Winter Siege

by Ariana Franklin

  She kept waking him up with her whimpering, and then he’d prod her cheek to see if it was getting warmer, which it was.

  In the morning she was still alive. By now his helmet contained a broth made with the beef he’d filched from Ely’s kitchen, some salt and a good drop from Ely’s brandy bottle.

  He went outside to have a piss and gather some sage from a herb patch in one of the ruined gardens – he’d once heard that sage was good for female troubles. It added richness to the already rich-smelling contents of his helmet, but then came the problem of how to get the broth down her.

  He consumed most of it while he thought about it.

  In the end, going outside again, he used his knife to cut into the fallen yew tree, and whittle a spoon out of its wood. He forced her lips open with it and let some of the remaining broth dribble in drop by drop.

  Her hair bothered him; he supposed he should have washed that as well but there was too much of it and it smelled disgusting – he didn’t like to think of what. God, they’d done everything to her; there’d been blood round her nose, bruises all over. How many of them?

  Yet he couldn’t feel pity; she made him feel queasy – her, them, himself for having travelled with them.

  Another thing he hadn’t been able to clean was her right hand. It had something clamped in it so tightly he hadn’t wanted to force the fingers open for fear of breaking them in the process.

  In the bright afternoon – it was getting warmer – he followed the track she’d made and came across the clearing where they’d stripped her and afterwards left her naked, to die in the cold. They’d taken her cloak and boots with them, those being saleable items; the only thing they’d left were her stockings and her underdress, tunic, kirtle – whatever females called it – a stained and tattered thing, but he decided to take it to her.

  Hoofprints showed they’d then headed south. He nodded to himself; he’d come across them one of these days …

  Back in the village, he stood in its centre and wondered how long it would be before the survivors of its destruction – if there were any – came back to rebuild it, or knock down the church for its stone. Stone was so rare in the fenland that, until now, the only bit he’d seen was an ancient milestone where thrushes and blackbirds came from miles around to crack snails open against it.

  She’s still in here, Gwil.

  ‘I’m coming, aren’t I?’

  His supper was a slice of Ely’s loaf toasted – it was getting hard by now – and a few of the broth’s chunks of boiled meat. He’d need supplies tomorrow. If the girl bucked up, her village would give him some when he took her back to it.

  Throwing down the tunic where she could see it, he took a last look at her before he settled himself for the night, edging his cloak more closely about her with his foot.

  Her fingers had uncurled now and the object she’d been clutching now lay loose against her right palm.

  He took it from her gently and held it towards the light of the fire to examine it. It was a scrap of good, black worsted wool entwined around a wooden tube such as scribes used to protect their quills.

  The wool was part of a cloak’s inner pocket and smelled strongly of asafoetida – the monk’s, without a doubt, torn off his cloak by the girl during the assault.

  Using his thumbnail, Gwil prised off the tube’s lid. No quills, but a piece of parchment which, unrolled, showed itself to be covered in writing. Gwil could recognize Latin when he saw it, even if he couldn’t read it, but this wasn’t Latin; the letters weren’t the right shape and there were marks over the tops of some of them.

  He rolled the thing up and reinserted it into the tube before putting it in his pack. Whatever it was, the monk had valued it and the fact that he would be displeased when he discovered its loss was a good reason for him, Gwil, to keep hold of it.

  Turning back to the girl, he saw that, alarmingly, her eyes had flicked open and fixed on him.

  He’d practised what he would say. ‘You … safe … now,’ he told her slowly and loudly in English. ‘I … am … Breton.’ He didn’t want her to think he was a fucking Fleming. Whether they fought for Stephen or the Empress, the Flemish mercenaries weren’t exactly endearing themselves to the people of England.

  Her eyes stayed on him. Not a child’s eyes now; they were vicious and terrified, more like a cornered weasel’s. He wished she’d close them again. ‘You hurt. You all right now. Tomorrow, I take you home.’

  Nothing.

  Gwil, whose travels had enabled him to get by in most languages, wondered if she spoke English. Nothing. He tried Norman French: ‘Where you from? What your name?’

  Nothing.

  In the end he placed his helmet with its remaining chunks of meat within her reach, crumbled some bread in it, added a drop or two of brandy after swigging some himself and retired to the nest that served him as a bed near the door on the other side of the fire.

  For a while he continued the work of yesterday: shaping a bow out of the fallen yew’s heartwood; he needed a weapon of some kind, although fletching arrows for it would be the bloody problem.

  He was aware of the girl warily watching every move of his knife. Well, he could understand that; there’d been cuts around her … her underparts, showing they’d used a dagger as well.

  Reassuringly, he stiffened his face into a smile, wagged the knife at her and then tapped it on the wood. ‘Make bow,’ he said. ‘Shoot birds for pot.’

  Nothing.

  Well, he’d done his best.

  He whittled on until he fell asleep.

  A thump in his chest jerked him awake to see her hobbling out of the church. He looked down at what had hit him, and there was his own damned knife sticking into the front of his hauberk … Jesus Christ, she’d tried to stab him.

  She was making for the trees, his cloak clutched to her and tripping her up.

  ‘You little bitch, what you do that for?’ He launched himself at her, grabbed her as she stumbled once more and hauled her back into the church, throwing her on to the bracken bed he’d so kindly made for her. ‘You could’ve killed me.’

  She couldn’t have actually and he knew it; it took strength to penetrate mail and the boiled leather beneath it, but she hadn’t known that and she’d tried, the little cow.

  He addressed the small cowering shape. ‘I should’ve let you go.’ He was tempted to do it yet. ‘See how far you’d get on your own in the dark. Tomorrow you go home. And where is that? Eh? Eh?’

  In a temper, he started to interrogate her again. He didn’t know what else to do. Who she? Where come from? He, good man. Good man. Her, ungrateful girl. What her damned name?

  Though she flinched with every syllable, her sharp little eyes never stopped watching him and eventually he gave up. ‘Go and good riddance.’ He flapped his arm at her. ‘You’ll bloody perish out there, and see if I care.’

  Stumping back to his bed, he picked up the knife from where it had fallen, waved it at her and, with some ceremony, put it back in its sheath, which he placed in his pack. Then, using the pack as a pillow, he lay down and made great play of pretending to go to sleep.

  You’re just a man’s shape to her, Gwil, no wonder she can’t trust you.

  ‘I don’t care, Lord. She should mind her manners.’

  But …

  ‘I’m not listening.’ And he put his fingers in his ears and began to hum.

  She was still there in the morning, curled up under his cloak in the bracken like a leveret in its form. He was aware of her watching him as he shaved, a job he’d not done for some days. Dipping the knife into the water of his helmet, he said: ‘Get dressed. Today I take you home.’

  Nothing.

  It occurred to him – he congratulated himself for the delicacy of thinking of it – that she might be reluctant to wear an underdress that was as fouled and ripped as her body had been.

  The well’s windlass had thawed out and he was able to bring up a good bucketful of water, which he took int
o her. ‘Laundry time.’

  She understood that, he noticed, and while he rasped the rest of his chin and cheeks with the blade of his knife, she raised herself enough to wash the thing, showing the expert twist of the wrist all competent females should have.

  The interrogation began again. What was she called? Where did she live?

  For the first time her face showed an emotion other than fear and hatred – it was puzzlement, bordering on panic.

  She doesn’t know who she is, the Lord said. Remember when Ernous got that dint on his helmet? Couldn’t remember his own name for days.

  Gwil experienced a panic of his own. ‘She’s got to, Lord. I’m not getting stuck with her. What more d’you want of me?’

  After all, he couldn’t build a church like the bloody rich did when they needed forgiveness of sins, but this girl God had presented him with was alive, not dead, and all due to him. That should count for something when he encountered St Peter at the gates of Heaven.

  Enough, is it, Gwil?

  He battled with the answer all morning while he finished the bow and made some arrow shafts.

  In the afternoon he went out to look for feathers and found a pigeon dismembered by a fox. Pigeon feathers didn’t make good flights but they’d have to do until he could shoot a goose.

  He hoped she might be gone when he got back, but she was still there, sitting quietly, draped in his cloak, her head in her hands. Her tunic was drying on the tripod, as was her hose, though not its bindings and God alone knew where they were.

  Gwil sighed and pulled a bowstring out of his pack, cut it in half and threw the pieces towards her, pointing to her thick, woollen stockings. ‘Tie ’em up with that,’ he told her.

  He made himself scarce while she dressed herself. A right little tatterdemalion she looked when he got back, but at least she was decent beneath his cloak.

  There was only water to drink now, and a cheese left in the haul from Ely; he gave her a quarter and ate the rest himself before settling down to an evening’s fletching.

  He made one last try before going to sleep. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Can’t remember.’

  Holy Saints, it spoke. ‘Can’t remember your own name? Can’t remember what happened?’

  She hissed at him between her little white stoat’s teeth.

  He thought for a while, wondering what to do next, and decided on comfort. ‘You was hit on the head. It’ll come back. You be a good girl, now.’

  In the night, he was woken by a touch on his body. He’d been careless; he’d put the knife back in the sheath on his belt rather than in his pack and those sharp little eyes of hers had seen him and she’d grabbed it. Only this time he wasn’t her intended victim.

  By the time he was on his feet, she’d escaped with it to the other side of the fire and with a jolt he realized that she was going to turn it on herself; women did that apparently: killed themselves when they’d been shamed.

  He held out his hand. ‘You don’t want that. Give it back to me like a good girl.’

  She began backing away towards the far end of the church and raised the knife to her throat – but to his relief, instead of slicing her flesh, she began hacking at her own hair. And all the time her gaze was on him, as if he ought to understand. Her left hand held a hank of the filthy curls; the right sawed away the rest at ear-level.

  ‘Ain’t a girl,’ she said as he gaped in astonishment. Now the right side had gone and she was groping for the hair at the back. ‘Ain’t a girl.’

  She was mad, that’s what it was. They’d sent her mad, and small wonder.

  Small wonder if she doesn’t want to be a female any more, Gwil, the Lord agreed. Would you?

  ‘Does she remember what happened, then? Or don’t she?’

  But God, having as little comprehension of the feminine mind as any male, did not reply.

  Yet the metamorphosis was extraordinary. The crop-headed little figure glaring at him in the tunic and bulky hose was transformed into a boy. What had been viciousness was now courage to be admired; the repugnancy of its survival had become a wounded soldier’s endurance. He could cope with her better now that she was a boy.

  And then, for an anguished moment, he was taken back to where, for twenty years, he’d done his best to avoid going: to the last sight of another little boy in a Breton doorway, trying to be brave as Gwil went off to war, waving goodbye and promising to be back within a year.

  He’d returned in two – it had been a long campaign, that one, under the banner of the Holy Roman Emperor. There was no son waiting for him, and no wife either, only a rough, single cross with their names scratched on it in the paupers’ graveyard.

  You were away too long, Gwil.

  ‘Stop telling me. I know, don’t I? I’ve always known.’

  Look after this child, then.

  ‘But it’s not mine.’

  It is now. Look on it as your penance.

  Defeated, he walked round the fire and took the knife away. ‘You made a mess of that,’ he said. ‘Let’s do it proper.’

  The remainder of the long hair fell to the floor as he trimmed it and then shaved the neck up to the usual army level. ‘One thing,’ he said, ‘you ain’t no family of mine. That clear?’

  She nodded.

  ‘All right, then.’

  Chapter Four

  BODY SIDEWAYS TO the target (drawn in chalk on the trunk of the heftiest of the beeches sheltering the grove). Feet same distance apart as her shoulders.

  Lower bow to load it. Nock arrow with index finger above and next two fingers below, not too tight, not too loose.

  Raise bow (smoothly, smoothly), draw back string to ear. Aim with dominant eye (she’d never known she had one).

  Release.

  ‘Well,’ Gwil said, walking forward to retrieve the arrow, his feet crunching the grove’s frozen grass, ‘you hit the bloody tree at least.’

  Actually, this time she’d hit the outer rim of the target, but he was as sparing in praise as he was in condemnation.

  She shot him a glance as if to ask what she’d done wrong; he was beginning to be able to read her now, to understand her even.

  ‘Didn’t follow through,’ he told her. She stamped her foot but more in frustration with herself than anything else.

  Bugger. Didn’t make sense to stay aiming after the arrow’d left the bow. But if he said it mattered, then it mattered; when he shot, he hit exact centre every time and she would become as good as him if it killed her.

  ‘Mind out the way, then,’ she said and reached for another arrow.

  ‘No you don’t. That’s enough for today.’ He reached out to stay her arm but she flinched from him. She would never allow him to touch her; not that he wanted to. Not like that anyway. He was tempted to slap her sometimes for her rudeness; but never would. He had never been one for disciplining children; his wife had complained often enough how he was too soft on young Emouale …

  He shook his head against the memory, lowered his arm and stood in front of her.

  ‘Enough,’ he said patiently. ‘Got to remember that the back is the archer’s friend, got to treat it kindly. Now get inside and see to that stew.’

  She hissed at him and he saw her mouth tense as the familiar guarded look clouded her expression once more. Practising archery was almost the only time when she could forget whatever it was she’d forgotten; when the waves she could hear roaring beyond the sea wall in her mind quietened a little, and she wasn’t swept away in the whirling, filthy, inexplicable terror that filled her dreams. With a bow in her hand she could summon up a hatred and a concentration equalling the deluge that’d otherwise overwhelm her. When she shot, she was no longer powerless.

  Didn’t mind not knowing who she was; didn’t want to. Sufficient to have been delivered a month ago into a ruined church by that old midwife, Gwil, archer and arbalist.

  All she knew for certain was that she was both very young and very old; that she was a girl and yet not f
emale; that she was called Penda because that was the name by which Gwil addressed her but that she once answered to another name which was even now being tossed to and fro like flotsam somewhere on the ocean beyond her mental sea wall – beyond her grasp, beyond his.

  ‘I’m going to have to call you something,’ he’d announced one day. ‘Can’t go around being nameless all your life.’ And then he’d closed his eyes as if lost in thought and when he opened them again he was smiling broadly: ‘Penda,’ he said. ‘That’s what I’ll call you. Pagan warlord Penda was, descended from Woden, or so they say. I think it suits you.’ She’d smiled, although she hadn’t had the slightest idea what he was talking about. On reflection, however, she thought it suited her too. And that’s all she knew, except that she must shoot and shoot, so the point of her arrow could one day thwack into the centre of a human target and inflict a wound on it like the one in the gaping tunnel between her legs.

  There was just one last thing she knew too: that she could trust old Gwil not to come too close. Like he was standing off now, arm outstretched to take the bow.

  She passed it over to him and went into the church to stir the stew, pausing in its arched doorway to peer forward and then behind in case … in case of what? Something terrible.

  No, nobody there. She went inside and felt the uneven walls slip around her like protective clothing. He’d made a safe, warm home of it, old Gwil. Patched the roof, made stools out of its spars, grubbed in the detritus of the cottages and found a pail, scorched but serviceable enough for cooking and washing in, used old bits of iron from the same source to hang on hidden string between the trees so they’d clang an alarm which would give them both time to disappear through a tunnel he’d scratched out under the back wall.

  And he’d made her a cloak out of the hide of a young deer he’d shot when it came blundering through the trees. Bit smelly, but kept out the cold. When she was good enough, he was going to teach her to hunt.