Part 6
"I can help you find Robin Hood."
Friar Tuck jolted out of his reverie; there were two children in the room. The boy he judged by what he had been told was Simon, heir to this manor and the other would be the daughter Naomi, she looked at him straight in the eye and he deduced that it was she who had spoken.
"I am Friar Tuck," he said introducing himself. "And you must be Simon and Naomi. I am here to teach you your lessons."
Naomi said nothing more of Robin Hood, and for the next two hours he worked steadily to teach them the rudiments of the alphabet. The girl child seemed eager to learn while the boy he knew would rather be elsewhere if the weather permitted his guess was outside running off his no doubt endless energy as he had once enjoyed as a young boy himself.
The lesson ended and as predicted the boy ran off as soon as he was dismissed. The girl however stayed and walked up to him where he sat at his desk. She watched him, her eyes wide as he pretended to get on with important things.
"Can I help you?" he finally asked.
"No, but I think I can help you."
"You can help me?" he replied with a smile.
"Yes, you said you needed to find Robin Hood I can tell you. If you can keep it a secret."
"I have kept many secrets over the years," he told her.
She stepped back and watched him some more before adding. "So…do you need my help?"
"Finding Robin Hood is dangerous for a man, let alone a small girl like you."
"Robin Hood is not dangerous, unless you are his enemy," she honestly told him.
"And what does a young thing like you know of a man like Robin Hood?"
"He is my friend," she simply replied.
Tuck smiled and decided that instead of her imagination being filled with fairies in the glen she had instead dreamt up a friendship with the legendary Hood.
"People just don't become friends with Robin Hood at least not people like you who live in luxury," he told her.
"He put us here," she told him, eager to prove that she did indeed know Robin Hood.
"He put you where?" queried the man of the cloth.
"Here, in Knighton hall with our father. Our mother died, we were lost, Robin Hood and Marian looked after us and then they brought us here. I would have rather stayed with them. But it is alright here I suppose."
Tuck regarded her earnest face and sighed, perhaps she was telling the truth, footsteps prevented him asking anything further as the nursemaid Sarah appeared and informed the child it was lunchtime.
As Naomi made her way out the room she turned and said. "Remember if you want to find him, I know how."
Tuck shook his head, did he need to find Robin Hood was that the answer? He didn't know, perhaps he needed more information, proof of what he had overheard but how he was going to glean that was anyone's guess.