Free The outlaw's tale by Margaret Frazer Page A

vaguely indecent because of her head's nakedness.  And uneasily pleasured at such unfamiliar comfort and ease.
    Across the hearth from her, seated on a stool, Magdalen had uncovered her own head and was combing down her waist-long hair in readiness for bed.  The firelight caught and glittered on her silver comb and found pale strands among the dark brown of her hair.  Her hair would be beautiful all her life, Frevisse thought; it would not dull or fade but turn white with the years and still be beautiful, as would her face whose fine bones would hold their beauty too with passing time.  Frevisse wondered why she had not married again.  Had she been so much in love with her first husband that three years of widowhood had not dimmed the pain of losing him?
    Or had he been so harsh that she dreaded taking a second husband?
    She did not want to ask, though she and Magdalen had been easy with each other from the very first, Magdalen's quiet competence setting so well with Frevisse's own bolder way that they had worked almost wordlessly together in stripping Sister Emma of her wet clothing, dressing her in a linen shift for extra warmth and putting her to bed under many blankets.  Then Magdalen had had one of her women brew an herbal posset, and Frevisse and she had forced Sister Emma to drink it, and under its influence Sister Emma had subsided to murmuring drowsiness and then sleep.
    Darkness had come while they were about it; and then supper had been brought; and now they were sitting together by the hearth in the companionable silence of shared tasks well done and a friendship begun.
    Concentrating on a small tangle resisting her comb, Magdalen asked in her gentle way, “Is there anything else you want or need?"
    “Nothing else at all except bed and I'll go there shortly."  When Sister Emma was deep enough asleep not to rouse when Frevisse crawled in beside her.  “I've been most marvelously seen to.  But we're taking your bed.  Where will you sleep?"
    “There," Magdalen said, nodding across the room toward the two truckle beds already drawn out from under the foot of her own. “My maidservant Maud is going to join the other servants in the hall and I shall have her bed.  Bess will stay, to be at hand if we have need of her in the night."
    “We're giving you a great deal of trouble."
    “It's trouble well-bestowed to a good end," Magdalen answered with a smile.  “And more an honor than trouble, come to that.  Truly, I'm glad to have you here."
    “You've lived her with your brother's family three years, I think Mistress Payne said."
    “Three years almost to the month," Magdalen agreed.  “They've been very kind to me."
    “But you've no mind to have your own home again?"
    “Or to marry?"  Magdalen completed the thought with only the slightest of smiles.  She turned her head sideways, bringing her hair forward, to curtain her face and reach nearly to the floor as she went on combing it.  “No.  I was married full many years to John Dow, beginning when I was fourteen.  I enjoyed being a wife, but I've found I also enjoy being unmarried.  And there's a certain pleasure in being responsible for very little, as I am here under my brother's roof.  And by my brother's advice, I've given most of my properties to rent.  He manages them for me, at a pleasant profit to us both, and I live here, sometimes a help to Iseult and always a fond aunt to her little ones."
    Earlier, before full dark, Frevisse had several times heard the scurry of children's feet in the other room; and once she had seen the door open ever so slightly and two small heads - a boy and a girl, she thought but it was difficult to tell in the shadows - had peered around the edge.  She had said nothing, and they had quickly withdrawn as silently as they had come.
    “How many Payne children are there?"
    “Five."  Magdalen straightened and threw her hair back over her shoulder.  “Though Edward would be wrathful to hear himself