They were passing Holy Cross, the hospital founded by the Bishop of Winchester to aid men indigent and infirm. The hospital had been far luckier than Hyde Abbey and the nunnery and much of Winchester, for the fires set by the bishop’s men had never spread south of the city; protected now by Matilda’s army, Holy Cross seemed likely to be one of the few buildings to survive the siege intact.
Warenne glanced back at the hospital precincts, floating above the fray like an island haven in a storming sea. “I do not understand,” he said, “why the queen refused to stay at Waltham. She’d be safer for certes at the bishop’s castle, and more comfortable, too. Why did the bishop not insist upon it?”
“The queen has a mind of her own, or so rumor says,” Ypres said blandly, but his mouth was twitching in an involuntary smile, for he was hearing again Matilda’s private comment, that she’d sooner seek shelter in a lazar house than under her brother-in-law’s roof. “She says she can do more good in our camp, and I’d be the last one to dispute that. She comforts the wounded, prays for the dying, never misses an opportunity to remind them-ever so gently-that they are fighting for their lawful king…and if she asked them to sprout wings and fly into Winchester, at least half would start flapping their arms for take-off!”
Warenne laughed. “She does inspire devotion in the unlikeliest of men! Let’s hope that is a trick Maude never learns, for if-” Breaking off in surprise. “What is going on?”
By now they’d reached the camp, and both drew rein, for men were bustling about, horses being unsaddled, additional tents being set up. “It looks,” Ypres said, “as if we have gained some new allies. Your brother Leicester?”
Warenne shrugged; he knew Robert Beaumont wanted to see Stephen restored to the throne, but he also wanted to protect what was his. Dismissing their escorts, they dismounted before Matilda’s tent, entered, and halted abruptly at the sight that met their eyes: Matilda sharing a wine flagon with the Earl of Northampton and Geoffrey de Mandeville, Earl of Essex. Matilda greeted them with a tight smile, saying, “The Earl of Essex has come to pledge anew his allegiance to my lord husband.”
“In truth,” Geoffrey de Mandeville said placidly, “my allegiance to the king never wavered. But when the Bishop of Winchester ordered all Christians to accept the Countess of Anjou as queen, I felt compelled to obey, as a good son of the Church, however little I liked it. You can well imagine my relief when the bishop recanted, for I was then free to follow my own conscience, to do whatever I could to gain the king his freedom.”
Warenne looked dumbfounded by the sheer effrontery of it, but Ypres was delighted; his only regret was that the bishop was not present to hear himself blamed for Geoffrey de Mandeville’s defection. As for the unrepentant defector, he seemed equally indifferent to Warenne’s amazement and Ypres’s amusement. He was already on his feet, kissing Matilda’s hand with ostentatious gallantry. “By your leave, my lady, I ought to get my men settled in.”
Northampton had risen, too. “I will keep a close eye upon him, madame,” he promised as soon as the Earl of Essex had departed, and ducked under the tent flap. Warenne followed, leaving Ypres alone with Matilda and her lady-in-waiting, for Cecily had stubbornly insisted upon providing Matilda with female companionship, mindful of the proprieties even in the midst of war.
Matilda was staring down at her hand with an expression of distaste, as if she could still see the imprint upon her skin of Geoffrey de Mandeville’s mouth. Ypres helped himself to some of the wine, then refilled the women’s cups. “I suggest a scrubbing with lye soap for your hand, a few flagons of hippocras for the foul taste in your mouth. You ought to be very proud of yourself, my lady. I am, for certes. The temptation to spit in his face must have been well nigh irresistible-”
“No, Willem, you are wrong,” Matilda said earnestly. “It never even occurred to me. I dared not offend him or let my true feelings show, not as long as he holds…”
The rest of her sentence was lost in the depths of her wine cup. Ypres was about to finish her sentence for her with the obvious answer-the Tower of London-when Matilda said, “Constance.” He looked away quickly, lest she read his surprise in his face, for he did not want her to know he’d almost forgotten that Mandeville had abducted her son’s child-wife. Matilda set the wine cup down, snatching up a parchment. “He even brought me a letter from Constance! The gall of the man!” She sputtered indignantly, muttering something under her breath that he’d have taken for an obscenity-had it been anyone but Matilda. “He is still posing as Constance’s protector,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief, “promising to return her to me as soon as her safety can be assured.”
“And what promises did he demand from you? What price does he put on his resurrected loyalty to the Crown?”
“He wanted me to match all that Maude had given him at Oxford. Which I did, of course. It is passing strange, Willem. The more I lie, the easier it gets.”
“Did I forget to warn you that sinning can be habit-forming?” But Matilda found no humor in his joke. She looked down at Constance’s letter again, and he said, quite seriously this time, “You are doing what you must, my lady.”
“I know,” she said. “But what if it is not enough, Willem? What if it is not enough?”
As Ranulf crossed the castle’s inner bailey in response to his sister’s summons, he slowed to watch the crowd lined up outside the kitchen’s door. When they’d begun giving out bread, most of the supplicants had been women and children, for the townsmen had been shamed at having to rely upon charity and had sent their wives to collect their share. But that was no longer so. On this overcast afternoon in early September, most of the people in line were males, for no man wanted his woman or child out on the streets, not anymore. The danger was too great. Matilda’s blockade had brought more than hunger to the citizens of Winchester. Once she’d lifted the siege of Wolvesey, their town had become a battlefield. The bishop’s men prowled the battlements of both his strongholds, shooting at anything that moved, even venturing out occasionally to clash with the enemy, and they included the townspeople in that hostile category, for Winchester had backed Maude, not their bishop, and he was not likely to forgive or forget. The city was now split into two broken halves, divided by the blackened boundary of Cheapside; the bishop’s men held the south side, and Maude’s forces the castle and the damaged neighborhoods north of High Street. There were daily skirmishings, daily deaths, and many feared that the worst still lay ahead of them.
Miles and Robert were standing on the steps leading up into the great hall. The tension between them was unmistakable, and not a surprise to Ranulf, for their rivalry was no secret, exacerbated by the very real differences in their natures and their approach to war; both men were capable battle commanders, but Robert was inherently more cautious than Miles, and that made conflict all but inevitable.
Ranulf was near enough now to catch the gist of their argument, low-voiced but intense, nonetheless. He’d heard it all before, for Miles had been very vocal about his desire to fight fire with fire, insisting that they take advantage of the castle’s high ground to hurl firebrands down upon their enemies. He’d not been convinced by Robert’s counterargument, that if the winds shifted, the rest of the city could burn, and he’d not taken defeat with any measure of grace, continuing to complain long after the issue had been rendered moot by Matilda’s arrival upon the scene.
They turned as Ranulf approached. He opened his mouth to remind them that Maude was waiting, instead heard himself say belligerently, “Robert was not the only one loath to put the city’s survival in peril. So was Maude.”
Miles was caught off balance; he’d long ago tagged Rainald as the family hothead, not Ranulf. He recovered quickly, though, and said caustically, “I daresay Stephen would have balked, too, and where did his misguided mercy get him?”
“We are wasting time,” Robert said impatiently, and turned on his heel. Miles and Ranulf followed in a strained silence. The others were already in the
solar: Maude, her uncle the Scots king, Rainald, Brien, Baldwin de Redvers, William Pont de 1’Arche, and John Marshal.
“We’ve been waiting for you,” the usually urbane David snapped; the siege was rubbing raw the nerves of even the most phlegmatic among them.
Miles was irked, but not enough to contradict a king. Straddling a seat, he said, “We need to talk about that mob down in the bailey. I know charity is a virtue, but we can no longer afford to be quite so virtuous.”
Maude frowned. “It is not a womanly weakness to feed hungry children, Miles!”
“I did not say it was, madame. But it is an indulgence. We’ve already cut our daily portions in half, and even that may not be enough. You’ve not been in a prolonged siege, and I hope to God you never are, for it is an ordeal no woman ought to endure.”
“He is right, my lady,” Baldwin de Redvers said emphatically. “I am indeed grateful that you were not at Exeter during Stephen’s three-month siege. My men ended up eating their horses, and when the well went dry, they had to put out fires with wine, until that ran out, too. Had they not surrendered when they did, they’d have been drinking their own piss.”
Maude was not impressed; she hated it when men treated war as their own private province, acting as if suffering were a uniquely male experience that no woman could hope to comprehend. She was particularly vexed by Baldwin’s contribution, for he’d escaped at the start of the siege, leaving his wife behind in the castle. She yearned to point that out, but she resisted the temptation, contenting herself with a cool reminder that “Our well has not gone dry. Moreover, we are expecting aid any day now.”
They had reason for optimism, for they’d sent out writs to Geoffrey de Mandeville, the Earl of Chester, his brother the Earl of Lincoln, the Earl of Warwick, the Earl of Oxford, and Hugh Bigod, among others. Robert created a stir, therefore, by saying suddenly, “What if aid does not come? Mayhap we ought to consider a withdrawal.”
“No!” Maude’s indignant cry was echoed at once by other voices, all expressing the same urgent argument-that Maude could not afford two successive defeats. After the disastrous setback she’d suffered in London, she must prevail here in Winchester. She dared not lose again.
Robert did not dispute them, merely waited them out. “I am not saying that we should retreat. I am saying, though, that we need a plan should it become necessary.”
“Why would it?” Rainald demanded. “Even if a few of these lords do not keep faith, they could not all fail us! Once we have more men, we can force a battle, put an end to this damnable war once and for all.”
“We have to settle this, Robert,” Maude agreed. “If I were to withdraw, people would see it as running away. And what of the townspeople? What would happen to Winchester once we’d abandoned it to Ypres’s Flemings?”
“In war, madame,” Miles said calmly, “soldiers expect to be rewarded for the risks they take. When a city falls, it is plundered by the victors. So it was at Lincoln, so it would be at Winchester.”
Maude started to protest, stopped herself just in time. What could she say, after all? She had indeed accepted the suffering of the citizens of Lincoln as a necessary evil, war’s ugly aftermath. So why could she not do the same for Winchester? Was the suffering real only if she could see it for herself? But she had never seen suffering like this before-hungry babies and homeless women and a city in ruins. She could not admit that, though. They would neither understand nor approve. Compassion was a woman’s frailty, one she dared not show, for it would but confirm their qualms about her fitness to rule.
John Marshal was lounging against the wall, arms folded across his chest, seemingly oblivious to the tensions and undercurrents swirling about the solar. When he spoke up now, heads turned in his direction. “As I understand it, the good news is that reinforcements are on the way, whilst the bad news is that we may run out of food ere they get here. So we ought to be thinking how to feed ourselves in the meantime…unless we really do want to empty out the stables.”
Baldwin de Redvers took that as a jab at his siege story. “I suppose you have a way to do that?” he scoffed, and was startled when Marshal nodded.
“I may,” he said, “I just may.” He glanced around to make sure they were all listening, and only then did he tell them what he had in mind.
It was very quiet after he was done speaking. Maude was regarding him thoughtfully. “You’d be taking a great risk, Sir John.”
He responded with a shrug, a laconic “If I were not willing, my lady, I’d not have offered.”
Maude admired his audacity, but she was not about to second-guess Robert or Miles on a matter of military judgment. She was turning to find out what they thought of John Marshal’s scheme when the door burst open and Gilbert Fitz John plunged into the room.
“Forgive my bad manners, my lady,” he said, “but this news could not wait. Geoffrey de Mandeville has betrayed us. That whoreson Judas has gone over to Stephen’s queen!”
“ Food is getting scarcer by the day in Winchester,” William de Warenne reported. “They cannot hold out much longer, not unless they get help and soon. And in truth, I doubt that aid will be coming. Those who can stomach Maude’s queenship are already with her. The others are reluctant bridegrooms at best, being dragged to the altar against their will. If they think there is a chance that the wedding might be called off, they’ll go to ground faster than any fox you’ve ever seen! Men like my cousin Warwick and Hugh Bigod are not about to spill their blood on Maude’s behalf. They’re not likely to get within a hundred miles of Winchester, not as long as the outcome is in doubt.”
The other men agreed with his optimistic assessment. Matilda alone kept silent, listening uneasily as they shared stories of the siege: rumors of sickness in the city and dissention in the castle, accounts of livestock being butchered for food, a word-of-mouth tale about a pack of starving stray dogs chasing down a drunkard-or was it a child?
That was too much for Matilda. She understood the strategy-to force Maude’s army into a fight it could not win, with hunger the weapon of choice. An effective weapon, for certes, but an indiscriminate one. Was she the only one troubled by that?
“I have a question,” she said, so abruptly that they all turned to stare at her. “Those who are suffering the most during the siege are the citizens of Winchester. Women and children, priests, pilgrims-they are supposed to be spared. Those are the rules of war, are they not? But these rules do not stop the shedding of innocent blood. So how do you keep from thinking of them-the innocents? Please…I truly need to know.”
There was an awkward silence. She looked from one to the other-from the Fleming Ypres to her brother-in-law the bishop, to the Earls of Northampton, Surrey, and Essex, to William Martel, her husband’s steward-and saw the same sentiment on the faces of these very unlike men: discomfort that she should ask such a foolish question and reluctance to offend her by saying so.
The bishop took it upon himself to allay her qualms. “It is always distressing to see Christians sorely afflicted, Matilda, my dear. But it is not given to mortal men to understand the workings of the Almighty. It is as Scriptures say, that ‘Now we see through a glass, darkly, but then, face to face.’ All will be revealed to us in God’s good time.”
This was not the answer Matilda had been looking for. The men realized that, but only William de Warenne ventured to improve upon the bishop’s effort. After a brief hesitation, the young earl decided he could best serve his queen by candor. “I am not qualified to argue theology, madame. But I can speak as a soldier. In war, men do what they must to stay alive…and sometimes they do what they later regret. Am I sorry for the suffering of those you call the innocents? I am. Do I think much about their suffering? No, in all honesty, I do not. What good would it do? The people in Winchester will be no less hungry because I pity their plight.”
She should have known better. What had she expected to hear? Matilda nodded politely, and saw their relief. After a few moments, the conversatio
n resumed. They were still certain that they need not fear reinforcements from Scotland and Normandy. Maude and Robert would have been leery of bringing a Scots army across the border. Nor would Maude have entreated Geoffrey to come to her rescue. The men laughed at the very thought, agreeing that Maude would starve first. Matilda said nothing. She seemed composed, but she’d begun to fidget with her wedding band, as she invariably did whenever she was under stress. That was how well Ypres had come to know her during this unlikely alliance of theirs; even her nervous habits were familiar to him. He watched her twisting and tugging at her ring, and he would have comforted her if he could, but he’d rather she grieve for the townspeople of Winchester than mourn for Stephen.
The bishop was proposing a plan to divert a stream that flowed past the castle when there was a sudden commotion outside. Warenne was the closest and the most curious, and ducked under the tent flap to investigate. He was back almost at once, wide-eyed and incredulous. “This,” he exclaimed, “you all have to see for yourselves!”
The camp was in turmoil, and in the very midst of it-seated astride a sleek white stallion, surrounded by an armed escort, and reveling in the uproar-was none other than Randolph de Germons, Earl of Chester. They were all taken aback, none more so than Matilda. She stared at Chester in disbelief, not finding her voice until he started to swing from the saddle. “No!” she cried. “Do not dismount, for you’ll not be staying. You are not wanted here.”
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