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Lady Marian of Knighton – the only daughter of Sir Edward of Knighton, the sheriff of Nottingham – experienced many hours of rapture that tinged her life with a glory of happiness. Hours she spent with Robin of Locksley, Earl of Huntingdon, when her heart was burning like a never-dying flame, when she felt like a goddess, perfectly delighted and admired by him. There was always her dream-world in Sherwood Forest with Robin on their favorite meadow; the world into which she could escape from monotony and loneliness.
But Robin was now gone for months. Marian was not sure that she would ever see Robin again. But she prayed that he would be unharmed, although she told him that she didn’t care whether a Saracen soldier would stab him in the heart, or one of his paramours would strangle him with her hands wrapped around his neck while kissing him.
Robin's unsentimental parting with Marian confirmed that he didn’t love her, leaving her free to blame him for the pain he caused her and to hate him. In daylight, Marian found things much less tragic and more endurable than in nighttime. When darkness blanked the earth, she always thought of her former betrothed, and a sharp pain was tearing through her heart as if something were trying to claw its way out. Marian lost confidence in her happy star. She wanted summer and her wedding with Robin; she missed her long strolls in the greenwood with him, and she craved to be on her and Robin's meadow that was often misty at sunrise. She always wanted Robin, but he was far away; he was not hers anymore.
So, Marian decided that she would move on and leave Robin in the past. The attention of the Earl of Dorset, who recently arrived in Nottinghamshire, restored a good deal of her self-respect and confidence. But although she liked the man’s company at balls at the castle, where her father as sheriff of Nottingham resided, at first she was not going to be a silly goose, fancying the man, who liked to talk to her and to lavish her with compliments. Suddenly, in a year after Robin’s departure, she grew slightly colder to her former betrothed and found herself quite interested in the Earl of Dorset.
One day, Marian became convinced that she had forgotten Robin; that she would never dream of him again in the dead of night. Robin’s time in her life was over, she told herself, and for a very short time, maybe for a few days, she felt that she had triumphed over Robin. And then, a truly terrible thing happened: she fell out of love just as suddenly as she had fallen into it. One day she was in love with the Earl of Dorset, and the next she wasn't. How could it happen? Was she mistaken that she loved the earl and forgot Robin?
She was aghast. She couldn't believe she could feel that way – love and not love, attraction and then indifference. Every time she saw the Earl of Dorset at the castle, she tried to pretend the old enchantment still existed, but the fact was that it didn’t, and her mind always flew to Robin. So, Marian attempted to thrill and dream in the earl’s presence, and she blushed when he hurled compliments at her, but she didn’t feel anything, except for hollowness in her heart. Hollowness that made Marian walk through the woods and remember Robin.
The Earl of Dorset continued to court her despite her displayed indifference towards him. He bored her almost into a deep sleep, so much that Marian yawned one evening in the very midst of one of his extravagant and foolish speeches. There was nothing to him but fine speeches, his empty compliments, and his confidence of a peacock. The man was exuding such overweening confidence that suited his own self-absorbed life-long venture into self-adulation, which irritated her beyond measure. Dorset only wanted her as a beautiful wife to bear his heirs and was not interested in her personality.
Soon the boredom Marian felt in Dorset’s presence changed into something else. No thrill from trysts with the man and no good emotion at all – just cold indifference that was gradually evolving into disgust to him. When she looked at him, she was shuddering with repugnance. Why had it never struck her before that the earl’s eyes were like a cow's? Marian was almost ill over every meeting with the earl at the castle. There was nothing to add to that.
And Marian sent the earl a letter, asking him to stop court her. She didn’t want to openly discard him and hoped that he would understand everything and stop approach her whenever there was a ball at the castle and she appeared there as the sheriff’s daughter. For that reason, the Earl of Dorset ceased to notice Marian, as if she didn’t exist, and soon he left Nottingham for London in order to start his career at Prince John’s court.
Nobles and scandalmongers in the shire thought Lady Marian of Knighton had been jilted and pitied her. It was unbelievable that the sheriff’s daughter had been abandoned by the Earl of Huntingdon and now by the Earl of Dorset. Marian gained the reputation of a woman who might be compared to a mirror – shining and bright on the surface and yet, having blemishes and hidden bad sides that are not reflected in that mirror. In the mind’s eye of all the nobles in Nottingham, it was Marian’s fault that she had been deserted by two noblemen. Something was terribly wrong with the sheriff’s only beloved child – that was what people said about Marian. Sir Edward who knew better was disappointed and disapproving of Marian’s decision to quit the courtship with Dorset, but he understood why she had done that.
“Fickle and shallow like all young girls. She doesn’t know whom she wants!”
“Sir Edward should pressure her into marriage to a man of his choice!”
“Lady Marian lost the Earl of Huntingdon and the Earl of Dorset!"
"Jilted by two earls! What a shame! Such a shame!”
“Two earls abandoned her! There is something wrong with her!”
“She will never get married! No one is mad enough to court her!”
“She is doomed to remain an old maid for the rest of her life!
“This lady is too arrogant and so cold! She is undeserving of happiness!”
“She covets a man with a loftier title. She will become Prince John’s mistress.”
“Huntingdon didn't marry her before leaving England! He must have a reason!”
“Lady Marian is heartless! That’s why men don’t want her!”
“She will be waiting for the highest bidder and then marry.”
“Her beauty attracts men to her. But inside she is too cold to love someone!”
“Huntingdon and Dorset both deserted her! Now nobody will court her!”
After Dorset’s departure from Nottingham, Marian had no spunk to defend herself. She supposed she deserved it all, for perhaps she was fickle. She didn’t really comprehend why she had assumed that she had been in love with the earl, and it was her father who opened her eyes to the truth. One evening, Edward told her that she had coaxed herself into believing that she was in love with the Earl of Dorset because she craved to forget Robin of Locksley.
And Marian was both devastated and ashamed of herself when she realized that her father was right. In an attempt to thrust away memories of Robin, she wished to try another courtship and persuaded herself that she had fallen out of love with Robin and in love with Dorset. Marian felt like a fool! It would have been better if she had lived a solitary life after Robin’s departure to Acre, but, instead, she made awful mistakes. She didn’t care about her reputation, and the latest events assisted her as they protected her from other potential suitors.
At last, her musings focused on Robin. Again… Again… Again… Robin and only Robin! Marian wondered where he was and whether he was alive. She still hated him for leaving her and choosing his duty to the king over her. Oh, how she wished that a conflagration of her love for the Earl of Huntingdon fizzle out utterly into ashes… not a spark of it left, not even a romantic memory… But it was not destined to happen… But Marian loved Robin more than she hated him, and her devotion to him was a heavenly, gorgeous thing – a love of eternity.
The sheriff’s daughter was very unhappy about her personal situation. In her bedroom, a distraught Marian cried, tears seeped between her lids, she cried and cried, calling Robin’s name. She viciously inked out the passage in her diary about “her love for Robin that was like the love poets dreamed of." When she was confined to her bedroom again, like it had been after his departure, she would look out of her window and see the outlines of Sherwood Forest in the distance – Robin’s favorite place in the world. Why didn’t he stay in England and marry her? Why did he prefer some unknown land to Sherwood and his home?
After the story with two earls, gossipers claimed that Marian had no depth at all. Marian wished she really were such a superficial creature so that she could efface Robin of Locksley from her memory, but she was a different personality. She knew that even if she had silly, tempestuous affairs with men or if she married someone without a bit of an affection, they would never replace Robin in her heart. Several years ago, she had been swept off her feet by the Earl of Huntingdon’s handsome face, his twinkling blue eyes, and his passionate bravado, and Marian’s heart would forever belong to Robin.
When he had proposed to her, Marian had believed that Robin had evidently and unmistakably fallen terrifically in love with her, but it was a wrong conclusion. His decision to join the king on Crusade meant that his romantic ardors were things of superficiality. The thought that Robin had never loved her as much as she loved him tortured Marian. Was she really incapable of inspiring a deep and lasting passion in a great man like Robin?
"Am I not good enough for Robin?" Marian questioned with terrible intensity. “He told me he loved me with a feeling that would last through eternity, but he lied.”
The sheriff’s daughter smiled sadly. It was too late to ponder over the reasons behind Robin’s decision to leave her and sacrifice their happiness. She was sure that Robin had long since ceased to care for her. But she – she would love Robin forever. And Robin… he would have affairs with many women, but she would still love him. Her love for Robin would hover around him all his life like an invisible benediction, safeguarding him from all perils in the Holy Land and keeping from him all things of harm and evil – it would save him for her.
The Earl of Huntingdon… Robin of Locksley… Always Robin… Forever her Robin…