Outlaw Guy

Trust

Trust

Guy kept his promise; the one he made to Djaq. He ate and drank sensibly, minded his injured leg, slept when he could. He marked the days and nights, remembering Djaq’s words: meet Robin seven days hence, when the moon next wanes.

Every day, he anxiously anticipated the sheriff’s roar of Gisborne! echoing down the torch-lit passageway that led to his bedchamber; but apart from the plod of guards patrolling the castle, the odd burst of laughter, or a sneeze, cough or belch from whoever was standing watch outside his door, Guy heard nothing.

If anyone missed the guard Robin had bound and gagged and shoved on a cart headed for York, doubtless with accompanying threats, they were not making a noise about it. 

By the fourth day, with still no sign of Vaisey, Guy began to feel hopeful, jubilant even. With any luck, he could escape the castle without anyone challenging him. Without the sheriff’s helmet-swiping, shin-kicking presence, the guards had become lazy and lax. His door was left unlocked and, mostly, unguarded. No doubt they deemed the sheriff’s wine-soused master-at-arms incapable of issuing commands or cautioning them on their lack of discipline.

Guy let them think this, keeping up the pretence of drunkenness while diligently pouring every wine jug delivered to his room into an empty chest. He let his beard grow too, giving off the air of a man who no longer cares about his appearance let alone anything else, though he did cave in and wash the ends of his long hair that had dipped into the pail he’d vomited in. That pail, along with his overfull chamberpot, had since been cleared away by a serving girl and later returned clean. Guy didn’t need the pail any more.

Curiosity finally overcame fear, and Guy limped about the castle, feigning disinterest in the comings and goings of folk, while secretly hoping to hear mention of the sheriff and his whereabouts.

Weary of being on tenterhooks from sunrise to sunset, he grabbed a serving boy’s arm one evening as he passed him outside the Great Hall and asked, “Where’s the sheriff?”

The boy stammered that he didn’t know, that no one had seen the sheriff or knew where he’d gone.

Guy checked the stables. The sheriff’s white mare was not in its stall. The sheriff’s groom did not know where his master had gone, or when he would be back.

Guy returned to his bedchamber, frustrated.

He spent the long, cheerless evenings fretting over the deal he’d made with Marian, wondering if it wouldn’t be easier simply to remain Vaisey’s dog and do his bidding. He could bide his time and then, when the sheriff’s plans for power and riches finally came to fruition, take his share and leave. He would run as fast and as far away as he could from everyone who knew or had heard of Guy of Gisborne, Sheriff Vaisey’s brutal henchman.

When he wasn’t agonising over whether to keep faith with Marian and the outlaws or turn back to the sheriff, he indulged in wild fantasies. He imagined the sheriff falling from his horse and breaking his neck, or a vengeful peasant whacking Vaisey in the head with a spade as the sheriff, giving the toiling man or woman a disdainful glance, rode by, or of him swallowing his fake, gold-shot tooth and choking on it.

At his lowest moments, he relived the day he saw Marian and Robin kissing, when they thought him asleep, safely tucked behind a shielding curtain; and he tortured himself with images of the blood on Djaq’s clothes and hands as he blundered backwards, sword in hand. At those times, it was hard not to give into temptation and drink himself into oblivion. To make certain he didn’t, he poured every wine jug immediately into the rapidly filling chest. He’d been pissing in it for the past four days.