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

the man. You can be civil on my behalf,’ said the Countess of Locksley. ‘Now, enough of this dawdling, slug-a-bed pace – in the name of all that is holy, let us ride!’ And with that she drove her spurs in her horse’s sides. The startled animal leaped up the track at a full thundering gallop, with Marie-Anne whooping with pleasure astride its back. A gust of wind caught her flapping white linen headdress and blew the garment from her brow and away into the woods, allowing her long glossy chestnut hair to flow free behind her like the streaming pennant from a charging knight’s lance.
    Belatedly, her priest and her eight bodyguards kicked their own horses into motion, and soon the entire convoy was pelting madly along the muddy track, their drumming hooves kicking up clods of mud, the riders ducking desperately under low branches, swerving around the many potholes, racing in reckless haste as if being chased by the Devil himself.
    ***
    The travellers arrived at Kirkton Castle a little before noon the next day, having stayed overnight at the castle at Sheffield. Marie-Anne’s face flushed with joy, as she rode along the northern road above the Locksley Valley, at the sight of her home. She had been born in the castle and had spent almost all of her twenty-two years in this lush valley. She knew every fold of hillside, every stand of trees, every gentle curve of the River Locksley. As the party went, they were greeted many times by the men and women who worked the lands of the Locksley family; shepherds mostly, though a few of the strips of fields were under the plough for barley and oats, and Tuck was struck once again by the pleasure that these humble folk took in saluting their lady.
    But Marie-Anne’s happy expression changed abruptly as they rode up the path from St Nicholas’s Church and towards the main gate set in the wooden palisade of the castle. From there, she could see Kirkton’s tall flagpole, above the square wooden keep. In the place where her blue flag with its white hawk normally flapped, a new emblem stirred in the breeze: a black pennant emblazoned with three blood-red chevrons. The Countess of Locksley booted her tired horse into a canter as she approached the gate, her face as tight as a fist and as pale as whey. The portal opened before her snorting horse and she reined in in the centre of the courtyard as her entourage clattered into the castle behind her.
    ‘Get that foul thing down, right now,’ Marie-Anne barked at the castle steward, the elderly servant who held her excited horse’s bridle, as she pointed with a trembling finger at the alien flag. ‘I want that filthy rag taken down, now!’ She was almost shouting at the old man.
    ‘But, my lady,’ quavered the steward, ‘we have with us a most distinguished guest…’
    ‘My lady,’ came a different voice, a lisping voice, speaking in good Norman French. ‘Welcome home.’ A short, dark, handsome man with girlishly full red lips stood in the doorway of the hall. He was dressed in costly black silks from shoulder to shanks, covered with a fur-trimmed black cloak secured at the neck by a thick gold chain.
    Marie-Anne stared hard at this small man who was leaning casually against the doorpost of her hall, a cup of wine in his right hand, his left on the silver handle of his sword. He had an extraordinary air of assurance for an uninvited guest in another lord’s castle, almost as if he were the true master here, and not she, and he was smiling at her in a louche, familiar way, almost smirking, as if he had just risen from their shared matrimonial bed.
    Marie-Anne stepped down from her horse, accepting the steward’s arm as she did so. Their faces came within inches as the Countess descended and she hissed violently into the old man’s ear. ‘That fellow yonder is never to be admitted to this castle again – under any circumstances. Do you understand?’
    The elderly steward flapped his hands in agitation. ‘But my lady,’