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oldshrewsburyian · 2 years

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I realize that absolutely no one asked for speculation about what happens after the perfect Hollywood finish of the ‘38 Robin Hood. However. After a recent viewing, I allowed my thoughts to drift to what actually happened after Richard’s return to England in 1194, said oh no, and discovered that at some point, a fairly detailed idea of how these characters would respond to the subsequent 20+ years of English history had formed in my mind. So, uh. This is that, posted here because it’s not fic-y enough for AO3 and I’m not sure how/if it should become so. Feedback on this and what to do with it welcome.

The Earl of Huntington and his lady leave behind them the noise of celebration in the castle where they have both been held prisoner, and ride for the greenwood. They ride slowly. He is wounded and they are both weary, but they are also both ecstatically happy. And although their marriage is not solemnized as befits a nobleman and a king’s ward until some weeks later, under the vault of St. Mary’s Church, it is pledged in the sight of God and made between the two of them in Sherwood Forest. Marian laughs in Robin’s arms and says it is only fitting.

They attend Richard’s coronation in great splendor, and return to their own lands with great joy. They are happy. It is easier for her than for him. She has been in other men’s power all her life, and now she is her own mistress and mistress of an estate, with a husband who adores her. Robin rises from his bed to get the scent of the forest and draw the night air into his lungs, and Marian does not complain. He still whistles at his work, and laughs easily, and moves so that it is a joy to look at him. Their tenants, of course, love Robin of Locksley as they loved him when he was a hunted outlaw. He knows their names and their holdings, asks after their health, trusts their knowledge of pigs and cattle and weather, and never comes home to Huntington without various small gifts for its lady. Marian discovers that she enjoys keeping bees.

They have children. It is tall John, always good with his hands, who makes the cradle that first winter. To the cradle come, in the following years, Mary, who does not live, and Anne and Cecilia, who do. Robin is delighted with them all. Marian herself is surprised by how interesting they are, the dark-eyed little girls who navigate the world clutching not only at her skirts but at their father’s shoulders, at the fur of dogs, at the hands of their parents’ friends. Little John, it transpires, appears perfectly happy to navigate the world with a giggling toddler clinging to each forearm. Anne is thoughtful, and Cecilia is lively, and Mary is buried in the church of the Virgin who is her namesake.

When the news of Richard’s death comes from France, barely five years have passed since Robin saved his crown for him. Robin drinks late into the night, and Marian does not try to stop him. The next day, they lie long abed together. “Robin,” says Marian, with her hand over his heart, “he hates you.” She does not have to explain whom she means, and he makes no answer, save to kiss the top of her head. It has suited the northern lords very well to have an absent king, as it suited them to have an imprisoned one, and a prince courting their favor. But John is now his brother’s heir, and he holds grudges. The Earl of Huntington, outwardly dutiful, attends his coronation. The king regards him sharply, and Robin fancies that he is looking at the faint scar on his temple, relic of the first time John tried to have himself crowned.

When their fourth daughter is born, Robin gives her his finger to hold and says, “It’s Martin’s feast day, and we can’t possibly call her that. Shall she be Elizabeth? Would not Bess be pleased?” Marian means to say that Bess would be very pleased indeed, but bursts into tears and says that he should have sons. At which Robin, grave as he seldom is, says that he does not need Huntington, much less sons to inherit it, and that he would live under any tree in the greenwood, or walk the roads as a tinker, so she were beside him. And Marian, as she so often does, finds herself scolding him for being foolish, and smiling as she scolds.

Within the next five years, the king has quite spectacularly alienated more of his nobles, and lost most of his lands in France. And this leads to what Marian calls the taxation incident. The fines are one thing. The new Sheriff of Nottingham is almost as unpopular as the old, but Robin’s tenants know that if they can evade the knowledge of shire officials, their secrets are safe with the earl who once roamed the forests. And if a widow wishes to remain unmarried, and cannot pay the king’s fee for doing so, she comes to Bess who is well contented with her sixth husband, or to Marian who plans on knowing one man only, and the fee is paid. And when scutage payments are levied, Robin only grumbles. The requested taxes, however, are another matter. Robin and Will sit with their heads together over the letter indicating what is owed, and when it is expected. “We can’t pay that,” says Robin, and Will says that is because of what Much charges (or doesn’t) to have flour milled, and the rents that are lowered or foregone in times of hardship, and the heriot that is not collected. “So tell him that,” says Marian, and they both turn to look at her. The estates of Huntington, that year, return an impeccably thorough report, made out in Will’s neat hand. It explains, in detail too great to be untrustworthy, exactly what fields and pastures produce, what fish and eels are drawn from ponds, what revenues come from bake-houses. The king may resent it, but disputing it would take time. And the extent of those neat entries make clear that it is a dispute he might not win. Robin, that first ink-stained night, throws his head back in laughter and says he has married the cleverest woman in England.

The interdict comes. Friar Tuck celebrates Mass anyway. Robin is nervous about the bishop. Old Bishop Hugh had known them all, and once shared an apple with Cecilia; his successor had been old and weary, and dead three years after his arrival. But this man — this man learned politics in great men’s households, and then chose the service of the king who has sent him north. But the bishop says nothing. Friar Tuck trots from parish to parish on a jennet, till Little John shakes his head and says he will grow thin with his labors. Curiously enough, it is Mortimer of Leeds and Ralf of Durham who tell Robin about the barons’ plot against the king. And Robin sighs, and says to his guests that it is true that they are in evil case, and that he will give them his answer on the morrow. It is Marian’s counsel he asks. “Do not tell me it is treason you fear!” says his lady, tracing his scars in the moonlight. “Not you!” Not treason, he agrees, but its punishment, should it fall upon them all. And Marian kisses him, and reminds him that they could live under any tree in the greenwood.

The rebels are successful, at first. Robin is dazed with it, this new victory against long odds. But then the pope, newly reconciled to England and its king, unexpectedly declares the charter signed at Runnymede illegal; and John marches north to Nottingham, bringing devastation in his wake. Robin and Marian manage to shield their people from the worst of it. The kings of Scotland and France marshal aid for their brother monarch, and Robin glowers at the fire and says, as if reminding himself, that they have faced defeat before. When Marian puts her hand on his shoulder, he covers it with his, and then draws it to his lips, as deliberately as he had done among other dangers, in other times. Those are dark years, when Marian and Robin both prepare for sieges like that of Rochester, and worry about Anne and Cecilia’s future marriages.

When the king dies of greed on a wild autumn night, it is like a judgment of God. And William Marshal knows Robin well enough to like him, and to know that what he wants to wrest from England’s kings is not power, but justice. So Huntington, surprisingly, weathers the defeat of the barons. The charter of Runnymede is confirmed. The French king’s troops are sent back across the channel. And Robin and Marian see Henry crowned at Westminster, and Robin kisses in fealty the hand of a boy young enough to be the son he does not have. They see Anne married. On that day, standing in the sunlight outside the church, he asks: “Does it not seem strange to you, that we should live to settle into something like peace?” Marian tells him that she has thought nothing strange since learning to love him, and that he should kiss her and stop philosophizing. So he does.

#the adventures of robin hood #is DEFINITELY part of my medievalist origin story #age 7: watches errol flynn swing out of trees #age 30: gets phd in medieval history #age 30mumble: you know what actually i have OPINIONS about robin's responses to tax policies #what i should be doing is writing about the 12th century in a distinctly different context but here we are!#it will never not delight me that in this version of events #king richard looks at how marian and robin look at each other for .2 seconds and internally says #'welp. better make that tall skinny man an earl so she can marry him'#he can't SUGGEST that a recently-condemned outlaw with blood in his hair and fire in his eyes marry a royal ward #but he can hint to said outlaw that he could ask nicely for her hand

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