The Boy's Tale (30 page)

"Oh," said Jenet coming forward. "Beg your pardon, sir, but Dame Frevisse said they're not to go anywhere, either of them, without she says so, sir. Even with you. She—"

"Jenet, face that way," Sir Gawyn said, pointing to the wall behind her.

Close in front of him now, Jenet blinked at him, bewildered by the order, then obediently turned her back on him. Deftly, too quickly for any warning even if either of the boys had thought to give it, he jerked his dagger from its sheath and, hilt first, struck her hard on the back of her skull. Even through the layers of cloth the crack was audible; she crumpled down into a heap without a sound.

Sir Gawyn did not watch her fall, was already turning toward Edmund. The room was small; Edmund was staring at Jenet, not fully realizing yet what had happened, and did not see in time to move as Sir Gawyn struck again, the knob of the dagger hilt to the back of his head. He collapsed as Jenet had, silently, a small heap on the floor.

Jasper gasped and as Sir Gawyn turned toward him, cringed back. But Sir Gawyn was putting his dagger away, holding out his hand instead. "It's all right. They're only unconscious. They'll be all right. I swear that to you. But this way no one can say they let me escape."

"Escape?" Jasper squeaked.

"We've been found. The people hunting us have found us. They're here with armed men in the yard. They won't hurt Edmund or the women so long as they're in here but they'll kill me. I have to escape and I need you with me. They won't try to hurt me if you're with me."

"But then I won't be safe in here!"

"You'll be safe with me instead. I swear I won't let them hurt you. You've been safe when you're with me, haven't you? Once we're clear of them, we can go back to your mother or on to Wales, whichever way is possible. No one will hurt you, I promise it. My Lord Jasper." Sir Gawyn held out his empty hand. "Come with me."

Jasper hesitated, but Sir Gawyn's need was very real. It showed in his voice and outstretched hand. And how would he ever be a knight himself if he refused another knight his aid, if he refused an adventure when it was offered to him? He put his hand in Sir Gawyn's. The knight grasped it, gave him a tight-lipped smile, and said, "There's my brave man. Come on then. Quickly."

Jasper looked aside to Edmund. "He'll be angry when he wakes up."

"You're smaller. I can handle you more easily," Sir Gawyn said tersely, already going, his grip tight around Jasper's hand, making him come perforce. "Is there a back way out of here to the stables?"

"Past the kitchen and through the side yard, out into the courtyard," Jasper said breathlessly.

"Too long. Too likely to be cut off. We'll go the bold way then."

Jasper wished Sir Gawyn would let loose his hand; he'd said he'd go with him, he didn't have to be dragged.

They were nearly to the outside door unseen, but Dame Frevisse came out of a doorway ahead of them along the cloister walk, directly in their way. Her face showed how startled she was, and so was Sir Gawyn, but on the instant he had swung Jasper to his hurt side, clamped his left arm around his neck and shoulders, and drawn his dagger with his other hand, to lay its point against the side of Jasper's throat as he said, "Let me by and the boy lives. Move aside."

Dame Frevisse moved back into the doorway, hands held empty out in front of her as if to show she meant to do nothing; but she said, "Where's Edmund? Where's Maryon?"

"They're all right. They're unconscious, that's all." Sir Gawyn was pushing Jasper past her as he spoke. His arm was beginning to choke and Jasper dug fingers into his sleeve, trying to loosen it. To his shock, the dagger pricked into his neck and Sir Gawyn said, "Don't struggle." To Dame Frevisse he added, "You go ahead of us. I want one of the horses that's out there and no one to follow us."

"Those are armed men out there, the earl of Suffolk's men."

"I know what's out there. Maryon went to see what was happening and told me. That's the countess behind you in the room, isn't it?"

Dame Frevisse had begun to back away from them, toward the outer door. Now she stopped and said sharply, "It would be too dangerous to you to take her. Don't even think it!"

"I know that! Jasper will do well enough."

"That's right," Dame Frevisse said harshly. "Children are more your sort of foe. And men who trust you."

"Move!"

"Let him go. You won't be able to escape so many."

"If they want him alive, and I'd guess that's why the countess came, no one will follow me."

Somewhere behind them, Dame Claire called anxiously, "Dame Frevisse!"

Her eyes fixed on Sir Gawyn, Dame Frevisse said back, "You can't help. Keep away."

They had reached the outer door. "Open it," Sir Gawyn said. "Tell them what I want."

She held back momentarily. Sir Gawyn pressed the dagger's tip deeper into Jasper's neck than he had before. Jasper gasped at the unexpected pain; his neck prickled under a thin run of blood. His grip on Sir Gawyn's arm tightened, trying to pull it a little loose. Sir Gawyn did not realize he was hurting him, surely. But the grip around his throat did not loosen at all, was too tight now even for him to speak. Dame Frevisse was looking at him, frightened, he thought, and reaching behind her for the door latch.

"Go on!" Sir Gawyn urged. "I won't hurt him unless I'm made to."

"You're hurting him now," Dame Frevisse said back. "Let him breathe a little, for God's pity."

Sir Gawyn's arm loosed a little, to Jasper's gasped relief. He'd known Sir Gawyn hadn't realized how tightly he was holding him. But more angrily than before, Sir Gawyn ordered, "Go on! Out!" and this time Dame Fervisse turned her back on him to open the door and go out.

There were men in armor and horses and a few women in the yard. All but a few of the men had dismounted, but they all seemed ready to travel again at a moment's notice, though guesthall servants were going among them with pottery mugs of something to drink. Heads swiveled toward them as they came out, and Jasper saw the nearest few men come suddenly alert, hands going to their sword hilts as they realized what they were seeing.

Dame Frevisse held out her hands to them. "Don't do anything! He's sworn he won't harm the boy if we don't do anything! Let him have a horse and let him go."

After a hesitation, all but the closest man faded back; he held out his reins toward Sir Gawyn, with nothing friendly in his face. Jasper, his eyes going rapidly from face to face around them, saw nothing friendly in anyone's; but it was Sir Gawyn they were staring at, not him.

"Dame, take the reins from him. You, go farther off," Sir Gawyn ordered.

Dame Frevisse and the man obeyed, Dame Frevisse taking the reins, the man then stepping backward, farther away, his eyes never off Sir Gawyn.

"Hand Jasper the reins."

Dame Frevisse obeyed. As she did, her gaze dropped to Jasper's face. To his surprise he saw she was not afraid, only sad. To Sir Gawyn she said softly, "Don't do this. Let it end here."

Sir Gawyn drew in a short, harsh breath, as if she had hurt him, but said, as hard-voiced as before, "If no one follows us, I'll let him loose somewhere safe and you can have him back. But only if no one follows us. Stand over there, both of you. Out of the way."

She did, and Jasper knew this was the most dangerous part. Sir Gawyn would have to mount before anyone could reach him to stop him, and it wouldn't be easy with his hurt shoulder.

But he had already thought out the problem. He let Jasper loose and said, "Climb on the horse. Have the reins ready." He gave him boost enough so Jasper could grab the saddle and scramble up, scooting well forward to leave room behind him in the saddle for Sir Gawyn. Jasper took the reins, and Sir Gawyn swung the horse around so it was between him and everyone else. He was on its off side now but from there, able to use only his right hand for it, he would be better able to mount. Slipping his dagger into his left hand, he grasped the cantle with his right and brought himself up into the saddle in a single swift swing, settled behind Jasper, his left arm around him again, across his chest this time, and the reins in his left hand, the dagger back in his right before anyone could close on him.

The man who had given over his horse made one spasmed movement as if to go for Sir Gawyn, but Dame Frevisse put out an arm to hold him back. On the tall horse, Jasper felt more exposed to the stares than he had before, but it was Dame Frevisse he was looking at, even as Sir Gawyn urged the horse forward. Suddenly he wished very, very much he was back in the cloister, that none of this was happening. He was suddenly desperately afraid, more afraid than he had been when Sir Gawyn struck Jenet and then Edmund, almost as afraid as when the riders had attacked them. And part of the fear came from what he saw in Dame Frevisse's face—grief and anger and desperation as she realized there was truly no way to stop Sir Gawyn now.

"Jasper," she said; and she was talking to no one but him in all the crowded courtyard, pleading with him to understand something. "He made Colwin try to kill you and Edmund, and he killed Will. Jasper!"

The last was a cry at their backs as Sir Gawyn dug his heels into the horse and set it into a canter toward the gateway, guiding it more with his legs than the reins.

Trying to twist his head around to see Sir Gawyn's face, Jasper cried out, "You didn't do any of that!"

Sir Gawyn didn't answer. They were through the gate, the canter rising to a gallop across the outer yard for the open gateway beyond. Jasper clung two-handed to the saddle, still straining around to see Sir Gawyn. Why would Dame Frevisse say it if it wasn't true? "You didn't!" he cried again, begging Sir Gawyn to agree. But he didn't, and Jasper's last, "You didn't!" was more with despair than pleading. Sir Gawyn wouldn't say it, and the glimpse Jasper had of his face told him why.

They were through the outer gateway, were making the wide turn into the road that here ran between the nunnery's outer wall and deep ditch with hedge beyond it. There was no one left to stop Sir Gawyn's escape now, and Jasper didn't plan what he did then. It was partly fear, partly outrage at Sir Gawyn's treachery, partly a cold, brilliant anger that came, out of all proportion to his size and years, with the full realization of what Sir Gawyn had done and how Sir Gawyn was using him. He reached left-handed across himself, below Sir Gawyn's arm around him, grabbed his own small dagger from its sheath and stabbed it hard as he could into the horse's shoulder in front of the saddle.

The horse screamed, flung sideways in frenzy away from the pain, and at full gallop was somehow falling, the ground gone from beneath its hooves. The green mass of the hedge smashed toward them from the side and behind him Jasper felt Sir Gawyn twist sideways in a desperate wrench.

And then nothing.

Chapter
23

They carried Sir Gawyn back to the guesthall and laid him on the bed that had been his these days past. By then "Dame Claire was there, and Father Henry, but as the men stepped back from the bed it was obvious that it was Father Henry who was needed. Dark, frothed blood oozed from the corner of Sir Gawyn's mouth each time his chest labored at a breath, telling he was badly, badly broken somewhere too deep inside to be helped, so that the bleeding cuts across his face from the hedge did not matter, nor that his shoulder wound had been opened by the fall and bright blood was seeping through his doublet in a spreading stain. He would not live long enough to make tending to them worth anyone's while, even his. Frevisse after showing the men where to lay him went back against the wall beyond the foot of the bed, not wanting to see him but unable to bring herself to leave.

For mercy's sake he should have been unconscious but he was not. As Dame Claire bent to wipe away the blood running from his mouth, his eyes searched past her among the strangers' faces around him. He seemed able to move only his eyes and his hurtfully breathing chest until he whispered, "Jasper," and stirred one hand.

Master Naylor came forward, bent over him so Sir Gawyn could see him clearly, and laid a quieting hand over his. "He's not hurt. He was only stunned and the breath knocked out of him by the fall. He's unhurt. Someone has taken him back to the nunnery."