The Outlaw of Torn Part 22

"I owe you much. You have saved my poor, silly wife from this beast, and Joan de Tany is my cousin, so I am doubly beholden to you, Norman of Torn."

The outlaw pretended that he did not see the hand.

"You owe me nothing, Sir Roger, that may not be paid by a good supper. I have eaten but once in forty-eight hours."

The outlaw now called to Shandy and his men, telling them to remain on watch, but to interfere with no one within the castle.

He then sat at the table with Roger Leybourn and his lady, who had recovered from her swoon, and behind them on the rushes of the floor lay the body of De Fulm in a little pool of blood.

Leybourn told them that he had heard that De Fulm was at his home, and had hastened back; having been in hiding about the castle for half an hour before the arrival of Norman of Torn, awaiting an opportunity to enter un.o.bserved by the servants. It was he who had followed across the ladder after Shandy.

The outlaw spent the night at the castle of Roger Leybourn; for the first time within his memory a welcomed guest under his true name at the house of a gentleman.

The following morning, he bade his host goodbye, and returning to his camp started on his homeward march toward Torn.

Near midday, as they were approaching the Thames near the environs of London, they saw a great concourse of people hooting and jeering at a small party of gentlemen and gentlewomen.

Some of the crowd were armed, and from very force of numbers were waxing brave to lay violent hands upon the party. Mud and rocks and rotten vegetables were being hurled at the little cavalcade, many of them barely missing the women of the party.

Norman of Torn waited to ask no questions, but spurring into the thick of it laid right and left of him with the flat of his sword, and his men, catching the contagion of it, swarmed after him until the whole pack of attacking ruffians were driven into the Thames.

And then, without a backward glance at the party he had rescued, he continued on his march toward the north.

The little party sat upon their horses looking in wonder after the retreating figures of their deliverers. Then one of the ladies turned to a knight at her side with a word of command and an imperious gesture toward the fast disappearing company. He, thus addressed, put spurs to his horse, and rode at a rapid gallop after the outlaw's troop. In a few moments he had overtaken them and reined up beside Norman of Torn.

"Hold, Sir Knight," cried the gentleman, "the Queen would thank you in person for your brave defence of her."

Ever keen to see the humor of a situation, Norman of Torn wheeled his horse and rode back with the Queen's messenger.

As he faced Her Majesty, the Outlaw of Torn bent low over his pommel.

"You be a strange knight that thinks so lightly on saving a queen's life that you ride on without turning your head, as though you had but driven a pack of curs from annoying a stray cat," said the Queen.

"I drew in the service of a woman, Your Majesty, not in the service of a queen."

"What now! Wouldst even belittle the act which we all witnessed? The King, my husband, shall reward thee, Sir Knight, if you but tell me your name."

"If I told my name, methinks the King would be more apt to hang me,"

laughed the outlaw. "I be Norman of Torn."

The entire party looked with startled astonishment upon him, for none of them had ever seen this bold raider whom all the n.o.bility and gentry of England feared and hated.

"For lesser acts than that which thou hast just performed, the King has pardoned men before," replied Her Majesty. "But raise your visor, I would look upon the face of so notorious a criminal who can yet be a gentleman and a loyal protector of his queen."

"They who have looked upon my face, other than my friends," replied Norman of Torn quietly, "have never lived to tell what they saw beneath this visor, and as for you, Madame, I have learned within the year to fear it might mean unhappiness to you to see the visor of the Devil of Torn lifted from his face." Without another word he wheeled and galloped back to his little army.

"The puppy, the insolent puppy," cried Eleanor of England, in a rage.

And so the Outlaw of Torn and his mother met and parted after a period of twenty years.

Two days later, Norman of Torn directed Red Shandy to lead the forces of Torn from their Ess.e.x camp back to Derby. The numerous raiding parties which had been constantly upon the road during the days they had spent in this rich district had loaded the extra sumpter beasts with rich and valuable booty and the men, for the time satiated with fighting and loot, turned their faces toward Torn with evident satisfaction.

The outlaw was speaking to his captains in council; at his side the old man of Torn.

"Ride by easy stages, Shandy, and I will overtake you by tomorrow morning. I but ride for a moment to the castle of De Tany on an errand, and, as I shall stop there but a few moments, I shall surely join you tomorrow."

"Do not forget, My Lord," said Edwild the Serf, a great yellow-haired Saxon giant, "that there be a party of the King's troops camped close by the road which branches to Tany."

"I shall give them plenty of room," replied Norman of Torn. "My neck itcheth not to be stretched," and he laughed and mounted.

Five minutes after he had cantered down the road from camp, Spizo the Spaniard, sneaking his horse unseen into the surrounding forest, mounted and spurred rapidly after him. The camp, in the throes of packing refractory, half broken sumpter animals, and saddling their own wild mounts, did not notice his departure. Only the little grim, gray, old man knew that he had gone, or why, or whither.

That afternoon, as Roger de Conde was admitted to the castle of Richard de Tany and escorted to a little room where he awaited the coming of the Lady Joan, a swarthy messenger handed a letter to the captain of the King's soldiers camped a few miles south of Tany.

The officer tore open the seal as the messenger turned and spurred back in the direction from which he had come.

And this was what he read:

Norman of Torn is now at the castle of Tany, without escort.

Instantly the call "to arms" and "mount" sounded through the camp and, in five minutes, a hundred mercenaries galloped rapidly toward the castle of Richard de Tany, in the visions of their captain a great reward and honor and preferment for the capture of the mighty outlaw who was now almost within his clutches.

Three roads meet at Tany; one from the south along which the King's soldiers were now riding; one from the west which had guided Norman of Torn from his camp to the castle; and a third which ran northwest through Cambridge and Huntingdon toward Derby.

All unconscious of the rapidly approaching foes, Norman of Torn waited composedly in the anteroom for Joan de Tany.

Presently she entered, clothed in the clinging house garment of the period; a beautiful vision, made more beautiful by the suppressed excitement which caused the blood to surge beneath the velvet of her cheek, and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s to rise and fall above her fast beating heart.

She let him take her fingers in his and raise them to his lips, and then they stood looking into each other's eyes in silence for a long moment.

"I do not know how to tell you what I have come to tell," he said sadly.

"I have not meant to deceive you to your harm, but the temptation to be with you and those whom you typify must be my excuse. I--" He paused.

It was easy to tell her that he was the Outlaw of Torn, but if she loved him, as he feared, how was he to tell her that he loved only Bertrade de Montfort?

"You need tell me nothing," interrupted Joan de Tany. "I have guessed what you would tell me, Norman of Torn. 'The spell of moonlight and adventure is no longer upon us'--those are your own words, and still I am glad to call you friend."

The little emphasis she put upon the last word bespoke the finality of her decision that the Outlaw of Torn could be no more than friend to her.

"It is best," he replied, relieved that, as he thought, she felt no love for him now that she knew him for what he really was. "Nothing good could come to such as you, Joan, if the Devil of Torn could claim more of you than friends.h.i.+p; and so I think that for your peace of mind and for my own, we will let it be as though you had never known me. I thank you that you have not been angry with me. Remember me only to think that in the hills of Derby, a sword is at your service, without reward and without price. Should you ever need it, Joan, tell me that you will send for me--wilt promise me that, Joan?"

"I promise, Norman of Torn."

"Farewell," he said, and as he again kissed her hand he bent his knee to the ground in reverence. Then he rose to go, pressing a little packet into her palm. Their eyes met, and the man saw, in that brief instant, deep in the azure depths of the girl's that which tumbled the structure of his new-found complacency about his ears.

As he rode out into the bright sunlight upon the road which led northwest toward Derby, Norman of Torn bowed his head in sorrow, for he realized two things. One was that the girl he had left still loved him, and that some day, mayhap tomorrow, she would suffer because she had sent him away; and the other was that he did not love her, that his heart was locked in the fair breast of Bertrade de Montfort.

He felt himself a beast that he had allowed his loneliness and the aching sorrow of his starved, empty heart to lead him into this girl's life. That he had been new to women and newer still to love did not permit him to excuse himself, and a hundred times he cursed his folly and stupidity, and what he thought was fickleness.