The Outlaw's Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  “Indeed yes. And I keep an eye around for any who may need to be warned off our territory. And advise which of our men should be sent where when time comes for collecting, that we not set up a pattern too easily guessed at."

  “In other words, Nicholas commands but it's through you that he knows what orders to give."

  Evan made a small gesture of agreement.

  “Evan!" one of the outlaws called from the edge of the clearing. “Nicholas wants you. Come."

  “If you'll pardon me?" Evan said, set his lute aside into a length of waxed canvas and wrapped it around for protection from the wet day, then ducked from the shelter and left Frevisse to her own thoughts.

  * * * * *

  By midday those thoughts had turned to worry. The persistent wet and chill had finally driven her to keep Sister Emma company by the fire, along with a huddle of outlaws. Now as the day went by it was becoming plain that Sister Emma was not imagining the depth of her discomfort. She could no longer breathe easily, and she huddled and shivered over the fire, complaining that she hurt; and when Frevisse ventured to lay a hand on her forehead below her wimple band, her skin was hot with fever.

  That was enough. Frevisse went purposefully in search of Nicholas, and found him beyond the rough bushes that hid one clearing from another. He was seated with Evan on logs under another canvas shelter, and by the looks on their faces as they saw her, they had been talking about her. As they both rose and bowed to her, she ignored Nicholas' greeting and said, “Sister Emma needs to be taken somewhere she can be warm and dry and nursed. Her cold has worsened into fever and will surely go to her lungs if she stays here longer."

  Nicholas hesitated.

  More forcefully Frevisse said, “We don't want her death on our hands. There'll be no pardon for you in that."

  Evan leaned to whisper in Nicholas' ear. Nicholas, diverted from Frevisse, looked at him disbelievingly and started to protest. Evan cut him off with, “By your leave, lady," to Frevisse, and drew Nicholas aside.

  Shivering a little, Frevisse moved nearer to the fire. It was larger than the one in the other clearing, with a better pile of drier logs beside it. At the far side of the shelter Evan spoke vigorously but too low for Frevisse to hear. Then Nicholas answered him, with more question than protest now, Frevisse thought, wishing she could hear what they were saying. Evan spoke again and this time, at the end, Nicholas nodded. When he came toward her, Evan behind him, he was smiling.

  Sweeping her a low bow, he said, “Your need is my command. Give me an hour, or maybe a little more, and there will be all you ask for and more."

  Frevisse looked past him to where Evan nodded in confirmation. Warm with relief, she said, “Then I'll thank you most greatly, cousin."

  With only a little more farewell, Nicholas left, taking one of his men with him. Frevisse picked up an armful of the dry logs and returned to Sister Emma's fire.

  Later, Evan brought them cold venison and hunks of soggy bread and mugs of ale. Frevisse ate willingly, but Sister Emma only shook her head. “I can't," she whimpered. “Everything hurts. And I can't breathe."

  The fact that her words stopped there instead of running on increased Frevisse's worry. When Nicholas finally returned, she sprang to her feet in relief. He cast a frowning glance at Sister Emma. “She's no better?"

  “She's worse. What have you brought?"

  “Not brought. Found. But you'll have to ride."

  “How far?" She doubted Sister Emma would be able to do much.

  “Four miles maybe. But there's a house at the end of it, dry beds and warm food and folk to see to her. It's an easy ride, and we can haste once we're to the road."

  “Then let's go as soon as may be. She's worsening, I think."

  Sister Emma barely protested when Nicholas, finally realizing she was not even good for walking, picked her up and carried her. Wet branches whipped and spattered them; rain dripped from leaves overhead; the ground squelched underfoot. Frevisse was soaked through to the skin when finally they came out on the wide way where they had left the horses, and Sister Emma was surely no better.

  Hal was waiting. As Nicholas put Sister Emma down on her feet, she swayed and said pathetically, “I feel awful. And now I'm wet clear through. And cold."

  “She can't ride alone," Frevisse said, putting an arm around her to steady her. Sister Emma sagged against her, crying softly.

  “You, Hal," Nicholas said quickly. “Take her horse and I'll hand her up."

  Hal, looking harassed, handed Frevisse the other reins, hesitated over how to manage Sister Emma's box saddle, and finally swung up awkwardly behind it.

  “Oh, this isn't right at all," Sister Emma moaned as Nicholas took her by the waist and heaved her up into her seat. “I can't ride with a man."

  “We're taking you somewhere you'll be warm," Frevisse reassured her as she tossed her reins to Nicholas. He mounted and she quickly swung up to sit behind his saddle.

  On the highway again, where they could ride on the grassy verge, they cantered to hurry the journey. The rain had finally eased, but the day's chill was deepening and the heavy overcast made the hour seem later than early afternoon. Sister Emma collapsed against Hal, sunk too far in misery even to notice the impropriety of leaning against a man. Frevisse kept silent behind Nicholas, yearning to urge the pace. And not soon, but sooner than she had set herself to endure, Nicholas said, “A quarter mile now maybe. Not more."

  She stirred herself to look around. They were entering a village, the houses shuttered, eaves dripping, no one in sight in the muddy street. Frevisse would have been willing for this to be their goal. Even the down-at-the-corners alehouse with its bush thrust out over the street looked inviting after the rude camp in the woods. As they rode past, the half-open door gave a glimpse of firelight and a crowded room, and a drift of hot, ale-scented air wafted to them.

  “Beyond the village?" she asked.

  “Not far. You'll be made comfortable there. Master Payne likes his comforts and has the money for it, so you'll lack nothing."

  “He knows about you?"

  “We do business together, clear and honest. I told you I've not broken the law these three years. But I have to live somehow and he's my way. Don't go asking questions about me because he won't have the answers. We're friends enough he'll do this for me, and send a messenger to Thomas Chaucer with your letter when you've written it."

  “He's agreed to all this? How did you explain Sister Emma and I being in your ‘keeping’?"

  Nicholas shrugged. “He's not to home right now, so I didn't need to explain."

  “You persuaded his people to take us in despite him being gone?"

  “Persuaded his wife. She knows I have dealings with him, and doesn't have to talk things to death to understand them like some do. Here's the turning."

  As the highway swung leftward, a smaller road turned right. Another hundred yards or so along that byway they came in sight of a half-timbered gatehouse set in a low wall running between outbuildings. They were expected; a man was there to pull the gate open as they approached. He stood aside to let them pass and pushed it shut behind them as they rode on into the manor yard.

  The house across the yard rose a little higher than its surroundings. Half-timbered like the gatehouse, white-plastered over its daub between the rain-darkened timbers, it was two storeys its entire, four-bay length. A plain house, but ample. And new, Frevisse guessed. Built within the last ten years, with glass in some of the upper windows. And there were at least three fireplaces; their smoking chimneys rose above the far side of the roof. Warmth and food were very near to hand.

  Their coming had been watched for from the house, too. The door was opened as they reached the porchless front door and servants came out to hold the horses. Hal lifted Sister Emma to the ground, and Frevisse slipped down from behind Nicholas. Sister Emma feverishly brushed away Hal's hands and collapsed against Frevisse, coughing from somewhere deep in her chest. Frevisse, praying this was not as b
ad as it was beginning to seem, urged her toward the door.

  A woman waited there, a step safely back inside, away from the rain. She was small in height and bones, a little woman with a worried face, dressed in an old gown faded to a soft blue-lavender under a plain, sensible apron. But her hair and neck were covered by a white, full wimple and starched, layered veils which like her dress were of good linen. Frevisse guessed she was Mistress Payne even before she said in a quick, fluttered voice, “Enter, my ladies, and be welcome. We've a room all readied for you. And dry clothing. Please, come in."

  Her gaze went over Frevisse's shoulder to Nicholas, still sitting on his horse in the rain. “And you'll... come in?" she asked. She seemed uncertain if she wanted him to accept her invitation.

  Nicholas shook his head. “I've matters to see to. Tell Master Payne I'll see him when he's back." He looked at Frevisse questioningly.

  Frevisse nodded. “I'll write as soon as I have chance. Tomorrow surely if not today."

  Nicholas nodded back his satisfaction and gestured to Hal to mount behind him. Frevisse opened her mouth to protest. They were taking her horse. But she held quiet. It was too much trouble; it might make too much trouble. As the two men rode away, and a servant led Sister Emma's horse toward the stables, Frevisse gratefully gave Sister Emma over to a servant woman waiting to take her, and turned her own attention to Mistress Payne.

  Chapter Six

  There were half a score of village men crowded in the Wheatsheaf, the village alehouse, this rainy afternoon. So early in the summer men would rather have been in their fields, seeing to the weeding of the winter corn, or else in their cottage gardens tending to their lesser crop. Or even in the barns, threshing the last of the past year's harvest. But the year had been cold and wet, and what little wheat or barley or oats there had been was long since gone. There was nothing in the barns to thresh, nor much left in the way of livestock. Talk was that if this year went on as it had begun – more rainy days than dry and hardly enough sun to bring the seed up – then next winter there would be hunger even deeper than the last.

  “I've to spend what good weather there is in the fields. There's not been dry days enough to let me mend my roof, and the thatch is that beaten down there's rain come through t'loft at back," one thin-shouldered man complained to his fellows gathered on the benches near the hearth.

  “Still," one man noted, “It's not like you'd aught there to be getting wet. Excepting floorboards. Unless you've more set away than the rest of us."

  “I've as much in my loft as you've in your head. So it's empty enough."

  Laughter grumbled around the circle. In a corner, obscured in the haze of smoke swirled down from the smokehole and the rushlights set here and there around the room, Nicholas sat with his hands wrapped around a second pot of ale. “Poor old gabbers, their brains reach no higher than their weeds or farther than their hedgerows."

  “It's life or death to them, after all," Evan, his first pot of ale hardly tasted. “And to us, for that matter. We eat the bread their grain grows for. Or don't eat if it doesn't grow."

  “There's always bread for the rich. And so long as the rich have bread, so do the likes of us. We've better ways to life and death, and a more certain profit at the end of it than these poor fools. Here's to our pardons."

  The men touched the rims of their mugs together. The Wheatsheaf did not run to better than cheap pottery, but the alewife never watered her brew, and no one ever asked much about Nicholas or any of his men when they came there. Otherwise, it was no more than a small and dirty village alehouse, with nothing else to recommend it – except Beatrice. She had come that way a few years back and stayed on because she had nowhere better to go, and Old Nan the alewife needed a sturdy serving wench now that she was not so young herself. The two women got on well enough with each other, and Beatrice got on with any of the village men who fancied her and had the pence to pay for it.

  Now she came carrying a jug toward Nicholas and Evan out of the fug of ale and smoke. She was a wide-hipped, ample-breasted woman with a froth of fair hair that hazed around her uncovered head. Her age was hard to tell, but her first youth was gone; a sag was overtaking her softness and there were lines in her fair skin that had not been there a while ago. But she was still a woman worth the holding, and good humored in the bargain; and while she took pence from the other men, she was always Nicholas' for the asking. Not that he did not gift her handsomely from time to time, as fortune favored him.

  He wrapped an arm around her rump, grinning up at her as she bent to pour his ale. She smiled back, leaning into his hold, resting a soft breast against his shoulder.

  “You here for the night?" she asked. “I know where there's a dry bed you're welcome to warm."

  “And no bed I'd rather," Nicholas answered. “But Evan is of a mind the men will take it ill if they're left to the rain while I lie easy so I'd best be back. We've something afoot and I need them happy."

  “You need me happy, too." Beatrice leaned nearer, smelling warm and womanly. Nicholas ran his hand down to her hem and under the edge of her dress to her ankle and began to work his way up.

  Evan reached past him to take the ale jug and pour his own mug full. “What's Will Colfoot doing here? That's him in the corner, isn't it, with the other fellow I don't know?"

  Not bothering to look around, Beatrice said, “That's him, and his yeoman. Doesn't bother with the likes of this place often, but happen he's making his monthly circuit and tired of the rain."

  While his hand went on with its business, Nicholas was looking past her to the other corner. “Will Colfoot? I don't know him, do I? Who is he?"

  “A franklin from along toward Burford and other places round about."

  “A franklin?" Nicholas looked at Evan with roused interest. “One of ours?"

  “No. He's not safe. He has a temper, and a nasty way with anyone who crosses him so much as the breadth of a nailhead," Evan answered.

  Nicholas returned his attention to Colfoot. “But if he's a franklin, the inside of his purse knows what coins look like, sure as sinning. What do you know about him, Beatrice? How much does he carry when he travels, and how many servants are with him?"

  Evan stirred uneasily, but Beatrice leaned more heavily into Nicholas, still trying to hold his attention while she answered, “He carries enough to keep him comfortable, and he likes his comforts. He has a single yeoman with him always. That's the fellow at the table with him. They're both armed, and don't you be thinking of making trouble here. Old Nan values her reputation."

  “And Lord knows she's had one in her day," Nicholas jibed. “From what tales I've heard tell–"

  Beatrice poked him warmly in the ribs and sat down on his thigh. “I'd not be mentioning those tales where she could hear you. She still has an arm that can set a man's ear to ringing if she gets a clear swing." She settled in closer, her softness pressing against him. “Now you kiss me and not be looking at a fat old franklin or I'll think your fancy's straying."

  She proceeded then - with Nicholas willing – to make sure she was the only thing he was noticing, until Old Nan squealed at her from the kitchen doorway to shift herself, that there were others that paid more and needed waiting on. With a final smothering kiss, Beatrice obliged. Nicholas' attention went back to Will Colfoot.

  “One yeoman, a fat franklin, and a fatter purse. That's easy pluckings."

  “That's a fool's wishful thinking," Evan retorted, but softly. “They're both armed. The yeoman is taller than you and younger than either of us. And that bulk across Colfoot's shoulders looks more muscle than fat to me."

  “Then one hale yeoman and a not-so-fat franklin," Nicholas returned. “The point is, his purse is fat, for a surety. You don't dress in burgundy wool if you're pressed for coin, and that's as fine a stretch of cloth he's wearing as I've seen this many a day."

  “These are our home roads. You'd not be such a fool as to stir trouble on them. We need no hue and cry after us, nor to risk ou
r pardons at this near date."

  Nicholas valued Evan's cleverness. But cleverness that interfered with sport was boring. Nicholas jammed his elbow into Evan's arm. “Why don't you ever have a go at Beatrice? She's a willing armful. Take some of that stiffness out of your backbone and put it lower, where it'll do you some good."

  Evan glanced aside at him. His expression was edged with a variety of answers, but he made none of them. After a moment staring away down into the darkness of his ale, he asked, “Your cousin will still write the letter to Chaucer, now she's out from under your hand?"

  Nicholas made a dismissive sound. “She'll write it. She's given her word, and her neck is as stiff as yours when she's pledged herself to something. I remember that much about her. Lord!" Nicholas snorted with laughter. “A nun. That suits her."

  “How do you mean?"

  “Because when I knew her the little while I was in Chaucer's household – and a duller place you wouldn't want to be abandoned in – she and her uncle were enough of a matched set to curdle your blood. So fond of their own wits that nobody else could abide their cleverness. No, she'll keep her word now she's given it. She's too proud to do otherwise. They're as proud a pair as you'll find this side of the king's court, she and her uncle." Nicholas' voice had a bitter edge.

  “So maybe she went to God because she couldn't stomach orders from anyone less," Evan suggested with a grin.

  Nicholas laughed out loud. “Aye. You've probably the right of it there." He fixed Evan with a look. “What do you care about her anyway?

  “She's our way to Chaucer and out of here. I want to know how sure we can be of her."

  “If the thing can be done, she'll do it." NIcholas took a long quaff of the ale. “By Christmas I'll be an honest man, with the greenwood and my merry men far behind me. You certain sure you don't want to be leader after me? You've a knack for the life."

  “I've a knack for other things, too, and most of them safer. Besides, the pardon is for all the band. There'll be no more ‘merry men’."