the blanched ivory of linen. Everything was covered, concealed—it was her own eyes, her own shroud, that stood between her and this world.
Marian’s feet took her to the main staircase, and she mounted the broad oaken steps. It had taken years of cajoling from Bellden before Robin would move into the master suite—it was his father’s room, Robin insisted. He had no need of its wide oak bed and view of the valley. His boyhood room overlooked the stables, and he could not sleep without the soft sounds of dozing horses in their stalls, the muffled pawing of their hooves. But he’d finally given in to Bellden, some four years after his father’s death. He’d only slept in the room for a few months before he decided to join King Richard in his crusade.
So it felt strange to Marian to stand in Robin’s father’s room and see Robin’s things there. There his record book, his ink and quill. There his clothes chest, slightly ajar where he’d left the corner of a tunic or jerkin to dangle and keep the lid from closing properly. And there his old wooden knight, once a constant companion, now a keepsake on a shelf, still bearing the shiny polish of his young hands on the horse’s nose, its flanks, the ripple of its tail with a piece missing from the time Marian had thrown it off the banister in the main hall in a fit of pique. She could not remember now why she’d been angry with him. But there it was, the chipped tail, the edges of the break worn round and smooth with time.
His sword and belt, which usually stood in the corner by his desk, were gone, and his bow and quiver too. He’ll need them to fight the infidels, Marian thought, glad that Robin would be fighting with his own weapons, the ones that had grown to fit his hand, the ones his hands had grown to fit.
Then she remembered. And she wondered if Robin’s killer had taken up his sword after he died, if English steel was even now being used to cut down more of the King’s men.
Grief, thought Marian, was not the melancholy mourning of a loss, not the long and dwindling ache that ballads sang of. It was forgetting, and remembering, again and again, an endless series of slashes, each as violent and sharp as the last. It was execution by a thousand different wounds, it was bleeding to death so slowly that you are certain it will never end, that you will suffer this torture for eternity, long after your natural life has ended. You are Prometheus, and instead of your liver, the eagle is tearing out your heart.
Marian stood at the foot of Robin’s bed, eyes on the linens protecting the mattress beneath, her fingers tracing the woodwork of the clothes chest. The red oak gave under her fingertips, and she remembered the corner of fabric keeping the lid from closing. She stooped to correct it, and she found herself holding the edge of Robin’s old cloak. He hadn’t brought it with him to the Holy Land, for he’d be wearing the King’s colors. Marian lifted the lid of the chest and pulled the cloak out, sinking onto the floor and letting the cloth pool in her lap.
It was heavy, a thick, coarse wool weave dyed again and again with woad and turmeric and verdigris until it was the deep, dark color of a shady summer day in Sherwood. Robin’s armor was in the chest too—not his chain mail, but his leather breastplate, his armguards, his archer’s glove. The chest smelled like him—or, perhaps, he smelled like his gear—and for the space of too many heartbeats Marian couldn’t move, just breathing.
I’m here, said Robin.
Marian’s fingertips tingled where they rested on the wool, and her breath caught painfully. So familiar was Robin’s voice, surrounded by his belongings and his scent, that she knew she was imagining his voice to comfort herself. Or else punish herself, for hearing him speak to her was a searing torture—it warmed her heart and made it bleed.
A distant thud jarred her from her stupor. Bellden was in the house, making his rounds or else repairing this or that. His tasks would lead him to the upstairs eventually, and if he found her there, she’d have to talk. Marian didn’t know if her heart could take it.
She couldn’t leave Robin’s clothes strewn about. Bellden would assume there had been a break-in. So