A Place Beyond Courage (29 page)
‘You are well, my lady?’ Sybilla asked politely.
‘Indeed yes.’ Aline’s voice was a whisper.
‘I was admiring your gown. What a beautiful shade of blue.’
Aline’s uncertainty receded and a tinge of pink flushed her cheekbones. She released the beads to smooth her palm over the sky-coloured wool. ‘I wore it to honour the Virgin, not out of vanity,’ she said and looked down the nave towards the altar. ‘It is a pity we have no bishop to celebrate the mass since Bishop Roger died.’
‘No, but the Archdeacon was excellent, I thought, and in all likelihood he will be admitted to the see.’ Sybilla smiled at the boys. ‘Your sons are growing swiftly, and aren’t they handsome?’ The older one gave her a solemn stare from wide grey eyes. The youngest buried his face against his mother’s skirts.
Aline murmured in the affirmative, but instead of embracing the boys, lowered her gaze to her beads and fiddled with them. Sybilla was tempted to make her excuses and leave, but it would have been rude and against her duty. ‘You will join the feast in our hall?’ she asked, and when Aline began to make her apologies, added, ‘We should celebrate the Assumption of the Virgin fittingly. The Archdeacon is attending.’
‘Then thank you, my lady.’ Aline smiled again, but it was strained and without pleasure - the grimace of a cornered creature.
When the feast in the hall was over, Aline spent a while in the bower with the women of the castle - the wives of the knights, vassals and retainers pertaining to the sheriff and the Archdeacon. She settled herself on a bench near the embrasure, making herself as small and inconspicuous as a mouse. Her sons were playing with some children belonging to the other women and she could hear occasional shouts from the sward beyond the open shutters, bright with boisterous life. Watching the daughter of the house, Sybilla, oversee matters, Aline felt a twinge of wistful envy. The girl was no more than seventeen yet already displayed a capability far beyond anything Aline could manage after eight years of marriage. When to speak; when to hold silent. What to say to put folk at their ease. What to offer to guests and all in a natural, smiling manner. The room was clean and bright with fresh green rushes strewing the floor and a jug of herbs and flowers standing on the embrasure ledge. How did one accomplish such things and remain unflustered when surrounded by such a gathering? The girl herself was stylishly dressed in a gown laced tightly at the sides, enhancing her figure. The sleeves were fashionably long and lined with yellow silk. When Sybilla spoke and gestured, those linings flashed their colour and drew attention to the line of the arm within the tight-sleeved pale undergown. Aline would never have dreamed of arraying herself like that - would not have had the confidence or daring; indeed, she would have felt brazen.
From general gossip about clothes and jewels, children and alliances, the talk inevitably turned to the situation in Winchester, where many of the women had husbands, sons and relatives involved in the contention. Aline clenched her fists in her lap and gripped the security of her prayer beads. She didn’t want to listen to such talk but was constrained by propriety to stay where she was. The less she knew the better she was able to cope. Ignoring it didn’t make it go away, but at least she could pretend it wasn’t there. They were talking about the quarrel between the Empress and the Bishop of Winchester, which was the reason John was currently away from home. The Empress was besieging the Bishop in his palace at Wolvesey.
John had returned briefly to Marlborough following the debacle in London when the court had had to abandon its dinner and leave the city to Stephen’s forces, led by William of Ypres and Stephen’s Queen. Then he had gone to Oxford for a court gathering. The Bishop of Winchester had failed to appear and it became clear he had deserted the Empress for his former allegiance, hence her descent upon his palace at Winchester. John had been growling something about people who couldn’t organise an orgy in a whorehouse, but at that juncture, she had shut out the rest of what he had been saying and taken herself off to church.
‘I always said Winchester couldn’t be trusted,’ opined a florid older woman. ‘He only joined the Empress in a fit of pique because his brother didn’t get him elected Archbishop of Canterbury. That’s what he really wanted, and instead he was pushed out by de Beaumont’s candidate.’
‘After what the Beaumonts did to Roger of Salisbury, he couldn’t be blamed,’ a knight’s wife said.
‘It must have been a shock to find his nest’s no more silk-lined on the other side. Who’ll give him their trust now? It’ll be bloody though. He won’t surrender his palace to the Empress without a hard fight. I hope she doesn’t send my Ranulf up a siege ladder. My children need their father.’
Aline must have made a sound, for the woman turned to her, eyes avid with curiosity. ‘Your husband is in Winchester too, Lady Marshal.’
Aline swallowed. There was a lump in her throat and suddenly it was hard to breathe. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.
‘You must worry for him when he’s the Empress’s marshal. Bound to be in the forefront.’
Aline nodded and compressed her lips. Her ears were ringing and she thought she might faint.
‘You must be so proud of him.’
She heard herself agree that she was. Knowing she had to leave the room before she made a fool of herself, she muttered an excuse concerning her sons, and hurried out. Ignoring the boys, who were playing a noisy game of chase, she leaned against the cool, pale stone wall of the guest hall and prayed to the Virgin. Holy Mary, let this conflict be at an end. Let there be peace and let it not be the peace of the grave. She was unravelling like a frayed edge of cloth and soon there would be nothing left but a few bare windblown threads.
22
Abbey of Wherwell, Hampshire, August 1141
The woman’s assumption that John was in Winchester was wrong. He was nine miles away at the Benedictine nunnery of Wherwell. The convent stood at a crossing of the river Test on a major supply route to Winchester and John had been sent to guard that crossing and make sure provisions got through to the Empress’s troops in the city. There had been too many raids on supplies and shortages were beginning to bite.
At dawn, he had received reports from his scouts that didn’t bode well. Royalist troops had sacked Andover and were headed straight for Winchester via the ford at Wherwell.
The Abbess was livid that her convent had been invaded and taken over by a band of armed men. Standing before him as the morning brightened with heat, she lashed him with her tongue.
‘God will punish you for this!’ she warned, eyes blazing.
‘Doubtless he will,’ John said grimly, ‘but I must take that chance. You and your sisters in Christ must leave these precincts.’ He looked up as another scout arrived on a lathered horse.
‘I refuse to be driven out of God’s house by a horde of . . . of routiers!’
John clung to patience by the skin of his teeth. ‘For your own sake, you must. Sooner or later there will be hard fighting here and you do not want to be caught up in it.’
‘If you leave there will not be a fight.’
He gave her a barren smile. ‘I cannot do that, Mother Abbess. I pray you, withdraw your nuns.’
She glared at him for a moment longer then pivoted on her heel and marched off. John turned to his scout.
The man bared his teeth. ‘William D’Ypres is coming up fast, my lord, from the Andover road with all his Flemings.’ The hollow of his throat shone with grimy sweat. ‘You are badly outnumbered; you will not hold him.’
The news created a void in John’s gut, but he maintained a composed expression. ‘His men will be tired, mine are not,’ he said. ‘I do not fear the odds. Get yourself a fresh horse and be ready to ride for Winchester on the moment.’
‘My lord.’
John tightened his jaw. From small boyhood, he had been taught to stand his ground. Never give in. Never. It was a sign of weakness and a reason for shame. He had sometimes wanted to run away, especially when he was taking a drubbing from an older, more experienced opponent; but as he matured he had learned to hold fast and, like a horse trained for war, had transmuted the desire to flee into battleground aggression.
Another rider pounded in, this time from Winchester with the news that a division of royalist troops under the Earl of Surrey had hit the city from the east and the Empress was retreating to safety. ‘Winchester’s in flames, my lord, it’s hell in there,’ he gasped. ‘The Earl of Gloucester is fighting a rearguard to hold off the Queen’s troops while he gets the Empress away. He’s sent her before him with my lords of Wallingford and Cornwall. They’re taking the west road through Le Strete to Ludgershall and Devizes. My lord Gloucester bids you do what you must to stay D’Ypres and prevent him from closing the trap. If he gains the Stockbridge road before the Empress has had a chance to make good her escape . . .’ He let his words trail off.
John gave a brusque nod. So there was no point sending his messenger on to Winchester. Stephen’s Queen with all the Londoners behind her and the Kentish militia would overrun the Empress’s positions like a high spring tide. If D’Ypres took this crossing at Wherwell, he would be able to race up the river road to the next bridge at Le Strete and cut off the Empress’s escape, trapping her like a grain between two millstones.
He looked at the sun glittering on the ribbon of the river, at the trees, still green with summer, but showing a little tired and dusty now. The thatched and shingled roofs of the nunnery buildings. A herd of red cows drinking at the riverbank, their hocks caked in drying mud. He felt the ground under his feet, hard after the heat of a long, dry August. Such weather was perfect for harvest. Cutting the wheat, scything it down. He was six and thirty. Better to die now than live down the years to become a dribbling wreck like Walter of Salisbury.
‘My lord?’
He turned to look at Benet, seeing with a sudden sharp clarity the lugubrious features and steady brown eyes. Through thick and thin. ‘We’re going into the jaws of hell,’ he said to the knight. ‘Find the nuns’ priest and get him to shrive the men. The quicker the better because William D’Ypres is going to be on us very soon.’
‘That bad?’
John found a smile. ‘Close enough.’
The unspoken message passed between them. ‘Good thing my sword’s sharp and my horse fresh,’ Benet said, bowed deeply and departed on his errand, striding swiftly but without alarm.
John called for his stallion, organised the men and spoke with the other senior knights. His company had the support of Geoffrey Boterel, brother to the Earl of Richmond, and Robert of Okehampton, both steady, seasoned men, strong in the saddle and impervious to panic. They all knew what they were being asked to do and what it meant. John sent the youngest squires and the grooms to escort the nuns away from their abbey. The villagers had already fled into the woods taking their goods and livestock with them. The news of what had happened to Andover had spread as swiftly as the fire that had consumed the town.
They heard them first - the clatter of hooves, the jingle of harness and weapons, the intimidating clamour of spears beating on shields. The sound grew louder, like an approaching storm on the verge of flattening the wheat in the field. Then they saw them, the Flemish mercenaries of William D’Ypres - hardened veterans of skirmishes and battles throughout Flanders, Normandy and England. Their armour was dirty from the fighting at Andover, but it was a veneer to encourage fear. John watched them come but refused to allow himself to think of defeat. These men had destroyed Andover and had marched all the way from there. Burning a town took effort, as did looting. Then a four-mile ride to Wherwell on top of earlier, strenuous effort. Enough to make the odds a little less overwhelming. He’d settle for that.
John had been in battles before, both skirmishes and heavy fighting, but never anything as hard and desperate as the attack launched on him by William D’Ypres as his Flemings strove to punch their way through. He slashed and cut with his sword, swung his shield, pivoted his stallion and redoubled his efforts. A mercenary went down. Two came at him at once. He spurred his horse, then reined hard and came across the front of the men. A swift hack of his blade brought one horse down and fouled the path of the other. The rider of the fallen horse screamed once as his mount crushed him. John took the other mercenary and spurred forward into the storm. ‘
Dex ai le Maréchal! Dex ai l’Empresse!
’
Dex ai le Maréchal! Dex ai l’Empresse!
’
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