The outlaw's tale (3 page)

While he spoke, he looked quickly, assessingly, from Sister Emma's rather dazed, damp, tear-reddened face to Frevisse standing cold-eyed and calm beside her.  His smile deepened, and by-passing Master Naylor and Sister Emma both, he went down on one knee in front of Frevisse.  “Good cousin, I pray your forgiveness for this unseemly meeting.  I could find no better way."

Frevisse, ready for a great many possibilities at that moment but not that one, stared.

The man lifted his head.  A little pleadingly, he said, “Don't you remember me at all then, cousin?"

Frevisse began to shake her head.  But something in him – maybe the mischief behind his eyes even while he pleaded – awakened memory, and suddenly, despite the changes in him, he was familiar.  “Nicholas!" she exclaimed.  Her father's older brother's elder son and indeed her cousin, though they had not met for almost twenty years.

He sprang to his feet, holding out his hands to her.  “You'd always more wits than any three other women together.  I knew you'd remember!"

In the surprise of the moment, Frevisse held out her own hands to clasp his.  “Of course I remember!  At Uncle Thomas'.  You were there in his household that whole season from Michaelmas until after Christmastide."  And had been sent away in disgrace, she remembered, because of too many jokes and insolences and finally for trying to seduce a serving girl.

There was clearly nothing of that scandal in Nicholas' mind.  He grinned broadly at her, holding her hands in his own hard, strong ones.  “You were an earnest creature then, forever tucked away in Uncle Thomas' library despite all Aunt Matilda tried to do to have you out of there.  Are you still that earnest?"

“Are you still a teasing rogue?" Frevisse retorted.

Nicholas threw back his head and laughed.  “Yes!  Yes, indeed I am!"

“And you could find no other way than this for a reunion?" Master Naylor asked, his voice dry and edged.

Nicholas looked around at him with plain surprise, as if he had forgotten there was anyone there but himself and Frevisse.  His demeanor changed quickly to apologetic.  “Now here I'm at fault to neglect you, sir.  And you, good lady."  He turned his smile on Sister Emma, who in the surprises of the moment was staring from him to Frevisse and back again, for a wonder both wordless and tearless.  But as he bowed elegantly to her, she remembered herself and drew away from him with a sniff and a trembling chin.

Nicholas' smile turned rueful.  “You've indeed been poorly handled, gentle lady.  Let me make amends, I pray you."  He stepped back, drew himself up straight, and swept a low bow to all three of them.  “By your gracious leave, good master and fair ladies, let me invite you to our feast this day.  We dine not elegantly but well, and I swear you would be no more honorably received in even the highest hall of the land."

Frevisse looked pointedly aside to Master Naylor's bound hands.  Nicholas took her meaning and gestured to Cullum.  “Free him.  He knows now we mean no harm.  I've given my oath and am Dame Frevisse's cousin into the bargain.  He'll give no trouble.  Will you, man?"

“Leave the ladies untouched and you'll have no trouble from me."

Nicholas put up a hand in ready oath.  “As I pray for God's grace, they'll come to no harm that I can keep them from."

Master Naylor, rubbing his rope-marked wrists, eyed him coldly.  Nicholas turned to Frevisse.

“There'll be food soon.  Will you talk with me the while until we eat?"

Rather than answering, Frevisse was gazing past him at the lute player still playing on the far side of the clearing.  He had remained bent over his lute, his face half-unseen, but with an air of listening as intently as his fellows to everything that passed.

“I know him from somewhere," Frevisse murmured.

Nicholas glanced around to see whom she was looking at and shrugged.  “I doubt it, unless your prioress lets wandering minstrels play for her nuns upon occasion."

Which Domina Edith certainly did not.  But Frevisse was the priory's hosteler, in charge of the guests that the Benedictine Rule required every house to provide for.  The lute player might well have spent the night some time.

The feeling was so strong that she would have gone to speak to him, but Nicholas led her aside to where a blanket had been spread on the ground at the foot of the largest tree.  Sister Emma made to follow but one of the outlaws stepped in her way with what could pass for a polite murmur, and Master Naylor took her by the arm, speaking quickly in her ear.  Tears threatened for a moment, but then Master Naylor took her by the arm, speaking quickly in her ear as he led her with the outlaw to another tree and blanket.  Frevisse, satisfied they would be all right, gave her attention to Nicholas.

He gestured down.  “Be seated, if it please you."

Grateful, Frevisse sank down on the blanket.  It had been fine once, thick and closely woven, but was filthy now with hard use.  Nicholas sat down on the tree root beside her and leaned forward, hands clasped between his knees.  For a moment they looked at each other.

Frevisse was remembering how he had been when they were young.  He had been tall and still was, though somewhat stooped; he had been slender, he was now gaunt; his thick brown hair was further back from his forehead, and there was gray scattered through its curls.  Laughter had always lurked behind his eyes, even in what should have been his most solemn moments, and it was still there.  But so was weariness, and there were deep-set lines beside his mouth and around his eyes.  He was older, and he had changed
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except for the lurking merriment behind his eyes.

“You're looking more solemn than you need to, cousin," he said.

He had used to grin down at her much as he was now when about to tease away her anger at him.  She was not angry with him now, nor much in the mood for being teased.  “Remembering you and how you came to be an outlaw is enough to make me solemn."

“Ah."  Nicholas looked away from her.  “There were mistakes, and then more mistakes.  Some folk - and particularly my father – always said I would go too far.  One day I finally did.  I've been paying for it a long time."

“Almost sixteen years."

“That long?"  He looked a little startled, thinking of it, and then agreed, “Yes.  It has been, I suppose.  You always tended to be right.  I remember that."

He had been in his early twenties, his father's heir to two good manors, when he ran afoul of a local lord unamused by some escapade of his.  Frevisse did not know all the matter of it, but what had been a slight matter had escalated to a quarrel and then to an armed skirmish.  Men had been killed on both sides, and Nicholas' own father had refused to back him or stand out against the decree of outlawry a Staffordshire sheriff had brought down on him.  In answer, Nicholas had disappeared into the Derby hills, and that had been the last Frevisse knew of him until today.  The Derby hills were a long way from southern Oxfordshire.

“Your father died," she said.

“I know.  I– used to learn things.  About home.  But it's been a while now.  Edward?"

“He was well, the last I heard, a year ago.  And his wife and children."

“He has children?"

“Two sons and two daughters.  The oldest boy is named Edward after his father."

“And the younger?  Not Nicholas by any chance?"

“Not by any chance," Frevisse agreed.  “He's named after his grandfather."

Nicholas looked down at his hands.  They had been clever, graceful hands when he was young.  Now they were broad and blunt, roughened and weather-browned like his face.  Barely above a whisper he said, “I want to go home, cousin.  I repent my sins, all of them.  I want the king's pardon so I can go home."

Frevisse said nothing, not knowing what to say.  Nicholas gripped his hands together tightly enough the knuckles whitened and looked at her.  There were tears in his eyes, and his voice was edged by a quiver he could not control.  “It's been sixteen years.  Long years.  I want a pardon and an end to this."

Frevisse hesitated, then said, “Is that why we're here?  Why I'm here?  Because you want a pardon and you think I can win one for you?"

“You were Thomas Chaucer's pet when you were in his household, and word runs that he's still fond of you.  He even comes to see you in your nunnery and takes an interest in its business because you're there."

“Yes."  How Nicholas knew that she did not know; but she could guess how pleased he had been to learn it.

“If you asked him - told him I'd truly changed and am truly repentant – if you begged him in my name for a royal pardon for me and my men, he could get it.  It would be easy for him, wouldn't it?  Knowing whom he knows.  High in the government as he is.  He could do it without thinking twice, and he would if you asked him."

“He might but..."

Frevisse thought there were reasons it would not be as simple as Nicholas wanted it to be, but before she could gather them, Nicholas leaned forward to clasp her hands.  She let him, but kept her own hands passive, her expression unresponding as he went on earnestly, “He would, cousin.  For you he'd do it.  Gladly do it.  It would be such a very little thing for him to manage.  Hardly a ripple among his great affairs of state.  But it would be life to me.  And to my men."

Frevisse looked around the glade.  “You and your men seem to be living well enough, Nicholas.  Free and well-fed and reasonably prosperous by the look of it.  I've seen honest peasants living worse."

She was not purposely goading him, only talking while she tried to understand the possibilities and probabilities of what he was asking.  But he let go her hands abruptly and stood up, saying sharply, “Not so prosperous.  Tired old clothes and chance-got food and never any certainty whether we can sleep in the same place two nights running or if this is the day we meet someone willing to shoot us dead."

Frevisse was aware that every other movement and voice in the glade had stopped.  Despite his passion Nicholas had kept his voice low; no one but herself had heard him.  But his sudden movement, his intensity, told enough.  Everyone was looking.  And for just a moment, as Nicholas realized that he had made his best argument and she was not readily agreeing to it, Frevisse saw his uncertainty.

Then from across the glade the lute player struck a long chord, breaking the moment with cheerful ease, and stood up.  “If that venison isn't done by now," he said loudly, “I vote we eat it raw.  Who's with me?"

They did not feast in the great glade but were led a little ways away to a smaller clearing set up for cooking and sleeping.  Logs, some of them crudely smoothed for easier sitting, had been put around a firepit where the venison – cut into chunks and spitted on skewers over the flames – was roasting.  With ceremony more grand than the setting, Nicholas seated Frevisse, Sister Emma and Master Naylor on logs comfortably away from the fire's heat.

“And I shall serve you myself, on bended knee," he laughed.  “Evan, a livelier air to suit this glad occasion."

The lute player, somewhere behind them, obliged.  He was not particularly good but at least did not stop after every wrong note.

True to his word, Nicholas waited on them, with all the manners he had ever learned in his father's and Thomas Chaucer's households, even down to the towel laid over his arm as he brought them their meal.  His elegance contrasted with his rough forester's clothing, the somewhat grubby towel, and the meal of fire-blackened venison served in wooden bowls with a chunk of day-old bread on the side and ale drawn from a barrel set up and bunged on a stump across the clearing.  But the meat was succulent, and Nicholas – as aware of the contrast as Frevisse was – made his serving into an amusement of manners, so that Sister Emma, at first sitting very straight with determined indignation and her eyes still pink from weeping, forgot herself and laughed at something he whispered in her ear as he bent to pour more ale in her wooden mug.  By the time the dishes were gathered up and carried away for cleaning, she had forgotten herself so far as to beckon him down so she could whisper something in his ear that made them both laugh.

Frevisse, meeting Master Naylor's silent look over Sister Emma's shoulder, knew he was neither charmed nor off his guard, any more than she was.  There was a bramble scrape along his chin and the red welt left by a tree branch on his cheek
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and Frevisse thought he moved as if his right side pained him, perhaps from the fall from his horse. 

When the meal was done, Nicholas led her away from the others again to sit beside him on a log on the other side of the firepit.

Evening was drawing in by then.  At St. Frideswide's the nuns would be gathering for Compline prayers on their way to bed.  Here, someone added wood to the fire now that the cooking was done.  The flames lapped up jewel-bright in the deepening twilight.  Some fat caught in the new heat sizzled and a green log cracked loudly open, sending sparks upward with the smoke..

“I trust," said Frevisse, “that was red deer we were eating."

Under forest law, the red deer was the only kind that could be freely hunted.  Too protective of its territory, the red bucks drove roe and all other kinds of deer away, reducing the sport for the nobility. 

Hand on his heart to prove his sincerity, Nicholas replied, “Would I presume to give you anything else?"

“Yes."

He grinned at her the way he always had when his teasing made her curt.  It was surprising how many memories she had of him from that brief time they had been acquainted in Chaucer's household.  He had been intelligent, charming – especially when in another scrape – and all around a slippery-tongued boy, as now he was a slippery-tongued man.  “I remember that smile boded no good," she said.

He laughed outright.  “I remember, too.  It barely worked better on you than on Uncle Thomas.  He'd fix on me with those eyes of his and I'd know he was judging how many layers of flesh he'd have to flay away before he reached the bone."

Frevisse opened her mouth to answer but Nicholas forestalled her, leaning toward her and taking earnestly hold of her hands, beseeching “Cousin, cousin, I'm sorry for who I was and who I am.  Believe that."