Post of the Month

~ March 2008 ~

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Robert & Rhiannon ~ Written by Siiri. Posted on the HoS Yahoo group November 2006.

The trees overhanging the shoreline of the lake at this point provided welcome shade.

The lake was a large stretch of water, but a peaceful one. Its waters gently rippled as it was fed continually by a series of small waterfalls dribbling down into it from a high outcrop of rock nearby.

Where he idly trod water in the small pool one of the waterfalls fed, Robert listened, soothed by the sound.

The lake to him had always been a friendly, welcoming, protective place. But the people from the villages around had been bred on the tale that some sort of evil inhabited the depths of the lake. It was the reason why folk did not visit this place, and the outlaws did nothing to discourage that superstition.

But there was nothing sinister in reality here. Robert often swam here. The deer came here to drink. If there was anything sinister at all about the lake and its surrounds, the creatures of Sherwood would not visit this place to drink.

He turned his head to scan for Rhiannon. She was sitting up on the flat-topped rock near where he trod water. Her foot was idly splashing in and out the water; Robert fixed on the sound, lunged forward through the water and made a grab for the splashing foot. He caught hold of her ankle and she gave a little shriek.

"Now I have you!" Robert teased.

"No you don't," she denied. "What are you going to do - bite my big toe to subdue me?"

Robert laughed, released her foot and tilted his head to listen in her direction, curious. "What are you doing?"

"Thinking."

Robert stopped treading water, found his feet to stand in his depth and held out his arms to her. "Come back into the water."

Rhiannon laid her hands on his forearms and slid down from the rock, down against him where he stood chest high in the water. Bare skin against bare skin.

Robert lifted a hand and moved his fingers lightly over her face to capture her expression, curious. "What's amiss?" He explored her face in more detail; her mouth, crooked on the left side and made so by old scars which had tightened, did not have its familiar upwards curve. "Ellie's all right with Tuck," Robert tried to guess at Rhiannon's mood. "She was sleeping when we left."

"I know."

"She's better than yesterday." Robert remembered the clingy little arms clutching at him, the hot little face, the wet neck of her baby shift from all the dribble. "Teeth, that's all it is."

"All!" Rhiannon echoed wryly. "You don't have to breast-feed."

Robert smiled, and pulled her over in the water with him. They lazily rolled over in the water together like two playful otters, laughing and trying to duck each other. Finally they surfaced; Rhiannon to find her feet and stand chest high in the water, whilst Robert leaned back and lazily trod water.

"When Ellie's older, we'll have to bring her to this spot to learn to swim," Robert said.

Rhiannon glanced around her. This calm pool just past the waterfall was overhung by trees and ringed by flat-topped rocks providing plenty of easy access points in and out. "How old do you think she'll need to be?"

"Maybe we could try her next summer?" Robert suggested.

"That seems an age away," Rhiannon answered. "We have the winter to think of first."

Robert considered her reply whilst he trod water. "Meg has already said she'll take you and Ellie in for the winter."

"I should go and see Meg again. She's nearing her time. I promised I'd be there when the child was born."

"The Sedgeley villagers don't know where we're currently camped - so she'll not be able to get a message to you if the child decides to come," Robert said.

"None of the villages know where we're currently camped," said Rhiannon.

"Aye, and just as well," Robert replied.

Rhiannon was silent again; he stopped lazily treading water in his depth and finding his feet to stand, he put both hands out to find and feel over her face, curious and bewildered.

"I'm just suspicious," Rhiannon said in answer to Robert's inquisitive fingers brushing over her face.

"Of what?" Robert asked.

Rhiannon glanced around her at the peaceful lakeside beyond the pool near the waterfall. "Of everything being too quiet."

Robert turned his head to listen around him. "I know what you mean, but there's nothing that suggests danger. This is the forest on a sleepy summer's day." He lifted his head, attentive to the sudden cry of a bird as it flew far above them.

Focusing his attention back on his wife, he stroked his hand down the wet length of Rhiannon's hair. "We can't do anything more at present save stay where we camp. If trouble is going to find us, it will sooner or later. If the Lincoln outlaws decide to invade Sherwood as they have been boasting, we'll soon know about it."

He paused in thought to himself for a moment, frowning slightly. "Anyway...it may not be the Lincoln outlaws that come. From what Jenet said, the ringleader was caught, and by Gisbourne, no less. It may be that the threat to us comes in the form of the usual threat - of Gisbourne and his men."

"Your father headed back to Nottingham and no doubt would have seen Gisbourne...." Rhiannon began.

Robert swung his head distractedly. "There's no way in the world he would have told Gisbourne where we were camped. He may have said some harsh words two days ago when he came here, but he's my father, and I trust him."

Seeing his sudden agitation, Rhiannon laid her hand lightly against the side of his face and turned his face towards hers. Her eyes searched his face for clues. His face relaxed from its tense expression at her touch, and at feeling her hand against his face he gave a series of fleeting smiles and nudged his cheek against her palm in response. Rhiannon wonderingly watched his face.

Yesterday, she had observed him as he had woken and she had seen he had clearly been quietly disturbed and preoccupied over his father's arrival in camp the day before. But upon arriving back in camp that afternoon with Nasir and Will and a good catch of fish, his mood had been lightened.

Except....except that evening by the fire, when Ellie had been asleep in her lap and they had sat close together, he had wanted her hand, and had continually fingered over it. He had not liked to lose physical contact with her throughout that quiet evening by the fireside, contented though he had seemed.

Almost as though he wanted to feel secure, Rhiannon had thought. She had caught Nasir watching Robert's behaviour across the fireside and had sensed Nasir had come to that conclusion too. Out of all of the others, Nasir was the one who could read all the subtleties of Robert's behaviour - how and why, Rhiannon did not know.

Now, the nudging of his cheek against her palm was a prompt for attention and touch, yes, but attention and touch that would give him reassurance. David's arrival at camp and his reaction had unsettled Robert, Rhiannon could see it more clearly now than she had been able to the day before.

She stroked his cheek gently. At her touch, Robert felt his mouth break out in a smile. He put one hand back up to her face and moved his fingers across her lips, finding with relief that at last, she smiled too.

"I know I do not say this often, but every day I wake and feel you in my arms and am nothing but glad," Robert said quietly

"You only have ever needed to say it once," Rhiannon answered. "I watch your face and I see it there, often, without you needing to say a word."

Robert dropped his head and planted a kiss on her collarbone then moved past her and struck out towards the sound of the waterfall. His hand touched rock; he wared his head for he knew the rock overhung the water in places and he felt along the familiar shape he had found till he found the flat smooth place he and Rhiannon had left their clothes.

He pulled himself up out of the water, feeling suddenly ungainly and heavy after spending time almost weightless in that expanse of cool silky wetness. The heat of the sun suddenly burnt along his bare back as on hands and knees he stretched out a hand before him and felt over the rock for the clothes they had shed. His fingers travelled over the soft folds of Rhiannon's chemise, her bundled up cloth gown, the long thin line of his guiding stick, the shape of his boots both laying on their side, before they connected with his shirt.

He took the shirt up and standing, rubbed himself down with it, then pulled that and trousers on, then sat on the rock, his arms braced behind him and turned his face up to the warmth of the sun whilst he listened idly to Rhiannon who was still quietly splashing around in the pool.

He felt physically content. His skin had been cooled by the water, his body relaxed by the swim and by making love to Rhiannon earlier. Ellie was safe with Tuck back at camp, and the rest of the band were either hunting for food or occupying themselves in whatever way they saw fit.

He felt physically content, but the encounter with his father still pricked at the contentment within his head. Robert lifted a hand and rubbed it across his face, falling to thought.

He had thought that the worst his father could endure was the loss of a son he had little or no pride in now. But now he had flung King John's pardon back in his father's face and had no doubt seemed like an ungrateful wretch; a heinous crime indeed.

Robert sighed to himself. He knew he had always been stubborn, from child to youth, to man under his father's roof at Huntingdon. His heart still ached from many years of David’s disapproval at that stubbornness, and if that were all there was to bear, he felt that his conscience would be clean. He would perhaps even feel vindicated in his choices by more than the cause he had undertaken.

This had all been meant to be. Over the past year he had realised that with full enormity - that all of this had been meant to be. Instinct, guided by the powers of Light and Darkness had pulled him onto the path that would lead to the restoration of the real Robert. He would have always headed onto that path, drawn to seek an answer to his vague sense that things were not right. Drawn to seek an answer to his discontent. The powers of light and darkness had trusted in his urge there, his instinct - they had relied upon it, and they had kept it even from Herne. They had rewarded him with his true self - but only when it had suited them to do so. They had been very clever.

He had had a choice - stay angry with them for what they had done, or accept that it had been meant to be. He had chosen the latter path.

He wished his father had been able to choose the latter path as well.

There came a swoosh of water as Rhiannon pulled herself out of the pool and up onto the rock beside him. He reached out and found her arm.

"I wouldn't change anything, you know," she said simply. She reached behind her to find her shift, and rubbed herself down with it where she sat, then pulled it on.

"Change?" Robert queried.

"Being here. Sherwood." Rhiannon's eyes roved the cool green that surrounded them as she sat back in the sun. "You. Ellie. Everything."

"Our fate is not decided by others," Robert agreed. "That was something missing in my life before I came here."

Rhiannon stroked his bare forearm. "Freedom?"

Robert smiled. "Freedom. The sense that I didn't have to be any longer someone I was not. The awareness that I shape my destiny and make the choices."

Rhiannon nodded, contemplating the shining waters of the lake before them; the myriad of sparkles on the ripples. "We are all the same, aren't we. The band. Each one of us has come to receive that sense, that awareness, enjoy that freedom. And that is why we are all here in Sherwood."

Robert fingered over her damp forearm in turn, listening to the call of birds flitting around the tree tops. "Tuck said once to me that Robin was no Sherwood Messiah. He did not call them all - Tuck, Will, John and others - to come to him here in Sherwood. Tuck said they all just came, it was Sherwood that drew them."

He drew his knees up to his chest, encircling them with his arms and listened out across the rippling waters of the lake that stretched before him. "Set aside Herne and the Powers of Light and Darkness, and there is still something special about Sherwood," he said quietly. "Something that goes so deep, so still, so solemn. I can feel it. I can't grasp hold of it but at times the forest allows me to lay my fingers on its thread of pulse. And then I feel a deeper power, a deeper spirit, at work. Older than Herne. Older than the Powers of Light and Darkness."

Rhiannon watched his face wonderingly. It seemed on the verge of smiling, and yet it did not actually smile. She had seen him sit in the forest and be silent and absorb all that was around him, and at those times too his face had acquired that same contented awe and reverence; expressions he had never been able to consciously learn, having been born blind. It was that which told her that whatever he absorbed from Sherwood at those times, whatever feelings he received, they were special, beyond the construct of descriptive words; nothing to be said, everything to be felt and understood - and he went where none of them else could go.

She laid her cheek against his shoulder and she stared out across the lake. "Being able to feel that pulse of Sherwood deeper than any of us is just one of the gifts blindness gives you."

Robert gave a slight laugh and rubbed his cheek affectionately against her forehead which was level with his shoulder. "Takes a blind man to see." He suddenly grew contemplative as he remembered Nasir telling him about Hassan the day before, and now curiously he wondered what Hassan, born blind like he, would feel in Sherwood were he brought here.

They were silent for a moment together, not moving. Robert felt a breeze gust against his face, and on it he smelt the first hot scalding note that was a prelude to rain.

"There's going to be a storm," he said quietly.

But neither of them moved from where they sat, as they lingered in their togetherness.