Winter Siege (22 page)

In the distance the enemy lines moved in a cumbersome but inexorable advance towards the castle. In the time it had taken Father Nimbus to grant his blessing, they had gained considerable ground and crossed the river.

The pike men came first; their deadly phalanx of ash poles crowned with vicious metal spikes glistened wickedly in the sun as it closed around the castle ditch like a malignant forest. Behind them droves of men hauled vast siege engines on rollers: the mangonels and trebuchets with which to bring the walls down; while ox-drawn carts carried huge stone boulders and tree trunks shod in iron. Even from a distance, their exertion was visible in the puffs of breath etched in the cold air. Following behind the archers, anonymous rows of men in coifs and hauberks marched swiftly across the demesne, picking their way past the vicious spikes of the caltrops which had been thrown down on Sir Rollo’s orders to delay them.

Sir Rollo himself stood in the bailey alongside his knights while Alan of Ghent patrolled the ramparts. When he reached Penda’s position he stopped and rested a hand on her shoulder: ‘Shoot as well today as you did the other day, Master Penda, and we’ll have no need to disturb those idle buggers down there.’ He gestured below towards Sir Rollo and his knights. Penda laughed. She looked up at him, grateful for his encouragement, and saw that the weary, gaunt face of an hour or so ago had been transformed by the prospect of a fight. She’d noticed the same change in Gwil too, who, despite his ill temper this morning, was suddenly imbued with a vibrancy and excitement she’d never witnessed before.

‘Remember now,’ Gwil said, popping his head around the merlon to grin at her when Alan had gone, ‘any bugger so much as looks at that wall old-fashioned gets an arrow in the chest. Hear me?’

She nodded.

‘And don’t look ’em in the eyes neither. Don’t see ’em as people; them there’s the Devil, Pen, and that’s all there is to it, right?’

She nodded again and realized that this feeling, whatever it was, apparently raging around the battlements had infected her too; and suddenly she could hardly wait for the fighting to begin. She snatched up her crossbow and was about to cock it against the ground when Gwil popped up behind her again.

‘Oh,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Forgot to mention it earlier but you might offer up the odd prayer to St Sebastian now and then too; he can be quite handy at times like these.’

She closed her eyes and put her hands together to do as she was told when she felt the sudden pressure of a hand on her arm. Gwil was scowling at her.

‘But don’t close your bloody eyes, you fool.’

THE FIRST FLURRY
of enemy arrows clattered on to the allure behind them and were met not with return fire but, to Penda’s astonishment, a barrage of jeers and insults. And even as the first boulder shuddered into the walls with such force that it shook her bones, the men closest to it merely leaned out through their embrasures in a show of mock outrage and dusted the damaged stone with their sleeves. The taunting and hectoring became louder and more raucous as aggression and fear combined to fuel the incendiary atmosphere among the men on the ramparts.

Penda’s pulse was racing, although not from fear. It was something else. For the first time since they had parted from the acrobats, she felt a sense of belonging. Shooting was undoubtedly what she did best, which meant that this was where she belonged, here among men, a bow in her hands and a sense of freedom in her heart. Life or death? Kill or be killed? They were the only questions she knew the answers to for certain and she was liberated by their simplicity. This was her destiny, the role Gwil had prepared her for. Only the dull ache in her belly, which persisted like a nagging wife, dissented.

Down in the bailey the atmosphere was less excitable but no less charged; the serious business of feeding and equipping a castle under siege was under way and Maud was once again marvelling at its efficiency.

She too was enjoying a sense of freedom. Sir Christopher had dispatched the Empress to the safety of the keep with Tola for company and, with her out of the way, she was able to breathe again and, best of all, resume control of her own castle.

She was standing next to Milburga, overseeing the transfer of great slabs of salted meat from the barrels in the storeroom to the kitchens. The sacking of the village meant the castle’s numbers had swollen by almost one hundred men, women and children, increasing the number of hungry mouths they would have to feed. Gorbag the chef, temperamental at the best of times, was not best pleased and she had spent a good deal of the morning trying to placate him.

It had been the same with Sir Rollo who, once again, as the desperate villagers appeared at the gates, clamouring to be let in, was reluctant to admit them until Maud appeared to chide him and remind him that they were
her
responsibility and that
not one
should be turned away.

‘Think of the cost, my lady! The useless mouths!’ he implored, wringing his hands. ‘Think of the drain on our resources!’ But his words, just as last time, had fallen on deaf ears and were met with a look he knew only too well.

‘Just open those bloody gates,’ she had said, stamping her foot, ‘and let the buggers in.’

They came in droves, the village’s dispossessed, hungry, cold and frightened, to stand in tatty, confused huddles in the bailey. But if Maud was merciful, sentimental she was not.

‘Get them doing something!’ she hissed at Milburga. ‘Good-for-nothing bunch of do-littles making the place look untidy: get them working.’ Thus Milburga and Father Nimbus were dispatched to organize them and put them to good use.

The enemy was now firmly entrenched on the counterscarp, shielded behind large wooden pavises arranged along its edge.

‘They’re going to try and fill the ditch, Pen. Get to the wall,’ Gwil warned. ‘See them fascines?’ he said, pointing to the large bundles of wood stacked beside the pike men and slingers. ‘They’ll chuck those in and keep chucking ’em until they’re dense enough to walk across and then they’ll bring the ladders in. So if you see so much as
one
of them buggers put his hand to un, shoot.’

Which is precisely what she did, Gwil’s instructions echoing in her head at all times, ‘Load … Aim … Don’t think … Loose,’ as the men below her fell like flies. She watched dispassionately as their expressions of eager intent turned suddenly to shock and outrage as each head whipped round to her arrow’s sting and acknowledged the impertinent barbs she buried in their flesh. She felt no pity either. Kill or be killed. It was the formula Gwil had taught her and its primitive power surged through her now. She wondered too at the efficiency and dispassion with which she could take a man’s life and the ensuing sense of power it gave her. She wondered if it was natural; whether everyone felt the same; whether or not she had been born with it.

They worked together: Gwil tied strings to his bolts which he would then fire at the enemy shields. As his quarrel pierced their centre he would pull sharply on the end of the string, lifting the shields and exposing the men behind them like ants under a rock and easy prey to the merciless volley of Penda’s arrows.

As the afternoon wore on, the unerring accuracy of her shooting began to draw attention from her fellow archers. News of her prowess spread along the battlements like wildfire and by the time the light began to fade the young red-headed lad with the fearsome aim was celebrated throughout the garrison.

‘And I thought death was supposed to be the only archer who never missed.’

The voice behind her was familiar and she turned to see Sir Christopher grinning at her.

‘I hear you got quite a tally today, Master Penda,’ he said, patting her heartily on the back. ‘Now come and eat.’

As she, Gwil and Sir Christopher descended the wooden steps from the allure to the bailey, she noticed Gwil limping slightly and rubbing his back.

‘Bowman’s back, Pen,’ he said, noting her concern. ‘Got to expect it at my age, but mind you look after yours.’

It was the first time in a long time that she had thought of him as old and it came as a shock.

When she had first clapped eyes on him in the ruined church what seemed almost a lifetime ago now, she had marked him as, if not old exactly, certainly elderly, but as time passed and she grew to know him, the years had slipped away. To her he was Gwil the invincible, the ageless protector and provider of all things on whom her survival had depended for as long as she could remember. But now, all of a sudden she saw him as if for the first time and was shocked by the flecks of grey in his hair, the slight stoop of his shoulders and the deep, weary lines on his skin.

‘You’re not to get old,’ she muttered under her breath. ‘I need you. You’re all I’ve got.’

Even in the twilight the outer bailey still hummed with people and activity; the air booming with the remedial hammering of the smiths and armourers at one end and the shrill commands of the scullions and cooks at the other. From inside the huddled reed-thatched houses, which covered the castle’s walls like moss, tallow candles and rushlights flickered over the injured and dying as they were ministered to.

When they arrived at the great hall the Empress once again summoned them to her table.

Her patronage was still a source of puzzlement to them both and they looked quizzically at one another and shrugged their shoulders; nonetheless, they were grateful for it, not least for the proximity it gave them to the fire and its welcome scent of blazing cherry logs.

They sat opposite her and were immediately ignored as she idly watched a chandler attending to the large candelabrum in the middle of the table. The flickering light illuminated the elegant lines and hollows of her impassive face and made them even more dramatic. She sure was beautiful, Penda thought, but colder than winter. All this fighting and sacrifice in her name and not a spark of emotion to show for it. She seemed impervious to almost everything: to war, to people, perhaps even to God Himself.

By contrast Maud, who was sitting beside her, was unusually fidgety. The Empress’s presence unnerved her in a way that nobody else could, throwing as it did the familiar hierarchy in which she functioned best into disarray. To Maud, Matilda represented trouble and danger, sieges and expense and a bloody great managerial headache and yet there was something about the woman which made everyone in her presence want to please her. The fact that Maud herself was not immune was almost more irritating than anything. Why, even Gorbag – the most recalcitrant of cooks, indeed of men – had put himself out quite obsequiously for their royal guest. She had watched in fascinated horror as a great pageant of servants was dispatched bearing plates of suckling pig seethed in honey, quail and pheasant stuffed with last year’s almonds and apple,
and
his very own speciality of meat tile, all of which, he insisted, was to be washed down with large jugs of wine spiced with ginger and honey. It was largesse on an unnecessarily grand scale and if it continued, she thought bitterly, they would run out of food within days. She would have to have words.

She sighed, gazing mournfully down the table at all the mouths she was going to have to feed for the foreseeable future, and then, with another twinge of irritation, spotted Penda and Gwil. She couldn’t put her finger on it but there was something about those two, something peculiar, especially that sharp-eyed red-headed boy, to whom she had taken an instant dislike.

‘What are
they
doing here?’ she hissed, digging poor Sir Rollo in the ribs.

‘Who?’ he replied, looking up reluctantly from the trencher he had been loading with as much food as it could hold.

‘That red-headed tatterdemalion and the mercenary. Oh, you
know
,’ she added irascibly. ‘The ones who arrived with the Empress yesterday.’

‘No idea,’ said Sir Rollo blithely, ‘but
she
seems to like them.’

‘Well, I don’t,’ said Maud.

Gwil, oblivious to the hostility directed at him by his host, was deep in conversation with Alan of Ghent who, Penda noticed, had been remarkably solicitous of him since their arrival at Kenniford.

‘How long do you reckon?’ she heard Alan ask.

Gwil shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ he said, taking another large swig of the malmsey he had fallen on with alacrity, announcing to the table as he did so that it was the only known cure for a bad back. ‘Depends on resources and the water supply. Who knows? We held ’em off all right today but who’s to say what’ll happen if they build that belfry of theirs and get it to the wall? There’s a lot of ’em out there.’

‘Two to one?’

‘Reckon that at least, and they ain’t going to be short of reinforcements when they’re gone neither.’

Alan leaned closer and lowered his voice. ‘My plan is to get the Empress to Bristol at the first opportunity. And as soon as I receive word from the Earl of Gloucester that he’s ready to receive her we’ll leave. Then, God willing, the King will call off the siege and follow us west and you lot can all go home.’

Gwil smiled. ‘Be a shame that, though,’ he said. ‘Now that we’re so comfortable here an’ all and so looking forward to the hangman’s rope.’

Alan laughed as he patted his companion’s shoulder. ‘Whatever happens we’re in your debt, Gwilherm de Vannes, you and your boy there. And although she might not show it, the Empress is truly grateful.’

The bond between them was palpable, and might have been touching, Penda thought, if it hadn’t also been quite so boring. Most of the time, or so it seemed to her, they made no sense at all, speaking in an unfathomable shorthand as impenetrable as a foreign language. To make matters worse, towards the end of what already seemed like an exceedingly long evening, as their tongues loosened and their speech became slurred by the malmsey, they began exchanging anecdotes about their various campaigns and crusades, battles and sieges, at which point Penda thought she was going to die. Quite apart from the tedium, her belly was hurting again and she was so desperately tired that she could have cried and yet there was no respite. Every time she closed her eyes they were joined by yet more men, each one more drunk and garrulous than the last.