Both hilt and scabbard were black with silver-colored furnishings intricately worked. She let her fingers run down the scabbard. Having no personal knowledge of such things, she had no idea if it were a reproduction or authentic. With Robert's taste, it was most likely authentic.

Above the desk hung an oil painting of huge old beech trees, the violet shadows and the smooth grey green of their trunks blending so that one was not quite sure if there were a man somewhere there or not. She studied it for a while, lost in its quality of stillness. It seemed to her it must be an English forest for she had often noted such huge beeches along the roads. She liked it, felt drawn into it, as though if she but spread her arms, one of the misty shafts of light in the painting might surround her and lift her into the trees. So taken was she by the experience of that she lost her hold on passing minutes and was startled when his voice came from the doorway.

"You find the painting interesting?"

"Very much so," she breathed, turning to where he stood in a somewhat lighter green shirt and brown slacks.

"Shall we make tea and see what might be found as muffin-replacements?"

His kitchen was smaller than hers and, again, not so well-lit. The ceiling was low, darkly beamed, and the half-timbered walls gave onto a matching dining area. "Orange and spice?" he asked, not in the mood this morning for Earl Grey. She nodded and he put a kettle on to boil, then set honey on the table. With a large knife he cut thick slices of crusty bread and set them out for her, along with fresh peaches and grapes.

He searched out a cup for her with an intricately-worked, rather Arabic pattern around it and out of habit set out the cup he always used for himself.  At the moment he didn't even think about it.

 

"What an interesting cup," she commented as he sat down.

"This? Oh, you mean the Robin Hood scene on it. Yes, I'm quite, um, a fan of the old legend."

"I almost thought I saw someone in that painting in your den." She smiled. "It could even have been Robin Hood."

"So it could. Would you like butter?"

"Do you think, Robert, there might have been a real Robin?"

"Why do you ask?"

"I just prefer to think there was. It's much more romantic that way."

"Being outlawed by your King, having to live in the forest...." His voice trailed away.

"Errol Flynn," she grinned, "all bright and green and swinging down on some vine."

"Sherwood vines are seldom so strong."

"You've been in Sherwood?"

"Not for some time."

"Did you like it there?"

"Did I like...? I am not sure 'like' is a word that springs to mind."

"But it's beautiful, isn't it? It...is...beautiful?"

"In it's way, yes." He looked into his tea. "And much preferable to the desert."

She sighed. "I do think about the good Englishmen following Richard on Crusade, you know, what it must have been like for them to leave all their native greenness and make their way through the heat of the desert on the way to Jerusalem."

"It was cold, too," he whispered, "in December when Richard turned what was left of his army inland from Jaffa. And wet."

"I've heard how it rained on them, yes."

"Almost without stopping. Buckets, torrents of cold rain, mixed with sleet and hail."

She studied his face. He'd gone away somewhere again. Perhaps he got into books very much like she did, so much that they became utterly real to him?

Robert was looking into his tea, not seeing it, only aware of the puddles under his weary feet, of how he sank in mud now, not sand, mud up to his knees. "So cold," he murmured, "so very, very tired and cold."