"Tuck, I would say half this island has noble blood...if you look hard enough." Robin's eyes had brightened a little.
Tuck knew that look and was unsurprised when Robin got up a bare moment later and slipped away. He had had an idea. An idea that might well lead to something. But he did not discuss it with Tuck.
Wise, that. Tuck had learned to be a better fighter and picked up the basics of tactics, but strategy remained beyond him. Likely, he thought, he had the wrong kind of mind for it. God gave people different abilities so that they might complement one another.
He had been taught that the nobility had different abilities from the peasants. Now he was not so sure. In some cases, yes...Jews, for example, seemed to be born with a greater ability than the common man to handle numbers, but less awareness of the land. Because, perhaps, it was not their land, from which they had been exiled. Perhaps those people, who sought to return to their homeland, chose not to allow themselves to love places of exile. Or perhaps the law that prevented them from owning land forced them to it. Perhaps it was simply that they spent more time cultivating the skill.
People were all different. That much Tuck knew. Those differences were both important and not in the grand scheme of things. If people were born with different abilities and skills, then that had to come from God.
Tuck turned towards the fire. It had been reduced to dying embers. London. It had been three years since he had last been there. He doubted the place had changed much.
London was the city of all cities. The Romans, it was rumored, had made it the capital of Britain. A port, with ships coming up the Thames. Ships from France and Belgium and Germany.
Everything was tied together. The farmer was needed and the merchant, and the long distance trade brought other things together. For a moment, Tuck envisioned humanity as a vast, interconnected web, its nodes individuals, cities, nations.
He felt as if he had fallen through the net. No. The net had been torn, the countryside still seethed on the edge of revolt. Rumor had it there had been revolts further south, closer to London. In the land through which he had to travel to try and finish Hereward's mission for him.
To talk to Prince John. To show the man what was happening. What could he do? He was only prince regent, and no major decisions could be made without the absent king. Maybe that was what needed to be changed.
Richard would probably not return. Sooner or later, Richard would die and remove himself from the equation by that means. That was the way of things. John and his children would be the line that continued, and poor Berengaria, alone.
Tuck shook his head. It was not his problem, except that it was his problem. Any other man who abandoned his wife and lands to go on Crusade would...probably be removed by the crown. Could a king be removed? God had placed him on the throne.
Or had He? Perhaps all of it was a sign that Richard and John had somehow been switched, born in the wrong order. Could God make mistakes?
The heretical thought that maybe God had nothing to do with it did cross his mind, but it was dismissed.
The fire burned lower. London. The white tower. The streets. Far too many people crowded into far too little space. That was what London was to him. People went there to seek their fortunes, and most ended up dead in gutters. Young women ran away from home and landed up in the bishop's brothels.
London was, Tuck realized, the second to last place he wanted to go. Yet, he had promised, and it had not been, truly, a promise made under duress. It had been a contract, a deal between the two men.
It had been, to an extent, a choice made out of his fondness for the other man. A fondness he had all but forgotten, but which had sprung back up full grown the second he had realized who it was. A friendship that had lain dormant.
Yet there were other friendships, too, and Robin seemed bent on risking half the band in London. Clorinda...Clorinda should not go to London.
They traveled openly down the street. Tuck rode his mule, a pair of hose under his robes so as to prevent anyone from seeing anything they should not. The animal, who much preferred pulling a cart, kept flicking a long ear back at him in an irritated manner.
Brownie would have to put up with it. Clorinda rode in the carriage, awkward in the clothes of a lady. Robin was in there with her.
He was going to claim to be minor Saxon nobility, a Lord Robert Locksley, and Clorinda his wife. Will seemed entirely at ease with the arrangement. Of course, from what Tuck knew, Clorinda's questionable virtue was completely safe with Robin, of all people. The rest of the band were outriders, or with the baggage train.
Tuck had positioned himself at the rear. He, of course, was Locksley's confessor. Which was the one thing anyone was saying about this that actually came close to the truth.
People did not keep the sort of records that would have revealed such a deception. Eventually, the prince might find out there was no Robert Locksley. But it would likely be long after they had left. Especially with Robin claiming to be a Saxon noble...many of whom had been stripped of their lands and had only their titles, if that. The Conqueror had given many estates to his followers, using any excuse to claim disloyalty on the part of their previous owners. It was an old ill, but not so old that some did not resent it.
It was still the best way to gain entrance
