The Preacher Pops His Clogs
Another tale in which an unloved character meets his end. Again, don't read if you're a Bobbin fan!!
Well, here it is. I’ve done for Tuck; the little devil perched on my shoulder made it just too tempting. Once again, written with the caveats that it’s both tame and crap, so read at your peril and then put it out of its misery and let it quietly wither away…
Severe liberties have been taken with both plot and time line, but this is Bobbin Hood, so neither of those things matters a toss anyway!
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Wilfred the boatman gazed at his passenger with undisguised venom. For two months, the duration of the trip from the Holy Land, he’d pulled off the remarkable feat of being wherever this cretin wasn’t, in a ship so small that someone hawking up at one end of it invariably splattered with phlegm the face of somebody at the other. He couldn’t escape the voice, but at least he could control his urge to tip the bastard into the drink.
Bleeding Jesus, the man did go on … and on. Every time a sailor remarked on being tired, there’d be a speech about fortitude and perseverance. Every time the topic of dividing up the profits from the trip arose, there’d be a speech about the dangers of greed. Every time someone cursed the taxes imposed to fight Good King Richard’s war against the heathen, there’d be a speech about God’s Will and the Monarch’s Merits. Wilfred was convinced that an outbreak of dysentery would have provoked a speech about keeping the spirits up and the trousers down in the face of adversity.
Now, this Tuck bloke was declaiming the joy of being almost back on native soil, to further the Good Fight and to deliver England from her enemies. Wilfred shot him a sour look. ‘Makes no odds to me,’ he snapped. ‘Richard or John - they’re both frenchie-spouting parasites determined to relieve me of my hard-earned. Why don’t you break the habit of a lifetime and shut up?’
‘But…’ Tuck began, but mercifully fell silent as Wilfred waved the oar about in a highly menacing fashion. The little boat was now as close to the shore as Wilfred was willing to take it and he watched with satisfaction as his passenger fell arse over tip as he exited, briefly disappearing beneath the water. ‘Humph,’ grinned Wilfred. 'I see you can’t walk on it, then! ’ He’d turned the boat and was already rowing back to the ship before Tuck resurfaced, his mouth, by way of a change, filled with the briny rather than bullshit.
With the unerring accuracy of a rat up a drainpipe, Tuck located the mouth of the Trent and began making his purposeful way along it towards Locksley. He was a Man on a Mission. He would find The One Known as Bobbin Hood, he whose other half had been left modelling the latest fashion in steel stomach-ware by the Troll of Nottingham’s henchman. It had followed an abortive attempt by the Gruesome Twosome to divide Good King Richard into several parts.
He would pull Bobbin back from the brink of despondency, remind him of his duty to Plantagenet and Peasantry alike and along the way, skew the course of history by being at least eight hundred years ahead of it. First things first, however. Creating a Legend required raw materials, so where to find this Bobbin? Perhaps he should scale the side of this Chasm and seek him in Locksley village?
As he looked up, a shadow blotted out the sun as something plummeted over the Chasm’s rim and began to descend rapidly in the general direction of Tuck’s upturned face. This man was no fool; he moved away pretty sharpish and saw with horror a bloated body hit the water … and bounce. In fact, it bounced several times and reminded Tuck fondly of the days when he and his friends would skim stones across the lake near their ramshackle, disease-ridden village. Of course, that was in the days before he had received the gift of Motivational Speaking, the days before everyone mysteriously vanished as soon as he appeared. The days before he had acquired his nickname of ButTuck.
The corpse caused him a moment’s anxiety as it stirred, grunted and attempted to rise. Tuck caught sight of thinning hair receding from a face that resembled twice-kneaded dough and thanked the Lord for his good fortune. He didn’t need the quiver of arrows that had somehow stayed attached through a free fall of over one hundred feet to know that this was The One Known as Bobbin Hood. He could now begin that task for which he had been called: the rehabilitation of a Legend. He would stand shoulder to shoulder with The One as they roused the pustulent peasants from their apathy, spurring them on with his powers of oratory. Never again would his desperate plea of ‘But…’ be directed at the retreating back of an ingrate who had snarled at him to shut up.
All went well at first; Bobbin’s outlaws were soon cowed into acceptance of his position as second in command by the sheer force of his passion and his obvious possession of at least more than one brain cell, although he did sometimes catch the beginnings of a ‘Shut up’ curling on the lips of Allan, the dodgy one whom he suspected of being a good deal brighter than he let on. Even Calamity Kate’s screeching whinge succumbed before the brilliance of his delivery, although her eyes, like those of the other rabble, always took on an alarmingly glassy appearance.
One pair of eyes, however, was never glassy in his presence. They were a brilliant blue, rimmed by long, dark lashes and far too knowing for comfort. They belonged to Guy of Gisborne, Bobbin’s erstwhile enemy and now ally. Brother to, and implacable foe of, Isabella, the new but sadly deranged Sheriff of Nottingham. Gisborne was impervious to Tuck’s uplifting sermons; his motivations were all his own, and once again Tuck endured that old and hurtful experience of being told to shut the fuck up. ‘But…’ he began, but chose wisdom over valour when confronted with a basilisk stare and a three foot long piece of very sharp steel; he had no wish to share Lady Marian’s quaint taste in abdominal accessories.
It was the swivel-eyed Isabella whom they now faced across the drawbridge of Nottingham Castle. Despite his rousing encouragement to the dollopy populace about standing up for themselves and fighting for their families, they’d turned away and one, braver than the rest, had echoed Gisborne’s sentiments that he should shut it before they all died of old age and the danger from the Sheriff became irrelevant.
‘But...’ He’d shaken his head sadly and looked to Little John for support. John was clutching that big stick of his so tightly that his knuckles showed white and was muttering under his breath about the benefits of deafness, but he had rallied bravely, and thinking of Bobbin, growled, ‘We go to Nottingham.’
So now they stood, Preachy-Speechy and the Man Mountain, surveying the Castle before them and the empty wastes behind. ‘We’d better call that last speech of yours a bit of a no-goer,’ remarked John. ‘We seem to be sort of on our own here.’
Tuck sighed. He was so sure that he’d got the tone just right. He blamed the mouthy one who’d cut him off in mid-stride; another hour or two and he’d have motivated the suppurating serfs to rise against their oppressors - well, the oppressors who were currently in the country, not the oppressors who were off bashing the heathen in the Holy Land.
A slight noise behind them caused Tuck and John to turn, fearing they’d been outflanked; an easy manoeuvre for scores of guards armed to the teeth and faced with a terrifying force of two. ‘It worked!’ In the blink of an eye, all Tuck’s confidence came flooding back as the peasants, always up for a laugh to lighten their sorry existence, shambled into view to see what the silly sod had got planned.
‘My friends,’ he began and took a deep breath.
‘Not now, Tuck!’ John’s voice was firm and though Tuck’s reflex was to rejoin with his customary ‘But…’, one look at his companion’s face and the proximity of his own to that very big stick, made him think better of it. He basked in the thought that he, Tuck, had brought things to this pass; even if Bobbin didn’t reach them, he would save the day with his loyal peasants and his amazingly prescient idea of sitting on his arse in front of an army of trained swordsmen, axemen and archers. One day in the future, someone would surely see this as a way to get their point across without bloodshed! He had a strange vision of a little, dark man called Gandalf wearing a nappy, but shook that thought from his brain.
The disadvantage for Tuck, of course, was that this strategy was well before its time and the delay in the enemy’s forward charge was caused only by the utter incomprehension with which they were regarding the mad monk. Isabella, pacing the ramparts like a wild stallion (without the balls), fixed him with a stare that could have stripped lime wash: one which reminded him disconcertingly of her brother at his most exasperated.
‘What’s that sanctimonious fool doing?’ she demanded of her Master-at-Arms, who shrugged helplessly and then nursed the splinters as his crossbow was wrenched from his hand without ceremony. Isabella was nothing if not fair; she always gave folk a sporting chance to run before she butchered them.
‘Clear orf,’ she ordered in her special toff voice and lined the bolt up level with Tuck’s chest. She still had unpleasant memories of that chest flopping sadly either side of his sternum and dropping towards his armpits as he lay supine on the rack and cursed yet again that the most gorgeous and buff male in the vicinity had to be her brother and alas, off limits.
John shot Tuck a warning glance. This situation was becoming very ugly indeed, but could possibly be salvaged at least until Bobbin blundered to the rescue: just so long as the garrulous gas-bag next to him kept his lips firmly closed on his tongue. John was a man of few words, which was unfortunate, as Tuck had never been adroit at picking up non-verbal signals. He raised his hands to heaven, opened his mouth and prepared to speak.
Isabella wasn’t the best crossbow operator in the world; she’d been aiming for his gullet and she screamed in frustration as she realised that she’d only got him in the shoulder. However, at least the injury seemed to have distracted him from whatever long-winded drivel he was contemplating delivering. She was about to signal to Blamire to open the gates and flatten the lot of them when a commotion surrounding the Man Mountain and the Self-Righteous Sermoniser captured her attention. She almost tipped head first over the crenulations in an attempt to get a closer look.
Bobbin slewed his horse to a halt and to the unfortunate creature’s obvious relief, descended to the ground in an undignified and muddled heap. He looked across as Guy dismounted his animal with his customary lithe grace and wondered for the umpteenth time how his plan to become as fit and strong as his nemesis had backfired so monumentally. In his efforts to bulk up, he had merely managed to bulk out, as the bowed legs of his still gasping steed bore testimony.
‘Bobbin?’ Allan’s voice cut across his thoughts. ‘I’m not bein’ funny, but Tuck don’t look too clever.’
Bobbin knelt by his second in command, who with teeth gritted against the pain, was clutching his shoulder and making a strange little noise that didn’t seem to emanate from his lips.
‘You’ll be fine,’ Bobbin said confidently; he was a Hero after all. ‘I’ll just move you out of the way for a bit and then sort that bolt out once I’ve duffed up those guards, stormed the Castle, put Izzy in the clink and solved the world’s problems.’
‘Sssss,’ was Tuck’s mysterious reply. Bobbin looked at him, baffled. There wasn’t enough blood oozing from the wound to imply that the monk was badly mauled, yet he’d turned as pale as it was possible for one of his swarthy complexion to do. Bobbin indicated for Little John to heave the quietly hissing human obstacle out of the way and heroically and, in certain knowledge that Right was on his side, plunged into the fray.
Of course, he managed to duff up the guards, storm the Castle, put Izzy in the clink and as an added bonus, solve the world’s problems, all without affecting the positioning of the comb-over that he’d latterly been forced to adopt. Now to turn his heroic attentions to Tuck. Where was Tuck? Espying a dirty grey heap that resembled the monk’s whiffy robe, Bobbin approached, with that cocky, wide-boy strut that made Guy want to scythe his legs from beneath him and tie them round his neck.
The rabble of scabby outlaws, rancid peasantry and vision of gorgeousness that was Sir Guy looked down with considerable bemusement at the monk, as he lay, gently hissing and … deflating. The blood loss from the bolt was of no significance; of far more import was the hole through which all the gas and hot air that had filled the Portentous Preacher was inexorably escaping. They dare not remove the bolt for fear of speeding up the process yet the unfortunate fellow before them was now a mere fraction of his former self. God’s bones, how he struggled to find the words, but the ultimate irony was that they wouldn’t come. With a final, sad farting noise, Tuck leaked his last.
Guy felt - relief. At least the sanctimonious sack of shit hadn’t had the chance to torment them with a farewell speech. Bobbin heaved himself to his feet, remarking mournfully, ‘He had a nickname, you know … when he was younger. He told me. They used to call him ButTuck. Do you remember how he always used to say ‘But…’ after he’d been told to shut up? Well, it sort of got tagged on to his name and it stuck.’
‘Yeah,’ noted Allan. ‘I can imagine he got told to put a sock in it a fair few times. Gawd knows I came close to stuffin’ one in fer ’im meself. There’s only so much motivatin’ a man can take and keep his sanity.’
Bobbin sighed. ‘Well, we’ll never hear him say ‘But…’ like that again now. Tuck is no more. We’ll bury him back in the forest; Lord knows, the grave won’t take long to dig. Farewell, ButTuck, you were a brave man and a great inspiration to a Hero like me. ’
Guy thought, uncharitably, that the nickname ButTuck had far less to do with his fondness for the word ‘But’ and far more to do with the fact that he always talked out of the orifice between his left one and his right one.
However, as Bobbin did seem genuinely upset, he thought it best to keep that observation to himself.