Deleted Scene #7
Old Hurts
It can be dangerous to linger too long after the big climax; as a rule, anything you failed to say, or didn’t need to say, before the story comes to a head, probably doesn’t bear saying afterward. In this short passage, from the final Chapter LXIII, a philosophical Gisburne is thinking of his departed father, and remembers two incidents from his youth.
HE LOOKED UP at the place in the Tall Tree where the wasps’ nest had once hung, a lifetime ago. It did not seem so tall now. That whole time felt like a dream. But the evidence was right there before him. His arrow – the one which, as a headstrong boy, he had used to shoot the nest down – was still embedded in its trunk where it had struck, though now twisted about with ivy.
He shuddered at the memory of that day – running headlong from the furious, buzzing horde as they had exploded from the wrecked nest, intent on his destruction, on the destruction of anything they could find. His chestnut pony – fenced in the paddock, and unable to flee – had proved a convenient scapegoat for their wrath. Driven mad by their stings, it had skewered itself upon a paling and died the same day. Gisburne had escaped with barely a sting, but the sick horror upon discovering the poor beast had left a more lasting mark upon him.
He had not always been so lucky. Over yonder, back near the muck-heap, he had burned his foot in a bonfire when he had tried to shove a faggot into it with his toe. Right here, in the paddock, he had fallen from his father’s great warhorse – the very mount his father had expressly warned him against riding – and had gashed his chin upon the old stone trough. That had scared him. It was the first time he could remember becoming fully aware of his mortality – not only of the fragility of his own body, but that there were things from which his father could not protect him, and which could not be mended. It was only by luck that the fall had not killed him. Limousin, Forêt de Boulogne, Hattin had all left their marks. Hattin especially.