Everything is a Choice

Chapter 31

Previously...

Guy is still standing where I left him, his ungloved hands fiddling with the fastenings on his doublet, clearly unsure what to do next.

I look across at Much. He wipes his nose with the back of his hand and then starts cracking eggs, smacking them onto the sides of a blackened pan and dropping them in, quite probably shells and all. Licking his lips, he whistles a wobbly tune. He does not fool me. I know he is crying.

Guy lays a placating hand on my back. I shake him off.

I have lost them, all of them.

Chapter 31

"Do you want some help?" I reach for an egg, my sleeve brushing the back of Much's hand. He recoils as if he's been stung.

"I can manage." Sniffing, he cracks another egg on the side of the pan. The white, yolk and bits of shell land on top of all the other eggs he's already broken into the pan; there must be at least a dozen in there already.

"That's going to make one hell of an omelette," I say, hoping to coax a smile out of my friend.

Much's reply is to pick up a rather blunt-looking knife and start hacking at a one of the apples from our apple store. Chunks of apple join the eggs in the pan; peel, core and stalk included.

I glance behind me. Guy has thoughtfully made himself scarce, no doubt realising I would like some time alone with my friend.

"It's not an omelette," Much says, casting around for something else to throw into the pan. He finds a lone carrot and starts to chop it up. Uneven orange slices, along with the leafy green carrot top, join the eggs and apples. "It's a mess of a mess, that's what it is." He picks up a wooden spoon and stirs, faster and faster. Raw egg flies out the pan, splattering us both. I take a couple of steps backwards.

Much flings the spoon into the pan, wipes his face with the back of his hand and looks up. "No Marian, or Will, or Djaq, Prince John in Nottingham, Gisborne in our camp." There's a blob of egg yolk under his right eye; it looks like a yellow tear. "I thought it couldn't possibly get any messier than that." He picks up the laden pan with two hands. Even as he brings it round in an arc, like some kind of comedic bat with which to strike a ball, I stand my ground.  I've seen Much's throwing prowess, or rather lack of, and fear more for the pan than I do for my head.

Much puts the pan back onto the iron bars straddling his fire pit, muttering something about it being a waste of good food.

"I'm sorry," I say. "You're always moaning about me not talking to you, so I decided to talk." I finger the ring Guy gave me with the pad of my thumb, running it over the raised design, turning the thick silver band around and around my middle finger. After Rowena had ridden off, I'd worked it off my left hand and put it on my right. It felt too much like a wedding ring wearing it on my left even if it was the wrong finger.

Much picks up an iron poker and jabs at the smoking logs under the pan. "And when you finally decide to take notice of what I'm saying, it's to tell me that you're going to..." Much gives the logs another vicious poke. "I don't even want to think about it, let alone say it out loud."

"Then don't," I tell him. "Don't think about it. This is between Guy and me; it doesn't involve you, or the rest of the gang."

"Doesn't involve me," Much says, waving the ash-covered poker at me, adding a dusting of grey specks to the sticky egg splats on my shirt. "Since when does anything you do not involve me? Much, fetch this. Much, do that. Much, don't tell my father, Marian, the village priest. You're always using me for your own ends in the name of friendship when you know it's because I'm your servant and always will be. So what now? Am I to keep a look out while you and he do whatever it is you're going to do?"