The Friar's Tale, стр. 3
Fortunately, his own order did not run to such excesses...but they also did not run to always having a cell for a wandering friar.
He looked out into the rain again. The paths around would turn into mud and wet bracken. He was going to be wishing he wore boots not sandals soon. Still, that was the price.
Not that he had ever paid it by stinting himself at the table, or of alcohol. Maybe he could even steal some of his ale back. Not with breakfast, though. Even he did not start that soon.
The woman outlaw made her way across to his tent. He was now even more sure of her gender. She had a bow and her breasts had been bound so that they would not get in the way of her draw. Still, her hips gave her away, as did the fineness of her features. "Good father, can I get you anything?"
Clearly, the rest of the band knew, for she made no attempt to disguise her voice. "I don't know what food you might have. What is your name?"
"Clorinda," she introduced.
A Norman name when the rest seemed Saxon. Her hair was dark enough...like as not she was a mix. A herald of things to come...the English race was, after all, itself a mix of Saxons and the smaller, darker Celts.
"I can get you gruel," she offered.
He would not ask the origin of the grain. "Gruel would be fine." It would probably be bad gruel, but it would help wake him up. Of course, he would rather have a real breakfast. Eggs. Maybe they had eggs...but no. He would not ask.
He would not press their hospitality when at least one sought his life.
Clorinda returned in a brief time with gruel, sheltering it from the rain with her hand. To his surprise, it was not bad gruel.
He would, too, have laid bets she had not cooked it...and larger bets that any other stranger would have assumed she had. She was probably the lover of one of the men, but she moved like a woman who bowed to no one.
It was none of his business, unless he chose to stay. The outlaw leader would very much like to keep him. There might even be worse fates.
Certainly, he would rather not die. Perhaps it spoke of a loss of faith, but Tuck liked the things of the world. He saw no reason not to appreciate every aspect of God's creation. Even the rain which came down in sheets. He saw Clorinda vanish back into another tent. She had braved it to check on him, but once that was done, she was not staying out in it one moment longer. That was his guess, anyway.
Well, it had started early, and thus would end early. In fact, he could already see the sky beginning to lighten a little. No sign of the sun yet, but it would stop soon.
It never rained for that long here. Not like in the Holy Land, where it rained all winter, it seemed. And only all winter. Tuck shook his head. As far as he was concerned, the Saracens could keep the place.
A heresy he might voice here, amongst outlaws, but nowhere else. Besides, Richard was going the right way about losing it to them.
And then, abruptly, the rain stopped. Cautiously, he stepped out of the tent, glancing up at the sky. It was lightening rapidly. The ground underfoot was damp...mud, leaves and twigs intermingling into something even a pig would not have wanted to walk across. It had, though, stopped falling from the sky.
At least one braved it. The extremely tall man was returning through the trees, a dead deer across his shoulders and his bow in one hand. A crime, of course, for all deer belonged to the king.
It was probably lunch. The man was not the one Tuck worried about the most. He had learned that it was the smaller men who were the more dangerous. And the women.
He sometimes felt the Saracens had the right idea keeping their women locked up. Women who did not know how to fight could be dangerous only with their tongues. Those who did were ruthless. Some of the women who had ridden on the Crusades...
Most had been disguised, but he knew at least two, for he had taken their confession. Under the seal, they had revealed their secret. He wondered how many there really were.
He would never know. He glanced over at the big man and elected to avoid him. He did not want to be roped in to help dress the kill.
Instead, he went to the tent in which the dead man lay. He dropped to one knee next to the body. He was not sure where they would bury him, except that it would likely not be in consecrated ground.
Would God care about that? Tuck liked to think no, but most believed that he would be condemned to hell automatically. Of course, he might already have condemned himself.
He would do his best for him...but he would do no more. Not without the story. Not without knowing what manner of men these really were. If they were hardened killers, then he would seek his escape.
If they were unfortunates caught out by the Forest Law, then was that not Francis' mission...to minister to the unfortunate?
The question was how he found out. How he found out without hearing only lies, as the hardened might pretend to be the innocent. He did not know, at that point.
Then the young leader came in. "I dislike the fact that we cannot get him to consecrated ground."
"I will say rites for him. I doubt God could ask more from you."
"I am not sure how much attention God is paying," Robin mused. "It seems to me as if most of the time, God expects us to look after ourselves."
"No," Tuck said, glancing up at the clearing skies. "God expects us to look