The Nun's Tale Read Online Free PDF Page B

hear that Archbishop Thoresby had offered his aid.
    Ravenser fell back behind his companions, thinking about his uncle and the one-eyed spy he had met at Bishopthorpe. He wondered what sort of inquiries Archer made for a man as powerful as his uncle, Archbishop of York and Lord Chancellor of England. Was he watching Alice Perrers and William of Wykeham? Or would Archer consider helping out on a matter such as this? Ravenser gazed about him, focusing on nothing, until a movement off to the side of the track, in a stand of trees, caught his eye: two horsemen, riding neither towards nor away from the road, but pacing Ravenser’s company. Ravenser reigned in his horse. So did the horsemen.
    ‘Ho, there!’ Ravenser called. Two of Louth’s men turned at his cry. Ravenser nodded to the still figures in the trees and Louth’s men took off. So did the horsemen, who had the advantage of their own plan.
    It was not long before Louth’s men came riding back to the shady knoll where the rest of the company waited. ‘We lost them,’ John, Louth’s squire, said, ‘but we did see that they had friends with them, waiting for them farther back. I counted five more. And well armed.’
    Dame Joanna stared about her, agitated, clutching at the tattered blue shawl she insisted on wearing over her habit. ‘Who? Who follows?’
    Louth lounged in the shade near her. ‘I thought you might tell us, Dame Joanna. Your lover, perhaps?’
    ‘My lover?’ She laughed, an odd, hysterical sound. Her eyes were wild, haunted. ‘Oh, indeed, if Death be now my lover. Yes. Death shadows me. Only my lover Death can come for me now.’
    Ravenser raised an eyebrow in response to Louth’s puzzled glance. So Dame Joanna saw her dilemma as a moral allegory. It did no harm. ‘Shall we continue?’
    Louth ordered his men to prepare to move on. They fell back to guard the rear of the party. It was a much subdued, anxious company, aware of the armed men behind them, unseen. The women did not protest the armed guard that accompanied them when they washed or relieved themselves.
    *
     
    The wind from the arrow’s flight ruffled Owen’s hair. Much too close for comfort. He’d seen the trainee’s aim go astray when the messenger entered the yard. Owen had stood his ground, wanting to make a point, that lives were at stake. But he had not meant to make it so dangerously – he had miscalculated the arrow’s trajectory. It had happened time and again since he had lost the use of his left eye.
    Gaspare yanked the bow out of the trainee’s hands and hit him across the stomach with it. ‘What are you, a dog after a hare? Captain Owen comes all the way from York to teach you how to save yourself in the field and you’d be killing him? Because a messenger caught your eye? What manner of cur has Lancaster sent us?’
    The young man clutched his middle and said nothing.
    Gaspare crossed the castle yard to retrieve the arrow, slapping Owen on the back as he passed. ‘You’ve not lost your nerve, that’s clear.’ He grinned crookedly because of a scar that puckered the right side of his face from ear to chin, creasing the corner of his mouth. ‘So what am I doing wrong, old friend? Why can’t the cur resist gawking at the world?’
    ‘You’re right to call him a dog after a hare,’ Owen said. ‘If he cannot ignore everything round him and see only the arrow and its target, he cannot be an archer.’
    Gaspare slapped the arrow shaft against his leg, a motion that the young man in question watched anxiously. Broad-shouldered and well-muscled, when Gaspare acted on his anger, he caused considerable pain. ‘I need to know. Is it me, or has Lancaster sent us a pack of fools?’
    Owen said nothing. The messenger, now within earshot, wore the livery of John Thoresby, Archbishop of York and Lord Chancellor of England. What now ? Owen wondered. Thoresby had encouraged Owen to take up his present task at the Queen’s castle of Knaresborough, helping two of his old