The Sheriff Marc had an inner circle of exceedingly young and nubile boys. He detested women, yet coupled with them often, for public display, or at times, to satiate some violence within.
His taxations were unparalleled and the country worked hard to appease his demands.
It was six months before Tooke and Robin were to be told of the hangings he had ordered - for the two had travelled in a different direction to the Brothers, and communication was scarce, due to the war. And they had purposefully hidden in places of no connection.
"Why did you not know this in time to save these men?" Tooke asked despairingly.
"We have had this discussion a many times" said Robin casting his head back and staring at the sky. "I am not God, Brother - I simply cannot see and solve everything, or even much at all.
"We should have both foreseen the risk and kept them in our care."
-Gabriel Brunsdon, Puck in Hell, Azlander Series
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| Stefan Kopinski |
"Treason is treason - and no Court needs to decide this - the criminals shall hang!"
Pre-cut scaffolding came in kit form in easy-to-assemble pieces. The Viking carpenters were the first to bring the new system to the British Isles. Eleven poles sat erect upon a stage-like platform. The Sheriff would have been content with trees; but authority spoke far louder through a good show.
"You cannot execute monks,” the chief Ambassador sternly counselled.
"That as it may be, but this lot gave forfeit to the protection of their holy Order - and so, you have no argue with me concerning what I may or may not do with their sentences. You can join them if you prefer their point of view to mine."
The Ambassador sneered behind the Sheriff's back - he did not take well to being threatened.
The Sheriff Marc spun around and caught him on the nose - sticking a finger up inside each nostril, freakishly intimately, intimidatingly. Two black rays shot forth from his fingertips, directly up and into the brain. If you could have seen inside the Ambassador's head there was a black pungent vapour that wound around the interior, saturating his inner flesh.
He fell to the ground in a seizure of ecstasy. Opiates or ale could not have come par to the raptures that this poor man was spun into. From hereon the rest of his life became a shadow and he would hover like a dog towards Marc's power wantingly.
-Gabriel Brunsdon, Puck in Hell, Azlander Series
"Pass me that apple."
Tooke threw the fruit hard, which Robin caught skilfully at the end of his sword - it burst open, showering them in a golden spangling light.
"Why could you have not used those tricks when we needed them?"
"I could not."
"But why?"
Robin appeared to be genuinely mournful and his youthful composure seemed to ague. He looked grimly at the ground and then back at Tooke who was waiting for an answer.
"If the Fey had license over the affairs of Men, they would run this world outright. I can solve a problem here and there individually, but I cannot affect history, for my own world would crumble with such an effort.
"Unlike men we know exactly our borders of what we can and cannot do. Our instincts are sharp to this; our faculties know the cosmic limits of our racial interactions...
"I have a history with you, but there is only so much that I can ever manifest - even to save a brother for whom I am most cherished of."
"I now know this well." Tooke said - understanding that in the world of Men there was only so much that the Holy could do on behalf of the rest - and if it were otherwise the world's salvation would be guaranteed, were it not so compromised then by the few.
-Gabriel Brunsdon, Puck in Hell, Azlander Series
"If you cut me do I not bleed?"
Robin took the end of the sword to make a point and sliced himself over the arm. Tooke was horrified.
"Ha!" exclaimed Puck flamboyantly ... "Oh no! Fancy that! I do not!"
"Sometimes I forget that I am not nearly the same as you" Friar Tooke conceded. He was a man of moderate composure whose thinking was so sedate it rarely inflamed with emotion of any kind. But his friend could vex him so.
Robin was just trying to make merry - disposing of the fact that Tooke's chapter had just left him and that the brethren had reentered the world for good.
Puck was continually showing him the incomprehensible - and was so uncanny that Tooke could not help but be disturbed on so many levels.
Robin, on the other hand, was beginning to feel the outcast that he was - and had only ever sought to impress his close friend - not to frighten.
Coming out of the woods and into the realm of men was never easy for him - he was sensitive to those things that they could never really understand.
-Gabriel Brunsdon, Puck in Hell, Azlander Series
The skies were overcast and threatening again. The chill in the air had a bite that nipped the ears, and his fellow monks were all losing weight - despite of the thick clots of crème they had been eating.
Ever since their torment, nigh after the Sheriff had bemused himself with his bilious comments whilst restraining them, the men had been downcast and believing themselves to have failed for becoming a'feared. Added to that was their survivors guilt from the battle; for all of them had brothers and fathers that had died that very day and it had only been the robes that had kept them from being cut down also.
They did not feel like men, and nor did they feel holy. This was a low period for them all.
"You must know that you are nit-picking about the crème" remarked Robin in his most tedious voice - what he meant to be saying was that this was the least of their troubles.
"I do know" the Monk replied wearily ... "but it fills in a day. There is nothing for us to do out here in hiding and the brothers are getting tired of it just praying all the time. I fear that their hearts are not attached to their contemplations anymore."
"You should let them go", Robin said unexpectedly. "The villages are in need of men - their own families are calling for ploughmen and fathers to be. Perhaps you should release them of their vows."
-Gabriel Brunsdon, Puck in Hell, Azlander Series
"Do you call that cream?"
"Yes. The lumps are all the more fancy."
"That is foreigner's crème not Anglaise cream."
"'Tis a marvel, I know."
Friar Tooke grunted, he liked his cream to be straight off the top and not diddled with - the panjacks were better rustic than fancy. This was not a good omen to begin the day.
-Gabriel Brunsdon, Puck in Hell, Azlander Series
Brother Tooke read his expression as consent and said:
"It is with love that I say this to you Brother." And then he backed up a few paces, rolled his baggy sleeves up to the elbows and ran powerfully towards Robin ending with a head butt to the chest - which was just enough to make him buckle. He then lifted him high, heaved him over his shoulder, running fast the fifteen paces towards the river, which lay, not far beside them.
"In the Name of the Son, The Father, and the all-pervading most Holy Ghost" he threw Robin in, jumped on him, dragging him down beneath the muddy water.
"Welcome! To the Order of Man and the Benevolence of the Christhood and its sanctity within our blessed Church!"
"Well, glad I am that that dialogue is now over" Robin said, caught by the humor of it, and that he had in fact, not dissolved in body or soul. He knew also that the monk never really did anything for mirth alone - Tooke was a practical man spiritually and as far as he was concerned, everything had its purpose, and that purpose was always good.
Drying off on the grassy banks Robin took a flying leap at Brother Tooke, hurling him back into the river again.
"It is only just my friend, that I should baptise thee!" he shouted as he had thrown him into the water's arms - narrowly missing the bulging boulders besides.
-Gabriel Brunsdon, Puck in Hell, Azlander Series
