A Place Beyond Courage (48 page)
Clouds had been gathering during the morning and the first flurry of rain hit them as they crossed the Devizes road at Avebury and took the track over the top to Marlborough. Here, rows of strange standing stones pushed up through the sheep-cropped grass like grey giant’s teeth, and John shivered. The rain itself was as sharp as needles of stone, prickling his skin, hurting his scar. His left arm was numb from William’s weight. The child stirred within the folds of cloak and rubbed his eyes, his little face flushed with sleep.
Suddenly from the rear of the column, one of his men shouted a warning. ‘Soldiers, my lord. Soldiers on the road!’
John cursed. There shouldn’t be soldiers in this vicinity lest they be from the garrisons at Marlborough or Devizes and, since he commanded those, he knew full well they wouldn’t be here. He bundled William across to Sybilla and pointed to the herepath. ‘Go!’ he commanded. ‘Ride for Marlborough and don’t look back! Hugh, take John on your saddle, you’ll cover the ground faster that way. Benet, escort my lady.’ He drew the sword from the scabbard at the side of the saddle. There wasn’t time to don his gambeson but the packhorse was carrying his shield and he was able to reach that and slide his left arm through the grips
A part of him heard Sybilla urging the mare; young John’s protests; William crying; the nurse screaming. It was Wherwell all over again. Putting himself across the road; making a stand to hold while others made their escape . . . only this time the stakes were ten times as high.
As Sybilla rode, she heard the first shouts, the clash and scrape of meeting weapons and forced herself not to look round, to keep riding. Every time her mare tried to slow, she pricked her with the spur. Not that a flat-out gallop was feasible or sensible with an infant in her arms, and the horses needed to be conserved for the miles over the Downs. After the initial spurt, she reined the mare to a swift trot. The pace jarred her spine. Her heart was pounding. Whose soldiers were they? What were they doing in the heart of John’s territory?
William had ceased crying and was looking around, wide-eyed and interested anew, delighted at the mare’s swift pace. ‘Faster?’ he said hopefully to Sybilla.
She felt laughter welling up inside her as it always did when she was agitated. Jesu, Jesu! William giggled with her, thinking it all a great game.
The rain arrived with a vengeance, lashing down on the party in vicious silver arrows. She put her head down and protected William within the folds of her cloak. The horses baulked and had to be forced into the wind. A flock of sheep sheltering in the lee of some standing stones scattered, their light footfalls swallowed in the heavier pounding of the horses’ hooves. They would belong to the manor at Rockley, she thought, less than a mile to the north. There were no defences there. Just farms and shepherds.
Horses were thundering up behind them at a hard canter. Benet shouted something to her that the wind snatched from her hearing. She dared a look over her shoulder, almost fearing that what she saw, like Lot’s wife, would turn her to a pillar of salt. Horsemen and a silver courser leading.
‘John!’ she gasped. She eased up on the reins to give her blowing mare a respite and allow the followers to catch up.
He reached her and she saw blood running from a nick along his jawline. A serjeant clung one-handed to his mount, teeth gritted in pain at what was obviously a broken arm. They had a prisoner with them, his hands lashed to his mount’s saddle.
‘Foragers,’ John panted, riding up alongside her.
‘Eustace’s men and fortunately for us no more than a scouting party.’
Sybilla stared at him through the lashing rain. Eustace was Stephen’s eldest son and while the father had gone north to try to contain Henry, Eustace had been left in command of London and the south . . . so what was he doing in Wiltshire?
‘Don’t stop. The rest of them could be anywhere. I need to return to Marlborough, liaise with Devizes and Wallingford and get the patrols out.’ His expression twisted. ‘Henry is headed south; the northern alliance has splintered, and Eustace is out to trap himself a prince . . . and where else to lay his ambushes except where he knows Henry will be headed?’
‘When you say “splintered”, do you mean . . .’
‘I don’t know yet, until the captive bird has sung some more.’ He glanced over his shoulder at the hostage. ‘I dare say he’ll be keener than a skylark when it comes to the test.’
Sybilla swallowed bile. She had been sick every morning for a week and a deep lethargy had engulfed her so that everything beyond sleeping was an effort. Her boast to John that she was barely touched by the early months of pregnancy now seemed hollow. The midwife who had come yesterday to look at her opined that it was probably going to be a girl since Sybilla had not been visited by the sickness when carrying her sons. A daughter. She wondered what John would say. She hadn’t yet told him she was with child. Indeed, she had barely seen him in a month . . . a month in which the world had turned to fire as Stephen and his son Eustace ravaged Wiltshire, particularly targeting Devizes, Marlborough and Salisbury. John’s manors at Rockley and Woodhill had been burned to the ground. Winterbourne had suffered an attack; so had Nettlecombe and Tidworth. Sheep, cattle and pigs had been slaughtered or driven off . . . and where fat grain sheaves had been stacked to dry in the fields, now there were only charred wastes and the threat of famine. They couldn’t go on. The people couldn’t go on. Henry’s attempt to seize York had been thwarted by a combination of bad timing, over-ambition and Stephen’s speed in bringing an army to the city’s defence. Henry had had to turn south and Stephen and Eustace had chased him, bringing fire, sword and devastation in their wake. Henry was dodging from pillar to post without the resources to do anything but fight on the back foot.
To combat her lethargy and nausea, she chewed on a piece of candied ginger root. Her sons were tumbling like puppies on the bed, play-wrestling, testing their muscles, their strength and each other. Already. And if they didn’t, they wouldn’t survive. Sybilla castigated herself for her mood. This wouldn’t do at all. It was the way of the world and unless she intended retiring to the cloister, she would have to cope with it.
The ginger made her feel a little less queasy and she summoned her women, donned her cloak and took the dogs and children to walk the bailey grounds. William ran ahead, waving his toy sword, chasing the yard hens with ferocious yells. His limbs were lengthening as he made the transition from infancy to childhood. She noticed absently that his tunic, one that had fitted John until he was almost four, was only just long enough at the sleeve and could do with an extra band of fabric adding to the hem.
A guard shouted from the watchtower and the soldiers on the ground moved to slot back the great timber draw bar on the gate. With thumping heart and renewed queasiness, Sybilla watched her husband ride in with the troop. He swung down from Aranais and handed the reins to the groom. William ran to him and in customary greeting, tackled his father’s knees. John grabbed his youngest son by the scruff of his tunic and swung him into his arms. He tousled the older one’s hair and kissed Sybilla.
‘We were walking the dogs when the guard called out.’ She strove to sound calm. Knowing what he had endured with Aline she would not cry . . . she would not! She studied him for signs of injury or morose humour, but he moved easily enough despite the weight of his mail. Before he had left for Henry’s court at Devizes he had been nursing a bruised shoulder and cracked ribs from yet another skirmish with Stephen’s soldiers.
She busied herself directing the hall chamberlain to see that the men were attended to, and had her women prepare John a tub in the private chamber, knowing he would want to bathe.
The sight of him naked confirmed to her that he had no new wounds to add to his tally. He endured her scrutiny with composure and a touch of bleak amusement. ‘It’s a trifle late in the day to be eyeing up the goods and deciding whether or not they were really a bargain after all,’ he said.
Sybilla flushed. ‘I was doing no such thing!’
‘No?’ He stepped into the tub. ‘Perhaps you’d like to make a closer inspection to be sure.’
She laughed. ‘I can see you quite well from where I am.’
John gave her one of his long looks and Sybilla decided that either the news must be terrible and he wanted to escape from it, or it was good enough for a celebration. With sudden decision, she dismissed her women and had the nurses take her sons to finish walking the dogs. Then, with slow deliberation, her eyes on him, she reached to the laces of her gown.
Clean, warm, sated and still a little damp around the edges, John poured them both wine. ‘Ranulf of Chester and Hugh Bigod are going to rise up in Lincolnshire and Norfolk,’ he told her. ‘Stephen and Eustace will have no choice but to respond. It’ll take the pressure off us and let us gather in what we can for the winter.’
Sybilla combed the tangles from her wet hair. Nausea threatened the periphery of her awareness, but she managed to keep it confined there. The pleasure of coupling lingered in dissipating flickers through her loins. ‘Thank Christ for that, but God help those they go to burn,’ she said with a small shudder. ‘What of Henry?’
‘He’s going into Devon. He’ll try to take Bridport and see if he can salt Henry de Tracy’s tail at the same time.’ Sitting down on the bed, John gave a deep sigh. ‘Henry doesn’t have enough men or resources. It’s like David fighting Goliath, but we don’t have the benefit of a slingshot. What we do need is help from Normandy in sufficient numbers to stop Stephen and that means Henry will have to go back across the Narrow Sea and garner it.’
Sybilla sat down beside him. ‘Will it ever end?’ She worked at a particularly difficult knot.
‘It must,’ he said grimly. ‘The Church refuses to crown Eustace heir to England and with each month that passes Henry grows in stature.’ He drew her against him. ‘Tomorrow I’ll start work on increasing our defences. I have to believe that before our sons are old enough to wield swords, there will be peace and order in the land again.’
‘And before our daughter picks up her first spindle.’
His breathing caught and he gazed at her.
She laid her hand to her womb. ‘I believe I am with child again. The midwife says so, and that it will be a girl.’
His expression softened but was tinged with concern too. ‘When?’
‘Spring . . . like the others.’ She set her arms around his neck and kissed him. ‘How would you have her named?’
He lifted his hand to tuck a damp strand of hair behind her ear in a tender, intimate gesture. ‘Assuming the midwife is right and it is indeed a girl, I would have Margaret for my mother. Besides, such flowers always grace the spring with their beauty.’
39
Salisbury Castle, Summer 1150
‘Look, Mama!’ Standing in front of his mother, William twisted his head to gaze up at her as he pointed. His voice was filled with such awed, astonished delight that Sybilla laughed and squeezed his shoulders. They were standing in the courtyard outside the hall at Salisbury Castle. A balmy June day was gracing the marriage of her brother Patrick to the lady Ella Talvas and the celebrations were going forward apace.
Sybilla had brought her sons and stepsons into the courtyard, away from the drinking in the hall, to watch the entertainment outside, including the antics of this performing horse. Its hide was a buttery gold and its mane and tail a silver cascade. Little bells tinkled on its red leather bridle and saddle cloth. Using his voice and finger commands, its owner made it kneel before God, count by pawing a forehoof and bang on a drum with back-kicks. For a grand finale, he made it lie down and ‘play dead’. Just when William was becoming agitated and thinking the horse might really be dead, the man touched it with his stick and made it rise to its feet again and do a dance to the music of a bone whistle.
Sybilla gave her sons silver to throw into the man’s hat and, with a smile, he put a crust of bread in the palm of William’s small hand and bade him feed the horse. William was entranced and Sybilla asked the player to bring his miraculous horse to Marlborough. She had already invited a troop of musicians and some mummers and realised she had better stop. It was like gorging oneself at a feast and stuffing as much as one could in a basket to save for later too. Merriment and pleasure had been so fleeting of late that occasions like this were to be seized upon and wrung dry.
Prince Henry had sailed for Normandy in January to raise an army and bring more support to England. In March he had been created Duke of Normandy, his father handing the Duchy over to him on the occasion of Henry’s seventeenth birthday. He was no longer a magnate in waiting, but one in his own right, and with all the revenues of Normandy behind him, a fact which hadn’t escaped Stephen’s son, Eustace, who had crossed the Narrow Sea to continue his pursuit of an inheritance on Norman soil. But at least while Eustace was fighting across the Narrow Sea, he wasn’t burning Wiltshire to a cinder and folk could snatch moments like this to marry and celebrate amid the ruins.
Her stepsons wanted to watch a wrestling contest between two of Patrick’s knights who were grappling bare-chested in a roped-off arena in the corner of the ward. Predictably young John and William didn’t want to be left out. Entrusting the older boys with the care of their half-brothers, Sybilla went to check on her baby daughter.
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