in the blink of an eye while I did nothing more than sit in my chamber, cradling the glass bottle in my palm. I felt at once paralyzed and fluid, for while I could not summon new thought or move myself to decide on some action, I also floated on the tide of time, lapping ever closer to my wedding day.

But lest you should assume that my lack of options caused me to become less observant, I ought to report that in this time I could not fail to make one comparison, which gave me much food for later thought. Watching Lord William interact with his underbarons, knights, and nobles, I was struck by the arrogance of their manners, the contempt with which they seemed to address their own overlord. This was not the way of the Sherwood yeomanry. Nay, those men trusted Robin Hood to be their better and gave him their loyalty because he proved himself so. Lord William had proven nothing beyond how well he was loved by the present king, and considering the twists of royal politics, I counted this as no great accomplishment.

Lord William’s place was tenuously held; Robin Hood’s was held through love and earned respect. The distinction was paramount and its repercussions now flooded my eyes and ears to such an extent that I chastised myself for not having noticed it before. Rumors of Lord William’s weakness were everywhere present in his court. It mattered not if he overtaxed or undertaxed, if he coddled one noble or another, the result was always the very same. In his best moments he was thought a simpleton, in which case his lessers were well occupied with plotting to overthrow him; in his worst he was a tyrant, hated for clutching his power too tightly and mistrusted at every turn.

Why was this? I asked myself. Was it the result of a ruling class that allows its king to select its leaders, rather than a more democratic approach? Perhaps it was, but I could not free myself from the thought that war was the true enemy that forced the circumstance, for without the nobles, a nation at war would have no barons to summon, no standing armies to call to its aid. A locally elected noble might hesitate to raise an army from among his peers. But then I thought on the Sherwood men and doubted my own reasoning, for surely they had the makings there of as fine an army as one could wish for, and I scarcely thought that Robin Hood would pause in sending his men to battle simply because they were his fellows.

These thoughts of Robin Hood piled a second sphere of confusion onto my already taxed mind, so I pushed him as far from my waking thoughts as I could manage. My dreams he might, and did, invade, but I kept him barred from my calculations. This was a feat of which I was quite proud. But in hindsight it may have been this very act of turning away that kept me from determining for myself what my fate ought to be.

W
HEN NEARLY ALL
of my three weeks had passed, a group from Sencaster arrived in great splendor, showing their colors to the best advantage. Lady Pernelle rode at the fore, followed close by her remaining son and his host of squires. I saw all this from my chamber window, for I had been placed there to cleanse and prepare myself for the new life I should undertake beneath the eyes of God and the absent king.

My feelings toward Lady Pernelle were as clouded as ever, and they were not made less so by an interview we had the night before my slated marriage. She came to my chamber, speaking in soft tones and petting my hair.

“Dear Marian, how good it is to see you again. And how lovely you look, my own daughter. I declare you appear to have aged somewhat since I last saw you. I hope your time of mourning offered ample moments of prayer and introspection?”

“Indeed, Lady Pernelle, I also feel that I have aged greatly since we met in London.” I kindly said nothing of how she had aged, for I was on my best behavior.

“It pleases me greatly to welcome you a second time into our family. I trust that, with the conclusion of this marriage, you will remove from Warwick to Sencaster Manor, to reside there with Stephen and myself?”

“I shall do as you wish, Lady Pernelle, in this as in all things.”

This brought a smile to her lips and made me hope she had forgotten our skirmish over my dower.

“Very well, that is what I wish. We shall all be one family, as we were before. Stephen is quite ecstatic to see you.”

“And I him.”

She prattled on about how Stephen had grown, about how he was loved by other boys his age, and his delight in his hounds and hawks. As she spoke, a constriction grew within my ribs, and I had to command my lungs to move, to heave my chest up and down so the air could flow. Robin Hood had asked me why I did not simply marry Stephen, as I would have to marry some man, and at the time I had not known the answer myself. But now I saw it, in blazing letters. Lady Pernelle had become my enemy, she made herself such in the London court, and this was now a battle between us. I might marry—truly, it appeared I would have to—but I stubbornly refused to wed as Lady Pernelle wished it, not if I could discover an exit.

That night I sat with my bottle of powder until tears trickled down my cheeks, for hot though my hatred for Lady Pernelle burned, my fear of this powder was proving stronger. The cold place that formed after seeing Dame Selga had refused to vanish. It had, in fact, grown in depth and quality each time my reckless imagination saw a vision of myself lying dead, or nearly so, and nothing I could do would warm the place. I thought of myself mixing the potion, drinking it down in a fit of haste, but the vision made me shiver so violently the bottle slipped from my hand and nearly smashed against the grate.

This was the hour, but I could not do it. My fear of the powder, of its possible failing, was greater, far greater, than my hatred for Lady Pernelle. Sobbing aloud, I pulled my wrap close about me, desperate for some feeling of warmth, but none came. I would not drink the potion down, I would not feign my own death, and yet the cold place still remained. For in the place of my fear of the white powder lay a dread of marriage to my dead husband’s brother and a life of servitude to his mother.

I thought on Sherwood and the freedoms of the forest and felt my heart grow tight with sorrow. I should never see that place again nor, most likely, my own lands. Robin Hood’s words came to me once more, asking why I did not flee, but even as the thought passed through me, I slipped from my stool onto the floor, exhausted by fear and my sense of impotence. I buried my face in the floor-piled rushes and wept until Annie came and put me to bed.

D
URING THE NIGHT
a summer storm slipped overhead, lancing the sky with bolts of fire from Jove’s great chest of arms. I awoke to rain, dressed to rain, said my morning prayers to rain, and could not help but think the sky had heard the tears falling in my heart and painted them on its larger canvas. I was as broken of spirit as any wild mule made to haul a cart, and I stood, compliant, drooping in my unbreakable harness.

I was sent to make my final confession, for every bride must sweep the cobwebs from her soul before taking her marriage vows. Lady Pernelle, escorting me below to the chapel’s confessional, told me herself that she had arranged for me to pass a full hour’s breadth with the rector. Perhaps she saw into my guilty heart and knew how much time would be required to purify my devious mind.

Scarcely hearing or seeing the world, I entered the confessional and knelt in silence, forgetting now to heed the tears that flowed down my cheeks as I crossed myself and dumbly spoke the ritual words. The grille slid open, and a kind voice spoke softly to me, in tones of comfort.