The Boy's Tale (2 page)

"If it's known we're gone, scurriers will have ridden far faster than we've been able to. Warnings may have been sent ahead of us."

She pressed, "This isn't a place anyone will remember. And the boys need—"

"We're better to go on as far as may be. It's the only hope of outstripping anyone after us. We have to keep the good start we've made as long as we can. They're brave boys." He turned to Edmund and Jasper with his smile that invited them to join him in a sport. "Aren't you, my lords? You can ride on as long as need be, for your lady mother's sake?"

Not so readily as they would have done two days ago, but for their mother's sake and to not be cowards in Sir Gawyn's eyes, Edmund and Jasper nodded. Edmund even asserted, "All night, if need be!"

Mistress Maryon began to say something else, but Sir Gawyn's squire Will, riding ahead with Hery Simon, said over his shoulder, "Riders ahead, sir. Beyond the ford."

The road had curved down into a broad, meadowed valley, to follow a willow-banked stream between fields where the tall bright grass, starred with buttercups, was nearly ready to be cut for hay. In the gap in the trees that marked its ford, the stream showed glittering in the late afternoon sunlight. It had been an empty, drowsing valley when they saw it from the road's crest, but now Jasper could see other riders halted off the road on the other side of the stream, five or six maybe, just visible through the screen of willows and alders.

Sir Gawyn drew rein, putting up his hand to halt the two men riding behind. Will and Hery had already stopped and were looking back and forth between the unknown riders and Sir Gawyn, waiting for orders. Mistress Maryon gestured Jasper back to ride beside Jenet and moved her own horse within reach of Edmund's reins. Jasper, suddenly aware that something was amiss, obeyed; Edmund, normally fierce in his independence, did not draw his horse away from Mistress Maryon's.

Sir Gawyn said with calm determination, "We'll go back behind the rise, then cut off the road to the river. We can hide in the trees. Perhaps they haven't seen us, and will pass without knowing we're here."

But they had barely turned in their tracks when Will said, "They're coming." Jasper looked over his shoulder to see that the other riders had come onto the road and had set their horses into a gallop, splitting into two groups, some of them following the stream to cut them off if they went that way, the rest crossing it, the water sheeting up around their horses.

Sir Gawyn kicked his horse in between Jasper and Jenet, dragged Jasper from his saddle and across his own horse to set him roughly in front of Jenet, braced between her and the high front of her saddle. "Hold on to him! Edmund, can you stay on that horse?"

Edmund nodded vigorously, his hand on his dagger's hilt. Jasper, trying to disentangle his arms from Jenet's to reach his own weapon, was strangling with the rage of being shoved into her keeping. He could sit a horse as well as Edmund did!

"Maryon, can you find that nunnery from here?"

"Yes." She had Edmund's horse by its rein.

"Then follow me. I think we can outride the men across the stream, and when we do, when we've crossed the stream, you and Jenet ride for the nunnery while we hold them back. Understand?"

"Yes."

"Then ride!" Sir Gawyn said and wheeled his horse back down the hill, toward the stream at an angle that cut them away from their nearer pursuers, driving his spurs into his bay's flanks so that it sprang forward into a full-out gallop. The rest of them followed in a desperate skein, his squire Will ranged in on Edmund's other side, and Hery Simon beside Jenet, the other two men behind them. Jasper clutched at the saddle, dagger and indignation forgotten.

There was no time to choose a crossing place; Gawyn rode straight for the line of trees along the stream. Jasper, looking around, saw that the other riders were riding to cut them off but would be too late: Sir Gawyn's change of direction had caught them by surprise. And then they were among the trees. Willow withies whipped at Jasper's face. He ducked them, bending to hide against Jenet's horse's mane that he was clinging to with both hands. His stomach lurched as the horse leaped. They jarred downward into the stream and water splashed up around him. Jenet screamed, and now Hery Simon had hold of her reins near the bit, forcing her horse along through the flurry of water flung up around them silver-and-diamond-sparkling in the sunlight.

Sir Gawyn reached the farther bank but not ahead of the riders coming to cut them off. They crashed down the bank through the trees to meet him. Swords were out on both sides, their brightness arcing in the sunlight. There were men yelling with a hoarse fierceness like nothing Jasper had ever heard on the practice field. Steel clashed and slithered down steel, and behind him were the shouts of the other riders closing on them, and Hamon and Colwin turning to meet them. He saw Hery Simon slice an unknown rider out of the saddle, had a glimpse of open mouth, wide-flung arms, a gaping redness before the man vanished into the water under horses' thrashing hooves. And then Hery was dragging Jenet's horse aside, spurring his own horse furiously after the gray haunches of Mistress Maryon's mount disappearing into the willows on the far bank, leaving the fight behind them.

Jasper ducked again, but lifted his head for breath as they galloped out the far side of the trees into an open field. Somehow Edmund was ahead of them all, clinging to a horse he probably no longer controlled but with Mistress Maryon close on his flank. Hery Simon was still beside Jenet, still holding her rein, and they were clear of the fight and away.

But behind them was the drum of other hooves. Hery looked back and swore. He had lost his sword somewhere, but he reached to snatch Jasper's dagger from its sheath, yelled at Jenet, "Ride, mistress!" and swung his horse back on their trail.

Jenet cried out, "Hery, no! Not alone!" But he was gone, and no one turned back after him.

Chapter 2

The cloister walk was warm with the late afternoon sunlight. Frevisse, coming out of the church after making sure that all was in readiness for Vespers, walked along it slowly, head down as if in prayer. But she was watching the flick of her long skirts across the lines of paving stones as she walked, not thinking of very much at all. She was glad of the warmth and the quiet in this little while before the bell would be rung for the next-to-last office and all St. Frideswide's nuns would come from their afternoon tasks to the single task of prayer in the church.

Not all of the nuns, she corrected herself; and some of the pleasure of the day gone through in quietness and her tasks well done went from her with the thought. Domina Edith, their prioress, had not risen from her bed since Easter week. Only Sister Lucy among the nuns could remember a time when Domina Edith had not been St. Frideswide's prioress, and now Domina Edith was dying. Not of anything in particular or in pain but simply under the weight of her many years, in a fading whose end was sure and yet would leave an aching gap at the priory's heart.

But beyond the low inner wall of the cloister walk, in the sunshine of the garth quartered by its four walks meeting where St. Frideswide's small bell was hung, the flowers—in blissful ignorance of their own and all the world's mortality— were bright with summer in this year of Our Lord's grace 1436. The daisies starred white in the thick grass, the columbine and flax and maiden pinks in their small plots, and soon the foxglove and valerian and lady's mantle.

Frevisse's long mouth curved slightly with amusement at herself. When had she learned to know them so well? So far as flowers went, she could appreciate them without a need to be bothered with their names. They were Sister Juliana's especial darlings; it had to be from so often hearing her go on about them during the brief hour of talk and recreation the Rule allowed each day that she had learned this much, whether she would or not.

What do we still find to say at recreation? Frevisse wondered. What is there to say we haven't said already? Do we even listen to each other anymore? St. Frideswide's was small; there were but ten nuns, and their last novice had taken her vows five years ago, with no expectation of another to take her place, unless little Lady Adela Warenne's father decided to give her up to the Church. Which was likely. The child was pretty, with pale skin and large blue eyes under dark, level brows, but with her malformed hip, she limped badly and always would; and with older brothers and another sister to inherit and carry on the blood, Adela's marrying, that might be difficult to accomplish, was not so necessary as it would have been if she had been Lord Warenne's only child.

He had probably given her into St. Frideswide's care with that in mind, and assuredly the nunnery could use the dowry that would come with her if he decided to benefit his soul that way. Not that Lady Adela had shown any inclination toward the religious life, but she was only seven, and a quiet, biddable child. Dame Perpetua, who had the teaching of her letters and numbers and beginnings of French was pleased with her and said she would do.

As if in answer to Frevisse's thought about her, Lady Adela came limping from the shadows along the far side of the cloister walk out into the sunlight of the garth with the servant woman whose duty it was this week to ring the bell for the seven daily offices. It was said that a misshapen child might be a sign of a parent's sinfulness—and Frevisse knew something of Lord Warenne that would warrant that—or a token of the child's own inclination of wickedness. There had been no sign of wickedness in Lady Adela that anyone at St. Frideswide's had ever seen, but despite her prettiness, the child walked with her head down, her shoulders slightly gathered in, perhaps because she knew what could be said of her. Or had been said of her, ofttimes in her little life. To Frevisse's mind, she was too quiet, too willing to go unnoticed, her one desire seeming to be to follow Dame Perpetua whenever she was allowed to, or to be with whatever servant she was told to, or else to sit mildly sewing in the garden or indoors.

But Frevisse had never been so willing to be quiet in her own childhood and maybe her doubts were simply from that. Assuredly Dame Perpetua was happy with the girl's demeanor, and Frevisse was willing to leave it at that, surely. She turned away from the pleasant picture of Lady Adela lifting a columbine's flower to look inside and the servant reaching for the bell rope. The nuns would come at the bell's summons; it was time she lighted the altar candles.

At the far end of the cloister the door into the courtyard slammed open, letting in an exclamation of shouts and the untoward clattering of horses in the cobbled yard along with one of the guesthall servant women clinging to the door as she cried, "Help, oh, help! Robbers! Murderers! At our gates! Help!"

With the immediate thought that opening the door to let them in was not the wisest of actions, Frevisse went quickly along the cloister, put aside the servant woman wailing and flustering in her way, and went out into the courtyard where there were neither robbers nor murderers, only a confusion of horses and riders and more priory servants than were likely to be of use.

In her first swift look around the chaos, Frevisse sorted out that there were five sweat-lathered, wild-eyed horses, two of them riderless, on the others only two women, a plump one clutching a child in front of her, the other holding the reins of a second child on his own horse. No armed men, no weapons. The worst danger was from the riderless horses; they were shoving and shying among the confusion, refusing to be caught. The plump woman holding the child on the saddle in front of her was crying and gabbling nonsense at the men who had caught her reins. Instead of listening to her they were giving each other orders and not listening to themselves either. Only the slender woman on the gray horse seemed certain what she was doing, forcing her horse and leading the other boy's among the servants toward the great door into the church to Frevisse's right along the cloister wall. Her wimple and veil were in disarray, her dark hair escaping in a tangle around her face. She was hampered by needing to manage two sets of reins, and when she saw Frevisse and the open door behind her, she brought her gray around to that nearer refuge, calling out, "You must help us!"

Frevisse jerked her head in a single sharp, agreeing nod. Whatever was happening, the woman's desperation was real. Whatever was happening, better she and the children and the other woman be brought out of the courtyard's chaos into die cloister's safety, where coherent questions and answers could be made.

Casting an anxious look over her shoulder toward the gateway behind her, the woman edged her frightened mare out from among the servants to a sidling halt beside the door. "The children," she said. "Take them inside. Jenet, here! Bring Jasper here!"