September 1192. With Robin Hood and most of his fighting men still returning from the Third Crusade, Marie-Anne, Countess of Locksley, is left to defend Kirkton Castle. The Sheriff of Nottinghamshire, Sir Ralph Murdac, sees the absence as an opportunity to break Robin’s power and lays siege to the household.
Father Tuck is among the few defenders available to Marie-Anne, but evidence of betrayal raises the possibility that the castle’s weakness has been exposed from within. The short story shifts attention from Robin and Alan to those who maintain the outlaw lord’s estates while his reputation is being made abroad.
The 1192 setting places the household in the unstable aftermath of the Third Crusade. Richard I is still absent from England, royal authority is contested and local officials can exploit uncertainty over who truly speaks for the king. The siege therefore gives the Robin Hood tradition a political frame in which control of one castle matters because national power itself is temporarily unsettled.
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