Winter Siege

by Ariana Franklin

  He said a grace before they ate: ‘Benedic, Domine, nos et haec tua dona, quae de tua largitate sumus sumpturi …’

  Mistress Margaret said nothing, thanking neither the Lord nor anybody else for the gift of food. When the roasted heart was passed to her on the end of the sword, she took it between a gloved finger and thumb with the expression of one who was used to better.

  But you’re scoffing it fast enough, Gwil thought, watching her white teeth tear at the flesh.

  Penda didn’t take her eyes off her and when, after the meal, the woman once more went outside to answer a call of nature, she nudged Gwil with ecstasy, unable to get over the fact that empresses were subject to the same physical requirements as the rest of humanity.

  Probably pisses vinegar, Gwil thought. If this was Empress Matilda, she had a reputation as a haughty bitch – well deserved, as he was discovering; it was small wonder the Londoners had chased her out of their city. He wondered how men like Alan and Christopher could grovel to her as they did.

  Yet it seemed that the hut shone the more brightly for her presence; he imagined it pulsing with a light that sent out the signal ‘Look who’s here’ for miles around. He remembered something from the Bible about entertaining angels unawares. That was what he and Pen were doing: entertaining a stiff-necked, glowing bloody angel with no manners, likely to attract the forces of Hell to their door.

  He studied the angel’s face with its thin, high cheekbones and straight, somewhat overlong nose. Large eyes of clear hazel, along with the perfect complexion, should have given her beauty – except that the arrogance with which they looked out on the world, and the sour mouth, were not conducive to it.

  Brave, you had to give her that. Again, Gwil imagined the flight through the lines at Oxford and the subsequent terrible trek along a snow-bound river.

  No ordinary woman could have done it. She hadn’t whined about tiredness or hunger, neither – not that he’d heard.

  She ain’t going to draw us in, he thought with force, she ain’t.

  The digestive silence following the meal was broken by Alan. ‘May I suggest you sleep, Domina? I think we ought to be on our way before dawn tomorrow, and we have to discuss …’

  The hazel eyes directed themselves with meaning at Gwil, and then Penda. Not in front of these yokels.

  Alan turned to them, awkwardly: ‘Could you leave us for a while?’

  Too much.

  ‘No, we couldn’t,’ Gwil shouted at him. ‘We guessed who she is, and if you want to talk secrets, you can do it without us freezing our arses off in the snow; we ain’t going to tell anybody.’

  There was a gasp from Christopher, and Mistress Margaret’s arched eyebrows arched even higher. Had her mouth twitched in amusement, or just a wider sneer?

  Her voice rasped. ‘Can we trust these fellows?’

  Alan smiled. ‘I think so.’

  ‘Then they shall come with us; we may have need of them.’

  No ‘please’, just the royal ‘we’ making a command. Gwil opened his mouth, but a nudge from Penda stopped him.

  ‘Be good, that, wouldn’t it?’

  She’s been bewitched, he thought. The magic of a grand title’s got her spellbound. But this ain’t no fairytale princess sitting there; this woman’s a liability as’ll pull us down with her.

  On the other hand, he’d found comfort in being in the presence of the two men, especially Alan. Something of the terrible responsibility he felt for Penda had been eased merely by their company; she’d been accepted as a boy, and a decent one; Alan had protected her in the battle with the wolves. Wouldn’t do any harm to continue with them for a bit, maybe, as long as the hounds after ’em didn’t catch up. In which case, he and Pen would be off.

  So he said: ‘Where you heading?’

  ‘Kenniford Castle,’ Alan said.

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Downriver a few miles, I’m not sure how many, but it can’t be far.’

  The Empress broke in. ‘Are we sure of this Maud of Kenniford? She is unknown to us.’

  ‘Like I said, Lady, she swore on the Bible to be your vassal.’

  ‘A switched allegiance, and one made under duress, you say.’

  ‘One she was happy to make, if I’m any judge.’

  It didn’t sound a good proposition to Gwil, and the more it was talked about between the three, the less he liked it. A castle in the charge of an untried female and one that, if it was held for the Empress, made it unique in a swathe of England that was almost entirely under the control of King Stephen, an island lapped by a hostile sea …

  ‘We suppose there is no alternative,’ the Empress was saying.

  Not for you, he thought. But Pen and me have one. We ain’t getting drawn in. ‘How big’s this Kenniford?’ he asked. ‘And once you’re in, how you going to get out? Lessen you’re reckoning you got an army as’ll come and rescue you.’

  ‘It’s no mere motte and bailey, I can tell you,’ Alan said. ‘Properly prepared it could hold out for a year, but I don’t intend my lady to stay in it that long. There was no time to explore it all while I was there, but a castle that size wouldn’t have been built without a postern out of sight of any besiegers, should there be any. Once we’ve gathered intelligence, we should be able to reach our own forces.’

  The discussion between the Empress and her knights continued. It seemed established in everybody’s mind, except Gwil’s, that all five should travel together.

  Alan, he noticed, was edgy and insisted that weapons be kept within reach, and that everybody sleep with their boots on – ‘In case we have to make a quick exit.’

  Gwil shared his disquiet, respecting the man’s instinct, and was later than the others in getting to sleep. A shuddering cry outside had him reaching for his crossbow before he recognized the call of a tawny owl out hunting.

  After what seemed like only a few minutes since closing his eyes, he was wakened by growling just beyond the hut. That would be wolves, their noses having made the inevitable discovery of the hanging deer.

  Christopher stirred and muttered: ‘There goes breakfast.’

  He heard the snap of the branch giving way as the beasts pulled the carcass down and began dragging it off.

  Taking it back to their lair, he thought. And then: Making a hell of a to-do about it – for the growling had changed to snarls that became louder and louder, now interspersed with the belling of different animals …

  Penda got to her feet. ‘Hounds.’

  Alan was at the door. Had gone out. Was back: ‘Up. Up. They’ve found us.’

  The grab for cloaks and weapons was a confused mêlée before Christopher could usher the Empress through the door, Gwil pulling Penda after her.

  The moon was clear and high, showing them a scene in which black, reflective shapes moved as if on a steel mirror. Men and dogs had disgorged themselves from two rowing boats on the river to head for the lantern of the hut, but between it and them were the wolves, eight at least, ready to fight for the deer’s carcass. Men were yelling at the hounds, trying to divert them from the smell of dead meat to that of living humans, without success. Dogs and wolves clashed together in snarling, whirling balls of fur and teeth and blood.

  For a moment the people from the hut stood outside it, transfixed, before Alan began pushing them towards the southern forest. ‘Run.’

  They ran, while wolves held the line behind them against men and dogs. It wouldn’t be long; the wolves were outnumbered; the men had spears.

  They ran, dodging trees, falling over brambles, trying to keep to tracks made by animals whose prints might disguise their own. At their backs the tumult rose, then began to dwindle. They heard the whimper of dying animals and at least one human scream before there was silence.

  Now the hunt was on. Alan, who was leading, jumped a stream and then came back to it. ‘Along here.’

  He took the Empress’s hand and pulled her into the water, wading in the same direction as its flow so that
their scent would be carried along with them, and not left behind for the hounds to sniff. Christopher, Gwil and Penda followed.

  It wasn’t a deep stream but, by God, it was cold. At first they couldn’t feel it, but once their boots had absorbed the water, their feet threatened to become unbending stumps that made louder splashes than before so that they couldn’t hear what was behind them.

  Then there were no more trees and the stream had gone down an incline, turning to ice in the process. All five slipped, bringing each other down like bowled ninepins so that they twirled ridiculously out into moonlight and space – to find themselves on a bank of a river so wide it could only be the Thames again. They’d made a wide arc that had brought them a bit further south, though probably not much.

  Alan helped the Empress to her feet, looking upriver and down. They listened for sounds of pursuit and heard only the suggestion of a disturbance somewhere back in the forest that might have been hounds, or more wolves. Or both at once.

  ‘Now they know we’re going south, maybe they’ll have taken to the boats again,’ Alan said. ‘They know we’ll be following the river.’

  But they were too tired to tackle the forest again, even if they could find their way in it.

  The bank they were on was lined with pollarded willow and promised better going than the other, which, being bare, was just an escarpment of snow – not that they could have reached it; there was no bridge to be seen.

  ‘Are you all right, Lady?’ Alan asked.

  They’d all fallen heavily, but while four of them rubbed their backsides, the Empress stood like a rock, as if royal arses didn’t bruise. She nodded, breathing hard.

  To give her another minute, Christopher said: ‘Who was St Lupus?’

  ‘A bishop or something,’ Alan told him.

  ‘Well, if he’s the patron saint of wolves, I’m going to build him a chapel all to himself. Those animals did us proud, bless them.’

  They set off downstream.

  Gwil kept looking behind him. Alan had been right; if Stephen’s men had any sense, they’d have taken to the boats, watching the banks as they went.

  No point in thinking how tired they were, no point in hating every drift that impeded them and had to be struggled through; no point in anything but lifting one foot and putting it in front of the other. One, two. Again. One, two.

  A swan taunted their lumberings by flowing past them like a beautiful, white aquamanile gliding along a black and gleaming tabletop.

  One, two. And again. One, two.

  Penda’s head was drooping; she looked terribly pale too, as though she were sickening for something. ‘Don’t get poorly on me now, Pen,’ Gwil muttered under his breath as he took hold of her hand and started pulling her along. We been drawn in after all, he thought, and wondered how it had happened. One, two.

  They disturbed an otter that slid down the bank and swam effortlessly away from them.

  The Empress stopped. She said nothing, just stood still.

  Gwil watched Alan pick her up, put her over his shoulder and stagger on, her head bobbing against his back.

  Bloody woman. Her fault, all of it her fucking fault. What she want to be queen for? Must be – Jesus – nearly as old as me. Three sons by the Plantagenet. Or was it four? They said she nearly died having one of ’em. Guts, you had to give her that. Bloody woman.

  Penda fell and didn’t get up. Gwil knelt, heaved her round his neck like a muffler, and limped on.

  A coot emerged from the reeds, pattering noisily over the water before taking off.

  Easy for furred and feathered things; fucking difficult for two legs.

  ‘Sanctuary.’ The cry from Alan made him look up.

  Eternity did have an end. In the distance, on the opposite side of the river where it bent, was a great wall. With towers. A castle.

  From behind them came a distant shout: ‘There they are.’

  Wearily, Gwil turned and saw, being rowed downriver towards them, the boat he’d known to be inevitable.

  It was coming too fast and the castle was too far away: she’d be captured; they’d all be captured.

  No you fucking don’t, he thought. Not now we come this far.

  He heard his own whisper: ‘Get on,’ and managed to raise it to a yell: ‘Get on, leave it … me.’

  He didn’t see if he was obeyed; his eyes were on the boat. He lowered Penda to the ground, still sleeping. Somehow he raised an arm to unhook the crossbow from his shoulder; somehow found a bolt for it – his last. Somehow put his foot in the stirrup and by a miracle had the strength to cock the thing. Went down on one knee in the striped shadows of a willow.

  From a quarter of a mile away, in the bright moonlight, the boat with its men and spears had looked like a massive hedgehog speeding over the water towards him. Now he could see the glint of Stephen’s striped silver and gold blazon on shields.

  The man-at-arms standing in the prow didn’t spot him; he was too busy pointing at the two burdened figures staggering along the towpath.

  Gwil waited, watching the approach of the boat’s prow as its rowers fought against the current to change direction and reach the bank ahead of Alan and Christopher to cut them off. Near him now. Unconsciously he worked out distance, angle, water resistance.

  Forgive my sins and be with me now, Lord.

  He shot.

  There was a spurt of spray at the side of the boat, disregarded by the excited men in it, and sounding to Gwil as weak as the ‘plop’ of a rising fish. Oh Jesus, he’d miscalculated. The bolt had hit the boat below the waterline, but bounced off. It had hit but hadn’t pierced, plugging the side, not holing it. Too tired, too old, he’d missed altogether.

  He was wrong. One of the rowers shouted, let go of his oars and took off his helmet to start bailing. The boat skewed and slowly, very slowly, tipped to port as water rushed in through the hole by its keel.

  Men were crying out. Some were clinging to the boat’s hull. The river was claiming others who splashed desperately to keep afloat in its weakening cold.

  God help them, he prayed, and began the trudge towards the castle. Shields and spears floated past him as he went and the cries behind him grew weaker. Help the poor buggers, Lord, but what else could I do?

  There was no bridge to the castle. At least, there was, but it was drawn up over the portcullis of a gatehouse some sixty feet tall and seventy-five feet away across the river.

  Alan, with the Empress pressed against his side to keep her warm, and Christopher with Penda pressed against his, were standing on a quayside that had on it what looked like a toll booth. Their voices were engaged in shouts with two others across the river, the argument making echoes skip back and forth across the swift-flowing water between them.

  ‘Tha’s all very well,’ a man’s voice from the gatehouse was saying as Gwil limped up the quayside, ‘but iffen you don’t know the password—’

  There was an interjection from somewhere along the ramparts. ‘Don’t think we got one, Ben.’

  The gatehouse was put out. ‘Ain’t we? Still and all, we ain’t letting just anybody in. I got my orders.’

  Gwil sat down and rested his head on his knees. This was sanctuary?

  ‘Your orders come from Maud of Kenniford,’ Alan yelled, ‘who has sworn herself and this castle to the service of the Empress Matilda. This is the Empress. Let her in.’

  ‘Don’t look like no empress to me,’ said the gatehouse. ‘Where’s her crown?’

  Christopher tried diplomacy. ‘If you would be good enough to fetch Lady Kenniford …’

  ‘This time o’ morning? She won’t take kindly. Be a braver man than me …’

  The Empress detached herself from Alan’s arm and stood tall. She took two steps forward, and spoke. ‘I am the Empress Matilda, Lady of England and your sovereign. Open to me. Now.’

  A thousand years of dominion went ringing across the Thames like a trumpet blast. Anglo-Saxon and Viking–Norman ancestry combined in a chord that had d
eafened and conquered nations. It expected the moon to bend its knee. If not, so much the worse for the moon.

  The gatehouse made an arbitrary decision. There was a roar of clanking chains as the bridge was lowered and thumped into place at the Lady of England’s feet.

  Head up, she crossed over it, followed by the others, to be received into Kenniford Castle.

  Maud was spitting mad to hear that five more strangers had been admitted into the castle and was wondering whether she should add the blasted gatekeeper Ben to the list of people she’d quite happily hang at the moment, the herald Payn being top of it.

  She’d discovered his latest slip after one of her rare visits to Sir John yesterday.

  Sir John of Tewing was still alive; paralysed but alive. The left side of his face, from eye to chin, was lopsided as if its flesh had melted and run downwards. He had no use of his right arm or leg and had to be helped in and out of his bed. Yet, in many ways, he was as big a presence in the castle as he had been before.

  What animated him was fury. The eyes in that ruin of a face, one of them pulled down to show a glaring red rim, bulged out at the world like an enraged bull’s. The only intelligible sound he could make was ‘uck-oo’, and he shouted it over and over – ‘Uck-oo’, ‘Uck-oo’ – with the regularity and force of a deranged Cuculus canorus, pounding his good hand against his useless one as if to hammer life back into it.

  Despite the inconvenience to herself and everybody else who attended on her patient, Kigva had insisted on moving Sir John to the topmost room of the keep, with views to the north, east, west and south.

  It had been built by Maud’s father, a man so distrusting of his own people that he wanted to keep an eye on them from all points of the compass as they went about their business 120 feet below. Kigva had said that was where Sir John wanted to be, perhaps for the same reason, perhaps to give him an interest. Maud, wanting to do her best for the man, had seen no reason to deny it to him – and only regretted it when, with Kigva’s delighted help, he managed to prop himself up against the window mullion and burst into uck-oo, uck-oo, uck-oo, uck-oos that could be heard throughout the castle baileys and beyond.