Free The outlaw's tale by Margaret Frazer

sleeps here.  You'll be very comfortable.  And when I can't see to you myself, Magdalen will.  She's very sweet."
    From Mistress Payne's hurried explanation, Frevisse was picturing a widow sunk well into middle age, her children grown, and herself so worn that she was willing to live with her brother rather than manage her life herself.  But at the word 'sweet' she imagined instead a very young woman unfit to live on her own.
    The reality was a woman perhaps in her thirties who, as they entered, straightened from helping a servant spread a sheet across the curtained bed whose curtains were tied open.  She looked at them from where she stood at the far end of the room with a long, clear gaze before coming to meet them.  There was no way to tell the color of her hair under the encompassing wimple and veil she wore, but her brows were dark and her eyes rain-gray.  Her dress was modest – a dark green gown with plain high neckline and straight sleeves, unwaisted but quietly shaped to her hips before flaring to full skirts.  She was tall for a woman, though not quite Frevisse's height, and she moved with grace and reserve together as she came to take the weight of Sister Emma's other side from Mistress Payne.
    “These are the nuns, Magdalen," Mistress Payne said in haste.  “Dame Frevisse..."  Frevisse and Magdalen exchanged a quick, acknowledging look over Sister Emma's sinking head.  “...and Sister Emma, who's ill I'm afraid.  Can you  – there's still supper to see to and I don't know when Oliver will be here or what he'll say - I want to be the one to tell him.  Could you...?"
    “I'll see to them, gladly," Magdalen said.  Her voice was low-pitched and even.  The house was Mistress Payne's, and Magdalen was younger, but she spoke with the kind, amused firmness of an older sister.  “The bed is near to ready, you can see; and Maud has found dry gowns for them; and there's spiced wine heating on the hearth.  You can be at ease about it all.  Leave them to me and go to your duties."
    “It's Oliver - he doesn't know yet, and when he does..."
    “He'll be startled.  And then he'll be glad of this chance to do these ladies courtesy.  His heart is as good as yours, Iseult, and he understands necessity as well as you do.  There'll be no trouble.  Now go on."
    Magdalen smiled reassuringly; and after an uncertain moment Mistress Payne took a deep breath, and with a quick curtsy to Frevisse and at Sister Emma, left.

Chapter Seven
    The rainy dark had drawn in early, and the shutters were closed against the chill.  Most of the room was in shadow, save for the firelight and the small golden glow of the lamp set near the tall bed where Sister Emma now lay, breathing heavily in her sleep.  It was a large chamber, the width of the house at its gabled end.  There were a standing loom near the window, a single chair close to the hearth, chests along the walls, and a few short stools.
    Frevisse sat there on the chair, dressed now in the plain, dark blue gown of one of Magdalen's serving women and enjoying being warm, dry, and well-fed.  She had dined on saffron rice with figs and her hands were wrapped around a mug of spiced, hot wine, her second from the pitcher keeping warm near the fire.  But her mind was not completely at rest.  The unfamiliarity was unsettling.  To sit at ease, warm with wine, in a comfortable chair, at an hour when she would normally have been in her bed in St. Frideswide's dormitory sleeping toward midnight Matins and Lauds.  To be wearing undergarments and a gown that despite their plainness revealed her body far more than the enveloping, unvarying familiarity of her Benedictine habit.  And to have her short-cropped hair uncovered to finish drying in the fire's warmth.  Except for when the nunnery had hair washing and hair cutting, her head had been covered by wimple and veil all day, every day, since she entered St. Frideswide's as a novice in her young womanhood.  Now she felt