The outlaw's tale (24 page)

“That he's a peddler and your lover and that Oliver meant to use him as scapegoat for Colfoot's murder."

“And when Nicholas tells him I'm one of his men?" Evan asked.

“I have things to say to Nicholas that will keep him quiet on that point," Frevisse said grimly.  “And if he isn't, then we'll deny and deny and deny it again.  We'll say we sent the accounts to him with promise of reward if he used them to make Master Payne let you go unharmed.  We were desperate and that seemed the only hope.  I'll tell the sheriff that, and you will tell him that, and that is all that we will tell him.  Our word will weigh far more than Nicholas's, in any event.  And if we don't convince him, I have other recourse.  There's still the matter of the pardons I asked my uncle for."

“You'll still ask pardon for Nicholas?" Evan asked.

“No."  There was no urge to good in Nicholas after all; apart from everything else, he had killed Oliver Payne in plain murder after Payne had surrendered.  “No pardon for Nicholas.  But you and the others, I think, will have yours.  I'll plead to my uncle for them."

Magdalen began to cry openly.  Frevisse left Evan holding her and went down to face the one person she wanted to face even less than the sheriff and crowner.

Nicholas was tied by the waist to one of the posts in the center of the barn.  Another rope had been thrown up over a beam and his arms tied above his head so that he stood at full height, unable to sit or even slump.  Blood had run down his neck from a cut above his ear and there was a darkening bruise below one eye.  His eyes were closed, but Frevisse thought he was aware.

The barn was shadowy, warm with cattle smells and straw.  Tam the stableman rose from his seat on an over-turned bucket as she entered.  A dagger was laid conspicuously on the straw beside him, but he had a piece of harness in his hands as if he had been mending it.  “M'lady?"

“I want to talk to him," Frevisse said.  Tam looked doubtfully at Nicholas, whose eyes had opened and were now fixed on her.  “He's sinned," she said.  “I want to help him pray."

“Ah.  Right."  Tam could see the sense in that.  “Go on then."

“Could you...?"  She gestured farther along the barn.  “So he can pray more freely?  Just a little farther off.  Not out of sight."

Tam could see the sense in that, too. He picked up his dagger and went perhaps fifteen feet further away.  Frevisse went close to Nicholas.

“I hope you have a dagger up one of your sleeves, cousin," he said.  “This is damnably uncomfortable and I want out of here."

“No dagger, Nicholas.  No escape."

“Then you're not much use!" he snarled.  “And I don't want your damned prayers.  Leave, damn you!"

“The sheriff and crowner will be here soon.  We must talk."

Wary hope rose in his face.  “You have a plan?  The pardon maybe?"

“The pardon is in my uncle's control.  What you have to do is keep silent about Evan."

“Evan?  Why should he go free while I don't?  I'll say anything I can and he can hang right next to me if it comes to that."

“Evan hasn't killed a man in front of witnesses," Frevisse said between her teeth.

“He asked for it!" Nicholas retorted.  “It was a fair fight; he had a sword!"

“Keep your voice down.  Leave Evan out of this and people will go on thinking he's only a peddler and only ask him the questions they'd ask a peddler.  But if you say he's one of your men, there'll be different questions, ones he'll answer to save his own skin.  Do you want Evan telling everything he knows about you?  Telling every tale he has of what you've done?"

Nicholas glared around the barn as if seeking for a better answer than the one she was demanding from him, but there was none.  Refusing to look at her.  “I'll leave Evan out of it."

“Magdalen and I will say we sent you the accounts with evidence of Master Payne's cheating you because we wanted your help in taking her lover out of her brother's house.  We promised you a reward.  That's what we'll say and that's what you'd better say."

“He did worse than cheat me.  The damn fool lost my money!"

“He hadn't lost your money.  If you'd bothered to read the letter that came with the accounts or used your eyes half as well as you use your mouth, you'd know the second page was all false.  In fear you'd be pardoned and come demanding your profits, Payne rewrote them so you'd think you had hardly more than you'd started with.  He was cheating you but the money was still there!"  Frevisse lost control of her voice.  It rose with anger and pain and her own shame for her part in all of it.  “We gave you the evidence to demand it from him, only you killed him instead!"

Not able to stomach him any more, she turned her back on him and left.

Lovie met her in the screens passage, flustered and anxious.  “My lady, they've come!  They're just riding into the yard.  The sheriff and crowner and all their men!  What do we do?"

“Have them brought into the hall, and tell Mistress Payne and Master Edward they've come and that I'll speak to them as Master Edward and I agreed."

“Will you?"  Lovie sounded awed.  “All by yourself?"

“All by myself," Frevisse said wearily.  What she truly wanted was to be entirely alone, and deny that any of the past four days had happened.  But it was not finished yet.  Not until she had spoken to these men who would ask questions she did not want to answer.  Not until she had made them believe what mix of lies and truths she was going to tell them.

She waited for them in the hall, composing herself outwardly far more than she was inwardly.  They came, with Lovie hasty at their side to introduce them.  To Frevisse's relief she knew neither of them.  If the crowner had been Master Montfort from her own side of Oxfordshire, he might have tried to find other answers than the ones she gave him, merely out of his deep dislike for her that had grown from their other encounters.  But this crowner was an older man, with a settled countenance, who would listen to a responsible description of the facts, and build his conclusion from that.

The sheriff was younger, with a keen eye, and said as they were introduced and Frevisse curtseyed to them both, “Master Payne is indeed dead?"

The distance between door and hall had been time enough for Lovie to tell at least that much.

“Yes," Frevisse said, forcing her voice to steadiness.  “He was killed in front of all of us.  We have the man who did it tied up in the barn."

“Is it the peddler?  The one Payne had the hunt up for, for killing Colfoot?" the sheriff asked.

“No.  The peddler didn't kill Colfoot."  Her hands tucked up her habit's sleeves tightened painfully on her forearms but she still held her voice even.  “Master Payne killed Colfoot.  Master Payne was killed by an outlaw he had had dealings with.  That's whom we have prisoner in the barn."

She had been too intent on the sheriff and crowner to more than marginally notice the half dozen of their men who had come in with them.  Now a familiar voice said, “Frevisse?  You mean Nicholas?"

Hardly daring to believe, caught between relief and alarm, she saw past the sheriff and crowner to Thomas Chaucer coming toward her.  Elegant in blue riding houppelande, furred hat, and high boots, he had his usual way of looking as if he belonged where he was and expected to be obeyed in anything he said.  Though he had consistently through the years refused the honors of nobility offered to him by the Crown he served, he had wealth and power enough that he lacked no authority he cared to have.  And he was the dearest friend she had.

Now, clearly known to the sheriff and crowner, he held out his hand to her, and she gratefully took it as he said by way of introduction, “This is my niece I told you of.  Is it Nicholas you have in the barn?"

Frevisse nodded.

Chaucer forbore to say the several things she saw cross his mind.  Instead he said, “I have someone else you may be glad of, too," and gestured behind him to Master Naylor come from among the other men.

Relief as great as the fear she had secretly carried since the outlaws had taken him from the camp suffused her.  “Oh, I am glad you're all right!" Frevisse exclaimed.  “I wasn't – couldn’t be – sure."

“I'm well," he said, bowing to her.

“But I think all that needs to be told should be told somewhere more private than this," Chaucer said.  “And hopefully in comfort.  Geoff?  James?  You agree?"

The sheriff nodded.  “It sounds as if there's a deal of telling," he agreed.

“This is too fine a house to lack a solar," Chaucer suggested.  “Or is there a parlor?  And something to drink perhaps."

She took them to the parlor and, careful of everything she said, told them all that needed to be told to make as much of an end as there could be to everything that had happened.

Pale, watery sunshine fell weakly yellow through the window and across the floor of the parlor.  While she talked, Frevisse watched the shadow of a joint stool move slowly across the carpet, because the shadow had nothing to do with anything that mattered.  It had no passion of love or hate or greed or any other thing.  That lack was very comforting just now.

She talked and the men listened, and when she had finished the sheriff and crowner thanked her for making it all clear and simple, then went to question others in the household and Nicholas.

Exhausted, still staring at the shadow of the stool, Frevisse slumped down in her chair.  She doubted they would learn anything that would hurt her tale.  She wished there had been no need to say any of it.

Quietly, evenly, Chaucer said, “That was well done, Frevisse.  Now suppose you tell me the part you didn't tell them."

Frevisse let out a deep and trembling breath.  “Was it that plain?"

“Not to anyone who doesn't know you well.  What else happened?"

She cast a look at Master Naylor standing quietly out of the way in a corner.  His face was lined with tiredness and the strain of a man who has not rested in several days.  Avoiding her uncle's question, she said, “Master Naylor, I need to ask your pardon for siding against you in the outlaws' camp."

The steward was rarely given to smiling, but his eyes held a shadowy amusement.  “Hasting me away from there before I forced Nicholas out of patience you likely saved me from what came to Master Payne."

“You also loosed him to come to me," Thomas put in.

“Not back to Domina Edith?" Frevisse asked.

“To Domina Edith first, after Sister Emma's family," Master Naylor assured her.  “And she sent me on to Master Chaucer, in time to reach him when you letter from here did."

“Did you send her word of that?" Frevisse asked, with memory of the letter she had never written to her prioress.

“Of that, and that we were going to fetch you home," Chaucer said.  “Her mind is as at ease as it can be until you ride back through the priory gates.  Now, what is it you haven't told us?"

Chaucer was not a man to be balked, whether in Parliament or in private.  Carefully, Frevisse explained that Evan was not merely a peddler, that he was one of Nicholas's outlaws; and described, in greater detail than she had given the sheriff and crowner, her help to Magdalen in saving and hiding him.  Only at the last, when she added her guilt in deliberately drugging Sister Emma, did she bow her head, letting her shame show.  She had known at the time what she was doing, and been willing to take the burden of it, but it sounded worse told aloud to others than it had in her own mind while she did it.  Almost everything she had done these past few days sounded worse told aloud and at length.  Abuse of Sister Emma's trust was only one of her sins.  She had lied repeatedly.  Betrayed the people who had given her shelter.  Helped bring about Master Payne's death.  Deceived apparently without end.

“It's done, Frevisse," Chaucer said.  He laid a hand on her arm.

Her hands, out of sight up her sleeves, tightened.  It was penance she was in need of now, not sympathy.  Wearily she pointed out, “Because of what I did, Nicholas is a prisoner, guilty of murder, and a man is dead who would not be if I'd not interfered."

“You couldn't see what would come of what you did."

“I might have seen if I'd looked.  But I didn't look.  And outcome or not, what I did were sins.  And behind them all was the worst sin.  Pride.  My pride that made me believe that I should interfere because I knew best what should be done."

“Only pride, Frevisse?"  Thomas' doubt was warm with sympathy.  “Not affection?  Not desire to help those in direst need, who had no other help but you to turn to?  Only pride?"

“I don't know," she whispered.  “I can't judge now.  I don't know."

Chaucer released her.  They knew each other's minds well; in a different situation they could have cheerfully argued the matter far into the night, but there was no cheer in her just now.  Instead, he responded to the strain behind her voice.  “Do you wish to leave here now?  As soon as may be?  I know someone who lives not far from here where you could go instead."

Frevisse very desperately wanted to be away, but without raising her head she answered, “Sister Emma can't travel today.  Her cough is still heavy.  Tomorrow."

“Tomorrow then.  Or longer if need be.  We'll stay here until she can travel."

“Will the crowner allow it before he's finished investigating?" Master Naylor asked.

“I don't see why not," Chaucer said.  “Frevisse has told him all she can tell him.  And if I can't persuade James of that, I can give recognizance for her, that she won't go anywhere he can't find her.  I think my word will stretch that far."  He smiled.  “Is there anything I can do for you at present, Frevisse?"

She shook her head.  “Just be here.  It helps to know you are."  To know that if she could not carry this through, she could turn to him for help.  “I had better go see how Sister Emma does."

She found Mistress Payne and her children – Katherine, Kate and Bartholomew ranged on one side of her, Richard on the other – praying beside her husband's body in the great bedroom.  They were not yet dressed in mourning, but were all kneeling with their heads bowed, silent except for an occasional shivery sob from one of the little girls.

Magdalen was there, too, but on the far side of the bed from them, deep in her own prayers for her brother's soul.  Sir Perys read prayers for the dead at the foot of the bed, and Lovie and Maud stood at hand to help if anything were needed.