Shadows and Strongholds (24 page)

Brunin nodded and, without looking at Hawise, went to fetch Jester, who was snatching at some weedy grass poking up beside the stable's outer wall.

Hawise shook out her skirts and on wobbly legs headed for the sanctuary of the upstairs chamber, but, as she set her foot on the steps, Hugh caught her arm. 'If I see him near you or Marion… or Sibbi again, I'll nail his balls to Ludlow's gates and go straight to your father. Understood? I mean what I say'

Chastened and ashamed, Hawise nodded. 'Yes,' she whispered. 'Thank you, Hugh.'

'Go on.' He released her with an abrupt wave of his hand and turned back to Brunin who was tethering Jester in the stables. 'God's life,' he growled, digging his fingers through his hair, 'that's one truce almost broken before it's born. What really happened?'

Brunin gave him a level look. 'I think you have guessed the biggest part of it for yourself,' he said. 'She thought it was innocent play but he wanted bloodsport… and he got it, but not as he expected.' He examined his grazed knuckles. 'What I said about an old score was true, though.'

Hugh rubbed his hands over his face. 'Better get one of the men to look at your fist,' he said. 'You don't want it going septic' Stooping, he retrieved his boots from the straw and smoothed his hand over the new leather.

'It won't,' Brunin said. 'Not if there's any justice in the world.'

'In that case you had better offer up some prayers too,' Hugh said wryly.

Brunin was in the undercroft where the soldiers had made their beds when Hawise appeared bearing her mother's box of salves and remedies. He surmised that she must have seen him leave the stables and cross the yard from the upper window, and that she had been waiting her moment.

'Is not one escapade in a day enough for you?' he demanded curtly as he set about unrolling his straw-stuffed mattress.

'I have my mother's permission. I told her that I had met you in the stable yard, and that you had hurt your hand.' She sat down on the low wooden campstool beside the mattress and unfastening the satchel withdrew a small earthenware jar. 'Honey salve,' she said.

Brunin knelt back from his pallet. 'It's no more than a graze,' he said without looking at her. 'One of the men can tend it.'

'No, please. I want to do it.'

'Why? To make your guilt go away?'

'You were right,' she said in a small voice. 'I should not have trusted him.'

'No, you should not.'

Hawise turned her head away, but he heard the choked sound she made. She raised one hand, and rubbed it swiftly across her eyes. Brunin didn't know what to do. Weeping was Marion's art and preserve.

She turned back to him, her face so rigid with control that she looked like her father when he went into battle. 'He left his glove behind,' she said, her voice wobbling with strain. 'He made me laugh, and was so kind that I saw no harm in meeting him to return it. I thought he wanted a few moments to talk to me in private—away from Marion. I wanted it to be a sweet tryst, not…' She made a gesture and he saw her mouth twist with revulsion. 'You were right. I was being a simpleton.'

He thought of the rough, masculine talk between the grooms, squires and knights of Joscelin's company. He had learned much from keeping his mouth closed and his ears open. Women expected 'sweet trysts' and those men who had the art of persuasion could often talk a woman into the bedstraw. Those who didn't, or who found their partners unwilling despite cajolery, had either to resort to rougher kinds of wooing or remain frustrated. The men exchanged the best lines of love talk as if they were passwords into the place between a woman's legs. There were crude names for the women who yielded, and equally crude ones for those who slapped faces and refused, all of it far distant from the wooing that women craved and seldom received.

'Here,' he said and gave her his right hand with its raw, scraped knuckles. 'Since you have brought the salve especially.'

Taking it, she composed herself with a loud sniff and another wipe of her eyes. 'Thank you,' she said with a watery smile.

Brunin shrugged. 'I needed little excuse,' he replied, thinking of hard hands pinning him down, of a knife's cold burn at his throat and the hot sting of urine down his leg. The debt wasn't paid yet by half.

Crowmarsh, bank of the River Thames, August 1153

Moving swiftly and quietly, Brunin poured wine for Joscelin, his father and Earl Roger of Hereford. Beyond the sheltering canvas, the August sun blazed upon the tents of Prince Henry's army and dazzled like millions of coins on the surface of the Thames. It also magnified the stink of recent battle. The particles of settling dust reeked of blood, excrement and sweat. An attempt to take the siege tower guarding the bridge to Wallingford had just failed.

'Well,' snarled FitzWarin. 'That was a waste of time.' Blood-stained saliva dribbled from the corner of his mouth. A blow above his shield rim had knocked out a tooth.

'We had to try,' gasped R.oger of Hereford. 'And it might have worked.' He gulped down the wine and signalled Brunin for a refill. His hand was trembling and his thin face streaming with sweat. He had been unwell throughout the spring and early summer with a persistent low fever, and although he had improved during the last month, the exertion of battle had taken its toll. 'A siege will take longer, but the outcome is not in doubt.'

'How reassuring,' Joscelin said acidly, holding out his own cup for a refill. 'Do Stephen's men in their tower know that?'

Roger grimaced. 'They will,' he said.

Unobtrusively, Brunin set out a bowl of new cheese seasoned with herbs and a basket of bread. The latter was going stale, but was not bad for army rations grabbed on the move.

Henry had arrived in England in the middle of a raw, wet January, and immediately set about making his presence felt. His invasion force had been small, no more than a hundred and forty knights and three thousand footsoldiers, but his ranks had immediately been swelled by the English barons who had rallied to his banner. Brunin had been living an interesting and itinerant life for the past seven months as Henry moved from town to town, laying claim, besieging, taking; sometimes being embraced with open arms; on other occasions having to fight for every inch of ground.

Brunin and Joscelin had made sporadic returns to Ludlow or Hereford, but these were mere days of respite while they changed horses and garnered fresh supplies. Henry and Stephen had circled each other warily like two hostile dogs. In the early days there had been the threat of a major battle at Malmesbury, but the swollen River Avon had separated the two armies and Stephen had stepped away from the confrontation.

'Losing the control and support of his men,' Joscelin had said, and in his gaze there had been a mingling of pity and satisfaction.

Losing control or not, the skirmishing and circling had continued throughout the spring and summer. Henry had celebrated Easter at Gloucester in grand style, as if already king, but the fact remained that vast areas of England still held loyal to Stephen and nothing was resolved. Now Henry had come to the rescue of a beleaguered Wallingford, but first his army had to get past the guard tower that Stephen had built to prevent passage across the river.

'I hate sieges,' FitzWarin complained. 'The men sit about on their arses and grow quarrelsome. There's only so many you can post to man the trebuchets or send foraging. They drink, dice and whore. They fill up the latrines and get siege-belly from the miasmas. Worse than that, they start killing each other instead of the enemy.'

Joscelin raised his cup in toast. 'The voice of experience,' he said and looked at Brunin. 'I hope you're listening to your father, lad.'

'Yes, my lord,' Brunin said.

'Aye.' FitzWarin gave a harsh bark of laughter. 'Especially about the drink, dice and whores, if I'm any judge of his years.'

'I train my squires better than that, and besides, I lead by example,' Joscelin said righteously. 'If he knows about those things, it is not from me.'

FitzWarin snorted and looked at his son. 'You have nothing to say, boy?'

'No, my lord. I listen and learn,' Brunin answered with a gleam in his eye that made the older man give a reluctant chuckle before waving him away.

The men returned to the serious business of discussing how long the siege would take; how many engines to use; whether they should try a night sortie to fire the timbers of the siege castle walls. And Brunin listened and learned, absorbing all and storing it for future use.

In the morning, Brunin went to help Roger of Hereford's trebuchet team assemble one of the siege machines that had been brought to Crowmarsh in dismantled sections. It was hard work positioning and nailing the timbers. The stone-thrower worked on a counterweight system: the long, stone-laden arm drawn down by a sturdy winch at the centre of the structure and released by a trigger at the back.

'Won't be ready until the afternoon at least,' said the foreman, blotting his forehead on his sweating brow.

Stripped to his shirt and braies, Brunin took a swig from his water costrel and squinted through the sun dazzle at the upright posts they had nailed together. 'What about ammunition?'

'Stones in that cart behind. Some of the Serjeants can go foraging. 'Course, we've got to get the range first. That'll take a couple of attempts.'

'How do you—' The question went unasked as the sound of a horn blared across the river and was answered by more horns from the soldiers trapped in their siege tower.

Brunin shaded his eyes and stared across the water. Amidst a churn of dust he saw the familiar glint of armour and ripple of banners.

'Looks as if the stakes have just risen,' the trebuchet foreman muttered.

Hearing a snort and the dink of harness, Brunin turned to see Gilbert de Lacy drawing rein beside the trebuchet, Ernalt de Lysle following close behind.

'Well, well,' said de Lacy to no one in particular, a half-smile on his lips, 'now we arrive at the crux.'

The truce between him and Joscelin had held until January, and then been renewed as Henry landed and made his play for the crown. De Lacy had opted to throw in his lot with Henry and had used the decision to needle Joscelin at every opportunity. He might not be raiding Joscelin's lands, but he could and did keep prodding him verbally. Now, he studied the growing dust cloud of men across the river before turning his stallion towards the tents. His gaze fell on Brunin amongst the trebuchet team, and he inclined his head as he rode past.

'Tell your lord that a reckoning comes,' he said. 'Perhaps sooner than he thinks.'

Sending a silent snarl in Brunin's direction, de Lysle followed his lord, but rode his horse so close to Brunin that the youth was forced to leap aside before he was trodden on. Brunin had no intention of telling Joscelin anything, but he went in search of him nevertheless. If there was indeed an army across the river, then the game was afoot.

'Leave that,' Joscelin said as Brunin picked up the wyvern shield to check it for battle readiness. 'There won't be any fighting today or tomorrow, or the next one.' He pointed to the flagon.