The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Fifth Annual Collection
- Автор: Датлоу Эллен, Виндлинг Терри
- Год: 1992
- Язык: английский
- Год: St.Martin’s Press
- Жанр: Ужасы
Электронная книга - «The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Fifth Annual Collection». Краткое содержание книги:
The roar of the crowd’s approval was not half as loud as Robin’s own joy.
He looked again to the crowd but the face he sought was not there.
Later, after his return and the celebration that followed in the camp, Robin walked out by himself through the greenwood. The moon shone brilliantly above the trees, the silvery light dappling the bushes. He walked to Kirkley Hall and in the bright moonlight the stones of the old manor gleamed.
“Well met, Robin,” said Vivian stepping from the shadows of the trees to meet him. “And did you win today?”
“Aye,” he answered. “I did.” And then he bowed his head sheepishly. “I had meant to bring you the golden arrow as a gift. But in the heat of my victory, I forgot and gave it to another. ”
Vivian laughed and Robin stared astonished, for he had never heard her laugh before. It was a bittersweet sound, without joy. “It were better given to Marion, Robin. I have no need for golden arrows.” As she approached him, Robin saw an expression of longing on her face. “I have served you faithfully for a year, Robin. There is no one in the greenwood who does not speak well of you. You are a man others will follow, will love. You no longer need me.”
Robin frowned at her words. They made him uncomfortable.
“I would ask one boon of you, Robin.”
“Name it.”
“It takes courage.”
“I am Robin Hood,” he answered, as if that were enough.
“I wish to be released from my service to you. I wish to return to my own life,” she said.
“You have always been free to go, Vivian.”
“To release me, you must kill me,” she said. She stepped back from him, her arms opened wide. “Shoot me, Robin, that I may be returned to my life.”
Robin’s hands chilled. His heart thudded in his chest. “I will not,” he stammered. “No Vivian, I will not. I rob the rich to give to the poor and I am protector of women in the greenwood. I can not go against my own word and kill you.”
“I am not a mortal woman. I beg of you, Robin, release me.”
Robin spun angrily on his heel and began to run. He didn’t want to be convinced into so shameful an act by the look of pleading on her face. “No,” he told himself as he ran, “I will not kill a woman,” reminding himself of his own vows as he tore through the woods, branches snapping underfoot. But beneath his resolve Robin felt the scratch of doubt. It festered in his heart like a thorn lodged too deep to be pulled free. Until then, he had not questioned his good fortune. Now he asked himself, How much of his skill did he owe to Vivian? How much of his name, of his success was her doing? Robin hacked at a bush with his sword seeing again the glimpse of her face at the archery contest. And he knew he battled the rising fear that in losing Vivian, he might lose his own future.
“No!” he shouted aloud. “I am my own man. No servant to any. I will not kill Vivian because on my word as a man, as Robin Hood, I will not harm any woman.”
As he neared the camp, he heard Allan-a-Dale singing. The smooth tenor voice eased away the sting of Robin’s doubt. Allan-a-Dale was singing of Robin’s victory at the archery contest. And when he entered the camp again, Robin smiled at the shouts of praise that greeted him. He belonged here. However it had happened, he had made a name for himself and nothing would change that.
The years followed and so did Robin's fame, spreading wide from Nottingham and Barnsdale, throughout the county of Lincolnshire and to the King himself. There was no act too daring, or too dangerous, for Robin and his men. They had made a great sport of the Sheriff of Nottingham, frustrating his every attempt to bring them to the gallows. And always and without fail, Robin’s arrows with the grey-goose fletch found their mark in the Sheriff’s men.
Robin walked the greenwood as if it were his own estate, the deer his deer and the purses of the wealthy his own private tax. There was only one change in him, hardly discernible by the closest of his own men. He almost never walked the woods alone. Once it had been his pleasure, but now he avoided it. For it was in those private moments that Vivian would come to him. Every time he saw her, she would beg again for her release.
“Kill me, Robin, that I may return to my life.”
“Kill yourself,” he replied once cruelly, enraged by her persistence.
Her face stilled to a wooden mask, her eyes dulled like stone. “I cannot. My father bound me to you. Only you can release me. I will stand here before you. It will take no skill of the bow to free me.”
“Damn you!” Robin cursed, turning his back to her.
“You already have,” she answered bitterly.
It was summer when the word was cried through Nottingham s markets that King Henry was dead and his son Richard the Lionhearted was crowned King. And before the summer was over, Richard himself had come to the greenwood, curious to see if the tales of Robin Hood were true.
They met in the greenwood and after a night of feasting on the King’s own deer, Richard was impressed enough in Robin’s skill as a leader to award Robin clemency and the return of his noble rank. To the men that had followed Robin loyally, Richard offered the positions of foresters. They accepted, since no other life but one in the forest held any interest to them.
Robin married Marion in a quiet ceremony, ringed by the trees of Kirkley Hall that had since been turned into a small abbey. He kissed her beneath the spreading oaks, and pledged his heart to her. He promised her a life of peace and happiness.
And they were happy, for a while. But the calm, sedate life of a lord bored Robin and he soon became restless. He missed the challenge of living in the greenwood, the hard ground for his bed and the openness of the night sky. And deep within his heart, there stirred another pain as the thorn pushed deeper and he knew he missed Vivian as well.
“The life of a lord does not suit you, my love,” Marion said to him on his return from seeing the King. He had ridden hard in the rain and his cloak was soaked and mud-spattered.
He smiled at her. “Is it that easy to see?”
She nodded, her hands on her hips, waiting for him to speak.
He placed his hands on her shoulders and gazed into her troubled eyes. “I have spoken to the King. I want to go to Palestine. To see more of the world.”
Her eyes sparkled with determination. “Then I will go with you.”
Robin clasped her tightly until Marion laughed, gaily protesting his wet cloak and dripping hair.
He left her to make the necessary arrangements and walked out into the night toward the greenwood. Out of habit, he slung his longbow over his shoulder and carried his quiver of arrows. The rain had abated and overhead only a few lingering clouds scudded across the clearing night sky. The half moon shone brightly.
In the shifting play of shadows, Robin saw Vivian, waiting for him in the garden beside a bush of drenched roses. White petals had scattered on the walk around her feet.
“You go to Palestine,” she said, her face downturned.
“Aye,” he answered.
She looked up at him and in the moonlight her eyes glowed green. “Robin, if you leave the greenwood I cannot serve you. I cannot protect you as in the past.”
He had been prepared to offer some words of kindness to her, perhaps even reconciliation. But the words she spoke now angered him.