Post of the Month

~ April 2009 ~

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Robert & Adela ~ Written by Siiri & Nikke.  Posted on the HoS Yahoo group August 2007.

Robert was flying.

No... more like drifting. No, that did not feel right....

What was happening to him?

Was he floating? No, that did not feel right either. Something, or rather somebody, had their hands around him. Somebody was lifting him up.....saying his name.

He found he couldn't answer. As though he no longer possessed a mouth...

The hands lifting him up vanished, the voices saying his name vanished. Where he went, he knew not.

Until the voice saying his name came back again.

"Robert?"

It was a woman's voice, and somewhere at the back of his mind he knew he should recognise it. He also knew in the back of his mind that there was nothing to worry about upon hearing this voice, but - there was something which nagged vaguely at him; something that he knew he should be concerned about.

With the voice came a touch, a woman's hand, calm and cool, gently stroking his hair back from his forehead. He became aware of his cheek against the softness of a pillow.

"Rhiannon," he muttered comfortably at the touch of the hand stroking his hair.

Where she sat alone by his bedside, watching his rising consciousness, Adela's face grew anxious. Rhiannon? Was that the name of his wife?

She suddenly hated David who was probably still away on the common trying out his new hawk with Chartain, conveniently leaving her to deal with his wounded son who was clearly going to first ask for his wife and then for an explanation as to how he came to be here.

She glanced at the unshuttered window across the chamber. Sunlight streamed in and from the shadows she knew it to be noon. Maybe David's stomach would bring him back to the castle before too long. Then he could see Robert and explain.

She leant over Robert and smoothed Robert's hair back from his forehead with a gentle hand. She spoke quietly, soothingly, with equal gentleness. "Nay, Robert, it's Adela. But it's all right. Everything's all right. Don't worry. Can you hear me? Robert?"

The voice again invaded Robert's ears. He stirred. His head was leaden with throbbing pain. Slowly, he became aware of his limbs, one by one. He felt how they were placed, against the cool smoothness of a sheeted bed; he felt how his body was placed, laying on its side. His body did not hurt, it felt comfortable, it was just his head that hurt. He gave a slight groan in response to the throbbing.

The voice came gently again into his ear. "It's Adela. You're safe, don't worry. Just had a bump on your head."

He recognised the voice now. "Adela...." he murmured, and slowly moved his hand upwards to find her wrist and grasp it; he secured her hand in his.

_Thank the stars,_ thought Adela in relief, watching the young man as he sought for and secured her hand in his, _he recognises me._ Robert's eyelashes kept flickering as though he was trying to open his eyes, and she could almost see his levels of consciousness steadily rise.

"Yes, it's Adela. You had an accident. But you're safe at Huntingdon." Adela carefully removed the cold wet compress from across the side of Robert's forehead. Robert winced, half lifted a hand to his throbbing head.

"You'll fair well enough," Adela said. She covered his hand with hers and brought it gently down from his face. "Don't touch your wound, it's sore."

Her voice fought though the receding fog in Robert's mind; the warmth of her hand squeezed his in reassurance and suddenly, briefly, took him back to being a child at Huntingdon, once when he'd fallen from his horse and been knocked out, and she had sat by him, held his hand, bathed his aching forehead and kept him company through several hazy days laying abed from his injury.

"The horse....?" he murmured now out to her presence, thinking vaguely that he must have fallen from his horse again.

Adela watched him, puzzled, and wondered what he was talking about. Clearly he was not completely comprehending everything as yet - maybe it was just as well, thought Adela, for David needed to be the one to talk to his son of what had been done to him. She wanted none of it.

_I will NOT do David's dirty work for him. He brought Robert here, he must explain his reasons to the boy._

Her glance wandered to the wine flask standing on the small table by the bed, and the goblet beside it. Laying on the table beside the wine was a small linen bag containing valerian - proven to relieve pain and bring on sleep.

Adela bit her lip in thought and looked back at Robert. How dangerous would it be to administer a sedative to someone only just fighting his way out of unconsciousness?

She leant closer to him and stroked his hair. "It was just an accident, Robert, don't worry. Don't think about it now - just rest."

At the touch of her hand stroking his hair, Robert opened his eyes where he lay, his cheek against the pillow.

Adela stared. David's words came back to ring in her mind. _"Wait till he opens his eyes, you'll see that the pupils have turned pure white."_

He was right. Robert's blue iris's ringed naught but a blank white circle where dark pupils should have been. More than that, the eyes moved oddly; they did not still to focus, they did not move steadily to track.

She stared at Robert, horrified; suddenly aware how awful it was not to have eye-contact with someone you knew and loved, how awful it was not to be able to read their eyes and see through them into their soul.

The eyes were so strange, that Robert suddenly seemed like a stranger too; his personality changed, and she wondered if she knew him anymore.

She tightened her hand over his in sudden emotion, still staring.

A brief flash of memory came suddenly back to Robert at the feel of Adela's hand tightening on his, and that brief flash of memory was as alarming as a flock of bats flapping around his head in the stillness of night. "The men-"

"-It's over," soothed Adela.

"-they tried to kill me-" Robert groped around for more memories, could not find them and felt himself flail around hopelessly in his quest to remember more information as to what had happened.

"You're safe now - Robert, don't worry." Adela's hand rubbed his arm in reassurance.

Robert subsided, feeling himself frown, trying to find more behind that brief flash of memory, as to what happened....but his fogged mind and aching head would not let him.

Adela watched him clearly struggle with his memory, dazed though he was, and her mind was made up. Her glance went again to the goblet on the table by the bed. She leaned forwards and squeezed his hand to gain his attention, and spoke gently. "I want you to drink something for me, Robert. Can you sit up a little? Slowly, now."

Robert drew up one knee to gain purchase on the bed and gingerly pulled himself half up to sit, finding Adela's hands assisting him. The hands moved close about him, moving the pillows behind his back and head, and gently guiding his shoulders back against their softness. He rested his head back against their softness and gave a sigh.

"This is my chamber?" he queried, feeling himself frown in concentration as he turned his head slowly from side to side, trying to scan around him.

Adela watched him, bewildered. What was he doing? It was clear he could not see anything; those strange eyes fluttered back and forth past where the light flooded into the chamber from the unshuttered window and gave no reaction to even that; yet he turned his head from side to side as though he was scanning around him.

She covered his hand which lay on top of the coverlet with hers. "Aye, it's your old chamber at Huntingdon. You....recognise it?" It seemed an absurdly ridiculous question to ask him, to ask a blind man if he recognised something, but she knew not how else to phrase her question.

Robert did not seem to find the question at all ridiculous. "Yes," he answered her vaguely, still turning his head to scan around him. Despite his fogged recent memory, fragments of his childhood suddenly came back clearly. Laying abed here as a child, listening to thunderstorms, the creaking presence of the old goodwife occasionally creeping into his room to check on him, that he was not frightened; the flaring sound of a candle being lit when it was time to go to bed; Adela scrubbing his unwilling face clean with a wet cloth as he stood in the chilly bedchamber garbed in a long nightshirt, his bare toes curled against the coldness of the floorboards; the rattle of the window shutters and the sound of winds howling around the exterior of Huntingdon at night as he lay in bed, drifting off to sleep. The long velvet dusty hangings around his large wide bed; its old carved headboard depicting knights riding off to war...

Robert suddenly put a searching hand out behind his head to feel, and his fingers met the carved figures on the headboard that seemed to leap out of the wood as though they were alive. He fingered idly over the shape of one figure, where he was half propped up by pillows, and he felt curiously comforted by the familiarity of it all. Yes, this was his bed, and this was his chamber.

Adela poured wine into the goblet, and added two large pinches of valerian from the linen bag into the contents of the goblet. She swirled the liquid around in the goblet to mix it, and stared down into the goblet with a perplexed frown, still weighing up what she was about to do.

She came to a decision, took Robert's hand and touched his fingers to the stem of the ornate goblet. "I want you to drink what's in this goblet, Robert."

Robert moved his fingers curiously over the engraved bowl of the heavy goblet. "What is it?"

Adela sought to make her voice reassuring. "Valerian mixed with wine. It's going to help your aching head and make it subside. Drink it all."

It would first calm him and then make him sleep for several hours. If memory returned to him before he drifted off into sleep, then it would be vague, his emotions would be less intense.

Robert obediently took and drained the goblet dry, and as he moved it away from his lips, he felt her hands touch his and take it from him. He turned his head, immediately alert, as the door on his right creaked open and a female's voice whispered from it.

Adela's hand touched his. "It's just Blitha my maid. I'll be back in a moment."

There came the sound of her light tread across the floorboards to the door, a rustle of skirts and the sound of Adela's voice whispering to the other female presence at the door. Robert could not hear what was being said, but the tone of Adela's voice sounded as though she were issuing some calm instructions.

Robert lifted his head higher, dazedly listening. There was something he should be worried about, he couldn't think what. Something nagged away at him, he could not grasp what. What was he doing in Huntingdon? Was he really here, or was it all some strange dream? He recognised his bedchamber but still felt oddly detached from it, from his surroundings. Frustrated by his foggy mind, he lifted his hand from the coverlet and flailed it vaguely through space. Yes, he was here, feeling his own movement, the movement of his hand through space reassured him. He was here, he existed, this wasn't a dream.

There came another low exchange from over by the door, then the sound of the maid's footsteps receding down the stone passage beyond. The door creaked closed, and Adela's presence came back over to him.

"Robert-" her two slender hands took his vaguely flailing one quickly between hers and stilled its movement, and he sensed unease and awkwardness about her. "What's wrong? - what is it you want? - I'm here."

"I'm here," he muttered in echo, but alluding to himself, and relieved by the discovery. If he could feel himself move, then he was here, he was a part of things, and he tried to stitch himself as a living moving being to the stillnessof the chamber around him. The stitches fell apart as soon as he tried and he gave an uneasy head swing in response to his failure. Pain suddenly rocketed around his skull at the movement and he gave a groan and stilled his head against the pillow.

"Robert?" Adela watched him, puzzled and somewhat horrified by the strange physical behaviour. Vague, half-formed expressions kept shuttling across his face, but they vanished before she could try and read them.

Robert's free hand felt over the back of hers, exploring the fine tracery of veins there. He felt his weary mind sag in its own mire, as he felt himself sag against the pillows at his back, but the urge to explain to her drove him on and pushed him against his own confusion. She needed to know; perhaps she could not tell.

"I'm blind," he murmured out to the cool hands that anxiously gripped his.

"Aye, I know you're blind. Your father told me. Besides, I can see your eyes for myself." Adela gently laid his previously flapping hand on the coverlet, and watched it uncertainly as its long fingers felt over the coverlet's folds in exploration. She looked up at him, finding it difficult to watch him, for he kept his face uplifted from his fingers exploration of the coverlet and those strange eyes with their white pupils flickered around without purpose to their movements. "How long have you been blind, Robert?" she asked softly.

Robert twitched a frown, puzzled at her question, trying to fight the steadily rising drowsiness overcoming him. "How long? Always."

Adela drew back a fraction and stared at him. She brought to mind what David had said. Robert had seemed convinced that he had been born blind, and David had called it a strange kind of denial - or some sort of mental aberration brought on by the shock of suddenly going blind, Adela thought. When you were suddenly plunged into total darkness, who knew how unbalanced your reason could become?

Robert felt a strange warmth flooding over him, stealing over his limbs and relaxing them. His eyes kept wanting to close. He turned his head aside, his cheek seeking the softness of the pillow behind his head.

"Lie down," Adela whispered. She leant over him and eased him off the pillows supporting him for a moment whilst she adjusted them so he could lay more flat.

Pillows adjusted, Robert obediently slid down in the bed, the bitter taste of the valerian still in his mouth, but his throat now eased of its dryness, and his stomach pleased by the wine's warmth. "The men...." he murmured.

Adela drew the coverlet up to his chest and laid her hand over his which he had drowsily laid atop the coverlet. Where she sat beside him, she watched him, troubled. "Aye, I know," she replied finally. "They attacked you. But you're safe now."

Robert's sleepy mind only faintly registered her reply. "Safe..." he gave a slight sigh and turned his head aside on the pillow. "Tell the others...." he whispered, closed his eyes and fell asleep.

Adela presumed he meant his men, that band of men who lived in Sherwood with him; those outlaws. She wondered upon them for having stayed with Robert even though he had gone blind - it must be from sincere loyalty to Robert, and that was a quality in them she found herself admiring.

"Aye. Aye, we'll tell the others," she assured the sleeping Robert quietly. And hated herself.