The Friar's Tale, стр. 7

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They broke camp two days later. Tuck's mule and cart were pressed into service, with two other carts pulled by the shaggy ponies. He walked at the animal's head. It would do him no harm to walk, and there was enough weight on the cart with the tents and supplies.

He wondered if their initial thought in ambushing him had been to steal the mule to replace some beast they had lost.

Perhaps, but now he was with them...for the nonce. If they were caught he could say he had been captured and compelled to say Mass for them. It would be close to the truth. And Robin fell in next to him.

"So," Tuck asked. "What is your story?"

The man walked with his bow unstrung as a staff, apparently not too worried about attack in this part of the forest. "My story?"

"The story as to how you are here, not ensconced in some pleasant house with a pleasant wife."

"A wife." Robin's face shadowed a little. "Aye, I might have had one of those."

Tuck rested a hand on the mule's withers for a moment. "As might I, had my father not all but sold me to the friars. Too many mouths to feed. An unfortunate woman she would have been."

Robin laughed, lightly. Then his face darkened again. "Gisbourne. Gisbourne is my story."

"Guy of Gisbourne. He crusades. I met him in the Holy Land."

"So, you have...have you seen Jerusalem?"

"Yes. And I wish I had not." Tuck frowned. "No, I wish I had not seen how the crusaders act in the Holy Land. They call it Holy and then sack and despoil it."

"Gisbourne sacks and despoils everything he touches. He demanded taxes that were more than we could pay, and when we did not pay, he burned several houses. One of his men raped the woman I was to marry. She killed herself."

In such short terms did Robin give his story. Tuck saw no love for the woman in his eyes, only the sharp, cynical bitterness of a man ill-used. Of course, even a yeoman did not always wed a woman of his own desire. She could well have been the best available, and he bound to her for want of another option.

Or he could simply have been so hurt by it that he had set his love for her aside, tossed it away. "I believe Gisbourne himself raped several Saracen women and then informed them he was doing them a favor, giving them Christian children." Tuck frowned. Gisbourne was not a man he cared to deal with.

"When he comes back, I will find some way to hurt him."

"I can think of a number of ways." Tuck paused. "He spoke several times of a black stallion he is particularly fond of. Given the way I saw him treat his horses, we would be doing it a favor if we stole it."

Robin laughed a bit. "A black stallion, eh? Why is it that people like that always want their fancy colored beasts?"

"Because they think it makes them look like better horsemen. He whips his horse into a frenzy so he can show off his ability to control it." Tuck patted the mule again. "I might be no horseman, but I know that is wrong. Richard, now there is a horseman."

"What is the king like?" Robin seized on the name like a small dog on a rat.

"Very French," Tuck said, shortly. He could see the disappointment in the man's eyes. "If you think Richard would be a better king than John, then you are setting yourself up for a fall. John at least cares something for England."

"And Richard does not." Robin's tone was flat.

"Richard is not crusading to be in the Holy Land, he is doing it to not be in England. I wish I could bring better news, but it would be a lie."

"So, the good king we are to look forward to...the one I saw in a vision...is not Richard."

A vision? Tuck did not dismiss it. Stranger things had happened. "Perhaps it is Richard's son. Or, more likely, John's. Or perhaps even further in the future."

It struck Tuck as unlikely Richard would leave any legitimate offspring. Most likely the king would die in the Holy Land. He was not one to shirk the front of the fight, after all.

"Richard..."

"I do not envision him ever returning to rule...and those who dream of it, do not know him." Tuck frowned. "Prince John's largest fault, from what I can see, is his grip on his purse strings."

"When people are unable to pay their taxes, you breed outlaws. When you mistake unable for unwilling, you breed even more." Robin glanced at the friar. "Perhaps a grip on the purse strings would not be so bad were it not accompanied by the desire to fill the coffers further."

"How much of that is the prince and how much is men like Gisbourne? And how much of it is the Crusades?"

"I had thought of going myself," Robin mused. "But..."

"I wouldn't recommend it." Tuck glanced at the young man again. "You would only be going from one kind of thievery to another, and a kind less honorable. They do not care who they hurt out there...and not everyone in the Holy Land is a Saracen."

"Truthfully?"

"There are Christians there, and Jews...not so many of the latter, for all that it was their homeland once." Of course, some would argue it was even less of a problem to harm