Post of the Month

~ June 2011 ~

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 John/Timothy ~Written by Gwyn & Rhys.

Posted on the HoS Yahoo group June 2010.

Uneasily, John wandered the clearing.

Twilight had arrived, and then night. Tuck had banked the campfire and smoke spiralled up into the dark sky. Everything was in shadow. Rhiannon had taken Ellie and now looked to be sleeping under the large oak across the clearing. Much and Alan had bedded down by the fire. Tuck and Will still sat there, silent and pensive, neither speaking. Tuck's face was etched with tiredness.

And Timothy....Timothy had not come out of the cave where he had disappeared into a while ago. John now hovered indecisively by the cave's entrance, peering into the gloomy depths.

"Why don't you go and talk to him?" John had asked Tuck after the altercation, jerking a thumb in the direction of the cave.

"I know Timothy. When he gets in that mood, it's impossible to talk with him," Tuck had replied. "I'll leave him be for now and have a word with him come morning. For now, he'll do no harm sleeping there in the cave away from everyone, if that's what he wants."

Nasir had slipped outside the camp with a face like thunder, to keep watch for the first half of the night. Usually it was difficult to see his feelings on his face, so the fact that he was so visibly angry had unsettled John.

He now made up his mind and glancing over his shoulder at the others settling down for the night, then ducked his head and entered the little cave where the young man had gone.

"Timothy?" He peered round the side of the cave, and just inside the entrance, he found the lad.

Timothy was sitting hunched up, knees drawn up to his chest and arms wrapped around his knees, his right shoulder and side huddled up against the rock wall of the cave. He had turned his face somewhat into the wall, so that the side of his forehead rested against the cave wall also. His very position indicated that Timothy was in a sullen angry mood.

"John Little," Timothy acknowledged flatly, not moving.

"What are you doing hiding away here?" John asked.

"I'm not hiding," Timothy said dully, not moving his head from where the side of his forehead rested against the rough surface of the cave wall.

"No?" John half amusedly quizzed.

Timothy sighed, not knowing how to convey his frustration over the Saracen who would not give him answers he desired. "I thought that in view of the argument I should take myself away from the company. I can't leave the clearing without becoming lost, so I thought I would come in the cave. It's quiet here, and

"Bit further back it is." John studied the blind man somewhat amusedly. "I can see you quite well here though."

Timothy sighed again and bumped his forehead against the rock wall in a gesture of further frustration. "I thought I couldn't be seen here. I thought it must be dark."

John chuckled. "Lad, don't worry about it."

"I like it when I know it's dark. When I am somewhere dark. Sighted people can appear so helpless then. Or afraid. I don't understand it, but I do take a certain pleasure in knowing that I have the advantage over them at those times," Timothy said.

John hesitated a moment, then descended to sit beside Timothy. He patted Timothy's shoulder in understanding, and then they both sat there and were quiet.

John watched Timothy's profile. The man seemed pensive, his face was full of thought. The expressions of someone born blind were not strange to John, and now he read Timothy's face accurately. He saw weariness there, uncertainty, a dull anger, a type of stolid, stubborn defiance. He saw fleeting expressions of curiousity, too, and that puzzled John. Then he glanced down at the guiding stick in Timothy's hand. Timothy's left hand held the shaft of the stick and the fingers of his right hand were feeling over the engraved silver knob. The silver gleamed dully in the faint light in the cave.

John twisted his head to try to see the engraving on the knob, but it was much obscured by Timothy's fingers feeling continually over it. John got the impression it was some sort of animal. He glanced back up at Timothy's profile in the gloom and now understood the expressions of curiousity Timothy kept making. It was to do with what his fingers were currently exploring. Clearly he was trying to work out the engraving on the knob. John wondered whether to say something, but instinct bade him be quiet. He but sat quietly and watched Timothy's profile.

"What are you doing?" Timothy asked. Before John could answer, he answered his own question. "You're looking at me, aren't you? If you can see me...if it isn't dark here, that means you can see me."

"I'm trying to find a resemblance to Robert de Rainault in your face," John answered. "But I confess, I can see very little of like looks you have with him. You must take more after your mother."

Timothy turned his face towards John, and John saw sudden interest there. "Have you seen my father a lot of times?"

"Quite a few times," said John, "but my mind was always focused on efforts of attack or escape whilst glimpsing his face, so I confess I do not know it as well as folk who have time to sit and study it without constantly thinking on escape or how best to attack."

"I do not know what he looks like," Timothy said in thought, lowering his head.

John chuckled. "You're not missing much, lad, believe me."

"But all the same, tell me." Timothy lifted his head, eager and alert. "Tell me what my father looks like? I do not know. I would like to know."

John was taken aback by the request. He found it odd in the extreme, the idea of describing de Rainault's face rather than his devious character, and yet there was something in Timothy's request which strangely touched his heart - for most men could see their fathers and know what they looked like. How was it to go through life and have no understanding of what people around you looked like unless they let you feel their faces? How was it to go through life and not to know what your own father's face was like?

John thought of his own father, who was still alive at Haversage, and found it easy to bring a vision of him to mind. Timothy did not have that ability. That aspect of being blind since birth suddenly impacted John deeply.

He searched his memory for a description to give Timothy that was both honest and accurate. "De Rainault? He's of small stature and thin wiry build. Has a high hairline - he's going bald though his vanity makes him try to hide it, methinks. Once he had a beard, but nowadays just a long moustache that curls round the sides of his mouth. Dark hair, dark eyes - though neither as dark as yours, so don't feel that there is a similarity there," John added hastily, looking Timothy in the face.

"There are different graduations to dark, " Timothy observed. "I know that much."

"Aye." John scratched his head, trying to bring a better picture of de Rainault to mind. "He's a smart dresser. Likes his robes. Often they are richly embroidered, cut of good cloth. Soft cloth. I've seen brocade at his neck and wrists that gleams with gold and silver thread. And a jewel pinned to his hat."

"Tell me more about his face," Timothy said softly. "I do not know of his face. I have never felt his face."

"His face...." John searched his memory again. "He has a high forehead, a cleft to the brow when he frowns which is much and often from my memories of him. He has bulbous eyes, and a sneer to the mouth when he speaks."

"Aye," Timothy said softly, "I have heard that sneer when he has spoken to me. The one and only time we talked direct. When I was fifteen and I confronted him about the fact he was my father. He spoke to me then, and I heard that sneer well enough."

They fell to silence again.

"What is everyone doing outside?" Timothy asked at last.

"Tuck's banked the fire, and everyone settles to sleep," John answered.

"And Nasir?" Timothy asked tentatively.

"He's gone on watch, outside the clearing. He seemed to want to be left alone. When he gets like that, we know better than to disturb him." John scratched his beard and regarded the young man beside him.

"I unease Nasir," Timothy said quietly at last.

John watched the young man. "And Nasir uneases you."

Timothy, surprised, turned his head in the direction of John's voice. "How did you know that?"

"Got eyes in my head," said John. "Saw how you recoiled from him when first you met him - before he even spoke. Like you were....frightened....or maybe even repulsed."

Timothy heaved a sigh. "It was the scent."

John was perplexed. "The scent?

"Aye. Before he ever spoke or touched me, I smelt him first. He'd been burning myrrh, I don't know why. But I smelt the smoke on him."

John scratched his head puzzled. There were times when Nasir appeared at camp and he'd caught the pungent whiff of some sort of smoke lingering about his clothes - a smoke more bitter than woodsmoke - but he had never been able to identify it.

"In Lisbon, there was pestilence and fever two summers ago," Timothy said quietly. "Many died. The Moors burned myrrh. It was part of their funerary ritual. I will always link the scent of myrrh smoke to death."

"I see." John sat there and thought.

Timothy changed the subject. "So. You're Meg's friend." John was silent. "More than just a friend?" Timothy pressed.

"How was she?" John managed at last. "After having the child, I mean."

"She's well in health. The baby is full strong and lusty with a wail to break the ears. A bonny lad with already a fuzz of hair." Timothy smiled as she remembered the soft curves of the face of the newborn and that soft fuzz of hair, like moleskin.

"You've...seen the child? John began then faltered as he looked in Timothy's face.

"Held him and felt his face." Timothy smiled afresh at the memory. "He curled his hand around one of my fingers and held on thus to me for long minutes till he fell asleep."

John felt almost jealous. Even though the child wasn't his, even though Meg was Adam's widow....he felt almost jealous. He should have been there for Meg when the child was born. Instead, Alan had been there, and had been the first to see the child. Now Rhiannon had seen the child - and now this blind young man - a relative stranger, had held the child.

"But..." Timothy began, and then hesitated and stopped.

John was immediately on the alert. "But what?"

"I would say she needs some help at the moment, in how she lives," Timothy said gently, thinking of the arid toft and the splinters of the woven wattle fences. "Help to get her back on her feet and able to subsist whilst she recovers from the birth of her child and the grief of becoming a widow."

"Lad," said John, feeling guilty, "we do what we can."

"We? What about you?" Timothy questioned. "You, more than the others. You are after all, her...friend."

"Friend, nothing more," John said hastily, keen to make that point clear.

Timothy's face was knowing. "But you were something more once. So you, out of everyone at camp, should help her more. If only for the sake of what once was."

"What has she said about me?" John asked low, not entirely liking the fact that Timothy, by the sounds of it, had gained Meg;'s confidence enough for her to talk intimately to him.

Timothy's answer was soft and reassuring. "Just that you and she decided to marry but in the end the call to be one of Robin i the Hood's men was too strong for you, and she let you go. You let each other go, she said."

"That's about right," John confessed.

They sat there in silence a moment longer, each lost in their own thoughts, each with his own mind busy.

"What does she need help in?" John ventured with at last. He felt ridiculous for asking, as he had seen the state of Meg's place for himself the last time he had been there, and Timothy was blind - but the blind saw very well in other ways, John knew by now. The blind liked order and organisation, so they could cope with the world around them which was geared to the sighted. No doubt Timothy had been very observant.

Timothy's answer left John in no doubt of Timothy's powers of observation. "Her toft most of all, I would say. She took me round it. It's in a state and no mistake. The ground is dry, half the plants are dying through lack of water, and the bean poles are coming down. The walls of the cott are crumbling and need new daub in time for the winter to shore up the holes. Her wattle hurdles she uses for fences to pen her pig in....well, she could do with a few new ones to last her. Her ones are beginning to rot and have holes in them. I patched them up."

John was taken aback. "You....patched them?"

"Why do you sound so surprised? I learnt to mend wattle fences years ago as a boy at Thornton Abbey. Plenty of call for blind basketweavers," Timothy said wryly. "Sighted folk seem to think that's the only craft we can do...."

John gave a slight chuckle. "Well, you're proving them wrong, aren't you, master-cook." He regarded Timothy up and down a little curiously and couldn't help but try and envisage how a totally blind man managed in busy kitchens. Timothy oozed confidence in his abilities, and had already shown that he had good organisational skills and was quick to learn.

"As is your leader, Robert, simply by being Herne's Son," Timothy pointed out.

"Aye. I think Robert relishes that. Proving people wrong, I mean." John sat there and thought. It was good, it was comforting, to mention Robert, and mention him in the present tense. As though he was only just outside the cave, in the clearing, and nothing had happened, John thought.

"It's often amusing, to observe sighted people's reactions when you have proved them wrong about your blindness," Timothy said. "It never ceases to astound me how sighted people believe I should hate my blindness and thus in a odd way, hate myself."

"Well," said John, "we sighted people, you know, we're strange. Robert often tells us that." He could not help but put affection into his voice at mentioning Robert's name.

Timothy smiled, hearing the affection in John's voice only too well. "I hope you find Robert."

"You sound like you're making up your mind to leave us," John observed, watching the young man curiously.

"That's what Rhiannon said as we walked back to camp this evening." Timothy rested the side his head back against the cave wall and was given to reflection. "Yes. Yes, I think it's time for me to move on."

"Where would you go?" John asked.

Timothy had already been firming the decision over in his mind. "London. I think I shall head south to London. To seek out de Rainault there. Confront him, gain the information I want from him."

"And then?" John asked. "Say you get from de Rainault the name of your mother, what then?"

"I want to find her - speak to her - if she still be alive," said Timothy. "Doubtless my father has keepen track of her all these years. De Rainault likes to keep track of people....he's like a spider with its feet upon the strands of its web. So he'll know where my mother is now, if she be alive still. And that's where I'll go. If it's Normandy - well, I'll take boat and head for there. Talk to my mother, learn more of my beginnings. Learn why she gave me up. I want to hear her voice, touch her face. Place her in my understanding of things in a solid, tactile way. So she becomes more than just this shadowy figment of my past."

"And if you find her and she talks to you and tells you all you wish to know...what then after that?" John questioned.

"Then I'll head back to Lisbon," Timothy answered simply. "That's my home now, not England."

"So we will never see you again after tomorrow, will we," John said quietly. He thought of Tuck and how the man would feel at saying goodbye forever to a young man who was clearly like a son to him.

The thought of saying farewell forever to Tuck was also hanging heavily on Timothy's mind. "No," Timothy answered quietly. "I don't intend returning to England. I want to live out my life in Lisbon. Beatrice is waiting for me there. I want to be a husband and a father, set up business in Lisbon - a cookshop or a bakery. I want to be able to get on with living my life, once I have learnt about my beginnings."

"When would you leave here?" John asked.

Timothy's answer was calm. "Tomorrow. I think it's best, in view of what's happened tonight. The camp is too small for both Nasir and I, that's clear enough."

"Does Tuck know you intend leaving tomorrow?" John asked low.

Timothy's reply was similarly low, as though he dreaded parting with Tuck on the morrow. "Not yet."

"Do me a favour," said John. "Stay another day - just one more day," as Timothy made to protest. "Tuck will be stuck here at camp, with his sprained ankle, and will otherwise be along with no doubt sober reflections on what could have happened to Robert. To have to say goodbye to you and bear your leaving of him would only bow him further down, I feel." He studied Timothy's face in the shadows of the cave. It reflected all the dread and doubt of taking his leave of Tuck on the morrow.

"Would you stay one more day?" John asked gently now. "Stay here at camp tomorrow with Tuck. Talk to him. Take the day to tell him of your decision of leaving. Take the day to say goodbye. Nasir won't be around to bother you. Stay just one more day. For Tuck's sake."

Timothy hesitated, torn. "Very well. It's the least I can do for Tuck. I'll stay the morrow and leave the day after."

John smiled, patted Timothy on the shoulder and rose. "I'll let you get some sleep."

"Goodnight, John Little," Timothy said solemnly.

He turned his head to listen to the sound of the man's receding footsteps as they crunched out of the cave, hit the softness of the grass outside, and then disappeared - and suddenly it seemed as though he was the only person in the world again.

Timothy sighed, drew his cloak more around him, and leaning his head back against the crumbling rock surface of the cave wall,

It had been a long and eventful day, with much physical activity. He needed to sleep. But he wondered if his restless and troubled mind would let him.

He hoped sleep would come.