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 nobility 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 Essex 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 Condé 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 breasts 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
