Winter Siege (39 page)

‘Just a little rest,’ she repeated, wiping roughly at her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘Because we’re going to get out of here, you and me, and then we’re going to go and live peaceful like we planned. Remember? The fens, remember? Remember what we planned, Gwil?’ She was speaking quickly, urgently, almost gabbling as she reminded him of the plans they had made, hoping that their memory could somehow tether his soul to his body for ever more. But he only smiled and nodded, murmuring something she couldn’t hear.

‘What’s that, Gwil?’ she asked, craning towards him, her tears dripping on to his chest. ‘Can’t hear you too well.’

‘Christ’s blood, Pen!’ He grimaced. ‘Not … going … to … make me repeat it, are you?’

‘Hush now,’ she said, stroking his face. ‘No need to go tiring yourself out with talk. Plenty of time for that later.’

But Gwil shook his head. ‘Got … to … say this now, Pen … Got to tell you that … might’ve took a while … but truth is …
the truth is
that I couldn’t have loved you more nor been more proud of you if you was … well … if you was my own.’ Then he smiled and sank back into her lap.

She saw him blink as his eyes grew tired and she lifted his hand to press it against her lips. ‘Don’t you ever say that, Gwilherm de Vannes … Don’t you
ever, ever
go saying stuff like that … You’re just tired is all … Wouldn’t be talking like that ’less you were.’

But Gwil was no longer listening; instead he was looking beyond and through her as though at some invisible presence above her head.

‘She safe now, Lord, is she?’ she thought she heard him ask. ‘I do right by her in the end, did I?’ And then, in response to a reply audible to no one but him, Gwilherm de Vannes, bravest of men, gave one last contented sigh and closed his eyes.

‘
BRAVEST OF MEN
. Bravest of men,’ the abbot murmurs.

Outside the storm has cleared, the wind and rain have ceased their battery of the abbey roof and the trees on the rise stand upright and still again.

With the little strength left to him, the old man rises on to his elbows to peer through the window, his rheumy eyes squinting into the light as he searches for something. When, at last, he finds it he drops back on to his pillows with a sigh. ‘Well, well,’ he says.

The storm has blown the last leaf off the old oak tree …

He smiles sadly as he turns towards the scribe. The once upright, eager young man now sits slumped and bowed on his stool, tears dripping indecorously off the end of his nose on to the tablet in his lap. The abbot’s face clouds with pity.

This is a misery I have inflicted, he thinks, and is sorry for it, yet he cannot waver now.

‘So Gwil dies,’ the scribe says quietly.

‘I’m afraid so,’ says the abbot. ‘And Father Nimbus and countless other brave souls besides. Death came to Kenniford that night, as I warned you he would, and did not leave alone.’

The scribe is silent for a moment; then he turns to the abbot: ‘But who admitted him, my lord? Who was “the serpent” you spoke of, “the betrayer” of Kenniford? I must know …’

Silence again. The abbot is looking through the window once more.

‘My lord?’ Perhaps he has not heard him. ‘The one who betrayed them all? You have not named him.’

‘Have I not?’ he replies eventually. ‘It was William, in the mistaken belief that the monk could cure his father. Kigva had so convinced him of the restorative powers of the monk’s prayer that he resolved to get him back by any means; so on the day they met – as if by chance – on the riverbank, it was all too easy for Thancmar to persuade the boy that his motive for returning to the castle was pure. William was just a child, after all, and, besides, he loved his father.’

‘He must have suffered greatly, though,’ the scribe says softly. ‘William, I mean.’

‘Indeed,’ says the abbot, wiping away a tear, relieved that the young man is too busy writing to notice it.

The scribe looks up. ‘And the others, my lord? What became of them?’

The abbot cannot speak, lest his tone betray what he dares not; instead he raises his hand to motion for some water, which Brother Infirmarian brings quickly, administering the sips with his usual care whilst scowling his eternal rebuke at the scribe above the old man’s head.

He sips the water gratefully and is once more revived by it. Death’s fingers may be tightening their bony grip but he will resist them just a little longer … He sighs again. ‘The terms of surrender were reasonable, as these things go; the survivors were at least granted safe passage out of the castle along, of course, with all Maud’s “useless mouths” – she insisted on it. They left that very night, heading west to find refuge with the Empress, turning their backs for ever on Kenniford, which, from then on, I fear, became an important stronghold for the King as his main crossing on the Thames.’

‘And Penda? And William?’ the scribe asks, leaning forwards anxiously. ‘What became of them?’

‘They survived,’ the abbot replies. ‘And now – if, that is, you will indulge me just a little longer – we must head to Bristol.’

WILLIAM OF YPRES
was in a very good mood on the morning of the surrender. The invasion had gone rather well: better than expected actually. His casualties were minimal, the King had his longed-for crossing on the Thames and, to be perfectly honest, he simply didn’t have the appetite for a mass hanging today. No, all things considered, he would happily grant Lady Maud of Kenniford – although she would have to forget the ‘of Kenniford’ epithet from now on – a safe passage out of the castle along with all those who wanted to leave with her.

A cock crowed as he watched the party of dispossessed ride across the drawbridge for the last time. He yawned; all his munificence had made him sleepy.

The journey to Bristol took the ragged cavalcade through a landscape punctuated by the marks of war: every other village a ruin of burned houses, flattened crops and slaughtered animals. Alan led the way, retracing the route he had taken with the Empress, traversing the uplands by day, seeking refuge in the cover of woods and forests by night; their movements trammelled at all times by an acute awareness of the gangs of outlaws who famously roamed the countryside preying on unsuspecting travellers. Not, as Milburga was quick to point out, that there was much worth stealing: a few half-lame palfreys, a couple of flea-ridden hounds and a rickety old cart containing the few casks of water and stale loaves Gorbag had managed to smuggle out of the kitchen before they left. Other than that there were only the clothes they stood up in, although, judging by the odours emanating from
some
she could mention, most of those could probably stand up and run away all by themselves.

‘Right bunch of tatterdemalions we are,’ she told Maud, turning in her saddle as she cast a critical eye over the caravan of dejected souls following behind. ‘Look too poor to be worth robbing; wouldn’t give us a second glance if I was them.’

Maud smiled weakly but said nothing. She had barely uttered a word since they left Kenniford, for which Milburga blamed Father Nimbus. It wasn’t that she wasn’t grieving for him herself, mind, it was just that getting cross – as she always found anyway – was a good deal more enervating than feeling sad; not to mention there being a certain irony in the fact that the only person who had ever truly been able to comfort Maud was the dead priest himself.

It was late morning on the second day of their journey and they were riding through a beech wood carpeted in bluebells, its canopy interspersed with shafts of warm golden sunshine. The scene, the scent, the whole enchantment of the place made Milburga smile with pleasure and she glanced sideways at Maud to see whether it had lifted her spirits too, although judging by the bowed head and listless droop of the girl’s shoulders it had not.

Milburga sighed. It pained her to look at her mistress, who looked as if all the stuffing had been knocked out of her; not that you could blame her, of course; what with losing poor old Girly and the castle and everything, she had every reason to be miserable; nevertheless, it shouldn’t be allowed to go on too long and Milburga vowed then and there that the moment they got to Bristol, she would set about putting it right. In the meantime – and this would be difficult – she would hold her tongue, leave Maud to her sorrows and give her time to grieve, the poor love.

She sniffed, then turned her head away to dab surreptitiously at her eyes; these were dreadful times right enough and they didn’t even end with Maud. There was William too, looking like a wraith these days, so pale and skinny and refusing to eat or drink or talk to anyone either; but then God only knew what
he’d
suffered! Penda too, for that matter, smothered in a pall of grief just like Maud, only hers, if that were possible, was even thicker and more impermeable.

Oh well, she comforted herself, not too much longer now; they should be at Bristol any day and in the meantime, there being nothing she could do for any of them, it was probably best not to look.

On the fourth morning, as dawn broke, cold, hungry and almost blinded by exhaustion, they arrived at last on the outskirts of Bristol where an enormous golden castle rose out of the early morning mist like a miracle to greet them.

‘Wait here!’ Alan held up his hand and drew rein by the ochre banks of a huge river. A murmur of relief rippled through the procession like a breeze as they watched him clamp his heels hard against his horse’s flanks and gallop off towards the gatehouse to announce their arrival.

‘Welcome, welcome, my poor, poor darlings!’ Countess Mabel, the Earl of Gloucester’s doughty wife, stood beneath the portcullis holding out her arms as they staggered wearily over the drawbridge towards her.

‘You must be Maud,’ she said, clutching her to her bosom. ‘So sorry, so terribly, terribly sorry to hear what a beastly time you’ve had of it, my dear; I do know how it is. Robert and I have had such trouble in the Marches. Quite, quite horrid, I do know.’ And before Maud could respond or, indeed, extricate herself from the embrace, she felt the countess’s mighty chest rise against her cheek as a pair of enormous lungs filled like bellows and a voice, which could doubtless be heard in those distant Welsh Marches, bellowed: ‘MATILDA! MATILDA! THEY’RE HERE. COME QUICKLY.’

It was all too much.

Perhaps it was relief that they were safe at last, a belated reaction to what they had endured, extreme fatigue or simply the idea of the Empress being so unceremoniously summoned but, whatever it was – and even Maud herself didn’t know for sure – she began to laugh; quietly at first, an easily suppressible shuddering counterbalanced, in its early stages anyway, by Mabel’s solid bulk against which it rose like a voluptuous wave gathering mirth and momentum until finally – just as the Empress came gliding into view – she was so convulsed by it that the countess was forced to let her go. And there Maud stood, to the open-mouthed amazement of everyone else, insensible with laughter, tears spurting helplessly from her eyes, shaking like one of Gorbag’s jellies.

Milburga came to the rescue, although whether Maud’s or the countess’s nobody knew.

‘My lady is tired,’ she said, taking her mistress’s hand and giving its palm a sharp, surreptitious pinch. ‘A rest perhaps?’

‘Indeed,’ said the bemused countess. ‘What a very good idea.’

Once Maud had composed herself – a few sharp words from Milburga later – they were led to the keep through three enormous baileys, each one lined not with the ramshackle timber buildings of Kenniford but with stone-built constructions gleaming with modernity. Every spare inch of every quarter of the place was vibrant with well-ordered industry, a cacophony of sounds and a dazzling array of people.

As they walked into the inner bailey an invisible wall of warm air blasted their faces like the breath of God from a vast kitchen housing three ovens, each one large enough to roast two oxen side by side and around which scores of cooks, bottlers, bakers and scullions buzzed like bees around a hive. Further on, beyond the great hall, teams of masons and painters were putting the finishing touches to a glorious chapel whose curved painted ceiling met the arches of its walls in a frieze of sculpted marble punctuated by windows of coloured glass. Milburga had never seen so much glass – or so much colour, come to that! And in the wards, among the many huntsmen, herdsmen and verderers who peopled the place, groups of outlandishly dressed men and women darted, bearing exotic silks and hides, furs and spices.

‘Merchants,’ Alan explained, amused by her open-mouthed wonder as they passed. ‘Foreigners.’

Despite the grandeur of Bristol and its assault on their senses, Penda remembered almost nothing of her early days and weeks there, just as she remembered nothing of the flight from Kenniford; everything from Gwil’s death onwards was blank. Only the sharp pangs of grief reminded her that she was still alive; everything else was buried and apparently quite dead.

‘Alan it was come back to find you,’ Milburga told her later, although she had not asked. ‘And there you was, weeping like a baby and clinging to Gwil’s dead body and poor little William there clinging to you. Dragged you both away, he did, and you making all kinds of fuss and then not speaking nor eating, not for days and days; and I was afeared as how you was going to die of a broken heart.’

Left to herself she would have done so but Milburga simply wouldn’t allow it.

It was Milburga who undertook to chide and cajole her back to the living; reminding her of the necessity of food and rest; coercing her back to the rituals of life that, left to herself, she would otherwise neglect.

‘Ain’t no sense in all this flopping about,’ she would say brusquely, as she took a comb to Penda’s hair or tied the belt around her kirtle to stop it falling around her ankles like a sack round a stick. ‘Ain’t going to bring ‘im back, is it?’ And Penda would smile and shake her head, pretending, though only for Milburga’s sake, that it would not.