A World That Will Not Turn to Ash (English)(From Ashes Vol.1)

Chapter 6 - Legacy

Marian's horse galloped and for a moment the pleasure of the ride with the wind in her hair banished all other thoughts. Her horse was fast, but he had a soft and secure step, and he always gave her the impression that she could fly.
Guy gave her the horse as a present when he was still convinced he could win her heart with expensive gifts that she regularly ignored. That one was perhaps the only gift that she had truly loved and that made her feel grateful to him.
But now to think of Gisborne and his clumsy attempts to please her, made Marian feel sad and that feeling hushed the joyful emotion she always felt when riding at full gallop.
She reined the horse to slow down while she entered into the forest. She thought with a shudder to the bandits who attacked Guy and she tried to dismiss her fear.
The question that tormented her was too horrible to be expressed in words, but she just had to find an answer, so she could not go back.
She stopped the horse, suddenly certain of not being alone, and a moment later the familiar figure of Robin Hood broke away from the shadow of a tree to meet her.
Robin came over and looked at her with an unreadable face while Marian dismounted.
For a few seconds, they looked at each other without speaking, but in their eyes complicity and joy were gone. A short time ago, just a look was enough to understand each other and they were happy for the simple fact of being together.
Marian was the first one to break the silence.
"Guy is dead." She said flatly, although her own words sounded wrong.
Robin remained impassive.
"I know."
"Did you kill him?"
The neutral expression of Robin seemed to crumble to that question and Marian knew that something had broken forever between them.
"That's what you think?"
The girl looked at him with tears in her eyes.
"You said that you would have killed him if he had dared to touch me... I keep thinking about those words... I know it wasn't you, you're not a murderer, but then I remember your anger and doubts come back to torment me. I have to hear it from your voice, Robin."
"Gisborne deserved death." Said Robin, dryly and Marian shuddered to hear the frost in his voice. "But I didn't give it to him. I'm not a coward, Marian, I don't make ambushes and the fact that you had to ask me to be certain destroys me."
The outlaw turned away and she called him with a sob.
"Robin..."
"No, Marian. No."
Marian covered her face with her hands to hide her tears, and when she returned to look up a little later, Robin Hood was gone.
She put her face close to the nose of the horse and she closed her eyes, suddenly exhausted. She knew she had ruined something asking that question to Robin, but, if she didn't, the doubt would have devoured her from within.
The breath of the horse touched her cheek as a kind of caress and Marian lifted a hand to scratch his muzzle.
She had never felt so alone in her life.

Allan went to the window of the porch overlooking the courtyard of the castle and he looked nervously at the gate for the umpteenth time in a few minutes.
Marian finally came back, riding her horse and Allan hurried to meet her.
She seemed surprised to see him come running.
"Allan. What happened?"
"You have to come right away! They're just waiting for you!"
"Who's waiting for me?"
"The sheriff, your father and a notary who come to the castle a few hours ago. He says he has a document that concerns you, and you must all be present."
She frowned, puzzled. She had no idea what they might want from her, but she hurried nonetheless to follow Allan, after entrusting the horse to a groom.
When she entered the main hall, Marian immediately noticed that the sheriff was annoyed and her father could barely conceal his anxiety.
Vaisey babbled some insults about the futility of women, then he rudely urged the notary to proceed now that the leper had finally deigned to arrive.
The man did not flinch in front of the sheriff's attitude and stretched out on the table an important looking parchment, certified by wax seals.
"What is it?" Marian asked, intrigued.
"The will of Sir Guy of Gisborne. I was instructed to inform you of his last wishes."
The girl said nothing, silenced by those words. Although she kept reminding it to herself, Marian could not yet fully realize that Guy was dead and she was terrified from that official document. When the notary would explain its contents to them, the death of Guy would have seemed much more real and she did not want that to happen.
"Did Gisborne wrote a will?" The sheriff asked, with a glint of greed in the eyes. "And what did he leave?"
"The land and the village of Locksley will be returned to the sheriff of Nottingham so that it can manage them on behalf of the King, with the exception of the house of Sir Guy and his personal property that will be left to Sir Edward and his daughter Marian."
The sheriff gave a malignant chuckle.
"Sir Edward is my prisoner. I do not see how he can inherit anything."
The notary shook his head gravely.
"Sir Guy left precise instructions about this matter: if Sir Edward will not be granted a pardon, a package containing highly sensitive information will be delivered into the hands of King Richard. In fact, I took the liberty of preparing the necessary documents for the release of the prisoner, you should only sign them, my lord."
Vaisey looked at the notary, suddenly livid with rage.
That was blackmail and the absurd thing was that it came from Gisborne.
From a dead Gisborne!
He thought of calling the guards and of ordering them to execute everyone on the spot, but he was certain that the notary had taken care to make sure that at least one copy of that document would arrive at its destination in case of his untimely end.
Gisborne was aware of all his plans, and if he had listed just a small part of them in that document, Vaisey would be hanged for treason in a very short time.
He decided that losing Locksley Manor and Gisborne's proprerty was a small price to pay to keep the secret and he angrily signed the documents prepared by the notary, then he affixed its seal on them.
"Apparently Gisborne made sure to pay his mistress." He said, looking at Marian with disgust. "Now go away, I don't want to see any of you in the castle again. You have until sunset to leave."

Allan personally checked that the servants of the castle put the last trunk on the cart, then he took the reins.
Sir Edward and Marian came walking slowly. She helped her father, who was still unsteady on his feet, but she seemed to be paler than her ill parent.
Allan helped the man to get on the cart, holding out his hand and pulling him up, then he turned to Marian to help her too, but she was already climbing on the cart by herself and she sat next to her father.
Allan snapped the reins and the horse began walking slowly. Marian gave him a puzzled look.
"What are you doing here? I could drive the cart myself."
Allan shrugged.
"I worked for Gisborne, not for the sheriff. Now that he's gone I have no intention of being at the mercy of that devil. If you will consider me as if I were a part of the inheritance, I will come to Locksley at your service, otherwise I'll find some other place to go."
Allan had spoken lightly, but Marian recognized a veiled plea in his words. If she and her father had said no, he would have no place to return to.
Certainly the outlaws wouldn't agree to take him back it in their gang.
The memory of her last conversation with Robin gave her a pang of sorrow, but she forced herself to dismiss that thought and she smiled to Allan.
"I'm afraid that the pay won't be very high, though."
Allan shrugged again with indifference, but his expression visibly relaxed.
For a while they remained silent as the horse trotted along the dusty road, then Marian turned to her father.
"Were you aware that Guy left a will?"
Sir Edward shook his head.
"No, I never expected anything like this."
"Maybe it goes back to the time when you promised to marry him." Allan suggested. "Probably he forgot to cancel it after you left him at the altar..."
Marian looked down to not let them know the remorse caused by those words, but it was his father who answered.
"No, I saw the date on the document. Sir Guy has signed that will shortly after the destruction of Knighton Hall. I have the impression that this could be his way of making up for the fire..."
"Guy never said anything about it." Marian said, amazed.
"I think that he had repented of his act." Edward commented and Marian snapped, nervously.
"If it is true, then why did he leave you to rot in the dungeons?!"
Marian tried to remember all the anger she felt towards Gisborne when Sir Edward had been imprisoned in the dungeons of the castle and she tried to revive it, thinking about the conditions in which her father had been forced to live. She also remembered Guy's cold rage when he had forced her to beg him not to burn Knighton Hall and all the hatred she had felt for him when he finally had set fire to her house.
Guy of Gisborne was also this, Marian didn't want to forget it, in fact she made an effort to think of him as the cruel henchman of the sheriff, like she did in the past.
Maybe if she succeeded hating him, it would be easier to continue her life and not to think how Guy's one ended.
Allan shook his head.
"Now you are unjust. Gisborne wasn't a saint and everyone knows it, but he always made sure that your father was treated with dignity. He often instructed me to bring nutritious food or an extra blanket to Sir Edward when he could not do it in person."
Marian turned to look at her father.
"Guy came to see you?"
"Yes, but he never talked much. Usually he just asked about my health and if I was treated well by the guards and then he went away without another word."
"If he was so worried about your health, he could have set you free!"
"Not even he could openly oppose the orders of the sheriff. And then I imagine that if he let go of me, you would not stay to the castle."
"No, not really."
Marian said to herself that this was another reason for not feeling too sorry for the death of Guy. How could she miss a man who had used the weakness of her father to keep her tied? Yet she could not help but think that this was nothing more than another demonstration of the feelings that Guy felt for her, another facet of his desperate need to have her near.
She remembered that last night, when he had embraced her in his sleep, begging her not to leave him and she was forced to turn her face away to dry a tear in secret. She didn't want to be seen by Allan and her father.
"Marian." Sir Edward called her gently and she looked at him. Her father touched her cheek with a finger. "Do not be ashamed to mourn him. Maybe he did it the wrong way and maybe he wasn't the person that you had chosen, but Sir Guy was really in love with you, otherwise I would not have agreed to give your hand to him."
The girl nodded.
"I know."