The Friar's Tale, стр. 74
Then they encountered the ox wagon. The road was better than most places, but a stream had changed course to run across it. The wagon was stuck firmly, the oxen pulling and the driver knee deep in the mud, trying to help them by pushing it out. He was having about as much success in the matter as one would expect. Almost none.
John slipped past to ride to the front. He looked big enough to pick up the wagon, oxen and all. Tuck pushed his mule afterwards, squeezing through the narrow gap between their own carriage and baggage cart and the side of the road. It was not a large enough space, really, for the mule to fit through. He made it, though.
Several of the men had dismounted and were joining the unfortunate farmer in the mud. Then John pushed past all of them, cracking his knuckles. He looked almost amused as he claimed a prime spot at the wagon's rear. Then he set his hands against it and pushed.
It did not move right away. It was, after all, very thoroughly stuck indeed. It did, however, move. Slowly, wheels spinning in the mud, and then finding purchase on the other side. Tuck smiled a bit. John was increasing the legend a little, although whether it would ever be connected to the outlaws, he would never know.
He climbed out of the mire. "We should be careful. We don't want to be the next people to get stuck."
Will backed the carriage up, then took it at a run once the farmer was clear. The tactic worked. For his part, Tuck let the mule pick his way around the edge. Mules were smarter than horses and they generally knew exactly how to avoid getting stuck in a quagmire.
The farmer had thanked them, but not really moved on. There was no way of getting past his heavy wagon on this road. Occasionally, he glanced back. Perhaps he was amazed that they had demanded nothing for their assistance. Amazed they hadn't screamed at him.
"We should have been nastier," Tuck murmured to John. "He'll never believe we're really noble retainers."
John laughed quietly. "Oh, he will. I made sure to be just the right amount of condescending."
Whilst demonstrating that he could have picked the guy up and planted him in the quagmire head first.
At least that seemed to be the last bad patch of road, and as the sun began to set, they finally reached the gates of London.
London. The streets were not paved with gold, but neatly cobbled. The city was an assault on the senses. John and Much had to ride slightly ahead to clear the way for the carriage, for the road was full of people, and the farmer's cart did not provide enough assistance. People just filled the street again behind it, a flowing tide.
Tuck saw goodwives in bright scarves, apprentices in various qualities of clothing and an old Jew slipping quickly through the streets. He did not linger. Three nuns emerged from one building, carrying baskets, their heads bowed. Spice shopping for the convent, perhaps.
Either way, they did not linger, except to glare at an apprentice who made an obscene gesture in their direction.
Tuck could not help but smile. Boys would do things like that, and boys would...always be in trouble for it. It was the nature of boys. He had gotten yelled at by nuns a few times as a boy himself.
Then they were past them, and the road split. Fortunately, the slow ox wagon went a different way, towards the produce market that Tuck knew was only a short distance away. "Brother!" John called. "The best inn?"
He turned, then adjusted the mule's pace to match John's horse. "The best inn, in my mind, would be the Golden Rooster. It's not much further."
"Thank you."
There was nothing all that strange about asking a friar where the best inn was. Friars knew all the best inns and taverns, on the whole. The only thing not worth asking them about was brothels...and even then, Tuck knew a few who could properly advise. He shook his head, amused.
Then he went back to watching the crowd. A merchant cursed as a woman threw slop from an upper window, narrowly missing him. Tuck shook his head. She should have been more careful, but the language that burst from the man's lips...
A Moor strode up the street in the other direction, vanishing into the same spice store the nuns had come out of. Men traveled, sometimes very far from their lands of birth. Tuck was a good way from his, but nothing like that. Yet, he had been as far. Or, perhaps, he had been born here, the result of trading that happened in bedrooms and tents, or the child of...perhaps even the child of the spice merchant.
A pair of guards or soldiers, of armed men, followed the Moor at a discreet distance. Tuck somehow felt they had not been hired by the object of their surveillance. Not everyone trusted Moors, although he had found them as honest as any man.
The sign of the Golden Rooster was slung across the street, ropes secured to the buildings on either side. It glinted with cheap gilt paint.
"Here?"
Tuck nodded. "They have private rooms and they even have baths." A rare luxury that. "The lady will be quite comfortable."
And hopefully not have to threaten to kill her maid this time. That had been an embarrassing moment, perhaps even a dangerous one. They could easily have been revealed as...something.
They turned into the inn yard, and two stableboys rushed out. One of them hesitated, looking at Tuck's mule.
"He doesn't bite," Tuck assured as he dismounted, careful not to land on anything unpleasant in the yard. "Although if you have food anywhere, he'll eat right through your clothing to get at it."
The boy actually laughed. "Sorry. The last mule we had stepped on my foot. Deliberately. Twice."
"He won't