One Corpse Too Many (2 page)

Forced to take the opposition seriously and resort to arms, Stephen had opened in the way that came naturally to him, striking hard where he must, but holding the door cheerfully open for penitents to come in. And what had been the result? He had spared, and they had taken advantage and despised him for it. He had invited submission without penalty, as he moved north against the rebel holds, and the local baronage had held off from him with contempt. Well, tomorrow’s dawn attack should settle the fate of the Shrewsbury garrison, and make an example once for all. If these midlanders would not come peacefully and loyally at his invitation, they should come scurrying like rats to save their own skins. As for Arnulf of Hesdin… The obscenities and defiances he had hurled from the towers of Shrewsbury should be regretted bitterly, if briefly.

The king was conferring in his tent in the meads in the late afternoon, with Gilbert Prestcote, his chief aide and sheriff-designate of Salop, and Willem Ten Heyt, the captain of his Flemish mercenaries. It was about the time that Brother Cadfael and the boy Godric were washing their hands and tidying their clothing to go to Vespers. The failure of the local gentry to bring in their own Levies to his support had caused Stephen to lean heavily upon his Flemings, who in consequence were very well hated, both as aliens and as impervious professionals, who would as soon burn down a village as get drunk, and were not at all averse to doing both together. Ten Heyt was a huge, well-favoured man with reddish-fair hair and long moustaches, barely thirty years old but a veteran in warfare. Prestcote was a quiet, laconic knight past fifty, experienced and formidable in battle, cautious in counsel, not a man to go to extremes, but even he was arguing for severity.

“Your Grace has tried generosity, and it has been shamelessly exploited to your loss. It’s time to strike terror.”

“First,” said Stephen drily, “to take castle and town.”

“That your Grace may consider as done. What we have mounted for the morning will get you into Shrewsbury. Then, if they survive the assault, your Grace may do what you will with FitzAlan, and Adeney, and Hesdin, and the commons of the garrison are no great matter, but even there you may be well advised to consider an example.”

The king would have been content enough then with his revenge on those three who led the resistance here. William FitzAlan owed his office as sheriff of Salop to Stephen, and yet had declared and held the castle for his rival. Fulke Adeney, the greatest of FitzAlan’s vassal lords, had connived at the treason and supported his overlord wholeheartedly. And Hesdin had condemned himself over and over out of his own arrogant mouth. The rest were pawns, expendable but of no importance.

“They are noising it abroad in the town, as I’ve heard,” said Prestcote, “that FitzAlan had already sent his wife and children away before we closed the way north out of the town. But Adeney also has a child, a daughter. She’s said to be still within the walls. They got the women out of the castle early.” Prestcote was a man of the shire himself, and knew the local baronage at least by name and repute. “Adeney’s girl was betrothed from a child to Robert Beringar’s son, of Maesbury, by Oswestry. They had lands neighbouring in those parts. I mention it because this is the man who is asking audience of you now, Hugh Beringar of Maesbury. Use him as you find, your Grace, but until today I would have said he was FitzAlan’s man, and your enemy. Have him in and judge for yourself. If he’s changed his coat, well and good, he has men enough at his command to be useful, but I would not let him in too easily.”

The officer of the guard had entered the pavilion, and stood waiting to be invited to speak; Adam Courcelle was one of Prestcote’s chief tenants and his right-hand man, a tested soldier at thirty years old.

“Your Grace has another visitor,” he said, when the king turned to acknowledge his presence. “A lady. Will you see her first? She has no lodging here as yet, and in view of the hour… She gives her name as Aline Siward, and says that her father, whom she has only recently buried, was always your man.”

“Time presses,” said the king. “Let them both come, and the lady shall have first word.”

Courcelle led her by the hand into the royal presence, with every mark of deference and admiration, and she was indeed well worth any man’s attention. She was slender and shy, and surely no older than eighteen, and the austerity of her mourning, the white cap and wimple from which a few strands of gold hair crept out to frame her cheeks, only served to make her look younger still, and more touching. She had a child’s proud, shy dignity. Great eyes the colour of dark irises widened wonderingly upon the king’s large comeliness as she made her reverence.

“Madam,” said Stephen, reaching a hand to her, “I am sorry indeed for your loss, of which I have this minute heard. If my protection can in any way serve you, command me.”

“Your Grace is very kind,” said the girl in a soft, awed voice. “I am now an orphan, and the only one of my house left to bring you the duty and fealty we owe. I am doing what my father would have wished, and but for his illness and death he would have come himself, or I would have come earlier. Until your Grace came to Shrewsbury we had no opportunity to render you the keys of the two castles we hold. As I do now!”

Her maid, a self-possessed young woman a good ten years older than her mistress, had followed into the tent and stood withdrawn. She came forward now to hand the keys to Aline, who laid them formally in the king’s hands.

“We can raise for your Grace five knights, and more than forty men-at-arms, but at this time I have left all to supply the garrisons at home, since they may be of more use to your Grace so.” She named her properties and her castellans. It was like hearing a child recite a lesson learned by heart, but her dignity and gravity were those of a general in the field. “There is one more thing I should say plainly, and to my much sorrow. I have a brother, who should have been the one to perform this duty and service.” Her voice shook slightly, and gallantly recovered. “When your Grace assumed the crown, my brother Giles took the part of the Empress Maud, and after an open quarrel with my father, left home to join her party. I do not know where he is now, though we have heard rumours that he made his way to her in France. I could not leave your Grace in ignorance of the dissension that grieves me as it must you. I hope you will not therefore refuse what I can bring, but use it freely, as my father would have wished, and as I wish.”

She heaved a great sigh, as if she had thrown off a weight. The king was enchanted. He drew her by the hand and kissed her heartily on the cheek. To judge by the look on his face, Courcelle was envying him the opportunity.

“God forbid, child,” said the king, “that I should add any morsel to your sorrows, or fail to lift what I may of them. With all my heart I take your fealty, as dear to me as that of earl or baron, and thank you for your pains taken to help me. And now show me what I can do to serve you, for there can be no fit lodging for you here in a military camp, and I hear you have made no provision as yet for yourself. It will soon be evening.”

“I had thought,” she said timidly, “that I might lodge in the abbey guest house, if we can get a boat to put us across the river.”

“Certainly you shall have safe escort over the river, and our request to the abbot to give you one of the grace houses belonging to the abbey, where you may be private but protected, until we can spare a safe escort to see you to your home.” He looked about him for a ready messenger, and could not well miss Adam Courcelle’s glowing eagerness. The young man had bright chestnut hair, and eyes of the same burning brown, and knew that he stood well with his king. “Adam, will you conduct Mistress Siward, and see her safely installed?”

“With all my heart, your Grace,” said Courcelle fervently, and offered an ardent hand to the lady.

Hugh Beringar watched the girl pass by, her hand submissive in the broad brown hand that clasped it, her eyes cast down, her small, gentle face with its disproportionately large and noble brow tired and sad now that she had done her errand faithfully. From outside the royal tent he had heard every word. She looked now as if she might melt into tears at any moment, like a little girl after a formal ordeal, a child-bride dressed up to advertise her riches or her lineage, and then as briskly dismissed to the nursery when the transaction was assured. The king’s officer walked delicately beside her, like a conqueror conquered, and no wonder.

“Come, the lord king waits,” said the guttural voice of Willem Ten Heyt in his ear, and he turned and ducked his head beneath the awning of the tent. The comparative dimness within veiled the large, fair presence of the king.

“I am here, my liege,” said Hugh Beringar, and made his obeisance. “Hugh Beringar of Maesbury, at your Grace’s service with all that I hold. My muster is not great, six knights and some fifty men-at-arms, but half of them bowmen, and skilled. And all are yours.”

“Your name, Master Beringar, is known to us,” said the king drily. “Your establishment also. That it was devoted to our cause was not so well known. As I have heard of you, you have been an associate of FitzAlan and Adeney, our traitors, until very recently. And even this change of heart comes rather belatedly. I have been some four weeks in these parts, without word from you.”

“Your Grace,” said Beringar, without haste to excuse himself or apparent discomfort at his cool reception, “I grew up from a child regarding these men whom you understandably name your traitors, as my peers and friends, and in friendship have never found them wanting. Your Grace is too fairminded a man not to admit that for one like me, who has not so far sworn fealty to any, the choice of a path at this moment may require a deal of thought, if it is to be made once for all. That King Henry’s daughter has a reasonable claim is surely beyond question, I cannot call a man traitor for choosing that cause, though I may blame him for breaking his oath to you. As for me, I came into my lands only some months ago, and I have so far sworn fealty to none. I have taken my time in choosing where I will serve. I am here. Those who flock to you without thought may fall away from you just as lightly.”

“And you will not?” said the king sceptically. He was studying this bold and possibly over-fluent young man with critical attention. A lightweight, not above the middle height and slenderly built, but of balanced and assured movement; he might well make up in speed and agility what he lacked in bulk and reach. Perhaps two or three years past twenty, black-avised, with thin, alert features and thick, quirky dark brows. An unchancy fellow, because there was no guessing from his face what went on behind the deep-set eyes. His forthright speech might be honest, or it might be calculated. He looked quite subtle enough to have weighed up his sovereign and reasoned that boldness might not be displeasing.

“And I will not,” he said firmly. “But that need not pass on my word. It can be put to the proof hereafter. I am on your Grace’s probation.”

“You have not brought your force with you?”

“Three men only are with me. It would have been folly to leave a good castle unmanned or half-manned, and small service, to you to ask that you feed fifty more without due provision for the increase. Your Grace has only to tell me where you would have me serve, and it shall be done.”

“Not so fast,” said Stephen. “Others may also have need of time and thought before they embrace you, young man. You were close and in confidence with FitzAlan, some time ago.”

“I was. I still have nothing against him but that he has chosen one way, and I the other.”

“And as I hear, you are betrothed to Fulke Adeney’s daughter.”

“I hardly know whether to say to that: I am! or: I was! The times have altered a great many plans previously made, for others as well as for me. As at this time, I do not know where the girl is, or whether the bargain still holds.”

“There are said to be no women now in the castle,” said the king, eyeing him closely. “FitzAlan’s family may well be clean away, perhaps out of the country by now. But Adeney’s daughter is thought to be in hiding in the town. It would not be displeasing to me,” he said with soft emphasis, “to have so valuable a lady in safe-keeping—in case even my plans should need to be altered. You were of her father’s party, you must know the places likely to be sheltering her now. When the way is clear, you, of all people, should be able to find her.”

The young man gazed back at him with an inscrutable face, in which shrewd black eyes signalled understanding, but nothing more, neither consent nor resistance, no admission at all that he knew he was being set a task on which acceptance and favour might well depend. His face was bland and his voice guileless as he said: “That is my intent, your Grace. I came from Maesbury with that also in mind.”

“Well,” said Stephen, warily content, “you may remain in attendance against the town’s fall, but we have no immediate work for you here. Should I have occasion to call you, where will you be found?”

“If they have room,” said Beringar, “at the abbey guest house.”

The boy Godric stood through Vespers among the pupils and the novices, far back among the small fry of the house, and close to the laity, such as lived here outside the walls on the hither bank of the river, and could still reach this refuge. He looked, as Brother Cadfael reflected when he turned his head to look for the child, very small and rather forlorn, and his face, bright and impudent enough in the herbarium, had grown very solemn indeed here in church. Night was looming, his first night in this abode. Ah well, his affairs were being taken in hand more consolingly than he supposed, and the ordeal he was bracing himself to master need not confront him at all, if things went right, and at all events not tonight. Brother Paul, the master of the novices, has several other youngsters to look after, and was glad to have one taken firmly off his hands.

Cadfael reclaimed his protégé after supper, at which meal he was glad to see that Godric ate heartily. Evidently the boy was of a mettle to fight back against whatever fears and qualms possessed him, and had the good sense to fortify himself with the things of the flesh for the struggles of the spirit. Even more reassuringly, he looked up with relief and recognition when Cadfael laid a hand on his shoulder as they left the refectory.