The outlaw's tale by Margaret Frazer Read Free Book Online Page A

is part of it."
    “I want to help him from indoors .  We should have gone with Master Naylor."
    This was Sister Emma at her most tedious, and worse because there was no cure for it.  Frevisse could neither give her her own way nor force on her the Rule of silence, one of the mercies of the nunnery.  So she tried to woo her with, “But this is an adventure.  Adventures always have to be at least a little uncomfortable or who would know you'd had one?  Think what you'll be able to tell when we're back in St. Frideswide's.  You've stayed among outlaws and sustained us with your prayers.  That's more than even Dame Alys has done."  Dame Alys was St. Frideswide's ferocious kitchener, a lady who daunted almost everyone who came in her reach.  “And all to save a man in peril of his life and soul."
    Sister Emma stared up at her, wiping at her nose and shivering slightly, but flattered enough by so exalted a view of what she was doing.  Firming her little mouth, she said, “I'll pray, for all of us."
    “And so will I," Frevisse said.  But not near Sister Emma, she added to herself, as Sister Emma bent her head over her clasped hands, sniffing and murmuring.
    Frevisse meant to go back to their shelter to see if there was still a dry corner where she could sit.  It was surely time for the morning's office of Tierce.  But Evan called to her from another leafy lean-to near her own.
    “If it please you come here, my lady, you'll find this more dry than most."
    The rain was thickening; Frevisse's hesitation was hardly longer than the glance that told her that her own shelter was dripping freely all through its roof.  She turned aside and ducked under Evan's.
    He was sitting at one side on the end of a blanket-covered pile of straw.  He nodded her to the other end of the pile and went on touching the strings of the lute he held as she sank gratefully down.  The straw was nearly fresh, the blanket clean, his shelter certainly drier than anywhere else Frevisse had been today.
    Evan nodded welcome without speaking, too busy tuning his lute, an instrument singularly sensitive to damp.  He moved from tuning to formless playing, as if waiting for a tune to come to his fingers.  It seemed part of the forest sounds of rain on leaves and hush of trees around them.  Frevisse realized she had been hearing it behind her thoughts while she walked and while she talked with Sister Emma, but she could not have said when it began.
    “Do you know where Nicholas is?"
    “No, my lady."
    “Do you know when I’m to write the letter to my uncle?"
    “Ah," he said, and his fingers went still.  “There is just a little problem with that."
    “What sort of problem?
    “I brought the vellum, ink, and pens, but Nicholas thought it was safer they be kept in his own hut.  And that was a mistake, for last night the rain leaked in and--"  He paused.  “Do you know how to dry vellum?"
    Frevisse nearly laughed at his rueful face.  She shook her head and said, “Sister Emma is not going to be amused at this further delay."
    Evan’s fingers went back to playing as he said with a nod at Sister Emma, “She’s not as happy with the carefree life of the forest as she was last night?
    “Last night was dry."
    Evan smiled.  Like the rest of his uneven face, it was a crooked smile and difficult to read.  “Is she ailing?"
    “Only complaining."
    “And you're not."
    “I've been wet before and have learned that I'll be dry again sometime and that until then there's no point in spending effort on complaining.  Are you more peddler or outlaw?"
    Evan took the change of subject with hardly a pause of his fingers on the lute strings.  “More peddler, I hope," he answered.
    “Have you robbed with them?  Or only gathered the information that sets them on their way?"
    “Robbed?"  Evan showed amusement at the word.  “We don't do anything so base – and perilous – as that.  Not for a long while past."
    “You just live merrily in the