The outlaw's tale (25 page)

Only Edward was missing.  But he was Master Payne now, head of the family and probably with the sheriff and crowner.  The adulthood he had been assuming a few days ago was fully and too soon come on him.

Lastly Frevisse made herself look at Oliver Payne laid out on the bed.  His wife and her women had already cleaned his body and dressed him in the red houpplande he had worn when Frevisse first met him.  In death his face had the reposed confidence of that evening.  She gazed on it a long while, unable to break the brittle, grieving peace of the scene, not wanting to do what she had to do next.

But necessity was stronger than desire.  With a brief prayer, she crossed herself and went to lay a hand on Mistress Payne's shoulder.

She looked up, and Frevisse saw that she was between tears just now.  The first shock of grief had passed; long and deep-set grieving had not yet taken hold.  In that pause between the onrush and floods of sorrow she was dazed but not blind with pain.  And she had no knowledge yet of what part Frevisse had had in her husband's dying.

So her look was only questioning.  And when Frevisse moved her head to show she wanted her to come away, she only paused to murmur one more prayer, crossed herself, and came.

Frevisse had been unable to think of anywhere to go that would be both private and not excite questions from anyone who saw them.  So they went simply to the head of the stairs between the Payne's room and Magdalen's, where no one could overhear or come on them unknown.

Briefly Frevisse explained that her uncle had come and that she and Sister Emma would be leaving as soon as possible, probably tomorrow, to ease the family's burden at least a little.  Mistress Payne made no answer beyond a nod.  Words, like tears, were temporarily drained out of her.  She was so small a woman, and so drawn in around her grief, that she seemed hardly more than a child now, standing in front of Frevisse with her head drooping, her face hidden.

But Frevisse went on.  “I've spoken to Edward.  Has he told you of that?  Of what we agreed to tell the sheriff?  That it wasn't Magdalen's Evan who killed Colfoot.  That it was your husband."

Mistress Payne shivered.  And still did not look up.  But nodded.

Frevisse brought her right hand out of her left sleeve where she had kept it all this while and held out the bloodied belt she had caught up from Magdalen's floor.  Mistress Payne's head jerked sharply away from it.  “The sheriff will want you to say this was your husband's.  Will you do that?" Frevisse asked.

Mistress Payne's head jerked again, caught between nod and denial.  But she said, her voice cracking with grief, “He's dead.  I'll say it.  It won't hurt him now."

“But you know it isn't his.  Don't you?"

Mistress Payne's head finally came up.  Her eyes widened on Frevisse's face but she said nothing.

Gently, very gently, Frevisse said, “It's Edward's, isn't it?"

“No."  The strength that Magdalen had said was in her sister-in-law now showed itself.  “No.  It's my husband's.  I've told you so.  I'll tell the sheriff and crowner so if they ask me.  It's my husband's belt."

“The wear mark of the buckle in the leather," Frevisse said, holding it out so she could see, “shows it went around a waist much narrower than your husband's.  A boy's waist.  Edward's."

Mistress Payne seized the belt out of her hands.  In rapid, jerking movements, she coiled it up buckle inward, covering the mark, leaving the bloodied end to hang free.  “It was my husband's belt," she repeated.

“That's what you must keep saying." Frevisse assured her.  “But I want to know how Edward came to fight with Colfoot.  He's told you about it?"

Mistress Payne held silent a moment longer, but perhaps it was a relief to say what would never be said to anyone else.  A relief to say what she had thought would have to stay sealed in her forever.  Or perhaps she simply bent to what she could not avoid.  “He heard the quarrel between his father and Colfoot, and Colfoot's threats against both us and Magdalen.  When Colfoot left here, Edward went after him, not even taking a horse.  He just cut through the woods and intercepted him along the road.  Edward didn't mean anything, only to talk with him, to try to talk him out of it.  But Colfoot was still in a fury.  He saw Edward as no more than an intruding child and cursed at him and brought out his sword and struck him over the shoulders with the flat of it.  Edward lost his temper.  He had only his dagger but they were so close together and Colfoot wasn't expecting it that I think Edward killed him before either of them knew what they were doing.  He didn't believe he'd done it, that somehow he'd only pulled Colfoot from his horse.  But when he knelt by him, Colfoot was almost dead and died while Edward was looking at him.  Then Edward was frightened.  He cleaned the dagger in the woods and came home.  He was so frightened.  He didn't know he had bloodied his belt.  I saw it when he came in.  It had to be by God's mercy I was the first to see him when he came home.  He looked so torn and in pain.  We didn't know what to do.  I couldn't let anyone else see him.  And I had to do something about the belt, but I didn't know what.  So we went to his father, in the parlor where no one would come if Oliver didn't let them.  It seemed the only safe place.  We were all so frightened."

Her voice trailed away, remembering not only her fear for Edward but her husband's.

Gently, Frevisse said, “Then your husband hid the belt until he could have a chance to be safely rid of it?"  Mistress Payne nodded dumbly.  “And Edward put on different clothes so its lack would not be so apparent.  And at supper that night Master Payne had the idea of making the stranger in the orchard out to be the murderer."

Mistress Payne sighed.  “It seemed the safest, the simplest thing to do.  We didn't know he was Magdalen's lover."

“And when you did, it didn't matter, because he was still no more than a peddler and no one but Magdalen would care if he died."

“It was... necessary," Mistress Payne agreed softly.  She moved past remembering to what was necessary now.  “Are you going to let us keep our secret?"

Lying.  Deception.  Abuse of trust.  Here they all were, joined together in a single act.  For this, more than all the rest, there would be penance so deep in her own heart that she might never be free of it.  But the choice had been made already.

Quietly Frevisse said, “I've helped you make it.  I'll help you keep it.  Tell Edward that he'll have my daily prayers through all his life to come."

Given the strict cloistering to which nuns were supposed to submit, Frevisse and Dame Emma's venturing out to a family christening may seem surprising. Indeed, nuns in medieval England were officially cloistered and supposed to stay shut from the world behind nunnery walls, but in fact leave could be granted for them to visit outside the cloister for any "manifest necessity" – and as Eileen Power observes in
Medieval English Nunneries
, "they could with a little skill, stretch the 'manifest necessity' clause to cover almost all their wanderings," whether on pilgrimage, for pleasure, or on family matters. To judge by the centuries-long efforts of bishops and other churchmen to regulate and curb these jaunts, nuns seem rarely to have faltered in treating cloistering as far more open to choice than their bishops liked.

For those accustomed to view medieval society as a straightforward matter of Nobles vs. Peasants, Master Payne's household may seen fanciful, but in truth there was a rapidly growing free middle class in England through all the later Middle Ages – prospering merchants in cities and towns; the gentry in the countryside – who owned their own property, ran their own lives, and served lords only insofar as they chose, even, as in Master Payne's case, making a business of doing so.

As may be readily expected, Robin Hood was a popular figure in medieval England, though not always in the guise more modern tellings give him.
Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales
, edited by Stephen Knight and Thomas Ohlgren, provides both a study and a number of stories of Robin Hood and other medieval outlaws that Nicholas and his men could readily have known.

Margaret Frazer is the award-winning author of more than twenty historical murder mysteries and novels. She makes her home in Minneapolis, Minnesota, surrounded by her books, but she lives her life in the 1400s. In writing her Edgar-nominated Sister Frevisse (
The Novice's Tale
) and Player Joliffe (
A Play of Isaac
) novels she delves far inside medieval perceptions, seeking to look at medieval England more from its point of view than ours. "Because the pleasure of going thoroughly into otherwhen as well as otherwhere is one of the great pleasures in reading."

She can be visited online at http://www.margaretfrazer.com.

Beginning in the year of Our Lord's grace 1431, the Sister Frevisse mysteries are an epic journey of murder and mayhem in 15th century England.

The Novice's Tale

The Servant's Tale (Edgar-Award Nominee)

The Outlaw's Tale

The Bishop's Tale (Minnesota Book Award Nominee)

The Boy's Tale

The Murderer's Tale

The Prioress' Tale (Edgar-Award Nominee)

The Maiden's Tale

The Reeve's Tale (Minnesota Book Award Nominee)

The Squire's Tale

The Clerk's Tale

The Bastard's Tale

The Hunter's Tale

The Widow's Tale

The Sempster's Tale

The Traitor's Tale

The Apostate's Tale

In the pages of Margaret Frazer's national bestselling Dame Frevisse Mysteries the player Joliffe has assumed many roles on the stage to the delight of those he entertains. Now, in the company of a troupe of traveling performers, he finds himself double cast in the roles of sleuth and spy...

A Play of Isaac

A Play of Dux Moraud

A Play of Knaves

A Play of Lords

A Play of Treachery

A Play of Piety

Available Now as Kindle E-Books

Neither Pity, Love, Nor Fear (Herodotus Award Winner)

Strange Gods, Strange Men

The Simple Logic of It

The Witch's Tale (Sister Frevisse Mystery)

The Midwife's Tale (Sister Frevisse Mystery)

Volo te Habere...

This World's Eternity

Cover Art: Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez, Francesco II d'Este – Duke of Modena, 1638.

Cover Design: Justin Alexander