Winter Siege (26 page)

STEPHEN
’
S ARMY SPAWNED
itself daily. Penda had heard about monsters who could do that. Row upon row of anonymous men in hauberks and helmets surrounded the castle. When one fell another took his place.

So great was its number that, despite the best efforts of the Kenniford archers, within days the King’s men had filled the ditch and dragged their siege engines through the hailstorm of arrows to the very foot of the castle walls, littering the scarp with their bodies but advancing nevertheless.

Their picks, rams and bores, brutal structures hewn from vast pieces of wood, were rammed against the castle by teams of men, shaking it so violently that the battery reverberated through the bodies of every man, woman and child inside.

With each blow a great cloud of choking dust rose up to the archers on the battlements as the ashlar slabs fell from the castle walls exposing the soft underbelly of the flint beneath.

On the allure Penda felt each shock judder through her bones, rattling her heart in her chest. There was no doubt about it; unless something miraculous happened, and soon, the walls would be breached and the King’s men would invade.

And it was this that terrified her more than anything; a swift arrow through the temple from a distant archer would, by comparison, be a merciful death and she was prepared for that, could face it with equanimity even, but the idea of invasion brought unimaginable horror and her nightmares were plagued by it.

Gwil had heard her lately, crying in her sleep, calling out to him, begging him to protect her from some invisible assailant, and every time she did so he was dragged back to his lonely vigil in the ruined church and was once more powerless to help her.

‘It’s all right, Pen. It’s all right,’ he murmured softly through those nights until the crisis passed and she fell asleep again, but each one was a reminder that the sleeping monster of her memory was stirring and that danger crept ever closer.

‘And what then, Lord? Eh? How can I protect her from herself?’

That’s a tricky one, Gwil, That’s the question. Even I can’t help you there, I’m afraid.

And Gwil shook his fist at the heavens and wondered what on earth he had ever done to deserve such torment.

She had been fine when the siege began. Oh, he had worried about her, watched her like a hawk from the moment she set foot on the ramparts, fretting about how she might react to it all; whether the violence of battle would stir her memory. But to his relief she took to it like a duck to water and, secretly, he had been proud – though he refused to show it of course – of the pluck she had shown and the confidence with which she fought.

‘Enjoying this, ain’t you, Pen?’ he asked one day.

‘Not half,’ she replied, grinning. ‘It’s like there’s this fire in my belly, gets lit the minute I got a bow in my hand, Gwil; makes me feel strong!’ The words tumbled out in a torrent; her eyes sparkled with excitement.

‘You just keep that ol’ feeling, Pen,’ he said. ‘Ain’t nothing wrong with that.’

She had too. To his great relief, the enthusiasm with which she scampered along the allure to her post every day as the weeks passed remained undimmed.

‘Think I done this before, Gwil?’ she asked him once.

‘Done what?’

‘You know! Fighting and such … This!’ she said, waving her bow at him.

‘Don’t talk daft. You was too little for a start. Ain’t never touched a bow afore I learned you.’

She stood there, staring thoughtfully at the weapon in her hand. Gwil watched her nervously, anticipating the inevitable scrutiny he knew must come … eventually. It was pure luck that it had been staved off this far but he knew that sooner or later something in that strange little head of hers would snap and she would demand to know exactly why it was that, alone of all her sex – or as far as he knew anyway – she needed to fight.

She stared at him for a while, frowning, and then suddenly her face brightened. ‘Ah but!’ she said, wagging her finger at him triumphantly as another thought occurred to her. ‘
You
said as how I was in a really bad way when you found me. How d’you know I hadn’t been in some sort of fight or something then?’

Gwil shook his head.

He could tell her now; perhaps he should. Perhaps, after all, he owed her the truth; but what to tell? That as a child she had been so brutally raped and battered that something of the steel of the men who did it to her had entered her soul? That he might have prevented it? He looked at the bright little face gazing up at him and simply could not.

‘Like I said, Pen. You was too
little
.’ Then he lowered his voice and hissed: ‘And you was a
girl
, remember!
Girls
don’t fight. God only knows what happened or how you was hurt other than somehow you bumped your head so bad it made you forget even your own name.’

‘Mmm.’ She narrowed her eyes again, regarding him suspiciously. ‘Think I’ll ever remember?’

‘Don’t know.’ He shrugged as he turned his back on her and pretended to busy himself with the arrows at his feet.

God’s eyes! It wasn’t all that long ago, but it felt like an age and so much had changed since then. Christmas had passed, January, and as the weeks went by the mood among the garrison had become increasingly gloomy. However much he tried to shield her from it, it was hard to avoid the inevitable conversation about the fate awaiting defeated armies once their walls had been breached. None of it was good; the rule of thumb, as he knew only too well, was that the more enraged the King became – the more often his entreaties to surrender refused – the more members of the defending force, especially among the lowly ranks such as the archers, were hanged once defeated.

No one was in any doubt by now that Stephen had greater resources on his side and that his patience was running thin. His casualties had been heavy, his demands for surrender rebuffed and therefore revenge, rather than reconciliation and a safe passage out of the castle, was the most likely outcome for the majority of them.

‘I think we should leave here, Gwil,’ Penda said one day. ‘Ain’t our war, you said so, remember? We could just go.’ Her only loyalty was to him and she was increasingly worried for his safety. They could, she reasoned, return to the charcoal-burner’s hut where this whole sorry business began, take their chances with the snow and the wolves, only this time refuse sanctuary to any passing empress, no matter how nicely she asked. He listened patiently to her argument but shook his head.

‘And go where, Pen? Ain’t no such thing as a safe place these days.’ He was right and reluctantly she had to accept it. Beyond the siege the ravening forces of lawlessness and anarchy reigned far more efficiently than Stephen ever had. The whole country was devouring itself. God and His saints were asleep all right and nothing, it seemed, could induce them to wake up.

Unlike God and His saints, however, Sir Bernard had slept very badly of late. His meticulous accounting, of which he was inordinately proud, was on the verge of ruin.

‘I’m not happy,’ he told Maud one morning as she paced up and down behind him in the great hall. ‘I’m not happy at all.’

‘Never knew you when you were,’ she said, stopping to peer over his shoulder at the ledger in front of him. ‘But what do you suggest we do?’

‘You know my position, madam,’ he said as patiently as he could. ‘And you don’t like it but the fact is that, sooner or later, we must dispense with some of these useless mouths. There’s nothing else to be done, I’m afraid. If this siege carries on much longer, we simply cannot afford to keep them.’

‘And you know
my
position,’ she said curtly. ‘I will not turn innocent men, women and children out of this castle to be slaughtered or die of starvation. We’ll have to think of something else.’

Sir Bernard breathed a heavy sigh and put his head in his hands. He knew what was coming next.

‘How much did you say we were paying those mercenaries?’ she asked after a while.

‘Two pence per day per man, six pence per day for the officers and a shilling a day for their commander,’ he repeated wearily. They had had this conversation many times before. He could hear her making the calculations under her breath, totting up the number of men and officers until all of a sudden she stopped and threw up her arms jubilantly.

‘Well, there we are then!’ she said. ‘There must be a good deal fewer of them now, surely. We’ll just cut down on the others’ pay!’

Sir Bernard groaned, his head drooping into the crook of his elbow on the table – it had been so much easier dealing with her father.

‘How many times, madam,’ he said eventually, ‘must I remind you that a mercenary without pay is about as useful as a colt in battle? If we do not pay them they will not stay and they will not fight. We need them and you must accept this fact once and for all however much you may dislike it.’

‘Bugger!’ she said and sauntered off leaving Sir Bernard to his books.

Outside in the bailey, pushing her way through a mêlée of men, women, children, dogs and cattle who now crowded the place like a load of ambulatory detritus, she nearly stumbled over a decapitated horse’s head that had recently been catapulted over the walls by an enemy trebuchet. Looking around furiously, she grabbed hold of the nearest bystander and, startling him out of his wits, pointed at the object and shouted: ‘In God’s name make yourself useful and get rid of this, damn you! Don’t just stand there or it’ll be your head over the wall next and I’ll fling it myself.’

After that she felt better and went to look for Milburga.

She found her, eventually, in the chapel with Father Nimbus and Cousin Lynessa, trying to organize a bunch of unruly children into sitting quietly.

‘Now if you’ll just listen, children!’ Cousin Lynessa was trying but failing miserably to raise her voice above the cacophony. ‘If you’ll just … just listen. I said
listen
! … we can all play a nice little game.’ But it was hopeless and after a few moments she crumpled on to a pew, looking plaintively out from under a rather skew-whiff wimple. Milburga stood beside her, looking equally despondent. Father Nimbus, it had not gone unnoticed, had retreated to the altar, where he was pretending to busy himself but was actually meditating quietly and gratefully on the merits of chastity.

‘Oh dear,’ Maud said as she cupped her hands around her ears in a futile attempt to cut out the din, ‘such noisy little useless mouths,’ and wondered whether it was too late to tell Sir Bernard she had changed her mind.

She looked around her at the squirming, seething mass of children and realized that the only one not present, as far as she could tell, was William. She mouthed his name at Milburga over the heads of the others, and she mouthed back:

‘Don’t know and don’t care. One less little bugger to worry about.’

Just then the castle shook as another boulder crashed against the walls. Cousin Lynessa, her nerves entirely shattered, leaped up from her pew with a cry, the children screamed, Milburga shouted and Father Nimbus ducked beneath the altar. Maud decided it was probably time to leave.

PENDA MADE UP
her mind that afternoon that, if she and Gwil could not leave Kenniford, the only way to prevent an invasion was to take matters into her own hands: to kill as many of the trebuchet masters as she could. Her tally so far had been pretty good but there was one particularly awkward bugger who had stayed tantalizingly out of range. As the day wore on her frustration was mounting but she promised herself that if it was the very last thing she ever did, she would get the bastard before sunset.

She was cursing broadly and had just lifted her crossbow to make yet another attempt on him when something tugged at the hem of her mantle. She swung round, startled to see the boy William standing beside her.

‘I could’ve shot you,’ she scolded, wagging her finger at him. ‘What in God’s name are you doing up here?’

‘Wanted to see what it was like,’ he replied, grinning. ‘It’s a bit boring down there.’

‘Well, bugger off,’ she said. ‘Ain’t no place for children up here. You could get killed. Go back, go on.’ With the weapon still in her fist she tried shooing him away but he refused to move and stood his ground stubbornly.

Penda, who recognized the obdurate stance of a small boy and an impasse when she saw one, began to wonder what on earth she should do next. Short of picking him up and carrying him bodily down the stairs, there wasn’t much she could do.

‘I brought these for you,’ William said brightly, holding out a fistful of quarrels.

‘Where’d you get ’em?’

‘On the allure when I was looking for you. They were just lying on the floor. From the enemy, I think.’

She snatched them from him, flung them on to the stack on the floor beside her and then turned back to the boy. ‘They’ll come in useful, them, no doubt about it, but I can get my own, thank you very much. Don’t need your help.’ She meant to sound cross but there was something about him which took the sting out of her tone.

She had noticed him often during her time at Kenniford, wandering aimlessly around the castle in search of company, occupation and goodness knew what, and had felt pangs of pity for him. He was another dispossessed soul and she, of all people, could empathize with that. However, this was no time for sentiment and the last thing she needed was to feel responsible for anybody else, let alone Sir John of Tewing’s only son.

‘So,’ she said, prodding him with the toe of her boot as she leaned backwards to check down the allure whether or not anyone else had noticed him. ‘What you looking for me for?’

‘So you can teach me to be an archer,’ he said, smiling, his bright blue eyes closing almost completely under the pressure of his round, freckled cheeks. It was quite a smile and she felt the corners of her own mouth twitching to return it.

‘Are you mad or something?’ she asked, trying to sound stern. ‘What you want to be an archer for? You’re going to be a knight, you. That’s much better, that is; won’t have to stand up here all day in the cold getting shot at.’