The Friar's Tale, стр. 49

He let it run past him, and then glanced around. Games of chance and contests. A girl was rolling a hoop. A goodwife and her husband walked past arm in arm, greying but clearly as much in love as the first day they had found privacy behind a haystack.

It was a good place to get lost in the crowd, and Clorinda and Will were dealing with the horses, acting as husband and wife. Which they might as well be, lychgate wed or not. Tuck was free to explore, as long as nobody recognized him as 'that friar'.

Most people did not look past habit and tonsure. An open-air bar of sorts had been set up, with men already getting drunk despite the relatively early hour. A widow regaled them with tales no woman should have known, much less spoken. Raucous laughter echoed, and a teenaged girl fled with her face colored and her hands over her ears.

Tuck shook his head, and elected, for once, to avoid the siren call of ale. He dodged too a man trying to get him to play horseshoes for a bet. He was not very good at the game, and he suspected they had weighted the shoes somehow.

It was his general assumption that every sideshow here was a con of some kind. A man had a bear on a leash. He was not dancing with it right now but feeding it an apple. It opened a mouth from which the teeth had been pulled.

Poor creature, Tuck thought. Bears were not amongst those animals that had been given to man to use. Talking of which, a pair of house cats chased each other, hissing, through the fair. Likely they were feral, but who knew. He could not be sure whether they intended to fight or mate. Far more obvious in their intentions were the young couple trying to hide behind one of the wagons. They risked pregnancy and being hauled to the church by both sets of parents. Perhaps, though, that would not be the worst thing.

Tuck shook his head. At least they had some choice, likely withdrawn from... Tuck stopped, his eyes catching the flash of a noble lady's colors. Gisbourne's lady!

She walked through the fair surrounded by servants, stopping at a peddler's stall that claimed to have fine cloth. She sniffed at it, and shook her head.

Like as not it was fine linen, not the silk he claimed. A lady like that would know. Tuck held his breath for a moment, then released it. The Lady of Nottingham would not know him. The sheriff, now, he might have to worry about. All this lady saw was a friar. He stopped at a different stall, this one that of a peddler offering to sharpen knives for the goodwives. Being quite capable of sharpening his own, he looked at the handles the man was selling. None appealed. The lady was talked to a vendor of spiced sausage.

Now, that reminded Tuck that he was hungry. He did not tempt fate by approaching her, however, but headed further down the row of stalls, looking for food. His stomach was doing a fair imitation of those cats, all of a sudden.

He found bread and fruit for a reasonable price and kept moving, eating it. Another stray goose flapped into one of the stalls, knocking down the various items. "I think that goose won a prize," Tuck couldn't resist but call.

The stallholder laughed. "I think that goose won a place in the cookpot." It got away from him, though, scurrying down the lane.

Tuck wondered which of the goose girls had so little control over her stock. It was not unusual, of course. They were usually maidens, sometimes lads, of little real experience. Geese were supposedly easy to herd.

Supposedly. These were demonstrating the contrary quite nicely.

He found himself at the edge of an open area. Two young men raced their horses around it, the animals' hooves thundering in a reminder of the messenger. They still did not know what he carried that was of such urgency as to sacrifice a valuable animal on its altar. These horses, though, pulled up. They were sweating, but still prancing, apparently more ready to go again than their riders.

Tuck moved away, before he ended up the one trampled when one of them lost control of an excited mount. Racing was a natural thing for horses, as easy to them as walking, and they seemed to enjoy it. As much as one could tell what, if anything, an animal felt. Some argued it was nothing...no joy, no pain, no fear.

Tuck had observed enough animals to refuse to believe that. They knew pain and fear alright, so why not joy? Why not pleasure in running?

He remembered the wild eyes of the messenger's mount. That had been fear. Fear of being beaten if he stopped, fear of collapsing if he continued. That animal had known.

Yet, no news had come through any channels in which they had an ear. Perhaps it had been the private affairs of some lord.

Tuck thought of the lord in the lonely tower. They had thought of doing something about him, but Tuck thought Sister Michael's way better. Excommunication de facto. He would either come crawling back, or endure his isolation. Either way, likely, a good number of his men would leave him.

It was a worthy punishment, and one that well fit his crime. Talking of crimes, a boy scrumped an apple from a fruit stall, darting off into the crowd before the stallholder could finish 'Stop, thief!'

Nobody seemed to have the heart to go after him. Tuck finished his bread, shaking his head.

The fair was chaos...and then suddenly something in that chaos changed, shifted. It was, of course, the prosperous who were here. The poor had no money for such luxuries. Yet, even the prosperous could feel fear.

That was definitely fear flowing through the crowd like a wave. Perhaps the racers had lost control and somebody had been trampled