The Princess and the Hood: Reflections of the Wine Bottle

Robin and the Monk

ROBIN

"UNH!" No sooner did I fall through the deep hole in the floor and hit the dusty ground than the two Nottingham guardsmen walked off. I could hear their sturdy boots echoing through the dungeons.

It was dark, damp, and I lost track of just how far underground we were. The two guardsmen who had been shoving me down those stairs, each of them holding an arm, had delved deeper and deeper into the jail that King John had ordered to be built. For good measure, as I suppose it was, they cast me straight down in the bottommost cave.

"I ONLY WENT TO THE CHURCH FOR MASS!" I yelled after them. "DOES THAT MEAN NOTHING ANYMORE?!"

Worn over my grey tunic was a patched brown cloak. I'd had my hood up and walked with a limp, using a staff, trying to appear as some other merchant or shepherd.

Like I said, I had only slipped into that church for mass. Prayer and devotion. No thievery or picking fights this time. I didn't even bring my sword. My staff was in hand for my disguise and in case I had to defend myself. Little John promised that it was as good a weapon a man could get. Plus, unlike the Sheriff's men who just loved holding territory, I had no interest in spilling blood in the house of God.

But thankfully, no one was there anyway. Or so I thought, up until...

"Hey... HEY! I know you!"

I had only just turned away from the altar, coming literally face to face with a robed monk whose wide eyes were alive with fear and anger.

"You're the deserter!" he exclaimed. "The bandit who stole grain from the church!"

Calmly as I could, I held a hand out and told the man, "I'm not a bandit, I didn't take it for myself. That was Nottingham's seed grain. It belonged in this soil, not York. I only took what was being stolen from the serfs who were starving here."

"And then you tied me up to wait for the next merchant to pass by on the road to free me. I was stuck there for two days straight!"

"And for that I'm sorry. But listen to me, Brother... erm, Brother... What's your name?"

"Like you care, thief!" The monk ran back to the church doors and slammed them shut.

"WAIT!" I called after him, running towards the doors and trying to push them open. They wouldn't budge. I could hear the monk's leather sandals hitting the dirt, running at full sprint. "Just listen to me!"

"GUARDS!" he yelled. "I have him! Get the Sheriff, it's Hood! He's in the church, here, shut the gates!"

That was it. I was locked in a house of God, being turned over by a man of the cloth, the kind of person who would normally be inclined to show mercy. But I was wrong. Within minutes the Sheriff's men came. I fought them off as best I could with my staff the way John had taught me, but it was no use. There were too many of them, all mail-clad and well-muscled. I lost my weapon and was captured almost instantly.

The awful cave they dropped me in was shaped like a wine bottle. The hole didn't have a grate at the top because it didn't need one. With no hand-and-foot holds, especially due to the shape, it was virtually inescapable. The oubliette, it was called. In France the word meant "forgotten place." Little John and I had heard all about it from the trees, our eyes and ears staying open while the jail was being built. Prisoners would be left in this thing to either starve or go mad.

The tube-like hole in the domed ceiling was too high for me to reach, almost twice my own height. I tried repeatedly to jump for it the way I always had while going from place to place. But this wasn't a dense forest with thick branches to climb or swing from. It wasn't a cluster of buildings with thatched roofs I could perch on to hide or launch arrows. This was just an empty stone hole with no way out.

My oak wooden staff had been confiscated, leaving me completely unarmed. Even my pouch of coins was taken, too. Specifically, a pouch that I was going to leave on the doorstep of a man whose horse just died. If he couldn't plough, he wouldn't be able to feed his family. My plan for after mass was to leave him the money, under the cover of darkness, so he could purchase a new horse and work again. But it wasn't going to happen. For me, that was where the wretched Sheriff crossed the line.

In the bottle-shaped cave I could still hear everything; how he taunted me on the way there, gloating, behaving unlike the man I once knew him as—before he became the Sheriff:

Guy of Gisbourne.