the tavern

the day they meet - chapter 5

(Regina's POV)

I smile as walk out of the tavern door and head the stables where I have paid one of the local boys to look over Rocinante. He was to make sure she has food and water and that she is ready for the journey back to the palace. I spot the boy sitting on the fence of the paddock in which Rocinante is enclosed in. He is stroking her main gently while eating an apple. I watch her as she nudges his hand with her nose a few times “fine.” I hear him say “Go on then, it’s my second one today any way." as he hands the apple over.

I walk up behind him and lean in next to him. “She is so spoiled already by me and now it looks like she got you rapped around her hoof” I laugh as he turns around and looks at me with a smile.

This has been our routine for the last few months. Whenever I am able to sneak away I come here. I hand the rains over to the smiling boy who has just entered his early teens and then wonder around. Sometimes spending the night with the children of the small village or walking around looking at the scenic views that surround this place. Sometimes I spend the time sitting with a lovely lady that people call granny helping her with the chores she has to do and having granny teach her how to cook, that is one of my favourite things to do. And other times when i don’t feel like doing any of them i head towards the tavern and spend the night in there. Then when it is time to leave I head to the paddock where I always find him sitting with Rocinante.

“I hope one day I will own a horse as magnificent as her. She’s so kind and loving and is so well trained” he says

“Well that’s just who she is.” I say climbing over the fence picking up the saddle that was sitting on the fence as well as the bridal and place it on her back and tightening the straps and making sure that it will be sturdy and won’t move position when I get on it “I have never really had to train her. Were both free spirits who like to run as fast as we can with the wind blowing in our faces” stroking the horses face as she places the bit in the horse’s mouth and places the bridal around her head and fastens it.

“Are you ever going to tell any of us your name?” the boy said

“Some of you DO know my name” I replied with a smile taking a hold of Rocinante rains as he jumps down from the fence and opens the gate so I can walk her out on to dirt road.

“Yeh but only granny knows it and she won’t tell me.” He wines looking at me with big puppy dog eyes.

I huff smiling “fine” I say brushing my hand over his cheek. “You tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine” after all there was no point trying to hide any more like i did in the beginning because Most of the people who live in this village know me now and because they don’t know my name they copied granny who has taken to calling her girl. And the first time that I had asked him his name he wouldn’t tell me because I wouldn’t tell him. In the end I became a little bit of a running joke between us and i just started calling him kid.

The smile that he replied to me with was one of the cutest I had ever seen “HENRY!! MY NAMES HENRY” he screamed jumping up and down on the spot

“Hahaha well henry my name is Regina”

“That’s a lovey name”

“Thank you henry” I smiled to him as I hoist my self graciously onto Rocinante.

“When are you coming back?” henry asked

“Umm ….. Not for at least two days I’m afraid” I said to him

“Ok” he said with a slight pout pulling at his lips that he was trying to pull back

I smiled down at him “I will see you soon good sir” I said with a smile.

“And you m’lady “he said with a slight laugh as I taped the horses neck and told her to walk on heading past the tavern and continuing up the road that leads in to the forest. After a few paces I turn and wave back to the boy I now knew as henry. After he waves back I turn myself forwards again.

As I come up to the tavern door it opens revelling robin. I see his shocked face rome over me and as he makes contact with my face. I laugh slightly to myself at how his face still holds the confused and bewildered expression that it held when I walked out of the tavern.  I blew him a kiss and then wink as I start Rocinante of at full-on sprint, rising slightly from the saddle to make the position a little more comfortable. My hair pulled behind me by the wind.

Only a few more day until I can find my freedom again But I have the knowledge that there are people who care about me here and that’s what will get me thorough the next few days of hell that I am to live.

(Robin’s POV)

I startle as I step out of the tavern and into the path of an oncoming horse. I look up tracing the woman’s form from her feet in the stirrups to her toned legs that are partly hidden by her dress and up onto the perfectly poised body that sits above the saddle and carrying on up to the face of what looks to me like an image of an angel that has somehow made its way down to us from the heavens above and then that picture fades in to mischievous and sexy woman who raises her eyebrow at me and in the very faint light coming out of the tavern windows and the nights stars, i see her blow a kiss to me with the most perfect lips I had ever seen. and the just like that she is gone. Galloping at lightning speed down the dirt road and in to then night “good bye Regina, see you in a few days” I hear from a childes mouth. I turn to find the owner of it. The young boy still standing there in the middle of the road with his hand in the air still waving to the now non-existent woman on top of the horse that had mad made my trousers feel a little tighter than usual after our little and brief interactions.

“Hay, young man” I hollered over to him as he was retreating in to the home of a woman I know to be called granny. “Did she say that she was coming back any time soon?” I asked after realising that I had been unable to say a single word to her as I was gawking up at her as she sat upon her steed. “No wonder she looked like she was about to fall in to a fit of laughter” I thought to myself “but now I have no idea if I will ever see her again”.

 As I asked him the question granny herself walked out the door and ushered him inside telling him to wash up and head to bed and that she had already let him stay up late enough that night when he tried to protest. Robin asked her “do you know of the woman with long raven black hair and deep brown eyes who just this moment left riding on her steed?” in which she replied

“Indeed I do robin but what is it to you?”

“Do you know if she is intended to come back here?”

“Ohhh, that girl can never stay away two long” she laughed at how robins face fills with happiness “goodnight robin” she sez as she walks in to her home and shuts the door “and you granny” I reply. Walking in to the tavern thinking about how lucky it is that we were already planning to stay here for a few months as the winter was coming in so that it would be safer for Roland because I did not think that trying to explain to my men that the reason I wanted to stay was because of the very reason that the will already find hard to take me seriously for the next few days.