Free The Betrayal of Father Tuck: An Outlaw Chronicles short story by Angus Donald

‘Childishness, that’s his problem. He’s irresponsible, immature and dangerously reckless.’ The speaker was William Odo, Lord of Edwinstowe, a tall thin man of about thirty years, lolling in a carved wooden chair at the high table of his own hall and digesting the noon-day meal. The man he was comparing to a child was his younger brother Robert, Earl of Locksley, and husband to Marie-Anne, his principal guest, who was seated in the place of honour beside him at the long table.
    Marie-Anne looked down at the white linen tablecloth, now stained with meat juices and spills of rich sauces, and scattered with crumbs and the torn crusts of bread. She said nothing, but two pink spots of anger could be made out on her usually swan-white cheeks, and her clear blue eyes shot out twin bright beams of undiluted rage. She had been enduring the company of her tiresome brother-in-law in his castle of Edwinstowe, in the county of Nottingham, for the past three days and she told herself that if she heard one more casual insult from him about her husband, she would either begin screaming or smash something.
    ‘I believe my lord means that our Robin is refreshingly young at heart, my lady,’ said Father Tuck, the Countess of Locksley’s personal chaplain, from two places along at the table. He was a fat, red-faced, roundish man who would never see forty again, but a luminous strength and goodness seemed to shine from him. ‘Robin has a charmingly youthful joie de vivre , I have always thought. And he’s fond of a jest, from time to time, as many of us are.’
    ‘I meant exactly what I said,’ grated Lord Edwinstowe. ‘He’s like a child at play – galloping off on this so-called Great Pilgrimage to the Holy Land with King Richard and his knights and leaving you here alone to fend for yourself. He’s been gone now for – what? – some thirty months, and who knows when he will return – if ever he does. He’s never been a particularly religious fellow and, all of a sudden, he has this overwhelming urge to rid Jerusalem of all unbelievers? It’s preposterous. He’s a family man now. He has responsibilities, a wife and a growing boy…’
    Marie-Anne flipped a delicate Venetian wine glass – an exquisite piece of work, rare and costly – off the edge of the table with a twitch of her index finger. It shattered on the rush-strewn floor of the hall with a delightfully musical tinkle.
    ‘I’m so sorry, my lord,’ she murmured, ‘how clumsy of me.’
    A servant was already at her feet picking up the delicate shards but Lord Edwinstowe did not even seem to have noticed.
    ‘Talking of the Great Pilgrimage,’ said Father Tuck, far too brightly, ‘I had a letter from young Alan Dale the other day. It was brought by courier, by sea and by land, all the way from the Holy Land. Took more than a year to get here, mind you. It describes a great battle in which the Christian knights thoroughly routed the Saracens at a place called Arsuf last summer. Alan and Robin both fought well, it seems, and they were not too much knocked about by the heathens…’
    Marie-Anne closed her ears to Tuck’s diversionary prattle. She toyed with a silver-chased crystal jug about half full of wine, twisting it in her hands and watching the play of sunlight from the high windows through the transparent material reflecting off the blood-red liquid inside. She wondered if she dared to toss it across the hall.
    It was not just the boorish company of her host that put her so on edge. She missed her husband like an ache in the heart. She was anxious for his safety, and equally anxious about his return. He had left so swiftly after they had been married that they had barely had a chance to settle down together before he had been swept off to the far side of the world with the King and his legions. Then there was Hugh, her son. Robin had left when the boy was no more than a babe in swaddling clothes, a mere two weeks after his birth, and now he was a