Fires of Winter

by Roberta Gellis

  That changed everything. It was the guards on the inner gate that I feared most; they would be the ones most watchful for an attempt at escape. So when we came off the drawbridge, I began to shake with eagerness, needing to think of holding my feet to a dull, exhausted trudge when every instinct bade me run ahead out of the outer gate to freedom. It was torture to keep to the slow pace of the oxen, but they did advance foot by foot, and after what seemed like a thousand years, I heard a kind of echo of the creak and groan of the cartwheels that told me we were near the wall. Then I risked a glance and caught my breath. We were right at the gates, which were open, and the attention of the guards was on a group of men who seemed to have just entered.

  Just as I lowered my head to better hide my face, I heard a cry of pain from one of the serfs ahead. I reached out for Stephen to remind him he must not resist—but it was too late. I saw a staff rise and strike him, heard his roar of rage, saw him leap on the man who had struck him and bear him down. I leapt too, knowing we were lost but throwing myself over the king to save him, I thought, from being beaten to death. But it was a knife not a cudgel that came down and struck me.

  Chapter 24

  Melusine

  Selfish! Self-indulgent monster! The voice was the queen’s, but the words were those my mother had said to me after my brothers died of the plague that had taken so many lives in Ulle on my thirteenth birthday. I felt dazed and confused, most aware of the stinging of my cheeks where Maud’s slaps had struck.

  “But that was because of Papa,” I said. “Because I was making Papa sick with worry.”

  “Your father is dead!” the queen shrieked, slapping me once more. “Long dead!”

  I lifted my head and focussed my eyes on her face. She was bent above me, and to my surprise it was concern not rage that I saw, but I could not answer her.

  “It is your husband to whom you owe your support,” she said fiercely, although she was no longer shouting. “He has supported you and protected you, even against my will. Do you owe him nothing? And he is in prison, chained like a beast by the order of that monster Matilda. Melusine, do you hear me?”

  “I hear you, madam.”

  “Then listen well. I will not stay long in Westminster. I will go first to Essex and root out any man who has ever been favored by Geoffrey de Mandeville and at the same time draw a heavy war levy, leaving some Boulognese troops to protect the province. As soon as I have news of where Matilda lies, I will follow. I will raise every city she enters against her, for the towns love Stephen, and I will hound her from place to place until she disgorges my man. You may not care that Bruno will rot in captivity, but I am not willing to accept that fate for my husband. I will be glad of your help and your company, Melusine, but if you wish to sit and stare at walls as you did when the king first put you in my care, I will leave you. I have no strength to carry dead wood with me now.”

  She straightened up, turned, and left the room, and I suddenly realized that I was sitting on the floor in a chamber looted of everything. I put my hands to my cheeks, which burned anew, this time with shame. What kind of woman was I that my answer to a disappointment was to become mad? No more. Never again. If I could not face the horror and grief of my life, I would take my sister Mildred’s path and walk into the water. I would not be dead wood, a burden to everyone, needing to be told to stand and sit, to eat and drink.

  I tried to rise, but my whole body was stiff and my legs would not support me. How long had I been sitting thus? I tried again, but this time there were hands under my arms, helping me, and Edna’s voice, trembling as she asked, “Are you well, my lady?”

  “I am well now, Edna,” I said.

  “I did not know the queen would be so angry,” she whispered. “I tried and tried to make you get up or tell me why you were sitting there, and then I grew frightened and…and I told the queen.”

  “Thank God you did,” I said, leaning on her and walking about the chamber. Now I saw it was not totally empty. In the corner behind me there was a stool. I moved toward it, tempted to sit down again, but each step was easier, and in a few minutes I let go of Edna to walk on my own. When I was steady on my feet, I came to her and put my hand on her shoulder. “Thank you, Edna. That was a brave deed. Queen Maud is so busy, it could not have been easy to get leave to speak to her.”

  “It was not hard.” She grinned up at me. “I did not ask for leave. I just walked up to the guards and called out to her. Everyone was so shocked that I should walk past all the great ones and cry for help, that no one tried to stop me.” Then she grew solemn, her eyes large with remembered amazement. “And the queen was so good. She bade all those high-born men wait and came at once when I told her you were sick and I could not rouse you.”

  I felt tears sting my eyes. Maud had been very good to leave such important matters to come to me. Her words and blows were sharp, but so had my mother’s been, and only for my good. “Yes,” I said to Edna, “she is a good woman. I am sorry I frightened you, but if it should happen again that I do not answer you for a long time, do as the queen did—I mean, cause me pain. That will wake me.”

  “But my lady—”

  “Never mind that now,” I interrupted. “I am famished. See if you can find me something to eat and drink. Anything will do.” As I spoke we walked to the door. I hoped Edna did not notice how my breath caught and I said quickly, “Bring the food here. I fear I will have no chance to eat if I go where the queen is.”

  I was afraid to admit to Edna and to myself too, that I did not know where I was, so I turned my back on the huge empty chamber and gestured toward the small room. Edna ran off and I turned back to the great chamber. It was a hall, a hall in Westminster—surely the queen said we were in Westminster. I was not so mad as not to be able to remember what had been said to me only a few minutes before, was I? And the place was not completely empty. As in the smaller chamber, I had not noticed that there were broken bits of this and that—a leg of a stool, a strip of cloth that had been white and was now marked with smudges where someone had stepped on it, half a trestle for supporting tables. And then I suddenly knew where I was. I had not recognized the place because each time I had seen it before it had been crowded with tables and benches and people—people eating, laughing, talking, sometimes dancing. I was looking at the king’s hall, and the chamber in which I had been sitting on the floor was the king’s private closet.

  My first sensation was shock, my second regret that my foolishness had forced the queen to come here; it must have hurt her to see the place empty and looted. Then I fetched the stool and sat down and asked myself what I was doing here. It was not a place that could have drawn me by familiarity; the place I knew best in Westminster was the queen’s hall and her private chamber where I worked. Why should I come to the king’s hall? Why should I, who had never entered it before in my whole life, sit down to wait—forever if need be—in the king’s private chamber? What was I seeking here in my madness? I never came to the king’s hall except…except in Bruno’s company or to find Bruno.

  Bruno. I had come seeking Bruno in my madness. I could not lie about that to myself any longer. And if I sought him when I was mad, then was he not the center of my life? The center of my life…yet he was the man who most likely killed my father and my brother. That was how it was done, to give the female to the victor. He had been the one to burst in the door of the hall at Ulle; he had taken the manor, that was certain. And I had been given to him, that was also certain. Was it not most likely that he had been allowed to take Ulle because in a sense he had already won it over my father’s and brother’s dead bodies?

  I shuddered so hard the legs of the stool creaked, but I hardly heard that. I heard the queen. “Your father is dead. Long dead.”

  Did that wipe out my duty to him? He had cared for me and protected me…But the queen’s voice overrode that thought too, angry, demanding. “It is your husband to whom you owe your
support…he has protected you even against my will.” It was true. But only because he wanted Ulle. No, that was a lie and I had come to the end of lying—that led only to a dark place where I sat on the floor and stared at the wall. Bruno wanted me—not Ulle, not even my body, although he took pleasure in both—he wanted my love. Papa had also wanted my love…Had he? Papa had wanted my devotion, which was a very different thing, not an equal sharing but a greater and a lesser—and Papa was dead. Dead. Bruno was in chains and might soon be dead.

  I found myself on my feet, my hand on my eating knife and ready to run…to Bruno, to keep him alive. Papa was dead and Bruno was still alive. Papa was dead. I could remember him; I could still love him, but I could not let his cold hand again draw me down the path that led to sitting on the floor in an empty chamber, deaf, mute, and blind because my duty forbade me to do what I desired with all my heart, all my mind, and all my soul. The queen was right. I could no longer pretend that I was loyal to Papa as long as I did nothing myself to help Bruno.

  My duty was a dead weight on me, crushing me; I must cast that aside. There were things, real things I could do to help Bruno. I could bring men from Ulle and there was silver in the strongbox. I could hire other men to fight with the queen. Sir Gerald could lead them. I could go to Audris. Jernaeve was rich; Audris would lend me or give me money to buy more men. Some might even come for the pure pleasure of fighting against Matilda, even though King David’s son was now their overlord and King David was with the empress. But King Stephen was Henry’s overlord, not his father, and I knew the men of Northumbria did not love the Scots.

  Edna came with my food—cold meat and bread and ale—and I ate with an appetite that I had not felt since the news of Bruno’s capture. When I was full, I went to the queen’s private chamber and waited, thanking God that I had done my accounts before Ypres returned with the news that the empress had escaped him. The queen did not come in until very late, and she looked tired. Nonetheless, I came and knelt beside her chair and thanked her for her kindness to me.

  “So,” she said, “have you decided who you are?”

  “Yes, madam,” I replied. “I am the wife of Bruno of Jernaeve, and I love my husband as you love yours.”

  “Very good.” She offered me a tired smile and leaned her head against the high back of her chair. Her eyes began to close, and her hand lifted to wave me away.

  I caught the hand. “Madam, a moment more, I beg you.”

  She turned her head a fraction. “Yes?” There was a weary patience in her voice, the patience of one who has begun a task, now almost regrets it, but cannot leave it unfinished.

  “I can bring men to swell your army.”

  Maud’s eyes snapped open and she jerked upright. I almost chuckled with amusement although I had deliberately said that to catch her attention when I knew she expected me to trouble her with some silly personal doubts.

  After staring at me for longer than I liked, she said, “Yes, I believe you have decided who you are. But have you told me the truth?”

  I was not shocked. Little as I knew about armies and battles, even an idiot could understand that an open enemy is less dangerous than an ally who knows your plans and betrays you. I knew too that Maud had never fully trusted me although I felt she had come to be truly fond of me. I had had several hours to consider what to say, and now I smiled.

  “I have told you the truth, but if you will give a moment’s thought to the matter, you will see that it does not matter. The only thing I am sure Papa would want me to do—” A little chill went down my back as I thought of the kind of revenge Papa would really want on the man who killed him, but that had nothing to do with who was king or queen. “—is to regain Ulle. I have a good hope of getting Ulle, or of Bruno getting it, from King Stephen. I have no hope of that from Matilda, even if I could get King David to make his son enfeoff Bruno or me. She would see me dead first for refusing her command to accompany her into Bristol. And she hates Bruno worse than me because he flouted her will more than once on our journey. And even if that is a lie and she promised me Ulle to come and spy on you, do you think me such an idiot as to still believe she will keep a promise to me, who will not keep them to the bishop of Winchester or to Robert of Gloucester?”

  Maud herself had to smile at my reasoning, but the smile faded as she went back over what I had said and saw that I had indeed covered every excuse for disloyalty. She frowned and looked uneasy and there was a pettish note in her voice as she asked, “How many men, and from where?”

  “I can only be sure of about fifty from Ulle with a knight to lead them, but it may be possible for me to bring many more, several hundred I believe. Bruno’s sister, Audris of Jernaeve, is rich. I am sure she will lend me, or even give me, money to buy mercenaries. There are many in the north who do not love the king of Scotland and who will come to fight against him—and against Empress Matilda.”

  Maud knew that was true; she had received bitter and angry delegations from northern baronial leaders about the peace treaty she had made with King David. She shifted uneasily in her seat and finally said, “I will mention the matter to Ypres.”

  “Thank you, madam,” I said. “That is all I desired. I would not have troubled you with this today when I knew you to be tired, only I was afraid I would have no chance to speak in the morning and that might cost me another full day. Jernaeve and Cumbria are far north and west.”

  To my surprise, the queen suddenly looked very pleased, patted my hand, and promised that if Ypres thought my idea worthwhile and if I indeed did bring several hundred men who fought well in King Stephen’s cause, I should have Ulle. It took me a while, lying sleepless on my pallet, to come to the conclusion that Maud’s suspicions had been increased by my approaching her privately in her chamber. She had probably believed that I chose to speak when she was weary in the hope she would seize on my offer while her mind was muddled with fatigue and sorrow and let me go at once.

  That gave me hope that the queen had found my offer very attractive—she always mistrusted herself when she had an instant liking for something—which meant my idea was good. Indeed, it proved so, for I was summoned from the queen’s chamber to repeat what I hoped to do to Ypres. He did not seem much interested in the men from Ulle, thank God; I had been afraid to speak about Sir Gerald lest his connection with my father make the queen and Ypres more suspicious. What Ypres was most interested in was who I expected to lead the Northumbrian troops.

  “I do not know,” I told him. “I know nothing of war, but Sir Hugh of Jernaeve—he that was Hugh Licorne before he wed with Bruno’s sister—will find a man for me who will be wise, strong, and trustworthy, I am sure.”

  “Licorne.” Ypres’s voice became eager. “If you are wise, you will beg him to come himself, Lady Melusine.”

  “No!” I exclaimed. “You think me a selfish monster indeed if you believe I would call my sister’s husband to war in the rescue of mine. I will beg for money. I will beg for men. I will do everything a woman can do to raise as large a force as I can. But I will also do everything in my power to prevent Hugh from being involved in any fighting.”

  I did. I swear I did everything I could to keep Hugh from leading my small army, but it was all in vain. Despite my need, I would never have gone to Jernaeve at all if I believed he would think of joining the fight to save Stephen unless I asked it of him. I am sure Bruno never told me that Hugh had once promised to take service with the king when his old master, Sir Walter Espec, no longer needed him. The king had freed Hugh from that promise when he did homage for Jernaeve in Audris’s name, but Hugh was like Papa and Bruno; he did not forget old promises.

  Did Ypres know? Was that the reason that he advised me to ride straight north to Jernaeve rather than northwest to Ulle? He said it was safer, that the whole central part of the country was seething with unrest, with war bands marching to and fro and outlaws attacking travelers and merchants. He took
the trouble to speak to Fechin and Merwyn and describe a route that should safely bypass the strongholds of Matilda’s supporters. And we did come safely to Jernaeve, only once having hidden in a wood while a troop marched by and once having outrun a party that rushed out at us from a ruined village.

  Hugh and Audris were at the lower gate to meet us, Audris’s face whiter than bone and her eyes round with terror. She had been weaving and from her tower window had seen Fechin on Barbe before we crossed the ford. As I had, she feared Bruno was dead. I had forgot she might recognize Barbe, and though I had written to Audris almost every month ever since I had been with her in Jernaeve, I had not told her Bruno had been taken prisoner because I knew she was with child again and was afraid to cause her worry.

  So my tale burst from my lips before I had even dismounted from Vinaigre—at least I cried out that Bruno was alive and with the king. Before I could say more, Audris flew from tears to joy. I did not think that unreasonable, for I had felt the same, and she began at once to talk of ransom.

  “Hush, love,” Hugh said. “Bruno will not leave the king. If he had desired to be ransomed, we would have heard the terms long ago. Remember that the king was taken prisoner in February, and this is July. Let us go back into the keep so Melusine can rest and eat. Ride up,” Hugh urged me, but I shook my head and dismounted.

  “I hope you do not blame me for lying to you,” I said, taking Audris’s hand. “I was afraid—”

  She patted her belly, which was large, with her free hand and shook her head. Then, still holding me, she began to walk across the bailey. Her step was not as light as usual, but she was breathing easily and I was astonished when Hugh picked her up and began to carry her up the steep path to the keep. She said once, “Put me down,” but when he did not, she only sighed and did not protest again.

  I poured out the rest of my news on our way into the keep, and Hugh shouted with pleasure when he heard that the empress had been driven out of London and had fled with no more than the clothes on her back. However, they would not let me explain my business until I had bathed and eaten, and I was glad of it. I found it harder than I thought to ask for money, but Audris laughed at me and waved her hand, brushing away any thought of debt.