Post of the Month

~ October 2005 ~

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Rhiannon & Robert ~ Written by Siiri.  Posted on the HoS Yahoo group January 2005.

The small waterfall spilled over the steep bank of rocks and splashed into the deep clear pool below.

The pool was dark in the shade of the overhangingtrees which surrounded it, making it seem secretive, half-set in another world. A kingfisher swooped down and fished in a blur of blue and orange; a butterfly fluttered aimlessly across the pool, skimming the rippling waters. All around existed a sense of well-being and peace - and Rhiannon submerged herself in the icy cool of this watery haven.

Where she floated on her back in the pool, she stared up at the blue sky through the branches of the trees. Sherwood enclosed her within its arms of earth and trees and water and sky, and she liked the feeling. The Sherwood of Herne, the Sherwood of her long-dead father Ailric, the Sherwood of her half-brother Robin, the Sherwood of her husband Robert, the Sherwood of her friends. Her Sherwood. It belonged to them all, whether dead or living...

It wasn't often she could snatch time on her own like this...or she and Robert together, come to that. But when these times were snatched - they were all the more enjoyed.

She was glad to be back once more with the band, after the birth of her child. She belonged with Robert, and Ellie belonged with both of them. The others had soon realised that, when she had returned to the band two months ago with Ellie. There had been some wariness at first, a few whispers of doubt - mostly coming from Scarlet - but those whispers had quietened once she had proven to them that neither she nor the child would hold the band up. She had recovered quickly after the birth and was hardy - Ellie was proving to be hardy also.

Rhiannon noted the position of the sun. She would have to return to camp - Ellie would need feeding.

She struck out for the bank, and scrambled out of the water, the heat of day striking her skin once more. She donned her thin chemise, her leggings, her coarsely woven gown with its split skirt. All faded muted colours of greens and browns, like the rest of the band, to ensure she blurred and melted in with the forest itself. The split skirt with leggings beneath was a practicality adopted from Marian - it meant she could run, climb, jump aboard a horse with none of the hindrances of a fully skirted gown. Having been the step-daughter of a tailor, she had further modified her clothes to accommodate freedom of movement.

Kneeling at the water's edge to use it at her mirror, Rhiannon took her comb from the leather purse at her belt and swiftly passed it through the tangles of her wet dark hair. Her hair reached her waist, flowed to there smooth and straight like silk. Robert loved to run his fingers through it.

She paused and looked down at her reflection. The ripples across the surface of the water distorted her reflection, but even the distortion by the ripples did not hide the distortion of her face in reality. Rhiannon surveyed her reflection without self-consciousness, in a calm and matter of fact way.

In a way, she thought, she was like Robert. He could not remember the artificial "sight" that the Powers of Light and Darkness had given him for the first one and twenty years of his life - she could not remember her face any different from this.

She had been five years old when a drunk soldier in her home town of Leicester had set about her with a knife for running out into the path of his horse, making it rear and throw him. He had carved his knife into her face, narrowly missing her right eye, but slicing off her right ear, doing great damage until horrified townsfolk had managed to pull him off her.

She had survived the injuries - and knew she had been lucky to survive...

And so this was the face that stared back at her today as a result. A smooth brow, an unmarked face on its left side - but from just below her eye to jaw, the right side of her face was criss-crossed by ancient, heavy white scars scored deeply into muscle and flesh, the skin puckered and twisted by all the stitching it had undergone. Most people gasped or at the least flinched when they saw her for the first time. It did not bother her; she was used to it - as used to it as Robert was when strangers flinched back from him because of his eyes.

So yes, in a way, she thought, she was like Robert....

She remembered the first night Ellie had been on earth; when the fire had burned low in the hearth of Meg's home, and Meg and her husband had been asleep that late night, and Robert had been sleeping too, close by her makeshft bed pulled near the hearth for warmth.

Rhiannon had looked across at where Robert slept on the hearth, the dim firelight glinting on his short dishevelled fair hair, head resting on his arm, his
eyes closed, his face peaceful, and she had looked down at their daughter asleep in her arms and had seen the same face.

"Little daughter, you will come to be aware that you have two unusual looking parents," she had whispered to the sleeping baby, stroking the wispy fair hair, "but that doesn't mean that unusual is bad....just different. And that you will come to be aware of, also..."

Thinking back on the recent past; on the way she had felt her heart would burst with love and pride when Ellie had been born; on the way she had felt when she had watched Robert hold their child in his arms for the first time and touch his fingertips gently to their child's face to explore it for the first time with such wonder glowing in his own face....Rhiannon smiled to herself. Beautiful feelings, beautiful memories she knew she would never forget.

Tucking her comb back into her purse, she rose andtook the path up from the pool, back through the cool green shade of the trees towards the camp, several hundred yards away.

She wended her way through the maze of trees with absolute confidence. She knew the forest like the back of her hand. Ever since Herne had given her what he had called the gift - placed his palm against her forehead and murmured some ancient incantation - knowledge of Sherwood had come to her then, all the ways, the tracks, the glades, the rivers and streams.....she knew Sherwood. Knew Sherwood as her father Ailric had once known Sherwood, as Robin had once known Sherwood - as Robert knew Sherwood now.... She could never be lost in the forest, never feel alone or afraid because she was lost, did not know which way to go. For she had been given the gift.

No-one else in the band had been given by Herne what she possessed. Even Robert had had to learn his way around the forest - when first arriving in Sherwood as Herne's Son, and again when his blindness had been restored. She sometimes wondered why Herne had given her this gift, rather than let her learn the usual way. Perhaps he had thought it needful for some reason - perhaps she had been given the gift simply because she was Ailric's daughter and Ailric had been given the same gift by Herne.

Whatever the reason, Rhiannon appreciated the gift, not only for its practical advantages, but for the link she felt with Ailric for possessing it. Ailric, the father she had never known...

As she approached camp, she glimpsed her husband through the patchy screen of leafy bushes which surrounded the clearing, saw the glint of his fair hair in a patch of dappled shade. Robert sat in that patch of dappled shade under the tree beside Ellie, where Rhiannon had left her lying asleep on a blanket. He was leaning over the sleeping child, gently stroking her fists which were curled in sleep.

At the sight of her husband with their daughter, Rhiannon smiled. Robert was a good father, and far more involved with his child at this age than a father usually was. Than a sighted man usually was. Robert's blindness brought him close to all he loved, for unlike the sighted who could comprehend with their eyes and so remain physically distant, he had the need, the instinct, to move close and to touch. Watching him explore his surroundings and interact with people and objects alike over the past year, Rhiannon had learned that when you had to comprehend something by touching it, listening to it, smelling it, tasting it, you became more aware of it as a real, separate entity.

At the soft sounds of her approach, Robert in the clearing sat up straight from where he had been leaning over the baby and he lifted his head, listening intently. As there came the soft swish of bushes as she pushed past them and broke cover into the clearing of the camp, he smiled, turning his face in the direction of her entrance into camp. Rhiannon, alone.

Rhiannon crossed the clearing to Robert, and descending to kneel beside him, she lightly kissed him on the mouth. He smiled, lifted his hand to touch her cheek, and then moved his fingers across to feel over her lips. "What was that for?" he teased.

"Must I give you an explanation for each kiss? We would then waste our nights in talk." Rhiannon teased back, slid her arms around his neck and looked into his face as his fingers lightly strayed back and forth over the curve of her mouth and registered her smile at him.

He was no longer the blind child he had been when his blindness had first been restored to him by the Powers of Light and Darkness. His blind childhood - the one he had never been allowed to have - over the past year had been worked through, it had been a time of learning, of discovering, of exploration and delights as the part of him that was blind progressed to adulthood. They had learned to let him work through that blind childhood, realising it was necessary he did so; they had learned when to assist in the learning or when to step back and let him work through things for himself when he had been puzzled by the world around him that he could not see. A great many things that were visual had puzzled Robert or mystified him - some things still did - but in many cases he had worked out his own conclusions about them and was content with his own conclusions. Even if sometimes they were a little strange from a sighted viewpoint. No-one intruded upon those conclusion or forced their sighted views on him. Who knew how he viewed the world without visual concept. Who was to say that the way he viewed it was wrong.

A small wail from beside them brought Rhiannon out of her thoughts and alerted her to the fact that their child had woken. She planted a light kiss on the tip of Robert's nose, took her arms from his neck and drawing back from him, half-turned to lean over Ellie. The child beamed in recognition up at her mother as Rhiannon loomed over her, gurgled and waved small fists.

"How was she?" Rhiannon asked. "Did she sleep for long?"

"She slept at first, then woke and was restive," Robert replied, turning his head to focus on Ellie's sounds and movements with his ears.

"Hungry," said Rhiannon.

Robert laughed. "I can do a great many things for our daughter, but feeding her at this age is down to you."

Rhiannon smiled, lifted the child and unlacing the front of her gown, put Ellie to her breast. Ellie latched on and suckled noisily, her small fists stopped waving and instead curled in contentment as she fed.

Robert listened to the sounds of his suckling daughter for a moment, and smiled. Then turning his head to listen to the crackle of the fire across the clearing, he twitched a slight frown; the fire was getting low again. Rising, he walked over to the fireside without his stick, and once there he dropped to one knee to place more wood on the fire.

Rhiannon watched him without a murmur or a call out to him to take care. Robert paced out the dimensions of every camp and often moved around them without using his stick. Over the past year, that had become natural progression; moving around a camp without using his stick. Sometimes he stumbled over something if one of them moved something or left something in his way without telling him, for then the layout, the map of the camp which he had established in his mind had been altered, but usually he moved around without trouble.

So was it the same around Sherwood by now. Employing his stick, as well as his senses and all his finely tuned awarenesses, some of which he could not adequately describe in words to them but which they had learnt by now existed, he found his way around the forest with the same confidence he displayed walking around camp. He knew every path and trail and trackway, every stream and river and crossing, and had a whole map of complex routes in his head; a map ofpaths and streams linked by both physical and sensory landmarks which pointed out the ways to him like signposts. He had built that map up remarkably quickly.

"Every area in the forest is different," Robert had described to her once when she had asked him how he was so quickly able to learn to find his way through the forest. "Every area sounds different, feels different, smells different, as I move through the forest. There is always a change from one area to another in all this, in varying ways and strengths and degrees. Sometimes the change from one area to another is abrupt, sometimes it is gradual. But I am always aware of the change."

Rhiannon watched her husband from where she sat and nursed their baby. "It's as well to keep the fire high," she remarked. "Much is sure to come back with some fish. Where did Will and Nasir go hunting?"

"Out by Maybury way. Hopefully they've been successful. If Tuck and Alan return this night, then there's a full compliment of mouths to feed." Robert
poked up the fire, listening to it crackle and spurt with renewed vigour.

"Some meat would be nice," Rhiannon agreed. "You should have gone with Will and Nasir."

It was no idle statement. Robert, in stalking game - or men - was a very important and valuable companion. He, with his finely focused hearing, was able to locate and track prey, animal or human, better than anyone else. When they were hunting and their view was blocked by trees and bushes, he could listen to beyond such visual screens and tell them in what direction prey was heading.

"I would have," answered Robert, poking up the fire, "but it was my turn to remain at camp and be on watch."

"And mind the baby," Rhiannon suggested light-heartedly.

Robert gave a laugh. "Don't let Scarlet hear you say that - it will only provide him with more ammunition to tease me with!"

He rose and walked back over to Rhiannon; reaching out his hand as he neared her, he found her shoulder and sat beside her once more.

Putting his hand out, he touched her face, caressing her scarred cheek, and gently turning her face more towards him, he leaned and kissed her mouth. She responded, tilting her head back to kiss him in return, whilst their baby suckled. Robert travelled his hand down Rhiannon's shoulder and arm to the child at her breast, and his fingertips lightly traced over the curve of her breast, the curves of the suckling child's face, the rounded shape of her wispy fair head. Ellie did not make a murmur at being so explored but continued to suckle peacefully; she was used to her father tracing his fingertips over her face.

Drawing back from her a little, Robert lifted his hand to touch Rhiannon's face once more, and they smiled at each other without a word.

They didn't need to constantly tell each other of their love. Love was constantly expressed in all the little touches that fled between them, and when they touched, it was total communication without words between two people who loved each other. It was total communication and connection without words, without sight, without-eye contact or facial expression. There was no need for eye-contact - and having no eye-contact did not matter. They could communicate or express their feelings solely by touch. They could speak a whole different language, and it was the language of touch. It was the language of the blind. Through using the sense of touch, Robert spoke the language of the blind to Rhiannon, and she had learnt to speak it back to him.

"Anyway," Robert said at last with a trace of amusement, "in your absence, I haven't been merely keeping the fire going and minding the child."

Rhiannon looked down at the small row of arrow shafts on the grass beside him, in the process of being fletched. Most had shaft feathers glued into place and had been propped in a line against a tree root whilst the glue dried. "You've been busy," she observed. "Turned master-fletcher."

"We needed more arrows," said Robert. "I checked your quiver whilst you were gone-" he half turned away from her, put his hand out to his side and feeling over the grass there found her quiver on the grass, and ran his fingers over the few arrow shafts left within. "You were running low. You should have said." He turned back to her and placed a finger against her lips as she started to protest. "Always keep a full quiver, Rhiannon. And next time you leave camp, take your bow with you. You never know when you could have need of it."

Rhiannon looked at where her bow stood propped against the trunk of the tree behind them.

"I found it left by the tree," Robert said simply, feeling her head turn towards the direction of tree trunk and guessing she was looking at her bow. "Don't leave it behind you again. Keep it with you at all times."

"I didn't think," Rhiannon said. "Sheltering in Sedgeley for the winter whilst I waited to give birth has dulled what I learnt before pregnancy stranded me there."

"You'll sharpen up now you're back in Sherwood. We'll make sure of that." Robert smiled at her, stroked a fingertip down her cheek, then moved to sit beside her once more and took up the arrow he had been in the process of finishing, binding strong thread over the leading edge of the fletching.

Rhiannon watched him at the task, fascinated by the deft sure fingers which worked at it. His face was uplifted from what his hands worked at; he had neither the instinct or urge to turn his face down towards what tasks he did with his hands.It looked odd at first, to people who did not know him, until they got used to him.

The outlaws had found Robert's lack of sighted behaviour difficult at first. There was no eye-contact or sighted gestures, and they had had to learn to read him in new and different ways than they had in the past. Rhiannon had had to teach Robert how to turn his face down towards Ellie and consciously smile at her when he interacted with her, having realised that he needed to learn to smile at his child so she could see he smiled at her and so formed the proper bonds with him - but that had been the sum of Robert's sighted "schooling". They had all learnt how to read him in those new and different ways and had now got used to the way he did not turn his face down to whatever tasks he was doing with his hands - though in the beginning, an amused Rhiannon had witnessed John and some of the others visibly flinch when Robert had used his sharp knife without "looking" down at what he was doing.

Ellie seemed full, and sleepy. Rhiannon laced up the front of her gown and moved the baby to her shoulder to wind her. "What are you thinking about?" she asked eventually, patting Ellie on the back and watching Robert curiously as he worked. He seemed far away in thought.

"My father," Robert replied quietly, his deft fingers winding the thread around the vanes of goose-feather to keep them firmly in place in the shaft slots.

"Word probably would have reached him by now," Rhiannon observed.

"Aye. About you and Ellie and my being blind." Robert paused his fingers in his task for a moment and listened to the sounds of the peaceful forest around him "He's never going to believe me," he said quietly. "If I were to tell him the truth - that I was born blind, that my sight has not been taken but in fact my blindness has been restored. He would not believe that."

"Does that matter to you?" Rhiannon enquired, patting Ellie on the back and looking across at him.

Robert gave an uneasy head-swing at her question, and Rhiannon studied him curiously. They had come to recognise these head-movements were not shakes of the head, but unconscious and instinctive ways of blind expression. She had learnt to read him well over the past year and recognised now that his head-swing expressed uneasiness - an unconscious response to some inner turmoil.

"Not if acceptance of my blindness and how I feel about it were to be coupled with the disbelief about its origins," Robert answered her quietly. "What happens in the present is more important than the past and all the whys and wherefores... But still...it is always nice to be believed. Especially by your father....by someone who matters to you."

"By someone you would LIKE to believe you," Rhiannon said softly in understanding, watching him.

"That too," Robert replied softly. He continued to wind the thread around the arrow-fletchings. "Sooner or later though, Rhiannon, he is going to seek me out and ask me; what happened? What happened to you, what made you blind?" His voice remained soft but was yet decisive. "I'm not going to lie to him. He will have to either believe or disbelieve, like everyone who encounters me and asks me that same question."

Rhiannon contemplated that future possibility. She thought back to the reactions of the villagers in the area upon first seeing that Robert was blind, upon first learning the truth behind his blindness. Some had struggled to believe the truth - even people like Edward of Wickham. But most of them believed now, because they believed in Robert and in Herne. And those that did not believe, accepted. Acceptance was possible without belief, and in the absence of belief, acceptance was the next best thing.

"Maybe he would come to believe in time," she suggested.

Robert gave a slight wry laugh. "He's a very stubborn man," was all he replied.

"I'm surprised he hasn't sought you out before now," Rhiannon commented. "I mean, he's back now, isn't he? Returned to England after nearly a years absence in Navarre. We heard he was back this month past." Alan's previous trip to Nottingham to information-gather had brought back that piece of
news.

"Maybe he's had a lot to concern him," Robert said, still wryly, reaching for another half-finished arrow to wind strong thread around. "Gisbourne being his bastard son would be a lot to concern any man, I'd reckon."

"You should have gone to Huntingdon to break the news about Gisbourne as soon as you heard David had returned from Navarre," Rhiannon said.

"Considering that we heard he had returned from Navarre at the same time we heard that Gisbourne had immediately ridden to Huntingdon and broken that news, there seemed little point," Robert replied.

He had cursed when he had heard that piece of news, it had been most unwelcome. Gisbourne had beaten him to their father to break that piece of news. A piece of news which had been waiting for a year to be broken.

He had planned to travel with Tuck to Huntingdon after Mordred's defeat and talk to his father, tell him about Gisbourne. But as they had set out on that journey, they had learned that the Earl was away in Navarre. So they had returned to Sherwood, and the news had remained unbroken.

Until a month ago...

Robert wondered how his father had reacted when Gisbourne had confronted him with this piece of news. Outwardly, he knew - they had heard that David Earl of Huntingdon had publicly acknowledged Gisbourne as his illegitimate son - but inwardly, what was David feeling, how was he reacting to the matter? Robert suspected not well, but wished he knew for certain.

"I wonder if the Sheriff's returned to Nottingham," Rhiannon's voice broke into his thoughts now.

Robert shook himself out of his thoughts, gave a slight laugh and returned to winding thread around another fletching. "Poor de Rainault - called to London after the snows of winter, to explain to the King about Mordred! His head must have been spinning at the prospect of such an inquiry."

"Better a spinning head than a detached one," Rhiannon said wryly.

"And he would be the first to agree with you there. Oh, no doubt he's made up some fabrications regarding Mordred to explain it all away to King John." Robert chuckled as he felt over the fletched arrow with satisfaction, checking it, and then felt out to his side to pick up another one to work on it. "I'd wager thinking up some plausible fabrications took him some time, though! The long winter evenings spent so occupied must have just flown by!"

Rhiannon laughed too. "It must have been very hard to tell King John what went on last summer concerning Mordred - when de Rainault really had little clue exactly what went on."

"Only the mumblings of his brother the Abbot about Ranulf's Tor and what happened there - and even then, Hugo escaped and ran before Mordred was defeated there and Robin-" Robert stopped short, thinking of his brother in spirit. "Before Robin died," he said quietly. "So de Rainault doesn't even know what happened there at the end. I wonder now if he thought Robin was just some very clever impostor who has now simply disappeared again."

"Maybe. He'll never be sure, will he." Rhiannon looked down at the baby asleep in her arms. Fair-haired and blue-eyed, like Robert - not dark like she and her half-brother Robin. But maybe as Ellie grew, she would see something of Robin in her daughter's face. Something of Robin, something of Ailric. Time would tell.

"Won't hurt him to forever wonder," Robert said wickedly, then suddenly paused in his work and jerked his head slightly higher to listen beyond the clearing, instantly alert. "Someone's coming," he said, but without alarm, for he knew by the sounds of them who it was.