Read The Boy's Tale for Free Online

But it's unlikely he'll ever have full strength in his left arm again, and maybe not full movement."'
     
    Will dropped his head with troubled sadness and his forelock of bright hair fell forward. He pushed it back with a slow hand. "That's not good for him."
     
    "No. But we can pray for better and maybe it will come," Frevisse said. "Now you look as if you need to eat and be off your feet. Ela, have you finished there? See to food being brought, and a mattress. You'll stay here?" she asked Will.
     
    "Better me to watch him than anyone else," he answered, as she had thought he would.
     
    Dame Alys had apparently not come to the guesthall to see if all was in order for their guests. Frevisse gave what orders she thought necessary for the night to various of the servants besides Ela and then went in search of Master Naylor, though by now it was well beyond the time she should have been inside the cloister.
     
    Beyond the gateway, the long, soft light of the summer's evening filled the outer yard. The warm and quiet day was drawing to a warm and quiet close, as if there had been no panic and fear at the cloister door, or a badly hurt man in the guesthall, or dead men to be buried. None of that seemed any part of St. Frideswide's, but only an aberration of the moment now past and ready to be forgotten.
     
    But it was not past. There was still much to be dealt with, and Frevisse was glad to see Master Naylor detach himself from a group of men talking beside the gate out to the road and start toward her across the outer yard. The gate, Frevisse noted, was closed and barred, a thing usually done only at the edge of full dark. And there was at least one man on the roof of the gatehouse over it, where there would be a long view of the countryside in most directions.
     
    "Dame Frevisse," the steward said with an inclination of his head as they met near the middle of the yard. Through experiences neither of them had wanted to have, they had learned respect for each other, and he asked more directly than he might have any of the other nuns, "How does the knight? The wound looked bad."
     
    "Dame Claire thinks he'll live if it doesn't infect. His squire could tell me almost nothing about what happened." Or had not chosen to. "What have you learned?"
     
    "Only that they were traveling and were attacked by outlaws. The men fought while the women fled with the boys for safety. Two of the men were killed and five of their attackers."
     
    "The man I talked to, Sir Gawyn's squire, thought only five attacked them."
     
    'That's what the other man said, too, when I questioned him. If so, then this band of outlaws at least is finished."
     
    "But you've seen fit to close the gates and set a guard."
     
    "And have sent warning to the village to be on-watch and a man to the sheriff and Master Montfort." The sheriff both for protection and to look into this breach of the King's peace; Master Montfort because he was crowner, with the duty to look into any violent or uncertain deaths and determine where the wrong lay and what was owed the King in fines and forfeitures.
     
    "Have there been any reports of outlaws hereabouts?" Frevisse asked.
     
    "None for years."
     
    "Did Colwin have any idea why they were attacked?"
     
    "None. He says they just attacked without any reason he knows of."
     
    "And do you believe him?"
     
    "No."
     
    Frevisse waited but he went no further until she prodded, "Why not?"
     
    Slowly, as if wishing to keep his thoughts to himself until he had had longer to think them over, Master Naylor said, "Any outlaws looking for prey worth their while around here would have to be on the foolish side of their work, and these men were too well dressed and well weaponed to have been fools."
     
    Master Naylor was no more easy in his mind about the outlaws than she was about Maryon's claim to be the children's mother. And there was another thing. "Sir Gawyn was wearing a breastplate under his doublet. I think his squire is, too,