Chapter Three

When they had finally reached the writer's intended destination, Wat wasn't at all astonished to find that it was the tavern that was regarded to hold the most unscrupulous reputation in their province of the English countryside.

Leave it to the likes of that poofter to gamble in the worst place he can find, Wat surmised, sighing inwardly.

Even Wat, a man that considered himself a 'bloke with experience' was quite uneasy with the prospect of entering a pub that was infamous for its sordid activity. The unpleasant thought was weighing harshly upon his better judgment.

His preposterously animated chum, however, to his eternal chagrin, waltzed in without preamble, as though the building just happened to be his private town-house.

Realizing that his companion wasn't following, Geoff poked his head out of the doorway with the expression that Wat had patented as a classical 'shite-eating-grin', eyes showing brightly with mock concern.

"Come now, isn't this a treat? Tell me, is my dear, brash, addle-brained harpy showing a smidgen of uncertainty? My, but you do reek of an insipid lack of spine, friend."

Wat scowled at the deliberate provocation. This time logic won out and he refused to take the jibe.

"Are you daft? Touched in the head, maybe? We can't go in there, it'd be bloody suicide! Only the scummiest of the scum go in there. Only the maddest of the mad, the filthiest of the filt-"

Chaucer sneered imperiously, rolling his eyes heavenward. "And probably only the twitiest of the twits if I end up letting you walk in there. Sweet Christ, don't be so damned fretful, you're beginning to remind me of my mother. Strange woman that one, had a darker mustache than my father ever had."

Wat paused in his babbling tirade, justly disturbed. "What?"

"uh…pay that last no heed."

"Right."

Scratching his head, the writer groaned, not bothering to hide the fact that he was anxious to stop loitering upon the front stoop of the establishment.

"So are we sallying forth, or no?"

The redhead crossed his brawny arms over his breast, shaking his head.

"Oh no, we're not, but you can."

"So you're telling me that you're leaving me to the beasts then, as you all but called them? Those large, rather frightening, ape-like men sporting engravings of big women upon their biceps? The ones with hair protruding out from their nostrils and the blood of the innocent staining their hands?"

Where does the bugger get his material? Wat wondered, vaguely perturbed.

"Yes."

Geoff stared at him quizzically for a moment, the lantern behind his head faintly outlining his lank silhouette in the night.

Then he shrugged and plodded inside.

Blinking once, then twice more, Wat stood dumbfounded.

The bastard had actually left him out here alone!

Not wanting to compromise his hide out alone in the darkness, Wat, courageous sort that he was, clambered up the stoop and stumbled into the tavern, leaving the moon outside to bear the only witness of his alarm.

The whore's inviting breath ghosted over Chaucer's right cheek while her tongue left a fire brand of liquid heat upon his ear lobe, a valiant though hopeless attempt to solicit lust where there was none.

Despite this, though, Geoff did not extricate her from the comfort of his lap. While his preferences ran toward the masculine in nature, he was not above resorting to the pleasures that could be afforded by the female body.

But that wasn't the case with this one.

The sole purpose she provided now was appearance, a neatly contrived façade that would put the handsome Master Fawlhurst in a compromising (and he hoped jealous) position, especially since they were now in an atmosphere that did nothing to halt the proliferation of the erotic.

Geoff lifted a slender hand to his tankard of ale, thin but sensual mouth curling secretively above the brim of the cup. His eyes danced as they beheld the object of his affections.

There, his heart whispered. There he sits, oblivious to my true intentions, gambling mostly to appease me.

It was almost enough to make him feel as though he were committing a crime; an act of corruption.

"Yer turn, Red. You roll."

The writer watched speculatively as the redheaded man took his try. The men they were keeping company with had long since abandoned his hand in the game, in all likelihood believing he'd grown too preoccupied with the woman sitting prettily atop his leather-clad thighs.

He didn't care, though. It presented him with that much more of a justifiable excuse to engross himself with his favorite activity: observing Wat.

Returning to his musing, Chaucer mulled over his last thoughts, contemplating if he really was in fact committing some type of dire betrayal of the trust and sanctity of their relationship.

He stopped that notion where it began, and tried to enjoy the glide of the harlot's lips along the column of his throat.

No, this passion he harbored wasn't one of evil intentions. Quite the contrary, Geoff knew, for it was to him the purest thing he'd sought after in his life thus far, pure as a mother's love for her child (well, perhaps not that pure), as unsullied as that of a lord for his lady, or the religious man for his god.

Oh, he had loved many times before, of course. He would be a liar if he had said that he hadn't as many lovers at one point in his life as he had digits upon his two hands and feet. The conquests Geoffrey had pursued in his wilder days proved that he had been searching for something then, perhaps the need for fulfillment that he didn't think he needed now. That search had ended when he'd met Wat and the others.

Nevertheless, he couldn't help but feel as though this yearning were different from what the others had been. Those had all been impossible loves. With Wat, however, he didn't long for the idea of a 'perfect' love, idealistically believing the other could bestow that to him. No, he merely pined for the man himself, the man seated across from him.

Here was the man with the crown of hair the color of flame. The man with the thick brogue that would only rear its Celtic head when he would fly into a tantrum, lending irrefutable proof of his Irish origins. The man that would inexhaustibly insist that he'd 'fong him within an inch of his life' if Chaucer stole his cream pastries again, though he would continue to do so just because it was routine. The man that could be a perfect gentleman in that simple, uncouth way that only the lower classes possessed that could make one feel as though an emperor or empress. The man that would wake Geoff up, screaming in the dead of night that he hadn't dumped the chamber pot's contents out of the window and that it was overflowing on the oak floor.

That was the man that he wanted to possess, that he wanted to be possessed by in turn.

Surely it is unmistakable now, Geoff, he considered to himself, chuckling softly as he continued to watch Wat.

You honestly have gone mad.

        

Wat was furious and stupendously drunk.

Not the best of combinations, yes, but it couldn't be helped. What was more, he was swiftly becoming further enraged the more he concentrated on the staircase that Chaucer had climbed up with that sodding vixen of his well over an hour ago, presumably to do all sorts of shadowy sexual deeds that Wat really didn't want to know about.

No, he didn't want to know at all. No, not at all.

Not. At. All.

And that was exactly why he was sitting there, ruminating over how much he hated that scruffy-headed buffoon at the moment.

Because he didn't want to see all of the things that Geoff was probably doing with his body, all of the positions he most likely had that wench contorted into.

Because he didn't wish to linger over, let alone admit how much he envied that trollop at present.

"You did'na just think that," Wat rasped, his tongue thick with alcohol and the never-quite-diminished accent of his forefathers.

"He's prolly avin' the frolic 'o his life right 'bout now", he slurred, watching the fire in the tavern's hearth lick the stones with a kind of whimsical fascination that could only be attributed to the most steadfastly devout of drunks.

It was puzzling these emotions coursing through his body. He had no idea what to do with them, a trait which made them all the more dangerous for someone as prone to spontaneous action as Wat was.

Reaching across the table, he picked up the tankard with jerky movements, praying for the siren call of acrid liquid sloshing about in its base.

Lady Fortune never did take pity on the intoxicated.

"Oh, toss it all" he mumbled, hailing the proprietor with a wave of his hand.

Fawlhurst nodded his head back just in time to catch the unfocused vision of a balding, leathery-faced man with a tin pitcher of what he assumed was ale coming toward him.

"You've been here awhile, haven't you? Just how many pints have you had, lad?"

Wat held up his hands, widening his eyes and rapidly blinking to clear the haze from his line of sight. Why was the room spinning?

He held up three fingers.

"Only three pints? Hell, a strapping young chap like you should be able to handle that. Or was there more?"

A look of confusion overcame the squire's rumpled face. "Only a wee bit more, I think."

"Just how much is a 'wee' bit more?"

The redhead thought about that for a time, furrowing his brow with the travail of staying on track. "Mmmmh…six…erm…eleven, no…fifteen."

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!" the blurred figure exclaimed, whistling with no small amount of admiration. "You're an Irish, aren't you?"

Wat sniffed. How did they guess?

"Mayhap I'll just leave the pitcher with you, boy. It looks as though you could use it."

Wat grunted and dropped his head unceremoniously to the table, promptly passing out in the midst of the tavern's boisterous revelry, the pitcher of ale he was nursing at his elbow his sole friend for the time being.

As the night wore on and as Geoff started trudging down the stairs, he noticed that the more respectable of the tavern's patrons, if that was indeed what you could reckon them, had left for their own beds, while the seediest of the clientele remained, carrying on just as loudly as ever.

Yawning, he stretched his stiff limbs, scratching the burgeoning patch of stubble that had begun to grow about his chin.

You are nothing but an inconceivably self-deluded fool, Geoffrey Chaucer, he reintegrated to himself for the umpteenth time. The man is as likely to grow jealous over that transparent charade as he is to abruptly declare his clandestine love for small furry rodents.

He really should have taken the woman up on her offer. But of course he, like the besotted lovesick arse that he was inevitably on the verge of becoming, ended up paying for use of the room for a nap rather than any of the usual 'hospitality' it was employed for. The things love could do to a man were just nauseating.

Oh, but he sincerely wished that Wat was jealous, else his labors of love be a travesty.

Squinting about the room, he found that he couldn't make out the object of his misery anywhere in the crowd.

"Wat? Wat? Where in God's Kingdom have you disappeared to?"

It was just as he was beginning to lose heart that he spotted the reason for the sheer magnitude of the noise level that was threatening to implode his ear drums.

There, in the smallest corner in the darkest section of the pub, the five abominably well-muscled men that he and Wat and gambled with were gradually closing in on the obviously drunk, albeit obviously terrified figure of his cowering companion.

Multiple shouts of 'Kill 'im' as well as raucous laughter was audible from nearly every direction as the rest of the tavern's audience made the move to investigate the curious spectacle unfolding before them. Apparently entertainment of that ilk didn't happen too often around here, something that Geoff found to be very surprising.

Pushing and shoving his way through the mob, he sprinted the last few feet to the place that his would-be-lover was being held captive, tapping one of the muscle-bound beasts upon the shoulder.

"Excuse me, but I would like to have a word with this man before you squeeze his innards out through his arse and make him the first human pastry. That is, if you don't mind of course."

The grizzly man eyed him calculatingly, pondering over his demand.

"What do ye need ta see 'im fer? Best be playin' no tricks, now, er ye'll be made into a grease stain upon this there floor jus' like yer frien' there's about ta be."

"Oh no, of course not. I am a man of God, I wouldn't entertain the notion of deceiving another soul in my life."

Another hulk of a man spoke up, this one more suspicious than the last. "A man of God, you say? You don't look like any priest I've ever lain eyes upon."

Chaucer did his best to be convincing, smiling with as much holy serenity as he could muster. "I'm still in training at the university. Now if you'll please step aside, I must give this man his last rites."

He managed to sidle up to the garishly pale Wat, lowering his voice to a whisper as well as attempting to look priestly doing so for the rest of his closely scrutinizing spectators.

"How the bloody hell did you get yourself into this position? I've only been indisposed for little over two hours, and what do I find on my return? You, caged in by veritable trolls salivating over who's going to be the first to eat your liver!"

His sobering friend turned leery eyes to his face, narrowing them dubiously in light of the grim situation.

"I was accused of cheatin' that's what! While I damned well know that I didn't, I've sure got a bloody good idea of just who did!."

Chaucer felt the blood flee from his face and the pit of his stomach lurch sickeningly.

He'd been so confident he could get away with it this time…

"Oh, Christ. I…I'm so sorry, Wat, I-"

"I don't care how bleedin' sorry you are right now, you great oaf, just get us out of this tavern!"

"Alright then, on the count of three, we're going to rush the smaller man-"

"Smaller man?! Their all the same bloody size!"

"-fine, the third gorilla on your left. After that, we'll run up the stairs. Turn to your right and head into the second room, it's unlocked, that's the one I was, mmmh…occupying. There's going to be a window that overlooks the building's parapet. We'll do our utmost best to climb down from there."

"That's the best you have?"

"Do you have any better suggestions, Master Fawlhurst?" the writer spat.

"No. One question though."

"You'd be wise to make it quick, they're growing impatient."

"What's a gorilla?"

"You ignorant, unworldly little country man."

"Are ye done yet? It's been my 'sperience tha the last rites don't take tha long."

Wat and Geoff exchanged a fleeting glance of panic.

"Alright, one…two…two and a half…two and three quarters…whatever happens, you're still a wench…THREE!"

With a burst of adrenaline they had rarely known before in their lives, the two men plowed head on into one of their advancers, tripping him up and bringing him crashing to the ground with a beleaguered 'arrrg!'of shock.

Panting, they surged up the stairs, knocking a few indignant whores accidentally into the walls in the process. The blonde man opened the door with a speed that couldn't be repeated even if he'd tried, and slammed it shut just as quickly, hearing the nails groan in their rusted, unkempt hinges.

"You first, you go through the window," Chaucer heaved, out of breath.

Wat wasn't about to refuse the offer.

He all but hurled himself from the thing, jumping onto the parapet as planned and shimmying down the straw roof of the tavern as though he were all but a seasoned professional at eluding death

Geoff started as he heard the pounding at the door and roar of the men's vengeful voices, then rapidly followed the squire to what he prayed was their safety.

After a breakneck run for their lives, the two men began to feel their thudding hearts slow once more, the use of flight no longer necessary.

Soon, it would be the gray hours of a fledgling dawn, the sun washing out the cloak of ebony sky like water gradually eroding lacquer.

"Wat?"

He felt rather than heard Geoff's breath murmuring his name, an apologetic sound that he found toilsome to resist.

The redhead had let his companion go quietly unacknowledged for a lengthy period now, the abundance of resentment he was fostering in his breast a constant reminder of how irresponsibly he had wounded his trust.

In spite of this, however, Wat did suppose that he would eventually have to forgive the lout. For the peril he'd so irresponsibly fixed him in, as well as the fact that he'd…

Wait. Chaucer didn't merit any of his malice for something as petty as enjoying himself with a woman.

What in God's name is awry with you, Wat?

He started when he felt the subject of his deliberation settle an unconfident hand upon his upper arm.

"You petulant child, will you not simply give me the civility of at least listening to my words?"

Releasing a long-suffering sigh, the squire turned round, confronting the annoyed writer. Though Wat was disgusted with himself for perceiving it, he recognized the remorseful quality of his friend's disposition.

He genuinely did regret everything.

Wat stared as Geoff raked a feckless hand through his cropped blond locks, vexation in his behavior.

"I never meant to leave you to the dogs, you realize."

Silence was what Chaucer was greeted with, rather than the explosion of wrath he'd been anticipating.

"Jesus, will you not yield for once? I can only make so much of an effort, Wat. You're the one that must relent to that stubborn ass's temper you so love to nurture. I had no idea they were on to my shenanigans, for if I had known otherwise, we would have withdrawn from the game and taken our leave sooner."

"Blimey, you really do know how to mop up a bloke's sense of compassion, don't you?"

Theatrically swooning as if struck, Geoff clutched the area of his chest where his heart would reside, sarcasm oozing from his voice like venom when he spoke. "Oh, but you have cut me to the quick, Master Fawlhurst! I do not feel as though I will ever be able to find peace of mind again! God help me, you have shattered my unshakeable faith in the good of the common man."

Wat laughed, an ugly sound that rankled unseemly with the cooing of the morning doves flying overhead.

"How am I expected to forgive someone that could've been the cause of my death?"

"That would be indirect cause of death, mind. Oh, don't give me that look, I'm merely teasing. Truthfully? I would never have let you die, Wat."

The squire snorted at that. "Of course you wouldn't have."

"I wouldn't," Chaucer said with serious conviction, drawing himself up to his full height at that proclamation.

Not knowing how to react to the honesty in those cornflower blue eyes, Wat fidgeted with awkward apprehension. He fixed his eyes to those of his friend, catching sight of a world of hidden confidences that had been artfully masked from his sight till now.

What the swirling plethora of emotion meant, he couldn't tell.

"Alright, let's hypothretically say that I believed you, what would you do?"

The barest trace of a smile graced the writer's comely lips. "That's hypothetically, and to answer your query… I'd swear to you that I would never enter another situation with you again that has the potential to be life-endangering."

Wat craned his head sideways, not attempting to suppress his grin of pleasure. "Then I'd say that I would forgive you."

Chaucer looped a casual arm about his friend's shoulder, pulling Wat along the trodden path back to their jointly shared estate, the tension waning from their bodies like the ebbing flow of the tides.

Author's Notes:    

A) Yes, Wat was actually the first human being to patent the popular phrase 'shit-eating-grin'. Isn't that quite the history lesson, children?

B) I decided that this story needs a few touches of Chaucer's point of view, considering it allows for a much better insight into where the plot is going, as well as his intentions pertaining to our adorable little Wattikins.

C) I ask your forgiveness for not updating for so extensive a time, my wonderful reviewers. It was one part laziness, and one part graduation, social pursuits, and college registration forms.

I love you all, and please keep writing your marvelous reviews, it keeps my ego afloat and my love of writing burning.