THE EARL (A HAMMER FOR PRINCES) (31 page)

“Rannulf,” Fulk said. “Go ride with Thierry, will you?”

“What? Why?”

“I want to see what happens.”

Rannulf lingered a moment, thinking, and shrugged and galloped off across the strip of ground that separated the two parties. Long-legged and now growing into his bones, he rode well, and the bay horse he had bought from Fulk suited him well. Fulk dropped back a little so that he could see.

Rannulf reached the other side, and the younger men, trailing Pembroke and Chester, drew aside, uncertain, but when they saw Thierry call and wave to Rannulf they crowded up near him and shouted to him.

Fulk laughed. His uneasiness increased, and he made himself laugh until he heard the hollow sound and stopped. Sober-faced, Roger was studying him. Fulk spurred his horse and galloped up toward Leicester. The prince was still ignoring them all on this side.

“You see,” Leicester said. “It’s too late. I told you.”

“I don’t know.”

The prince was acknowledging the cheers of the people on the walls. He drew rein, and the barons fought for space around him. Fulk and Leicester managed to get close to the prince, on his left, but Chester’s followers massed themselves around Henry, almost encircling him. Hugh was with Pembroke; he looked at Fulk as if he didn’t see him, and Fulk could see no sign of strain on his face.

Henry spoke to Chester, gesturing toward the walls, and Chester nodded and laughed and all his men laughed and nodded although few could have heard what the prince had said. Henry’s eyes flickered toward Fulk and Leicester and Derby, but he said nothing—Thierry was speaking to him, leaning forward, smooth and genial.

“Whatever happened to the black-haired girl?” Fulk said.

Leicester shrugged. “He left her in Wallingford.”

Fulk put his foot up against the pommel of his saddle and buckled his shoe again, simply to look unconcerned. He heard the prince say, “Something must be done to supply us while we’re here,” and his back stiffened.

“My lord,” Chester said, “let me do it.”

“Very well, my lord.”

Leicester glared at Fulk. “Speak, will you.”

Fulk shook his head. “Let Pembroke.”

“My lord,” Pembroke said sourly. “Stafford has already bought certain herds. I thought it was by your order or I would not have—”

“My lord Stafford,” the prince said, and turned his horse so that he faced Fulk. “How reliable you are.”

Fulk said nothing; before the silence could tell, the prince booted his horse forward, and they started off again across the tangled grass, past the walls of the city.

After a moment, Leicester said, “You may be right.”

“You see what he does.”

Leicester nodded. His face was clear, and he looked around him intently. “The weight is with us, I think.”

Fulk hunched his shoulder. The Earl of Hereford had not come up from Wallingford yet, and the Earl of Wiltshire would meet them here sometime in the next few days. Hereford was a Clare and would go with Pembroke and Wiltshire would probably follow. The uneasiness swept back across Fulk’s mind, and he struggled to hold it down. With everybody hanging on each sign of the prince’s favor, the trick was to seem not to care.

“We need Pembroke,” he said.

“Well, we shan’t have him.”

The prince held in his hands the power to grant or take away each man’s claim to office, to lands and legacies, and the truce bound his barons as well as him, so there was no running to King Stephen in revenge. Wallingford had changed more than they had thought. He watched Rannulf riding in the midst of Chester’s following, beside Thierry.

They rode back toward the prince’s camp, behind Leicester’s at the east gate; just outside it, the prince drew rein, and they gathered around him. Henry turned to put his back to the sun. With its light on his brilliant hair, with his scarlet cloak thrown back over his shoulders, and his gray horse gathered like a knot, he made them all quiet with a look. He waved toward Stamford.

“Here we shall prove the right of our cause,” he said. “God be with us here.”

He crossed himself, and everyone else did also, right arms moving in unison.

“This shall be the order of command. My lord the Earl of Pembroke commands by the river, against the castle gate, and my lord Chester shall hold the camp opposite the west gate."

Chester and Pembroke were smiling. The Prince went on, “My lord the Earl of Stafford shall command opposite the north gate, where his camp now is, and my lords Leicester and Derby command the east gate. I myself will order you all, by your advice."

Two by two, Fulk thought. As they boarded the Ark.

“My lord Stafford has already begun to supply us with food. Sir Thierry will be in charge of guarding the roads so that the supplies reach us."

“My lord,” Fulk said, and nudged his horse forward. “The roads can best be guarded by the castles that supply us—I can give them knights to help, if they need it.”

Chester and Thierry cried out together; Thierry shut his mouth, and Chester said, “My lord, Stafford already has duties that strain even his great ability—let Thierry take some of the weight.”

“No one can do everything at once, Fulk,” the prince said mildly. “You must see the wisdom in what Chester says.”

“If I did it with only half a mind to it, I’d still guard the roads better than Thierry—he has already proven he cannot command.”

Leicester swore under his breath. Black in the face, Thierry cried out, “That is a base slander.”

“Are you challenging me?” Fulk shouted. “Shall we decide it by combat, uncle?”

“Quiet,” the prince said. For an instant, his face was tight, but immediately it softened into a smile. “I forgot—you’ll forgive me for opening up old wounds, my lords. Rolf de Tosny will guard the roads.”

In Chester’s following, young Tosny raised his head and threw out his chest like a rooster, beaming.

“As you will, my lord,” Fulk said, and bowed.

Henry bowed to him. “I will.” His eyes gleamed; he started at Fulk a moment longer than necessary.

Chester and Thierry were talking, low-voiced, and Pembroke turned away from them with a shrug. “So long as he is ours,” he said, loudly.

“I need a herald,” the prince said, “a man of high rank, to carry messages to the lords of Stamford.” He looked them over calmly. “Rannulf of Ledgefield, whose side are you on?”

Rannulf had been looking down at his hands. He lifted his head toward the prince, his eyes wide. “Yours, my lord.”

Henry put his head back and laughed, and Chester and Pembroke burst out laughing. The laughter spread throughout their followers, but Fulk and Leicester stayed quiet, and their men did not laugh.

“Then,” Henry said, “you shall be my herald. Come with me, Rannulf. The rest of you have my leave to go.”

He turned his horse and galloped off toward his camp. Rannulf worked his way free of the crowd and rode after him, and in two bands the barons started away, glaring back and forth at each other across the widening strip of grass between them.

Rannulf took messages to the aldermen of Stamford, promising them that the prince would confirm their charters and the charters of the weavers’ guild, and when the sun rose the next day all the garrison had withdrawn from the walls of the town into the castle and the gates of the city stood open to the prince’s army.

Henry published an order forbidding pillaging, but all during the day men from the armies outside the walls sneaked into the town and robbed, and in the night the glow of a dozen fires lit up the streets. Fulk with forty of his knights and Chester with fifty of his rode in to stop the plundering. Fulk sent Roger and ten men to chase the looters out of the area around the north gate and went down into Stamford’s Jewry, where three separate fires were blazing.

Cinders and burning embers floated through the air, and the whole town smelled of fire. Most of the Jews were out wetting down the thatched roofs of their houses and shops; men carrying buckets of river water marched up and down the streets. Here and there, a rich man’s house thrust its wooden roof up above the oat straw of the other houses, but these burned too; everyone suffered.

Fulk led his men into an alleyway toward a burning building. Water streamed off the roofs on either side of them and dripped down on their heads and backs. A man popped out of a garden ahead of them and ran off down the alley, shouting that more pillagers were coming. Whenever they passed a house, dogs barked and charged along behind the fence and the shutters were quickly drawn.

“Down there,” someone called, behind Fulk, and he looked down the street they were crossing and saw flames leaping from a house halfway along it. He swung into the street and put his horse into a lope. Black shapes dashed back and forth from the burning house to the street, carrying furniture and bundles of clothes and goods. They saw Fulk coming, dropped what they carried, and sprinted away on foot. Fulk stopped his horse in front of the house—the heat of the flames washed over him.

“It’s gone,” he said. The house was wrapped entirely in the fire; he could see rooms in it, furniture in it, as if the flames were the walls. “You three, gather up this—” he gestured toward the loot—”and impound it in the marketplace until we can find out who owns it. Alan, find us a wagon. Let’s go, the rest of you.”

He started down the street after the looters, who were disappearing into an alley halfway to the crossroads. In the firelight, he caught a glimpse of a family huddled against a wall opposite the burning house—he saw their face, the streaming eyes of the children.

They chased the looters down the alley almost to the bank of the river, and there, they scattered, some running into other streets, and some trying to climb into the gardens around them. Fulk shouted to his men to chase them. He led three knights at a fast trot down the street to a gate into a garden where he had seen men scaling the wall, knocked hard on the gate, and told his men to break it down. In the house beyond, a woman screamed. Light appeared behind the shutters.

Fulk rode into the garden, clustered with fruit trees; it was too small to hide the looters, and they burst from their cover and tried to flee. From a window over Fulk’s head, a man in a nightcap with a candle in his hand was shouting to them all to get out. Fulk ran one looter into the wall and chased him up and down it, reining his horse hard to follow the man’s dodging and leaping. The looter jumped to catch the top of the wall and started to pull himself up, and Fulk rode in, slipped his arm around the man’s waist, and dragged him across his saddlebows, face down.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” the man in the window shouted; he waved his candle, and it went out, and he threw it at Fulk. Ducking back inside, he vanished. Fulk rode to the gate, where two of his men were tying up prisoners, and dumped the looter to the ground.

“Watch out!”

The man in the window had returned, with a full chamberpot, and he upended it on the heads of a knight and two looters. The knight dodged; Fulk saw the stuff splash on his shoulder, and the looter howled and clawed at his eyes. The man in the window shouted Jewish curses at them. Bending down, the knight took the looter by the hair and dragged him screaming toward the gate.

“Tie them, take them to the marketplace, and guard them. You and you.” He led the remaining knight through the broken gate and loped down toward the river. All along the wall of the castle, to their right, torches flared, and men shouted and shot random arrows. Three houses in a row were burning; the unquiet water of the river glistened with the light. A crowd stood in the street in front of them, clutching each other and whimpering. Fulk rode up between them and the fires.

“Listen to me. These are my orders to you. Go to the marketplace and wait and we will find you someplace to stay tonight. Hurry, if you stay in the street you’ll be taken for looters. If anyone questions you, tell them you’re under the protection of the Earl of Stafford.”

A baby was whimpering, and the smaller children let out a howl at the sound of his voice, but the men grouped their families together and drove them down the street. Four more of Fulk’s knights rode toward him through the crowd. A couple of the townsmen shook their fists at Fulk and cursed the knights. In the smoky, ruddy light, Fulk rode along the river street, away from the castle; there were people wandering about, and he sent two of his men to take them, if they were looting, or send them back home if they were just seeing the sights. The smoke hurt his lungs, and he kept his horse to a quick trot to get away from the fires. They turned up another street and chased half a dozen looters along it, through the dark, catching them one by one.

At the corner, eight of his knights joined him, and they turned into a street packed with Chester’s men. Fulk glanced behind him. He had only a dozen men with him; the rest had gone with prisoners and booty to the marketplace. He reined in, looking for a street away from Chester.

“Stafford,” a harsh voice called, and he turned forward again. Chester galloped heavily out of the tangle of his men.

“This is my quarter.”

“I was unaware we had divided the city,” Fulk said. “How have you done?’

“Never mind that—get out of my quarter.” Chester stopped beside him, their horses head to tail; his face was greasy with sweat.