Fic: Dreamers

[gnimaerd]

Title: Dreamers - The Life and Loves of Edward of Knighton
Genre: angst, humour, romance
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Robin/Marian (in the background)
Words: 10,149 (um... yeah - this is loooong)
Summary: The title is a bit of a give away here... The story of Edward of Knighton, wife of Kate and father of Marian. His life, and his love of the only two women ever to matter to him.

AN: Be forwarned. This doesn't end happily. I mean, we all know what happens to poor Eddie, right? I've tried wherever possible to infuse a bit of lightness and humour, but this is something of a three act tragedy. Blame the show writers, not me: they're the ones that decided that the poor guy wasn't going to be allowed to catch a break. Still, like I said, it's not all angst. And I would like to thank my beta, clinicallybored, who did GREAT work helping me polish this fic. ^_^

Dreamers: The Life and Loves of Edward of Knighton

He met Kate (Katherine) for the first time when he was sixteen, and she was eight.

She was a cousin’s cousin’s son’s ward’s daughter. A child with too many men ready to decide her future without enough concern for the girl herself.

 

He had thought little of her at the time – dark hair, green eyes, a pretty dress, an earnest look, a rag doll and a nurse. What interest was she to him, young ambitious Lord of Knighton? He who was determined to be Sheriff of Nottingham one day had little interest in the orphan of an orphan under the protection of a relative he knew so little of.

 

Later, he would regret not knowing her as a child. Not using every moment of those precious extra years of hers on Earth – what he would give to seize them back and live them over and over.

 

Still, time passed, as it was wont to do, and he was Sheriff in due time, and still young and proud and firm and respected. He was well-liked amongst Lords and peasants alike, for he had a reputation for fairness and for taking care of those in need. He felt proud of his shire, where harvests were good and houses sturdy and so few starved. He liked council, listening to the Lords under his authority and working them as a farmer works the earth, manipulating and debating and always, always getting his own way whilst never allowing them to suspect that they had done anything but win the argument.

 

Politics – a game perhaps not as inspiring as swords play, but far more intriguing.

 

He was twenty eight, and his cousin’s cousin’s son brought his ward – the little maid Katherine, who was Lady Katherine, by then, twenty years old and, mysteriously, still unmarried – proud and beautiful.

Edward found himself puzzled by his distant relative’s refusal to find the girl a husband. She had been betrothed twice to quite suitable men who could provide for her, but apparently fussed her way out of both arrangements, disliking her suitors.

 

Edward had thought her spoiled and her guardian foolish – letting a mere girl have her own way thus.

 

Then he had laid eyes upon her, and was glad.

 

She was Norman, with skin the colour of ivory and eyes the dark green of the restless ocean. Thick dark hair curled with easy grace down past her shoulders, about a straight nose and contrariwise mouth. Cherubic dimples which made her look like an imp; like an angel; like a woman with wit beyond what the world might credit her with.

 

She arched a delicate brow at him across the table that night, and when he raised his goblet to her in polite acknowledgement of her gaze, she smiled, and he was lost.

 

She told him later, nestled comfortably against his side in bed one night, that he had been the first (and only) person that night to look at her as if he considered that she might have had thoughts and feelings of her own. That she had made up her mind to marry him then, sooner or later, and been determined that none other would do.

 

He had laughed, and kissed her, for it was exactly like her to determine such a thing in such a manner.

 

She spent the next few months reducing his mindset to that of a gibbering adolescent boy and causing him to do incredibly humiliating things like walk smack into walls and trip head first over his own feet upon spotting her.

 

Winchester wanted her, of course. Winchester wanted a great deal of whatever Edward did. And never for a moment did Edward consider the idea that his friend would not succeed in winning her.

 

Winchester was bold, and confident, and Norman, and sat on wealth far greater than Edward’s, for all he had won the Shire through sheer guile.

 

But neither of them had reckoned on her guardian’s soft spot for the girl. Were it up to the man alone, Winchester certainly would have taken Kate as his bride.

 

But it was Kate who was the deciding force in the situation, not her guardian, for all he was not happy with her choice. He could not deny the girl her heart – and her heart lay with Edward (who was as shocked as any when he heard).

 

Edward had never been in any hurry to find a bride. He was a man, and he could take his time as he chose. Besides, if he died without children, he had a good many able cousins who the estate could pass to. Knighton was securely in Saxon hands, whether he married a good Saxon woman and produced good Saxon children or not.

 

But Kate… suddenly her Norman blood seemed an issue pale in comparison with her sweetness, her humour, her intelligence and her beauty. Her biting wit and her refusal to be won over by unfeeling tokens, but insistence that he work for her using his head and his heart, not protocol or courtly ritual.

 

His relatives were horrified.

 

What has she done that makes her worthy of your love?

 

And he would stare at them uncomprehendingly. For what was the point of love if it had to be justified with worthiness?

 

Kate and her Norman blood… he barely understood such urgency as now brewed in his heart, but he knew himself to adore every breath past her lips, every indentation left upon the ground by her feet, every lash to drop from her eyes. Though she chastised and belittled him; teased and confused him; scorned and mocked him; argued with him heatedly; said and did silly, petty things (not least of which was turning down Winchester’s marriage proposal) he knew he could love no one more than he did her.

 

(Or so he believed until the day of Marian’s birth).

 

And, through some miraculous chance, she saw fit to match his adoration with her own.

 

They were married in May, and she shirked all traditional bridal blooms and wore cherry blossom in her hair, carrying sprigs of the delicate, sweet-smelling stuff in her hands as her guardian walked her down the aisle.

 

She tried her utmost to look serious throughout the ceremony, but failed half way through the vows and began to shake with laughter – at which point his own nerve gave out and he almost doubled over with silent mirth. They stumbled out of the church together and made it as far as their carriage before finally collapsing into helpless spasms of glee at the surreality of it all.

 

“I hate this stupid dress!” She had complained, wiping away tears of helpless laughter, “Look, the hem is already coming away – I cannot dance in this!”

 

“But you look wonderful!” He had replied, “And I had so hoped to help you out of it this evening!”

 

His answer had been a shower of cherry blossoms as she made to whack him over the head with her bridal bower.

 

As luck would have it, he had helped her out of it – just rather sooner than he had thought he would, as she had insisted that she would not spend another hour in the wretched thing and he had quietly accompanied her to their new bedchamber at Knighton in order to change.

 

She’d had surprisingly few scruples about consummating their union in the middle of the day, barely half an hour after the wedding. Not that he’d had many objections himself.

 

That was how he liked to think of Kate: laughing as he plied her with kisses and compliments; bare skinned and purring with contentment amongst white sheets damp with sweat, languidly stroking his hair and asking where he’d learned to do that. Darting about their bedchamber like some kind of sprite, wrapped in only a bed sheet or one of his linen undershirts, remarking on the fine morning or wondering what was for breakfast or teasing him for his inability to get out of bed in the mornings. Depositing herself into his lap in the evenings and easing him out of some dour mood with gentle good humour and sweet kisses and coy promises.

 

He could not bear to think of her so sick as each pregnancy had made her. How her belly grew round whilst the rest of her wasted away about it – and how he grew to hate the children which grew inside of her and stole her life away by inches and seconds and heartbeats.

 

And yet, such strange grief as each infant withered and died so soon after the other. Some never saw the light of day but died in the womb and bled from her loins; others were born but never lived to draw breath; and those that did did not do so for long.

 

In total there were five ill-fated pregnancies in four years.

 

And they both knew, when the sixth one came, that she would not survive it.

 

The physician had warned Edward, after the last miscarriage, that another would kill her and that her chances of living through another labour were slim, particularly if the child were born to full term.

 

Kate hated being in bed so much as she was required to be during those nine months. She complained loudly and distractedly of boredom and of the unfairness of it – that she would rather die fulfilled than having spent the last few months of her life staring at the same four walls day in and day out. And he had snapped at her, for he could not bear to think of losing her.

 

He would never forgive himself for quarrelling with her as bitterly as he did in those last few months of her life.

 

In what rare peaceful times they had together, as she was propped up in bed looking too thin and too pale around her ballooning abdomen, she would speak of the child.

 

“She’s going to be strong, you know,” she had once told him.

 

“How do you know it’s a girl?”

 

Kate had folded her arms, crossly, “A mother knows these things, Eddie.”

 

More earnestly, another time, she had begun trying to instruct him on how he must provide for the infant she was now convinced was their daughter once she was gone – and he had had to stop her, unable to listen to her lay out plans she would never see come to fruition.

 

“Don’t name her after me, for God’s sake,” she had waved a hand, “No old names, Edward. She’ll be brand new – she must be named as such. For the future.”

“What do you want to call her?” He’d asked.

 

“Marian,” she’d replied – a French name, of course. A new one, just becoming popular in the French courts her cousins still frequented back in Normandy.

 

He’d grimaced, “Kate…”

 

“Don’t you like it?” She’d looked disappointed.

 

He’d sighed, “She’s not going to be Norman, Kate. She will be Saxon. If, indeed, she is a she.”

 

“She will be at least part Norman,” Kate had insisted, stubbornly, “and Marian she will be, do you hear me?”

 

He’d laughed, and held up his hands in defeat.

 

“If you’re so concerned about your precious bloodlines, you can have her marry the little Locksley boy,” she’d told him, “They’re Saxon, aren’t they? Then you breed back to the source. If you’re going to insist on seeing our daughter as a sow for your Saxon heritage.”

 

“And if he’s a boy?”

 

“Name him whatever you choose,” she waved a hand, “but really, Edward – Marian’s a girl.”

It was a rainy afternoon in early December when a messenger arrived at Nottingham castle to inform Edward that his wife was suffering the early pains of labour. By the time he made it back to Knighton, Matilda, the good strong midwife for most of Nottingham – who had delivered little Robin of Locksley and seen Kate through all of her previous pregnancies – was already well-instated and beating everybody back out of the master bedroom with a broom.

 

 “There are some things that women go through that only other women may be allowed to witness!” She had told Edward, firmly, “Now kindly get out of the way, sir Sheriff, and let me do my job!”

 

So he spent the day marching about Knighton hall and wondering if he would ever see his wife alive again.

 

It was dark, and the sky beginning to crack with thunder, when Kate’s screams finally ceased to echo about the manor house – and for a moment there was only a terrible, sickening silence, as Edward stood stock still at the bottom of the stairs.

 

Until he heard the single, unmistakable wail of a newborn infant, and felt his heart stop in his chest.

 

“I told you she’d be a girl,” Kate sighed, weakly triumphant as he crashed none-too-elegantly into the room. She was propped up on the bed amongst blood-stained sheets, barely managing to maintain her grip on a tiny bundle of blanket and cloth, as Matilda sponged down her forehead.

 

“The infant’s still bloody,” the midwife had informed him, her cheer for once seeming to ring false, the worry too bright behind her eyes, “for your wife wouldn’t let me take her from her. Not that I blame her. Good set of lungs on the women in your life, and no mistake.”

 

Marian hiccupped and mewed in her mother’s arms, muddy blue eyes unfocussed and somewhat surprised looking. She really was still wet with her mother’s blood, little tufts of dark hair stuck up at odd angles.

 

“Isn’t she funny looking?” Kate smiled sleepily at her daughter and then her husband, “Look at that squashed little face… oh, and her hands are so tiny… she keeps shaking her fist at me – do you think she’s angry with me, Eddie? I expect I woke her up… what business was it of mine, spilling her out of her peaceful little life in my belly into this mess of a world…”

 

And Edward had to catch the bundle of his daughter and her blanket before it could slip from Kate’s grip, her eyes fluttering closed, her thin, pale face finally stilling.

 

“Kate?” He could not register Matilda beginning to weep as Marian screeched in alarm at the sudden separation from her first protector.

 

Kate said not a word.

 

“Is that why she died?” Marian once asked him, beginning to cry, when he finally related the story of her birth to her. “Did she think I was angry with her, father? I wasn’t, you know – I’m sure I wasn’t – I didn’t mean it – ”

 

“No, no, hush,” he’d patted her awkwardly, once again cursing his incredible lack of an ability to mother her properly, “That’s not what I meant at all – Marian, be sensible – ”

 

And then he had realised what he would have done had someone told him to ‘be sensible’ about Kate’s death at the time, and he drew his seven year old daughter into his lap and let her weep until her tears ran dry.

 

“Your mother was being… as she always was,” he told her, gently, “Making light…. She loved you, Marian…”

 

Marian sniffled, and asked to hear the story again.

 

Matilda had found a proper wet nurse for the girl, and done much of her mothering for the first few months of her life, as Edward tried to readjust to this strange, dull existence beyond Kate.

 

The world continued to grind on, with alarming speed, and Nottinghamshire needed its sheriff, and Marian needed her father.

 

Her eyes were blue, like his – and her nose turned up, as his had always done; but it looked sweet on her – a little dainty, rabbit nose, which he would tap, affectionately, to make her burble with pleasure (the first physical contact he allowed himself with her).

 

But her hair grew in thick, dark curls. Not jet black like his own, but honey brown – almost black in some lights, almost chestnut in others, just as her mother’s had been. And her mouth was contrariwise; her dimples cherubic; her skin fair as porcelain. She had tiny chubby hands and tiny chubby feet. Her cheeks were of the sort that made local women want to stop and pinch them (a treatment she did not take to well).

 

It was her outraged shrieks that drew him one day over to where her nurse was letting some of the women fuss about her as normal, and caused him to demand that they please leave his poor daughter in peace.

 

Lord Robert of Locksley, whose own wife had perished of a terrible chill not long after Edward’s had, brought his four year old son to visit often enough – with that curious village boy (Much?) who seemed the only one capable of managing the rambunctious child. Robert was an intelligent Lord, sharp-witted and cheerful. Edward had always liked the man, feeling the brotherhood of their shared Saxon blood, and being impressed with how he vied for the needs of those peasants who resided in his village.

 

Little Robin was largely uninterested in Marian, but young Much, wisely sending Robin off to complete some suitably energetic task (like running around the outside of the house ten times without stopping), would sit at Marian’s cradle and rock the infant patiently.

 

Edward took comfort from Robert’s friendship, and amusement from the antics of the two boys, and strength, from the gradually blossoming miracle that was Marian’s existence.

 

Against all odds, she lived, and grew, and was as strong as Kate had always said she would be.

 

Edward learned how to comb long, thick hair without tugging it. He learned to part and braid it neatly. He learned how to tie ribbons into adequate bows, and how to fasten and unfasten tiny belt buckles and dress catches and shoe straps. He learned how to blow on cuts to take the sting away, and how to mop up tears and snot without flinching, and how to play chase and hide and seek.

 

He learned the art of convincing a small, paranoid girl with an over-active imagination that there truly weren’t any monsters lurking under her bed; and attempted to perfect his bedtime story technique (though he never felt himself particularly adept on that front).

 

It was just that he found himself at a loss as to how honest he was meant to be with the child.

 

When she was five, after witnessing the wedding that he himself conducted between two of the locals in Knighton, she asked him to describe his own wedding to her mother. So he told her. And found himself taking an ear-lashing from her nurse the next day when she came to him demanding to know why on earth her young charge wanted to know what the word ‘consummated’ meant.

 

But when he lied, or when he omitted things, Marian seemed able to sense it – and pestered him until he answered her truthfully.

 

Kate grew in her everyday, it seemed. Determined to know things, even to her own detriment.

 

And Edward saw more of his beloved wife in the girl with every passing month. Her oval face; her earnest gaze; her heavy brow; her eager grin. Her stubborn pride; her good humour; her sweet concern for all those about her.

 

He once found her weeping over snail that she had accidentally stood on and crushed.

 

“Papa, I hurted it!”

 

“Yes, my dear – but you didn’t mean to – ”

 

“Papa, I killed it! I killed it all dead – all dead!” And she continued to weep inconsolably for the rest of the afternoon. “Poor snail… poor mister snail… all dead… what about his little snail children and his little snail wife?”

 

Only when Much and Robin blessedly arrived with the Lord of Locksley was a solution found, with Much promptly bringing order to the situation by suggesting that Mr. Snail must at once be given a proper funeral. After that, by way of repentance, Marian was tasked with leaving cabbage leaves all over the garden in order that his wife and children wouldn’t starve.

 

Robin made himself entirely unhelpful by sniggering all the way through the solemn little ceremony. Marian, however, was consoled – largely because she eventually lost her temper and smacked her future-betrothed clean across the back of the head.

 

But at least she was no longer weeping.

 

This did, however, start an unfortunate little habit of hers – and Edward was to discover her leaving cabbage leaves in various obscure corners of Knighton Hall’s extensive gardens well into her teenage years.

 

And just as he had mastered one set of skills apparently required of him, they became obsolete, and he found himself needing to learn a whole new game plan. Marian could comb and braid her own hair, fasten her own dresses, and fight the monsters under her bed.

 

She could also turn handstands.

 

“Look! Look, Father, look what Robin taught me!”

 

He’d been quite impressed, really. He’d certainly never learned to do handstands before his twelfth birthday – and she was only just nine.

 

Her nurse, however, had been less amused.

 

“Marian, turn yourself the right way up this instant and don’t ever let me catch you showing your knickers in public again!”

 

And that was only the start of it.

 

Girls, as it happened, had an unfortunate habit of turning into women. And Marian, around about her tenth birthday, began to turn into a woman as confusing and baffling and downright infuriating as her mother had been – without the convenience of her not having been any of his responsibility at that age.

 

“When is Robin coming to visit again?” She enquired, a little too casually, one breakfast.

 

“I don’t know, Marian,” he had replied, evenly, “Would you like him to come and visit?”

 

“No,” Marian went back to stirring her porridge, “I was just asking. So I can prepare. And hide my snail collection.”

Robin was fourteen, by then, and showing signs of his father’s good looks – a fair haired, smart-mouthed, but ultimately good natured young lad, on the verge of shaking off his childhood altogether.

 

Edward had watched them playing as children – watched them play still, now, and began to wish that he had known Kate so much longer than he had done. Was glad, suddenly, that Marian and Robin would have spent their whole lives together – not a wasted moment apart.

 

He enquired of Robert what kind of dowry he might be interested in with regards to Marian.

 

“If they are happy to be wed when Marian is of age then I ask nothing but your blessing of the union,” Robert told him, “For goodness sake, Marian could practically be my own daughter – Robin your own son; we are family in all but blood. A marriage would be joyous, not a business transaction, for all it will benefit both our estates.”

 

Marian had snorted at the idea, “I am not going to marry Robin! He’s rude! And his teeth are funny. And he smells like a barnyard.”

 

“My dear, you must marry somebody…”

 

“Can I marry my horse?”

 

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

 

“If I find a horse and then call it ‘somebody’ can I marry him?”

 

“Marian…”

 

Continued here.