Winter Siege (18 page)

‘And how are we today?’ she asked Sir John brightly.

‘Uck-oo.’

‘Now we don’t need to say that, do we?’ She was convinced that Sir John was recovering speech and strength while hiding both from her. His face was still distorted, the right side of his body useless, but from her solar she had occasionally heard a limping step crossing and recrossing the ceiling above, along with harsh replies to Kigva’s murmurs. He’d become mentally and physically stronger.

But if he thinks he’s getting Kenniford back, he can think again.

‘What would you like for supper?’

As she discussed food, she looked around. The place always made her shudder but there was something else here today.

Kigva kept the room in darkness and, as usual, was crouching by Sir John’s bed like a malignant familiar. Her dark, dirty hair hung about a face that had sharp cheekbones, its beauty spoiled by eyes of such a pale blue that they were almost white. Maud refused to be afraid of her, but she daunted others; maids sent up on errands were reluctant to go and not just because Sir John threw things at them; the witch cursed them, they said. By night at certain phases of the moon, she gathered strings of milk thistle, ivy and mistletoe with which to decorate the room; people who saw her at it crossed themselves and went indoors.

Today there was a scrying bowl on the floor filled with what looked like urine. Only God knew what she dipped her rushlights in but it wasn’t good animal fat.

That was it;
that
was what was different: there was another smell in the room, as a woman who’s just left a place leaves a lingering trace of her scent, but this wasn’t perfume, it was harsh, a riband of a different stink, and masculine. Maud couldn’t identify it, had never smelt its like. Since the room was the same as it always was, and there was no one else in it, she assumed that it came from outside, though when she opened the shutters and sniffed all she could smell was the winter air.

Later that afternoon, as was her custom, she joined William and Milburga in the parlour. It was already dark outside and the comparative cosiness of the candle-lit room was a welcome retreat from the winter draughts that now ravaged the rest of the castle.

William was sitting at a large table, tucking into great mouthfuls of bread and sucking down a delicious-smelling pottage from a cup under Milburga’s ever-watchful eye.

‘He can eat, that one!’ Milburga said, her arms folded proudly across her chest. ‘I’ll say that for him.’

William looked up briefly from the over-laden trencher in front of him to direct one of his great beaming smiles at his stepmother.

Maud leaned against the wall and sighed contentedly. She loved this leg of the day; after all the endless bustle of castle business, she could relax for once. It was satisfying, too, to be able to nourish the child – one of the few things, in fact, that she
could
do for him.

She was watching him now, itching with a desire to grab a cloth and wipe away the broth dribbling down his chin, knowing that she should not. He was growing up so quickly, she thought sadly, weaning himself away from the ministrations of all clucking, cosseting women.

In the background Milburga chattered on: ‘Don’t s’pose ’e gets much food up there,’ she muttered. ‘And even if ’e did, who’d want to eat with those swine in that swill …’ She burbled on and on until, unawares, Maud caught the tail-end of a question ‘… how d’you think ’e looked anyway?’

‘Sorry? What?’ She had drifted off, lost in her own thoughts. It wasn’t that she wasn’t interested in what her beloved Milburga had to say, it was just that, on occasions, there was so much of it. ‘Sorry, Milly,’ she repeated. ‘Who?’

‘His lordship!’ Milburga said with exaggerated patience. She sometimes despaired of her mistress’s powers of concentration. ‘How do you think ’e looked?’

Maud shot an anxious glance at William. She refused to discuss Sir John in front of him, out of deference for the child as much as anything. The boy, for reasons best known to himself, adored his father, and since she, Maud, could not be relied on to say anything kind about the man, felt in that case that most things were better left unsaid. On this occasion, however, he seemed so absorbed in his food that he appeared not to be listening.

‘Well,’ she said, lowering her voice and sidling closer to Milburga, ‘I thought, actually, that he looked a good deal better.’ She was about to add ‘unfortunately’ when William piped up behind them, startling them both.

‘Oh, he is,’ he said cheerfully. ‘A man came to see him today and Kigva thinks he might be able to cure him.’

Maud turned abruptly. ‘What man?’ she asked, frowning. ‘A physician?’

‘No.’ William shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. I’ve never seen him before. He looked like a monk and Kigva says he has powers and that he will use them to help Father.’ Maud was gaping so uncomprehendingly at him that he turned pink under the scrutiny.

A monk! What would a monk be doing in that unholy pigsty? she wondered, but then remembered the delegation from Henry, the Bishop of Winchester and Stephen’s brother, who’d appeared at the castle that morning to persuade her to return to the King’s side. He needed access to the river crossing which Kenniford provided.

At one point during the negotiation she had been tempted to cast aspersions on the bishop’s own loyalties, which blew in the wind, as far as she could tell, but Father Nimbus had recognized the direction of the conversation and put his hand on her arm to stay her, so, in the end, she hadn’t.

‘A
monk
?’ she said at last. ‘One of Bishop Henry’s messengers who came here today, do you mean?’

‘I think so,’ William stammered. Maud was looking unusually cross.

‘What did he want with your father?’

‘He blessed him.’

‘Why?’ Maud was confused.

‘Kigva asked him to and it worked; Father’s getting better already. The monk made her scry for him afterwards and she said that she could see Father would be well soon. She said that he must come back again – the monk, that is – and that if he did Father would carry on getting better and better.’ He looked imploringly from Maud to Milburga and back again.

‘I’ll bet she did,’ Maud said under her breath. The woman was a primitive, but sharp enough to know that without the patronage of Sir John she would be turned out of the castle to crawl back under whichever stone she had emerged from in the first place, and would, therefore, clutch at any straw to prevent it. Maud took a deep breath, torn between irritation with Kigva and pity for the boy.

‘I won’t have scrying under my roof, William. Do you hear me? If she does it again you’re to tell me. Understand?’ She had very little truck with magic and mistrusted those who practised it. ‘And I won’t have strange monks roaming my castle, come to that. Do you hear me?’

William hadn’t liked it much either. In fact he had been frightened out of his wits by Kigva’s odd chantings and alarmed by the sudden appearance of the strange man who had introduced a peculiar atmosphere into the room which emanated not just from the unpleasant smell he trailed behind him but something else, too, something clandestine and unsavoury. And although he could never confess it to Maud, for fear of betraying his father, he had been more than happy to see him leave.

‘Do you hear me?’ Maud repeated, dragging his attention back to her with a stamp of her foot. William nodded, and bowed his head. It was most unusual for Maud to get so cross with him; more often than not it was Milburga who did the scolding and he couldn’t understand it.

‘Good,’ she said, her voice softening at last. ‘Then you may get down from the table.’

She waited until he had gone before summoning her herald, who’d been put in charge of the visitors.

‘What do you mean by it, Payn? Letting Bishop Henry’s men roam the castle as they please?’

Payn flushed almost as pink as William at Maud’s admonishment. He took his position seriously and was ashamed; he’d been outflanked; there’d been a diversion. He’d settled the messengers in the barbican with an archer to guard them, had ordered them food and wine, sent their horses to the stables to be watered and seen to. While he was doing this, the visitors boldly walked out into the inner bailey, separating as they went. ‘I ordered them back, my lady, but they didn’t stop. I couldn’t shoot them, could I? As messengers, they were under our protection.’

He’d managed to round up the two knights and one of the monks, but it had taken time to find the other, who was eventually discovered in Sir John of Tewing’s room – and unceremoniously ejected.

‘He was just a monk, my lady,’ Payn said with all the contempt of a knight-to-be for a religious. ‘He was praying over Sir John. I hope there has been no harm done.’

‘I hope there hasn’t. Don’t do it again.’ As her herald reached the door, she called out, ‘Did he smell, Payn?’

The boy grinned. ‘Did he
not
? It was the same Devil’s dung my grandmother used to ease her wind. Terrible wind, my granny. We never knew which was preferable, her farts or the asafoetida.’

A stinking monk and now somebody purporting to be the Empress. Whatever next?

SO IT WAS
that, shivering and in no good mood, Maud of Kenniford stumbled from her bed to follow her porter through the cold, dark baileys and their darker arches to the gatehouse. ‘Of course it isn’t her, you numbskull. What would she be doing here? Last we heard she was besieged at Oxford. What do you think she did to get here? Fly?’

‘Wouldn’t put it past her,’ Ben the porter said. ‘You waits till she talks.’

‘Rubbish. You’ve let in a load of beggars again, blast you, and I’m going to have to feed them.’ Christ’s injunction to succour the poor had to be obeyed, but it was a nuisance, especially in the early hours of a freezing morning. She paused. ‘Are they armed? Have you called out the guard?’

‘Two’s got bows, and two’s got swords, but Daegal’s guarding ’em with his spear.’

‘Very comforting. I told you not to let anybody in unless they knew the password.’

‘What
is
the password?’

Maud, who’d forgotten it herself, gave him a shove that allowed her to precede him into the gatehouse where five tatterdemalions drooped against one of its walls.

Despite the poor light, she knew the tallest immediately. ‘Come to take another small child hostage?’ she asked.

Alan of Ghent smiled and bowed – not to her, but to the wreck of a female beside him. ‘Domina, may I present Lady Maud of Kenniford.’

Maud surveyed the woman to whom she was being presented rather than, as her position usually demanded, being presented to
her
: the veil that showed straggles of hair, the torn and dirty cloak, the saturated boots. Then she looked into the eyes, and after a moment, dropped into the deepest curtsy she’d ever made.

‘Welcome to Kenniford Castle, Lady,’ she said, and to the porter: ‘What are you keeping my lady empress waiting here for, idiot? Escort her to the keep.’

She ran ahead to wake the household.

That evening, Sir Bernard bent to his household account books to record the day’s outlay, as a good steward must do every night.

‘To the two maids, Mildryth and Leola: 2d each for provision of baths.’ (They were entitled to extra pay for lugging jugs of hot water on a weekday, rather than on a Saturday when they had to do it for nothing as part of their duties.)

‘To a gallon of wine for the Empress’s bath: 4d.’ (This addition to the water was because the Lady was considered in need of strengthening.)

‘To messengers Picard and Bogo for travel to the West Country: 40s.’ (A large amount of money, but necessary for two men who were going to have to ride hard and fast to seek out the Empress’s supporters and gain information about where she might safely meet up with them.)

‘To good wool cloth and silk for the Empress’s new clothes to be made quickly …’

‘To the accommodation of her companions …’

‘To …’

‘To …’

At last Sir Bernard sprinkled sand over what he had written in order to dry the ink, tapped shut the lid of the inkwell, cleaned and sharpened his quill ready for tomorrow, and closed his book with a sigh. It had been an unusual and very expensive day.

Up in the solar, Maud sighed too, and not just at the expense. For one thing, she was physically uncomfortable at having to sleep on a palliasse on the floor, her own bed now being solely occupied by the Empress behind its heavy, drawn curtains.

(Milburga, whose palliasse it was, now had another outside the door, ousting the even lower-ranking Tola from that position, and so on down the line …)

It wasn’t the indignity Maud minded – an empress had a right to expect a lady of high degree to be her woman of the bedchamber. If anything, Maud admired the Empress for not showing an ounce of gratitude for the trouble her presence was putting everybody to. She herself, she realized, was too easy-going and allowed her household to treat her with over-familiarity. The Empress was setting her an example and, by God, she intended to follow it.

No, by sheer lineage and the right Maud had granted her, this was the Empress’s castle. It was the danger the Empress was putting it in that stopped its chatelaine sleeping.

Alan of Ghent had emphasized it with the vulgarity she’d come to expect from him, actually berating her. Red-eyed from fatigue, he’d shouted: ‘Great God, my lady, I told you to have the place in readiness. You should have better look-outs than those clowns at the gate.’

Before she could splutter a protest, he’d continued: ‘Once Stephen knows Matilda has escaped him at Oxford, he’ll guess she’s here. Where else
could
she go on foot? He will come and he will have you cinched so tight you won’t be able to breathe. If God is merciful, he will not bring up his army for a few days, by which time she’ll be rested, I will know the lie of the land and I can get her away. But he is coming. Like the wrath of God he is coming –
and you are not ready for him
…’