Winter Siege (15 page)

By the time the fuel was glowing, Penda had begun to nod. Her cap had fallen off and he noticed that her hair, which seemed to grow like wildfire, would soon need cropping again; in repose, in fact increasingly these days, she looked more feminine. He frowned as he took off her wet boots and rubbed her feet; he worried about her more nowadays, the time was coming, and he knew it, when he wouldn’t be able to protect her any more. It was like trying to hold back the tide. He yawned and took off his cloak and laid it over them both, and sat, listening to the shrieking buffets of the wind against the hut’s northerly wall …

Penda nudged him awake. ‘Somebody out there.’

‘Can’t be.’ Nevertheless he reached for his crossbow to cock it.

Then he heard them; disjointed shouts of argument over the wind between two men.

‘A light, I tell you.’

‘… risk it.’

‘… have to.’

‘Shit,’ he said.

‘Got to let ’em in, Gwil.’

‘I know.’ To deny shelter to whatever flickering humanity was out in that howling waste was callousness they wouldn’t be able to live with.

Nevertheless, he gestured for Pen to arm herself before going to the door. Snow had piled up against it and he had to push hard to get it open.

At first he couldn’t see them; their voices were very close but disembodied. Then the whiteness beyond the door resolved into three figures, equally white, like ghosts blown towards him by the wind. He crossed himself before stepping back to let them in.

‘Bless you, God bless you, good sir. Bit chilly out here.’

Two men were supporting a woman between them. All three were crusted with snow, their eyes like gashes in a mask, though those of the man who hadn’t spoken – taller and older than the other – looked from Gwil’s bow to Penda’s, as his hand slid towards the hilt of his sword.

Gwil put his bow down and reached for the semi-conscious woman to help prop her on the edge of the firepit. He was stopped. ‘Better leave her to us,’ the younger one said gently, ‘if you wouldn’t mind.’

Between them, they removed her boots as Gwil had taken off Penda’s, rubbed her feet and face. She wore fine, doeskin gloves and those they left on. ‘S’pose there ain’t anything to eat and drink, is there?’

Gwil handed over the remains of the ham and cheese – there hadn’t been much to start with – and one of the bottles. The taller man tasted the ale first, spat and said, ‘It’ll have to do,’ before pressing the spout to the woman’s mouth. ‘Take some of this, my lady.’ It was said in Norman French; his companion had used English.

Their ghostliness wasn’t just from the snow; all three were enveloped in white sheets – satin, Gwil noticed – that stuck wetly to the cloaks underneath. Nor did the hiss as the men moved come only from ice spattering off them into the fire; they wore mail beneath their surcoats, excellent mail.

Knights.

‘Did you come on horses?’ he asked in English.

‘Matter of fact, we’ve, er, had to walk quite a bit,’ the younger one said. ‘Well, slid mostly. Down the river, you know. It’s frozen over further up. Missed our way this last stretch. Saw your light.’

Knights without horses; unheard of.

‘How far have you come?’

The woman’s eyes were closed but suddenly she spoke with effort in a high, harsh voice. ‘Impertinence. Tell him. Mind his own business.’

The taller knight laughed suddenly, as if relieved to find she could talk at all.

The younger one smiled. ‘Better introduce ourselves. This is Mistress Mmm … Margaret. Fella over there is Master Alan and I’m Christopher. Three simple travellers, you see.’ His smile stretched into the triumphant grin of someone having overcome an obstacle. ‘You English?’

‘Will,’ said Gwil. He pointed at Penda: ‘My nephew, Peter.
Two
simple travellers.’ Damned if he was giving information when he wasn’t getting any. These men were Sir Somebodys of Somewhere; they reeked of privilege, or at least Christopher did; Alan had the look of an experienced campaigner. As for the woman, she was no more called Margaret than he was; Christopher had stumbled over the name.

Christopher beamed again. ‘Much obliged, Master Will,
much
obliged. God’s blessing on you.’ His head fell forward abruptly; he was asleep.

‘Better get out of those cloaks,’ Gwil said.

Alan was reluctant for a moment but nodded and accepted Penda’s help in divesting first the woman’s, then Christopher’s and finally his own.

All three were soaked through so that the clothes underneath were patched with wet – a condition that didn’t hide the quality of the woman’s velvet, nor the jewels round her neck, nor Christopher’s emblazoned surcoat and the ornate hilt of his sword in its gold-threaded baldric. Alan’s surcoat was less showy, though very fine, like his boots.

The way he hung up the cloaks by using the struts of the roof, spreading them wide so that they would dry the quicker and at the same time add another layer to the hut’s walls, was reminiscent of every soldier who’d camped in hard conditions without a squire to serve him.

Don’t know what you are now, but you were a mercenary once, Gwil decided. He watched the man settle down to sleep.

‘They ain’t simple travellers though, are they?’ Penda asked softly.

‘No, they ain’t.’

Alan’s eyes remained closed. ‘We mean you no harm,’ he said.

‘Don’t mean you any, neither,’ Gwil told him.

Yes, a mercenary for sure; always one ear open.

The storm outside became wilder, shrieking as if in fury that it hadn’t killed the five frail creatures in its path, shaking the hut to try and get at them, but the uninvited guests slept the impervious sleep of the exhausted.

During the course of the night, Gwil got up to push open the door every so often in order that its movement outwards would shovel away the snow that otherwise threatened to block them in. The blast of freezing air that came in each time was almost welcome; the fire and five close-packed bodies, as well as the insulation provided by snow piling up against the north wall where the crack was, created a toasting heat.

The third time he opened the door, he saw that he’d roused Mistress Margaret. She sat up.

Immediately Alan was awake. ‘Domina?’

‘Boots,’ she said. ‘Cloak.’

The process of passing her these things and helping her into them woke everybody up.

‘Shall I come with you, Lady?’ Christopher asked.

The woman said nothing, but her look quelled him into staying where he was. She pushed past Gwil, who was still by the door, and went out into the night.

‘Leave the door open,’ Penda said, beginning to get up. ‘I got to go too.’

‘When she’s back,’ Alan told her.

‘I ain’t going to go where she goes.’

‘When she’s back.’

‘She better be quick, I need to
go
.’

Moments passed in silence, Penda fidgeting and putting on her own boots to be ready. The men were tense until Mistress Margaret once more appeared in the doorway. Alan nodded at Penda; now she was free to enjoy the facilities afforded outside.

‘Thanks so
much
.’ Penda was all sarcasm before she bolted through the door.

In the morning all the cloaks were dry. Christopher collected them to make a bed and pillow for Mistress Margaret, who slept on.

And the hell with anyone else, Gwil thought, amused. But then, with Penda a supposed male, this must be what they called chivalry.

He went to fetch more charcoal. ‘We ain’t going anywhere for a bit,’ he announced, coming back. It had stopped snowing, but the world outside was swirled with drifts. Not far away, the last, low hills of the Chilterns encircled them on three sides, topped with forest like untidy lace against a grey and threatening sky.

Alan went to the door to check. ‘I’m confused. Which way is the Thames?’

Gwil pointed east to the river valley that was as indistinguishably snow-covered as every other treeless space. ‘Hard going,’ he said. ‘Storm might blow up again. I wouldn’t try it, not with a tired woman in tow. Not yet.’

Again Alan had to go and look for himself. On his return, he nodded. ‘We’ll have to wait it out.’

‘Where you heading for?’

‘South.’

Gwil shrugged. That didn’t tell him anything.

‘Mistress Margaret is going to need food. Apart from what you gave us she hasn’t eaten in two days,’ Alan said. ‘It’s time to go hunting.’

‘With swords?’

For the first time, the man smiled. ‘I hoped a couple of simple travelling archers might come with me.’

Christopher was to be left in charge of the still-sleeping woman. ‘Keep a good look-out,’ Alan told him.

Penda raised her eyebrows at Gwil. Look-out for what? The silence around them was absolute: no birds, no sound, just white desolation.

Gwil recognized the anxiety of all hunted things. Something was out there in the emptiness; these three were being pursued, just as he and Pen were, but more closely.

The war, bugger it, he thought; somebody’s after them, and me and Pen don’t want to be around when it catches up. Stephen’s soldiers or the Empress’s – nothing to do with us any more.

However, food was a necessity for them all. Booted and wrapped, they set out for the forest, three brown beetles against a white landscape, choosing wind-blown, erratic paths where they could, otherwise plunging through drifts on legs that sank in above the knee with each step.

‘You’d better go back, lad,’ Alan told Penda. Being shorter than the two men, she was panting with the struggle.

She shook her head, eyes lit at the prospect of using her bow.

As they entered the shelter of the forest, the going became easier. And now there were tracks, hundreds of criss-crosses made by birds, the padded, sharp-nailed print of squirrels, the four-toed imprint of a fox.

Deeper in, they came across the promise of a feast. A mass of slots in the snow and some damaged young beeches showed that a small herd of deer had stopped in its search for food in order to tear bark off the trees. The strips were fresh and Alan wagged a triumphant thumb in the air, almost immediately turning it downward as he looked again. Here and there, prints like those of big dogs were overlaying the slots.

Gwil knelt to examine them.

Wolves.

The number of prints was difficult to make out. He held up two fingers for the others to see, then three, to show that he wasn’t sure.

They began to hurry; there were four-footed predators ahead that could go faster and snatch prey away from them, scattering the rest in flight. They had two advantages: approaching from the south, as they were, they were downwind of the creatures they followed; and they didn’t have to watch their feet – the snow had covered any twigs liable to snap.

In silence, they began to lope, reduced to animals of the pack themselves by hunger and a concentration that discarded thought in favour of sight, sound and scent, the craft of wild things.

They heard the wolves first: a sudden loud growling and rending – not too far away either.

They ran; no need for caution now, the wolves would be too intent on the kill to hear them. The noise was tremendous, not just the growling, but the cawing of a hundred disturbed rooks circling the sky in protest.

It was a deer calf. One wolf had it by the nose, the other two had their teeth into its rump, worrying it, shaking it. As Alan, Gwil and Penda crept nearer, they saw it give up the ghost. Its eyes went dull.

Behind a tree, Gwil put his foot in the stirrup of the crossbow and slotted a bolt into place. Penda reached for an arrow. She looked at Gwil:
Which one’ll I take?

He gestured towards the two wolves growling and tearing at the calf’s rump.
Scare them off. Mine’s the one at the head
.

He stepped out into the open. The wolf he’d earmarked for his shot turned its amber eyes towards him but didn’t release its prey; it was too hungry to give it up for a two-legged intruder. Gwil aimed at the spot between its ears, and shot. It went down.

Penda, he saw, had got one of the other wolves in the side, the only angle presented to her. It whimpered and jumped round, trying to dislodge the arrow. Its companion realized its danger, but instead of running off, bounded towards her, growling, its beautiful teeth bared. It was big, as big as she was. Bless her, already she’d fitted another arrow in place and was aiming, but Alan stepped in front of her, sword raised so that the beast speared itself on it in the throat. The impetus threw the man backwards on to the snow, a dead wolf on top of him.

Everything had happened in seconds, a moment’s lifetime of killing and surviving. The air stank of wolf and blood, but they spent minutes breathing it in without moving, the terror of what had passed only coming to them now, when it was over.

The other wolf had gone off yelping, Penda’s arrow still stuck into its side, for which Gwil was sorry; somewhere it would die in pain. Bad hunting, that was; a dirty kill, but nothing to be done about it.

He strode off to Alan and helped him struggle out from beneath the great grey corpse. ‘Big un, ain’t he?’

‘Don’t I know it.’ Alan felt his ribs tenderly. ‘Good shooting, both of you.’

‘Didn’t do so bad yourself.’

They were still shaking, but triumph was taking over. They would eat because they were lords of the forest whom God had set in dominion over all beasts for their delectation.

Alan produced a poignard from beneath his cloak and bent over the calf to begin the gralloch. It was a male fallow deer; its face and rump were in tatters but the creamy brown hide of its body was untouched. Alan turned it on to its back and splayed its legs outwards as far as possible to expose the throat. He made an incision just below the windpipe and ran the knife carefully along the belly with a sound like tearing soft material, stopping before it reached the pizzle. Immediately, the stomach came bulging out. Alan wiped his poignard on his cloak before putting it away. He inserted his hands carefully into the long cut so as to ease out the rest of the stomach. It plopped out, milk-white and steaming, on to the whiter snow.

‘Innards?’ he asked, looking up.

‘Keep ’em in for now. We can roast the heart for the lady right away when we get back. Take the liver out, though.’