The Boy's Tale (15 page)

A little silence at the burden of honor and duty that carried with it fell over all the children, until Jasper said wistfully, "Still, I'd like to go on with it instead of being here."

"When we do," Sir Gawyn said, "and the quest is complete"—he had quickly picked up Maryon's version of their journey—"I'll show you a cave where a dragon used to dwell."

"One of Merlin's dragons?" Edmund asked eagerly.

"Alas, not so grand, I fear. Only a common, cattle-eating dragon, but a dragon nonetheless."

"You've never killed a dragon, have you?" Jasper asked.

"I've never had occasion to, no," Sir Gawyn said.

"But you would have if you'd had the chance," Edmund said firmly.

"I would indeed," Sir Gawyn agreed.

"Just as you killed our enemies," Edmund declared. "Because you're a true knight." He looked at everyone else for their agreement. They all nodded, Jasper and Lady Adela vigorously, Mistress Maryon holding in a warm smile.

The expression on Sir Gawyn's face was less easily read, but Edmund suddenly said indignantly, "This shouldn't be your room. You shouldn't be here."

"No?" Sir Gawyn asked, bewildered.

Lady Adela understood and said eagerly, "You've been wounded on a quest. You're supposed to be in a fine room in a grand bed hung with tapestries, with fair ladies waiting on you. That's how it is in the stories. In all the stories."

"And this isn't fine at all," Edmund pointed out. "And you've only Mistress Maryon and Will to see to you."

Sir Gawyn shut his eyes, his face drawn taut with sudden pain. He reached toward his shoulder again, but Frevisse guessed that, vulnerable as Sir Gawyn now was, the pain came from somewhere deeper in him. In all likelihood, Sir Gawyn was what so many men were—a landless knight dependent for his living on his service in someone else's household, with his best hope for the future an annuity given for life by his lord. Or in Sir Gawyn's case, by Queen Katherine. But from what Maryon had said, it was unlikely that Queen Katherine was going to be in a position to be granting any such thing, now that her secret was betrayed. And anyone known to have served her would have difficulty taking service elsewhere, even if able of body, which Sir Gawyn was not likely ever to be again. He was very far from anything like the romances of adventure and chivalry that were clearly the boys' idea of knighthood, and the children's blithe words had jarred his harsh reality against what he would never have.

But Maryon with a forced lightness that betrayed how much she understood—probably far more than Frevisse did—said, "Then I suppose we should say he's in the Castle of Cruel Duress, denied what should be his by right as a brave knight."

That appealed readily to the children. Edmund and Jasper nodded complete agreement and Lady Adela murmured happily, "Cruel Duress. Cruel Duress’s."

"And all we need now," said Maryon, "is the tale of how he escapes from here."

She moved to stand at the foot of the bed, drawing everyone's gaze to her. Frevisse knew, from other times, how charming Maryon could be at need. Now she was clearly set to charm not only the children but Sir Gawyn if she could, and for that her Welsh imagination served her well as she spun her story of his escape from St. Frideswide's and his adventures afterwards, making it more fantastical as she went along by sometimes asking one of the children, "And what do you think happened next?" and weaving their wild and then wilder ideas into her telling.

In the candlelight, her eyes bright with the story, she looked younger than her years that after all were not so very many. Too plagued with the problems and possible trouble she had brought into St. Frideswide's, Frevisse had stopped seeing her as a person. Now she found herself acknowledging that in her narrow-boned, dark Welsh way Maryon was lovely. Lovely enough to have married by now if she had chosen to, even if she could manage only a small dowry. How old was she really? What hopes did she have for her life? How much was she in love with Sir Gawyn? And did he love her? Frevisse could not tell, but relaxed deeply into his pillows, he was mostly watching Maryon as she talked, and the grimness—or was it only sadness?—that still showed in the set of his mouth eased from time to time when he smiled and once he even laughed at some particularly fantastical turn in his supposed adventures.

Will had left his watch and come to lean, arms crossed, in the doorway, his deep-creased face eased with amusement, the candlelight catching a gleam from his bright hair. The children, all sitting on the bed now beside Sir Gawyn, listened with glowing delight while the story came to a castle high in the Welsh mountains, all in ruins except when the full moon shone on it, and for that while, that little while, it was whole and beautiful and full of lords and ladies and great wealth. "But if you linger past that hour," Maryon said, her voice throbbing deep and low, "or try to carry away more gold and jewels than your cap can hold—you did come wearing your caps, didn't you?" Three young hands rose dismayed to their bare heads. "If you do that or stay too long and the moon passes from full, the castle fades to ruins again and you disappear forever from the earth."

"Not until just the next full moon?" Lady Adela asked.

"Forever," Maryon said, making the word toll doom.

"And what does Sir Gawyn do? He doesn't disappear forever, does he?" Edmund asked.

"We'd have no more story then, would we? No, Sir Gawyn . . ."

The story went on but Frevisse's attention strayed again. She was tired. The nuns went to bed directly after Compline. In summer that was before the sun went down, which had been difficult for her when she was a novice, but she had long since grown used to it. She discreetly covered a yawn. The candle was nearly burned out, piddling around itself in the holder. When it began to gutter, she would tell the children it was time to go.

She covered another yawn. Her mind completely drifted from the story now, she watched as a long fragment of wax left standing up taller than the candle flame began to bend toward the heat. It had escaped its fate this long but no longer. Slow and slow it bowed over, wasting away in the candle flame . . .

"But in the next valley he found his home at last and all his people waiting for him and there was an end," Maryon said suddenly. "Now off Sir Gawyn's bed and away with Dame Frevisse to your own. That's all there is."

Even to Frevisse's lax attention, the ending had come abruptly. The children, vastly indignant, set up a clamor of protest. "You never said anything about valleys! What home? What people?"

"But the treasure! He hadn't found the treasure yet!"

"You didn't finish the part about—"

Maryon scooted them all off the bed. "Maybe there'll be more to tell another time but that's enough tonight. Go on. It's late. Away with you."

Will and Sir Gawyn were taken as much off guard as Frevisse and the children, but Will rallied, stepped aside from the doorway with a gesture that urged them through it, and said, "She's right, you know. Sir Gawyn is tired and so are the rest of us."

"We're
not tired!" Edmund declared.

"You will be by the time you've reached bed," Frevisse said. "Will, pray you, see them to the yard. I need a word with Mistress Maryon."

That disconcerted Maryon, but she followed Frevisse from the room. As Will shepherded the children away across the hall, they moved away from the door to Sir Gawyn's room and Frevisse asked, low-voiced, "What happened? You're pale. Are you ill?" All that was needed now to make matters more difficult was for Maryon to sicken with something.

In the same near-whisper, Maryon answered, "No, I'm well enough. It was the candle." She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself even though there was no evening chill.

"The candle?" Frevisse asked, completely puzzled.

"You saw it. It made a winding sheet. Didn't you see? That bit of wax standing up beside the flame? A winding sheet."

Frevisse had never seen her so shaken. "I don't understand."

"Maybe it's only in Wales we remember. Maybe you've never heard. When a winding sheet standing up beside a candle flame begins to bend, the person it points to is marked for death."

Despite herself, Frevisse felt the creep of a small chill up her own spine. The "winding sheet" had been pointing toward the bed. Toward Sir Gawyn. And toward the children.

Chapter 12

By morning Frevisse knew how foolish her reaction had been to Maryon's fear. Assuredly Mary on had believed about the "winding sheet" of candle wax, but there were a great many such beliefs in the world, and very few of them proved true often enough to count for anything.

And any last thought she had about it disappeared in chapter meeting when Dame Claire asked for their especial prayers for Domina Edith after Sister Thomasine, as infirmarian, had explained in her soft voice, "It's not so much that Domina Edith is markedly worse as that she's simply . . . less here. She'll leave us soon. It could be any time."

Frevisse, in her own grief, had the comfort of the church itself, spending more than even her usual time there, doing again what was already done, cleaning into its far corners, dusting the choir stalls, polishing the altar steps to greater sheen, making more perfect the already shining altar furnishings, smoothing again and again the altar cloth as she prayed for the repose of Domina Edith's body and the safety of her soul.

She was rarely alone while she did. No one's duties around the nunnery were slacked; that would have been disrespect for all that Domina Edith had expected of them through her years; but the nuns came as they could, simply or in twos or threes, to kneel below the altar in prayer for however long they could spare from their other duties; and the cloister servants, kneeling farther from the altar but there in whatever brief moments they could take from their work; and even the boys and Lady Adela, brought by Dame Perpetua after their lessons.

A different hush than usual filled the cloister. Not the hush of work gone about in silence but a hush of waiting. And in that hush the burst of the boys' laughter and their sudden running in the cloister walk on their way to their afternoon lessons jarred beyond the usual. Jenet quickly shushed and curbed them, but Frevisse flinched at the broken silence and saw Sister Emma and Sister Juliana, just entering the church, look back into the cloister with resentful frowns. She considered a moment, then went to find Dame Claire, and when the children came out from their lessons, she was waiting for them with Sister Amicia.

Edmund stopped short at the sight of her. Behind him Jasper stopped, too, but Lady Adela bumped into Jasper and he lurched into his brother and they had to sort themselves out with an unnecessarily enthusiastic use of elbows before Edmund shook himself free and said with great and earnest innocence, "We weren't going to do anything!"

"I'm sure you were not," Frevisse agreed, and wondered what they had had in mind before her appearance forestalled them. "But Dame Claire has given permission, if Dame Perpetua agrees"—she emphasized that so they would understand this was no lightly given favor—"for Sister Amicia and I to take you out of cloister to see more of the nunnery than you have until now." As eagerness leaped up in the boys' faces, she saw Lady Adela's stricken face over Jasper's shoulder and added, "And Lady Adela, too, of course."

Lady Adela swung around to Dame Perpetua behind her, caught her hand, and pleaded, "Please you, Dame, may we go? Please?"

Dame Perpetua looked surprised to see so much eagerness from so usually demure a child, but said with some hesitation, "I don't see why not, so long as you stay with Dame Frevisse and Sister Amicia and do what you're told."

"I will! I promise I will!"

"Then go on and be a good girl. And you be good boys."

Edmund and Jasper nodded unhesitating agreement. Frevisse suspected that all three of them would have agreed to anything for the chance of going out. She remembered too much of herself as a child and knew too much of other children to have any warmhearted notion that children were inherently innocent. Indeed, what she had seen of children seemed to support the doctrine of original sin.