The Friar's Tale, стр. 4
He had planned for that line to be the last word, and he almost succeeded, for there was quite the thoughtful pause from the outlaw leader.
Tuck considered asking him outright how he had ended up in this position. How he was here, in the woods, not in some tidy village. There was nothing of quality about the man, but much of leadership. A solid yeoman, he suspected, not a man of high birth, but a man of integrity? He could hope so.
Finally, Tuck spoke. "Your older friend. Does he still want to slit my throat?"
"Oh, ignore him." Robin quirked up the corner of his mouth. "He is a bitter old man, and he has reason to be. Every reason to mistrust the church, too."
"I am a friar, hardly a representative of the bishops."
"Do I detect, in those words, a certain bitterness of your own?"
"I dislike those who claim to do the Lord's work but seek only a soft living." Tuck shrugged. "Not that I have always been best at keeping the vow of poverty myself. The occasional problem with obedience, too."
Robin laughed. "And chastity?"
Tuck shrugged. "I am not an attractive man. That one is a lot easier." He doubted Robin was particularly chaste. It was possible, even probable, the lithe, tough Clorinda was his wife or his mistress. Or simply his woman. Out here, it did not really matter. God, Tuck thought, read the intent in a man's heart, not the strict letter of the law. Marriage, in particular, should be in the eyes of god, not man. He did not speak to the depths of his heart and the fact that he had, in fact, never been tempted to violate that vow, either with woman or with man.
"Still. There was no gold or jewels in your cart. Admittedly, a rather large quantity of ale."
"When one finds a good brewer, it serves one to buy enough to last a while." Tuck shrugged. He was aware that he liked his ale far too much, his food far too much. But as the outlaw had said, he carried no gold or jewels. Had no woman. He did better than most.
Obedience, though? He tended to follow his own thoughts and his own ideas. Robin was a man who undoubtedly did the same.
"And when one finds a good priest."
"That I would have to think about. I am of the Order of St. Francis. Staying in one place is not much to my nature."
Robin nodded. "Nor to mine, to be honest. I will not hold you, except that if you reveal our secrets..."
He did not need to voice the threat, it was simply there. Obvious. Hanging in the air. Well, Tuck had expected no less. The man owed his people protection. He had a responsibility, and if that meant killing a friar, then he would do it with no hesitation.
Tuck respected that. It might not end well for him, but he did respect it.
2
Tuck made his way along the trail. He was, for once, alone...although he was trespassing, it was unlikely that the king's men would arrest a friar. As long as they did not catch him with the king's venison.
That, of course, was the furthest thing from his mind. It was not escape he sought, merely solitude. They had buried Simon that morning, in a grave set by the roots of an oak. Not consecrated ground, but it would have to do. The words had been said, and Tuck was certain God had received the man's soul. Not into heaven, no, but at least into purgatory, that place where souls learned those lessons they had not learned in life.
Nobody went straight to heaven except those rare true saints. Tuck had never met one. He had met many who thought of themselves as saints.
Hypocrites. He stopped at the edge of a stream. A small brown bird emerged from the water, something wriggling in its beak. He thought he could see small fish within the silver flow. Those, the king would not miss, being but they were sticklebacks...too small and too muddy to eat.
The king. To be fair, it was not all John's fault. The man was only following trends that already existed and doing his best in the absence of his brother. Not a good king, no, but not as terrible a king as some accused him of being.
Those some longed for Richard's return. Lionheart. Pfah. The man had no more courage than a common peasant. He was not crusading out of courage, but quite the reverse.
Tuck had met him, yes, on the road to the Holy Land. The man had thought an English friar would speak no French. Truthfully, Tuck's French was not what it could be. Yet, it had been good enough to catch most of the supposedly good king's tirade about England and his English subjects.
Barbarians, all of them, he had said. Not to mention the fact that it rained too much in England. That last, he would give him. The rain, of course, was welcome after the desert. Tuck had even lost weight...a difficult task for him indeed. Even if he did not eat well, his body remained heavy. God had meant him to be that way. His staff tapped the ground as he walked along the stream.
He opened his senses to the forest. His chosen life was not one meant to fall within the walls of a cloister. The Clares, the women who followed the path, did such. Even Francis had thought women unsuited to privation.
Tuck thought that Francis had needed to meet more women. But then, women were not as strong as men in some ways, nor as large. And, of course, they faced pregnancy and childbirth. It was his children a man sought to protect, not his wife. In many cases, anyway. Few were the men Tuck had met who truly loved their women.
That the woman loved her man was more common and might, he thought, be the great tragedy of humankind. The Clares