‘Not long now,’ he said after a time. ‘Up you get, my lady.’ He came back and formed his hands into a stirrup. The Empress put her left foot in it and swung her right leg across her horse’s saddle.
Alan went outside again and this time Maud joined him. All was calm and quiet, the distant men encircling the castle as silent as those inside it.
‘Why aren’t they moving? Why aren’t we?’ Maud said. ‘In the name of God, why doesn’t somebody do something?’ The wait was almost unbearable.
‘Nervous?’ The mercenary’s eyes were on the castle gates.
‘I’m not nervous … nerves aren’t something I suffer from. Will there be a signal?’ But her teeth were chattering and from something other than the cold.
‘Soon. Gwilherm – sorry, Sir Gwilherm knows what he’s about. But I warn you, it’s going to be noisy.’
The mounting suspense was terrible; unable to stand it, Maud went back into the tunnel to where the Empress was twisting in her saddle to arrange her cloak into decorous folds. She reached up to help her, deftly tying the scarf-strings of the Empress’s hood more tightly under her chin so that it should not be blown back to reveal either the gold circlet round her hair or the jewels in her ears and at her neck. In her outer clothes, she looked like any male winter rider; underneath she was fully equipped to bribe her way through enemy lines.
And how many of those would be encountered on the terrible ride ahead of her? ‘God go with you, Lady,’ Maud said and was surprised by how earnestly she meant it.
Whether the Empress replied she didn’t hear, because at that moment a great noise broke out at the castle gates. She rushed out of the postern to join Alan among the rowan trees and watch her contingent emerge from the rear gate making a racket of whistles, boos and shouts; there was even a trumpet blast. In the middle of them all a slight figure, its veil blowing in the wind, was screaming in a high falsetto.
‘What in God’s name are they doing?’
‘Attracting the enemy’s attention. They need that circle to break.
Leave a gap.’
Maud thought it unlikely that Stephen’s men would believe the Empress was being taken out with such furore. They’d suspect a trick. She said so.
‘Stephen might, but I don’t think he’s here yet. Come on, you bastards, come on. Break ranks. Come and pick that nice fat plum for your king.’
So far, the ring was holding, though some of its men were becoming restless at the jeers coming from the castle ramparts, and were having to be commanded back into line by their lieutenants. Gwilherm, followed by the castle contingent, had turned round and was circling the enemy so close that he was in arrow range. He was shouting, though what he yelled, Maud couldn’t hear. Sir Christopher’s taunts were like the screams of seagulls.
The temptation was too much for Stephen’s troops: they could take the Empress; they might even take the castle, with a reward for both. One by one the ring’s sections crumbled, its pieces surging forward in ragged attack.
Gwil wheeled away from them and headed for a gap that had opened in the south-east towards the hills. Christopher and his men galloped after him.
The delay had cost them dear; the enemy was at their heels. One man was outstripping the others, a morningstar with a wickedly flanged head flailing in his hand, ready to bring down Christopher’s horse.
‘Shoot him,’ Maud whispered. She was holding on to a tree trunk so that her knees wouldn’t give way. ‘Kill him.’
Whether anybody did or not, she suddenly couldn’t see because a troop of Stephen’s men who’d been holding the ring to the west came past to join the mêlée, their horses ploughing through the mud with a rocking action that scattered the earth over her.
‘Bless ’em,’ she heard Alan say. He went back into the tunnel to get mounted and fetch the Empress. ‘Our way’s open, Lady.’
When, both on horseback, they re-emerged, Alan reined in among the trees and looked down at Maud. He had looked at her like that once before on almost this very spot and was having the same effect now. Oh no! she thought. Not again! But this time she held his gaze and lifted her face to him.
‘A farewell kiss?’ he asked softly. ‘It is St Valentine’s Day, after all.’
Afterwards Maud tried to convince herself that she was about to protest but before she could say anything he had scooped her up and kissed her with an energy which sapped all hers and then lowered her gently to the ground again. Her heart pounding like a sack of frogs she could only watch as the Empress and her mercenary captain clamped their legs against their horses’ sides and galloped off, turning right away from the hubbub behind them.
‘Impudence,’ she whispered, raising her hand to her cheek when her head finally cleared. But because her knees were shaking, though this time from something other than fear, or cold, she found another tree to hang on to while she watched two figures disappear behind the fold of her fields that led to the west.
On the ramparts Penda’s eyes followed the soldier with the morningstar. He was chasing Christopher so closely that their horses were almost alongside. She could hear, or thought she could, the whistling displacement of air as the weapon flailed inches away from the labouring rump of Christopher’s horse. Another attempt like that and the animal would be brought down.
Penda sighted the arrow in her bow. It was going to be a long shot, a very long shot; the man was only just in her range. ‘Swerve, you fool,’ she told Christopher under her breath. He did, his pursuer swerving with him, the gleaming morningstar raised for another thwack.
It never came. The weapon dropped on to the field and the man fell forward on to his horse’s neck as Penda’s arrow went into his spine.
Sir Christopher looked round, saw her and raised an arm in salute before he made for the gap in the enemy ranks and disappeared.
Chapter Twenty-four
‘AND DID SHE escape? Did the Empress get away?’ the scribe asks.
‘Oh yes,’ says the abbot. ‘After many adventures on the way, she arrived at her stronghold in the south-west, and was reunited with young Henry at Bristol, but much of the fight had gone out of her; she was, after all, over forty years old by then.’
‘So the war was over?’ the scribe asks, rather too casually for the abbot’s liking. He raises his eyebrows but the scribe is too busy writing to notice.
‘Not quite over,’ the abbot says with emphasis, too tired to berate him properly for his ignorance today. ‘Not yet … and anyway the Anarchy was just beginning. You see, in a strange way Stephen needed the Empress as his enemy; her very existence had given his barons a straight choice: Support me, the King, or you will be ruled by this domineering, unpleasant woman. Without her as a contrast, he was left naked as it were, his faults exposed, of which the greatest was weakness.’ The old man pauses and clears his throat to ensure he has the scribe’s full attention. ‘Now, I’m not saying Stephen wasn’t courageous or a fine general – he could move an army around England faster than anybody – and he was even kindly if they’d let him be, but he wasn’t a …’ He looks out at his oak tree to find the right word among its diminishing leaves. ‘… a nailer.’
‘A nailer, my lord?’
‘A nailer. Not effective. He seemed unable to administer the finishing touch. A job was never quite completed, a rebel never totally reduced. The Empress’s supporters, who were still fighting, could tempt him away from one siege by an attack somewhere else to which he would immediately respond. His word, though generously given, could not be trusted.
‘Under Henry the First, a much harsher man, there had been strong government, an efficient tax system, a rule of law. People knew where they were, even if they didn’t like it, but under Stephen these things disintegrated; he had no time to apply himself to them, though I doubt if he had the administrative ability to do so if he had. Wrongdoing went unpunished. Barons who were not concerned with putting the Empress on the throne, but with creating their own little kingdoms, saw that they could defy his a
uthority. They became savages, invading their neighbours’ territory, torturing the landholders into revealing where they kept their money, taking men to build castles for them, stripping the fields of harvests so that peasants died in their thousands from starvation.’
It has been a long speech for a dying man. He lies back on his pillow, gasping. The scribe administers a spoonful of medicine and tells him to rest. ‘We can continue tomorrow.’ But there is one more question he has to ask: ‘My lord, what happened to Kenniford after the Empress had gone? Did it give in?’
‘Give in?’ All at once the abbot is reinvigorated. ‘Give in? There were great hearts in that castle, its chatelaine not the least of them. No, my son, only treachery could take Kenniford.’ The abbot’s eyes close again and his scribe sees tears creeping from under them. ‘The treachery of that grand dragon, that ancient serpent who leads the whole world astray, who was hurled to the earth and his angels with him …’
The scribe creeps out of the room, leaving his master to murmur from the Book of Revelation.
Chapter Twenty-five
EVEN WITH THE Empress gone the battle continued to rage. Stephen, thwarted by Matilda for a third time, was wreaking revenge on those responsible for his latest humiliation.
From Penda’s vantage point on the ramparts, there seemed an added ferocity to this morning’s attack, as if it were somehow personal this time.
Arrows rained down in great arcs to clatter on to the allure behind her, while the castle itself shuddered and shook as if, at any moment, it would crumble to dust under the relentless assault.
Gwil was no longer at her side, his duties as the newly appointed commander-in-chief had taken him elsewhere and she missed him. On the other hand, she was grateful too; the archer who had taken his place had received an arrow through the eye and was lying face up, dead, on the allure behind her. Such was the mercilessness of the enemy fire that nobody had been able to risk attending to the body.
All around she could hear the cries of men either wounded or dying as the Kenniford casualty toll rose. She herself had only narrowly avoided being hit when, having turned briefly away from her loophole, an enemy bolt came whistling through with such force that it embedded itself in the stone wall behind her.
‘I’ll get it for you, Penda.’ A child’s fluting voice, incongruous in the brutal noise of battle, wafted through to her.
It couldn’t be! Surely it couldn’t be!
She spun around but saw nothing, comforting herself that she had just imagined it; after all, fear and panic did strange things up here. Perhaps it was her memory stirring again? But it came again; only this time, when she turned round she saw him.
He was standing with his back to her, his small feet set firm and wide, his arms reaching high above his head as he struggled to tug the bolt which had so nearly killed her out of the wall.
William!
‘Get down, you idiot!’ she screamed, terrified by the storm of arrows whistling through the air around him. He was going to be killed and it would be all her fault. It was she who had encouraged him yesterday when she should have summarily booted him back down to safety; it was her pride, the very thing Gwil had warned her about, succumbing to the flattery of a child that had put his life in danger. My God! she had even praised him for his bravery and thanked him for collecting arrows for her; and now she would be punished for her sin with his blood on her hands.
‘GET DOWN, WILLIAM!’ another voice screamed in unison with hers and Penda watched as another woman rushed towards the child.
He had freed the bolt now and turned triumphantly towards her, grinning with delight, innocent of the chaos and panic around him as he held it aloft.
‘GET DOWN! GET DOWN!’
But he seemed not to hear.
Maud reached him almost before Penda had a chance to move. She grabbed him, clutching him to her, weeping into his neck and scolding him bitterly with relief that he was safely in her arms. She too was oblivious to everything except the boy for whom she was prepared to risk her life.
Another arrow shot past them, perilously close this time, shocking Penda into action; dropping her bow to the ground, she rushed out from behind the safety of the merlon towards the woman and child. Whatever the risk to herself, she must get them out of the line of fire and down into the bailey as quickly as possible.
Spreading her arms wide, she reached around the two crouching figures, mantling them in her cloak to shield them as best she could from the raging storm of arrows while she forced them back towards the stairs and safety.
‘GO BACK NOW, GO BACK,’ she repeated over and over again as they stumbled in a ragged phalanx towards the stairwell.
When, at last, they reached it she pushed them through the gap in the wall and watched, as if her gaze alone could provide sanctuary, as they stumbled down the steps. Only when they were safely beyond arrows’ reach did she allow herself to breathe again.
They were down. Thank God!
She stood up, settled her mantle straight across her breast, and prepared to return to the loophole when she felt something strike her just below her right shoulder.
At first she thought she had been punched and, shocked at the audacity of the assault, wheeled round, fists clenched ready to confront whoever it was, to hit back if necessary; but there was nobody there.
She shrugged and carried on walking towards the merlon, until suddenly her legs were too heavy to move and she stumbled as the pain in her back, little more than a dull ache at first, grew in intensity, surging through the right side of her body like a branding iron. She staggered towards the nearest wall, struggling to breathe, and then her knees betrayed her and she collapsed.
Maud reached her before she lost consciousness completely.
Having delivered William safely into the arms of Milburga, she turned around to look back up at the strange red-headed boy who had just risked his life for theirs. He was still standing on the battlements watching over them, oblivious to the danger behind him and therefore unable to see, as Maud could, the arrow which came winging its way over the castle wall to bury itself in his back. The moment she saw him fall, Maud picked up her skirts and raced back up the steps to the allure.
When she reached him he was lying face down, arms by his sides, eyes open but unseeing. Maud knelt down beside him and put her ear to his lips. He was still breathing, but only just, and judging by the crimson tide creeping over the stone beside him, the blood loss was already considerable.
Think, think! She reached out tentatively, hands shaking, to the arrow protruding from his back; it had to come out, she knew that much, but to remove it would cause yet more bleeding and she dared not, could not, touch it; to inflict more pain and damage was somehow repulsive. She needed Milburga; she needed Father Nimbus. She raised her face to the heavens. Oh help me, Mary, Mother of God! But there was no time to invoke anybody’s help because when she looked back at the stricken creature, she saw that his eyes were closing and his breathing was becoming shallow. He was dying and she could only kneel beside him and watch.
The castle shook again, rocking her sideways, as another huge boulder ricocheted off the wall. She had to get him out of here. Have to do something! So, scrambling to her feet, she ran to the stairwell to scream for help.
Chapter Twenty-six
IT WAS GWIL who came.
Despite the ferocity of the fighting and his new responsibilities, he had managed to keep half an eye on Penda all day and wherever he was, whatever he was doing, would glance across every so often to check on her. When he saw Maud waving so desperately on the allure on the opposite side of the castle close to Penda’s position, his instinct was to drop everything and run.
As he rushed towards her, darting through the crowds in the bailey, weaving his way around the archers on the ramparts, he hoped against hope that his instinct was wrong and that the casualty, if there was one, was not her. But as he reached the small, still body lying on the ground his hopes were dashed.
/> Between them, they lifted her up and carried her down the steps through the bailey to the keep.
The journey seemed to take an age. It felt as if the very ground was conspiring against him, as he jostled his way through the crowds, carrying the unconscious Penda. Maud ran in front, screaming at anyone who stood in their way, pushing and shoving when necessary to clear their path.
When they eventually reached the solar, Milburga and Father Nimbus were summoned: Father Nimbus queasy at the sight of so much blood and suffering; Milburga bristling with efficiency.
‘What you all standing around for? That there needs to come out,’ she said, pointing at the arrow shaft protruding from Penda’s back. ‘No good lookin’ at it. Ain’t going to pull itself, is it?’ In times of crisis, as Maud knew only too well, Milburga’s default position was one of supreme bossiness.
‘But which way?’ The very idea of removing the arrow was appalling; any decision taken now would be crucial to the boy’s survival.
‘We’ll see.’ Milburga frowned as she peeled back the blood-sodden outer clothing from the wound. ‘Can’t see no barbs,’ she said, turning her head this way and that as she examined it. ‘But likely it’s too deep. Pull it backwards an’ it’ll rip more flesh and he’ll bleed out.’ She stopped the examination for a moment to wipe her bloodied fingers on a cloth, then sighed, stood up straight and, with an emphatic nod of her head, said: ‘I say for’ards.’
The decision was made.
Father Nimbus quailed and turned a peculiar shade of green; then stumbled towards the bed, laid a trembling hand on the mattress to steady himself and, for want of anything more constructive to do, began unpacking his chrismatory box.
Milburga stamped her foot. ‘Put that away, Girly, you old fool. He ain’t dead yet!’ And then spinning around to the rest of the room, hands on her hips, glaring at them fiercely, demanded: ‘Now is you lot just going to stand there flapping, or you going to help me? You!’ she said, pointing at Gwil. ‘Sit ’im upright, won’t lose so much blood that way.’ And to Maud: ‘Send to the kitchen. We’ll be needing a jug of wine, some yarrow leaves and some comfrey. And don’t be long about it neither.’
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