The outlaw's tale (18 page)

“He’s
not
!"

“Oliver, you’re hurting her!"  Mistress Payne pushed in among the press of servants.  “And everyone listening!  Bring her inside at least."

Master Payne had been too lost in his anger to care, but her words brought him a little to himself.  “Take her to the solar and keep her there.  Jack, see to it.  She’s to go nowhere and not to be left alone an instant."  But before he let Magdalen loose, he said into her face with set-jawed anger, “We’re going to hunt your peddler down.  And if we can’t lay him by the heels, I can tell the sheriff what he looks like and he can do the hunting for me.  The man’s known around here.  He won’t escape."

He shoved her away toward his wife.  Magdalen stumbled sideways into Mistress Payne’s arms and, helpless with tears, clung to her.  Frevisse reached an arm around her shoulders to help, and together she and Mistress Payne took her through the servants and into the house, Jack at their heels.

Because it seemed best to have Magdalen out of sight as soon as might be, they went up the near stairs rather than cross the hall to the others that went directly to Mistress Payne’s solar.  On the narrow spiral Magdalen stumbled and collapsed against Frevisse, awkwardly enough that Mistress Payne had to fall behind them, and Jack behind her.  Separated from them by the turning of the narrow stairs, Magdalen – suddenly not crying at all – whispered desperately to Frevisse, “Oliver thought he only tore his tunic, but he wounded him.  I saw it.  He may not be able to go far.  Please find him.  Help him."

“This peddler–" Frevisse began.

“He hasn’t killed anyone!  Trust Bess."

There was no time for more.  Probably at Mistress Payne’s orders, Lovie had kept the younger children inside, but they were waiting at the top of the stairs, loud with curiosity.  They cut Magdalen away from Frevisse, and then Mistress Payne came, with Jack behind her and Edward and Richard crowding at his heels, Richard complaining at their father’s forbidding them the hunt.  They took Magdalen in an exclamatory clot toward the solar, no one heeding that Frevisse stood quietly to let them go.

She went into Magdalen’s room to brave Bess’ and Sister Emma’s frantic curiosity.  Careful of every word, so as not to alarm them needlessly, she told them what apparently had happened and what had been said.  There was no point in concealing any of it; Bess would have it from the other servants as soon as she joined them.  But Sister Emma’s exclamations of “Poor Mistress Dow" and “However do you suppose it happened?" and “Well, they certainly shouldn’t leave him to roam about killing other folk, that’s all I can say.  A leopard can’t change his spots, you know" and “A peddler!  Whatever was she thinking of?" drove Frevisse close to distraction before heavy coughing and a firm insistence afterwards on a horehound drop paused Sister Emma for a while.

“You lie there quietly," Frevisse said with enforced pretense of patience, "And I’ll say Sext.  You can follow silently."

“Mmhmmmm," Sister Emma agreed; and fell asleep sometime before Frevisse finished.

Frevisse finished the office without faltering before rising from the bedside and saying to Bess, “Can you watch by her a while?"

“I thought I might go to Mistress Dow," Bess began.

Frevisse allowed some of her anxiety to show.  “She asked me to do a task for her.  She said I should trust you."

Bess opened her mouth to ask more, then proved her worth by closing it.  Instead of whatever she had been going to say in protest or ask, she simply said, “Go on then, and God go with you.  She’s a gentle lady, and if she asks it, it must be good."

But Magdalen’s love was a peddler, though Frevisse suspected outlaw was more apt, and perhaps a murderer.

As she crossed the room, she thought of bandages and picked up the linen towel that hung beside the wash basin, rolled it small, and hid it up her habit’s sleeve.

Outside the room, she moved with studied pace, careful not to seem in haste.  She kept her eyes bent downward, her hands tucked into her sleeves, a familiar gesture that gave the appearance of serenity she most decidedly did not feel.  If anyone asked she was prepared to say she merely wanted a walk in the air; but she saw no one, and no one called after her as she left the house and crossed the stable yard to the orchard gate.

The orchard was silent, which gave her some hope.  If Madgalen was right and her love was badly hurt, he had to have gone to earth somewhere very near.  If he had, and the hunt for him had begun at the orchard edge, he was likely to have been found almost immediately.  Since he had not yet been found, he had either been unhurt after all and had hared away, or else Master Payne – not knowing he was hurt – had set his hunt into the woods beyond the orchard and, moving fast to overtake him, missed him altogether.

Once into the orchard, it was not hard to guess where Magdalen had met with him; a writhe of gooseberry bushes along the stream screened a small stretch of grass from view of the house and the rest of the orchard.  Frevisse wondered briefly how they had managed to meet unseen in the barren winter, and then thought that unfortunately the bushes also screened sight of anyone coming unless careful watch were kept, and that must have been how the lovers had been surprised yesterday and, most foolishly, today.  Why had they risked meeting today?  And how had Magdalen known he was here?  For most surely she had known when she abruptly left her room.  There must be some signal.

But those questions were not to her purpose.  What mattered now was that Magdalen believed in her love, and both of them were more desperate than they had been before.  With a sadness for how much unhappiness must have been mingled with the little joy the two of them had found in their snatched moments here, Frevisse looked around the little greensward.  No broken brambles or torn grass, as there would have been from excited men searching.  Nor any blood. She tried to judge where a hurt man would go to escape an armed attacker.  Away from the house, surely.

Frevisse went to the clearing’s lower side, where the brambles screened the stream, and found the one place through them, a narrow way probably made by deer coming for fruit in the orchard.  It was wide enough for a man to slip through, a little harder for her with her skirts and veil.  But she did; and found a bright smear of blood across some of the leaves at about hip level, and more on the ground further on.  Magdalen had been right about him being wounded.

The way came out on the stream’s bank.  The stream was narrow here, its bank high on this side, low on the other.  It was an easy leap for a man or a deer, and though there was a dense mix of alders and brambles on the farther bank, the narrow path through them was plain to see.  With a sigh for how she would explain fresh mud on her shoes and hem, Frevisse gathered up her heavy skirts, slid down the bank, waded the stream, and slipped along the path through the bushes into the oak forest beyond them.

There was no dense undergrowth here; so close to the manor, it was undoubtedly gleaned for firewood and in the autumn grazed by the pigs.  But what growth there was was unbroken and untrampled, and she judged that the hunt had not begun or come this way.  Nor, to guess by the lack of blood along the deer trail, had the hurt man gone that way.  Frevisse cast to either side of it, her soft shoes making faint moist sounds on the soaking ground and the wet hem of her underdress clinging to the back of her ankles as she moved.  It was hard, under the day’s gray overcast, to find what she needed, but finally there were broken twigs that showed where someone had passed with more haste than care, and a scuff in the mold, as if someone had slipped and regained his balance.  And another brightness of blood beside the scuff.  After that the signs were easier to find and follow.

They led her back toward the stream, where the bank was still low on this side, still high on the other, running now between the forest and a meadow, with a wide band of alders on either side.  Loving the water, they grew thickly here, useful for withies in building and basket-making and to hold the bank together.  But they sometimes failed at the latter, and Frevisse found what looked like an excellent hiding place.  At a sharp bend in the stream the bank had come down, bringing a tangle of alders with it.  Still bound by roots that had not pulled completely loose, trees and turf slanted down from the upper bank to the stream, and possibly, just possibly, there was space behind them for a man to hide.

But she could not be sure of that from where she was, and after looking carefully to be sure no one was in sight, Frevisse again crossed the stream and crouched down, hidden now by the bank, near the fallen alders.

“Are you there?" she said, pitching her voice low.  “Magdalen sent me.  I’m here to help you."

For a moment she thought she had erred.  But then something stirred in the darkness under the bank, and a low voice asked, “Dame Frevisse?"

“Evan!" she exclaimed.  “How badly are you hurt?  Can you come out?"

“I’ll try," he said.  With a slowness that betrayed pain, he drew his head and shoulders, smeared with underbank mud, into sight.  “I’m hurt in my thigh.  I’ve slowed the bleeding but I can’t stop it."

“Come out if you can.  Maybe I can help."  She drew out the towel.  “There’s no one about, as nearly as I can tell.  They’ve all gone off hunting you.  Master Payne didn’t realize he’d actually wounded you and they’ve set their search farther afield, to overtake you."

Evan managed a tight smile; but the smile narrowed into a gritted line of pain as he began to drag himself the rest of the way out.  Frevisse climbed into the tangle to give what help she could, and when he was clear, made him lie on the slipped edge of the bank, near to the water, where she could both see the wound and wet the towel to clean it.  Exhausted, he lay obediently still, stretched out and motionless except for shuddered, uneven breaths drawn through his clenched teeth against the pain of her tearing his ripped hosen away from the wound.

“Your hiding place has done this cut no good," Frevisse said as she began to clean the gash.  “And I’ve nothing to cleanse it with but water."  Dame Claire at St. Frideswide’s used wine on the worst cuts that came to her; she claimed it kept illness out of hurts better than water did.  But water was all Frevisse had for now, and she spoke to take Evan’s mind at least a little away from the pain she was causing him.  “But as hiding places go, and aside from the mud, it’s excellent."

“Much of life is like that," Evan said in short breaths.  “Excellent, except for the mud.  How is it with Magdalen? Is she all right?"

“Except for her brother’s anger and worry over you, yes."  Frevisse inadvertently hissed as she saw the wound clearly.  Master Payne’s thrust had made a thin, deep slice across the outside of Evan’s left thigh.  Not so deep that the muscle was severed, but deep enough that it was still bleeding.  And too high to allow the leg’s amputation if the worse happened and it suppurated.  If she managed to bring him to safety, it would have to be cleaned again, rigorously.

Evan lay with his face turned away, flinching now and again, his breath hissing through his clenched teeth.  To cover her own sympathy, Frevisse said, “Do you have any plans for your escape aside from lying here and bleeding to death?"

“If I still have the strength, I mean to go off after dark, back to camp."

“And if you don’t have the strength?" Frevisse asked.  She did not think he would.

“Then if it comes to my dying here, I’d likely never be found and at least they’d not have my body to hang in chains to rot at the crossroads.  At least I’d spare Magdalen that."

“And leave her never knowing what became of you?  If you wanted to spare her, you should have stayed away from her from the beginning."

Evan did not reply at first.  Then he said, “I could have slit my throat, too, after I fell in love with her.  It would have been the same either way.  It would have killed me to deny our love once it began."

His quiet certainty, more than his words, made Frevisse pause.  Almost, she could begin to believe that the love Magdalen claimed was between them was greater than its foolishness.  More gently than she expected to, she said, “You can’t have had hope for your love.  Not with so much difference between you and her.  Her family would never countenance it.  And you–"

She did not finish; Evan knew what he was.

“I hoped not to be an outlaw much longer.  That would be a beginning.  It’s why I encouraged Nicholas to try for a pardon.  Nor have I squandered everything I’ve ‘gained’.  I’d not come poor to her.  And she has properties of her own.  She’s not dependent on her family."  And then as if he read from her mind the last, greatest objection Frevisse had, their wide difference is rank, he said, “Nor was I always a peddler."

“You come of good family?"

“Good enough they wanted to see no more of me after I’d disgraced them.  And seen no more of me they have.  I was a stupid boy and I did stupid things, and have maybe grown only marginally wiser with the years.  But yes, I come of good family.  Good enough I’d be no disgrace to Margdalen."  He broke off with a groan as Frevisse pressed the now-folded towel hard over the wound.

“I have to stop the bleeding altogether," she said.  “If it goes on, you will die."

Evan jerked his head in acknowledgment but did not try to speak.  There was only the burble of the stream and a dripping from leaves around them as Frevisse tightened the strip of his hosen holding the towel over the wound.

When she finished his face was gray as clay.  She let him lie quietly a few moments.  How much truth was in what Evan had said about himself?  He clearly had better than a peasant’s manners or speech about him.  So maybe there was some truth to his claim of better birth.

But whether there was or not, it was not her concern.  She was out here, at risk of her reputation, because Magdalen had asked her help; and having once begun to give it, Frevisse found she could not stint it.

She said, “You’ll never make it so far as Nicholas’ camp.  And by now Master Payne probably has all the countryside roused to hunt you as Colfoot’s murderer."

“I didn’t kill him."