Crossing into the bailey, they rode into utter pandemonium. Men were coming on the run from all corners of the castle, and they were mobbed as soon as they reined in. A dozen eager hands reached up to help Maude dismount, but her muscles were so numbed and cramped that she stumbled and had to grab at the nearest arm to keep from falling. When she faltered again, Brien was there to catch her. As soon as he felt her trembling, he jerked off his own mantle and wrapped her in it before escorting her into the great hall, leaving Ranulf, Hugh, and Sampson to fend for themselves.
Maude was dazed by the furor. She had often been the center of attention, but never before the object of such intense and unbridled enthusiasm. Every man in the hall was beaming at her, admiring, marveling, approving. She was being assailed from all sides with shouted questions and lavish praise; it was unseemly behavior and she reveled in it.
Ranulf and Hugh and Sampson were fighting their way toward her, overwhelmed by so much goodwill; men were slapping them on the back, spilling wine on them with overeager generosity, inadvertently keeping them from what they most wanted: to thaw themselves out by that blazing hearth. Maude was so close to the flames that she was in danger of being singed. She was thirsty and hungry and half frozen and so fatigued she felt lightheaded. But none of that mattered. She was quite content to stay right where she was, in Brien’s arms, surrounded by laughing, exultant men, men who were calling her Queen Maude as if they truly meant it, rejoicing in her triumph and making it their own.
Brien was holding her as if he had no intention of letting her go, dark eyes never leaving her face. “You are the most amazing woman,” he said, and laughed, too happy to hide it, to keep up the pretense between them any longer. Maude smiled at him as her own defenses dropped, realizing what was happening and not caring, not now, not anymore.
“My only regret,” she said, “is that I’ll not be there to see Stephen’s face when he finds out I’ve bested him!” That set them all to laughing, and this time she knew the jokes were at Stephen’s expense, not hers.
“If I do not sit down soon, I’m likely to fall down,” she confided to Brien, for she could admit to physical frailties now; she’d earned that right. His arm tightened around her shoulder, and when he called out for a chair, so many men volunteered that Maude began to laugh. Never had she felt like this, so in harmony with her world, so at ease with herself. It was a wonderful feeling, had been a long time coming.
She smiled again at Brien. But he was no longer gazing down into her face with such flattering and heartfelt joy. He was looking over her shoulder, and although he showed no overt signs of tension, Maude saw enough subtle indications—a tightening around his mouth, a flickering of his eyelids—for her to turn around, seeking the source of his stress.
A woman was coming toward them. She was about Maude’s age, although without Maude’s statuesque carriage or her elegant, high-cheeked handsomeness. Maude’s features were boldly stated, her coloring as dramatic as her demeanor. This woman’s appeal was as delicate as it was conventional, delineated in gentle, muted shades, hair a pale ash-brown, golden lashes, eyes a soft, misty blue, eyes that were as clear as spring water and as transparent, giving Maude an unwanted glimpse into the very depths of her woman’s soul. There was pain in the look she now gave Maude, pain and fear and a quiver of hopeless hatred.
“Welcome to Wallingford, madame,” she said tonelessly. “Welcome to my husband’s home.”
STEPHEN felt more than triumph as he watched the castle drawbridge being lowered; he felt a quiet but intense sense of vindication. Judging from the comments he overheard as they rode into the bailey, he knew his men were experiencing emotions no less jubilant and a good deal more vengeful. As much as he’d wanted to take Maude prisoner, he had no desire to see her humiliated, and in that, he was clearly in the minority. His brother in particular was anticipating Maude’s surrender with more pleasure than seemed becoming for a man of God. Stephen hoped Henry would not gloat too openly, but he could not very well say anything. Not only would that infuriate his brother for days and even weeks to come, but it would reinforce the lingering suspicions of his other allies, that he lacked the old king’s implacable will and unforgiving royal memory. It would be a great relief once he no longer had to compete with a ghost; in ending the threat Maude posed, he hoped, too, to put her father to his long-overdue rest.
Rob d’Oilly was awaiting them upon the steps of the great hall, standing with a tall, burly man whom Stephen recognized as the captain of Maude’s household knights. But there was no sign of Maude, and Stephen’s smile faded. “That is odd,” he said, “I would have wagered any sum that Maude would be the first one we’d see.”
“It is not so surprising,” the bishop countered. “She is facing utter ruin, confinement for the rest of her days. Little wonder she might want to put off the moment of surrender as long as possible.”
“After all this time, Henry, do you know Maude as little as that? The greater her defeat, the more determined she’d be to meet it head-on. I do not like this, not at all. Mayhap she is ailing? That might explain her sudden capitulation. In truth, I’d expected her to hold out until the last morsel of bread had been swallowed.”
Rob d’Oilly drew a visibly bracing breath. He was obviously not looking forward to this coming confrontation, and that was the true measure of the difference between them, Alexander de Bohun thought, with just a trace of disdain, for he was relishing what lay ahead. His eyes flicked past Stephen to the familiar faces behind him: the cutthroat Fleming, the swaggering Warenne whelp, that sour pickle Northampton, whose smiles always looked borrowed, and Winchester’s ungodly bishop, as smug as a cat with a mouse between its paws. No, he was glad now that his lady had asked him to keep her brother from blundering. He’d not have missed this for all the whores in Babylon.
Rob d’Oilly’s sin was not in being nervous; it was in letting it be seen. He was determined, though, to follow the proper code of conduct for such occasions, and as Stephen dismounted, he stepped forward stiffly, knelt and formally offered his sword. “Oxford Castle is yours, my liege.”
Stephen accepted the sword with appropriate gravity and did not keep Rob on his knees any longer than need be. Say what you will about the man, Rob thought, he knew how to play his part. But he did not yet know that Maude had rewritten the ending. And when he did?
“Where is the Countess of Anjou?” the Bishop of Winchester demanded, and Rob found himself—oddly enough—taking umbrage on Stephen’s behalf, that his partisans should feel so free to usurp his role. He hesitated and was not sure whether to be relieved or resentful when Alexander de Bohun spared him the dangerous duty of revelation.
“You were expecting to find the empress here?” Alexander queried blandly. “You are in for a disappointment, then.”
There was a brief moment of stunned silence, and then, uproar. Stephen had to shout to make himself heard above the din. “How witless do you think we are? She must be here—unless she has learned to fly! Now where is she? I’ll have the truth from you,” he warned, adding ominously, “one way or another!”
Rob gulped, saying nothing, but thinking all the while of the garrison hanged at Shrewsbury Castle. Alexander was not as easily intimidated; he even smiled. “I do not expect you to take my word for it. See for yourselves.”
Several of the men seemed ready to fling themselves at Alexander de Bohun and Rob, threatening to beat the truth out of them if need be, and Rob took an involuntary backward step. But Stephen stopped them with a peremptory gesture, “Search the castle,” he commanded. “Take it apart stone by stone if you must, but find her!”
They took Stephen at his word, all but tore the castle apart. Rob and Alexander de Bohun and the rest of Maude’s men were herded into the great hall under guard. Those who showed too much pleasure in the frantic search were soon nursing bruises and split lips, and Rob warned them hoarsely that prudence was the order of the day. Sidling up to Alexander, he asked softly if they ought not to remind
Stephen of his promise to free the garrison. But Alexander shook his head. “No, just stay quiet till their fury burns out. Only once has Stephen sent men to their deaths in a rage, and it is said he later regretted it. I do not doubt Ypres or the bishop would hang the lot of us before breakfast without blinking an eye, but Stephen will not let them take out their anger on us—if we are half as lucky as the empress!” It was sound advice and Rob took it. For the remainder of the search, he and his men kept as low a profile as they could.
“The bitch is gone,” the Earl of Northampton reported, sounding as if he could not believe his own words. “We’ve looked in every corner and cranny of this accursed place. If she is still here, she is in one of those fresh graves out in the bailey, for we’ve not missed so much as a mousehole.”
Stephen turned away without answering. His brother was beside him now, ranting in his ear again. Listening to Henry was like pouring salt into an open wound. Swinging about, he headed for the stairwell, taking the stairs two at a time up to the chamber he’d been told was Maude’s. His spurs struck sparks against the stone steps, and his heart thudded in rhythm to the dirge echoing in his brain. Gone. She is gone. But how? Christ on the Cross, how?
Maude’s chamber had been demolished, bedding slashed, coffers spilled open, her clothes strewn about, ripped into rags. William de Ypres had backed a heavyset woman against the wall, pinning her by her wrists. Her hair had been shaken loose, falling over her face in salt-and-pepper dishevelment, and there was blood welling in the corner of her mouth. But she showed no fear, and that seemed to goad the Fleming all the more.
“Where is she, old woman? You’d best tell me now, whilst you still have a tongue to talk!”
“I do not know! And if I did, I’d never tell you!” she spat, before calling Ypres a name that sounded German to Stephen, and clearly no compliment.
“Let her go, William,” he said angrily, and Ypres spun around to protest, but saw something in Stephen’s face that silenced him. Moving to an overturned coffer, he picked up a woman’s chemise, tore it in half, and flung the pieces contemptuously at Minna’s feet.
Minna expelled an audible breath as Ypres stalked out, watching Stephen warily as he moved about the chamber. “I know who you are,” he said. “You have been with Maude for a long time. It surprises me that she could leave you behind like this. Had she no fear for your safety?”
“She knew you’d not harm a woman,” Minna said calmly, retrieving the torn chemise and using it to daub at her bleeding mouth.
“Did she, indeed? I find it passing strange,” Stephen said, with sudden bitterness, “that my enemies value my virtues more than my friends do.”
Minna continued to watch him closely, rubbing her chafed wrists now that Ypres was not there to see. “I was not lying,” she insisted. “I do not know where my lady is.”
“I do,” Stephen said, “Wallingford. Where else could she go? But I need to know how she did it. You owe me that much.”
He did not truly expect her to answer him, but she did, saying readily, “She had us lower her from St George’s Tower, down onto the ice outside the walls.”
“And then what? She just walked past my army?” Stephen asked incredulously, and she nodded proudly. “I see…so you are telling me she escaped from a besieged castle in the midst of a snowstorm. I suppose I should say that if she could endure such an ordeal, take such a mad risk, then she deserved to get away. But I will not. I cannot,” he said, his voice cracking with rage, and another emotion, one more raw and revealing than anger.
Minna was folding the bloodied and shredded chemise neatly, as if it were still a whole garment and not a fragment beyond salvaging. “Even if you had captured my lady,” she said, “you would not have won your war.”
He turned to look at her, and she continued quietly. “You’d only have gained yourself some time. The empress is fighting for her son, and even if you were to confine her in the Tower until she died, men would still see young Henry as the rightful heir.”
“That may well be,” he said at last. “But Maude had best understand this, that I am fighting for my son, too.”
AT Wallingford, Maude was still enjoying her newfound celebrity status. The garrison could not do enough for her, and on the few occasions when she’d ventured beyond the castle walls, the townspeople flocked around her, the way Londoners had once trailed after her mother, “Good Queen Maude,” on her visits to the city’s lepers and Christ’s poor. Maude was no saint, nor did she want to be one. But she’d been popular with her German subjects, and it had stung her pride when the English acknowledged her so grudgingly, with suspicion and scorn instead of approval. So there was a healing balm in this belated acceptance, even though she knew that nothing had truly changed. Men might praise her courage, admire her intrepid escape, but they were still not willing to obey her.
The sun was blinding on the snow, so bright that it hurt Maude’s eyes. Some of the younger men were having an exuberant snowball fight, but they waved and held their fire until she’d safely passed by. As soon as she entered the hall, a young page offered to fetch her an almond milk custard from the kitchen, and when she declined, he confided that the cooks were planning a special Christmas Eve subtlety in her honour: they were baking a cake shaped like Oxford Castle, surrounded by sugared snow. Up in her bedchamber, Maude found she’d been given extra pillows, and yet another gown was spread out on the bed, a soft wool in a flattering shade of green. As Maude was too tall to borrow any clothes from Brien’s wife, he had engaged some of the townswomen on her behalf, and to judge by the way her wardrobe was expanding, they must be sewing day and night. Maude had never been treated so well as she had during her stay at Wallingford, and she wanted nothing so much as to get as far away as she could.
Ranulf was in the solar, decorating it with mistletoe and evergreen boughs. Smiling at sight of his sister, he said “Catch!” and tossed Maude a wafer. It was hot from the oven and filled with honey, the aptly named angel’s bread. “If Robert does not get here soon,” Ranulf confessed, “I’ll not find a horse big enough to bear my weight. I’ve not been able to stop eating, spend more time in the kitchen than the cooks!” He was pleased when she laughed, for he knew she was not as cheerful as she would have others believe. He suspected that her victory had left a sour aftertaste in her mouth, and he thought he knew why. But Maude would never admit it, mayhap not even to herself.
“I saw Sampson in the stables this morning, Maude. Flying higher than any hawk, is that lad. He says he’s coming with us back to Devizes, sounding like a man offered a post guarding Heaven’s Gate!”
“Actually, he approached me first, said he had a yearning to see more of the world than Wallingford. I was going to take him with us, anyway, though, for I do not care to think what might have befallen us without him.”
Sitting down, she helped herself to another wafer. “Ranulf, I’ve been thinking about the ransoms. We might as well send word to Stephen now, find out what we must pay to free Rob and Alexander and Minna and the others. I know Brien wants to wait till Robert arrives, but surely Stephen knows by now where I am.”
Ranulf sat down across from her; so simple an act as sitting in a chair was a pleasure after all those weeks of feeding their furniture into the fire. “You are not worried about your safety here, Maude? There is no need, you know. Robert was already gathering an army to march to your rescue when he got Brien’s message about your escape, and so he should reach us any day now. And you may be sure that Stephen knows he is on his way. But even if Stephen were foolish enough—or furious enough—to assault Wallingford this very morn, he’d have no chance of taking it ere Robert arrives. If the worst happened and he somehow captured the town as he did Oxford, he’d never be able to take the castle. And Brien has his larders well stocked. I’d wager we could hold out at Wallingford till spring and beyond if need be!”
He’d meant to reassure her, but the look on her face was one of dismay. It was painfully obvious that she found th
e prospects of a Wallingford siege even more daunting than the dangers she’d braved in escaping from Oxford. She would, he suspected, flee barefoot out into the snow rather than be trapped here with Brien and his wife, and he understood why; thinking of Annora, he understood all too well.
The door burst open and Hugh reeled into the room. “Riders approach,” he panted, “under a flag of truce!”
Maude and Ranulf both flew to the window, fumbling with the shutters. For all his bold talk, Ranulf felt a chill that was not caused by the sudden infusion of cold air. Was Stephen making a demand that Brien give Maude up? He leaned out the window, so recklessly that Maude and Hugh grabbed for his belt to anchor him. “I can see them now,” he reported. “They are Stephen’s men, for certes. Either a messenger or an escort—Holy Mother!”
He was blocking Maude and Hugh’s view, and they could only wait impatiently until he withdrew safely back into the solar. As soon as he turned, they knew his news was good. “It is Minna! Stephen has sent her back to you, Maude!” His grin widened. “And damn me if else, but he threw in my dyrehunds, too!”
MAUDE was sitting beside the hearth in her bedchamber while Minna brushed out her long, dark hair. It had been quiet for a while, a comfortable quiet; they were finally talked out. Moving to the table, Minna poured wine for them both, then went back to brushing Maude’s hair.
Maude sipped the wine without enthusiasm; it was a malmsey, too sweet for her taste. “Did you ask for Ranulf’s dogs?”
Minna shook her head regretfully. “In truth, I never thought of them,” she admitted. “No, that was Stephen’s doing.”
Maude set her wine cup down, turning so she could look into Minna’s face. “Did he take it hard…my escape?”
“Yes,” Minna said, and Maude smiled.
Another silence settled over the chamber. Minna had begun to hum under her breath, a German song from her youth, and it was like a cat’s purring, proof of Minna’s contentment. “What a Christmas this will be, madame. It would be well-nigh perfect if only Lord Robert were here. Do you know what sort of festivities are planned? I asked that woman, but she was not very forthcoming.”
When Christ and His Saints Slept Page 55