“They fell in,” Father Henry answered, as embarrassed as if it had been his doing.
“They fell—or jumped?” Keeping her distance, Frevisse circled ahead of them to open the gate.
“Fell in. With the sow. And her piglets,” Father Henry said, his voice shaking. He was distressed by more than the dirt and smell; under his tan he was white, and with good reason. A sow with piglets was vicious beyond any other yard-kept creature. If this one had reached either of the boys before someone grabbed them out, they would have been in need of far more than a scrubbing.
“Master Naylor and I snatched them out right enough,” Father Henry hastened to assure her, as if she could not see for herself they were untouched except by filth. “But it was a near thing.”
“She was grabbing for my foot,” Edmund declared. “She didn’t want Jasper. He doesn’t taste good.”
“Be quiet.” Frevisse shut the gate behind them and led the way toward the laundry shed. “How did they come to fall?”
“They were on the top rail of the fence, sitting there and safe enough it seemed. They’ve the grip and balance of monkeys, or so I thought. But one of them fell and grabbed the other and in they both went.”
“It wasn’t that way at all,” Edmund protested. “It wasn’t our fault!”
“The rail rolled,” Jasper said. “We couldn’t stay on.”
“The rail rolled?” Frevisse repeated blankly.
“The posts have holes through them.” Father Henry let loose the boys to show with his hands. “The rails go through the holes. You know. Four rails up between each set of posts, and the ends of the next set of rails going through the same holes.”
Like most of Father Henry’s explanations, it was less than clear but Frevisse knew the sort of fence he meant. The rails rested in the holes in the posts without being fastened. They could roll, but not very readily. The boys must have been jostling them badly and someone should have stopped them.
“We didn’t make it roll,” Edmund insisted. “It wasn’t our fault. It just did!”
“It doesn’t matter whether you did it on purpose or not,” Frevisse said unsympathetically. She was not sure at whom she was more angry: the boys for being so careless as to fall or the men for letting them sit there in the first place. Either way, the outcome was that they had to be cleansed of the dirt and stench when she would far rather have been praying for Domina Edith. Or seeing to almost anything else rather than them in their present state. Not bothering to temper her annoyance, she said, “What matters is that you’re dirty and you have to be washed. And you’re right. You are going to be scrubbed and very hard!”
Chapter 13
Edmund, Jasper, and Lady Adela sat on the low wall around the cloister garth, legs hanging over its grassy verge, brooding at a bright bed of gillyflowers in the morning sunshine. Except for the occasional thud of their heels against the stone, there was only the hum of bees among the flowers and the occasional whisper of skirts as a nun passed by.
They were bored. Again.
Lessons had been boring and Jenet was boring and St. Frideswide’s was boring and, “I still have raw places where they scrubbed me too hard yesterday,” Edmund muttered. He kicked a foot at a pale pink gillyflower just out of his reach and added for good measure, “I hate flowers.”
The three of them considered that for a while, and then Jasper said, “Mother loves flowers.” And after a while, wistfully, he added, “I wish Father would come for us.”
Edmund punched him in the shoulder and said with a fierceness that threatened tears, “You be quiet!”
“I don’t have to be!” Jasper’s voice rose to match Edmund’s and his temper with it. Anger was better than crying.
“If you fight,” Lady Adela warned, “they’ll send us all to our rooms!”
The threat made both boys hesitate. A fight would have made them both feel better, but to go back to their room meant going back to Jenet, who had finally stopped crying but now just sat, sighing and drooping, more boring than sitting on a wall. They both subsided, went back to staring at the garden and kicking the wall.
“I want to go out” Edmund muttered after a while. “There’s nothing to do here.”
“Nobody is going to take us out again, ever,” Jasper replied sadly. “And it wasn’t even our fault.” He was still aggrieved about that.
“We could go just into the orchard,” Edmund suggested. “Nobody would be very angry about that, if we didn’t stay long. And nobody would miss us anyway.” He swung around to hop off the wall but paused to see who was with him.
“They’ve moved the key,” Lady Adela said, aggrieved in her turn. “I can’t open the gate anymore.”
“And we promised Dame Frevisse we wouldn’t,” Jasper said.
Edmund swung back, and the thud of their heels and the bees’ hum were the only sounds for a while. And then Lady Adela said, “A forced oath isn’t binding.”
Edmund and Jasper looked at her.
“What?” Edmund asked.
Carefully, a little smugly, Adela explained, “If someone forces you to promise something, the promise doesn’t count because they forced it from you. An oath made under … under duress … isn’t binding.”
Edmund and Jasper considered that. It made sense. Jasper saw his brother start to grin and felt obliged to point out, “But the gate is still locked.”
“That one isn’t.” Edmund pointed to the door out of the cloister into the yard.
“We’ll be seen.”
“Maybe not. Come on.”
“If we’re seen, we’ll be sent to our room forever.”
“And if we’re not seen, we’ll be out and away. We’ll go the way they took us to wash us yesterday. There’s lots of places to hide and there has to be a back gate somewhere there. Adela will try it with me, won’t you, Adela?”
Lady Adela had already swung her legs back over the wall and slid to her feet. “Come on, Jasper. It’s better than sitting here,” she urged.
That was true enough. And it was better to try and fail than to be a coward afraid to try at all. A true knight always dared, no matter how doomed a chance might be.
Jasper tended to consider matters a little longer than his brother did but, a decision made, he was as bold or bolder. As rear guard, he watched behind them for anyone coming as Edmund and Lady Adela opened the door the smallest possible crack to look out and survey the yard.
“There’s nobody out there,” Edmund said.
“All’s right here,” Jasper whispered.
“Then go” Lady Adela said, pushing at Edmund impatiently. “Run, before somebody comes.”
Edmund ran, Lady Adela close behind him, and Jasper far last, having taken time to close the door to cover their escape. He followed Edmund’s lead to the side gate Father Henry and Dame Frevisse had taken them through yesterday. Beyond it, they were among the side yard’s clutter of small buildings. The only one they knew was the laundry, and that they gave a wide miss in memory of yesterday’s indignities but found their way, unnoticed by anyone who thought to stop them, to the nunnery’s postern gate.
It stood open. It was the common way in and out of the nunnery for the servants coming or going to the kitchen gardens or farther away to the village. No one was there; they went through unchallenged, paused long enough to decide which way to turn, and with no need to argue over it, ran along the nunnery wall, ducked their way among the garden plots, and disappeared into the trees along the stream at the bottom of the slope.
Out of the sunlight there was sudden coolness. The sound of the water drew them, and they found it, running brown and clear between shallow banks, spangled with sunlight through the leaves overhead, rippling over smooth mud and rocky shoals.
Remembering the anger roused by their wet clothing last time, they were satisfied at first to throw twigs and drop leaves into the water and challenge each other over whose would be first out of sight around the stream’s curve. But soon Edmund had a particularly fi
ne twig and as it swung away on the current toward the bend, in danger of going out of sight forever, he stripped off his shoes and hosen and waded in after it.
“My leaf!” Jasper protested the swamping of his newest craft by Edmund’s careless passing but Edmund ignored him, as was Edmund’s usual way when he was set on something. And then he realized that what Edmund was doing was better than what he was doing and, forgetting his leaf, Jasper stripped off his shoes and hosen, too, and followed him into the water.
“That isn’t fair!” Lady Adela protested from the bank. “I can’t! My dress will get wet!”
“Too bad,” Edmund called back without noticeable sympathy. “You’re a girl and it can’t be helped.”
Jasper saw Lady Adela’s eyes tighten with anger and said, “You can follow along the bank. Come on.”
She stuck out her tongue at him, but she came, along the narrow, deep-trodden path along the stream that showed other people came this way and often.
Around another bend the stream widened into a broad pool below steep banks. Edmund’s twig had already drifted out toward the middle and he would have followed it but Lady Adela called, “You’d better see if it’s too deep first.”
Edmund looked as if he were about to say that was a girl-thing to do, but Jasper dragged a long stick from a flotsam along the bank and poked out into the water. Hardly beyond where they stood, the stick went deep and still did not touch bottom. He and Edmund exchanged looks. Edmund shrugged. “Maybe we can learn to swim. Will told me he learned by being thrown into deep water. We could, too.”
“You’d better not,” Lady Adela said.
“We’re not girls. We won’t get our dresses wet,” Edmund taunted. But he went no farther. Instead, he took the stick from Jasper and hurled it out into the pool. The splash was very satisfying.
Adela in a temper at his taunt snatched up a short, heavy stick from the ground beside her and flung it into the water directly in front of him.
“He! That’s not fair!” Edmund yelled, stumbling back but still being spattered.
“Good!” Adela yelled at him. “You’re a boy and you’re rotten!” She grabbed up and threw another stick, splashing him even more satisfactorily.
“You’re getting me wet!”
“I mean to!”
“Stop it!”
She did not. Her third stick splashed between him and Jasper.
“Come on,” said Edmund. “Let’s push her in.”
He waded to the bank, Jasper after him, and scrambled out.
“You wouldn’t dare!” Lady Adela said, backing away.
“Yes, we would.”
She hesitated, decided he meant it, and turned and ran, off the path into the underbrush, almost instantly out of sight.
Edmund, still in a temper, would have gone after her, but Jasper stopped and called after him, “We don’t have our shoes.”
Edmund pulled up, thought about it, then shrugged it all away as a waste of time, settling for saying loudly at the woods, “We’re well rid of her anyway! And she’d better not tell anybody where we are either.” Then he added to Jasper, “Come on. I bet I can throw farther than you can.”
It was more fun to throw sticks from the top of the bank, and watch the ripple patterns break against each other and make little dazzles, of sunlight over the water. They came, of course, to tussling and then to daring each other to jump off the bank into the water, but they both knew neither of them dared to do it, Will’s story notwithstanding. Their cheerful arguing had come down to, “I will if you will.”—“You go first.”—when Jasper, knowing it was not going to happen, moved away to find another stick. He was saying, “Not until you do,” when Edmund’s shocked yell spun him around.
He was in time to see his brother pitch sprawling into the water. As Jasper stared, he disappeared in a great splash, surfaced flailing desperately, too choked to cry out again, and Jasper realized he had to do something. But before he could, he was hit a great blow in his back by two hands, sending him over the edge after his brother.
Once she had determined the children were nowhere in the cloister and made sure the gate into the orchard was locked and the key still hidden and had snapped at Jenet for being useless and set her to look through the cloister all over again, Frevisse crossed the yard to the guesthall, learned by quiet questioning of one of the servants that the children were not with Sir Gawyn or Maryon, and returned to stand angrily at the top of the guesthall steps while trying to decide what best to do next.
They were not in the cloister, she was sure of that, and they had not gone out the orchard gate. They were unlikely to have all three fallen down the well together and made no sound while they did it, and someone would have seen them if they had gone out the kitchen door or gotten as far as the outer yard. That left only the side yard and the postern gate. It was quite possible that three small, determined children could have skulked out that way unnoticed.
She should go back to Dame Claire for permission to go out, Frevisse knew, but that would take time and the sooner and more quietly the children could be brought back, the better. If she did not find them very soon, then Master Naylor would have to be asked for men to look for them, but it was too soon to raise that much alarm. She doubted they had gone far.
At the postern, looking out over the gardens and sun-bright fields, her hand shading her eyes, she tried to guess where the children might have gone; and saw the trees along the stream and knew where, as a child, she would have gone on such a warm afternoon.
The two servant women hoeing in the kitchen garden straightened as she passed them but to her question said they had only just now come out and had seen no children go by. Frevisse went on, still sure of where they most likely were, and at the wood edge came on Lady Adela sitting in the long grass trying to weave fading sweet cecily flowers into a wreath.
Relieved to see her, certain Edmund and Jasper must be nearby, Frevisse said, “Their stalks are too stiff to work well for that.”
Unaware of her until then, Lady Adela dropped her work and scrambled to her feet to curtsy and gasp, “I didn’t hear you come, Dame.”
“I could tell that,” Frevisse said, standing very straight and staring down at her sternly.
Lady Adela gulped, scooped the ragged wreath from the ground, and held it out to her. “For you, Dame,” she suggested hopefully.
“I don’t think so. Where are Edmund and Jasper?”
Lady Adela dropped the wreath again and pointed into the trees. “There. At the stream. They were mean to me,” she added.
“Show me where.”
Lady Adela hesitated. “Are we in trouble?”
“You know the answer to that. And in worse trouble the longer people are worried over you. Show me where they are.”
Lady Adela sighed at the inevitable and turned to lead the way in among the trees.
From somewhere not far away there was a cry and a great splash, followed an instant later by another splash.
“They’ve fallen in!” Lady Adela exclaimed. “Into the pool, and it’s deep!”
Frevisse pushed her aside and ran. Hampered by the underbrush and her skirts and veil, she fought her way through and, following the sounds, came out onto a path above the wide curve of a pool. Well out in the water, beating madly at it, sinking and fighting their way to air again, were Edmund and Jasper. There was no hope at all that they could reach the bank on their own, and Frevisse looked desperately around for a stick large enough to thrust out to them. There was nothing and with no choice she moved to where the bank was less steep, reached down to grab the back hem of her gown and pull it forward and up between her legs, bundling the skirts to above her knees. There was too much of it to tuck under her belt, she was forced to hold it with one hand, leaving her other hand free for balance as she waded into the water.
The bottom dropped steeply and was breast-high on her by the time she was in reach of Jasper. Stretching, she grabbed his out-flung hand and dragged him toward her, or
dering, “Don’t kick, don’t fight me, or we’ll both drown!”
She did not expect him, in his terror, to understand her but he did; he went limp and let her pull him to her. She swung him around to behind her, ordering, “Hold on to me!” and reached for Edmund just sinking out of sight. Only barely she managed to clutch his hair before he disappeared. Ruthlessly she dragged his head back up out of the water and toward her. He was conscious but gagging for air. He had swallowed too much water and needed help, but there was nothing she could do for him here. Shifting her hold to under his chin to pull him through the water with his face above it, and weighed down now with Jasper clinging to her gown in the back, she struggled back toward the bank.
Halfway there, she was unsure that she would make it. Her soaked clothing and the children were too heavy. They dragged her down and her legs no longer wanted to hold her up. But Lady Adela was weeping on the bank hard enough to break her own heart and anyone’s who heard her, and Jasper was gasping his way through every prayer he had ever learned in English and French and Latin, and Edmund was so utterly at the mercy of her strength that she struggled against her own aching need to collapse the few yards more to water shallow enough that Jasper’s trailing legs touched bottom and he stood up, releasing her from his weight. From there she was able to wrestle Edmund and her skirts to the bank, Jasper splashing beside her.
Ignoring Lady Adela’s sobbing and leaving Jasper to help himself, she pulled Edmund out of the water, rolled him onto his belly, and pounded on his back. He retched and gagged, water came out of his mouth, and he began to cry. Satisfied he was breathing sufficiently, Frevisse sank down in the soaking mess of her gown, fixed her gaze on Jasper’s white but unwailing face, and demanded, “How could you be such fools as to both fall in?”
He began to shudder, sank down on the ground, drew his knees up against his chest, and wrapped his arms around them, holding tightly to himself. “We didn’t fall,” he whispered. “Someone pushed us.”
Chapter 14
5 The Boy's Tale Page 12
