The last was a cry at their backs as Sir Gawyn dug his heels into the horse and set it into a canter toward the gateway, guiding it more with his legs than the reins.
Trying to twist his head around to see Sir Gawyn’s face, Jasper cried out, “You didn’t do any of that!”
Sir Gawyn didn’t answer. They were through the gate, the canter rising to a gallop across the outer yard for the open gateway beyond. Jasper clung two-handed to the saddle, still straining around to see Sir Gawyn. Why would Dame Frevisse say it if it wasn’t true? “You didn’t!” he cried again, begging Sir Gawyn to agree. But he didn’t, and Jasper’s last, “You didn’t!” was more with despair than pleading. Sir Gawyn wouldn’t say it, and the glimpse Jasper had of his face told him why.
They were through the outer gateway, were making the wide turn into the road that here ran between the nunnery’s outer wall and deep ditch with hedge beyond it. There was no one left to stop Sir Gawyn’s escape now, and Jasper didn’t plan what he did then. It was partly fear, partly outrage at Sir Gawyn’s treachery, partly a cold, brilliant anger that came, out of all proportion to his size and years, with the full realization of what Sir Gawyn had done and how Sir Gawyn was using him. He reached left-handed across himself, below Sir Gawyn’s arm around him, grabbed his own small dagger from its sheath and stabbed it hard as he could into the horse’s shoulder in front of the saddle.
The horse screamed, flung sideways in frenzy away from the pain, and at full gallop was somehow falling, the ground gone from beneath its hooves. The green mass of the hedge smashed toward them from the side and behind him Jasper felt Sir Gawyn twist sideways in a desperate wrench.
And then nothing.
Chapter 23
They carried Sir Gawyn back to the guesthall and laid him on the bed that had been his these days past. By then “Dame Claire was there, and Father Henry, but as the men stepped back from the bed it was obvious that it was Father Henry who was needed. Dark, frothed blood oozed from the corner of Sir Gawyn’s mouth each time his chest labored at a breath, telling he was badly, badly broken somewhere too deep inside to be helped, so that the bleeding cuts across his face from the hedge did not matter, nor that his shoulder wound had been opened by the fall and bright blood was seeping through his doublet in a spreading stain. He would not live long enough to make tending to them worth anyone’s while, even his. Frevisse after showing the men where to lay him went back against the wall beyond the foot of the bed, not wanting to see him but unable to bring herself to leave.
For mercy’s sake he should have been unconscious but he was not. As Dame Claire bent to wipe away the blood running from his mouth, his eyes searched past her among the strangers’ faces around him. He seemed able to move only his eyes and his hurtfully breathing chest until he whispered, “Jasper,” and stirred one hand.
Master Naylor came forward, bent over him so Sir Gawyn could see him clearly, and laid a quieting hand over his. “He’s not hurt. He was only stunned and the breath knocked out of him by the fall. He’s unhurt. Someone has taken him back to the nunnery.”
Sir Gawyn’s eyes closed and his lips moved silently in what looked like prayer.
Master Naylor leaned nearer. “You saved him, twisting the way you did to come between him and the hedge. You saved him with that.”
Sir Gawyn’s eyes opened. “You saw?” he whispered.
“You nearly rode me down by the outer gate. I was there. I saw.”
Father Henry had been laying out the necessary things on the table across the room from the box he had run to fetch when he had realized what was happening. Now as he put the stole around his neck and turned toward the bed, his prayers, mumbled in a rapid undertone, became audible if still not comprehensible, and the men around the bed and the crowd of servant faces at the door drew back. They had no place in what was coming and knew enough to leave. In the agony of her own helplessness, Dame Claire hesitated until almost last, then withdrew, too.
But when Frevisse and Master Naylor moved to follow her, Sir Gawyn whispered hoarsely, an odd, thin gurgle to his voice, “No. Dame Frevisse, stay. And—I don’t know your name.”
“Roger Naylor, the priory’s steward.”
“Roger Naylor. You and Dame Frevisse. You stay and hear this. Someone should hear. Besides the priest. Someone who can tell …”
He began to choke on his own blood. Frevisse went to him quickly, rolled him on his side and held a cloth to catch what drained from his mouth, wiped his lips clear, and eased him to his back again. Sir Gawyn groaned and, eyes shut, whispered, “I wish to confess my sins,” beginning what had to be done before absolution and the last rite could purify his soul.
But it was maybe to Father Henry least of all he spoke, with the need to make someone understand what he had done and why as strong or stronger than the need to save his soul. The words came as broken as his breathing, and his eyes stayed shut, his hand still now, all of what little strength remained in him given over to the words.
“I sold my honor to someone working for the duke of Gloucester. In the queen’s household. For money I promised that when the time came I’d do what I could to give the children into his hands. And when the time came, I couldn’t keep the promise. I broke it and kept my oath to their lady mother instead. I meant to take them to Wales. We killed those five men at that stream, and Hery and Hamon died, because I kept my promise to her.” The cruel, wheezing effort to breathe overtook him, held back the words. No one touched him or spoke. More weakly, but still determined, he went on. “And then they told me my arm was gone. That I wouldn’t use it well again. That meant there was nothing … left … for me … except poverty. Except … Gloucester would pay … to be rid of the children … his man had said. He’d said if Gloucester couldn’t have them, then they were better … dead …”
Frevisse wiped blood away again. Master Naylor, because Sir Gawyn seemed unable to go on, said, “So you thought to have them killed.”
“Their lives or mine,” Sir Gawyn agreed. “I knew … Will … wouldn’t …”
“So you told Colwin to do it,” Frevisse said.
A slight twitch of Sir Gawyn’s head agreed.
“And Will found out.” Frevisse said it because she did not think Sir Gawyn could. “He realized Colwin made the boys fall into the pigsty and that’s what they quarreled over at the stables, but he couldn’t change Colwin’s mind. And when Colwin followed the children yesterday, Will followed him but was too late to stop him, struck him unconscious, and when we had left the stream, stripped off his clothes and drowned him in the pool. If I hadn’t come, Will would have saved them, but I came and Will stayed hidden, hoping to keep your secret.”
“Yes.” Sir Gawyn drove the word from himself, struggled for breath, and said, “Prayers for Will.”
“As many as I can make,” Frevisse said. “I promise.” But there was more she had to know. Willing Sir Gawyn to go on answering her, she said, “It wasn’t that easy, was it? Colwin regained consciousness enough to fight being drowned and that’s how Will’s shirt was ripped.”
“Yes. He told me …”
“He told you what he’d done because he was your squire, you were his knight. He wanted you to stop.”
Sir Gawyn’s nod was small, painful.
“But now Will was a danger to you as well as a traitor, so you killed him last night. When everyone had settled for the night, you asked him to help you to the necessarium, took his dagger, and killed him there in the passage.”
“Yes.” Sir Gawyn opened his eyes, fumbled his hand to grasp her sleeve. “But Will wasn’t … traitor. I … was. He … was trying to save … me from what … I’d tried … to do. He meant … to talk me … out of it … after Colwin was dead. He … tried … and I wouldn’t … listen.”
It had not been only Colwin’s death that Will had cried for yesterday on the guesthall steps, but for the death of his belief in his knight’s honor. Frevisse hoped that he knew— that somehow he knew—what Master Na
ylor had said: that at the last Sir Gawyn had killed himself to save Jasper in that crashing fall. And Tibby running from the cloister as they had carried Sir Gawyn back across the yards had told her that Edmund, Maryon, and Jenet were alive and coming conscious. So he had meant it when he said he would not hurt Jasper if they let him go. He had not killed Edmund; there would have been no point then in Jasper’s death. “But then why did you change your mind at the last and not kill them as you escaped?”
Sir Gawyn’s hand slipped loose from her sleeve and knotted with pain into the blanket under him. Eyes shut, he whispered, “Because it would be known I did it and … everything … lost then anyway. So there was no point … anymore … if Maryon knew.” He labored more heavily at his breathing and barely managed to force out, ‘Tell Maryon … sorry.” And Frevisse realized they were out of time. She felt Master Naylor’s hand on her arm and let him draw her aside, leaving Sir Gawyn to Father Henry and the ending that would come very soon now.
As she and Master Naylor left the room, both of them silent, distantly the cloister bell began to toll the slow count of years that marked a death. A stroke for every year someone had lived.
That was not right, Frevisse thought. Sir Gawyn was not yet dead.
And then she knew.
The bell was not for him. Not yet.
Tears scalded in her eyes, blurring sight of people all across the hall going down upon their knees as they realized, too. Not for Sir Gawyn.
Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine. The words came to her from the Office of the Dead without bidding. Et lux perpetua luceat eis. Eternal rest give to them, Lord. And perpetual light shine on them.
In pace, damina, libera.
In peace, my lady, go free.
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