The Friar's Tale, стр. 66
"Robin, you have a new follower."
Robin turned. The dog was no more than a puppy and gave him a puppy's look. "He claims his owner does not feed him."
As, if anything, the beast was fat, Tuck laughed. "I think he just wants to be scratched behind the ears."
Puppies. Of course, the puppy reminded him distinctly of young Reginald. Some humans were very much like dogs in their blind loyalty to master or cause.
A young voice called something and the puppy, with one wistful look at Robin, turned and padded away. Its tail, though, was still wagging.
"That dog is better off than many humans."
"Happier, certainly. But then, dogs are always happy. You can beat a dog, and five minutes later it will be happy." Tuck mused on that. Some humans were like dogs in that manner, too. You could abuse them, physically or verbally, and it would be over and done with and forgotten.
And other humans. Clorinda, for example. She was most definitely a cat, sensual and belonging only to herself. Robin...also a cat. No. A wolf. Robin was a wolf. Wolfshead. Maybe there was something to that particular euphemism.
Tuck himself...a cat. Definitely a cat. Most of the people here, though, seemed to be dogs.
Robin headed for the unfinished Cathedral, a skeleton of stone bones reaching for the sky. Tuck wondered what dedication they planned for it. What monks or nuns would sing God's praises within the building and any cloister attached to it.
It did not matter. That, at least, he could feel and agree with. Order did not matter. Maybe heresy, to a point, did not either. There were Christians in Egypt who claimed they and only they knew the true word and life of Christ. Maybe they were right and everyone else was wrong.
Maybe they were wrong and everyone else was right. But everyone could not be right. Or could they?
All gods are one God. He shook his head. A Jew, wearing his skullcap, moved past them on some business.
All gods are one God. The Saracens thought only their God was real, and yet showed more tolerance than Christendom. What did that teach him?
Robin had quickened his pace.
"Where are we going?"
"The gallows."
Great. Was Robin planning a jail break? Tuck did not know if any of the others were within York's walls. They likely were. He tended to tell his men only what they needed to know and have a narrow idea of what that was.
What did Tuck need to know? He was not sure at all. All he knew was that he had just stepped in a pool of horse urine. He shook it off his foot and continued. Nothing to be done about such things, after all.
Still, York was relatively clean. The streets were well cobbled. This had been a rich city and retained some of it even now. It had been a Roman city, which Nottingham had not. Perhaps that was the secret. Its age. Its...strength. Oh yes, there was a strength to this city.
There was a crowd starting to gather. How had Robin known, three days ago, that there would be an execution today?
Simple, Tuck thought. York always did all of its executions on the same day of each month. Some cities did that. Stored up the criminals and then made a big deal of it.
Tuck did not ask Robin anything more. He trusted him.
Robin glanced at him. "Work the crowd. Ask for alms. Act normal."
He didn't give him a cue for no longer acting normal. From which Tuck gleaned that it would likely be extremely obvious.
Robin usually managed to be just that. He moved away from the man, producing his begging bowl. Crowds gathered for executions were always good for alms. Perhaps it was an expiation thing, of the guilt they took on themselves by even being here. By watching men die for entertainment.
They were not starting with an execution, though. As Tuck glanced over at the gallows dais he saw a flogging frame being set up.
He shuddered a little but kept moving. "Alms for the poor. Alms for the poor." He phrased it like that, implying he would give the money to somebody who needed it more.
He fully intended to do so. Oh yes, he would give these alms to somebody who needed them, yes. Anything he got.
A few small coins dropped into the bowl, but most people's eyes were not even on him, or even close to him. They were on the flogging frame.
The boy who was being flogged was no more than fourteen. Broken apprenticeship, perhaps. Who knew? He already had welts on him, that looked to be from a belt or similar. He already...
Tuck shuddered. The poor kid...he was thin, too. Yet the crowd's mood was shifting, the peculiar elevation of institutional violence.
He wanted out of here. Better yet, he wanted to see an arrow fly, cut the boy down from the frame. But there was no move yet.
They could not save everyone. They could not help everyone. They could not...they had to focus on what they could do. The boy was a casualty in a war nobody really grasped was happening.
Clorinda grasped it, but her solution was to start a different one. Tuck frowned. His breath was let out quite sharply. It fogged in the air. When had it gotten so cold? Maybe some of the cold was inside him, not in the air that flowed around.
The boy got off lightly. Five lashes, counted easily, then he was cut down and helped away. He would live, but he would hate. Tuck could almost feel it. He had already hated, and he was seeing hate's reward...but what was the alternative?
That brief preamble over, the gallows were being checked. The hangman was checking the drop, carefully. Taking pride in his work.
Pride for a hangman was a swift