Weekend at Vasey's, Chapter Three
The Sheriff's deal with Prince John causes some trouble for Team Castle, and it's going to be a loooong weekend. I don't own anything. Some Guy/Marian/Allan. Ridicfic set sometime before 2x10 "Walkabout."
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Marian was starting to think perhaps this was more of a challenge than she had imagined. The Sheriff’s body was getting harder and harder to move, and the increasingly noxious odor didn’t help, either. “Grab his arm, twist it round so . . . no, like this . . .”
“I can’t move it any more than that. Bleedin’ things gonna snap off!”
“No, it won’t! Just . . . oh, let me do it.” She bent the dead Sheriff’s arm into what she hoped was a more realistic pose. “That’s better,” she said, sighing with relief. Marian had had no idea the Sheriff would be nearly as much trouble dead as he was alive.
The dead man’s eyes were once again popped open, giving him an almost lifelike appearance. The effect was very disturbing, but anyone who had known Vasey in life would be suspicious if he looked otherwise. Next to him on his nightstand, Marian had set out a pitcher of wine, which she had only filled one-third of the way to make it seem as though it had already been drained, and next to it stood a bowl containing some apples and cheese. His right arm seemed to be grasping a goblet of wine, the contents of which were spilled from his mouth down to his robe. There was no need to make the Sheriff smell like spirits, and she thought that the fact that he reeked of urine would only make the tableau more believable.
“Good, he’s all ready.”
“Marian, do you really think we should be doin’ this? I mean, it dudn’t seem quite . . . holy, ya know wha’ I mean?”
The good-hearted Lady Marian, thinking only of the people of Nottingham and their welfare, replied, “Don’t be a ninny, Allan. We’re doing this! Besides, Guy will be here with Prince John’s man any minute.”
“Fine, but I dunno how I’m going to explain this to the priest at my next confession.”
“Don’t be absurd! The concept of sin is social construct, a part of the patriarchal authority’s attempt to curtail subversive and revolutionary behavior by the proletariat. You don’t want to be a tool of the patriarchy, do you, Allan?” Marian looked at him as at a naughty schoolboy.
“’Course not!” Allan had no idea what Marian was talking about, but he wasn’t about to let her call him a tool.
“Good. Now put out that torch over there. The poor lighting in this place is going to be to our advantage.”
************************************************************************
Guy led Phillip out of his chambers and escorted him to the door of the Sheriff’s bedroom. He felt a sensation in his gut like a stone being dropped. There was no way this was going to end well. Why not just admit what had happened and beg for mercy? Then he thought of Marian, and took courage. Maybe if she thought they were all going to die together, she would be more open to a certain thing he’d been wanting to try . . . He was determined to follow through with the plan, in the hopes that, even though he was going to die, he would at least have a real shot with Marian, who would be feeling guilty and vulnerable for getting their arses killed.
Guy knocked on the door, and Marian opened it, letting the two men in. Allan was nowhere to be seen, except for a rather large pair of black boots that were just barely visible underneath the heavy curtain beside the Sheriff’s bed. Neither Guy nor Phillip noticed this, however; the latter because he was in a liquor-and-lactose-induced stupor, and the former because the sight of his dead former master, lying in his bed and holding a goblet of wine, was distracting him. What the devil was Marian thinking, leaving the body on ghastly display like that? Prince John would torture them all to death for sure now. Guy hoped that he would at least be spared the dreaded “Feather of Fear,” in which the hapless victim was tormented mercilessly by the strident application of a feather to the bottom of his feet. Guy could bear anything but tickling!
These thoughts were interrupted when Marian, who by now had moved closer to the curtain to hide Allan’s enormous feet, began to explain to Phillip about the Sheriff’s “condition.” “My lord, the Sheriff is feeling unwell today . . .”
An exaggerated groan seemed to come from the Sheriff’s lips. Guy smirked. His investment in Allan’s ventriloquism class at “þe Olde Lerninge Annex ffor Reformed Owtlauues” had actually paid off! And to think the Sheriff had made fun of him for wanting to give the boy a good education.
Phillip mustered up all the stateliness that his position required, or rather, he attempted to, then let out a loud belch. “Excuse me. Ahem. I am sorry, Sheriff *hic* that my coushin Jashhper wassss not able to be heeeeere,” he began, then paused for effect, “but I, Sir Phhhhhillip of Dunghill, have come *hic* in hisss ssshhtead. And what have we heeere . . .” He turned away from the Sheriff and faced the lady.
Marian tried to look suitably impressed, then realized that the man wasn’t looking at her face at all. He was looking at her two golden luscious, round mounds that seemed to be taunting him with their fresh, delicate sheen. He eyed them hungrily.
“My lord . . .” Guy nudged Phillip testily. Did the man have no sense of propriety at all?
“I *hic* shorrry . . . They’re jussht so *hic* lovely . . .”
Guy rolled his eyes in exasperation, then snapped, “Oh, for God’s sake, Marian, just give him what he wants!”
Marian hurried nervously over to Phillip, nearly letting the succulent lumps spill out before Phillip could put his clammy hands on them. “Here you are, my lord.”
Phillip eagerly snatched at the tasty morsels, fearful that the careless young maiden would let them fall on the floor. “Oooohhhhh, yessss . . . Provolone!”
Marian stepped away in disgust as Phillip devoured the hunks of cheese. She and Guy exchanged a smoldering, yet uncertain look as they tried to remember whether they were enemies or not. They both remembered that they were, in fact, working together on this, so Marian broke off the gaze with a slight smile, then primly pursed her lips. Guy continued to watch her lustfully as she moved surreptitiously over to the Sheriff and yanked his arm to give it a new position.
“Ouch!” yelled Allan from behind the curtain, getting a little too much into character. “I mean, uh . . .”
Marian stomped on his toe to shush him. “Ouch!” She was about to do it again, thinking irritatedly that the Nightwatchman would never be such an oaf. The Nightwatchman was amazing. All those times he got stabbed by Sir Guy were just rotten luck, that’s all.
Just then, though, Phillip looked up, licking the morsels of Provolone from his scant moustache. “I was supposed *hic* to do something . . . Now what wassh it? Oh, yessh . . .” He pulled out a rather squashed roll of parchment from inside his tunic and began to unroll it. “The Shhheriffff . . . hassh to put *burp* hish sheal on thish form and then I get to *hic* take it to . . . to . . .”
“Prince John?” Guy suggested.
“No . . .”
“Jasper?” Guy asked.
“No . . . I mean, yesnomaybeidontknow.”
“What?”
“Yesh.”
“Yes what?”
“Prinsh John.”
“Marian!” Guy nearly stunned himself with the decibel level of his booming voice. “Get Sir Phillip some more cheese, at once! And a shiny spoon!” Phillip’s eyes lit up, at least relatively. They looked a bit less glassy, anyway.
Marian’s head began to throb. Why did Guy insist on bellowing out his orders? And why was he telling her what to do? And what if there was no more cheese?
“Fine, I’ll get it,” she capitulated, thinking of ways to get her revenge, and all of them involving a certain caped costume that was only a few short steps away, tucked between her copy of XVII Magazine and a tight, shiny black gown from her brief and ill-considered “Gothic” phase. She would fight the urge to dress up, she would . . .
Meanwhile, Guy was trying to coax Phillip away from the Sheriff. “Sir Phillip, won’t you please sit down? The Sheriff would like you to sit down, wouldn’t he?” Guy asked, with an inflection that was aimed at the big heavy curtain.
“Would I? Oh, that’d be fantastic,” Allan improvised. “I mean . . . do I want you to sit down?” he amended, “A clue? Yes!”
Phillip suddenly plopped down on the floor, making himself comfortable on the deer-skin rug. He had always prided himself on following orders promptly. If he behaved himself, maybe the Sheriff would tell Prince John just how incontinent he was! He could almost taste that promotion. That and the bits of cheese that were still clinging to his moustache.
“Uhh, er, Sir Phillip, about this parchment . . .” Guy began uneasily.
“It has squiggly lines on it! *hic* Shee?” Phillip blurted out, holding up the document proudly.
“Yes, they’re very pretty lines. Now, what was that about the seal?”
“The Prince’s seal . . . has to *hic* be on it.”
“You mean the Sheriff’s.”
“No.”
“Ye-es.”
“Ye-es,” Phillip mocked, giggling.
The Sheriff’s odiferous corpse hissed, “Get the seal, Giz!”
“I don’t know where it is!” Guy whisper-shouted back. Luckily, Phillip was busy fluffing up the deer’s tail the wrong way and didn’t hear.
“It’s got ‘a be here somewhere, dunnit?” the corpse whispered in reply.
“Yes, but . . .” then Guy remembered the Sheriff’s top secret private locked desk drawer. “I’ll just fetch the seal for you, my lord,” he said in a super-obvious tone that still failed to signal any warning bells for Phillip. He walked over to it, then looked inside the skull that the Sheriff always kept on top of the writing desk. There was the key!
Guy quickly unlocked the top secret private locked desk drawer, expecting to find the seal lying amongst important documents and such. Instead he found some rather crude yet clever drawings of himself dressed as a rather scantily-clad jongleur, apparently done by the Sheriff’s own hand, and labeled “Ser Guye, mi Best Mayte. A cloo? No!” Guy smiled to himself, delighted that the Sheriff had thought about him in his spare time. Next to the drawings he found a scrawled note in a nearly illegible hand:
Deerist gizzy,
Iff ur reeding tihs, that meens u problably merduerd mirdrd maerdert killd me so itz sayfe to tell yiou taht i kiled Your faimily & u wil dye Soon to becawse i hid mye seel wher u will Nevar fynd itte ha ha ha
and mariyan will never goe ffor itt i thynck u no wot i meene.
luv
vasye
Guy dropped the note in horror. Surely the Sheriff couldn’t have meant what he wrote. Guy looked up at where the Sheriff lay, his beady eyes glinting, and it almost seemed like the man was still mocking him now. No, it must be true. Even the Sheriff didn’t believe that Marian would be into . . . that certain thing! Plus, the blackguard had killed Guy’s family and also put him into mortal peril, all because of that stupid Archbishop . . . Guy mentally cursed all archbishops, bishops, friars and monks everywhere.
Where was the seal? And would Marian really never open her . . . heart . . . to him?
Continue to Chapter Four
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Marian was starting to think perhaps this was more of a challenge than she had imagined. The Sheriff’s body was getting harder and harder to move, and the increasingly noxious odor didn’t help, either. “Grab his arm, twist it round so . . . no, like this . . .”
“I can’t move it any more than that. Bleedin’ things gonna snap off!”
“No, it won’t! Just . . . oh, let me do it.” She bent the dead Sheriff’s arm into what she hoped was a more realistic pose. “That’s better,” she said, sighing with relief. Marian had had no idea the Sheriff would be nearly as much trouble dead as he was alive.
The dead man’s eyes were once again popped open, giving him an almost lifelike appearance. The effect was very disturbing, but anyone who had known Vasey in life would be suspicious if he looked otherwise. Next to him on his nightstand, Marian had set out a pitcher of wine, which she had only filled one-third of the way to make it seem as though it had already been drained, and next to it stood a bowl containing some apples and cheese. His right arm seemed to be grasping a goblet of wine, the contents of which were spilled from his mouth down to his robe. There was no need to make the Sheriff smell like spirits, and she thought that the fact that he reeked of urine would only make the tableau more believable.
“Good, he’s all ready.”
“Marian, do you really think we should be doin’ this? I mean, it dudn’t seem quite . . . holy, ya know wha’ I mean?”
The good-hearted Lady Marian, thinking only of the people of Nottingham and their welfare, replied, “Don’t be a ninny, Allan. We’re doing this! Besides, Guy will be here with Prince John’s man any minute.”
“Fine, but I dunno how I’m going to explain this to the priest at my next confession.”
“Don’t be absurd! The concept of sin is social construct, a part of the patriarchal authority’s attempt to curtail subversive and revolutionary behavior by the proletariat. You don’t want to be a tool of the patriarchy, do you, Allan?” Marian looked at him as at a naughty schoolboy.
“’Course not!” Allan had no idea what Marian was talking about, but he wasn’t about to let her call him a tool.
“Good. Now put out that torch over there. The poor lighting in this place is going to be to our advantage.”
************************************************************************
Guy led Phillip out of his chambers and escorted him to the door of the Sheriff’s bedroom. He felt a sensation in his gut like a stone being dropped. There was no way this was going to end well. Why not just admit what had happened and beg for mercy? Then he thought of Marian, and took courage. Maybe if she thought they were all going to die together, she would be more open to a certain thing he’d been wanting to try . . . He was determined to follow through with the plan, in the hopes that, even though he was going to die, he would at least have a real shot with Marian, who would be feeling guilty and vulnerable for getting their arses killed.
Guy knocked on the door, and Marian opened it, letting the two men in. Allan was nowhere to be seen, except for a rather large pair of black boots that were just barely visible underneath the heavy curtain beside the Sheriff’s bed. Neither Guy nor Phillip noticed this, however; the latter because he was in a liquor-and-lactose-induced stupor, and the former because the sight of his dead former master, lying in his bed and holding a goblet of wine, was distracting him. What the devil was Marian thinking, leaving the body on ghastly display like that? Prince John would torture them all to death for sure now. Guy hoped that he would at least be spared the dreaded “Feather of Fear,” in which the hapless victim was tormented mercilessly by the strident application of a feather to the bottom of his feet. Guy could bear anything but tickling!
These thoughts were interrupted when Marian, who by now had moved closer to the curtain to hide Allan’s enormous feet, began to explain to Phillip about the Sheriff’s “condition.” “My lord, the Sheriff is feeling unwell today . . .”
An exaggerated groan seemed to come from the Sheriff’s lips. Guy smirked. His investment in Allan’s ventriloquism class at “þe Olde Lerninge Annex ffor Reformed Owtlauues” had actually paid off! And to think the Sheriff had made fun of him for wanting to give the boy a good education.
Phillip mustered up all the stateliness that his position required, or rather, he attempted to, then let out a loud belch. “Excuse me. Ahem. I am sorry, Sheriff *hic* that my coushin Jashhper wassss not able to be heeeeere,” he began, then paused for effect, “but I, Sir Phhhhhillip of Dunghill, have come *hic* in hisss ssshhtead. And what have we heeere . . .” He turned away from the Sheriff and faced the lady.
Marian tried to look suitably impressed, then realized that the man wasn’t looking at her face at all. He was looking at her two golden luscious, round mounds that seemed to be taunting him with their fresh, delicate sheen. He eyed them hungrily.
“My lord . . .” Guy nudged Phillip testily. Did the man have no sense of propriety at all?
“I *hic* shorrry . . . They’re jussht so *hic* lovely . . .”
Guy rolled his eyes in exasperation, then snapped, “Oh, for God’s sake, Marian, just give him what he wants!”
Marian hurried nervously over to Phillip, nearly letting the succulent lumps spill out before Phillip could put his clammy hands on them. “Here you are, my lord.”
Phillip eagerly snatched at the tasty morsels, fearful that the careless young maiden would let them fall on the floor. “Oooohhhhh, yessss . . . Provolone!”
Marian stepped away in disgust as Phillip devoured the hunks of cheese. She and Guy exchanged a smoldering, yet uncertain look as they tried to remember whether they were enemies or not. They both remembered that they were, in fact, working together on this, so Marian broke off the gaze with a slight smile, then primly pursed her lips. Guy continued to watch her lustfully as she moved surreptitiously over to the Sheriff and yanked his arm to give it a new position.
“Ouch!” yelled Allan from behind the curtain, getting a little too much into character. “I mean, uh . . .”
Marian stomped on his toe to shush him. “Ouch!” She was about to do it again, thinking irritatedly that the Nightwatchman would never be such an oaf. The Nightwatchman was amazing. All those times he got stabbed by Sir Guy were just rotten luck, that’s all.
Just then, though, Phillip looked up, licking the morsels of Provolone from his scant moustache. “I was supposed *hic* to do something . . . Now what wassh it? Oh, yessh . . .” He pulled out a rather squashed roll of parchment from inside his tunic and began to unroll it. “The Shhheriffff . . . hassh to put *burp* hish sheal on thish form and then I get to *hic* take it to . . . to . . .”
“Prince John?” Guy suggested.
“No . . .”
“Jasper?” Guy asked.
“No . . . I mean, yesnomaybeidontknow.”
“What?”
“Yesh.”
“Yes what?”
“Prinsh John.”
“Marian!” Guy nearly stunned himself with the decibel level of his booming voice. “Get Sir Phillip some more cheese, at once! And a shiny spoon!” Phillip’s eyes lit up, at least relatively. They looked a bit less glassy, anyway.
Marian’s head began to throb. Why did Guy insist on bellowing out his orders? And why was he telling her what to do? And what if there was no more cheese?
“Fine, I’ll get it,” she capitulated, thinking of ways to get her revenge, and all of them involving a certain caped costume that was only a few short steps away, tucked between her copy of XVII Magazine and a tight, shiny black gown from her brief and ill-considered “Gothic” phase. She would fight the urge to dress up, she would . . .
Meanwhile, Guy was trying to coax Phillip away from the Sheriff. “Sir Phillip, won’t you please sit down? The Sheriff would like you to sit down, wouldn’t he?” Guy asked, with an inflection that was aimed at the big heavy curtain.
“Would I? Oh, that’d be fantastic,” Allan improvised. “I mean . . . do I want you to sit down?” he amended, “A clue? Yes!”
Phillip suddenly plopped down on the floor, making himself comfortable on the deer-skin rug. He had always prided himself on following orders promptly. If he behaved himself, maybe the Sheriff would tell Prince John just how incontinent he was! He could almost taste that promotion. That and the bits of cheese that were still clinging to his moustache.
“Uhh, er, Sir Phillip, about this parchment . . .” Guy began uneasily.
“It has squiggly lines on it! *hic* Shee?” Phillip blurted out, holding up the document proudly.
“Yes, they’re very pretty lines. Now, what was that about the seal?”
“The Prince’s seal . . . has to *hic* be on it.”
“You mean the Sheriff’s.”
“No.”
“Ye-es.”
“Ye-es,” Phillip mocked, giggling.
The Sheriff’s odiferous corpse hissed, “Get the seal, Giz!”
“I don’t know where it is!” Guy whisper-shouted back. Luckily, Phillip was busy fluffing up the deer’s tail the wrong way and didn’t hear.
“It’s got ‘a be here somewhere, dunnit?” the corpse whispered in reply.
“Yes, but . . .” then Guy remembered the Sheriff’s top secret private locked desk drawer. “I’ll just fetch the seal for you, my lord,” he said in a super-obvious tone that still failed to signal any warning bells for Phillip. He walked over to it, then looked inside the skull that the Sheriff always kept on top of the writing desk. There was the key!
Guy quickly unlocked the top secret private locked desk drawer, expecting to find the seal lying amongst important documents and such. Instead he found some rather crude yet clever drawings of himself dressed as a rather scantily-clad jongleur, apparently done by the Sheriff’s own hand, and labeled “Ser Guye, mi Best Mayte. A cloo? No!” Guy smiled to himself, delighted that the Sheriff had thought about him in his spare time. Next to the drawings he found a scrawled note in a nearly illegible hand:
Deerist gizzy,
Iff ur reeding tihs, that meens u problably merduerd mirdrd maerdert killd me so itz sayfe to tell yiou taht i kiled Your faimily & u wil dye Soon to becawse i hid mye seel wher u will Nevar fynd itte ha ha ha
and mariyan will never goe ffor itt i thynck u no wot i meene.
luv
vasye
Guy dropped the note in horror. Surely the Sheriff couldn’t have meant what he wrote. Guy looked up at where the Sheriff lay, his beady eyes glinting, and it almost seemed like the man was still mocking him now. No, it must be true. Even the Sheriff didn’t believe that Marian would be into . . . that certain thing! Plus, the blackguard had killed Guy’s family and also put him into mortal peril, all because of that stupid Archbishop . . . Guy mentally cursed all archbishops, bishops, friars and monks everywhere.
Where was the seal? And would Marian really never open her . . . heart . . . to him?
Continue to Chapter Four