The Outlaw of Torn by Edgar Rice Burroughs (intellectual books to read txt) 📖

King Henry?” queried Norman of Torn, his eyes narrowing to mere slits and face hardening.

“That I be,” replied the girl, “an’ from your face I take it you have little love for a De Montfort,” she added, smiling.

“An’ whither may you be bound, Lady Bertrade de Montfort? Be you niece or daughter of the devil, yet still you be a woman, and I do not war against women. Wheresoever you would go will I accompany you to safety.”

“I was but now bound, under escort of five of my father’s knights, to visit Mary, daughter of John de Stutevill of Derby.”

“I know the castle well,” answered Norman of Torn, and the shadow of a grim smile played about his lips, for scarce sixty days had elapsed since he had reduced the stronghold, and levied tribute on the great baron. “Come, you have not far to travel now, and if we make haste you shall sup with your friend before dark.”

So saying, he mounted his horse and was turning to retrace their steps down the road when he noticed the body of the dead knight lying where it had fallen.

“Ride on,” he called to Bertrade de Montfort, “I will join you in an instant.”

Again dismounting, he returned to the side of his late adversary, and lifting the dead knight’s visor, drew upon the forehead with the point of his dagger the letters NT.

The girl turned to see what detained him, but his back was toward her and he knelt beside his fallen foeman, and she did not see his act. Brave daughter of a brave sire though she was, had she seen what he did, her heart would have quailed within her and she would have fled in terror from the clutches of this scourge of England, whose mark she had seen on the dead foreheads of a dozen of her father’s knights and kinsmen.

Their way to Stutevill lay past the cottage of Father Claude, and here Norman of Torn stopped to don his armor. Now he rode once more with lowered visor, and in silence, a little to the rear of Bertrade de Montfort that he might watch her face, which, of a sudden, had excited his interest.

Never before, within the scope of his memory, had he been so close to a young and beautiful woman for so long a period of time, although he had often seen women in the castles that had fallen before his vicious and terrible attacks. While stories were abroad of his vile treatment of women captives, there was no truth in them. They were merely spread by his enemies to incite the people against him. Never had Norman of Torn laid violent hand upon a woman, and his cut-throat band were under oath to respect and protect the sex, on penalty of death.

As he watched the semi-profile of the lovely face before him, something stirred in his heart which had been struggling for expression for years. It was not love, nor was it allied to love, but a deep longing for companionship of such as she, and such as she represented. Norman of Torn could not have translated this feeling into words for he did not know, but it was the far faint cry of blood for blood and with it, mayhap, was mixed not alone the longing of the lion among jackals for other lions, but for his lioness.

They rode for many miles in silence when suddenly she turned, saying:

“You take your time, Sir Knight, in answering my query. Who be ye?”

“I am Nor—” and then he stopped. Always before he had answered that question with haughty pride. Why should he hesitate, he thought. Was it because he feared the loathing that name would inspire in the breast of this daughter of the aristocracy he despised? Did Norman of Torn fear to face the look of seem and repugnance that was sure to be mirrored in that lovely face?

“I am from Normandy,” he went on quietly. “A gentleman of France.”

“But your name?” she said peremptorily. “Are you ashamed of your name?”

“You may call me Roger,” he answered. “Roger de Conde.”

“Raise your visor, Roger de Conde,” she commanded. “I do not take pleasure in riding with a suit of armor; I would see that there is a man within.”

Norman of Torn smiled as he did her bidding, and when he smiled thus, as he rarely did, he was good to look upon.

“It is the first command I have obeyed since I turned sixteen, Bertrade de Montfort,” he said.

The girl was about nineteen, full of the vigor and gaiety of youth and health; and so the two rode on their journey talking and laughing as they might have been friends of long standing.

She told him of the reason for the attack upon her earlier in the day, attributing it to an attempt on the part of a certain baron, Peter of Colfax, to abduct her, his suit for her hand having been peremptorily and roughly denied by her father.

Simon de Montfort was no man to mince words, and it is doubtless that the old reprobate who sued for his daughter’s hand heard some unsavory truths from the man who had twice scandalized England’s nobility by his rude and discourteous, though true and candid, speeches to the King.

“This Peter of Colfax shall be looked to,” growled Norman of Torn. “And, as you have refused his heart and hand, his head shall be yours for the asking. You have but to command, Bertrade de Montfort.”

“Very well,” she laughed, thinking it but the idle boasting so much indulged in in those days. “You may bring me his head upon a golden dish, Roger de Conde.”

“And what reward does the knight earn who brings to the feet of his princess the head of her enemy?” he asked lightly.

“What boon would the knight ask?”

“That whatsoever a bad report you hear of your knight, of whatsoever calumnies may be heaped upon him, you shall yet ever be his friend, and believe in his honor and his loyalty.”

The girl laughed gaily as she answered, though something seemed to tell her that this was more than play.

“It shall be as you say, Sir Knight,” she replied. “And the boon once granted shall be always kept.”

Quick to reach decisions and as quick to act, Norman of Torn decided that he liked this girl and that he wished her friendship more than any other thing he knew of. And wishing it, he determined to win it by any means that accorded with his standard of honor; an honor which in many respects was higher than that of the nobles of his time.

They reached the castle of De Stutevill late in the afternoon, and there, Norman of Torn was graciously welcomed and urged to accept the Baron’s hospitality overnight.

The grim humor of the situation was too much for the outlaw, and, when added to his new desire to be in the company of Bertrade de Montfort, he made no effort to resist, but hastened to accept the warm welcome.

At the long table upon which the evening meal was spread sat the entire household of the Baron, and here and there among the men were evidences of painful wounds but barely healed, while the host himself still wore his sword arm in a sling.

“We have been through grievous times,” said Sir John, noticing that his guest was glancing at the various evidences of conflict. “That fiend, Norman the Devil, with his filthy pack of cut-throats, besieged us for ten days, and then took the castle by storm and sacked it. Life is no longer safe in England with the King spending his time and money with foreign favorites and buying alien soldiery to fight against his own barons, instead of insuring the peace and protection which is the right of every Englishman at home.

“But,” he continued, “this outlaw devil will come to the end of a short halter when once our civil strife is settled, for the barons themselves have decided upon an expedition against him, if the King will not subdue him.”

“An’ he may send the barons naked home as he did the King’s soldiers,” laughed Bertrade de Montfort. “I should like to see this fellow; what may he look like—from the appearance of yourself, Sir John, and many of your men-at-arms, there should be no few here but have met him.”

“Not once did he raise his visor while he was among us,” replied the Baron, “but there are those who claim they had a brief glimpse of him and that he is of horrid countenance, wearing a great yellow beard and having one eye gone, and a mighty red scar from his forehead to his chin.”

“A fearful apparition,” murmured Norman of Torn. “No wonder he keeps his helm closed.”

“But such a swordsman,” spoke up a son of De Stutevill. “Never in all the world was there such swordplay as I saw that day in the courtyard.”

“I, too, have seen some wonderful swordplay,” said Bertrade de Montfort, “and that today. O he!” she cried, laughing gleefully, “verily do I believe I have captured the wild Norman of Torn, for this very knight, who styles himself Roger de Conde, fights as I ne’er saw man fight before, and he rode with his visor down until I chid him for it.”

Norman of Torn led in the laugh which followed, and of all the company he most enjoyed the joke.

“An’ speaking of the Devil,” said the Baron, “how think you he will side should the King eventually force war upon the barons? With his thousand hell-hounds, the fate of England might well be in the palm of his bloody hand.”

“He loves neither King nor baron,” spoke Mary de Stutevill, “and I rather lean to the thought that he will serve neither, but rather plunder the castles of both rebel and royalist whilst their masters be absent at war.”

“It be more to his liking to come while the master be home to welcome him,” said De Stutevill, ruthfully. “But yet I am always in fear for the safety of my wife and daughters when I be away from Derby for any time. May the good God soon deliver England from this Devil of Torn.”

“I think you may have no need of fear on that score,” spoke Mary, “for Norman of Torn offered no violence to any woman within the wall of Stutevill, and when one of his men laid a heavy hand upon me, it was the great outlaw himself who struck the fellow such a blow with his mailed hand as to crack the ruffian’s helm, saying at the time, ‘Know you, fellow, Norman of Torn does not war upon women?’”

Presently the conversation turned to other subjects and Norman of Torn heard no more of himself during that evening.

His stay at the castle of Stutevill was drawn out to three days, and then, on the third day, as he sat with Bertrade de Montfort in an embrasure of the south tower of the old castle, he spoke once more of the necessity for leaving and once more she urged him to remain.

“To be with you, Bertrade of Montfort,” he said boldly, “I would forego any other pleasure, and endure any privation, or face any danger, but there are others who look to me for guidance and my duty calls me away from you. You shall see me again, and at the castle of your father, Simon de Montfort, in Leicester. Provided,” he added, “that you will welcome me there.”

“I shall always welcome you, wherever I may be, Roger de Conde,” replied the girl.

“Remember that promise,” he said smiling. “Some day you may be glad to repudiate it.”

“Never,” she insisted, and a light that shone in her eyes as she said it would have meant much to a man better versed in the ways of women than was Norman of Torn.

“I hope not,” he said gravely. “I cannot tell you, being but poorly trained in courtly ways, what I should like to tell you, that you might know how much your friendship means to me. Goodbye, Bertrade de Montfort,” and he bent to one knee, as he raised her fingers to his lips.

As he passed over the drawbridge and down toward the highroad a few minutes later on his way back to Torn, he turned for one last look at the castle and there, in an embrasure in the south tower, stood a young woman who raised her hand to wave, and then, as though by sudden impulse, threw a kiss after the departing knight, only to disappear from the embrasure with the act.

As Norman of Torn rode back to his grim castle in the hills of Derby, he had much food for thought upon the way. Never till now had he realized