Post of the Month

~ October 2009 ~

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David/Adela/Robert ~ Written by Nikke & Siiri. 

Posted on the HoS Yahoo group November 2007.

David rode along the track from Fearnley that stretched across the area of spring planting, and turned onto the main path that led through his estate to Huntingdon itself. He was on his favourite palfrey, White Surrey. His squire Chartain rode behind on his rouncey. No-one else accompanied them.

He had been to Fearnley to settle a few minor disputes and also to see Potkin and the family of Walter the hayward. He had been received by both families with distinct chilliness beyond the respectful politeness due him as their lord; he had expected nothing less, considering the circumstances. He had compensated both families, and given Walter's wife his promise that her home and strips of land would be secure for the rest of her days. He had not tarried long at Fearnley, and had been glad to get away from the village, aware of the gazes cast in his direction and the curious and speculative whispers he knew circulated about Robert's return to Huntingdon as a blind man.

The Huntingdon meadows had been shorn of their grass to make hay. Behind them, the river ran merrily past and the scatter of animals peacefully grazed on the common pasture. David surveyed around him with serious gaze. All was how it should be.

As he rode, the brisk breeze blew into his face. Overhead, patches of grey clouds partially obscured the sun, leaving only the meanest rays to illuminate the path, and a crow was cawing in the distance from a line of pines on the far edge of the spring planting field.

David noted with some satisfaction the waving rows of barley in the field as they bent gracefully in the wind. A good harvest this year, by the grace of God.

He remembered the day after he and Eleanor had been wed, how he had taken her out to view such a scene. He had been proud to display the physical riches of his estate; the barley and oats springing strong from Huntingdon's fertile earth. Eleanor, her long fair hair flying in the same brisk breeze he felt now against his face, had admired all in a sincere and adoring way which had made his heart beat with even more pride, and he had silently hoped that she would soon prove as fertile as his land. He needed sons to inherit from him and continue his line.

His hopes had soon been realised. The next year the wheat had been waving in the summer breeze, she had not ridden out with him to admire it because Robert had been growing within her belly. And within one short month of that harvest, she was dead after giving birth to him.

David had many fond memories of Eleanor but he lamented how quickly they now began to fade in his mind. There had been a time when he could have recalled the details of a conversation with Eleanor as he had lain beside her, staring up at the canopy of his bed, feeling the touch of her slender fingers in his dark hair. Rudely, fondness departed and was replaced with the melancholy reminders of how quickly time passed. His hair was now grey and Eleanor's grave gathered creeping moss which mocked the cold stone beneath it.

Her death had been a cruel blow. David had never thought she would die before him. He had, occasionally, imagined his own death, the mourners, his children's futures as heirs.

But she had been gone more than two and twenty years, and there was just one legitimate heir. Who was every bit as stubborn as Eleanor, who had used to lower her fair lashes in assumed acquiescence to him but whose lips had set and whose heart had steadily beat in resistance.

David shook himself out of his thoughts of the past as he and Chartain clattered through the main gate of Huntingdon and into the inner courtyard.

Dismounting from White Surrey, he glanced up at the solar window and glimpsed Adela's solemn face hovering there as though keeping watch for him, and he sighed to himself.

Robert to see and deal with again, no doubt. The boy must have woken and the Lord alone knew what mood he would be in after learning the truth about his abduction from Sherwood, thought David.

He irritably tramped through the main entrance hall after bidding Chartain bring him clean boots to his private withdrawing chamber, and then crossed the Great Hall to collar his steward.

"Godwin! Send wine up to the Great Chamber."

He needed a drink before he faced Robert again.

Once in the privacy of his withdrawing chamber just off the Great Hall, David wearily flung off his cloak and sat down on the windowseat, rested his hands on his knees and was given to pensive thought.

He found he did not like to revisit the memories of yesterday. But Robert's face full of fury as he had learned of what David had done came back to ring in David's mind. The strike out at David, too - done on impulse by a groggy Robert, but clearly with no less sincere feeling behind it.

Robert's strike out at David had missed, but David found now that it still hurt. The intention loaded behind it hurt. And strangely enough, the way it had missed had hurt, too. It had somehow framed Robert's vulnerability as a blind man, that flailing jab that had missed its intended target. He regretted grabbing Robert's shoulders and shouting directly into his face, but he hadn't known what else to do to ensure Robert paid attention to him. One usually knew when the other person was paying attention to your speaking because their gaze would be fixed upon you. Those strange eyes of Robert's with those white pupils could not seem to fix upon anything, and even when he had been talking to Robert, those eyes had flicked aimlessly around, the face had been mostly blank, and David had not been sure that Robert had been paying attention at all, at times. It both befuddled and irritated him.

He broke out of his thoughts and glanced up as Chartain entered with the clean boots.

"You can keep yourself busy by cleaning these," David told Chartain, standing by the window in his chamber and removing his spurs and muddied riding boots. "And there's another pair under the windowseat here which I see you've neglected. You're slacking, Chartain. I saw you idle off whilst I spoke to Potkin at his bedside; I suppose you went and kept company with some of the Fearnley village lasses. I can see we shall have to curb your visits there. You've your future to think of and I cannot abide a slack squire."

Chartain looked distastefully at the mud encrusted boots. "Yes, my lord," he replied obediently.

"I don't know what's coming over you." David pulled on the clean boots. "Everyone seems bitten by amour, if it isn't you off with the village lasses, it's Barnaby the ditcher having to own to another little bastard, and if it isn't either of you, then it's somebody else. I thought amour ran wild only in Spring. Someone has forgotten to mention to you all that it is now high summer."

"Yes, my lord," Chartain muttered, scooping up the boots.

David made for the door. "You can clean the saddlery and my spurs, as well as those boots. Then wait on me in the Great Hall." He paused in the doorway and shook his head at the squire. "I don't know, Chartain. Amor. I suffer these proceedings with every new squire I take on. You know, in my day, we did not plait our locks at night to obtain wavy hair in the morn, nor did we moon after the ladies. When I was a squire your age and lusting after the ladies, my master soon knocked it out of me, and I'm heartily glad he did." He left, banging the door to.

"So, I suspect, were all the fine ladies spared your advances," Chartain muttered to the closed door, and made for it himself with the armful of boots.

David re-entered the Great Hall. "Not now, Godwin," he snapped at the steward who ventured forwards towards him, and ascended the stairs leading off the side of the dais to the Great Chamber above.

The Great Chamber was empty and silent, the shutters flung open to admit the hazy summer light, showing a view over the main entrance and the curtain walls to the meadowland and spring planting beyond in the distance. The wine was waiting on a small covered table. David poured it from the jug and took a long draught from the goblet. The liquid coursed down his dry dusty throat and comfortably warmed his stomach.

He set the goblet down and gave a sigh, glad for a moment's peace alone to gather his thoughts and his emotions before he saw his son again - and then turned sharply to face the door as it opened and Adela entered.

She closed the door softly behind her and moved across the chamber to him, her eyes going from the wine jug to his face.

"How's Robert this morn," David managed to ask.

"Much better. Up from his bed and dressed, and has an appetite. He does not look so pale."

David but nodded and then stared down at his goblet in thought.

Adela laid her hand on his arm. "There's ale in the solar, my lord, and food. Higg and Berolt managed to throw a noon meal together of sorts. Some of yester-eve's pork, some new bread, and broth made from a ham bone. I had it fetched up to the solar; I felt you would prefer to eat in private this day."

David gave her a grateful smile. "I swear you can read my mind."

She smiled back. "The kitchens are a fair pickle, and Higg and Berolt constantly at loggerheads on how to run them now Herfast is gone."

David poured himself more wine. "How did the burial go."

Adela smoothed down her skirts and stood beside him at the small covered table. "As well as a burial can ever go. How was Potkin at Fearnley?"

David downed the second goblet of wine. "He lost the eye but is well, considering. I compensated both he and Walter's widow. Promised her that her home was safe til the end of her days. Her second son wants to go into the Church, I promised I would do what I could there."

Adela nodded thoughtfully in response, then looked up at David. "Robert wants to see you."

David almost flinched at the ridiculousness of that statement, yet knew there was no other word that could be used. "Where is he?"

Robert was alone in the solar.

He sat on the wooden settle by the unlit fire and was given to thought.

He had not been in this solar for three long years. It was a strange feeling. It was still difficult to get used to being in chambers, to feel a man-made roof over his head, shutting out the sky.

He was still surprised that he had not been kept locked within his bedchamber. Adela had left him to see to household matters for a while, but had not locked his chamber door as Robert suspected his father had ordered her.

He had decided not to stray beyond his bedchamber and immediately display either his capabilities or his intent to escape. Instead, left on his own, he had paced out the dimensions of his bedchamber and explored its contents by touch, learning where everything was and re-acquainting himself with his childhood surroundings.

Then he had pulled up the small stool to the window that he knew overlooked the inner courtyard, and there had sat and listened to all the comings and goings below in the courtyard, glad to feel the warmth of the sunshine and the blow of the breeze against his face. And he had thought of Rhiannon and Ellie, and had deliberated on how best to get himself out of this situation.

There were only two options as far as he could make out. Either persuade his father to give up this folly and take him back to Sherwood - or try to escape. For the moment, he preferred to try persuasion; to make his father see sense. Things were strained enough between he and his father at the moment, and he preferred not to inflame the situation.

It would not be easy, Robert knew, to try and persuade David to do anything. He was a man much set upon his own ways, his own aims, his own beliefs, his own views about what was true. He was not good at believing or accepting things he did not want to believe or accept if there was an alternative of pushing them away to be hidden. He was not good at making leaps of faith, and a very large leap of faith would be required to believe and accept the circumstances surrounding Robert's blindness.

Robert had wondered whether his father would ever believe or accept.

He had still been sitting there at the window and thinking upon it all when Adela had returned to him. His father would soon be returning from Fearnley, she had said, and she had fetched the noon meal up to the privacy of the solar where he and David could perhaps talk without the entire household gazing on. Would he come?

Robert had been glad to leave the confines of his bedchamber. He had felt his way along the lines and turns of the passageways, trailing the fingertips of one hand lightly along the inner wall to guide himself, counting the doors his hand encountered and remembering to himself what they led to.

As he had walked, tapping his stick lightly from side to side ahead of him, he had been aware that Adela had hovered anxiously at his side, keeping pace with him. She had several times asked him if he needed aid and several times she had nervously wared him of steps or a turn looming up before his stick had encountered it and he had negotiated the steps or turn with perfect ease, and he had gained a clear impression that she watched his progress with some apprehension and a strange sort of sad curiosity.

Once they had reached the solar, he had let Adela take his arm and guide him over to the settle by the hearth, although he remembered well enough where it was. Large heavy objects like settles and chairs were not often moved from their location. He had quickly traced out the map of the solar in his mind from memory; the settle set at a right-angle to the fire, with its back to the large glazed window that overlooked the approach from the main gates. His father's grand carved chair set opposite him by the hearth, and a single covered trestle table set in the far corner. The echoes of voices and footsteps in here were dulled by the embroidered hangings he remembered being on the walls.

What he had forgotten about regarding the layout of the solar, Adela had briefly volunteered the description of as she had escorted him to the settle. She had bid him sit, and then had fetched him a platter of food from the nearby table. She had sat with him and they had ate and she had tried to make stilted, over-bright conversation, and all the time he had sensed that she had been watching him with the same sort of sad curiosity.

Where Robert sat now on the settle, he was aware by the draught that he faced another window across the chamber; the window that overlooked the inner courtyard. He turned his head to listen to the sounds that rose from below in the courtyard. Someone was trundling a handcart with a squeaky wheel over the cobbles. There came the regular dull thwack of shopping wood from the kitchens yard.

The fingertips of his left hand were paused on the pewter rim of his half-finished platter of food. His right hand was lain on the shaft of his guiding stick, which was propped against his knee. The tip of the stick rested against the floor. The floor of the solar and the floors of the chambers surrounding it were wooden, and through his stick now, Robert could feel the faint vibrations as quick footsteps hurried down the passage beyond the solar, and heavier footsteps crossed an expanse of floor in a nearby chamber. He felt a door slam; the vibration trembled immediately up his guiding stick and against his alert fingers.

Sighted people seemed to have no idea of the sensory web he could string so delicately out around him to catch so much in it, and Robert wondered now at their blindness to his web.

He turned his head again, slowly sweeping his surroundings with his ears, listening intently to the faint sounds that could be heard within other chambers beyond the solar.

Being inside muffled things; walls, windows, and doors limited the volume of the sounds coming from the outside. But he had heard two horses arrive in the inner courtyard and heard his father's voice drift up as it had instructed Chartain about something. Adela had excused herself and he had listened to the creak of the solar door pull shut behind her and then her soft footsteps down the passage only to halt and creak open another door.

The footsteps had gone and all had grown quiet now, and Robert felt bored beyond words. He was aware that he was frowning in answer to the uneasy swirl of feeling that kept knotting his stomach at thought of Sherwood. There was always plenty happening in Sherwood; its rhythms of nature and pulsing life constantly flowed around him to delight him and entertain him with all its sounds and scents and movements - but Huntingdon and its chambers so far seemed like a succession of small boxes he had been shut into. He seemed to travel from one enclosed box only to enter another, and sometimes he felt as though there was not enough air and not enough space.

Sherwood....there was always enough space in Sherwood; treetops whispering and rustling high above him and the streams running away into the distance. Space in all directions.

Robert sighed at the thought of Sherwood and rubbed an uneasy hand across his face as he thought of Rhiannon. He suddenly wanted her - and Ellie - beside him so much that it was like a physical pain. She would be beside herself with worry now at his disappearance. And what were the others thinking, feeling? They would have surely gone to ask at Maybury when he had not returned to camp, and then the next logical thing for them to do would have been to try and track him. They would have walked the route by the stream which they knew he would have taken, and Robert wondered now if they had managed to follow the course of events - and if they had found the blood that surely must have flowed from Walter the hayward. If they had found it, did they think it was his?

He suddenly straightened up as he heard a door further along the passage creak open, and then two pairs of footsteps - one heavy, one lighter - approach down the passage towards the solar. He turned his face expectantly towards the direction of the solar door as it was swung open, and waited, listening.

David entered the solar with a mixture of emotions. Whilst Adela immediately greeted Robert and then bustled across the chamber to the table of food, David lingered uneasily by the solar door.

He looked across at his son. Robert sat on the settle by the unlit fire, platter of half-eaten food and a pewter goblet set on the long seat beside him. The fingertips of one hand rested on the rim of the platter, and the upturned, solemn face was turned in David's direction. David could almost SEE Robert listen, and he marvelled silently to himself at it.

"Robert," he acknowledged briefly at last across the solar to his son, and moved after Adela to the table with the food.

"Father," Robert acknowledged quietly in reply, and kept his head turned in David's direction, curiously listening to the small movements, the rustle of Adela's skirts. He heard the glug of liquid into a beaker or goblet, the dull stabbing up of food from a pewter platter with a knife tip.

David, now at the table, paused in filling his platter with food and glanced back across at his son. It was with a feeling of some guilt that he studied the gash filled with dried blood at the hairline on Robert's left temple and the shades of bruising that extended from it down into his left eye and across his cheekbone, but bruises would soon fade, and the gash would close up and heal and there would be no violent reminder of what he had engineered, David tried to console himself with.

He turned his attention briefly back to the small array of food set on the covered trestle table in the corner of the solar. Broth and bread and cheese and some pork as Adela had described, plus a few small and bitter-looking apples. He slid a few more slices of pork onto his platter and then crossed the solar to his chair at the fireside.

"You look better, Robert," he observed loudly but kindly in an attempt to make conversation, as he seated himself in his carved chair opposite the settle.

Adela took her own platter to sit on the window-seat, from where she warily watched father and son across the solar.

Robert did not answer but turned his head to refocus upon David's new position as he settled in the chair opposite with a sigh.

He held his head slightly too high, David observed, and judged that if Robert had sight he would be looking at the top of David's head, not into his father's face. David watched the eyes, the clear symbol of Robert's blindness, and tried again to come to terms with them. It was hard to keep track of them, they could not be secured by another's gaze.

It was just as hard to secure what Robert's thoughts might be. Vague, unformed little expressions swept across his face, his brow twitching in what might be concentration, David thought - perhaps trying to work out what was happening around him. He wondered how confusing a completely black world was for Robert. He did not seem too fazed by it, however, and David thought that there was some consolation in the fact that at least Robert seemed to be adjusting well to a life of blindness.

"Your head no longer pains you?" David questioned briskly as he ate.

"The pain is gone," Robert replied quietly.

David collected up the last morsels meat from his platter with the tip of his knife and decided to continue with the brisk and pleasant approach. "Then that is good. You found your way fair enough to the solar, then, with the aid of your stick."

"I walked with him," Adela cut in from the window-seat with a similar attempt at forced cheerfulness, "but I found I did not have to take his arm and guide him, not even once - he managed very well with the aid of his stick."

Robert's jaw tightened and he gave a slight frown at being discussed about over his head as though he were an infant, but still he spoke quietly. "I've walked these passages from birth - of course I know my way around my own home."

David's nervous hands played with the crust in his hand, but he paid no heed to the crumbs that fell everywhere. "I am glad you still acknowledge that this is your home."

"Was," Robert said low.

David ignored his comment. He put his bread down on the plate in front of him, and took a large gulp of the dark red wine in his goblet. "You are free to wander around Huntingdon as you please, if you feel you can manage, Robert. I do not intend to keep you locked in your chamber as though you were an errant child. Perhaps Adela can take you to the herb gardens and read to you. You may enjoy sitting there."

Robert ignored his father's comment in turn and launched straight into accusation. "You burnt my clothes. Will you destroy my identity too?"

David swallowed his last piece of bread and wiped his mouth. "Your identity is Robert of Huntingdon, son and heir to me."

"You think my blindness now gives you a God-given opportunity to control the way I live my life?" Robert's voice was cold. "You are grievously mistaken in your belief."

David's response was equally cold. "Your blindness robs you of many of the rights a normal man of your age and status would have. The blind are not normal, they cannot BE normal, they cannot achieve the same level of functioning independently as sighted people."

Robert's response was to uneasily swing his head aside in that peculiar motion he had, and David watched discomfited, as those strange eyes flitted around without purpose. Their movement prompted him to irritably say: "Be grateful, Robert!"

Robert quickly jerked his head back to face David and his voice was incredulous. "Grateful?!"

David set his platter aside on the small covered table by his chair and spoke with calm logic. "You have become a blind man, reliant upon others and their good natures to aid you. It is a sorry state of affairs for a young man such as yourself but you must needs learn and accept the new boundaries your handicap has inflicted upon you."

He leaned forwards in his chair towards his son and spoke more sternly. "Be grateful that due to the grace of King John giving you a full pardon and due to my recovering you from Sherwood, you will be able to live a life as a blind man free from the struggle of poverty and hardship and parish charity."

"You think me useless because I am blind?" Robert demanded.

From her place at the solar window-seat, Adela watched father and son with troubled eyes.

David sighed, sat back and ran his hand through his hair in exasperation. He spoke with sarcasm. "Pray tell me, what use hath a blind man in the measure of most things?"

Robert felt such a strong and silent rage rise up inside him that it took him by surprise and rendered him speechless and at a loss for how to respond to that remark, even though a thousand sentences defending his capability as a blind individual swam through his mind. He found himself unable to speak for pure anger, yet frustratedly knowing that his inability to speak would only seem to David that no defence of a blind mans capabilities could be found.

And if he could find words, would his father only brush them off as false protestations of independence, or take them as proof that he was in denial?

It seemed to Robert that he could not win, however he answered - even if he COULD find the words against his raging emotion.

_Why should I have to prove myself to him?_ Robert thought with resentment. _He is my father, he should know better than to think that of me. Why should I have to prove myself to him just because I am blind?_

He had been feeling trapped physically, but now suddenly he felt trapped emotionally and mentally as well by David; pushed into a corner and kept there, as though he were a child again.

David watched his son curiously, trying to read the vague shadows of expression that fluttered across Robert's face. Thwarted in recognising many of them, he felt his irritability increase. Robert had shut off from him as a child whenever he had needed putting in his place; it seemed that he was still capable of doing that, even as an adult.

What difference was there really between a stubborn child and a blind adult? None, really. They both were helpless and needed care and protection. The only difference really was that a child would grow up and lose their helplessness and a blind adult remained blind and would never lose that helplessness, thought David.

He dropped careful words into the silence that had so rapidly become like a gulf between he and his son. "But blind or no, Robert, you can still function as my legitimate son and heir even if at a diminished level."

Robert's fingers clenched around the shaft of his guiding stick and he frowned, both uneasy and suspicious. "What do you mean?"

David rose and crossed the chamber to pour himself more wine. "I mean that you can still be married and beget legitimate heirs for Huntingdon. Continue my line - OUR line."

Robert half-twisted round where he sat on the settle to follow the sound of his father's movements across the chamber. He shot out a defiant statement in the direction of his father. "I am already married."

David did not glance up as he tipped more wine from the jug into his goblet. "Tuck married you and that woman, did he not? He has been outlawed, and Abbot Hugo had him excommunicated long ago. The marriage is not valid, therefore, and you have a bastard child."

"I have a daughter," Robert insisted.

"A bastard," David corrected.

"A DAUGHTER," Robert repeated through clenched teeth. "Eleanor. My flesh and blood, my child - my LEGITIMATE child."

David's voice was dispassionate in its calm correction, as a father would correct a child. "No, she be a bastard of your body. Furthermore, she be a girl. I have no use for a girl - a daughter of your body. I need grandsons."

"Well, you're not likely to get them if you keep me from my wife," Robert replied sarcastically.

David drained dry his goblet and set it back down on the table. "Your "wife" will not be receiving anymore little bastards from YOU."

Robert's heart thudded in his chest, but he tried to speak calmly. "What do you mean."

David moved to stand before him and he looked down at his son. "What I say. Your place is here, now, not Sherwood. You need to be cared for. You also need to be saved from yourself and your addled ideas of this Herne, being some sort of saviour of the people."

Robert scowled. "I never said I was that. Pray do not put delusions of grandeur into me where there are none."

"Well, maybe just delusions, then," David said. "Your blindness has made you take on some strange form of denial."

"David!" admonished Adela from where she sat on the window seat; he immediately silenced her with a glare flung briefly in her direction.

Robert clenched his fists. "You cannot keep me here against my will!"

David merely raised an eyebrow at the outburst. "Can I not? You have been legitimately pardoned by King John due to your blindness, on the provision that you are delivered into my care where you will cause no further trouble."

"My men will seek me out," Robert said angrily.

"They will have no idea where you are," David replied. "I am the last person in the world they will suspect of taking you from Sherwood. They will cast the blame on Gisbourne - a blame I am sure, knowing Gisbourne, he will be willing to take for the amount of praise he will get from certain parties such as de Rainault. Failing that, they will cast the blame on your abduction and seeming murder on other outlaws - I hear there is a group of them recently sprung up outside Lincoln who have been boasting they will take over Sherwood."

Robert's stomach turned over in distress at the thought of Rhiannon believing he had met his end at the hands of Gisbourne or the Lincoln outlaws. But he tried to keep his voice calm and defiant. "Word will eventually reach Sherwood where I am."

"Word travels exceeding slow, even in high summer when roads are more passable," David replied. "And after harvest time, you and I will be travelling to my estate in Navarre where they will be very hard-put to find you, let alone reach you."

He moved to the hearth where he stood with his back to the unlit grate, and folding his arms, looked at Robert, who jerked his head uneasily round to follow the movement of his father.

David cleared his throat. "I've sought for you a marriage partner in Navarre, and I have found one. Lisette de Sernays, eldest daughter of Sir Roger de Sernays. He is a well respected man and she is an obedient daughter. I had occasion to see her for myself when I was in Navarre two months back. She is eighteen years, tall, straight of limb, healthy and unmarked with the scars of pox or anything else. She is demure and discreet - and, I believe, pious and kind. She accepts your sad situation and says she will care for you."

Something about his father's patronising tone shot a fiery trail of anger and distress through Robert's very core. Still aghast at this revelation he hardly knew how to contend with it. "I don't wish to be cared for in that way! I am not an imbecile who needs to be cared for!"

"Then stop acting like one!" Irritated, David watched him. "God's teeth, as if blindness wasn't enough of a tragedy and a mar, you appear at times as though you are not sound of mind! With that, it is best that you are removed from much public gaze before the weight of embarrassment of you descends heavy upon my shoulders!"

Robert swore, and where he sat, swung fully round to face his father standing by the fire, aware his brow was twisted in a frown. "I will never give you grandchildren by anyone save Rhiannon!"

David's answer was matter-of-fact. "So you say now. A lifetime spent in solitude on my Navarre estate should change your mind. You'll be glad then to tup the wife I arrange for you. A man is a man after all - and I presume there's nothing wrong with the rest of you, it's only your eyes that don't work. Legitimate grandsons are what I wish for, and you shall provide them, damn you, instead of running off with that scar-faced whore from Leicester who has but given you a bastard daughter!"

"Robert-" his voice suddenly softened, as did his eyes momentarily and taking a step forwards towards the settle he laid a tentative hand on Robert's shoulder; Robert immediately angrily shrugged it off. "I will come and visit you in Navarre. I'll not leave you forgotten there."

"So say you," Robert said through gritted teeth. "Isn't that why you want me in Navarre? Out of the way - forgotten about? Out of sight, out of mind? Well may you be able to forget about me if you do not have to look upon me - but my wife and my men will not forget about me!"

David's voice, clipped and unyielding, cut in. "And do the dead remember, Robert? Do they?"

Robert lowered his head, clenching his jaw, trying to think how best to fight against this sentence his father had passed on him. Very real fear struck into his heart - Rhiannon and Ellie were in Sherwood without his protection, and he knew that Will and the others would defend them to the very last drop of their blood, but against the might of Gisbourne and a horde of soldiers, that may not be enough.

David continued. "Now you have been removed from the forest, Gisbourne will have no reason to hold back going into Sherwood for fear of antagonising me and losing whatever inheritance he thinks he can worm out of me. You surely know well what will happen then. Gisbourne may be a bloody fool at times when it comes to social occasions but he's far from inept as a soldier or he'd never have survived gaining his spurs. It may take him a while, but by sheer force of numbers he and his men will eventually crush that small pocket of resistance you formed in the forest."

He hesitated. "I could even tell Gisbourne where you and your men last struck camp," David said at last. "I came there only a few days ago, do you remember? To tell you about the pardon. We talked down by the lake. There is only one such large lake in Sherwood." He watched Robert's face keenly for reaction. "The Saracen blindfolded the soldier that was with me so the man would not know the way to where you lodged. But the Saracen did not blindfold me."

Robert's fingers clenched round the shaft of his guiding-stick. "I trusted you," he snarled low, the words hot in his throat.

David watched Robert's knuckles whiten and chewed his lip, well seeing the stubborn set look on Robert's face. "I'll bargain with you, Robert," David said finally.

Robert scowled in his direction. "I will enter into no bargain with you!"

"If you agree to my plans for you," David cut in, "I'll order Gisbourne to spare the life of your woman and child when he finds them."

Robert stopped short.

David watched his son's face carefully, trying to read the succession of emotions that crossed, it, and chose his next words carefully, making sure they were calm and weighted with reason. "I can do that. Gisbourne won't want to annoy me because he will wish for a portion of inheritance from me. He will wish to stay in my good favour for what it could bring him, so he will do as I request. I will write to him and tell him to spare the life your woman and child and they will be allowed to go free."

David shrugged. "Your men - I can't help you there. They've done too much, for too long. But your child is but an innocent babe, and your woman is but a woman."

Robert struggled to find a response. When he did, his voice was slow and suspicious, uncertain as to this bargain. "How...will I know you are telling the truth, that Gisbourne will leave them unharmed?"

"Me." Adela suddenly rose from the window seat, unable to keep quiet any longer. "I'll see your woman and child for myself and make sure they are safely sent on their way."

She ignored the sudden furious look David shot her in front of Robert's unaware face and continued to speak calmly. "Robert-" She came across and knelt before him where he sat on the settle, and took her hands in his; he twitched a series of uneasy expressions at her touch, unwilling to believe in her sincerity. She saw it in his face so well, and the thought that he was reluctant to believe that she was being sincere, shocked her. "Robert, trust me. May I be damned before God if I lie to you about this."

Robert lowered his head, trying to think through the tumult of destiny that his father had suddenly flung onto his shoulders.

His father spoke the truth about Gisbourne. Robert knew that well enough. There was nothing to stop Gisbourne now from going into Sherwood and laying it to waste in attempt to hunt down his men - and if he managed to round them up, Rhiannon and Ellie would be amongst them. There was no knowing what Gisbourne would do to Rhiannon and Ellie in his viciousness, seeing as how he would not be able to reach Robert himself. A very real fear struck Robert's heart.

"I'll see your woman," Adela re-affirmed, "and I'll make sure she and the child reach safely wherever she wishes to go. I'll write you a letter when you're in Navarre." She squeezed his hands gently in hers. "I have no wish to see a woman and her child be slaughtered by Gisbourne, Robert - you know full well I have no love for him, but every love for you."

Robert kept his head lowered, his mind going to Rhiannon in Sherwood and how she must be feeling at his disappearance - what was she thinking? That Gisbourne had him, or the Lincoln outlaws? - that they had murdered him and cast his body into a stream or gully somewhere?

"Robert?" His father's sharp demand cut into his dazed thoughts, clearly wishing a response, an agreement to this foul bargain.

Robert felt trapped in a maze. Even his hands still held in Adela's felt trapped; her fingers kept insistently pressing on his knuckles, her touch silently pleading with him to agree to what had been proposed. He felt confused, he could not read her intentions; he did not know whether she just wanted him to agree for the sake of peace with his father, or whether she was really on his side.

He was certain of only one thing - he could not rely upon her to help him. He could only rely upon himself in this situation.

Robert pulled his hands away from hers with their irritating surges of pressure. He kept his head lowered and chose his quiet and defeated words carefully, directed at his father's presence hovering above him. "You know I cannot do anything but submit to this indignity. I am as you said, a blind man who is reliant upon others to aid me."

"Robert-" Adela's voice began in sympathy, and her hands tried to take his in hers once again, this time in comfort, but Robert angrily pulled them away at first touch. She seemed to understand, and did not try to touch him again. He lowered his head again and was still once more, and there was for a few moments nothing but an awkward silence in the solar.

"So," David's voice said at length out of the awkward silence, more calm, more self-assured, sounded over Robert, looming in his dazed ears, "it is settled. I am glad that we can reach an...amicable agreement. Best for the atmosphere in this household."

Robert kept his head lowered and did not answer.

He felt his father's uncertain hand touch his shoulder, as though trying to offer some sort of apology. "Robert?" David asked.

Robert shrugged off his father's hand, rose without a word, and gathering his guiding stick into his hand, he tapped his way across the solar to where he knew the door was, aware that David and Adela's sad attention was focused on him. He came up against the wall, followed it along to the door, fumbled with the iron ring that served as a handle, savagely yanked the door open and strode out and away down the passage to his chamber.

In the solar, Adela rose to her feet and looked across at David. "I doubt until you and Robert leave for Navarre at summer's end that any atmosphere in this household will be truly amicable, my lord."