Winter Siege (7 page)

The scribe looks at the scratches in the wax. ‘We have King Stephen imprisoned by the Empress,’ he says. ‘Is that how the war ended?’

‘My son, we are only yet accounting for the year 1141; there is longer and worse to come. Yes, the King has been taken to Empress Matilda’s fortress at Bristol and is fettered with iron rings – an unforgiving woman, the Empress. She is filled with joy, for now she feels she has England in her grasp. Once she is received into the city of Winchester, which contains the crown and royal regalia, she can plan her coronation at Westminster. But, first, to enter Winchester she must gain the permission of its bishop, who is Stephen’s brother, Henry.’

‘And he refused her?’

The young man gains a smile for his innocence. ‘How much you have to learn, my son. No, our good Bishop Henry is on the toasting fork of indecision. Which side should he present to the fire? His brother has disappointed him sorely in not granting enough rights to the Church – that is, to himself. Will the Empress be kinder? His price is high but Matilda pays it, as she must if she is to be crowned. In return he pledges fealty to her as Lady of England, soon to be queen.’

The abbot finds a scrap of parchment among the litter on his bed. ‘Here is the declaration made by himself and other bishops who were present at that extraordinary council. Read it: my eyes begin to fail me.’

‘ “We choose as Lady of England and Normandy the daughter of a king who was a peacemaker, a glorious king, a wealthy king, a good king, without peer in our time, and we promise her our faith and support.” ’

‘And this,’ the abbot says, ‘issued by men who once swore fealty and allegiance to Stephen.’

The scribe shakes his head at human perfidy. ‘Treason.’

‘Treason, indeed, unless you account as the original traitors the bishops and barons who swore to a dying King Henry the First that they would acknowledge his daughter, and then did not.’ The abbot begins to cough and clutch his chest. ‘My medicine, boy. Quickly.’ But, after a sip, he throws the phial on to the rushes of the floor. ‘What in hell is this?’

‘My lord, I mentioned the trouble with your sight to Brother Infirmarian, and he felt that ground bats’ eyes should be added to your usual marshmallow and honey.’

‘Did he, indeed. Well, you can tell Brother Infirmarian that if he does it again, I shall add my boot to his arse, weak as I am. Now, where are we?’

‘The King is in prison, my lord, and the Empress triumphs.’

‘Indeed she does. Her armies go forth, and one of them, under the command of her mercenary, Alan of Ghent, marches on Kenniford Castle, that strategic jewel on the Thames, which, as we know, is in the hands of King Stephen’s man, Sir John of Tewing. As they near it that morning, they come across some small boys fishing in a stream known as Kingcup Brook …’

The abbot’s eyes become inexplicably misty. The scribe pauses for a moment.

‘Kingcup Brook. There were fine trout in that stream; on a calm summer’s day you could tempt them into your net merely by tickling.’ The abbot sighs and shakes his head at his digression. ‘Some of Ghent’s men capture the boys – so that their parents may be persuaded into paying a ransom for them – and take them to their commander. One boy, especially, is richly dressed, though muddy. He refuses to tell them his name, but his poorer companions, being frightened, say that he is called William and that he is no less than the son of Sir John of Tewing himself.’

‘God be praised, so the unnatural machinations by Maud of Kenniford did not prevent her bearing her husband a son.’

‘They did, actually,’ the abbot tells him. ‘No, this William is a son by Sir John’s previous wife, who died giving birth to him.

‘He was seven years old. And trying not to show how frightened he was – almost as much of his father’s wrath when Sir John realized he’d crept out of the castle that morning as he was of his predicament. Which, I have to say, was somewhat parlous. The commander and men of the Empress’s army marched him to Kenniford and, helpless, he had to watch as they took up positions surrounding the castle. Then the commander – this Alan of Ghent – dragged the boy to the riverbank opposite the castle walls so that Kenniford’s sentries could see him. A gallows was erected, a halter put round his neck. Alan of Ghent shouted for Sir John of Tewing to come to his ramparts and, when he did, threatened to hang the boy if the castle did not surrender
…’

IN THE EARLY
morning, patrols reported an enemy force heading for them; too large, they said, to risk the garrison going out to do battle.

Immediately, and with considerable efficiency, the castle made ready to be besieged. As the alarm bell began clanging, men poured out of the guardhouses like bees swarming from a hive. The half of the bridge that spanned the Thames from the Kenniford gatehouse to the Crowmarsh bank was drawn up with nerve-scraping grinds and the even shriller ‘
Pull
, you bastards,
pull
’ of the gatemaster until it fitted over the portcullis like a shutter over a window, leaving the far span stretching uselessly into mid-air. Archers raced to line the allure running along the top of the outer walls, carrying bundles of extra arrows. Two trebuchets with pivoting arms fifty feet long were trundled into position in the outer bailey and great baskets of stones put beside them ready to be slung. Water-filled buckets were stood in rows against thatched buildings in case the enemy used fire.

Maud hadn’t given much thought to the realities of war; never having faced them, she hadn’t believed she ever would: fighting was a man’s game, something they played elsewhere. She hadn’t been able to conceive of a Kenniford – solid, safe, peaceful and homely for generations – subjected to burning and violent death.

Now, here she was, ordered to stay in the keep with the castle’s women and children and prepare to receive the wounded.

It wasn’t so much that she was frightened as amazed; instead of carrying domestic sounds, the air coming through her windows was assaulting her ears with shouts and clangs and heavy movement. Amazed, too, that even among her own household, she was not in control; she didn’t know what to do.

The one who did was the eldest of them. Lady Morgana, here on a visit from her Welsh castle, had put the serving women to stuffing sacks with straw in order to make palliasses and organized Cousin Lynessa and Maud into tearing up clean rags and rolling them for bandages. ‘Where’s the kitchen maid?’ she demanded.

‘Here, my lady.’

‘The sharpest knives, if you please – clean, mind. Where’s Milburga? I want her to organize games for the children. Maud, don’t just stand there. What have you got in the pain-killing line? Brandy will do, lots of it.’

Maud looked at the old woman, the arthritic hands. ‘I’m sorry, Morgana,’ she said. ‘So sorry you’ve been caught up in this.’

She earned a smile. ‘My dear, when you’re facing the Welsh, as we are in the Marches, this is quite a normal day.’

A normal day, Maud thought as she went outside to go down to the cellars, it’s not normal for Kenniford. It’s not right.

Unfairly perhaps, she blamed her husband; he’d brought this … this horrifying vulgarity upon her home – and not only
her
home.

Oh dear God.

Somebody caught her arm. ‘Best get back inside, my lady,’ Sir Rollo told her.

She clutched at him. ‘The village. Have the villagers been let in?’

He shook his head. ‘He’s ordered the gates shut.’

She knew who ‘he’ was. ‘They’ve got to be let in.’ There were over one hundred men, women and children out there in vulnerable homes nestling against the walls, with every right to expect her protection.

‘They’ll eat up our food, see,’ Sir Rollo said. ‘That’s what he says.’

‘Does he, indeed?’ She began striding towards the bridge to the middle bailey.

Sir Rollo pulled her back, but as she struggled against him there came a scream from the keep and Milburga was running towards them. ‘William, it’s William.’

‘What about him?’

‘Ain’t here. Not nowhere. And his fishing rod’s missing. Little bugger, I’ll flay his hide when I gets him.’

Milburga was panicking, another astonishment of this dreadful day. Dear Christ protect him. The boy had gone to Kingcup Brook, crept out of the castle before dawn as he usually did, and they had yet to work out how, to come back with a creel full of trout for his father’s breakfast.

And Kingcup Brook was in the path the besieging army had pursued on its way to besiege them.

‘He’s allus home by now,’ wept Milburga.

Dear Christ,
dear Christ
.

When Sir John had first brought his son to the castle and presented him to her – ‘Here’s a stepson for you’ – she’d kissed the boy, smiled and nodded without warmth; she didn’t like children much, and certainly not one sprung from her husband’s loins; even less one who, if he lived, would inherit her castle.

The thing was, William turned out not to be at all like his father. She supposed the gentle face and features, the pale and floppy hair, were an inheritance from his dead mother, the unknown woman for whom Maud felt the deepest sympathy.

Expecting the boy to be given preference, as heirs were, she’d been taken aback to find him almost as much an object of Sir John’s bullying as anyone else in the castle.

William, at the age of seven, had gentle manners, an aversion to bear-baiting and a leaning towards bookishness, all attributes of his late mother – a weakling, according to the boy’s father – which must be beaten out of him if he were not to become an effeminate, namby-pamby milksop who’d rather stay in m’lady’s chamber playing a fucking lute than go to war.

Maud, having her own problems with his father, had stayed aloof for a while – everybody else in her household conspired to mother the child – and was only drawn in by an event that was afterwards referred to with awe as ‘Milburga’s victory’.

It had taken place in the keep’s kitchen. Milburga, passing through the tiltyard where young William had been put to practising sword blows against the battered tree trunk set up for that purpose, saw blood dripping from the child’s right hand.

‘You come along o’ me,’ she’d said. She’d taken him by the scruff of the neck and marched him to the kitchen so that she could minister to a small palm off which the skin had been taken by friction against the sword’s grip.

When Sir John had found them there his bellows of rage attracted half the castle.

By the time Maud arrived on the scene, Milburga, shielding William behind her, was squaring up to Sir John, equally tall and big, both faces puce with shouting.

‘I’m his father, you fat cow. I know what’s best for ’im. He’ll learn swordsmanship if it kills him.’

‘Bloody sword’s too heavy for him, you girt great fool. Taken the skin offen his poor little hand.’

‘Get out of my way, bitch.’ Sir John raised a hand like a ham as if to strike her.

‘An’ don’t you be calling me no bitch,’ Milburga had yelled back, ‘or next time they brings you your bloody soup I’ll have pissed in it.’

There was a sudden silence. The crowd round the kitchen door hunched its shoulders in terrible anticipation.

Then … the man’s hand had fallen to his side, like Balaam’s when the ass he was beating for refusing to move saw the angel of Jehovah blocking their way. Sir John was giving a grunt of approval and the hand which he had raised in violence now stretched to ruffle his son’s hair. Turning to Milburga he said, ‘You’ve got balls, woman, I’ll say that for you. All right, if he wants to, he can leave off practice for today.’

Milburga had won.

But William betrayed her victory. Getting to his feet, he’d picked up his sword. ‘No. I’ll go back, Father. I’m sorry.’

As she watched the small, courageous figure leave the kitchen, Maud had felt a rare pity and the early stirrings of maternal love.

Now, with Sir Rollo dumbstruck and staring at Milburga, those same feelings propelled her across the bridge, through the middle bailey, across the next bridge – not registering the sudden quiet, nor that the men by the trebuchets, the spearmen, the archers lining the walls, were now so still they might have been ossified.

In a world of concentrating silence, the only sound came from one carrying voice: ‘… we will hang your son.’

Sir John was standing in one of the crenels on the outer allure glaring across the Thames to the Crowmarsh bank. He was in his nightshirt, having been drunk the night before and still asleep when the alarm sounded. His squire hopped beside him, trying to get him into his mail shirt and helmet. Stang, his second-in-command, was with them.

Panting, Maud joined them to look where they were looking.

It was a beautiful September morning with a light breeze fluttering the pennants of the besieging force. And, dear Mary, Mother of God, a little boy stood in the midst of them with a rope round his neck which ran up through a ring on the cross-piece of a high, stout pole. The tall man standing beside him, one hand resting on the child’s shoulder, his other arm through the guige strap at the back of his shield, was demanding Kenniford’s surrender. At the far end of the rope were two more men, ready to pull.

In that instant, the pity Maud had felt for the boy transformed into something more agonizing. She’d never been so afraid – not of the danger the castle was in, not even for the crowd of people immediately below, cowering against the castle’s gate, but of what the man at her side would do, or, more terribly, would not do. She knew him.

And the child, so small, so brave, so very pale.
God help him. God, I’ll do anything, I’ll build You another church, just save him.

The call came across the river for the third time from the man with his hand on William’s shoulder. ‘You will be given honourable terms if you give in, but in the name of Empress Matilda, I say again, surrender your castle or we hang your son.’ The guttural Norman French carried easily.