Download from Apple iTunes (eBook) Download from Smashwords (eBook) Amazon Draft2Digital draft2digital Category:  Historical Fiction Publisher: 1624438526 Type: Fiction Pages: 176 Copyright: October 15, 2005 ISBN-13: 9781005488307 Sir William de Marisco and 16 of his followers are sentenced to death by public execution in 1242, for crimes including treason and piracy. As this seems excessive even for the times a noviciate friar is sent to investigate. This book is a contemporary reinterpretation of friar Otto's report. Rather than quote from the work itself I will give here the publisher's blurb... The Secret Report of Friar Otto is Sam Smith's reinterpretation of the classic text, The Report In Confidence On The Imprisonment & Execution Of William de Marisco & 16 Of His Followers. Eschewing a traditional, academic translation, Smith has produced a contemporary, very much 21st Century reading that aims to weave into the prose the contextual meaning of what in reality is arcane language, an approach that makes a fascinating story at last accessible to the general as well as academic reading public. But this isn't Romeo & Juliet The Reality TV Show - it is instead a sensitive and sensible reworking that is neither 'dumbed down' nor panders to the lowest common denominator. If a 750 year-old story can be described with such a cliché, this is truly a 'modern classic.' "(the) story had me interested from the beginning ... was almost as if I had been party to the events described." Stanley Marris: Canadian descendant of Sir William de Marisco Additional Sales Message: The Secret Report of Friar Otto, a novel by Sam Smith, is due for release in the Spring of 2006 by boho press/bluechrome publishing. Due to the wide, international interest in this book, a limited number of pre-release copies are to be produced in the coming weeks. These will only be made available direct from the publisher and will be sold on a first-come-first-served basis.    Excerpt Folio 1 (i) 21st July 1242: The Tower Pursuant to your instructions, brother, I came first to this London castle called The Tower. New to this land and to this city I was confused to find that this castle was not one tower but four. The rest of the day proved to be as confusing. Although the constables did fulfil my expectations: uncouth, they were also mightily frightened of their prisoners and insisted on opening my habit and delving into my cowl to ensure that I had no weapons concealed about my person. Then, with four of the constables pressed close about me, their cudgels at the ready, the bolts were thrown back and I was bundled into the room. Now our robes (need I remind you brother?), and I question the humbling necessity of their being quite so cumbersome, are not conducive to sudden movements. Mine tangled about my legs, and almost tripped me to the floor. I was about to pass comment on my rough handling by the constables when the very beginning of my complaint was cut short by the slamming and the bolting of the door behind me. Allow me to describe the room in which I so summarily found myself. Of grey stone, high and long, the light came through two tall embrasures on one wall. Midway along the room, lengthways on, was a table, with a bench on either side of it. On the table was an earthenware pitcher, a bowl, a shallow basket and some squat clay goblets. Ranged around the inner walls were six straw mattresses. Some of their leaked straw was scattered about the floor. Just inside the door, the boards about it stained with spillage, was a wooden bucket with a lid. The stink emanating from it had me close my mouth. Had I been physically capable, I must confess, I would have also closed my nose. The shapes of four men lay under coarse brown blankets. One man, of a dark countenance, lifted his head from his mattress to look around the end of a bench at me. Another, closer by, moved the edge of his blanket the better to see me. I will remind you here, brother, that you employed me for this task because of my veracious memory. Thus I will repeat here verbatim much of what was said, also the circumstances of its utterance; lest my unfamiliarity with local nuances, and my wrongful interpretation of them, innocently mislead. The only man standing, aside from myself, was one leaning against the wall by the furthest embrasure. As I looked to him he turned his face from me towards a man sat at the table. Since my dramatic entry into the room this man at the table had been studying me. As I, between looking about the room, him. Around a weather-scalded face he had white hair and a white beard. The very redness of his skin made his blue eyes seem brighter. He lowered those eyes as he pushed himself up from the table, and he kept them lowered as he stepped over and around the unused bedding coiled about the floor. Only when he was but an arm's reach from me did the blue eyes rise to mine. He was both taller and much broader than I. "Never seen a hand so white," he said, referring to the outflung hand I had slapped against the wall to stop myself falling. "Nor so thin," he said. "Except on a lady-born." Made aware of my posture I removed my hand from the wall and, in what has already become an habitual gesture, I placed it inside the sleeve of the other arm. "You don't happen to have," the scarlet-faced man lowered his voice as he moved his mouth closer to my ear, "a small blade up that sleeve? One I could trim my beard with?" "The constables searched me," I told him. With the wall at my back I was unable to move away. "They forced a search on me, even though I assured them," my tone of voice was intended to convey outrage at my rough treatment the other side of the door, "that I had not so much as a quill sharpener upon me." "So where did you hide it?" The man was so close to me by now that his whiskers were tickling my ear. At this proximity I could see that his skin was pocked, as if the scorching could have been caused by disease and not by weather or by flame. Having been forewarned I was determined not to be intimidated by any in the room, so I did not flinch from either his ruffianly posture or from the idea of disease. I was, however, so overcome with his presence that I hadn't felt his hand reach down to the hem of my habit. When he asked, "Here?" he pulled the lower half of my habit up over my head and held it fast. Thus I was stood with my arms trapped and my lower half exposed to ridicule. Helpless, I was rocked back and forth, even spun in a circle. "Look at this!" the man shouted and laughed. "Our visitor's got a parsnip for a pecker." While thus exposed to their mockery, frightened also to their intent, I had yet mind enough to comfort myself that our Lord Francis had publicly stripped himself of his own cloak. Yet my humiliation was not for mindless sport: I heard no rejoining laughter from the other men. Nor when he went on to comment on the copper colour of my nether hair and on my long white shanks, even to ask if I shaved them. Which I do not. As you are aware, brother, the coarseness of the material from which our habits are made rubs the hair from the front of our legs. Despite my muffled denial, repeated, my tormentor persisted in the assumption that I shaved my legs, asked if I was someone's catamite. Finally, tiring of his sport, the redfaced man released my habit. I pulled it closer about me, retied the rope. "So how," the man stepped in close to me again, "do you cut your hair? In this shape?" He flicked my hair. "Without a knife?" He cupped and raised my jaw, "And how do you get your chin this smooth?" Jerking my jaw free, I attempted to introduce myself, to explain that I am a follower of Francis of Assissi. The redfaced man, though, ignored me as if I hadn't spoken. "So how," he roughly grabbed my chin again, "do you cut your hair?" "A barber cuts my hair. My beard I shave myself." "So where do you keep your blade?" "In my lodgings." I was about to jerk my jaw free again, decided instead to take the argument to him: "Do you really think that I would be so foolish to come in here, or that your keepers would be foolish enough to let me come in here, with a knife?" "So why," the red face came so close to mine that our noses almost touched, "are you here?"

pulp.net
A gang of renegade knights take refuge on Lundy island. When the knights are betrayed, captured and condemned, a friar is sent to inquire about the crimes they were accused of — but, confronted by some dangerous ideas, he starts to ask himself some awkward questions. The Secret Report… is Sam Smith's reinterpretation of a real 750 year old manuscript, The Report in Confidence on the Imprisonment and Execution of William de Marisco and Sixteen of His Followers. The original text has been turned into a beautifully written modern novel, utterly convincing in its evocation of the medieval world and mindset. Fortunately, the prisoners spend as much time goading the prudish celibate with stories about 'tupping' the ladies as they do discussing doctrinal niceties. A brilliant book, actually, that deserves a decent readership.