The Boy's Tale Page 11

  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.

  Conversely, Sister Amicia had the notion that children were God's innocent lambs, and as they left the cloister to cross the yard toward the gateway to the outer yard, she was saying, "We're going to have a lovely time, aren't we? And you'll behave yourselves just as you promised Dame Perpetua because it's good little boys and girls who go to heaven, you know."

  Sister Amicia always had all the obvious words for any occasion. But though Frevisse invariably found her tedious, she had chosen her as companion now precisely because she was not likely to notice if the boys inadvertently said or did anything that betrayed themselves. For the sake of that, she intended to endure Sister Amicia patiently, but intending was not the same as doing, and she barely held back a sigh as Sister Amicia pointed at the doves strutting on the cobbles near the well across the yard and exclaimed brightly, "See all the pretty doves? Don't they look pretty with the sunlight on them? All those pretty colors in their feathers! Aren't they pretty?"

  A look passed among the three children, and with unspoken agreement and not an instant's hesitation Edmund and Jasper broke into a run toward the well. The doves burst up in a wildness of wings at their precipitous coming. Ignoring them, they leaped up the steps to the well and flung themselves belly-down over the coping to peer into its depths.

  With distressed exclamations Sister Amicia scurried after them and caught hold of their belts as if they were sliding head down to destruction. Frevisse, with better opinion of their common sense, stayed where she was, looking at Lady Adela. The girl had run a few limping steps after the boys but stopped when the doves had flown and now stood with her head bent back to watch them as they swung high around the yard, rising and rising against the sky until they wheeled away over the wall and out of sight. She went on gazing after them into the empty sunlight, her look of longing so intense it told Frevisse more about her than any one thing else in all the months since she had come to St. Frideswide's. Lady Adela would never stay inside St. Frideswide's if ever she were given chance to go.

  But meanwhile Sister Amicia was still clinging to the boys, trying to pull them back, which only meant they clung more tightly to the stones, squirming against her hold while she cried at them, "Come away before you fall! You'll fall in and drown!"

  Lady Adela blinked, came back to herself, and ran to fling herself onto the coping next to Jasper.

  In added agony, Sister Amicia cried, "Dame Frevisse, I've only two hands!"

  Without raising her voice, Frevisse said, "We can stay here until we're out of time or we can go on. The choice is yours to make."

  The children glanced at each other and slid backward to their feet, Edmund and Jasper deftly twisting out of Sister Alicia’s hold as they did.

  "The stables," Edmund declared. "We want to go to the stables and see how our horses do."

  That was reasonable enough. Frevisse led the way, the children behind her, and Sister Amicia last, telling the children they had to be more careful, not take foolish chances like that, she had heard of a boy who came to a terrible end at the bottom of a well. The only response among the children was Lady Adela complaining, "I didn't see any stars. They say you can see stars if you look down a well, but I didn't see any."

  "It has to be a deep, deep well and this one isn't," Edmund said.

  "It doesn't have to be a deep, deep well," Lady Adela retorted. "Only a deep one."

  Before that could escalate into an argument over what was deep and what was very deep, Frevisse said, "Isn't that your man Colwin in the stable doorway?"

  The outer yard of St. Frideswide's stretched to the outer gateway that opened onto the road. Around it, enclosed by the nunnery's outer wall, were the stables, byres, sheds, and a scattering of workshops needful to the nunnery's daily life. Just to the left outside the inner gateway were the long stables, and it was indeed sturdy Colwin standing in the doorway, talking with Master Naylor.

  Edmund hallooed him and waved. "Our horses! We've come to see our horses."

  Jasper turned to Lady Adela. "They're proper horses. Not ponies. We rode them all the way from home to here."

  Edmund had not waited for Colwin's or anyone's response. He was running toward the stables. Jasper and Lady Adela paused long enough this time to ask Frevisse with a look if it was all right. She had meant to visit the stables anyway, and would welcome an inconspicuous chance to talk with Master Naylor, so she willingly nodded for them to go on. Jasper tempering his pace this time to Lady Adela's, they went on eagerly.

  Frevisse and Sister Amicia followed more sedately. Though the children pelted straight on into the barn, Master Naylor and Colwin waited to bow to the approaching nuns before Colwin followed the children. From what little Frevisse had seen of him, she judged he had blunt good sense enough that the children would be safe in his care, but she said to Sister Amicia anyway, "You'd best go in, too, to be sure they keep out of the muck. I need to spend a word with Master Naylor."

  "I haven't been in a barn since ever so long. I just love the smell of new hay!" Sister Amicia exclaimed and disap­peared happily into the stable shadows.

  To no one in particular Master Naylor said, "The new hay isn't in yet, we've only begun to cut it. There's only the last of last year's hay in there just now and it's gone musty."

  "She'll probably not know the difference," Frevisse said.

  Master Naylor was not given to showing much of his feelings on his face. He merely shook his head once and turned his attention fully to Frevisse. "May I help you, my lady?"

  "I was wondering what you told the sheriff and crowner."

  "No more than I had to."

  "About the children?"

  Master Naylor's brows drew down a little. "I had word from Dame Claire they weren't to be mentioned if it could be avoided. They weren't mentioned."

  He fixed a look on her that said he was willing to have that explained to him, but Frevisse slid away from it. "Have there been any . . . unusual . . . travelers of late, staying in the guesthalls, either one?"

  "Won't Dame Alys tell you that?"

  "Things seem to go better the less Dame Alys and I talk together," Frevisse said wryly.

  With no hint of wryness in return. Master Naylor an­swered, "I could see how that might be." He had not enjoyed his necessary dealings with Dame Alys when she had been cellarer, and matters had not improved now she was hosteler. "There've only been the usual sort of traveler. None who've stayed more than a night." His gaze on her face sharpened. "And no one I've heard of asking questions out of the ordinary except you. What should I be lookin
g for?"

  "Anyone interested in the boys."

  "Why would someone be interested in the boys?"

  His direct, sharp question and her worry nearly drew the answer out of her. But though it might help for him to know, he was in the long run of it safer in ignorance. He could not be held accountable if he truly did not know who the children were. So against her inclination Frevisse shook her head and only answered, "I can't tell you. But there may be people who would think them . . . safer in their hands."

  "Dame Claire knows this? Knows what you're about?"

  "And Domina Edith." Who knew far more than Dame Claire and had surely given Dame Claire direction to order Master Naylor to silence. Or had she confided more than that to Dame Claire? Frevisse suddenly wondered.

  Distant beyond the gateway and courtyard and cloister walls, the bell began to ring for Nines.

  "Oh no!" Frevisse said. "I didn't know time had gone so far. The children have hardly been out at all. They're not going to be happy being taken back so soon."