Winter Siege (16 page)

They must leave that as an offering to the god of the hunt and whichever of his creatures would feed off it.

He noticed that his opinion was asked for and listened to, a respect won for him by his archery. In return, he admired the man who’d stepped in front of Penda. A brave act, that one; and the way he gralloched the calf had been neatly done.

A considerable fellow, this. How old? In his thirties? Alan, eh? Alan of where? Both his English and his French, though fluent, were touched with a Germanic accent, which meant he could be German proper, a Frieslander, Hollander, Fleming or even from Lorraine; Gwil wasn’t expert enough to differentiate, but a suspicion was beginning to form that scared him.

Above them, the rooks continued to make a racket. ‘Oh, shut up,’ Penda shouted at them, which made Alan laugh.

With the deer lightened of its stomach, the two men took a hind leg each to begin the long haul home. At least, it was a home to them now; they were bonded by success; what they dragged was not just food for those left behind, it was a trophy.

As if to reward them, the sky had cleared, allowing the sun to turn the world into crystal. Penda began singing; not exactly a pleasant sound but it delighted Gwil because it was the first time he had ever heard her do it.

‘We been on a deer hunt, a deer hunt, a deer hunt,
We killed off the Frekies, the Frekies, the Frekies …’

Alan grinned at Gwil. ‘He knows the Scalds, does he?’

‘Scalds?’

‘Freki was Odin’s wolf.’

He hadn’t known, though he’d heard that fenlanders had Norse ancestors. In the first joy she’d known for a long time, Penda had reverted without thinking to the paganism of her forebears. A right little Viking, then; well, it accounted for her toughness, he supposed, and he was proud of her. Maybe the shutter was letting good memories filter in.

With a shock, he realized that if she remembered who she was, he’d lose her; she’d go back to her real parents and leave him in a loneliness he hadn’t known since his son died. He found himself swearing. Bugger it, he’d got used to her.

The day was drawing in by the time they came in sight of their hut. The light of the fire inside glowing through the hole in its roof and the cracks in its walls gave it the appearance of a giant lantern set down in the snow to guide passers-by.

‘Shit,’ Alan said. ‘It can be seen from the river.’

‘Who’s chasing you?’ Gwil asked.

Alan glanced at him. ‘Bad men,’ he said.

Gwil shrugged. ‘No help for it, though.’

‘No.’ Their two options – to put out the fire, or to set off into the freezing night – were no options at all; they wouldn’t survive either.

On the other hand … ‘These “bad men” of yours,’ Gwil said, ‘they ain’t likely to find you tonight, not after dark. They won’t be travelling by night, not in this weather.’

‘We found
you
after dark.’

‘You was desperate.’

‘So are they. Jesus, they might have got to her already. Stay here.’ He dropped the leg he was pulling so fast that the calf’s body skewed to one side. Gwil and Penda watched him go towards the hut, the snow forcing him to lollop, like a man trying to hurry through thigh-high water. He drew his sword as he went.

‘It’s her they’re after, then,’ Penda said. ‘Who
is
she?’

Gwil turned to look at her and saw the same amazing thought come into her mind as had been in his.

‘Can’t be,’ she said, ‘
can’t be
. Can it? She’s sieged in Oxford.’

‘Oxford’s north,’ Gwil said. ‘They came from the north.’

‘Sieged, though. A bloody great army round her. How’d she ever get out?’

‘They wore white. Remember? They had sheets over ’em.
Satin
sheets.’

‘Gor, bugger.’

They were both silent as images – very similar images – transfixed them. They saw three ghosts, unseen by the patrols, gliding through the surrounding enemy lines.

‘
Gor, bugger
,’ Pen said again. A grin of exquisite astonishment crossed her face as she remembered the incident in the night. ‘An’ she has to go out into the snow and piss like anybody else.’ She clutched at him. ‘An empress, Gwil. We got an empress in our bloody hut.’

‘We got a bloody danger in it. If Stephen’s found out she’s escaped on foot, he’s sent soldiers after her. That’s what’s gnawing Alan.’

They saw the man emerge from the hut and wave to them. All well.

Penda took the deer’s other hind leg and began pulling. ‘I like him. He was nifty with that wolf – not that I wouldn’t have got another shot in afore it got me. We sort of owe him.’

‘
No we don’t.
’ Gwil was emphatic. ‘We ain’t getting involved with their wars. Anyways, they owe us.’

‘An’ that Christopher’s nice. Soft, but nice. Polite.’

‘We ain’t getting involved, Pen. Tomorrow they go their way an’ we go ours.’

The rest of the dragging was done without conversation, though Gwil could hear Pen whispering ‘an
empress
’ under her breath.

She bolted into the hut the moment they arrived, leaving Alan and Gwil to butcher the calf, a process that, for efficiency, required it to be hung up. Christopher came out to look and admire.

‘Got any string?’ Gwil wanted to know.

Alan was apologetic. ‘Sorry.’

Huffing with annoyance, Gwil went inside to fetch some from his pack.
Didn’t even think to bring any bloody string with ’em
. He knew he was being unreasonable; if these people were who he thought they were, and made the night escape from Oxford he thought they had, string hadn’t featured high on their list of requirements. But he was both overawed and frightened by them. They were high politics, the highest, in a trouble as extreme as troubles got.
Me and Pen, we’ve enough of our own.

He wouldn’t look at the woman as he snatched up his pack and went back outside with it, but he was aware of Pen sitting opposite her, hands clasped, staring with voracious, eye-popping interest.

He tied the front hooves of the carcass together. Christopher helped him hook it to a branch of the nearest tree. They took the heart out to be roasted for ‘Mistress Margaret’ – it would give her some of the deer’s strength – and cut off both haunches to be cooked for the rest of them.

Christopher looked sadly at what remained. ‘If we leave it hanging out here, it’ll be gone in the morning.’

‘No room for it inside,’ Gwil said shortly. Anyway, venison went bad quickly when exposed to high heat.

They worked quickly in the extreme cold under a sky winking with stars and a rising moon that gave them long shadows.

A tripod for the cooking was the difficulty; branches of the trees were desiccated by frost and would burn faster than the food. In the end, Alan, with much reluctance, speared the meats on his sword blade and they took turns revolving it over the fire.

Christopher was suitably floundered by the story of the hunt. ‘Bolt right between the eyes, and that while the beast was moving. I call it handsome.’ He turned to Penda: ‘And you, Master Peter, composure under attack in one so young – handsome, very handsome. God’s blessings on you.’

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.