5 The Boy's Tale

by Frazer, Margaret

  “Jenet has collapsed. The funeral was too much for her. She came back in hysterics and is in the infirmary, asleep with something Sister Thomasine gave her. Tibby is watching after the boys. Do you want Tibby responsible for them outside the cloister?”

  “I’ll miss Compline. And be late to bed.”

  “I give you leave for it.”

  Frevisse realized that the objections she was making against going were out of proportion to the matter. She was trying, she realized, to stay as far as she could from a problem for which she had no solution and which worried her both because of her helplessness and the danger there was in it. But at least she knew the danger and no one else in the cloister did. She bent her head and said far more evenly than she felt, “I’ll gladly do it.”

  The boys were undressed down to their shirts and hosen, enduring under protest Tibby’s attempts to wash their necks. Unnoticed for the moment in the doorway, Frevisse watched Edmund duck grimacing away from the washcloth despite Tibby’s grip on one ear and writhe as if the water running down his back was boiling oil until, exasperated, Tibby snapped, “You don’t do this for your Jenet, do you? You stand still for her, I warrant, or she clouts you.”

  Edmund exclaimed indignantly, “Nobody ever clouts us!”

  “And I’m sure I believe that, don’t I? Not clout silly little boys? Who’d not?” Tibby said scornfully and pushed the back of his head, assuredly not as hard as she would have one of her brothers, but Edmund jerked away and rounded on her angrily.

  “Don’t you dare push me! Nobody pushes me like that! We’re—”

  “—very loud in a very quiet place,” Frevisse said. And when all three looked at her, she added mildly, “Is this the way Mistress Maryon wants you to behave?”

  Jasper, less angry than his brother, grasped her warning before Edmund did and looked instantly discomfited. Edmund, caught between his rage at Tibby and indignation at being interrupted, was less quick but caught her meaning soon enough to snap his mouth shut over whatever he had been going to say, flushing a red nearly as dark as his hair.

  Pretending she noticed nothing of it, Frevisse said, “And now you have to dress again because I’m taking you both to see Sir Gawyn.”

  There was no trouble after that in their cooperating with Tibby. While Frevisse waited, they shrugged into their jerkins and found where they had kicked their shoes under the bed and let their hair be combed to tidiness with resolutely no fidgeting, then stood straight and still while Frevisse looked them over and pronounced them fit.

  “And Lady Adela is to go with you, since she’s become your friend,” she added.

  They had no objection to that either, so long as they were going to see Sir Gawyn and miss their bedtime in the bargain.

  Dame Perpetua had Lady Adela tidy and waiting in the cloister. The girl curtsied prettily to Frevisse and then to Dame Perpetua, as mild-mannered as ever. But Frevisse caught the corner of a glance she gave Edmund and Jasper and knew the girl was as eager as they were.

  The boys had not been in the yard since their precipitous arrival. Now, as they crossed it, Edmund swerved aside toward the well. Frevisse caught his arm, bringing him along with the rest.

  “I only want to look down it,” he protested.

  “We’re expected at the guesthall and it would be rude to be late.”

  “My looking down the well won’t make us so much later,” Edmund insisted. “Hardly later at all. Not so late that anyone would notice.”

  “People notice what you particularly don’t want them to notice,” Frevisse said. “That’s something you’d best remember.” She barely kept herself from adding, “my lord.”

  Their father might be a next-to-nobody, but it was clearly their mother’s royal blood that told in both boys when they were crossed. “And besides, it’s too late now, we’re here,” she added as she bustled them up the stairs into the guesthall.

  Will rose from a joint stool outside Sir Gawyn’s closed door as they approached. He bowed to Edmund and Jasper and then to Dame Frevisse and Lady Adela, before cocking a teasing eye at Jasper and saying, “I’ve something for you that you lost, my lord.”

  Jasper looked puzzled. Will reached behind his back, drew something from his belt, and held it out to him. Jasper exclaimed, “My dagger!” and took it from him eagerly. “Hery took it in the fight! I thought it was lost!”

  Will laid a big hand over Jasper’s on the hilt, making the boy look up at him. “I found it in Hery’s hand, when he was dead,” he said quietly. “Don’t ever forget how he and Hamon died to keep you safe.”

  Solemnly Jasper met his look. “I won’t forget.”

  “Was there blood on it?” Edmund asked. “Did he use it on anyone?”

  Frevisse frowned, both at the question and at the eagerness on all three children’s faces for the answer. But Will seemed only amused, taking their bloody-mindedness in good part. “Aye, there was blood enough. He’d done someone with it.”

  The dagger was clean now, but the children gazed on it with an awe more properly reserved to holy relics, and Frevisse said briskly, “I think we’d best go in now.”

  Will, taking the hint, rapped at the door and opened it for them. Edmund entered readily enough, and Lady Adela with him, but at the last moment Jasper hesitated, an odd expression on his face, as if he thought he might be sick but did not know for sure. Before Frevisse could urge him on, Will leaned close and said to him, too low for anyone in the room to hear, “It’s none too bad, my lord. He was up and walking a ways this afternoon. And the wound is bandaged. There’s nought to be bothered over.”

  Jasper glanced at him with brimming gratitude and went in. Frevisse, ashamed of not having understood as quickly as Will had, murmured, “Thank you,” and followed, Will bowing her through the doorway.

  Because fresh air was known to be bad for any sickness or hurt, the room was shuttered and in shadow even on so fine an evening. A candle burning on the table beside the bed gave the only light, as well as a warm color to Sir Gawyn’s face. He was sitting far more up against the pillows and looked marginally better than he had this morning, laughing at something Edmund had just said and chiding, “But you shouldn’t say so, my lord. They’ve given us good shelter and comfort here.”

  “Dame Frevisse,” Maryon said before Edmund could go farther about whatever he had complained.

  Frevisse indicated with a silent movement of her hand and head that she could be ignored for this while, and went to stand in the shadows across the little room. The visit was for Sir Gawyn and the children; she did not need to be considered part of it.

  Edmund had already climbed onto the bed to sit by Sir Gawyn. The knight now put out a hand and drew Jasper to the bedside. His hand on the boy’s arm, his other hand on Edmund’s knee, he smiled at Lady Adela and asked, “And who is this lovely lady come with you?”

  “Lady Adela,” Edmund said casually. “She’s been here in the nunnery for years and years.”

  “She’s Lord Warenne’s younger daughter,” Maryon said more formally.

  Sir Gawyn bent his head to her as respectfully as if she were a grown woman. “My lady. If ever I may serve you.”

  Lady Adela bent her head in return and said with equal courtesy, “I thank you, good sir.”

  Impatient with such courtesies, Edmund asked, “Does it hurt much? Your wound? Is it very bad? Where is it?”

  “Here.” Sir Gawyn indicated his left shoulder. “And no, it hardly hurts at all anymore, unless I forget and move the wrong way. But it’s ill to talk of wounds around ladies. It distresses them.”

  Edmund scorned that. “Mistress Maryon has been tending you. She’s not bothered.”

  “And Lady Adela doesn’t care,” Jasper put in. “She likes that sort of thing. We’ve told her all about the battle.”

  “It was a little small for a battle,” Sir Gawyn said.

  “A bloody skirmish!” Edmund enthused. “And more of them than of us!” He bounced to his knees on the bed a
nd struck vigorously with an imaginary sword at an imaginary foe somewhere behind Sir Gawyn’s head.

  Sir Gawyn winced at the jerking of the mattress and loosed Jasper to take hold of his shoulder. Edmund, chagrined, immediately sank down to stillness beside him, eyes wide on his face. Jasper, pale as Sir Gawyn suddenly was, pressed closer to the bed, a frightened hand laid on the knight’s thigh. Mistress Maryon started to say something angrily, but Sir Gawyn held up his hand enough to stop her.

  “It’s all right. He didn’t mean it.” He drew a deep, steadying breath and smiled at Edmund. “But don’t bounce again, all right?”

  Edmund shook his head. “I’ll be still as anything. It really does hurt, doesn’t it?”

  “It really does hurt,” Sir Gawyn agreed, then added with mock sternness, “but only sometimes. Like when you bounce.”

  Carefully, as if afraid the words might jar him too much, too, Jasper asked, “When will you be better? When are we going to go? Tomorrow?”

  A little shortly, Sir Gawyn said, “Not tomorrow.”

  From her place at the foot of the bed, Maryon put in, “Nor the next day even. Not until he’s strong enough to ride. You’ll have to go on being patient and doing what Dame Frevisse and the other nuns tell you for the while.”

  All three children made faces at that, and Lady Adela declared, “I want to come, too, when you go.”

  “You can’t,” Edmund said. “It’s our adventure.”

  “It could be mine, too.”

  “No, it can’t.”

  “It can!”

  Into their escalating anger, Maryon said smoothly, “This was a quest laid on them by their—lord and they have to see it out as he wished, companioned with none but those he sent with them at the start.”

  “A quest,” Lady Adela said, awed. “For what?”

  “They’re not allowed to say. That was laid on them with the quest itself.”

  A little silence at the burden of honor and duty that carried with it fell over all the children, until Jasper said wistfully, “Still, I’d like to go on with it instead of being here.”

  “When we do,” Sir Gawyn said, “and the quest is complete”—he had quickly picked up Maryon’s version of their journey—“I’ll show you a cave where a dragon used to dwell.”

  “One of Merlin’s dragons?” Edmund asked eagerly.

  “Alas, not so grand, I fear. Only a common, cattle-eating dragon, but a dragon nonetheless.”

  “You’ve never killed a dragon, have you?” Jasper asked.

  “I’ve never had occasion to, no,” Sir Gawyn said.

  “But you would have if you’d had the chance,” Edmund said firmly.

  “I would indeed,” Sir Gawyn agreed.

  “Just as you killed our enemies,” Edmund declared. “Because you’re a true knight.” He looked at everyone else for their agreement. They all nodded, Jasper and Lady Adela vigorously, Mistress Maryon holding in a warm smile.

  The expression on Sir Gawyn’s face was less easily read, but Edmund suddenly said indignantly, “This shouldn’t be your room. You shouldn’t be here.”

  “No?” Sir Gawyn asked, bewildered.

  Lady Adela understood and said eagerly, “You’ve been wounded on a quest. You’re supposed to be in a fine room in a grand bed hung with tapestries, with fair ladies waiting on you. That’s how it is in the stories. In all the stories.”

  “And this isn’t fine at all,” Edmund pointed out. “And you’ve only Mistress Maryon and Will to see to you.”

  Sir Gawyn shut his eyes, his face drawn taut with sudden pain. He reached toward his shoulder again, but Frevisse guessed that, vulnerable as Sir Gawyn now was, the pain came from somewhere deeper in him. In all likelihood, Sir Gawyn was what so many men were—a landless knight dependent for his living on his service in someone else’s household, with his best hope for the future an annuity given for life by his lord. Or in Sir Gawyn’s case, by Queen Katherine. But from what Maryon had said, it was unlikely that Queen Katherine was going to be in a position to be granting any such thing, now that her secret was betrayed. And anyone known to have served her would have difficulty taking service elsewhere, even if able of body, which Sir Gawyn was not likely ever to be again. He was very far from anything like the romances of adventure and chivalry that were clearly the boys’ idea of knighthood, and the children’s blithe words had jarred his harsh reality against what he would never have.

  But Maryon with a forced lightness that betrayed how much she understood—probably far more than Frevisse did—said, “Then I suppose we should say he’s in the Castle of Cruel Duress, denied what should be his by right as a brave knight.”

  That appealed readily to the children. Edmund and Jasper nodded complete agreement and Lady Adela murmured happily, “Cruel Duress. Cruel Duress’s.”

  “And all we need now,” said Maryon, “is the tale of how he escapes from here.”

  She moved to stand at the foot of the bed, drawing everyone’s gaze to her. Frevisse knew, from other times, how charming Maryon could be at need. Now she was clearly set to charm not only the children but Sir Gawyn if she could, and for that her Welsh imagination served her well as she spun her story of his escape from St. Frideswide’s and his adventures afterwards, making it more fantastical as she went along by sometimes asking one of the children, “And what do you think happened next?” and weaving their wild and then wilder ideas into her telling.

  In the candlelight, her eyes bright with the story, she looked younger than her years that after all were not so very many. Too plagued with the problems and possible trouble she had brought into St. Frideswide’s, Frevisse had stopped seeing her as a person. Now she found herself acknowledging that in her narrow-boned, dark Welsh way Maryon was lovely. Lovely enough to have married by now if she had chosen to, even if she could manage only a small dowry. How old was she really? What hopes did she have for her life? How much was she in love with Sir Gawyn? And did he love her? Frevisse could not tell, but relaxed deeply into his pillows, he was mostly watching Maryon as she talked, and the grimness—or was it only sadness?—that still showed in the set of his mouth eased from time to time when he smiled and once he even laughed at some particularly fantastical turn in his supposed adventures.

  Will had left his watch and come to lean, arms crossed, in the doorway, his deep-creased face eased with amusement, the candlelight catching a gleam from his bright hair. The children, all sitting on the bed now beside Sir Gawyn, listened with glowing delight while the story came to a castle high in the Welsh mountains, all in ruins except when the full moon shone on it, and for that while, that little while, it was whole and beautiful and full of lords and ladies and great wealth. “But if you linger past that hour,” Maryon said, her voice throbbing deep and low, “or try to carry away more gold and jewels than your cap can hold—you did come wearing your caps, didn’t you?” Three young hands rose dismayed to their bare heads. “If you do that or stay too long and the moon passes from full, the castle fades to ruins again and you disappear forever from the earth.”

  “Not until just the next full moon?” Lady Adela asked.

  “Forever,” Maryon said, making the word toll doom.

  “And what does Sir Gawyn do? He doesn’t disappear forever, does he?” Edmund asked.

  “We’d have no more story then, would we? No, Sir Gawyn …”

  The story went on but Frevisse’s attention strayed again. She was tired. The nuns went to bed directly after Compline. In summer that was before the sun went down, which had been difficult for her when she was a novice, but she had long since grown used to it. She discreetly covered a yawn. The candle was nearly burned out, piddling around itself in the holder. When it began to gutter, she would tell the children it was time to go.

  She covered another yawn. Her mind completely drifted from the story now, she watched as a long fragment of wax left standing up taller than the candle flame began to bend toward the heat. It had escaped its fate this long but no l
onger. Slow and slow it bowed over, wasting away in the candle flame …

  “But in the next valley he found his home at last and all his people waiting for him and there was an end,” Maryon said suddenly. “Now off Sir Gawyn’s bed and away with Dame Frevisse to your own. That’s all there is.”

  Even to Frevisse’s lax attention, the ending had come abruptly. The children, vastly indignant, set up a clamor of protest. “You never said anything about valleys! What home? What people?”

  “But the treasure! He hadn’t found the treasure yet!”

  “You didn’t finish the part about—”

  Maryon scooted them all off the bed. “Maybe there’ll be more to tell another time but that’s enough tonight. Go on. It’s late. Away with you.”

  Will and Sir Gawyn were taken as much off guard as Frevisse and the children, but Will rallied, stepped aside from the doorway with a gesture that urged them through it, and said, “She’s right, you know. Sir Gawyn is tired and so are the rest of us.”

  “We’re not tired!” Edmund declared.

  “You will be by the time you’ve reached bed,” Frevisse said. “Will, pray you, see them to the yard. I need a word with Mistress Maryon.”

  That disconcerted Maryon, but she followed Frevisse from the room. As Will shepherded the children away across the hall, they moved away from the door to Sir Gawyn’s room and Frevisse asked, low-voiced, “What happened? You’re pale. Are you ill?” All that was needed now to make matters more difficult was for Maryon to sicken with something.

  In the same near-whisper, Maryon answered, “No, I’m well enough. It was the candle.” She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself even though there was no evening chill.

  “The candle?” Frevisse asked, completely puzzled.

  “You saw it. It made a winding sheet. Didn’t you see? That bit of wax standing up beside the flame? A winding sheet.”

  Frevisse had never seen her so shaken. “I don’t understand.”