Post of the Month

~ April 2011 ~ 

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Tuck ~ Written by Angela.  Posted on the HoS Yahoo group December 2009.

The forest was quiet save for the occasional stirrings of small animals and the rustle of the trees, as the heavy summer midday arrived.

Limping heavily, Tuck entered the camp's clearing, pushing his way through the screen of bushes, dragging several long young trees that had been roughly lashed together for the journey to camp.

He dumped them by the fallen tree by the cook fire, then sat on the fallen tree and stretched out his leg to look critically at his ankle. Still swollen but not as bad as it had been. He leaned forwards, and pulling off his sandal, wrung out a strip of rag from the bucket of cold water nearby and wound it around the offending ankle, then propped his foot up on another upturned bucket, and turned his attention to the collection of young trees. They had only had a handful of years growing time, shooting up to become tall and spindly in an effort to reach the light under the thicker tree cover above them. Tuck took up one now and squinted along the line of it to judge how straight it was. He frowned to himself in thought.

He had needed to occupy himself this day with more than just scrubbing out cookpot and preparing a meal. The Devil made work for idle hands, Tuck knew that well enough.

He had thought back to the storm that had hit Sherwood the night before Robert had disappeared and how they all had crammed into the small cave and tried to rest there in that cramped space. Most of them had had to sleep sitting up. Rhiannon and the child had been given the place in the cave which had the most shelter from the elements, but even so, the direction of the wind had driven the rain into the cave and those trying to sleep nearest the cave mouth had become damp. And the precious cook-fire had been put out by the rain and had taken time to rekindle.

There was no doubt in Tuck's mind that they would be staying at this camp until Robert was - _was found_ he told himself firmly now, preferring to push all other eventualities from his mind. Wherever Robert was, if he was able at some point to make his way back to them, perhaps escaping his captors, whoever they were, he would make his way back to this camp to find them. And for that reason alone they needed to stay here, for him to be able to find them.

So stay here they would, and in the meantime, they needed better shelter, for it was inevitable that thunderstorms and rain would follow this patch of heavy sweltering heat.

Tuck had gone down to the side of the lake, to a place where young ash trees grew in profusion, some little more than saplings. Nature had a way of thinning out such infant trees as they grew, anyway, so Tuck had had no qualms about hewing some down. They were twice his height but the circumference of their trunks no more than the thickness of his wrist, and he had had little trouble in felling them with his hand axe and clearing away the biggest of their branches which he had stacked to carry back with him also. Both trees and the largest of their branches would make excellent poles to form the basis of the shelter he had in mind. Ones which could be driven into the ground around the mouth of the cave to form the frame of a shelter he had in mind to construct.

Where he sat, Tuck took the small hand axe from his belt and began to strip the small trees of their branches to make the poles, keeping the larger leafy branches and limbs that he clipped off in a pile on the ground, for usage later. leaving little notches in place where he had clipped off smaller branches from the main pole.

As he worked, his mind was just as busy as his hands. He thought upon his friends, and wondered how each of them was faring on their day's search. Much, seeming determined to follow the signs he felt had come to him in a dream. John, obviously troubled - and had been ever since news had been brought of Meg's giving birth. Rhiannon, seeming to cope, and managing Ellie, but with exhaustion caused by constant dread lining her face. Nasir clearly uneasy about Timothy's presence at camp.....WHY? Tuck asked himself briefly puzzled, knowing that the Saracen usually weighed all things up carefully and was not usually so vehemently judgemental.

And Timothy. He was restless, Tuck had seen it only too clearly. Impatient to resume what could only be his collision course with de Rainault; a collision course which had begun from way back in the past.

The past.... Who knows what threads of our lives on this very day will create a collision course for any one of us - a path that will lead us to our eventual destiny, Tuck thought now.

His mind went back ten years, to that summer in London when he was just plain Simon of Tuckenby. Little had he known then that his marriage would eventually set him on a collision course towards his own destiny - back towards Nottingham and back towards the Church, entering de Rainault's household at Nottingham Castle as his chaplain - and thus set on his own path of destiny to meet first Marion of Leaford, and then Robin of Loxley....

And all because he had married...

The marriage.... Tuck let his mind drift over the past, to the place which had once caused him the greatest joy, and then, the deepest suffering, the greatest pain.

The marriage... Almost ten years ago, now...

Anna had said yes, and he had kissed her, the first time he had ever in his life kissed a woman on her lips, in the way that a man wanting to know a woman did.

No-one had known in London that he had once been Brother Tuck, therefore no-one had been shocked when the news of their impending marriage had been announced. Surprised, perhaps, that Simon of Tuckenby, fat, thirty-six year old, unattractive Simon of Tuckenby who worked at Myles Godefroy's apothecary had captured the heart of Anna, the widow of the candle-maker Thomas Basset in Chandler's Row.

The banns had been called, and he had spent his Sundays after Mass walking with her at Smithfield, delighting in her company, in the warmth of her hand so readily given to him now that they were betrothed, laughing with her, feeling at last as though he belonged, that he was destined for this - for marriage, for whole and earthly love.

Anna....her sometimes listless spirit had lessened with the approach of their marriage, her eyes had brightened. Tuck had met her family - her parents were long dead and she had been the only surviving child, but she had however two he-cousins - brothers Henry and William Coleman who worked as fullers by Rotherhithe and who had procured for her a bolt of soft fine woollen cloth to make a betrothal gown from.

They had been married on a sweltering summer evening at St Bartholomew's Church in Smithfield. She had worn her new gown with her long dark hair plaited up and hidden under a wimple.

Tuck remembered that gown unlike he remembered any other. It had been a deep green colour and fairly plain, with a full skirt and long sleeves. A thin gilded girdle had been tied low round her hips, the ends of the girdle falling loose down the skirt. There had also been a matching narrow strip of gold brocade around the cuffs and neckline, which had shown off the delicate skin of her neck and throat but had stopped short of anything more risqué.

Perhaps he remembered that gown to this day because it had been the colour of Sherwood in summer; green with touches of gold. Sherwood in summer constantly reminded him of that gown. Tuck glanced around him now at the blur of green surrounding him, lit by golden streaks of sunlight, slanting down through the leafy branches. And his mind travelled back over the past again.

After the marriage at St Bartholomew's he had taken up his small bundle of possessions and gone to Anna's home above the shop - the dwelling in Chandler's Row which cost twenty shillings a year to rent, with the shop and work and cook area below and two rooms above the shop which was their private home. Above their living quarters had been a garret where their maid Biddy had slept. Biddy had been a fresh-faced thickset girl of seventeen come recently out of Norfolk sent here to work by her family in Norwich. Biddy did everything - cleaned, cooked and helped out in the shop when the need was great.

They had held their small wedding feast in what Anna rather grandly referred to as the solar, though it had been but a small, square room, with tiny windows. The weather had been too hot for a fire, so Anna had filled the empty grate with a jug of calendulas to give the appearance of flame, and Tuck could not smell the spicy aroma of calendulas nowadays without seeing that green-glazed jug of orange flowers in Anna's hearth. They had set up the trestle table and Anna had lain her best linen cloth over it, and with the collection of silver spoons she had inherited from her mother, and her late husband's pewter plates and goblets, she had declared it a fine show indeed. The company had crowded round the trestle table on stools and ate.

Their guests had been few. Tuck had only invited Myles Godefroy and his wife. On Anna's side, there had been her two he-cousins the Colemans and their wives, and a couple of business acquaintances of her late husband, who had advised Anna on handling the chandler's ever since Thomas Basset had died. They had eyed Tuck suspiciously, as though he could be marrying Anna for her late husband's business, and he had felt unsettled. However, he had tried to push his discomfort to the back of his mind and appreciate the wedding feast. They had been served good ale, and sweet cakes, small loaves still warm with green cheese to spread on them, a dish of pease, another dish of eggs, and Biddy had dressed a leg of mutton.

Tuck had not noticed back then that Anna had eaten none of it.... He only remembered her blushed and beaming face as she sat at the head of the table and looked out over their guests happily falling upon the fine fare she and Biddy had lain out on the snowy white cloth.

That night - that marriage night, Anna had unbraided her hair for him and once abed, he had run his fingers through that hair, so smooth. They had blown out the candles, and in the darkness her floral scent had encompassed him and his situation, and considering that not so long ago all he had ever been had been Brother Tuck, all he had ever known had been how to be Brother Tuck, laying abed with Anna had seemed surreal, not meant to be - and yet, wholly right under God's Law, for they were married.

Anna had been compliant and genuine in his arms that night, and he had known that yes, she had married him, not for protection or for any other gain, but simply because she loved him. She had been warm in his embrace, so warm… and he had breathed in her sweet floral scent,

Tentively he had touched her in their marriage bed, trailing what he felt were unworthy fingers down her naked back and limbs, whilst outside the storm had broken the heavy hot summer night and rain had lashed against the tiny precious window of glass set high in one plastered wall of their chamber

Her fragile form, yet so provocative. The fire had started in his body, and his heart had pounded so much he had feared it would burst, but then he had found, to his surprise, that both Anna and he were a lot stronger - and lustier - than he had thought. And she had laughed and hung onto him as he had made love to her, and had told him she was not made of glass and would not break, and that indeed, the rougher he was, the more she would enjoy it.

There had been a part of him which had thought he would hate carnal love, that it would be a duty of their marriage, to beget children, as the Church taught. But he had found that far from hating it, he received pleasures he had never known before - and suddenly he had understood why Timothy's face and eyes had shone with unspeakable wonder and satisfaction when at age fifteen he had used to return from the village of Felden and Tuck had known Timothy had been rolling in the hay with Joan of Felden or some other girl.

It had seemed incongruous that Timothy at fifteen had done what had taken he thirty-six years to do, Tuck had thought wryly.

They had fallen to sleep afterwards - only for Tuck to wake with a start some time later as Anna had jerked up to sit in the bed beside him.

He had sat up also and looked at her. White moonlight had shone through the windows, streaking out across the floor of their tiny bedchamber which overlooked the narrow London street outside. She was breathing hard, she had kicked away the woollen blankets that had tangled around her feet during the night. She sat still, sweat ran in wet, salty paths down her forehead.

Tuck had been suddenly afraid. _"Are you ill, dear heart?"_ he had whispered to her.

She had shaken her head dumbly in response to him, not speaking, her wide eyes fixed on the window opposite as she watched the rain beating against the glass with every fierce gust of wind.

"I had a bad dream," was all she had whispered at last.

"Think upon happier things." Tuck had drawn her into his arms and lain her down with him again; she had not protested; he had blown out the guttering candle on his side of the bed, and there they had rested in each other's arms.

"Think upon....what?" she had asked in a whisper - almost dazedly.

"On what we do tomorrow. On our future together."

Anna had looked at him, solemn-eyed, in the gloom. "We're old, aren't we, Simon. Not exactly the maiden and youth who usually marry. We're old, to marry. I am thirty and you six years older. We're old to marry. We cannot hope to produce many children together, at our age."

"Does that matter?" Tuck had asked her gently.

Anna had glanced away from him, to the deepest shadowed corner of their bedchamber. "I would not wish to disappoint you."

"You would never disappoint me," Tuck had chided. "How many children we have is the will of God."

She had been silent at that.

"Maybe....maybe there will be plenty of children for us," he had whispered.

There had come her soft sigh of longing in the darkness "Oh, I do hope so."

And yet the voice had been troubled, and he had not known why, as though she kept some troubling knowledge from him.

It had not been for months after the marriage when Tuck had learned that Anna did not have what other women had which signified fertility. That other women bled for a few days every month - and she did not bleed, nor had not bled for years.

"Didn't you KNOW that?" the voice of Juliana, William Coleman's wife had been astounded, as she had stared at him as finally after several months of marriage he had confided in her his worries. She had called on Anna one day, but Anna had gone to market with Biddy, and so Tuck had invited Juliana up to their living quarters and there fetched ale and bread and honey for her refreshment. "Where have you been, Simon, not to know that?"

In an Abbey for the past twenty-eight years, Tuck had thought wryly at the time, but had not said so. If Anna had kept a secret of her loss of fertility - or at least her suspicions of it - then he would keep a secret also of his being Brother Tuck. No good would come of telling anyone in London. He had felt ashamed for not disclosing his past - but somehow, having been Brother Tuck was like a precious secret he hugged to himself - a possession of his, in a way. His, and all his. Only his.

Juliana had continued as she had bustled forcefully around the small dishevelled solar, casting a disdainful eye over it, setting in order the candlesticks on the aumbry and plumping up the cushions on the wooden settle before settling there like a queen. "She's too thin, that's what it is. I keep telling her. You must tell her. If she eats more, gains weight, she'll bleed again every month and conceive, like as not. After all, she did twice before, before..."

Tuck had remembered the graveyard of St Bartholomew’s, and how Anna had stood wistfully before those two small unmarked graves in the corner of the churchyard - the graves of her two baby boys. "Before what?" he had asked tentatively.

Juliana's plump be ringed hands tore the bread into quarters on the platter of food she had been given. "Before she started complaining of having no appetite after Thomas died. It didn't always use to be so. But look at her now, Simon, she's as thin as a rake. Sometimes I watch her at gatherings when we are at table - like your wedding feast - and I take note that she scarce puts two mouthfuls of food into herself before she pushes away her platter and pretends she is finished and is replete."

Anna had arrived back from market then, and Juliana had merely looked meaningfully at Tuck and had said no more, whilst Anna had sat happily in the solar and gossiped with her she-cousin.

But Juliana's words had worried Tuck. He had started to surreptiously watch Anna. They ate simple fare. Biddy bought bread and cheese and fruit at the market - plums, pears, and apples - and she and Anna cooked pottage and broth and stews over the hearth in the back room on the ground floor. Anna made pies and sent them out to be baked at a cookshop, and occasionally sent out joints of meat to be roasted, which she then dressed herself exceedingly well. Anna seemed happy enough handling food, and encouraging him to eat. But herself....that was a different matter, Tuck had slowly come to realise.

He had not understood. Only martyrs starved themselves like this so cheerfully. The brothers at Thornton had had a sparse diet in their Benedictine order, but Anna's disclination to eat had been nothing like Tuck had ever encountered before.

Summer had fled to Autumn, in that crowded heaving swell of London. Golden sunlight had burned itself onto all the leaves of the trees around Smithfield, reminding Tuck of how the edges of Sherwood had touched his life at Thornton. How Timothy as a small boy had used to play amongst those drifts of fallen golden leaves - and how memories of the now lost Timothy as a child had resurfaced to hit Tuck most sharply and painfully. The way he had laughed mischievously, wound his small arms round Tuck's neck, felt Tuck's face with recognition and love, and learnt with curiousity and absorption about everything in the world around him that Tuck could show him through his four senses.

Those memories with the child Timothy had cut through the fog of the past and sent longing through Tuck's heart in a way he had never known before - oh how he wanted a child with Anna! He wanted to be a father. He wanted to recapture in part what he had had with Timothy at Thornton, raising the little boy. In a way, he almost mourned silently as much as Anna for those two tiny little souls buried in the corner of St Bartholomew's, for they would have been two step-sons, and he would have loved them for their own sakes, not just because they were Anna's children. They would have become his children too.

And so that summer had turned to Autumn, the trees blazing gold and red like a crown of fire binding the land to change. The nights grew teeth, and the moon burned cold. And the frost was a herald of what was to come.

Tuck jerked himself out of this memories of the past at the sudden snap of a branch, and he startled, half-rose and looked around him anxiously at the camp clearing. But it was quiet and dreaming in the heat of the summer day, and the snapping branch had merely been one in the fire succumbing to the flames.

Tuck sighed and mopped his sweating face with his scapula, feeling his heart thud. _No more awakening these memories of London,_ he told himself sternly, _no more. Thinking upon the past will do no good...._

And as though they heard him, the memories receded, but he knew they were there, and now they had been awakened, they would come to the fore again and carry him further along their path.