Post of the Month

~ August 2006 ~

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Robert and Rhiannon ~ Written by Siiri. 

Posted on the HoS Yahoo group September 2005.

Rhiannon scarcely stopped as she stormed down to the stream, peaceful in the evening light.

She paused at the edge of the bank, and looked up and down the stream briefly, all the time fumbling with her belt; unbuckling it, she cast it aside, and kicked off her shoes to join the belt. Unlacing her split-skirted gown, she slithered quickly out of that, and first standing on one leg and then the other, pulled off the leggings she wore underneath the split skirt; worn for decency below a sparse skirt split for freedom of movement whilst running, climbing or riding.

Her heart was pounding with what seemed the sudden culmination of all that had happened in the last hour or so - delayed shock and realisation of what she had done, perhaps - sweat clogged her skin on this hot late afternoon.

"Rhiannon!" Robert's voice came through the trees and bushes to her, and then again, growing nearer: "Rhiannon!"

It was an irritated call, and yet a concerned one. She made few allowances for her husband's blindness; her relationship with Robert had never worked that way, and indeed he never asked for any allowances, for it simply never crossed his mind that allowances should be made because he was blind - but after a year of living with him, she had learned that you replied someone blind who called to you in concern, even if angry, to allow them to know you had come to no harm.

"I'm here," she called back abruptly over her shoulder, and shedding her chemise, stepped out of it on the bank, now naked, and waded into the middle of the stream where dappled sunlight played upon the surface of the running water.

She had no qualms about letting Robert find her himself. He found his way accurately all over Sherwood, using his ears and stick and a whole host of other skills that blindness gifted him with, and finding his way alone through the forest held no fears for him. He had in reality never known any way different, now the Powers of Light and Darkness had removed from him the strange false sight they hadgiven him for the first twenty-one years of his life. She knew he would find her, guided by her voice and the sound of her movements, as now she bent, and using a handfull of twisted-up coarse grass, scrubbed hastily away at the bloodstains on her arms and hands and neck....she was spattered all over with that soldier's blood, and she only wished now to cleanse herself of it, and then perhaps the remorse that she had killed another person could be somewhat cleansed as well.

Robert pushed his way through the bushes, sweeping his stick from side to side and finding the clearest path ahead of him, all the while following the direction of Rhiannon's voice that drifted over to him.

He broke out of the bushes and walked forwards towards the sound of the stream rushing by. His stick found the clear grassy space of the bank and then the edge of it, and he halted. He turned his head towards the direction of her movements. She was some yards away to his left, out in the stream.

"Rhiannon...?" Robert began.

"I'm washing," came her brusque answer from further along the stream, accompanied by a flurry of splashes.

Robert frowned to himself, and walked further along the grassy bank towards the sound of her splashing. His stick connected with a soft bundle heaped on the grass in his path, and he halted.

He crouched on his heels, reached out both hands and felt over the soft jumble of clothes that lay on the grass before him, finding discarded shoes, leggings, her split-skirted gown, her chemise, belt and purse....everything, it seemed.

"Are you naked, Rhiannon?" he asked across to her bemusedly, fingering over her thin chemise which lay topmost on the small heap of clothes.

"Yes!" came her annoyed voice, "I am naked. I am standing knee deep in water, in a bloody cold stream, stark staring naked! And I don't care!"

Robert felt a smile twitch momentarily at the corners of his mouth, but bit his lip, hoping it would not be noticed.

He paused for a moment, then rose from where he crouched, and kicked off his boots, and rolled up his trouser-legs to his knees. Finding the edge of the bank with his stick, he stepped lightly down into the cold rushing waters, and waded over to where Rhiannon stood.

She had stopped splashing and seemed to be standing still, as though in pensive thought. Robert put out his hand and found her. He found her back was turned to him, her long fall of straight smooth hair swept aside over one shoulder, her arms crossed over her breasts and her head bowed. She did not speak, but he felt her tense body relax under his touch.

Robert's sensitive fingers traced the curve of herbare neck and shoulder, and then trailed lightly down her back, following her spine. She was shivering, with cold or with dread, he didn't know - maybe a mixture of both. He laid his hand against the small of her bare back in a gesture of comfort.

"Tell me what happened to you," he requested softly.

"It was as Will said," Rhiannon whispered. "And as I told you, in the clearing. They met us suddenly....upon the track, with little warning." Robert listened. "They came up to us and questioned us....Oh, but you could see that they knew who they were. Outlaws. Will threw one off his horse, and told me to run. I didn't want to leave him, but I had Ellie in my arms...."

Robert's throat tightened. "And then....?"

"So run I did, through the trees. One came after me. I knew I couldn't hope to outrun him, with Ellie. So I hid Ellie and drew him away from her...I ran and ran....and then I hid. Lay in wait. He came searching for me, pushing past all the bushes. I leapt out when he came past me and stabbed him. I kept - I kept stabbing him, whilst he struggled with me."

Rhiannon looked down at her now clean hands, the water dripping from them. "He eventually fell, and then he died. Will had finished the other one. He came and found me, recovered Ellie from where I'd hidden her. Then we came on to camp."

She was silent for a moment. "Oh, I know what he would have done to me had he caught me. He was calling out to me that he wouldn't hurt me if I showed myself, but I knew better. He would have caught me and raped before taking me to Nottingham as his prisoner."

She turned and looked Robert in the face, where they still stood knee-deep in the stream. "Ellie and I are a danger to you. If Ellie and I were ever caught....Gisbourne's men would use us to set a trap for you. Or to get you to surrender. That's where we are a danger to you. I've always known that, Robert - but this encounter with the soldiers has made me realise it with a new intensity."

"Do you not think that I am a danger sometimes to all of you? Simply because I am blind." Robert lifted his hand and gently touched her face. "I am far from helpless, but the fact is I am blind, and I am not blessed with some fantastical human power that enables me to conquer all that comes my way. Blindness gives me much, but it doesn't lessen the danger that comes my way - in fact it adds to it. You know it, I know it - the entire band know it," he said wryly.

His fingers traced down her face. "But I accept that added danger, the need to be aided by sighted folk sometimes. Because I would not want myself any other way than how I am now, the man who stands before you."

"Robert-" Rhiannon began, troubled.

"-And you accept that extra danger I sometimes have the potential to place you all in, because I am blind. You all accept it." Robert spoke softly but firmly. "Just as I and everyone else accepts that extra danger you and Ellie's presence in the band have the potential to create for us as a band. Because you're one of us - you and Ellie. I could not imagine you and Ellie not being with me, here in Sherwood. I accept that extra danger happily because I love you. Because I know that a long time ago, you made the choice to accept that danger also."

Rhiannon looked aside, sobered. "What you say is true. But..."

Robert reached out his other hand to find her face, and cupped her face between both hands, turning it back to him. "Rhiannon....we're all vulnerable, each of us in our own ways. Best then that we stay together and combine our strengths, because in doing so, we can protect our vulnerabilities."

His hands were still bloodied, and catching the scent of blood from him as he cupped her face between his hands, Rhiannon could not help but flinch; in her minds eye she saw again the bright red spurt coming from the chest of the soldier she had stabbed.

"What is it? - what's the matter?" Robert asked immediately at feeling her flinch - and then he realised she was not flinching from his touch, but something else. "I've blood over me too, haven't I?" He could smell it, feel it encrusting his bare forearms and hands.

"Aye," was all Rhiannon could manage with, trying not to recoil in repulsion from the smell of stale blood - a scent she had just ridded herself of. It seemed to be a scent which was haunting her.

Robert sensed her repulsion, and hastily he stooped, and rolling up his shirt sleeves, washed his hands and bare forearms in the icy flow of the rushing stream, ensuring every bit of dried blood was gone from him. Then he straightened to face her once more.

Rhiannon watched him. "You've blood on your face as well. Smeared across your forehead and cheek."

Robert bent, scooped up water and dashed it into his face, rubbing his face until he was sure it was clean, and then rubbed it dry with his sleeve.

He straightened up once more, and racked his brains to try and ease her repulsion. "A lot of the blood is John's. I saw to his wound."

Rhiannon didn't answer.

Robert reached out and gently touched her bare wet arm, and found she was shivering. He stroked his fingertips down the length of her forearm but did not say anything.

Rhiannon did not pull away, but neither did she touch him back. Instead, without a word, she moved past him, splashing through the knee-deep water of stream and scrambled out onto the bank, hastily rubbing herself dry with her chemise before pulling it on over her head.

Robert followed her through the water and scrambled up onto the grassy bank. There, he moved round to face her and reached out and found her arm, not liking to lose physical contact with her whilst she was in this strange disturbed mood. "Why are you annoyed with me?" he asked.

"Because you're a man and you don't understand," Rhiannon said simply.

"That's a little harsh, isn't it?" Robert frowned in a mixture of bewilderment and annoyance himself. "You'd be the first to rant at me if I told you that you were a woman and you were too emotional."

Rhiannon moved to stand before him and looked him in the face.

"I'm sorry," Robert said quietly at last. "I had no idea you had blood on you." He twitched a frown of confusion. "It's not nice to see, I assume. It's definitely not nice to smell..."

"I'd got the blood of the soldier I killed over Ellie. It's dreadful to see your child covered with someone elses bloodstains," Rhiannon tried to explain, but looking him in the face, she saw he could not really understand. She reached out and reassuringly caressed his bare forearm, still looking him in the face, and attempted to explain in ways he could understand. "It's like....like you smelling the scent of death about someone....or hearing the death-rattle in someone's throat....you would want to recoil from that, wouldn't you?"

"But you've washed - I've washed - we don't have blood on our hands any more... Rhiannon...." Robert cupped his hand against the side of her face, stroking his thumb across her cheek.

"Oh, you have no idea!" she suddenly cried out in frustration at him, and clapped her hands to her head. "I killed a man, Robert, don't you realise? Yes, I know he would have killed me and Ellie, or at the very least captured us and raped me - I KNOW it had to be done, I had to kill him - he was bigger and faster than I and the only weapon I had was the element of surprise with my dagger, and I KNOW he was a soldier, one of Gisbourne's men, but-" she grabbed the front of a surprised Robert's tunic and pulled him forwards slightly so their foreheads almost touched and their breath was warm against each others faces and she spoke low and determindly, "-but I still KILLED someone, Robert. I killed a person. And yes, I am sure in order to keep safe, I will have to kill again, but this - this time was my FIRST..."

Robert laid his hands gently on her upper arms without gripping her. He could feel the gooseflesh which had sprung up on her arms, he could feel her shivering - and something told him not to interupt the flow which suddenly poured from her.

"My mind-" Rhiannon was trembling by now, "-my mind goes back to when I was just a child of five, and that soldier in Leicester set upon me purely because as an energetic child I ran out in front of his horse and made it throw him, the drunk bastard that he was. I remember how he set about my face and ear with his knife without mercy - and I remember how that FELT....I thought I was going to DIE...." She looked up into Robert's face which was twitching with expressions of horror. "Was that how that soldier felt when I set about him with MY knife? If so, I know what that terriffied feeling is LIKE, Robert...."

Robert could think of nothing to say, so placed his arms around her and gently touched his face to hers, rubbing his browbone and cheekbone against hers in affection that was beyond words as he held her. She did not weep, she merely subsided against him, glad to be held, and not a word was spoken between them.

Finally, she drew slightly back from him and looked at him.

"It gets easier," Robert said quietly. "If that's any comfort. But it never gets so easy that sometimes in solitude you don't think with soberness that you killed a man who was perhaps just following orders, who perhaps had a wife and child, like I have you and Ellie. Since we've had Ellie, I haven't liked that part of killing; knowing that perhaps I've caused a child to lose its father. But I still have to kill; to defend myself, and to protect you and Ellie. I don't want my little girl growing up without her father. I don't want to be denied the joy of witnessing her grow, her and any other children we may have in the future, I don't want to be denied the pleasure of holding you in my arms and making love to you - just because a soldier put an arrow or a sword into me because I started questioning was it right to kill."

"It's wrong to kill." Rhiannon whispered.

"But we have to do it in order to survive," Robert reiterated softly but firmly.

She looked up at him. "How on earth does Tuck reconcile killing with his religious beliefs?"

"I don't know, but he seems to have reconciled it somehow. You'd have to ask him. I have never, for fear of being intrusive." Robert frowned slightly to himself. "I always have sensed that Tuck's past is....clouded somehow, for he never speaks of it. I don't wish to waken any demons that might be resting there."

He lifted his hand and traced his fingers over her face, following the blinking movement of her open eyes, her furrowed brow, the tendrils of hair falling down and across her plump smooth unscarred cheek. He smiled, and moved his fingers across her full lips, exploring them.

Rhiannon's annoyance, her tide of dread at what had happened, turned and faded at his touch. It was the touch of her friend, her partner, her lover. It was a touch that was explorative, curious, soothing - speaking so much without words, comunicating so many feelings that eyes of a sighted person were not capable of - and the magic in the touch made itself felt, made her want more.

Taking Robert's hand, she tugged at it as she moved past him up the stream bank. "Come on."

"Where are we going?" Robert asked wonderingly, allowing himself to be led forwards by the hand, away up the stream bank. He put out his free right hand to the side and felt around, wondering if there was anything to find, but his hand went through space, though he could hear trees rustling nearby.

Rhiannon chuckled. "That's for me to know and for you to find out."

They brushed through waist-high foliage. "Bracken," Robert's exploring hand brushed over the uncurling swathe of fronds with delight as the scent from its touched fronds was released upwards to him.

Rhiannon in front of him had stopped, he felt her turn to him, release his hand - and as he reached out both hands in her direction to find her form, curiously wondering where they were headed next, her slim hands caught his arms and tugged him downwards - he descended quickly and easily, suddenly down amongst the fronds, where he found there was a hollow.

"We're amongst the bracken." Robert put out his hand and found the bracken fronds rising upwards all around him like a flexible wall.

Rhiannon watched him. She enjoyed seeking out special places for them. Places with special scents and sounds attached, special textures and shapes - places that felt safe and hidden-away. She knew Robert's nose was picking up with pleasure the scent of the bracken, the earth, the wildflowers that grew nearby; his ears were pleasuring in the song of the birds and the rustle of the trees above, the rustle of the bracken; his fingers were enjoying the soft shapes of their surrounds.

"Our own secret place," Rhiannon said amusedly. "Away from the others....."

Robert chuckled. "They'll never find us here!"

Their new-found hideaway was delightful. He eagerly sifted all the new scents, holding his head high to listen to the faint indistinct murmour of the stream, aware he was smiling.

Rhiannon moved closer to him and something tickled his nose; he felt his face twitch in response, and heard her giggle, he put out his hand and felt in her direction and captured her hand that was holding something. His fingers covered hers and explored, traced the long thin stem upwards to a cluster of soft petals. He put his other hand up to her face, fingering gently over it and found her mouth was slightly parted and smiling at him. He smiled in response as his fingertips swept lingeringly over the curves of her lips, and he turned his face wonderingly up, feeling the sensation of warmth splash against his face.

Rhiannon watched those last evening rays of dappled sunshine slant straight down into his face. His eyes were unaware of the light but his face was only too aware of the warmth that light gave, and it responded with joyful expressions, delighted bursts of smiles and it was his face that she watched and joyed in watching. Robert had never known light - but he knew the feel of warmth, and she knew well by now that knowing warmth in one's life was far more important than seeing light.

She had never felt pity for him, or even regret that he could not see. There was nothing missing in his world. His world was complete and full and rich - she had learned that so quickly upon first knowing him. She had long ago gained the sense all too clearly that his perception of the world was far more vibrant, more vivd than hers; he perceived the world around him with every scrap of his being, and that was enviable.

Robert twitched a frown of bewilderment still straying his fingertips gently over her lips, wondering why she had gone so quiet. Then he felt her hand against his cheek, her fingers gently stroking against it. He sighed softly and turned his cheek more under the stroke of her fingers; he felt her lean close, gently touch faces with him, and then came the butterfly soft kisses against his closed eyelids.

He turned his face slightly back towards hers, touching his face to hers, gently rubbing his cheekbone and browbone against hers in a gesture of affection, then his lips touched hers and very softly tasted.

Her hands were unlacing the front of his tunic and shirt, parting both to either side of his chest.

Robert shrugged his arms out of both garments and moved to place both arms around her neck whilst he continued to kiss her with increasing desire and urgency. He slid the fingers of both hands down through the long soft straight tumble of her hair which fell down her back, as always loving the feel of the silken strands passing between his fingers.

He felt the splashes of warmth from above against his bare back and shoulders now, and Rhiannon's hands caressing his chest, then moving up to his face to caress that, running her own fingers through his short and rumpled hair; parting his lips from hers briefly he laughed softly, loving the sensation of his hair being rumpled, before his mouth refound hers.

She laughed softly too, now laying below him on the softness of the grass, and her arms came up, caught him round the neck and pulled him down to her.