Fires of Winter (45 page)

That could not have happened in King Henry's time. Any knight through whose territory so large a force passed—even if it did no harm—would have sent messengers to the sheriff, who would have sent the news to the king at once. Indeed, the reason that Stephen had been able to quash the rebellions of 1138 and move so quickly that one rebel could bring no help to another was because he had just such warnings from the sheriffs and often from the bishops who held sees in those places and had news from a local priest that a baron was arming and buying men. But that was before Stephen had struck at Salisbury; now both Church and sheriffs were silent.

Only Stephen was not downhearted. He ordered the army to march east immediately, for London must be protected at all costs. He was sorry to miss the opportunity to take Trowbridge and then strike directly at the source of Gloucester's strength; however, he pointed out to his glum council, the situation was not all bad. If Miles was marching toward London, he had no stronghold east of Wallingford. He could be caught in the open, forced into battle, and utterly destroyed.

There was no answering light in the vassals' eyes nor did my heart lift. The same lack of support that had permitted Miles to march east in secret could easily prevent the king's army from coming close enough to force a battle. Stephen was not unaware of this. He sent riders out both to the sheriffs and to spy out the country—only Miles was not marching on London. That news had been false. While we searched to the east, riding all the way to London, Miles of Gloucester had circled around us again well to the north and sacked Worcester.

Waleran was beside himself, for he had been made earl of Worcester and had no warning from his own sheriff. I was as angry as he, but for a far different reason. The king had sent a messenger to bring the queen to London, but she had not yet come when we had the news of the attack on Worcester, so I missed seeing Melusine and any chance of making peace with her before we went west again—to no purpose; Miles was gone, safe behind the high walls of Gloucester. Stephen took some small revenge by assaulting and capturing the little keep at Sudeley, but I think he might have followed Miles and attacked Gloucester, despite the danger of ourselves being struck from the rear by forces from Bristol, had not news come of the death of the bishop of Salisbury on 11 December.

Leaving a strong garrison at Sudeley and a substantial force at Worcester with Waleran, the king moved swiftly to Salisbury to secure the see. To my great joy, Stephen sent messengers ahead to the queen and she arrived in good time to keep Christmas with us. For others it may have been a sad time; few came to Stephen's court that season. But for me, light returned to my life. It was not the same light; there were shadows it did not reach and a flickering that made it unsteady, but I did not see that at first. It was light, and there was warmth in it. After more than a month of total darkness, it was so bright to me that I was blinded.

I am not certain to what I owed Melusine's forgiveness—not that I felt she had anything to forgive; as I had told her twenty times over when I left her in the care of the bishop of Winchester, I was only doing my duty to the king. However, I was not such an idiot as to mention our parting, and neither did she. Perhaps she had reconsidered her unreasonable anger and realized that I was right, but long acquaintance with Audris's humors told me that was unlikely. Probably the fact that I was limping had more to do with the softness of her greeting than any acceptance of the concept that my service to the king must precede my attention to her as long as she was in no danger.

The king did not ride out to meet the queen because he, and all of us who had come to his court, was attending the funeral services of the bishop of Salisbury. We had already been standing in the church for an hour when a messenger sidled discreetly up to Stephen and whispered that Queen Maud's cortege was in sight. The king's face lit with eagerness, and he looked toward the door. To my shame, I found I was praying he would leave instead of that he would stay, although I knew word of such an outrage would spread like wildfire and do him harm. Geoffrey de Mandeville laid a hand on his arm, and Stephen turned back to the altar.

Perhaps we should have walked out, for in the end the seeming respect did no good. Those priests kept us for three hours more—I am sure apurpose—and for all I know would have gone on all day had not the king signalled Camville, who spoke softly to the most elaborately robed priest, one whose paunch was visible under his robes. He was not intoning prayers at the moment and I saw his face redden and his eyes flick toward the king, but he brought the service to an end within the next quarter of an hour.

We found the queen and her ladies at the back of the church. Maud moved forward to speak to the priests even before she greeted the king, and my heart nearly stopped when I did not at first see Melusine. I thought she had not come just to avoid me, or that she had even left the queen's service, which shows the state I was in; the only place Melusine could have gone was to King David, and Maud would never have permitted that. But that was only the depth of my fear making me stupid; she was there, very near the door of the church so that when she offered her hand in greeting, I was able to step outside and pull her into my arms to kiss. She did not pull away, and I asked for no reasons.

“You are hurt,” she said softly, her voice shaking, when our lips parted.

“Only by stupidity,” I said, grinning like an idiot to see her anxious frown. “I tripped when we entered Sudeley and hurt my foot.”

I did not bother to say that I had tripped over the king, who had lost his balance climbing over the splintered logs of the palisade, and if not for the happy chance that I had fallen backward, shield and sword uppermost, we would both have been dead. Stephen managed to spit the man in front of him by thrusting up and catching him between the legs, but I would never have been able to turn over in time to get the two coming from the side. As it was I had only to sit up, and I hit the first in the groin with my shield and caught the other with a blow that tore the sword from his hand and cut his thigh to the bone. Actually my foot was not hurt by tripping. The second man-at-arms I had wounded fell on my leg and must have broken one of the small bones in my foot, but the action was so heated just then that I jumped up and walked on the foot until the keep was secured. It was only then that I fell, and my boot had to be cut off because my whole leg was swollen.

Having already gained Melusine's sympathy, there was no need to describe any of this. I had learned my lesson with Audris. What I thought amusing had turned Audris pale and sick with terror. Let Melusine think I was just clumsy. She would tend my foot and some other bruises I collected at the same time just as tenderly, and not be set imagining all sorts of horrors that had not happened but might happen in the future. I remembered, too, that her father and brother had died in battle and did not wish to remind her of that.

“If you hurt your foot,” Melusine said sharply, but without releasing my hand, “why have you been standing on it for hours? Do you think that will do it any good?”

“No,” I answered meekly, “but I did not think of it at first, and once in the church you know I could not leave while the service was going on. That would be looked on as another deliberate offense I am sure. But it hurts, and I can ask to be excused from duty for the rest of the day. Stephen will be with Maud and will not want me. Will you ask leave from the queen to tend to me?”

“Do we have lodging?” she asked.

I could feel my face twist. “So few have come that you can pick whatever you like, inside the bishop's palace or without, if you do not care for the chamber I have chosen. I took what must have been one of Salisbury's clerk's rooms. They all fled, you know, but we came too quickly for much to have been stolen. I could have looked for a lodging outside—we would have been more comfortable I suppose—but…but the palace was so empty…it echoed.”

Melusine stared up at me without speaking for a moment and then said softly, “I did not realize things had come to so bad a state.” I do not know what she read in my face, but she looked down, away from me, then took my arm over her shoulder and went on, quite briskly, “It is just as well, with your bad foot, that the chamber is close by. Let us go there; then I will ask the queen if I may stay with you, and if she gives permission, I will ask her to tell the king where you are. Then I will bring us dinner to eat in our chamber.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but I saw that dark from which I had just emerged closing in on me and I shut my mouth again. Every minute of the light was precious, so I let Melusine help me to the room, which was in a wing of the palace given over to cells for priests or clerks or I knew not what. It was a small room, but I had collected two braziers and a good store of charcoal, so it was warm. There was no bed—there had been a cot, but I had taken that out and replaced it with two fresh, newly stuffed pallets. The blanket I used on the march was underneath to take up most of the cold from the floor; a fresh blanket I only used when I was with Melusine lay atop, and I knew she would have her own to add. I had collected two stools also, and she pushed one of those close to the pallets so I would have a place to rest my foot and bade me sit.

I saw Melusine look about with pleasure, but when she turned to me, I would not meet her eyes. She said nothing, so I do not know whether that meant anything to her; she only dropped her cloak, unpinned mine, and helped me to sit down; then she unbound the strips that held my boot together and slid it off. Finally she “tchkd” and drew her cloak over my foot to keep it warm—and she touched my cheek as she rose and went out.

That touch was full of tenderness, but it only brought the dark closer. I was sure that Melusine had hurried me into the privacy of our chamber to try to induce me to leave the king—not to join the empress, Melusine was not a fool, but to seek the neutral sanctuary of Jernaeve.

That we would be safe there and not openly connected to either party was true. Stephen had sent no summons for men to the northern shires. Although Prince Henry was nominally his vassal and had given oath to send support if Stephen ever needed it, the king was too wise to test that oath, specially since he did not need men. His army was already larger than any that could be gathered by the rebels. Thus, all that would be necessary to send us into safety—without loss of my position as Knight of the Body and protected from any chance of open conflict with King David or the empress—was an excuse to take Melusine north, and I could think of several, the easiest being that she had discovered she was with child.

Without loyalty to any person, except perhaps to me, Melusine would never understand my refusal. She would feel that I was deliberately exposing her to danger, and it would be useless for me to offer to send her to Jernaeve alone. If I fell with the king, she could not hope to win back Ulle, for she had offended Empress Matilda by not going with her. Worst of all, she would feel I did not return her loyalty, and her rage would be far worse than when I would not take her to the queen myself.

By the time Melusine returned, laden with two large baskets, I had reduced myself to the condition of a child ridden by nightmare. And, of course, I had totally underestimated her. It must, indeed, have been the strain of dealing with Matilda that drove her into open fury when I crossed her in Bath. I should have remembered that Melusine was used to managing eight headstrong men (not all at one time, of course, but she had told me a great deal about her father and her brothers) and knew perfectly well that confrontation was not the path to getting her own way.

What she did was to kneel down beside me and say, “Are we so close to disaster, Bruno? You look as if you had seen Armageddon.”

“Not for the realm,” I answered, “but for me.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, looking astonished. “I know the king is not angry with you, for by chance—I do not know this place and took a wrong turn and came out right at the door of the king's chamber just as Stephen and Maud were going in. So I told him your foot was all swollen and he was most concerned for you.”

There was something in the way she spoke of the king and queen that sparked a hope I had been a fool, and I laughed and took her face in my hands and said, “Oh, I do not fear the king. He cannot bring my Armageddon. Only you can do that, woman.”

I cannot swear she knew what I meant. I think her eyes widened with realization, but perhaps she thought I was remembering our quarrel in Bath. Whatever she knew she kept to herself, for she also laughed and said, “Well, I did not bring it in my baskets. Shall I bind up your foot first, or shall we eat what I snatched from the kitchen?”

“I have a stronger appetite,” I murmured, leaning forward and kissing her. “It is too early for dinner, at least by half an hour, and it eases my foot to lie down.”

“And having nothing else to do in an idle half hour you choose to toy with me? Lecher! The time will be as well spent tending your foot.” She spoke sharply, but her eyes laughed, and when she twisted free of my hold, it was to move the baskets safely out of the way.

“I do not believe in wasted motion,” I said, snatching at her and catching her around the buttocks without much effort; she did not try to escape. “Since you must take off my chausses to see my foot, you might just as well attend to the other swelling too.”

“Disgusting,” she said haughtily, but her fingers were busy untying my shirt as mine were undoing her laces. “You have had a bath,” she murmured when we were lying on the pallet.

She had good reason to know, for she had been playing with me, kissing my belly and thighs and Sir Jehan's red head too. And she laughed when I answered only with groans, but there seemed to be red flecks in her dark eyes, like the red glints the shaft of sunlight from the small window brought alight in her dark hair. And when I seized her and pulled her atop me, her mouth was hot against mine and she was ready.