A Thief in the Night

Friar Tuck spent the day buying fruit bread in Nottingham, with money taken from the rich and corrupt. He was buying fruit bread for the poor to enjoy during the feast days of May, and it took him all day because he was also eating all day. Still, he was carrying a lot of bread as he headed home, and was feeling merry enough until Stalwart, a deputy of the Sheriff of Nottingham, approached, wanting the bread for himself.

Stalwart: Where did you get so much bread? Did you steal it?

Tuck: Would I, a man of God, have stolen bread?

Stalwart: Perhaps you thought that you were taking back what was rightfully yours. Perhaps you think that Normen like my lord Sheriff stole everything in England from you.

Tuck: But we have the same kings, Richard and the Lord whose man I am.

Stalwart: Of course; so tell me, how come you by so much bread?

Tuck: All things come from our Lord God, so you could say that these are His loaves.

Stalwart: But that means that they belong to you no more than they belong to me!

Tuck (starting to get indigestion): I am only a poor servant of God, but these loaves are destined for poor peasants, by God's charity; so, they belong, by God's will, to the Normen whose poor peasants shall enjoy them. You would be stealing from those Normen were you to take these loaves.

Stalwart: Why talk of taking? I am myself but a poor deputy. Could you not give me some of your fruit loaves?

Tuck (feeling a bit better): These loaves are not mine to give. They belong to our Lord and, by His charity, to those Normen whose peasants shall enjoy them.

Stalwart: Perhaps our Lord wants me to have some of them, though. I am, after all, but a poor deputy of my lord Sheriff, tasked as he is by our earthly king to keep this town safe from thieves and murderers.

Tuck (feeling more nauseous): I am glad that we are safe from thieves and murderers. And I do not claim to know infallibly the ineffable will of our Lord God. Do you think that that is indeed what He wants?

Stalwart: Yes, yes I do.

Tuck: Well, I suppose that our Lord might want you to have a few of these loaves; why else, I wonder, would He have had me standing here talking to you, as the night draws in around us, with its thieves and murderers?

Stalwart: Why indeed! And were you not tucking into a few fruit loaves yourself earlier? It seems to me that our Lord may well want a variety of poor people to have these loaves. After all, He gives us all our daily bread, does He not?

Tuck (seeing his way home at last): He does indeed, and so here is some more bread for you.

Stalwart: Thanks.

Tuck: Thanks be to God.

Tuck leaves with most of his fruit loaves, and a bitter taste in his mouth, and the thought that stolen bread was tastier.