Winter Siege (4 page)

The older woman and the younger stayed side by side, one head leaning against the other, Maud marginally comforted by the fact that she’d had no choice but to save the lives of precious people.

Comforted, that is, until a noise in the hall sent Milburga to the chamber door to listen, and turn back in distress. ‘They’re bringin’ him up.’

‘Mary, Mother of God, be with me now.’

She reached for the pile of seeds and began munching.

HE
’
D HAVE STOPPED
them galloping off with the girl if he could, but he’d lost control of the men by then.

He’d lost his horse, and all because he’d dismounted to have a piss and given its reins to Ramon to hold. Which he shouldn’t have because that bastard had just been waiting for the opportunity to get rid of him.

So they’d taken off with her.
And
his horse.
And
the crossbow that had been in its saddlebag.

His
crossbow
, for Christ’s sake. With that weapon, he was one of the finest arbalists in Christendom; without it, he was as helpless as the child. And her only ten, maybe eleven years old, poor scrap. Brave though; fought like a terrier … but red-headed; unlucky that: the monk liked a red-head. He’d seen the look on the bastard’s face when he came back from the last one; hadn’t been able to save her either.

The suffering man standing amidst the reed beds and pondering on these matters was somewhere around middle age and middle height; the skin of his face with its greying stubble and the black, bloodshot eyes were those of a dark Celt. As always in the fenland, he felt unbearably exposed beneath the vast sky – though it was misty at the moment – as if he were under the eye of God.

This was not a comfortable position for a mercenary who was automatically damned by his profession; Gwilherm de Vannes had lost his soul a long time ago and was aware that, owing to recent events, he had small chance of finding it again.

He had witnessed things lately bad enough to shock the Devil: the plunder of Ely Cathedral; the murder of monks and women and children; and although he had played no part in them, his mere proximity to the atrocities had been enough to damn him. No two ways about it, his soul was lost for good.

Nevertheless, he dropped to one knee in order to pray for the deliverance of the little girl he’d just seen abducted and, while he was about it, for the restitution of his crossbow so that he could kill the men who’d taken both.

He listened for an answer and heard only the rustle of wildlife in the reeds and the mocking
ke-ke-ke
of a hen harrier as it quartered the marsh.

Well, what did he expect? Rustling slightly himself – he wore a mail hauberk over boiled leather under his cloak – Gwil stood up, took off his helmet and looked about him.

Where the hell was he, apart from deeply in the shit?

He saw flatness, just flatness extending into mist, and reed, marsh, black water; he’d seen little else since Lincoln.

Lincoln
. The only pitched battle so far in this war of sieges – and they’d lost it. The last Gwil had seen of King Stephen, he’d been surrounded by the enemy, laying about him with an axe.

Brave man, Stephen, and a bloody dolt. William of Ypres had begged him: ‘Wait and send for reinforcements, my lord.’

Had he? Oh no, waiting for reinforcements to come was against the royal manhood, apparently.

So they’d attacked the bloody castle and its defenders had come storming out, yelling like berserkers, and overwhelmed them.

A fucking rout, that’s what it had been. Most of Gwil’s contingent had made for the river and, to judge from their cries, drowned in it. He himself had mounted the nearest riderless horse and charged through Stephen’s knights while they were still laying down their arms. All right for fucking knights; they got ransomed, enjoying nice dinners and comfortable beds while their knightly captors waited for the money to come in. Poor bloody mercenaries like him got hanged.

He and a group of others had ridden south with the Empress’s soldiers in full cry after them, heading for the cover of Lincolnshire’s fens and then, throwing off the pursuit, further south into the even deeper fenland of Cambridgeshire, not knowing what fucking awful country it was. You got lost in it; flickering lights tempted you to follow them at night, but if you did you were never seen again; there were bogs that could suck rider and horse into them – and had. And
cold
, cold enough to shrivel your bollocks. He was never coming back here again – that’s if he ever got out.

At first he’d more or less been able to command the small band of mercenaries. Yes, all right, they’d raided the occasional village for food as they went, but never more than they needed and there had been no killing; he’d never allow that.

Until that weird bloody monk had joined them, him and that bastard Ramon.

God alone knew how those two objects had teamed up. Ramon was only a bloody stone-slinger, for Christ’s sake, lowest form of mercenary life. Who the monk was you couldn’t tell; never gave his name, never removed his cowl but – of all things – he reeked of asafoetida. It was a smell Gwil recognized from the days when he’d been serving under old Sir Hugh d’Arromanches, a former crusader with bad digestion – an affliction he attributed to the rich food of Palestine – and who spiked his every meal with it.

‘Stops me breaking wind all the time, d’ye see,’ he’d declared. ‘Great stuff for avoidin’ embarrassment in front of the ladies, asafoetida.’ (Privately, his men had thought that ladies would probably prefer to be embarrassed than have their noses unremittingly assaulted by the all-pervading, pungent stink of the spice that enveloped the old knight.)

Taken individually, Gwil could have commanded Ramon and the anonymous monk, but together they’d radiated a powerful insanity that the others had mistaken for leadership. Terrorizing and ransacking every village they came to and then leaving it on fire – it had been madness, as Gwil had pointed out: ‘What’s the fucking point of setting every man-jack’s hand against us?’

But he’d been forced to stay with them because it
had
set every hand against them; any mercenary caught on his own now wouldn’t have bollocks left to shrivel.

And then Ely.

At first, even Ramon had baulked at attacking a cathedral, but the monk had been set on it.

Ely’s bishop, the monk had said in that strange, thin voice of his, was still in exile for having supported the Empress, and most of Ely’s knights with him. Only a handful of monks guarded its treasures, he’d said. ‘And I know the secret causeway to it.’

I bet you do, you bastard, Gwil had thought, and got your own reasons for betraying it.

But Ramon had heard the word ‘treasure’ and that was enough.

So they’d gone in and plundered. Well he, Gwil, hadn’t. Not exactly
plundered
. With a mercenary’s priorities, he’d gone straight to the kitchens to take food, a bottle or two, and a pinch or so of tinder fungus …

All right,
all right
, he’d called in at the bishop’s empty house on his way and filched some coins from the money box – he needed it more than a bloody bishop – but he hadn’t killed anybody.

Ramon had, though, along with the others. When he emerged, Gwil had found corpses of monks butchered on the steps of the cathedral where the poor buggers’d tried to protect the jewelled relics of the saints who lay inside it.

If he hadn’t been doomed before, Gwil knew then that, by association, he was doomed now. They’d been powerful saints in there; Anglo-Saxon saints made more powerful by being in their own country.

Even Ramon had felt intimidated by what he’d done once the killing madness left him. Interestingly, the monk had not. And the pack mules they’d both acquired carried sacks that clinked with gold and jewels.

Anyway, they’d galloped away from the place with revengeful spirits breathing down their necks.

It was soon after that when the child had bolted up under their hooves from out of a ditch and into the reeds.

Gwil, horseless and stranded, had watched them go after her.
Run, run, girl. In the name of God, run
.

But her hair had betrayed her as she went, bending low. It had trailed like a fiery comet through the reeds, the only colour in the greyness. And even from this distance Gwil had seen the monk fix on her, like a hawk on a mouse.

They’d herded her, playing with her, cutting off her escape this way, then that.

Brave little devil, too; fought like a wildcat when they caught her – Ramon’s nose wouldn’t regain its shape for a week. Her screams had stayed in Gwil’s ears long after he’d lost sight of them all.

‘Lord,’ he begged again, ‘I’d have saved her if I could.’

Again the marsh harrier mocked him,
ke-ke-ke
. It was right; no good dwelling on it; she was past praying for by this time.

And so are you, my lad.

He found that once more he’d fallen to his knees. He got up.

The appearance of a weak sun was clearing away the mist, allowing him to get his bearings. He looked about him again. And
shit
– something was emerging out of the sky to the north-west. Towers were formulating themselves as if out of cloud, giving the impression that they were floating above the ground.

Ely
.

Either he’d been walking in a circle or the place was pursuing him. And him with some of its bishop’s gold in the pack on his back.

Quickly, limping slightly, Gwilherm de Vannes set off southwest through the marsh, wishing he wasn’t exposed as the tallest thing in it.

Wishing he could have saved the girl.

By dusk he was nearing the fen edge; he could tell that much because he was up to his knees in bracken, and the trees it darkened here and there were beeches, signifying that he’d left peat for chalk. He’d hoped to strike a road by this time, but couldn’t even see a path.

The mist had been a false promise; the darkening sky was clear, every star showing, and the air freezing.

He blundered on, not wanting to build a fire he could lie down by in case he attracted unwelcome attention, but knowing that if he didn’t rest soon he’d fall down and, in this cold, never get up again.

A few minutes later, he was in a clearing and approaching what had once been a small village set around a well.

To begin with he thought Ramon and the others must have come upon it; then he saw that the burned houses were an older devast ation, an early casualty of Stephen’s and Matilda’s war perhaps. Weeds had grown among the ash.

The only building left standing was a tiny church, a plain, unadorned rectangle of stone no more than thirty feet long. Its blackened patches showed the raiders had tried to put that to the torch as well but had been defeated by sturdy Saxon masonry. Though the church’s thatch had gone, a nearby yew tree, its trunk almost burned through, had fallen sideways on to its roof and provided cover of a sort.

Sanctuary.

In the fading light, Gwil gathered bracken and what dry wood he could find to carry in. The church’s interior was no warmer than outside, and full of rubble. He had to clear a space to build and light a fire in virtual darkness, but he was an old hand and the tinder fungus from Ely lit at the first spark of flint on steel. Feeding it fronds of bracken, he began puffing …

By the time he had his fire going, he looked around for something to make a tripod from which to suspend his helmet – it was also his cooking pot – over the flames.

Charred but serviceable beams from the roof had fallen on the rough stone table that served as an altar at the church’s eastern end. They’d do.

He was taking his pick of the spars when his boot stubbed against something yielding. Bending down, he saw that an animal had crawled under the altar to die.

He took hold of one of its legs and pulled.

It was a girl, naked and filthy, cold as all dead things are. The long hair on the head was reddish under dirt. Christ have mercy, it was
the
girl. They’d done it to her here.

He let go and turned away because the dried blood between the corpse’s legs was as indecent as the crime that had caused it. He had to get rid of it. Bury it quickly to hide its shame.

It whimpered.

‘Don’t be alive,’ he told it, shrinking backwards away from it. ‘Be dead.’

He picked up its arms and dragged it near the fire. Put his cloak over it.

Then he went outside and interested his mind by looking for their tracks so that he could follow them and get his crossbow back.

It was too dim to see much, though light enough to be sure that there weren’t any tracks – at least, not of horses and men; only his own footprints and, where she’d crawled, a trail of slime that led into the church.

For a bit, he followed that back into the bracken from which it had come, until it disappeared in the darkness.

Not here, then; they hadn’t done it here. But not too far off; near enough for her to crawl to this place once they’d finished with her. That meant they might be camping only a hundred or so yards away. He listened and heard birds settling down for the night.

So they’d moved on; by this time they’d have been noisy with drink. Still, in the morning he could follow the track …

Gwilherm de Vannes
. The voice came from the church behind him.

He didn’t turn round. ‘What?’

She’s still in here.

‘I know, Lord.’

You said you’d save her if you could.

He blustered. That had been then, when she’d still been whole and clean; anyway, he didn’t know how; she’d probably die anyway, and … oh
shit
, you had to be bloody careful when you invoked God; He could amuse Himself by granting what you’d prayed for …

He went back into the church, fetched his helmet and carried it to the well. The windlass was frozen but some water in the bottom of its bucket came out in a block of ice. In his pack there was a clean cloth – well, cleanish – that he kept for polishing the crossbow stock.