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2017-01-21
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2021-07-26
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The Nightwatchman Doesn't Kill

Chapter 7: Our Lives in Your Hands

Chapter Text

Marian was surprised by his harsh tone, but she replied to him, trying to stay calm.
“I went to the market, we needed some supplies for you. Sir Guy, please take a look at this length of cloth… it's of a beautiful shade of blue…”
Guy didn’t even glance at the cloth.
“Why should I care for shades of color? I guess that you just wanted to go away from here. Away from me.”
Marian was tempted to reply that she desperately wanted to stay away from him. At least for a few hours.
The girl felt the weariness deeply in her bones.
Guy's voice, deep, possessive and terribly demanding made her angry.
“The cloth is for you,” she said, “everything I've got from the market is for you. Everything I have done these days is for you. And is this still not enough?"
Guy looked at the girl, surprised by her sharp tone.
It wasn’t the first time that she berated him like that: when he had asked her to show him the necklace, a few days ago, she had been angry at him.
He still was ashamed when he thought about it: he had doubted her loyalty, and Marian proved him wrong.
She eventually accepted to marry him, but he couldn’t help wondering if she did it only to protect her father.
That doubt was like a thorn in his side, and now it was much worse: how could she like him when he was so broken and weak?
He was afraid that she could break the engagement, and his own helplessness made him touchy and irritable.
He wanted to be the one to take care of her, to buy her gifts, not the other way round.
“I don’t need your help.”
The stubbornness of that man gave her even more discomfort than his possessiveness and exclusiveness.
Marian wondered how she would be able, really, to marry him, and to live with him.
The King's return would allow her to escape from her engagement to him, but, maybe, it would also be the end of Guy's life.
His confession.
That thought made her shiver.
But the man's stubbornness prevailed in her reaction.
"The moment you will be healthy enough,” she said, “you will not need nor me, nor anybody else. But the responsibility for your current conditions is mine, for now. Ask and you shall receive, my lord!”
Guy lifted his eyes to look at her.
“Your responsibility? What do you mean? How could this be your responsibility?”
He glanced at the blanket that covered his injured body, and he felt even more angry.
“It’s the Nightwatchman’s fault! That miserable outlaw keeps defying me, but the first thing I’ll do when I get better will be capturing him. He shall hang, and I’ll watch him swinging on the rope.”
The girl realized her sudden mistake: she had to fix it, immediately.
A further distraction could be fatal for her.
She was afraid.
At the same time, Marian could not understand why he was so angry and concentrated on catching the Nightwatchman. She never did anything really wrong, until that fatal night. What the Nightwatchman did was nothing, until then, in comparison to what Robin and his gang at the castle were doing in and out of the Castle, and around the County.
Yet, Guy seemed to attack the Nightwatchman relentlessly, trying to catch him with increasing anger.
"Sir Guy," Marian said with a calmer, more controlled tone, “you have been injured in the vicinity of this house, we needed to take you home immediately, so we took care of you here, without losing precious time or risking your health to bring you back to Locksley." She made a pause. "I am your betrothed, Sir Guy. It’s my responsibility to help you regain your health, to help you in everything you might need.”
Marian approached Guy, and slowly touched the man's forearm, like a slow caress.
“In sickness and in health.”
She smiled at him, vaguely seductive.
“Sir Guy, there is something I do not understand,” she added, inadvertently. “With all the enemies of the Crown out there, why would you stubbornly do anything to capture just him. What is the Nightwatchman for you to risk your life to this extent,only to get him? From what I hear around, he carries just food, or just a little money to poor people. What’s wrong with this? Pity is due from the Lords. Compassion towards others should be our first thought. Please, give up your insane hunt to catch him, My Lord.”
Guy looked at Marian’s hand on his arm, and his heart started beating a little faster. Her touch was like fire, scorching and distracting, capable to numb his mind, but the words she said, took him back to reality in a moment.
He moved his good hand to clutch Marian’s wrist, and he looked at her.
“Do you think he’s harmless?! Be careful, Marian, these are dangerous words, if somebody else should hear you, you’d be suspected of betrayal. That man doesn’t just feed the poor. He defies the authority of the Sheriff, every time he gives them food or money, he’s inciting them to rebel and someday they will try to disobey the law, and they’ll end up hanged.”
Marian felt trapped, Guy's hand was gripping her wrist, his long, slender fingers just above the slight scar that the Nightwatchman had recently suffered from him.
One wrong move and she would be at his mercy. And now she knew that Guy wouldn’t have had pity on her, if he had discovered the truth.
She felt lost. And then there were his eyes fixed on her, watching her, challenging her, with anger, with conviction, with fury, with passion.
As long as he had been weak, Marian had not been afraid, or embarrassed to touch him, to hug him even, and had let him embrace her. But now, with him suddenly strong, threatening, suddenly returning like the man who was, she felt an extreme heat from his touch, a sensation she had never felt on her skin before.
She only wanted to flee from him, to flee quickly.
She had never felt like this, in all those years, even when she had to free herself from unwanted advances from one or two of her suitors.
Guy's deep warmth, his strength, the possessiveness in his eyes, made her feel guilty, dirty, and not because she was the Nightwatchman, but because his gaze made her feel strangely, deeply exposed.
“Sir Guy! Remember, we are still promised. This is inappropriate. If someone saw us....I have a reputation to keep. Please let me go. Now.”
Guy stared at her, blankly, then he released her from his hold. She looked afraid of him, disgusted maybe, and he thought that it was because of his conditions.
This thought made him even angrier. He hated to be weak, forced to depend on servants to attend to his most basic needs. And it was the Nightwatchman’s fault.
If once he could have decided to listen to Marian’s words, and believe that the man just wanted to help people, now it was a personal revenge. That outlaw destroyed his life, and he had to pay for it.
“If being here bothers you so much, you can go. I don’t need anyone’s pity!”

Marian was relieved, freed from his touch, but his words kept hurting her. She wanted to go away, to leave him there. She really didn’t understand how to deal with Guy. But she would still have the last word, in that absurd competition between them.
Where would he find another woman to look after him?! Another woman willing to waste her sleep, her energy and her heart for him!
“Sir Guy, I do not feel ANY pity for you!” Marian looked at Guy, regaining her self confidence and her detachment. “You are intractable today, and I'm tired. I'm just very tired. I will send someone to help you.”
Marian left the room.
Guy looked at her back. He was the one who told her to go away, but he had the sensation he was the one to be dismissed.
“Stop immediately!” He shouted, even more angry than before.
Marian heard Guy shouting, in a tone of voice so strong and so peremptory that she went back hastily. No one, absolutely no one could dare to speak to her that way. And in her house!
"You! You! Don’t you dare to talk to me in that tone! I'm not your servant, nor your maidservant. Never! Never again you will talk to me in that tone. You! You don’t deserve anything. You are bad, you are cruel, a threat to the Kingdom. A threat to the King! From me you will have nothing but assistance, I am ashamed of what you did! And here I was! Hoping that you could really be a better man! I was wrong, so utterly wrong!”
Guy’s heart skipped a beat. He had never seen Marian so furious, and a part of him liked that wild side of her.
He was so mad and frustrated, that a verbal fight with her could have been satisfactory, a good way to vent, but then her words filled him with fear.
Why was she talking of the King? She talked as if she knew his darkest secret.
He looked at her, unsure, but calmer.
“What… what do you mean?” He asked, lowering his voice.
Marian came back to Guy, feeling stronger. She finally had an advantage over him for once.
“Isn't it true that in the period in which they said you were ill, and there was need for you to be quarantined , you were actually in the Holy Land?” She said, almost in a whisper, mimicking and imitating his facial expressions and his posture, his conspiratorial tone.
Guy froze. He tried to keep a straight face, but he couldn’t think clearly.
How could she know? She couldn’t have guessed, and only two other persons knew about his secret: Vaisey, and the physician who lied about his illness.
Guy couldn’t believe that either of them could reveal his attempt to kill the king to Marian.
Maybe Locksley had recognized him?
But if that was the case, why revealing the truth to Marian, instead of accusing him?
His heart pounding, Guy grabbed again Marian’s hand and he stared at her.
“Never repeat those words. Never. You’ll die if you do.”
Marian felt herself tremble. Was Guy really threatening her to die by his hands? How much longer she would and could have to endure such a thing from him?
No More, Marian thought.
She felt tears, born from anger, forming at the corners of her eyes. Instead of trying to hold them, she let them fall, and she stared at him, at his eyes.
“How dare you threaten me, Sir Guy? How can you even think of marriage, of a family while threatening your future wife of death? What kind of man are you, for real, Sir Guy? I know. You told me yourself. You are not good at keeping secrets. And now you won’t do me any harm. It will be our secret. And you will have to behave differently from now on, if you really want to marry me.”
Marian prayed to God that Guy didn’t understand the truth, she was truly terrified that he really might hurt her, or to turn his rage against her father.
But in his fevered delirium Guy had asked her to help him. Those words had to have a value. They had to mean something. She prayed God, to listen to her silent prayer. She stared into Guy’s eyes, feigning conviction and firmness.
Guy could feel Marian’s arm tremble between his fingers, or was he the one who was shivering in fear? He slowly shook his head, trying to dispel the dizziness that was cutting his breath short, giving him the sickening impression of being, again, on a ship headed for the Holy Land.
“Me? How is that possible?!” He asked, in a urgent whisper, and he was surprised to notice that Marian shrank away from him, in fear. She repeated that he was the one who revealed that secret to her, during a feverish night. Guy realized that she was afraid of him, as if he could actually hurt her.
“After today, never talk about it again, not even to me. If the Sheriff should suspect that you know, he’ll kill you. Your father too. And me. We’d all die. Your life… my life… they are all in your hands now.”
Guy wanted to keep talking and tell her that he never wanted to put her in danger, that he really loved her, and that she was his only hope to become a better man. He was also bubbling with rage, and scared to death at the same time, all his emotion jumbled together in a overwhelming mixture.
His mind was in a turmoil and his body pained him beyond his endurance.
He looked at Marian, unable to utter any other words, and he had the impression that her figure was clouded by dark spots, dancing in front of his eyes.
He felt waves of nausea washing over him, and for a moment he feared that he was going to be sick in front of Marian. But soon darkness enveloped him, and he mercifully slipped in a place where there was no pain and where he could be unaware of his illness.
He collapsed back on the pillows that were propping his body upright, and he passed out.