Chapter 3

When Rowena went back to the safety of the forest after her sojourn with the randy gentleman and his paramour, she found Doxie had already moved back into the camp. In her very own words,

“The convent life is not for me and that is a fact. Those nuns can really get on one’s nerves, let me tell you.”

Roxana’s spies from Nottingham were waiting for her and they told her,

“The tax collectors from Prince John are squeezing the Sheriff for more treasure. They are fanning out this very morning to drain the villages of every last copper hidden away. Some of the Locksley folk are trekking in this direction to avoid the tax men.”

Rowena was disturbed by the troubling news but she was not yet ready to push the panic button.

She gathered the elite warriors of the outlaw band and told them,

“We will set up an ambush on the tax men after they finish their dirty work. That way, we can teach them a lesson and recover the stolen funds as well!”

She hesitated to take Roland, the aging Knight with her on the mission to recover the “peoples” money. It was not because of his advancing years, but because he was an “old school” warrior who never allowed his enemies to escape the wrath of his axe. She cautioned him that they were more interested in recovering the money stolen from the villagers than in seeking retribution from the tax men sent by Prince John.

He nodded his head in agreement and told her,

“I smell the musk of copulation all about you, mistress. You need to go to the river and bathe away the scent of whoever caused your juices to flow so pungently.”

Rowena had to smile. It was certainly a roundabout way of telling her she smelled bad. No, the old axe man was quite correct. She immediately took fresh attire from the closet and headed to the quiet smooth running river to the rear of the encampment.

She stacked the dirty clothes next to the clean set and waded into the tingling water. The bit of soap in her fist was more than enough to refresh her skin to its normal immaculate condition. Just before she started to rise out of the swirling river waters, she spied the old knight squatting silently nearby with his axe at the ready in case they had unwelcome visitors.

“Thank you for guarding me, sir knight. I hope I am of more scented appeal to you now.”

“You would appeal to me even if you were covered in the river mud, my lady. It has been a sizable passage of time since I have bedded a female of your good looks and fair nature.”

Rowena rose up out of the water and bent over the stacks of clothing. She was in no hurry to dress and allowed the older knight to view her disrobed figure, both fore and aft, in her indisputable sparkling cleanliness.

She watched the knight rise up from his haunches and shed his jerkin and leggings. He was impressively well- hung low between his legs and she peeked in amazement with widening eyes and open mouth.

“La, sir knight, you are possessed with a magnificent figure. I bet you took many a maiden for long rides with much delight.”

The old knight was a man of few words. He kissed Rowena’s with the passion of a much younger man and explored her lips to with the skill and experience of a man in his later years.

Rowena gasped loudly when the knight’s manhood touched her bare skin gently like a timid stranger. He aroused her with much expertise and she reacted with the hunger of long denial and nights of lonely solitude.

When he started to spank her flanks with his firm hands, she made no objection because it was her major weakness and the key to her submissive nature in matters of great delicacy ... The wise old knight stroked her gently and then accelerated his up close and personal contact until she went into an uncontrollable release that shamed her to her very core. Only his strong arms kept her from falling in a heap on the grass.

After Roland had serviced her base needs for masculine adventure, he picked her up in his arms and carried her back into the refreshing river water to cleanse her once again. They dried off on the shoreline and returned to the encampment to ready for the reality of a deadly joust with the tax men of Prince John.

They moved south into the farmland trying to keep to the available wooded areas. The outlaw band only felt safe in the deep forest where escape could take many directions.

Friar Alphonse went ahead to scout out the route to make certain they were not walking into one of the Sheriff’s famous ambushes. Several of the curious forest folk recognized them and scooted away for they knew where Rowena Hood’s band roamed, trouble was soon to follow.

Rowena held her bow loosely at her side with a sharply tipped arrow notched and ready. Her quiver was filled with mostly hunting arrows good for all game including tax men. A few of her combustible quarrels were safely wrapped and ready to create either a diversion or chaos. She had formed an entire group of talented females to construct the shafts of deadly purpose. Rowena had a constant fear that they would run out of the arrows and find the Sheriff’s men surrounding them with evil intent.