Winter Siege (25 page)

‘I’m fine, Milly,’ said Maud, almost euphorically grateful for her nurse’s timely appearance. ‘I really am fine,’ she repeated, wrapping Milburga’s ample arm in hers and squeezing it tightly. ‘Let’s go back, eh?’

Back at the entrance, Sir Rollo was waiting for them. ‘How was it?’ he asked as they emerged blinking like moles into the unaccustomed brightness of the cavern.

After a long silence in which he never once took his eyes off Maud’s, Alan grinned and said: ‘As posterns go it was an absolute beauty. In fact, I can’t honestly remember when I liked one better.’

‘Oh, good … er … very good,’ Sir Rollo replied, twiddling his chubby fingers nervously. ‘Yes … Very good. Uh … Well, if you’ll excuse me, long day and all that …’ And wandered off.

Maud, still clinging to Milburga’s arm, felt the heat rising in her cheeks again and hoped to God it didn’t show. This feeling, this, this … malady or whatever it was would pass; she knew it would. It had to. She would come to her senses … eventually. She must … And yet, however hard she tried, there was nothing she could do to prevent her mind slipping back to that moment in the darkness when he had held her in his arms and made her feel so unexpectedly peculiar.

‘Bed,’ she heard Milburga say and felt herself propelled in the direction of the keep. ‘You’re looking a bit peaky, madam, if I may say so.’

HALFWAY BACK TO
the keep the composure Maud had prayed for returned like an enchantment lifting. She stopped abruptly.

William!

Amidst everything else she had forgotten since she almost lost her senses, she had completely forgotten about the boy and was suddenly anxious about him.

‘What’s the matter?’ Milburga asked. ‘Acting very odd you are all on a sudden.’

‘It’s William,’ Maud replied. ‘I haven’t seen him today!’

‘Oh, ’e’ll be all right,’ Milburga said. ‘Shouldn’t wonder if ’e’s not up with Sir John. Saw ’im at suppertime. Certainly ate hearty enough. Wouldn’t worry if I were you.’

But Maud did worry. There was something about William which haunted her. It wasn’t just that he was a motherless child with a brute for a father; it was something in the boy himself, some intangible quality that drew her to him. It was almost as if he had been born without the protective carapace other people possessed, making him extra vulnerable. It hadn’t been immediate, but from early on in their relationship she had felt an overwhelming urge to love and protect him as though he were her own flesh and blood. And if this revelation had come as a shock, the intensity of the feeling had only increased with time and was still capable of surprising her.

‘I just don’t like the idea of him being up there all the time,’ she said. ‘It’s not healthy to spend so much time in that cesspit with those two … all that scrying and nonsense … No! It’s not right! I’m going to fetch him.’

Milburga sighed and shook her head. It had been a long day, they were both tired and to cap it all her mistress had been acting very peculiarly ever since she had emerged from that blasted tunnel. On the other hand, as she knew only too well, once Maud got an idea in her head there was no shifting it.

‘Don’t know what you’re fussing for,’ she complained to her mistress’s back as it marched off in the direction of the turret. ‘’E’ll be asleep by now and ’e don’t seem to mind ’em.’ But Maud was implacable and as Milburga had decided long since that it was
her
role in life to love and protect her mistress come what may, she would have to go too.

The stairs were punishing on tired legs and both women were breathless by the time they reached the top. Milburga, who carried a good deal more weight than her mistress, and several more years besides, could be heard chuntering and complaining under her breath most of the way up.

‘Bloody child’ll be the death of me
and
you, if you ain’t careful,’ she said.

‘Shh,’ Maud hissed. They had just arrived at the door to Sir John’s chambers, against which Maud’s ear was now pressed; partly from a reluctance to go inside – as if by sheer force of will she could absorb William through it – and partly because, after the unpleasant surprise of the other day, she wanted to know what Kigva was up to before the woman was alerted to their presence.

Nothing, apparently. There wasn’t a sound.

‘Ain’t I told you?’ Milburga whispered as Maud eventually raised her hand to knock. ‘Them’ll be asleep. Let ’em lie.’

Maud knocked anyway. Footsteps scampered on the other side of the door but there was no answer. She knocked again, more loudly this time.

‘Lady Maud to see her husband,’ she called out imperiously. More silence, and then after a few moments the hinges of the door began to creak before opening to reveal Kigva staring warily at them out of the gloom.

They brushed past her into the room, which, Maud noted, still smelled decidedly foul, but only, thank goodness, with the familiar foulness of its general decay; there was nothing to suggest anything of the olfactory untowardness of her last visit. Milburga wrinkled her nose, grimacing at the squalor surrounding them. Goodness only knew when those rushes had last been changed, or would be – that floor had probably never even seen a broom. She lifted her skirts ostentatiously high above the reach of the filth and sniffed accusingly at Kigva, who was now crouching in the furthest corner of the room like a spider.

‘I am here to see how William is,’ Maud announced loudly and clearly, as one might address the profoundly deaf. She had long since decided that both her husband and Kigva were beyond the reach of most human understanding and therefore, to communicate effectively with them, one should speak up.

‘I’m well, thank you,’ piped a voice.

Maud peered into the murk in the direction of the voice and saw William sitting on the other side of the room by his father’s cot, attempting to feed him some slush of indeterminate colour. One of Kigva’s preparations, presumably.

‘Uck-oo!’ Sir John said when he spotted Maud. She pretended not to hear, but couldn’t help noticing that he looked even more robust than he had done yesterday and, as she approached, sat bolt upright. ‘Uck-oo!’ he shouted again and, ‘Uck-off!’

‘Ooh,’ she heard Milburga say under her breath. ‘Adding to our repertoire, I see! We
are
getting better.’

William leaped to his feet. ‘Stay calm, Father,’ he said, gently trying to press his patient back on to the pillows, but Sir John was by now incandescent with rage and was thrashing his one useful arm so wildly in Maud’s direction that he accidentally clouted the boy on the head. It was a heavy blow with an audible clunk, but although William’s eyes smarted with the pain, he refused to cry.

‘It’s all right, Father,’ he said quietly, taking hold of the flailing hand. ‘You didn’t mean to hurt me. I know you didn’t.’ He looked beseechingly at Maud and Milburga. ‘He didn’t mean to. Really he didn’t.’

‘Of course he didn’t,’ Maud said, moved almost to tears by the generosity of the child to one so undeserving of it. ‘Nevertheless it is rather late and your father’s obviously very tired and in need of rest. So I think it would be best if you came with us. Come back tomorrow though, if you like?’ she added brightly, holding out her hand to him.

William got up reluctantly and walked towards her, glancing back anxiously every few steps at his father, who had finally calmed down and was once more staring blankly at the ceiling. In the corner of the room Kigva rocked back and forth on her heels, muttering to herself, and the moment Maud and Milburga reached the door, she scuttled over to the bed.

They hurried William out of the room and took him to his chamber, where they rubbed comfrey oil on the bump on his forehead – by now the size of an egg – and put him to bed. When at last he was settled they returned to the solar where, once more, a bleary-eyed Tola was ousted from the mattress beside the Empress to make way for Maud.

‘Not that one neither!’ Milburga snapped when, still half asleep, the poor girl crawled on to its nearest neighbour. ‘That’s mine. You’re over there.’

Outside in the bailey Alan and Sir Rollo were making a final tour of the battlements, checking to see that all the guards and men-at-arms were awake and the castle secure. Satisfied that all was well, they too returned to the keep, Sir Rollo to his own room on the upper floor, as befitting his status, and Alan to his pallet on the floor in the guardroom, as befitted his.

Maud slept fitfully that night and Milburga, who had been woken by her mistress’s turnings and murmurings once too often, made a note to slip her some catnip oil at breakfast in the morning to ward off any further disturbance the following night.

In her dreams Maud was happy, deliriously so, standing in the now defunct cherry orchard squinting out from beneath the delicate shadows cast by the blossom-laden branches into a beautiful spring day. All around her was peace and calm, the siege a distant memory, the air filled not with the cries of men and the clang of weaponry, but birdsong and the scent of flowers and she, herself, was swaying, in a gentle breeze to the strains of a distant choir in the arms of … of … oh dear God! …
Alan of Ghent!

She woke up sweating, gasping for breath, and in the grip of panic grabbed hold of Milburga’s wrist, waking her up again.

‘Catnip for you all right, my girl,’ Milburga grumbled, prising off the offending hand. ‘Hear me?’ But Maud had already gone back to sleep.

Below them, in the guardroom, among scores of prostrate, snoring men, Penda was sleeping badly too. The pain in her belly had got even worse and she felt sick. The blood, which was apparently endless, had once again saturated the cloths she used to staunch it. Earlier that day Gwil had directed her to the basement where large bales of the stuff were stored so that, with some stealth, she was able to replenish them, but in the dead of night it wasn’t a journey she relished. Nope, all in all, she decided, being a woman, whatever that meant, was an uncomfortable business and she didn’t like it.

She propped herself on her elbows and looked around the crowded room at the men surrounding her, envying them their pain-free bellies and their ability to sleep; even Gwil, whose behaviour had been so strange that evening, looked peaceful now.

He had been an age returning from the chapel but she had waited for him nevertheless.

She had lain on her back for what seemed like hours, staring blankly at the milky patch of moonlight shining through the oiled cloth which hung over the tiny window on the other side of the room. More hours passed, the room grew silent and still he didn’t come. Then, just as she was beginning to despair that he might never return, she heard footsteps across the room, the familiar, involuntary groan as he lowered his aching body on to the mattress beside her and the soft, contented sigh as he eased himself into the warmth of its blankets.

She turned to face him, wanting more than anything to talk to him, to learn about his business with the priest, but, although he turned towards her briefly and smiled, acknowledging the fact that she had waited up for him, he turned back again almost immediately and went straight to sleep. It was the way things were between them nowadays and deep down she knew that all enquiry was pointless, unwelcome and unwise.

All her life, or as much of it as she could remember, she had been content with knowing only those things which Gwil taught her. Nothing else mattered; nothing beyond them existed; as if he had simply conjured her into being one day out of the fenland peat. She had never questioned the tacit understanding between them that no good would ever come from knowing about her past and knew somehow that by maintaining her ignorance of it, he was also keeping her safe. And yet … and yet, something
had
changed in her; as if a coverfeu had been lifted from the embers of her memory sparking long-forgotten images to life. She subdued them when she could, as she had struggled to do this morning, but her defences were weakening and in her dreams they would stutter and spark and sear their way into her consciousness. Most of the time they seemed meaningless, fractured images of a peculiar land where the sea and sky merged into one and strange birds wheeled and screeched and rushes grew as tall as men. But just lately she had dreamed of a golden-haired woman who held her in her arms and sang softly to her and when she woke up, her heart was heavy with a longing she didn’t understand and a loneliness she could hardly bear.

The next morning, as dawn broke over Kenniford, the business of the siege began again. Emissaries from both sides rode out into the no man’s land between the castle and enemy camp, shook hands on their mutual implacability and the fighting resumed.

‘Hope you slept well, Master Penda,’ Alan said as they took their posts once more on the ramparts. ‘We’re going to need you sharp again today.’

Penda grinned. ‘Hear that, Gwil?’ she asked, poking her head around the merlon to peer at him. ‘Alan of Ghent thinks I’m sharp.’ But Gwil only mumbled something under his breath and carried on as if he hadn’t heard.

She couldn’t understand why he wasn’t more pleased or, indeed, more proud, that under his tutelage she had garnered such skill and reputation. It made her wonder, and not for the first time, what she could possibly have done to displease him. She shrugged; there was nothing she could do about it, he was being very strange. Besides, she couldn’t think about it now, she was going to need all her wits about her for whatever the day held in store.

Once they had settled themselves in, crossbows loaded and cocked, bolts and quarrels organized neatly beside them, Gwil appeared behind her.

‘Same as yesterday, Pen,’ he said. ‘But watch you don’t get too proud of yourself. Ruins your aim, getting too proud does.’

‘Oh, does it?’ she muttered as she raised her bow and aimed it through the loophole. Then she paused for a moment, glared at him over her shoulder, turned back to the loophole, drew the string tight to her chest, released it and made her first kill of the day. ‘Does it indeed?’