by Beth Moran
I shook my head. What did he do?
“He pulled off his trousers and his jumper, and his shoes. He plunged into that freezing cold, murky lake in just his underwear and he swam through the pouring rain out to my boat, now eight inches deep in water. He climbed in with me, and while I bailed, he rowed us to shore. His arms were so strong, his pull on the oars so swift, that I didn’t have to change more than my socks. And Miriam Hamilton Moore was none the wiser.
“Do you know who that angel was, Marion?”
I thought I did.
“Your da was a good man in every sense of the word. A great man. He was my best friend, and I miss him every day. I feel angry some days, and bewildered on others. Sometimes I just feel so very sad. But I am always glad to have had the honour of knowing him.”
Father Francis told more stories about my father, and for that hour I forgot about cancer, and mothers who smash plates against the kitchen wall. I stopped thinking about fat cousins with glittery eyes who spat in my lunchbox and laughed as they walked away. For the first time in over a year, I forgot to feel scared or alone.
I remembered Father Francis as I stood, clutching the brown envelope, while crowds of visitors jostled past me toward the entrance of the Robin Hood Festival. My father was a great man, loved by good people. There could be nothing to fear from discovering the truth about someone who dived into a freezing lake to rescue a stranger from getting wet trousers. So he once had a different name, a past no one was allowed to probe. A secret family he never saw, or even mentioned. I knew how he felt.
It felt surreal, wandering down the forest path toward the visitor centre. I had dreamed of coming here for months. I’d imagined the people, hordes of children wearing green hats or garlands of plastic flowers, waving swords and aiming arrows. I had pictured the medieval encampment, the stalls of crafts, and the jesters and bards. But I could never have predicted walking right up to the first person I saw who looked vaguely something to do with the festival and showing them the picture of my da under the Major Oak in a Robin Hood costume.
The man looked at me and wrinkled his brow. “What’s this then?”
I wrestled briefly but fiercely with the mute child who hides in my windpipe.
“I was wondering if you might recognize this picture, or be able to tell me anything about it.”
“Oh, right. It looks quite old.” He squinted through his glasses (did they have glasses in Robin Hood’s day?). “When was it taken?”
“I think between 1979 and ’84. That’s all I know, except for what it says on the back.”
He turned the photo over. Written on the back in blue pen were the words “Daniel, Robin Hood Festival”. The boy in the picture looked maybe sixteen, maybe twenty. It was slightly blurred, so I couldn’t be totally sure it was my da. But if not, it was a very close relative. The image of my father was fading inside my head, to be replaced with only the smells, and the memory of the texture of his stubble, or his dressing gown, on my cheek. But I had spent hours comparing it with the last photograph taken of him before he got ill, and I had to believe this boy Daniel was the man I called Father. What I wanted to know was why everybody in Ballydown had called him Henry.
The obvious person to ask was my mother. Unless you had met her, of course. Then you would know that even mentioning his name would be a stupid waste of time, likely to end up with you covered in spaghetti bolognaise, or whatever else was near to hand. I threw away four ruined tops before I gave up asking.
“Sorry, duck. I wasn’t around back then. Try the minstrel.”
Hidden in the trees I found the minstrel. Under an ornate velvet canopy, surrounded by children squatting on blankets, he looked quite possibly old enough to remember the original Robin Hood. I waited on the fringes of his audience until he had finished his tale, accompanying himself with what I think was a hurdy-gurdy, and then shooed the children away.
He watched me, beetling his bushy eyebrows as I moved toward the blankets. I coughed at the blockage in my throat.
“Can I just – ”
He held up his hand, palm facing me, like a policeman stopping traffic, then turned and lit a cigarette. He took a couple of long slow drags, eyes closed, and puffed the smoke out into the trees. I opened my mouth to speak again, but he grimaced and held up his hand, not bothering to open his eyes. Taking another drag, he pulled a flask out of his medieval tunic and tipped it to his mouth, wiping his sleeve across his face once he had finished drinking.
The minstrel opened his eyes and sighed. “What?”
“Well, I was just wondering, if you don’t mind…”
“I’m on a break. Get to the point.”
“Do you recognize this man?” I rushed out the words, thrusting the photograph forward so that it didn’t matter if he could understand my accent or not.
He flicked his eyes down for the tiniest of seconds, long enough for his pupils to contract. “No.”
“Are you sure? If you could just have another look, maybe you will recognize something else about the photo.”
“I said no.” The minstrel stared up at the sky without blinking. Now that I was finally here, something in me refused to be intimidated.
“I’m trying to find out when this photo was taken. Do you know anything about the festival in the eighties? Who played Robin Hood those years? Or anyone who might know something that could help me?”
He scratched at his stubble with yellowed fingertips. “I can’t help you.”
“Please. I think this man might be my father. I just want to find out who he was.”
“I said I can’t help. Drop it. Go home.”
Not “can’t”; won’t, I thought as I walked away.
I spent the rest of the morning asking around, but the majority of the volunteers and entertainers were either too young or not around back then. The sting of the minstrel’s rebuttal lodged in my mind, puncturing my initial enthusiasm. I decided to take a break for lunch, convinced that the one person who could actually help me, for some reason wouldn’t.
I bought myself a sandwich and wandered through the woods to find somewhere quiet to sit, eventually winding up back at the main event area. Here a dozen old-style craft stalls, and demonstrations of the different aspects of medieval life, ranged around a currently empty main stage. I recognized some of the market traders from Hatherstone, including the man who had sold me a postcard. He smiled and introduced himself as Jimbo. Next to him, glaring like a two-fingered salute to all the attempts at authentic history, was the woman with pink hair.
I took a few minutes to pass around the photo. It sparked a complicated discussion about everybody they had ever known called Daniel, but they concluded that all those Daniels were the wrong age, the wrong size or too ugly to be the young man in the picture. A couple of older traders did admit he seemed vaguely familiar, so I gave them the phone number of the Peace and Pigs, and asked them to call if they remembered anything else. They seemed interested enough in helping me, but once home, I wouldn’t be sitting around waiting for the phone to ring.
I found a spare bench and ate my sandwich opposite an enormous, ancient tree: the Major Oak, where Robin Hood supposedly hid from the evil Sheriff of Nottingham. It formed the backdrop to my father’s photograph. Except that now, the tree’s giant branches were held up by posts and metal supports – a protective fence preventing tourists getting close enough to touch it. In the photograph the boy called Daniel leaned with one hand propped against the gnarled trunk. I watched the tree, wishing I could do the same.
A loud trumpet blast made me jump. The crowd turned their heads toward the sound of shouting from the forest to one side of us, and out of the trees galloped two horses, with several men running alongside them. The rider of the first horse called out.
“All hail the Sheriff of Nottingham!”
There were murmurings and a few laughs. One of the men on foot, who were all dressed as soldiers, pointed his massive sword at a man at the front of the crowd.
“Bow before your lord or face the consequences, peasant!”
The man, grinning to the people either side of him, bent over and tipped his baseball cap.
“All of you!” the first man on the horse hollered. “Hail your Sheriff!”
Most of the visitors made some sort of gesture, either a quick nod of the head or, for the bigger show-offs, a more flamboyant bow. I huddled on my picnic bench and kept still.
The second man on horseback, dressed in black and silver, nudged his horse over to where I sat. He wore a large velvet hat tipped over half his face. He swung one leg over the side of the horse and jumped down to the ground, right in front of me. I gripped the empty sandwich wrapper in my fist. A shadow fell over the bench as the Sheriff stepped closer. The crowd watched all this, silent except for the occasional catcall or whistle. They thought it was part of the entertainment. I was in the preliminary stages of an anxiety attack.
“Pray tell – ” the Sheriff spoke in a pretend medieval lord’s accent – “what beautiful maiden is this, who doth scorn me, the Sheriff of Notting-ham, by refusing to bow? Name yourself!”
Oh no. The voice belonged to Jake. I wriggled on my seat, and tried to find his eyes underneath the shadow of the stupid hat so that he would see my terror and leave me alone.
He drew a frighteningly realistic looking sword with a dramatic swish and poked the tip about two inches from the pulse that pounded in my throat.
“Your name.”
“Jake, please…” I whispered, while the crowd listened in, transfixed.
“Your name,” he shouted. “Or shall we throw her in the stocks?”
This got a mixture of cheers and boos. The stocks were all the way over on the other side of the field. Right then I would rather he kill me with that sword than drag me across the clearing and place me in the stocks. But a drawbridge had slammed across my voice box. As the crowd grew noisier, I panicked my way through my mute busters. Jake tipped back his hat with his free arm and peered at me.
“Come on,” he murmured out of the side of his mouth. “I can’t back down now. Just tell me your name, give me a bow and I’ll move on to the next bit.”
I forced a tiny whistle of air up through my throat. “Marion,” I mouthed, waiting for the earth to open up and swallow me whole. It was much easier to bow my head forwards toward his feet. The hard part would be pulling myself up again.
Jake heaved a sigh of relief and put one hand on my shoulder. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to embarrass you,” he mumbled, smiling ruefully.
Calling out to his men, he took the reins of the horse now nibbling on the grass behind him. “She yields! Onwards, men! We have a foul outlaw to lay hold of this night.”
But one of his men must have had supersonic hearing. Either that or he could read lips. Or was just mean.
“With all due respect, my lord, have you lost your mind?”
Jake snapped around. His eyes flashed.
“Did you not hear that this is none other than the Maid Marion? This is the lady who has stolen the heart of that dastardly fiend, Hood. Surely this would be a perfect opportunity to ensnare the evil criminal and rid ourselves of him once and for all?”
A murmur rippled through the spectators. A voice called out: “Tie her to a tree and use her as bait.”
I saw who had shouted and wanted to rip out her hair one pink strand at a time.
Jake hesitated. The crowd liked this idea. Again, they thought it was all part of the show. A chant rose up. “Tie her to a tree! Tie her to a tree!”
I braced myself, shifting back as far as I could on the bench. Weren’t the people supposed to be on Robin Hood’s side? Jake twisted around to find his men gathering closer. They began urging him to give the visitors what they wanted.
Jake bent down and took hold of one of my wrists. His touch was light but I flinched anyway, yanking my arm away.
“Look. It’s only for fun. Robin’s due here any second – he’s probably waiting in the woods watching us already. I’ll just walk you over to the tree and wrap some rope around, okay?”
No, it was not okay. However, I was way beyond speech. I looked at Jake and my eyes must have screamed at him not to do this. But I was one girl who had dented his pride. Behind him, a dozen men with swords and a mob high on candyfloss and Friar Tuck’s home brew stood watching. He took hold of my hands, gently enough that they still had room to quake inside his grip, and led me over to the Major Oak. I would get to touch it after all.
When I was nine years old, on holiday for the third time, my delightful cousin Declan had tied me up and trapped me in the coal bunker. I was there for six hours before Uncle Keith found me.
When I was eleven, he enlisted the help of Benny to tie me up again. This time they left me in the woods overnight.
I was thirteen, and wearing my first teen-sized bra, when he tied me to a tree and decided to unleash all of his hate and his evil, angry poison on a girl who would not tell of his crimes. My bra was ruined, but I decided it suited me better that way. I patched it up and carried on wearing it, wishing that my life could be held together with just a needle and a reel of cotton.
The next time Declan tied me up, someone found us. That someone beat Declan until he needed to spend three weeks in hospital. He made sure that Declan never came near me again. That is why, ten years later, when that someone pushed a diamond ring onto my finger it was harder than it should have been to take it off.
As Jake coiled the thick, twisty snake of rope around my body, some sort of long-buried survival mechanism kicked in. I began to fight. Jake’s handsome face was gone. All I could see were the shiny, gleeful eyes of my cousin. I kicked and bucked and hollered. I think I may have spat.
Gasping, frantic, with the desperate instinct of a wounded animal, I wrestled my way out of the hands that seized me, and fled back toward the shadows of the forest.
Twenty strides in, a pair of hands reached out from behind a tree and grabbed my shoulders. I screamed. The hands flipped me around, pressing my face against a leather-clad chest, stifling the sound. I found myself pulled behind the huge trunk, lost in panic and frantic fear. A muffled voice spoke just above my ear. “Calm down. You’re safe. I’ve got you.”
I couldn’t calm down. A volcano of buried emotions had erupted. I pushed and wriggled, and tried to twist my head from side to side. I scratched at his wrists, stamped the heel of my trainer down on his foot. For a long time he let me fight, repeating his words over and over again.
“You’re safe. Calm down. Just breathe.”
Finally, spent, I stopped struggling. He loosened his grip.
“Are you going to scream?”
I shook my head.
He let go of my arms. I stepped away, keeping my head angled to watch him as my body bent double, gulping in air.
It was Robin Hood. I could tell by the outfit, which was an exact copy of the one that Daniel had worn. The bottom half of his face was covered in a dark scarf. His hood was pulled forwards, leaving the rest of his features hidden in shadow.
“Better?”
I nodded, too drained to feel embarrassed.
“You just had a panic attack.”
“I know.” I shrugged, standing upright, wiping my trembling hands across my face. “A thing happened to me once. I guess I’m not over it yet.”
“Well –” Robin Hood’s voice was grim from behind his scarf – “not many people would have enjoyed being caught on the wrong end of Jake’s overinflated ego.” He shook his head. “He’s a fool. He should be banned from volunteering.”
“Maybe.” I remembered the look of confusion and hurt on Jake’s face when I raked my nails down his cheek. “Do you think jumping out from behind trees and grabbing women is any better?”
“For the evil Sheriff of Nottingham? Absolutely not. For Robin Hood? Most women in this forest dream about having me wrap my arms around them.”
He tipped his hood back so that I could see his eyes for the first time, and winked
at me, disappearing into the trees. Darn. Those eyes. Twilight in the forest.
I tramped back through the greenery, avoiding the paths, hoping I was moving in the direction of the exit. I still had the photograph in the back pocket of my jeans, but I had left my bag by the picnic bench. I didn’t go back for it, trusting that Jake or one of the market traders would have kept it safe for me.
Jake. Now we had a reason to make working together even more awkward. I would have to tell Scarlett. Except she was bound to know what had happened already. I pondered what advice she might give about dealing with the situation. Apologize, forgive, get over it, move on. I could do that. Jake wasn’t to know the scars I still bore from Declan’s attentions.
I reached the visitor’s centre and tidied myself up in the toilets. Finding my car, I managed to hold it together until I saw my bag on the passenger seat. Somebody must have made pretty good time to get there before me. My purse and keys were still inside. Opening up my purse to check if all the money was still there, I found a tightly folded piece of paper squashed in with my loose change. A note: “FORGET HIM!”
I climbed out of my car, closed the door, ripped the paper into a hundred thousand tiny pieces and chucked them into the air like rotten confetti. I was back in my car and out of the car park before the last swirling, spinning fragment hit the ground.
But then came the finishing touch to round off my day, just in case it hadn’t been rubbish enough. I don’t believe in luck or fate. The reason bad things come in threes is because after the first two you are so stressed out, fed up, exhausted and distracted, thinking about ropes, crowds, crusty minstrels, pink hair and notes, to look where you are going. Your head hangs so low, you stop paying attention to the road in front of you, or, in this case, the person who steps out in front of you.