Winter Siege (35 page)

‘I am happy to see you,’ she whispered.

‘And I you, madam,’ he replied.

‘But it is a surprise,’ she added. ‘A pleasant one, but a surprise nonetheless.’

‘Sir Robert is a close ally and neighbour of the Empress, my lady,’ he said. ‘News travels fast, so when I heard young William was to be sent to Bristol I volunteered to be part of the dispatch. Besides, the Empress doesn’t need me at the moment; things are pretty quiet in the West at present.’

They stood gazing at one another for some considerable time until behind them two sets of throats were cleared ostentatiously.

‘Forgive me,’ Alan grinned. ‘A mercenary’s manners are almost always found wanting, as well you know, my lady. But may I make amends by introducing Sir Percy Bellecote and Edward Gilpin, whose company I’ve kept and, must say, enjoyed immensely on our journey here?’

The two young men smiled and bowed and Maud was suddenly reminded of her duty and so sent them off to be fed and watered.

She spent the rest of the day with Alan discussing everything that had happened since they last met. She told him about the final day of the siege, about Penda’s injury and the shock of discovering that she was, in fact, a girl and how, although poor old Sir Rollo was still smarting from Matilda’s insult, Gwil had proved an excellent commander. He in turn told her about their escape, the arrows he and the Empress had only narrowly avoided as they galloped away from the castle and his fears for Sir Christopher, who hadn’t appeared until well beyond Malmesbury, but was still wearing the Empress’s veil when he did. Maud laughed.

‘He is well, I hope,’ she said. Alan nodded.

‘And your husband, madam?’ he asked. ‘He is well too?’

‘Not exactly,’ she replied, ‘but still alive … just.’

‘I see.’

Maud had been to the turret earlier that day because William had rushed there after their conversation in the solar and she wanted to make sure that he was all right.

When she arrived, however, the boy had refused to acknowledge her and without his usual cheerful greeting the room felt even gloomier than ever. All that could be heard in the heavy silence was the laboured rasp of Sir John’s breathing interspersed with groans of pain.

He lay motionless on his cot just as he had the last time she had seen him and yet his face – bestially contorted on one side and as slack as an imbecile’s on the other – was turned permanently towards the door as though he were expecting someone at any moment.

Kigva was kneeling beside him, murmuring softly, her back to the door, her filthy naked feet splayed out behind her. Every now and then she tossed her head to free her face of the long damp strands of hair covering it, to guide a cup to her patient’s lips.

Maud shifted uncomfortably in the middle of the room. ‘Well, I shan’t be staying long,’ she said, although it was already a fleeting visit even by her standards. ‘But if there’s anything you need …’ She was half expecting Kigva to round on her again like a wild cat.

To her surprise she did not.

‘No, thank you, madam,’ she said instead and although the woman still had her back to her, Maud realized that it was the very first time she had ever addressed her properly, which she found strangely disconcerting.

‘Well, if you’re sure …’ she said, glancing over at William once more, who was still refusing to look at her.

‘Oh yes,’ Kigva replied, only this time she did turn round; the strange pale eyes stared directly into Maud’s. ‘We’ve got everything we need now.’

It was a peculiar sensation but, long after she had left the room, Maud could still feel Kigva’s eyes on her back.

THE ABBOT ATROPHIES
daily as though an invisible creature is eating him alive from the inside out.

It is the scribe’s fault, the infirmarian thinks as he puffs and clucks around his patient, muttering darkly that all this talk will do him harm; yet still the young man comes, armed with his instruments of torture, to drain the abbot’s soul. And still the abbot welcomes him.

It is morning and the scribe is sitting as usual at the bedside, poised to write.

‘It was a rare and joyful time for Kenniford,’ the abbot says. ‘After the siege and the fighting, its people had survived, triumphed even, and on the evening of Alan’s arrival there was, for the first time in a long time, music and dancing, and greatest of all, there was love, at last.’ He sighs wistfully, causing the scribe to shuffle uncomfortably on his stool. He doesn’t approve of music or dancing and certainly not the ‘love’ of which the abbot speaks. He mutters to himself, gives the coarse girdle around his loins a peremptory rub to prevent any stirrings and stops writing.

The abbot looks up irritably. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, boy! I will spare you the details but in God’s name write. I’m nearing the end.’

WITH AN EXQUISITE
pang Penda realized that today had been the happiest of her life.

The epiphany struck at suppertime as she looked around the hall at all the munching, laughing, chatting heads and understood that she loved them all; well, not perhaps
all
, but definitely the idea of them and certainly the majority.

She could, at last, love the place with impunity now because her time here was coming to an end.

She and Gwil would soon be leaving, to take to the road like old times and head east to find her family if they could. It was this idea and also, perhaps, the delicious spiced wine – of which she had drunk rather too much – which had suddenly brought everything into such sharp relief.

‘I love you,’ she told Gwil, resting her head on his shoulder and gazing up at him in woozy affection. ‘And I love you too,’ she said, turning to Father Nimbus on her other side. The two men exchanged amused glances.

‘My dear child, you are a most generous soul,’ Father Nimbus said, patting her hand. ‘And I am very fond of you too. May the good Lord bless you and keep you always. You will be much missed at Kenniford.’

‘Ease up on the old wine a bit, Pen,’ Gwil said, nudging her in the ribs, but he was smiling and she could tell that, although displays of emotion embarrassed him, he was secretly pleased.

Earlier on they had bumped into Alan of Ghent whom Maud had obviously primed so well that he did not betray the least surprise to see Penda in feminine apparel; instead he had complimented her on her beauty, adding that he hoped she was still as handy with a crossbow. Best of all though had been Gwil’s reaction:

‘Certainly is,’ he told him proudly, before Penda had a chance to open her mouth. ‘Best I’ve ever seen.’

It was a prize beyond rubies and she would remember those words for the rest of her life.

After supper there was dancing.

Penda sat on her stool, her feet tapping furiously to the music, watching the twirling dancers on the floor. Gwil, however, seemed oblivious to the merriment and was instead staring into his lap, fiddling with the quill case like a penance.

‘Could get bloody irritating, that could,’ she piped up when she could bear it no longer.

He looked up, startled. ‘What could?’

‘You fidgeting with that thing all the time. What is it anyway?’

He sighed wearily. ‘I’ve told you an’ told you. It’s nothing … it’s just a … thing … a mercenary’s answer to rosary beads, that’s all. Anyway, mind your own business.’

She pursed her lips and shrugged. He could be a miserable bugger sometimes and this evening was turning out to be one of those times.

Her previous euphoria succumbed to a sudden stab of guilt. Perhaps it was all her fault? She should not be taking him away from here; not when he, of all people, had so much to stay for. Of course
she
could be happy,
she
was going home, most likely to be reunited with her family, but his family was dead! No, she was a selfish girl even to have suggested it, not to mention a stupid, conceited one to think that she alone could make him happy … and yet, from the very first, he had leaped on the idea with alacrity.

‘I’m done here, Pen,’ he had assured her. ‘Siege is over. We done our bit. I’ll hand back to poor old Sir Rollo and no harm done. Be like old times, won’t it?’

Back then she’d thought he had meant those words but now she wasn’t so sure. Look at him! He had hardly touched his food all evening and was so preoccupied with whatever it was that there wasn’t so much as a flicker from him when a pair of blackbirds flew out of one of Gorbag’s pies. All the other diners gasped and applauded but Gwil just sat there as if nothing had happened.

She was beginning to despair when Milburga, wearing a smile of grim determination, came bearing down on them and sashayed around the table to bully him to his feet. There was no doubt about it, he had blushed a terrible colour, and affected huge reluctance, but at long last Penda could see that deep down he was rather pleased.

‘I’ve often wondered about them two,’ she confided to Father Nimbus as they watched them dance.

‘Really?’ the old man replied, turning towards her in surprise. ‘Milburga? Oh, yes – yes, I see what you mean … Well, there is no doubt that she is a very, er, fine woman, a very fine woman indeed. But it would take rather a brave man, don’t you think?’

‘None braver than my Gwil,’ she said proudly.

At the other end of the table another couple, also giving many cause to wonder about the nature of
their
relationship, sat deep in conversation, oblivious to all but one another. Penda could hardly take her eyes off them. It was the first time she had seen a couple in love and it made her curious.

From the way they behaved it looked a bittersweet experience and although she could overhear very little of what they said, she could tell by the way Maud intermittently lowered her eyelids – very un-Maud-like – and the inclination of her head that it was not inconsequential. She watched, spellbound, as the exchange went back and forth until suddenly Alan reached out, pressed his finger to Maud’s lips, clasped her hands in his and began to tell her something with such intensity and passion that Penda gasped and had to look away. When she looked back, some moments later, Maud’s expression was one of rapt attention. Whatever it was they were discussing, this was the crux, but although she tilted her stool this way and that and to quite a perilous angle at one point, craning her neck until it hurt, they spoke so softly that she could barely hear a word. And then, as if the sentence had been carried to her on a breeze, she heard Alan say:

‘I
will
come back, my lady. As soon as this damned war is over I’ll be back at Kenniford before you can say “God save the Queen”.’

The evening ended as the sun went down, the hall emptied and a host of hiccoughing fuzzy-headed revellers made their way obediently to the chapel for Compline and then to bed.

THE ABBOT IS
muttering once more from the Book of Revelation: ‘ “His name was Death. And Hades followed with him …” ’ He repeats it over and over again.

‘Whose name, my lord?’ The scribe leans forward to hear him more clearly. ‘Who is Death?’

But the abbot puts his finger to his lips. ‘Shhh,’ he says as his eyes cast wildly around the room. He is shivering.

Outside the light is dim for so early in the afternoon and thunder growls in the distance. A storm is brewing and through the window of the infirmary the scribe can see the trees on the rise beyond the abbey bend to a sudden gust as dark clouds chase across the sky like warlords on horseback.

There is a hush broken only by the abbot’s sudden gasp: ‘He was waiting, you see, in the rowan copse, as he said he would, standing in the shadows, waiting.’ The old man is struggling for breath. He makes no sense; the scribe is frightened.

‘But who, my lord?’ He must press him; time is running out. ‘Who? Tell me who?’

‘The monk,’ the abbot replies, his voice barely audible now. ‘That fiend in cleric’s robes. It was he who was waiting.’

‘But for whom, my lord? For whom did he wait?’ He is desperate to wring the ending of the tale from the old man before he goes entirely mad or dies, yet death is breathing hard upon his scrawny neck.

‘The serpent. The betrayer of Kenniford,’ the abbot hisses. ‘He alone who knew its underground labyrinths; he who could come and go through them unseen like a will-o’-the-wisp.

‘It is
He
who leads Death to the postern, guiding him like a shepherd along its narrow path to where another passage, unknown to all but he, converges.

‘They do not speak but the monk, crawling on his hands and knees through the low, dark tunnel, mutters unholy things beneath his breath.

‘And still he leads him on to the Wormhole and through the rusted grille into the castle itself …’

The scribe rocks back and forth upon his stool, hands writhing in his lap, his face tilted to the ceiling as he implores God to give him patience.

But the abbot has turned his face to the wall and is silent once more, while outside the thunder executes its threat, bouncing angrily over the hills as the rain lashes hard upon the abbey’s roof. It is cold suddenly and the scribe shrinks deeper into his robe.

‘My lord?’

The abbot turns towards him, his face wet with tears. ‘While God and His saints slept,’ he sobs.

AS THE REVELLERS
stumbled to their beds and the servants settled into their various niches in the hall, Gwil made his way to the ramparts for his final patrol of the evening.

It was a cold, clear night and the watchmen stamped their feet, their arms flapping like a murder of crows to keep themselves from freezing.

‘Goodnight, gentlemen.’ Gwil nodded at each in turn as he made his way along the allure behind them.

‘’Night, Sir Gwilherm,’ they mumbled through frozen mouths, their warm breath etched in the chilly air.