Someday in a cold January 1238, and somewhere in Kirklees, a hooded figure standing silently before a grave of someone. That person was holding a lute, and the silhouette resembled a familiar gentleman. If we could guess...
"It's been years, my good fellow...", an also familiar voice was heard muttered, and his fingers plucking on the strings. "Since your death, I had no one to drink ale and share adventures with; and the last ones I could trust are thy right-hand man and our poor abbess...", he whispered.
The atmosphere remained its quietness a long moment after, before a tall figure came and broke the silence with a low yet warm voice.
"Sir Alan...", he called.
Alan-a-Dale smirked without turning over as he recognised that voice whose owner he was once a close acquaintance. If it wasn't the good man whom Robin Hood recruited after duelling him a fair match.
"Feeling like thou shoulde pay a visit to the late master, eh?", Alan-a-Dale's smirk widened to a grin.
"It's been a while, milord. I've been busying with the child lately, I mean, she has been seventeen, and she had blended in the Royal as King Henry's mistress... I've been gathering intelligence through her, and the Shakespeare child...", told Little John.
"Well, if that Anais could gain some good infamy at the age of twenty, then this Anais could be a famous spy at that age also", Alan-a-Dale replied with a smile, "... or earlier..."
"You seem so carefree, milord. This Anais is unlike that Anais; this is a Rebel's daughter, and that was the Crown Princess of England", Little John said with quite a confusion in his mind.
"That Anais could turn King John and his allies upside down, as Anais d'Nottinghamshire herself, not as the Crown Princess. However, it seems to me, my fellow, that Lord Timbley's little daughter had done better... She is worth being the daughter of the Spymaster"
Suddenly, Little John showed a faint, yet connotative smile.
"He would be proud. Well, it was an astounding secret, anyway..."
Addled by the man's strange act, Alan-a-Dale turned over with curiosity.
"What were you talking about?"
"Nothing, milord. I have received a request of audience from the Barons, the requested destination this time is a wooden-and-mud cottage in Yorkshire; in the forest's outskirts..."
"Thou mean my birth-house, eh! It's a safe place, I assume?", chuckled Alan-a-Dale.
"We are too old for jokes, milord, but I still like the way you joke", replied Little John with a smile, "I haven't a chance to teach the child fencing yet. Well, maybe after I finished my businesses, perhaps?"
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"You are late, sirs... And, by the way, welcome home, Sir Alan..."
"My apologies. I was visiting a friend of mine in Kirklees", apologised Alan-a-Dale while nodding a greeting to the barons, "Leaving the guest to wait wasn't a good manner, was it?"
"Well, we will go straight to the main thing. We do not have much time. We have to leave before the Guards find out this place", a baron said.
"In fact, they found this place once, when they were chasing Her Majesty who had just returned from the Holy Land..."
"I said we have no time for joking, sir!"
"My apologies. What was the thing you would like to show us, milord?"
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Anais Timbley - A deadly beauty
Historical FictionBorn as the child from the ill-fated but dreamy affair between a nobleman and a peasant-born lady, Anais had the title of a noblewoman but lived her childhood as simple as a commoner in her parents cottage on the outskirts of Sherwood Forest. Grown...
