Sir Guy of Gisborne's Diary

Entry 16

After my disagreement with Marian over the Lambert affair, I was desperate to get back into her good books. The sheriff suggested I buy her a trinket or two. So far, trinkets (horrible flashback to tasselled leather bra) have not been working too well. Still, yesterday morning, noticing her fawning over a horse in the castle courtyard I had an idea. I would buy her a horse. I then remembered that I had bought her a horse for Christmas - a white one - but I figured another wouldn't go amiss, so I bought her a brown one.

She seemed delighted when I took the blindfold off her (naughty thoughts of her in my bedchamber, me wearing nothing but a blindfold, her in a leather one-piece) and revealed the splendid brown stallion, but almost immediately, she queried the expense. I told her it was nothing, indicating that I had wealth and could afford to provide for her and a stableful of horses if that was her desire.

I suggested she try out the horse, so she mounted and galloped off - no thank you kiss, no invite to ride alongside her - she just rode off. How's that for gratitude!

I waited for more than an hour, thinking she would just ride around Knighton or something, but she never came back, so I begrudgingly rode back to the castle remembering on the way that we had some stupid Saracen prince - Malik - visiting and I was expected to join him and the sheriff for an evening meal. My stomach quailed at the thought of sheep's eyeballs and badger's brain and all the way back to Nottingham I considered how I could get away with not eating any of it.

Malik appeared to be as disgusted by the food as I was and we both ended up pushing it around out plates and occasionally dropping bits on the floor when the sheriff wasn't paying attention. Tears filled my eyes when I thought how not so long ago Mr Paws would have happily devoured anything that fell off my plate.

I went to bed hungry.

The next morning I was to take Malik to look for his wagon, which had overturned in the forest on his way here. We found it after some searching - the damn thing was painted green, so it wasn't easy to find with all the new spring growth on the trees. But, no sooner had we found it, than the outlaws started loosing arrows at us and kidnapped Malik. I was incensed, especially when I realised that the sheriff would most likely send me to bed without supper and after not eating last evening I was somewhat on the famished side.

The sheriff, predictably, called me names and I feared further punishment when he had me on my own, but then joy of joys Malik entered the castle, seemingly unharmed. I presumed he had escaped the outlaws. Perhaps he'd turned up his nose at the forest fare they served him, squirrels not being so different from the muck the sheriff offered him last evening. Anyway, all was looking up and our plan, or rather the sheriff's plan, of ransoming Malik could continue.

But, as ever, just when it looked as if everything was going to go our way for once - the ransom arriving along with a gaggle of pretty women - it all went pear-shaped.

There was no ransom and the pretty Saracen women turned out to be brutal killers. They'd come not to hand over a ransom but to assassinate the prince. Oh happy days, I thought. As if glazed sheep's brain wasn't bad enough, I was now about to have my eyeballs gouged out by crazed ninja women and I doubted strutting around the hall in my gleaming leathers offering a taste of my assets would appease them.

So then all hell broke loose and I did what any respectful knight would do in the circumstances and played dead.

While I was on the floor wishing I were anyway but in the castle, a well, a cesspit, anything would do, some mad man called Harold - with tattoos that put my squalid acid-smudged tattoo to shame - killed all the ninja women and saved the prince. So, no ransom for the sheriff and me - downside - but no more yucky badgers' intestines to eat, so silver linings and all that.

PS. I would write about what happened to me on 1 April (Fool's Day) but there's a limit to the embarrassing material I am prepared to commit to parchment and this was a humdinger: let's just say feathers were involved.