Post of the Month

~ July 2010 ~

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Robert/David ~ Written by Siiri & Nikke. 

Posted on the HoS Yahoo group November 2008.

The evening was quiet. The candles set in their prickets on the walls and in the wheel above that hung suspended from a sturdy beam painted flickering shadows on the fine-plastered walls of the solar and on the tapestries that hung there.

And David and Robert were alone, and in silence.

Where he sat opposite Robert at the small covered table in the solar, David watched his son's fingers feel the number of dots on the dominoes at each end of the rapidly spreading game.

Here, they were equals; his son could play by touch, David could play by sight, and the game worked to neither's advantage.

Robert moved his hand lightly across the table to feel the indented dots upon the five ivory tablets still in his possession, checking anew what numbers he had against what his father had just laid down.

His mind was still full of the day which had been. It had been a strange, formless day. Unlike Sherwood, when there had always been something to do; tasks - gathering wood, fletching arrows, sharpening knives, fetching water, gleaning bread and ale and cheese from the various villages. Checking fishtraps and snares. Making rope from fibrous strips of willow-bark.

Instead he had awoken in a bed in a chamber and found there was nothing to do. He was not used to the softness of the bed and found his muscles complained. He was not used to a roof over his head - to a ceiling above him which blocked out the sky and made his and other's voices echo in a way not of nature, and the feeling of that ceiling somewhere above him, pressing down on him, had greatly unsettled him.

Robert had tried his best not to fight against the strangeness of his surroundings - so familiar in one way, so remembered, but yet so alien in others. Instead he had tried his best to absorb that strangeness, and flow with it. Learn about it and accept it.

He had sensed that was the best way forwards to coping with being at Huntingdon against his will.

He had not been kept to his chamber, but he had remained there voluntarily for a great deal of the past day. Mostly sitting on the cracked stool at the window that overlooked the inner courtyard below, listening to the comings and goings. He had not wanted to venture forth into it - as yet. It was always best to first pause on the threshold and observe and learn, before venturing into anything. Vital if you were sighted - but doubly vital if you were blind. Robert knew.

He had needed to fall into the rhythm of Huntingdon once more, relearn its pulse - understand this place once more, after three years of being away from it. Once he had done that, then he would explore Huntingdon further in a physical sense. Maybe somewhere out there was an overlooked escape route, or an ally, or someone he could subtly tap for all sorts of information that could help him.

Reluctantly, he had however gone down to the Great Hall to partake of the evening meal, when his father had demanded his presence there. It would do no good to remain cloistered in his chamber like a sulking child, Robert had thought. Best to show willing, to appear as though he grudgingly was coming to terms with all which had been imposed upon him.

From above in the solar, he had heard the general murmur of the household as they had gathered to eat the evening meal in the Great Hall below. As he had descended the stone newel staircase that led down to the dais, feeling for each step below his feet and had tapped his way the few yards across the dais to find the long dais table where his father presided over the rest of the Great Hall at each meal, he had been aware of the household gathered in the Great Hall, watching him from where they surely sat to partake of the evening meal, on flung-up trestle tables below the dais, below the salt. Robert had felt their stares on him like a physical pressure.

And as he had come into contact with the sturdy shape of the oak dais table and had felt his way along its length to find his father's carved high-backed chair, and to sit beside it in the place of son and heir, he had heard the murmurs from the watching household servants grow in unrest and consternation and had picked out various whispers below in in the Hall. "Blind....he is blind..." "His eyes, look at his eyes...." "Dear God, look at his eyes! - what caused that?"

They would never believe him if he told them, not in a thousand years, Robert had thought with a twinge of wry amusement. It had been hard enough in the past year for the villagers around Sherwood to accept his blindness and believe in what caused it, even with all their love of Herne and he as Herne's Son. The born and bred Huntingdon people had no such figurehead as Herne to believe in. His eyes at best would be considered by the Huntingdon household as the result of some terrible illness or accident - and at worst, would be considered a sign of sorcery or a curse placed upon him.

The evening meal had dragged. Robert had irritably picked at the food lain before him. His father to his left had been awkward and seemingly embarrassed of his blindness, had offered little conversation, and Adela on his right had been over-concerned and solicitous, guiding his hand to the stem of a goblet set on the linen cloth and even offering to cut up his meat for him, which Robert had reacted with bad-temper to, feeling insulted. She had withdrawn from him, somewhat hurt by his reaction to her offers of aid, and he had continued to irritably pick at the food he had been given.

There had been little ceremony about the meal and he had been glad to ascend once more to the privacy of the solar once it was done, away from the stares and whispers of the general household.

Now, it was late. There was the smell of candles burning in the solar. Below them in the Great Hall, he could hear very little movement and a few muted voices as the household settled to sleep.

Adela had left he and his father and had retired to her chamber to sleep. She had come over to Robert in a swirl of her sweet violet perfumed oil and had kissed his cheek; he had placidly let her do so but had not made an attempt to kiss her back.

He was in a strange place with Adela at the moment, Robert had realised. Neither hating her nor having the old love he had had for her. He thought now however that he could not blame her for this. This - being taken from Sherwood and being kept here at Huntingdon against his will - this was his father's doing, and so it was his father he should be angry with.

But he found he was also angry with Adela. For having so obviously been party to his father's plans for him and agreeing with them. For different reasons, mayhap - thinking that it was best he came under David's rule to be cared for, for it was clear to Robert that Adela felt that he could not take care of himself blind - but still being party to his father's plans and agreeing with the action David had taken.

Robert wondered if he would ever forgive her. His father too, for that matter.

He had been surprised when a clearly ill at ease David had asked him to play at the dominoes. Haltingly, slowly, as though he had wondered whether Robert still could, being blind....and yet somehow wanting to do something with him, to communicate over, to build some sort of bridge between them.

Robert's instinct had been to respond in the affirmative and to show willing, to see if it could get him anywhere with his father and reach a deeper understanding with him.

_Be friends with him. Show him you are still a person, still his son, and still capable, only in different ways from how he remembers you. Then thus you may start to change his view of you and have him come to his senses about holding you here._

Robert could only hope. He would try this way first. It would be easier for everyone if he was successful this way. He would rather remain on good terms with his father than become an angry, bitter opponent of him. He remembered all the times he had struggled against his father as a child and as an adolescent and felt his father crush him. He did not want to feel like that again.

David watched Robert curiously as his hands passed over the line of dominoes before him. What was Robert thinking? It was difficult to tell. Whether on purpose or not, his face remained for the most part impassive. He had not smiled yet. Not even when Adela had kissed his cheek goodnight. He had merely borne the kiss planted against his cheek with an outward calmness and had made no attempt to reach for her and to kiss her back, as he had used to as a boy.

"You're very quiet, Robert," David said at last, "have been so all this while."

"I'm thinking," Robert merely replied. "Is the day dark yet outside?"

"Yes, and the moon has risen. It's a fine full moon, as I'm sure you can imagine."

Robert did not answer that comment, just continued to feel over the ivory dominoes in his possession, concentrating on them. David saw no flicker on Robert's face that he remembered what a full moon looked like, and his son's lack of reaction cut David to the core. Could Robert really not remember anything he had ever seen?

The moonlight slanted in through the window and fell in scattered patches over their clothes and hair. From by the table, David's favourite hunting dog Olwen whimpered in her sleep, chasing rabbits in her dreams.

David considered his own group of dominoes before him, and then looked up at his silent son. "You said you think. What do you think upon, Robert?"

Robert swung his head uneasily, annoyed at the probing, and his answer escaped him before he could temper it. "My thoughts are my own and I will not make anyone privy to them if I wish it."

Watching him, David felt annoyed. Once again, the door he had been trying to open in friendliness had slammed in his face; Robert had drawn his shutter down against him and David felt thwarted in his attempt to understand his son. Robert's face was strange; twitching with expression one moment, blank the next, and the eyes...the eyes were unreadable. He hated looking Robert in the eyes but all the same was fascinated by them.

He attempted to seek where Robert's thoughts might lie; attempted to make conversation. "It was...awkward this night at table in the Great Hall. But the household will grow used to you. Adela has instructed them not to move anything in chambers you are likely to be in. Not one table, nor chair, nor chest will be moved from the location it is currently in."

"I little care what people think of my blindness," Robert said. "Either they will get used to me or they will not; it matters little to me."

"Well, it should," David immediately snapped back, irritated, and then almost immediately again, softened. "They were struck by the tragedy of what has befallen you, that is all."

"My blindness is not a tragedy," Robert snapped in return, just as irritated.

David felt a deep annoyance once more. "Why must you possess such a stubborn view, Robert? It gets you nowhere. You were the same as a boy - stubborn and unbending. Caused me many a time to use my belt on you to rid you of that stubbornness, that willfulness. Alas, I see that I did not succeed. You are still as stubborn and as wilful at twenty-two years as you were at ten years old."

Robert frowned and decided to ignore the accusation. He laid down an ivory tablet at the other end of the growing line of them arranged in the middle of the table, and abruptly changed the subject. "What are you going to do about Gisbourne now that you have acknowledged him as your bastard son, Father?"

"You mean, what am I going to give him," David said knowledgeably, almost amusedly, looking into Robert's face. Was that an expression of apprehension that shadowed it?

"If you like," Robert conceded. "What are you going to give him?"

"No more and no less than what he should have, being a bastard of my body," David replied. "A parcel of land I have in Northumberland should suffice." He laid down the next to last tablet in his possession, again steered Robert's fingertips to it, then regarded Robert's face curiously and was prompted to add: "You needn't worry, I am not going to hand him either Huntingdon or the earldom."

"Supposing something happens to you?" Robert queried. He sook a way into the argument for keeping him here at Huntingdon rather than be sent to Navarre. "If I am to be locked away across the seas in Navarre, what chance do I have of keeping Huntingdon safe from any attempt of he taking it over upon your death? Your other lands, too."

David raised an eyebrow as he regarded his son, disliking the subject of his own mortality to be raised. It only served to remind him of that mortality - that he could die with no legitimate grandsons to continue the line. But he answered his son calmly. "I wouldn't worry, Robert. By my dotage I will have your oldest son growing to manhood here at Huntingdon. And he will deal with any problems relating to Gisbourne and any offspring Gisbourne may produce, should the need arise. By that time, I will have groomed that eldest son - aye and his brothers - well."

Robert scowled. "You speak as though they are already born."

David's tone was confident. "They will be. You've already proved you can father children despite your blindness. And de Sernay's daughter is healthy and strong."

Robert was silent, instead he reached for his goblet set at his right hand and drained it.

David watched him. "You might be resistant to the idea now, Robert, but a man is a man and can't help but succumb to the urges of his body."

Robert's reply was biting. "Was that what happened to you the first time you saw Margaret of Gisbourne, Father?"

"Hold your tongue," David snapped.

"She was married," Robert accused.

"She was widowed - so we both thought." David drained his own goblet of wine, then added: "And don't accuse me of being unfaithful to your mother, because this was before I was pre-contracted to betrothe your mother."

Robert's voice was telling. "So you'd have married Margaret of Gisbourne, then. If Edmund of Gisbourne hadn't turned up alive after being presumed dead in the Holy Land...."

David fell silent, uneasy. Would he have done? Would he have gone against his own father's wishes to marry Margaret, when his father had put forwards Eleanor de Montville as a possible bride?

He cast his mind back to his father; a blunt, square man, huge calloused hands from regularly wielding a sword in melees, a man with a sparse tolerance for disobedience. David had been one of only two legitimate sons - much to his father's disappointment in his mother, who after David and his older brother, had only managed to produce dead babies before dying herself, of what David presumed to be exhaustion from child-bearing when David had been sixteen.

"I may have," David conceded stiffly at last in answer to Robert. "But that does not detract from the regard I had for your mother."

Robert gave a shudder. Gisbourne, already swelling in Margaret's body, would have been the legitimate heir of Huntingdon and the Earldom. And he himself would have never come into existence at all.

That thought was frightening....to realise how he might have never come into existence....

"I did love your mother, Robert," David repeated, this time more softly. "Not in the way that I loved Margaret, but....it was still love. And she, after all, gave me you, at cost of her own life."

"Why did you never marry again?" Robert asked, just as softly, trying to find a way forwards during this moment to accelerate his bid for freedom.

David shrugged, and then realised Robert could not see him. He looked across the small covered table at Robert's listening face. Robert sat there, interested, his hands resting lightly on the edge of the table before him.

"Maybe because Margaret was not widowed after all," he said wryly at last.

He realised now that whilst he had got over Eleanor's death, he had not got over losing Margaret to her suddenly alive husband turning up and reclaiming her. That had been more painful than her dying. Seeing someone you could not have because she was another man's.

Robert laid down another of his ivory tablets, then reached for the wine jug to the side of the small table and refilled his goblet. "Why did you not marry Adela? She's a good woman."

"Aye, she's a good woman," David conceded, "and I have a great affection for her, but she is of a lesser class." He hesitated, thinking over the matter. "She has never once pressed me to marry her," he said at last. "Perhaps, because over the years it became clear that she was barren. Unable to give me children. She perhaps did not want to....tie me down when I could have perhaps remarried, had more sons."

Robert decided to try and find a bond with his father. "My daughter is called Ellie. Named after my mother. Eleanor. We thought it a good name for her to carry."

"Sons are everything," David replied bluntly, "It is the naming of sons that is important....the naming of daughters can look after itself."

Robert felt as though he faced an impenetrable wall on the subject. "And if I had been a daughter?"

"I would have considered myself unlucky indeed," David replied. "Losing your mother....over a daughter. Mind you, losing your mother over a son who becomes blind in the prime of his life makes me also consider myself unlucky. Having the pity of my contemporaries because of you being blind is only marginally less distasteful to me than having their disdain because of you abandoning your duty in life and haring off to Sherwood to actively oppose the law of this land and live amongst the commoners, and aye - even breed with one of them."

Robert was silent, and his fingers tightened imperceptibly over one of the ivory tablets lain before him as his mind fled to Rhiannon in Sherwood, Rhiannon with Ellie in her arms, Rhiannon, no doubt by now wondering and fearing.

David watched his son's face curiously, wondering where Robert's thoughts lay. He fancied he knew, but was not going to probe, for fear of where that particular trail of conversation might lead them. He instead continued on the same theme. "However, that is my misfortune to bear. It is the common fate of sons to be misunderstood by their fathers, and of fathers to be unloved of their sons, but it has been the particular bane of the English throne."

"And Gisbourne?" Robert asked, his voice low.

David cleared his throat as he laid down his next to last ivory tablet at one end of the line. "No shame in having bastards. Our late King Henry had enough of them, after all - and I gather at the end of his life that he preferred them to his legitimate offspring, who had sorely let him down."

Robert was quick to move his hand across and find the newest tablet laid down; his fingertip checked the number of dots at its end, and he moved his hand back to his own collection of tablets to recheck what he had that he could match David's tablet with. He kept his voice casual as he reached over the covered table and laid his tablet end to end with David's most recent one. "I have heard say that when our late King Henry died at Chinon fifteen years ago, the only son at his bedside was an illegitimate one."

"That is so. Geoffrey, my lord Archbishop of York, had been the only son to attend Henry II on his deathbed, after even the King's favourite, my Liege lord John, had deserted him." David's calm voice carefully cut into the peace of the solar. "I believe King Henry said on his deathbed that his legitimate children were the real bastards."

His father's tone said everything; Robert felt his face twitch in a reaction of dismay to what had been said, and he wondered, did his face reflect his inner dismay? He did not know.

David watched his son for a moment, then took the last remaining ivory tablet in his possession and laid it next to Robert's at the end of the line. He took Robert's right wrist and steered his fingers to the tablet.

"I win," David said simply and calmly.

Robert made to move his hand away, but David's hand still over his pushed it firmly back down over the tablets, against the table, keeping it there, as though to drive his point home.

"I win," David said calmly again, but with a tone of finality about his voice that Robert recognised only too well. "You did not keep your tablets shielded from my gaze, Robert. You forgot I could see them, could therefore plan my own moves ahead of you." He pressed Robert's fingers even more firmly down against the last tablet, till Robert felt sure the indented dots on it would become imprinted upon his fingertips. "You forgot I can SEE, Robert. And that is the difference between us. The difference between weakness and strength."

Robert frowned, and jerked his hand away from under David's as though it had been burnt. He twisted sideways where he sat on the stool by the table, turning away from facing the sound of his father's voice, rubbing his right wrist with his left hand as though David's grip had left a stinging mark around it, still frowning to himself, and he did not speak.

David watched him impassively for a moment, seeing the barrier come down between them once more, then frowned to himself and rose from his seat at table.

"I'm away to my bed." He collected up ale-jug and goblet to take with him. "I presume you can find your own way to yours when you feel fit?"

Robert did not answer, and David sighed to himself. He had hoped his son's transition back to his old life would have been easier than this. He had hoped that Robert would accept what had been planned for him and been in a far less resistant state of mind before they took sail for Navarre in the autumn. Instead, David forsaw a summer spent at Huntingdon with a wall between he and his son. Unacceptance and sullenness on Robert's part. A constant battle of wills with very few words.

It was not going to be an easy summer, David realised now.

"Goodnight, Robert." He turned and left the solar, shutting the door quietly behind him.

Robert swung round on the stool to face the table again - and the door that his father had creaked closed behind him. He listened to the man's footsteps echo away down the passageway, and memories came back to him as a boy, of hearing those same footsteps echo away, when he had done some wrong-doing, and his father had taken him up to his bedchamber and used his belt, and then put him in his bed to reflect upon his wrong-doing.

He remembered laying there, small backside smarting, blanket drawn up to his chin, listening to his father's footsteps echo away down the passageway. much as they did now, and he remembered being filled with a sense of injustice. He wished he had happier memories of being his father's son and heir.

But the past could neither be changed, nor remembered differently.

Anger and frustration filled Robert, and he felt as though he were that small boy again. In his father's eyes, he supposed, he may as well be.

He ran both hands over the long line of the dominoes laid out on the table before him - and then angrily dashed them aside off the table, to hear them clatter to the wooden floor below, and leaning his elbows on the table, he buried his face against his hands and wassilent.