Winter Siege (27 page)

He thought for a moment and scratched his head. ‘Trouble with being a knight is’, he said eventually, ‘that I don’t much like horses. And anyway, I want to be like you.’

‘Blimey!’ She realized she was blushing. After all, although she knew her reputation had spread beyond her peers and was almost embarrassed about the attention she received for it, she had no idea that it had reached the likes of William.

‘Well, you wouldn’t if you knew me better,’ she said eventually.

‘But I would,’ he replied. ‘You’re the best. Everybody says so. And that’s why I want you to teach me.’

She scowled, put her hands on her hips and was about to explain that she didn’t have time for teaching small boys, what-with-there-being-a-siege-on-and-all-in-case-he-hadn’t-noticed, when a large rock sailed through the embrasure beside them and crashed on to the floor with a loud thump.

Bugger! She really
was
going to have to do something about that blasted trebuchet! So instead of arguing with him, she took him by the shoulders and spun him round to face the boulder which had skidded to within inches of their feet.

‘You see that!’ she said, shaking him vigorously. ‘That lands on you and you’re a dead boy. Understand!’ Then she pushed him on to the floor beneath the loophole and pressed his head below the parapet. ‘You stay down there, hear me? Don’t move, don’t talk and don’t let nobody else see you and when I’m finished with that … that … pillard out there I’m going to take you back down them stairs afore Lady Maud misses you.’

As it turned out she need not have worried about William being missed that afternoon because after a cursory search of his favourite haunts Maud had decided to forget about him for the time being. No doubt he would turn up sooner or later, as he usually did, and, besides, she reasoned, he was probably up in the turret with his father. No, this afternoon there was something more pressing she must attend to and could postpone no longer. It was time to pay a visit to the Empress.

As chatelaine of Kenniford it was Maud’s responsibility to entertain the castle’s guests and while most of the time it was an amiable enough chore, she wasn’t looking forward to this one. Nevertheless it was her duty, and since duty was a burden she had never shirked, she found herself trudging, though reluctantly, towards the keep.

When she reached the entrance to the solar she stopped for a moment to pat down the stray strands of hair which had escaped her circlet and to smooth her skirts, then took a deep breath and knocked on the heavily carved door.

Tola opened it, swinging it wide, and as she did so the beautiful, circular room, which had always reminded Maud of Heaven – or what she imagined it might look like – was revealed. She paused on the threshold, as though seeing it for the first time, and, as always, its chalk-white light and beautiful lines lifted her spirits until the ensuing pang of regret that it was no longer hers dashed them again.

The solar’s latest incumbent was sitting in a large chair in the middle of the room, her head bent over a piece of brightly coloured needlepoint in her lap.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said without looking up.

‘Lady.’ Maud curtsied, wondering how she knew
who
it was if she hadn’t looked. ‘I … erm … came to enquire after your health.’

The Empress lifted her piece to the light and squinted at it. ‘I am tolerably well, thank you.’ She was still not looking at her inquisitor. ‘And having found me so, what do you propose to do now?’

Maud, not yet wholly accustomed to the Empress’s rudeness, was lost for words; if it came down to it, this was after all
her
solar and
her
castle and so far she had not received so much as a breath of thanks for the provision of any of it. She opened her mouth to say something, found she was still unable to speak and closed it again. What was the point? Any dissent would no doubt be treasonable and was, besides, unlikely to cut any ice with the Empress.

‘Well?’ Matilda said, goading a response.

‘Erm … I thought I might … sit with you a while, perhaps,’ Maud stammered. ‘I, er … thought you might … be in need of company.’ The humiliation was cheek-scorching. She had never been made to feel quite so redundant or so foolish in her life.

‘Oh, good Lord!’ The Empress was unpitying. ‘Why not spare us both the agony? Go about your
business
, woman! I’m sure you have some. Isn’t there a siege on? Besides, I have Lola here, or Tola, or whatever you call her, and she at least has the decency not to engage me in idle chit-chat. No, I simply can’t be doing with it.’ And waving her hand loftily in the direction of the door, she turned back to her needlepoint.

‘Well, if that’s all …’ Maud bobbed a hurried curtsy and was about to rush out when the Empress said:

‘Never mind. Not too much longer now.’

She turned back. ‘Lady?’

‘I said: Not too much longer now,’ Matilda repeated. ‘I’m expecting word from Robert any day. We should be leaving soon.’

‘Thank God,’ Maud said, but not loud enough for the Empress to hear.

The fighting ceased as dusk fell. When the trumpet sounded for supper Penda was finally able to persuade William to leave.

‘And I don’t want to see you up here again, mind,’ she said, pushing him roughly towards the stairs. ‘Careful how you go now and don’t let nobody see you or there’ll be trouble for me.’ She watched him clamber down the steps to safety and smiled to herself. She had grown rather fond of him during the course of the afternoon, enjoyed his company even. At times he had proved useful too, sparing her the effort of stooping for her bolts and handing them to her like a small apprentice. Whether or not she had been as effective an assassin as usual with him around was another matter but he had, at least, taken her mind off her worries and, just before the light faded, she had finally claimed the trebuchet master she had been aiming for all day.

When she saw him fall backwards clutching at the bolt she had buried in his chest, she had yelped with delight and danced a celebratory jig and so had William.

It had been fun and she couldn’t remember the last time she had had any, certainly not at Kenniford.

William had enjoyed himself too, enormously in fact, and was most reluctant to leave; on the other hand he was pretty hungry by that time, and however edifying Penda’s company was, it was no substitute for food.

Once back down in the bailey he made his way immediately to the kitchen where, to his great relief, Milburga was much too preoccupied with problems of her own to make enquiries of him. She fed him but was clearly distracted, keeping half an eye on the mêlée of irritable scullions and cooks who, at Gorbag’s behest, were charging hither and yon turning great carcasses of meat on spits or running between vast iron cauldrons bubbling with stews and soups for that evening’s supper.

She had incurred the great chef’s wrath once already that afternoon when she commissioned one of his precious cauldrons to heat the water for Maud’s bath. His reaction to the request had been so explosive that she was unusually anxious about provoking him any further. There were few people on God’s earth capable of intimidating Milburga, but Gorbag in a temper was one.

It was all Maud’s fault. She had returned from her sojourn with the Empress in a stompingly bad mood, insisting, most unreasonably in Milburga’s opinion, on having a bath; since they no longer had access to the solar, it would have to be set up elsewhere, which had proved a good deal easier said than done.

First of all it meant requisitioning a spare corner of the kitchen, despite Gorbag’s menacing insistence that no such thing existed; then a large canopy had to be erected, to preserve Maud’s modesty, which had pleased him even less; and finally she had had to purloin a reluctant team of his scullions to hoist the great wooden tub down several flights of stairs; all of which was performed to the accompani ment of some really quite dreadful eye-rolling and cursing from the apoplectic chef. To make matters worse Maud insisted the water be fragranced so Milburga had found herself scrabbling around the kitchen garden in the cold gathering herbs for the infusion.

When, eventually, it was ready and Maud installed, Milburga set about scrubbing her back.

‘What you want to make such a fuss for anyways?’ she scolded, lifting the hair at the nape of Maud’s neck so roughly that she winced.

‘Ouch!’ Maud shouted, spinning round to slap Milburga’s offending hand. ‘You’re hurting me!’

‘Sorry,’ Milburga said, ‘but what you got so vain for all on a sudden?’

Maud rounded on her again: ‘Christ and His mother! What’s vain about wanting a bath! I haven’t had one – in case you hadn’t noticed – since the Empress arrived. That’s all.’

‘Is it now,’ Milburga said under her breath. She knew better than to say any more, but she also knew her mistress like the back of her hand and was sure something was afoot. In fact she wouldn’t be at all surprised if that something wasn’t a certain Alan of Ghent, whose mere presence seemed to bring out the colour in Maud these days. Nobody but a fool could have failed to notice the frisson between them during that business with the postern.

She had been discussing her suspicions only that very morning in the chapel with Cousin Lynessa.

‘Well, he is rather handsome,’ the nun had said wistfully. ‘And even if he is only a mercenary, he’s infinitely preferable to that awful old Sir John. And Maud is so young and lovely and so it goes, I fear, Milburga.’

Maud was by now out of the tub and drying herself.

‘And what are we going to wear?’ Milburga asked. Maud thought for a while and then said:

‘The blue bliaut and the gold circlet, I think.’

‘You’ll look very pretty,’ said Milburga, trying hard not to smile. ‘Very pretty indeed.’

THE SCRIBE WAKES
and in no good humour either. He cannot sleep. Every night his dreams are assailed by succubi, those voluptuous emissaries of the Devil who taunt and tease him and from whom no amount of genital dousing, however cold the water, can make him immune.

He blames idleness; he has been sitting by the abbot too long, he thinks; or perhaps, and this is more like it, it is the fault of the abbot himself and all his talk of unchaste women.

He will confess and he will wear a goat’s-hair girdle around his loins in future and may not even go to the infirmary today
…
and yet, and yet, the compulsion to do so is wickedly strong.

‘You are late,’ says the abbot when, some time after Nones, the scribe finally appears. ‘I thought you might not come today.’

‘I am sorry, my lord,’ the scribe replies. ‘I had other business.’ It is a half-truth but it will do. He coughs nervously while he readies himself with his tablet and quill.

‘We must not discuss the erm
…
the
…
incontinence today though, my lord,’ he says, rushing the words out awkwardly, hardly daring to look up.

‘Then we will not,’ says the abbot and smiles to himself as a thought occurs to him. ‘You were a child of the cloister, my son?’ he asks.

The scribe nods. ‘Indeed, my lord. Left on the abbey’s steps when I was but a few days old.’

‘Ah,’ says the abbot. ‘I see.’ And so he does. Without experience of the secular world, it is no wonder the young man is so discomforted by its revelations. He must remember to be more gentle with him.

‘We will turn then instead to the Empress,’ the abbot continues, ‘awaiting news from Robert of Gloucester, remember? The Earl of Gloucester? Her half-brother, illegitimate firstborn of Henry the First?’ He stops, grins wickedly and raises an admonishing finger, which he waggles at the scribe. ‘Yes, his begetting was indeed “incontinent”, as you might say, but we will not dwell on that. Besides, no matter his origins, the man himself was honourable. So much so, in fact, that when his father died, and the question of the succession arose, he resisted the not inconsiderable pressure to make his own claim to the throne.

‘In the early days he was loyal to Stephen and a powerful ally too. But the King was blind to his qualities and quarrelled with him foolishly, reneging on his promise not to confiscate the English and Welsh estates bestowed on Robert by his father. So, when Stephen razed his castles, Robert was provoked enough to break ranks, renounce his allegiance to the King and send orders to his under-tenants to prepare for war. Thereafter he devoted himself unstintingly to the cause of his half-sister, whom he himself brought to these shores from Normandy.’

‘I see,’ says the scribe who, if the truth be known, cares little for Robert of Gloucester because, despite the chafing of the goat’s-hair girdle, he still has half a mind on the Kenniford women.

‘I hope so,’ says the abbot. ‘And so Matilda waits, her patience stretched almost to breaking point, unable to move until she knows her brother is ready for her.’

‘And is he? Does he rescue her?’

‘He does his utmost,’ says the abbot. ‘All the time she was under siege at Oxford he was trying to lure Stephen away by besieging Wareham, the castle the King had previously seized from him. But the plan failed and Stephen refused to move. When Wareham finally surrendered Robert fought on tirelessly, taking in turn Portland and Lulworth castles, all the time building up a vital stronghold for his sister in the West but only when it is strong enough will he summon her partisans to meet him at Cirencester.’

‘But what of Maud and the mercenary?’ The thought rushes out of the scribe’s mouth before he has time to censure it. ‘If the Empress leaves Kenniford, they will be parted?’

‘They will indeed,’ says the abbot sadly.

AS MAUD WALKED
through the hall that evening to take her place at the high table, all eyes turned to her. She looked beautiful.

Alan of Ghent, who was talking to Gwil as usual, forgot what he was saying mid-sentence and gaped open-mouthed as she passed; even the Empress turned her head to nod approvingly and Milburga, walking behind her mistress, mopped up the attention like a sponge, barely able to contain her pride or suppress her giggles.