The Friar's Tale, стр. 55
"Is he speaking sedition?" A voice from nearby, not a familiar one. One of the guardsmen.
"He's speaking trouble and crazy rumors."
"Outlaws again?"
Tuck shook his head. "He's spreading some rumor about the king being killed or imprisoned in the Holy Land. Like I said. Trouble."
He felt somewhat guilty...the guards would likely take this out of the relic seller's hide, but on the other hand...
What if the rumor was true? What if it was? Either Richard would be ransomed or not. He was not sure that the best thing for the country was not for him to be executed by the Saracens. He would not, though, wish that fate on him. A man who lived by the sword would die by the sword, yes, often enough. Yet...
Tuck shook his head a little.
"I heard that one too. Doubt its true. But it could be harmful."
"Put the guy's head in the stream for a few minutes and he'll stop spreading it," Tuck suggested. He wasn't suggesting killing the guy. Just cooling him off.
The guardsman laughed. "Oh, he'll stop spreading it. Besides. I don't think he has a peddler's license."
The momentary camaraderie was surprising and almost bothersome. Tuck knew this man worked for Gisbourne and was loyal to him. Yet, he was still a decent man. He could tell. "I doubt it. And we'd be doing the goodwives a favor convincing him to go peddle elsewhere."
It was often women who fell for such things, both more devout and more naive than men. With exceptions.
He did not think Mary Michael, for all that she had likely not left the cloister since her first blood, was naive.
Naivete was not circumstances, he sometimes thought, but a kind of willful ignorance. Women, perhaps, cultivated it so their men would not feel threatened by them. On the other hand, he knew plenty of willfully ignorant men, too.
"Likely. I'd doubt he has anything..."
"Pigs' bones," Tuck pointed out, referring to a common scam. It was, at least, less harmful than robbing a graveyard to get actual human remains. Which he had seen happen much in the Holy Land. They could legitimately say the bones were of 'saints from the Holy Land'...when like as not they were those of Saracens. But still, that too was a form of willful ignorance. The very naming of that land as Holy.
Christ might have lived there, but did that really hallow it more than any other place? Tuck thought not. Holiness, he thought, had to come from people, not place.
The guard was laughing. "Take care, Brother." And he was heading off in the direction in which the relic seller had left.
21
"The king imprisoned?" Robin let out a short, sharp breath, lifting one foot onto a rock to tighten the laces of his boots.
"That is the rumor." Tuck frowned. "However, I wouldn't exactly refer to the man I heard it from as reliable. I think he may be a trifle insane."
"If Richard is imprisoned, then John will pay his ransom. I can't imagine him not doing so."
"There's little love lost between them."
"Brothers are still brothers." A brief cloud passed over the outlaw's face. Tuck wondered if he had a brother.
Who that brother was, what had happened to him. He thought of his own siblings...two brothers, four sisters. All healthy and happy last he talked to them, but with that last being a good while ago.
Well, that was not his problem right now. "They are. But John does not have the ransom, nobody does."
A ransom for a king would be substantial, and the Saracens would treat him well, but hold him until it was paid. It was well within their customs. They would also likely attempt to convert him to their alien faith.
Tuck laughed inwardly. A cannier man might fake conversion to gain release, knowing that no oaths made under duress were true and binding. Richard Lionheart was not a canny man. He was, in truth, a rather simple and straightforward fellow.
"No. So, how will he gain it?"
"Put the squeeze on the Jews," Tuck said, instantly. That was a grand old tradition, right there. The crown needed money, the Jews would be forced to lend it on pain of expulsion or worse. Everyone assumed all Jews were rich.
"Yes. He will, won't he." Robin seemed thoughtful. "But I do not like the idea of stealing ransom money. I have nothing against Richard."
"I do. He needs to come home. Of course, he can't do so if he's in a Saracen jail. But all this assumes the rumor is true."
"The sheriff would know."
"We could bribe his servants," Tuck mused. A good servant was invisible. Which tended to mean their masters forgot they were there, did not think about what they might see or hear. He knew of nobles who would casually undress in front of a manservant or maid as if they were alone...not realizing how much they gossiped about their mistress' blemishes.
Well, any woman who had been married a while had those. Pregnancies took their toll. And Tuck, no prize himself, shook his head a little. "I suspect they have heard something that would tell us the truth. But what about this relic seller?"
"You set the guard on him."
"I did, but they won't do more than fine him and maybe have him cool his heels for a night in jail. He was not speaking treason, after all. Just...rumor." And if he had the sense not to mention he was trying to get that rumor to the outlaws.
Maybe he thought they would take him in if he led them to a share of the ransom money.
"Other possibility would be to talk to the Jews. If John puts the squeeze on them..."
Tuck nodded. "Might I suggest we do both?" He glanced up at the sky. It was threatening rain.
"Will you talk to the Jews?"
It would seem a strange request, except that the Jews he had met had shown a strange respect for wandering friars. Apparently, they were the