Winter Siege (21 page)

Penda looked towards Gwil, who was sheltering behind the merlon beside her, and saw him cross himself and mutter some incantation under his breath. She did the same, although her hands trembled as a bolt of fear and excitement shot through her.

‘You’re a brave little bugger, Penda,’ Gwil said, puffing hard as he slipped his foot into place in his crossbow’s stirrup to cock it against the ground. ‘And I’ve taught you as well as I know how. But you’ve never shot more’n a wolf and I’m fearful for you. You stay alive, hear me? By God’s eyes, I’ll do all I can to keep you that way but this ain’t our war, ain’t our siege. Our job’s to survive and theirs’ – he gestured towards the enemy lines in the distance – ‘is to kill us and I mean
us
, not them.’ He was pointing now back down into the bailey where the Kenniford knights were waiting. ‘Our lives is cheap, Pen, you gotta know that. Won’t be no knights lost in all this, too valuable as hostages, them, but we ain’t and what’s more we’re a bloody nuisance and Stephen’s men’ll kill us soon as look at us.’

All the time he was ranting at her he’d been busying himself with the weaponry at his feet. When he had finished he looked up and saw her mouth quivering. ‘No crying now,’ he said with a sudden tenderness that made her want to sob out loud, but then he checked himself and the stern look and hectoring tone returned. ‘Ain’t no time for crying,’ he went on, turning back to his loophole. ‘Ain’t no place for crying in battle.’ He repeated it over and over again like a mantra until something in the dim reaches of Penda’s memory echoed back:

‘Fen women never cry.’

She’d learned that once; someone had told her that once but who and why she couldn’t remember. She shook her head against the voice.
Not now, not now. Whatever it was must not come back now. She couldn’t afford to remember now!

The sudden screech and grind of heavy apparatus cranking into action dragged her back to the mêlée of the present and the booming exertion of male voices drowned out the ones clamouring in her head. Then a loud creak announced the raising of the portcullis and from her vantage point she saw Maud, Sir Rollo and Father Nimbus walk out over the drawbridge towards the three men waiting for them in the snow-laden field.

IT WASN
’
T EASY
to walk confidently, Maud decided, in snow. Standing behind the gate as Milburga clucked and fussed around her like a mother hen, waiting nervously for the signal to egress, she’d planned to do so as elegantly as possible. She was meeting the King, after all, and as the representative of her beloved Kenniford, she might at least try to win the battle before it began with a display of her own personal invincibility. If she could hold her head up and convince Stephen that she and therefore Kenniford were indomitable, there might be a chance of negotiating a mutually beneficial truce. After all, there wasn’t much else she could do.

Deep down, of course, she knew it was futile, had known it since she’d first clapped eyes on Stephen’s men on the far side of the river that morning and watched her precious village burn. Even Sir Rollo had flinched at the sight and although, as she was fond of telling people, the man was dull to the point of eye-watering tedium and could probably bore several men to death at fifty paces, there was no denying that he was also brave.

‘King Stephen has a reputation for goodness, you know,’ Father Nimbus had whispered as they waited for the herald’s trumpet to sound. He’d sensed her nerves, bless him, and was doing his best to quell them.

And it was true, in the past Stephen had been reasonable, but it was also true that his reputation for leniency – which, according to his critics, had sometimes bordered on idiocy – had been hastily revised since the day, not so long ago, when he had hanged poor Ernulf of Hesding at Shrewsbury Castle along with four of his knights and eighty-eight other members of the garrison. This news coupled with the fact that he was famously kicking himself for allowing the Empress to escape him twice – first at Arundel and now at Oxford – meant that he was unlikely to embrace clemency, especially as regarded Matilda, ever again.

As they stepped off the drawbridge the leather soles of her shoes began to move independently of her feet on the icy, rutted earth and she grabbed hold of Father Nimbus’s arm to steady herself.

‘There, there, my dear,’ he said, patting her hand although he was slipping and sliding like a skater himself. ‘All will be well. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other and if we all remember to – whoops! Dreadful weather this! – er, just remember to, er, breathe in and out, God, I’m sure, will protect us.’

He’d better, Maud thought to herself. If she were perfectly honest, she was beginning to wonder where exactly God was in all of this. How many times must she plead for the safety of her castle and the people in it? Why couldn’t they all just leave? Why, even the Empress! She could simply go back to Normandy, or wherever it was she damn well came from, and Stephen could go … well … anywhere, actually, she didn’t care, just as long as it was away from here. The anarchic spirit of the age had entered Maud’s soul. After all, this was now a land devoid of loyalty, where almost every man and woman was for him- or herself first and for the King or the Empress only as far as self-interest dictated. Why should she be any different? Why not capitulate? Why not emulate the bloody barons who changed sides as often as they changed horses? She owed nothing to either party! The King had foisted a drooling boor of a husband on her and the Empress a bunch of foul mercenaries. There was quite literally nothing and nobody to prevent her from declaring a truce with the King right then and there, thus saving Kenniford and relieving herself of the burden of the Empress and this damned, impending siege.

And all this she might have done if it hadn’t been for a blasted blackbird trilling away in the distance somewhere on the Crowmarsh bank, reminding her of the two she had heard so poignantly as she swore her oath not only to the Empress but to God. And what was it she had said:
I shall keep this vow, Lord. Because You have sent me a lucky sign to tell me that I must.
And suddenly, for one rare moment in her life, devotion superseded pragmatism and she realized there was no getting out of it. Damn it!

The King looked older than she’d imagined, slighter somehow. The deep lines around his eyes spoke of a weariness that no amount of sleep could ever salve and the set of his mouth betrayed a cynicism that no man was ever born with but, to her relief, she saw no cruelty there. None either in the man to his left, whom she assumed was William of Ypres, Stephen’s mercenary commander-in-chief. He was a typical of his ilk, so cold and indifferent that he might have been hewn from granite, but she’d seen his like before and had his measure. No, it was the man to the King’s right, a cleric of some sort judging by his robes, who frightened her most. Cruelty was etched into every line of his face, and appeared to seep from every pore – she could practically smell it; and when she looked into his strange pale-green eyes she saw that they were as cold and ravening as a wolf’s. A sudden chill, like cold fingertips along her spine, made her shiver and she looked quickly away.

At that moment the King stepped forward.

‘Lady Maud,’ he said. ‘Here we are in the midst of yet another godforsaken winter.’ He was looking down at the ice-encrusted hem of her cloak. ‘And only a madman – my condolences, by the way, for your husband’s affliction, I have only just heard the news – would relish the prospect of a siege in these conditions. So let us waste neither time nor words nor leave this parley without making peace.’

Maud opened her mouth to reply but Stephen raised his hand to stay her. ‘Look yonder, madam,’ he said, gesturing towards his army. ‘Surely you can see that you are outnumbered and that beyond even those men my resources are limitless?’

There was something in the weary authority of his tone which prevented her from replying even though her mouth had opened to do so.

He continued: ‘Of course you might hold out against us for a day? A week? A month even, but as surely as night follows day we will batter your defences, destroy your garrison and starve you into surrender.’ He spoke in a strange monotone and it occurred to Maud that this was merely a recitation of a speech he knew off by heart and had made countless times before. They were wearisome statements of fact as far as he was concerned, nothing more, nothing less. He looked from her to Father Nimbus and Sir Rollo and back again. It was her turn to speak.

‘My lord.’ She heard the strangle of nerves in her voice and hoped against hope that Stephen hadn’t. Only Father Nimbus and Sir Rollo knew her well enough to recognize them and they, thank God, were on her side. Nevertheless, she paused for a moment to put her shoulders back, as Milburga had taught her to in times of crisis, and cleared her throat. ‘I have faith in my men,’ she said eventually, relieved at the clarity of her tone. ‘And, as a matter of fact, our provisions are quite plentiful so we have no need to fear a siege. But, apart from that, I have sworn fealty to the Empress in the eyes of God and I will not break my oath.’ To stop herself trembling, she had screwed her hands up so tightly inside her gloves that her fingernails were biting painfully into their palms. She stopped speaking to stare defiantly at the King. His turn.

‘And if I were to offer you and the Empress a safe and unmolested passage away from here, what would you say then?’

‘Madam,’ Sir Rollo, who’d been agitating beside her for several minutes, suddenly broke in. ‘May I speak to you a moment?’

Maud nodded and withdrew a few steps from the King.

‘I must advise you, madam, as is my duty,’ Sir Rollo whispered when he deemed they were far enough away not to be heard, ‘that these are very reasonable terms. If you should accept the King’s offer, you will lose Kenniford but you have other estates and other castles. The Empress will be imprisoned, of course, but will survive and
she
has other supporters. But if you reject these terms now and lose, you will incur the King’s wrath and the price of any further treaty will be much, much greater. Of this I must warn you. However, if you choose to stand and fight, I will naturally stand with you.’

She looked at his worn, earnest face and smiled. ‘You’re a dear man, Sir Rollo,’ she said, ‘but I have sworn fealty to an authority higher than either the King or the Empress and I will not break it.’

He nodded; it was what he had expected her to say. ‘So be it,’ he said and bowed.

‘What’s happening now, Gwil?’ Penda asked as they watched the three distant figures turn solemnly away from the King and his party and begin their procession back to the castle. ‘They’re coming back now! What does that mean?’

‘Means the parley’s over, Pen, and less’n they’ve managed to agree a truce, which I doubt, we’ll be fighting soon.’

‘And then what?’

‘And then it’s anybody’s guess. First off they’ll try and batter us into surrender and then if that don’t work they’ll get the under-wallers in and if that don’t work either they’ll try and starve us out. That’s the bad bit. On crusade I heard of sieges went on so long all the supplies ran out and the garrison took to eating the flesh of their own dead.’

‘Yuck.’ Penda shuddered. She was quiet for a while and then a slow smile spread across her face: ‘Tell you what though, Gwil. I promise you this: If you die and I’m starving, I won’t eat you.’

Gwil grinned. ‘Nor I you, Pen … Or, leastways not unless I’m really hungry.’

Once Maud, Sir Rollo and Father Nimbus were safely back inside the castle a trumpet sounded, the drawbridge rose and the metal teeth of the portcullis locked into place. An unaccustomed silence fell as everybody stopped what they were doing and turned to the small figure of the priest who was now standing in the middle of the bailey.

‘May the Lord keep you and protect you.’ His thin, clear voice floated up to the battlements. Gwil stopped what he was doing and bent his head in prayer; Penda followed, squinting sideways at him through half-closed eyes to take her lead as to what to do next.

Father Nimbus raised his hands: ‘And may His blessing be upon you now and for ever more …’ He stood silently for a moment, looking around at all the bowed heads surrounding him. He wanted to embrace them, to keep them all safe. The idea of war was anathema to him. All this bloodshed and conflict was simply too much for his poor old heart, not to mention the tricky question of whom to bless and whom not. Oh dear! He hadn’t a clue what the papal edict on crossbowmen was nowadays. It was getting so hard to keep up. But whatever it was, as far as he was concerned they were all God’s lambs, yes, even the arbalists with their beastly weapons, and therefore just as deserving of divine protection as anybody else. And with that, he raised his eyes to the ramparts and made the sign of the cross. ‘Amen.’

There was silence for a moment or two and then the castle erupted with a resounding ‘Amen’ and business resumed.

As far as Penda was concerned siege warfare was a malodorous affair. Even if she hadn’t been feeling quite so unwell anyway, the combination of smells wafting up to the battlements would have been enough to set her off all by themselves. Some of them she recognized: the boiled meat and vegetables blowing in from the kitchens, for instance, which weren’t so bad; the fresh blood from the ox hides strewn over every piece of thatch in the bailey as a protection against fire arrows wasn’t, on its own, too unpleasant either; but there were others that made her retch, like the one seeping up in great plumes from the hideous grey liquid the carpenters were stirring, which smelled like an entire ocean of rotting fish.

‘That’ll be the glue, Pen,’ Gwil said, laughing at the look of disgust on her face. ‘For the bows. Case they get broke.’

‘Oh,’ she mouthed weakly, hoping very much that hers didn’t; proximity to the fetid stuff might finish her off, never mind the enemy. She turned gratefully back to her loophole; there may be danger on the other side but at least the air was fresh.