His uncle had explained to him that the besieged garrison had appealed to Stephen for aid, agreeing to surrender if he did not come to their rescue. The rules of war gave them that right. Henry understood that, or tried to. He understood, too, his uncle’s strategy: he was using the castle at Wareham as bait, hoping to draw Stephen away from Oxford. Such tactics had always worked in the past, for Stephen had rarely found the patience for a long siege; that was not his nature. So far, though, he had not taken the lure, and with each passing day, it seemed more and more likely that he was willing to sacrifice Wareham if it meant he gained a far greater prize-Maude.
When Henry had confronted his uncle with these fears, Robert had acknowledged their validity. But he’d explained, then, the grim truth-that the three hundred men with him were not enough to raise the siege at Oxford. He’d need a far greater force to expel Stephen’s army, sheltered behind the city’s walls and newly dug earthworks. Unless they could provoke Stephen into coming out to meet them, as he had at Lincoln, Oxford Castle seemed doomed, for certes.
After that stark revelation, Henry’s fears took a far darker turn. He’d spent a lot of his time at Corfe thinking of his mother, holding on to memories as elusive as the fireflies he chased every summer. It had been more than three years since he’d seen his mother. What if he did not recognize her? Even more unsettling was the thought that she might not recognize him; he’d been only six then and he was nigh on ten now. He fretted, too, about what she was enduring at Oxford. People were always interrupting conversations as he came by, but he already knew what they did not want him to hear-that her food supplies must be running very low by now, for the siege was into its third month.
But after his uncle admitted that they could not just ride to the rescue the way he’d expected them to do, he could not bring himself to write to his father, who’d shrugged off his mother’s peril with the scornful words, “Whatever trouble she is in, she brought upon herself.” And each day when he awoke, his first conscious thought was always the same. Would it be today that the castle fell? Today that his mother was taken prisoner? His worry about recognition seemed a small care, indeed, when measured against the dread that he’d never see his mother again.
His dogs were rooting in the coverlets, for he’d eaten bread and jam in bed for breakfast and spilled enough crumbs to warrant their attention. Wolf gulped down the last morsel, then began to bark. The female dyrehund joined in, and a moment later Robert entered the chamber.
“Wareham Castle surrendered to me this morning,” he said, not sounding at all like a man who’d just gained a significant victory.
Henry scrambled down from the bed. “What will you do now?”
“What I’d hoped to avoid-lay siege to Oxford. We’ve got to muster as many men as we can, so I’ve summoned all our allies to meet me at Cirencester.”
“Will you take me with you to Cirencester?” Henry asked, and was very relieved when his uncle nodded. “Uncle Robert…you do not think we’ll be able to rescue Mama, do you?”
Robert debated the merits of a kind lie versus a cruel truth, but he waited too long to make up his mind, and his hesitation confirmed the worst of Henry’s fears. He turned away, knelt by the closest of his dogs, and buried his face in the dyrehund’s thick, silvery ruff. “If Stephen captures the castle, will he hurt my mother?”
“No,” Robert said swiftly, “he would not harm her. Not Stephen.”
Henry glanced up, eyes wide and very dark in the candle-lit shadows. “But he would not let her go,” he said, and Robert slowly shook his head.
“No, lad,” he admitted. “He would not let her go.”
27
Oxford Castle, England
December 1142
It was snowing again. From his vantage point up on the castle battlements, Ranulf gazed out upon a frigid, frozen landscape of barren, foreboding beauty. Stephen had set up his quarters at the king’s house north of the city walls. Much of his army was billeted within the town, but he’d established an outer defensive perimeter, and at night it looked as if the city were ringed with flames. Now it was midday and the blowing snow hid the smoldering campfires. So much snow had fallen in December that it even covered up the uglier scars of the siege: the newly dug graves in the outer bailey, the churned-up, pitted earth where mangonel missiles had landed, the ruins of the stables, which had been ignited by a flaming arrow more than a month ago. The snow muffled sound, blurred vision, and transformed the familiar and known into another world altogether, one pristine and alien and eerily, deceptively tranquil.
Ranulf did not remain up on the battlements for long; the wind soon drove him to seek shelter inside. Not that it was so much warmer indoors. As their food supplies had dwindled, so, too, had their fuel. Their firewood had been consumed weeks ago. These days they kept fires burning only in the great hall and the kitchen, but even so, they’d slowly stripped the castle of most of its furniture. Stamping snow from his boots, Ranulf hastened toward the open hearth. Other men were taking their turns there, too, thawing out. Only the ailing had the privilege of staying put, and there were always a few blanket-clad figures crouching close to the flames, for their increasingly Spartan diet and the constant cold were taking an inevitable toll.
The faces around him were grim and pale and gaunt, for hunger had become the enemy lurking within, Stephen’s remorseless accomplice. They had not been as careful with food as they ought in the beginning, confident that aid would be forthcoming. By Martinmas, though, they were on strict rationing, and Maude had contributed greatly to the men’s morale by insisting that portions be shared equally; the highborn usually claimed more than their just due.
As the provisions in their larder were depleted, they’d killed the castle livestock, one by one, and then their horses. Ranulf had hated that. But they had no more grain to feed the animals, and less and less to feed themselves, so it mattered little whether he liked it or not. If the siege dragged on for another month, he might have to make a wrenching decision about his dyrehunds. So far he’d been sharing his own meagre allotment with them, and even if men thought it was foolishly sentimental of him, they kept their opinions to themselves, for he was a king’s son and the empress’s brother. But that could all change if the spectre of starvation became a real danger.
Moving reluctantly away from the hearth, Ranulf began to look for Hugh de Plucknet. It took a while, for it was hard to distinguish one bundled form from another. Eventually he found Hugh slouching morosely in a corner, playing a game of merels with Alexander de Bohun, the Angevin captain of Maude’s household knights. Alexander aligned his pieces in a row just as Ranulf joined them, and both he and Ranulf braced themselves for Hugh’s complaints; the hotheaded Breton was a notoriously poor loser. Now, though, he did not react at all, demonstrating anew how the siege was sapping their spirits.
They made room for Ranulf in the window seat, but no one bothered to talk; it expended too much energy and what was there to say? Beyond the castle walls, the world went on as usual, but they no longer seemed to have a part in it. Ranulf in particular found the isolation hard to endure; it was, he thought, like a foretaste of death, the smothering silence of the grave.
They’d had but one outside contact since the siege began. A daring archer had gotten himself admitted into the city, waited till dark, and then shot an arrow over the castle wall, with a letter from Brien Fitz Count wrapped around the shaft. Brien assured them that he’d sent for Robert. He’d had no luck luring Stephen out to do battle, but he’d been doing all he could to harass and harry Stephen’s occupying army, engaging in hit-and-run raids, disrupting Stephen’s supply barges as they paddled upriver past Wallingford. But Stephen ignored the challenges, and rerouted his supply trains overland.
And since then, nothing. October had yielded to November and then December. The snows came and the noose tightened. What, indeed, was there to talk about?
Alexander was too restless to sit for long and soon wandered off. Ranulf and Hug
h were trying to muster up enough enthusiasm for another game of merels when Rob d’Oilly headed their way. Never the most articulate of men, he seemed even more tongue-tied then usual. “Did Maude tell you about our talk?” When Ranulf shook his head, Rob frowned and worried his thumbnail between his teeth. “I spoke to her last night. I told her that…that we ought to consider surrendering.”
Ranulf’s “No!” merged and echoed with Hugh’s equally impassioned protest, and Rob flushed. “I do not want it that way,” he insisted, “God knows I do not. But there comes a time when resistance for its own sake makes no sense. We’re past the point of hope, and are merely prolonging our own suffering. I understand if you do not want to hear that, but it must be said. And Maude knew that, too, for she did not argue.”
“She agreed with you? I do not believe that!”
“Well, she did not say it in so many words, Ranulf, but she listened to what I had to say and made no protest. If you want my opinion, I think she is losing heart for this struggle. Women are not meant for hardships and privation, after all. They despair more easily than men-”
“You’re raving! Maude is braver than any man I know!” Ranulf snapped, and Hugh chimed in, no less indignantly, arguing that Maude would starve ere she’d surrender.
“Then why is she acting so oddly? Why did she say nothing when I talked of surrender? And…and there is more, Ranulf. When I came to her chamber this morn, she was behaving in a most peculiar manner. She and Minna…they were sewing!”
Ranulf and Hugh exchanged astonished glances, and then both burst out laughing. “Good God-sewing? That is indeed proof of madness!”
Rob bridled, his face getting even hotter. “Do not mock me till you’ve heard it all. The room was in utter disarray, the coverlets thrown on the floor, the bed stripped, coffers open as if they’d been searching for something. And there they were, sewing away in the midst of all this chaos, so intently you’d think they were getting paid by the stitch. And mind you, they were not mending old clothes, or even making new ones. They were cutting up and hemming bed sheets!”
“Sheets?” Ranulf said blankly. “Are you sure, Rob? What could they possibly make out of bed sheets?”
“That is what I’ve been trying to tell you.” Rob frowned again, lowered his voice, and said uneasily, “I’ve thought upon it and I can come up with only one answer-a burial shroud.”
Ranulf did not share Rob’s anxiety about Maude’s emotional state; he knew their sister better than Rob. He was curious, though, about those mysterious bed sheets. But when he sought Maude out, she shrugged off his curiosity with a cryptic smile, saying she’d explain that evening, after Vespers.
The twilight service was held in the chapel adjoining St George’s Tower. It was well attended; most men found that their piety increased in direct proportion to the urgency of their need. Once it was over, Ranulf accompanied Maude and Minna across the snow-drifted bailey, back to Maude’s chamber in the upper story of the keep. There they found Alexander de Bohun, Hugh de Plucknet, William Marshal, and Adam of Ely, Maude’s clerk, awaiting her return. They were soon joined by William Defuble, another of Maude’s knights.
Ranulf could not help smiling, thinking they made an odd sight, indeed: muffled in mantles up to their ears, their breath frosting the air as they searched for seats; the castle’s chairs, benches, and stools had long ago gone up in smoke. Rob d’Oilly was the last one to arrive. As a rule, Maude did not like to be kept waiting. Tonight, though, she seemed quite tolerant of Rob’s tardiness, which confirmed Ranulf’s suspicions-his sister had something in mind, and he’d wager the surety of his soul that it was not surrender.
“I have been giving thought to what you said, Rob, and I have decided that you are right. Our men have put up a gallant defense, but they have endured enough. The time has come to put an end to this. If you offer to surrender the castle, you ought to be able to get generous terms from Stephen, a promise that the garrison goes free.”
Rob looked relieved, the other men stunned. “Maude, no!” Ranulf exclaimed. “It may seem hopeless, I’ll not deny that. But you cannot give up. If you surrender, you’ll be shut away from the world for the rest of your life. Stephen will never let you go!”
“I am not giving up, Ranulf. And I have no intention of surrendering to Stephen. But it is obvious by now that we have no reasonable hopes of being rescued. Robert would never abandon me. If he has not come to my aid, it is because he cannot. So it is up to me to save myself-if I can-by escaping from the castle.”
“My lady, I doubt neither your resolve nor your enterprise, and for certes, not your courage. But this time I fear you are well and truly trapped. You cannot very well fly over the castle walls, and every gate is watched night and day by Stephen’s sentries, even the little postern in the west wall.”
“No, Hugh, I cannot fly over the wall,” Maude agreed, with just the hint of a smile. “But I could be lowered down from St George’s Tower onto the iced-over moat. The marshes must be frozen solid by now, and the river, too. If I am right, I ought to be able to cross in safety. If I am wrong…” A slight shrug. “As I see it, I do not have much to lose.”
She did, of course. She was putting up the highest of all stakes-her life. But Ranulf would have made the same wager, had he been the one facing a lifetime’s imprisonment. “You are proposing, then, to walk right through Stephen’s lines? That is without doubt the maddest idea I’ve ever heard. When do we try it?”
Maude looked at him and laughed. “Tonight…after it is full dark.”
“Would it not be safer to wait until the snow stopped? To be out and afoot on such a night…you’d have as much to fear from the weather, Maude, as from Stephen’s men.”
Marveling at his slowness, Maude said patiently, “What better cover could I have, Rob, than a snowstorm? Stephen’s guards will not be able to see beyond the noses on their own faces, and they’ll be too cold and wretched to be showing much zeal for sentry duty. With but a bit of luck, we ought to be well-nigh invisible. Show them, Minna.”
Even as Minna reached into the closest coffer, Ranulf had a sudden epiphany. “The sheets!” he cried, bursting into enlightened laughter. Hugh began to laugh, too. The others remained perplexed-until Minna straightened, holding up her handiwork for them to see: a hooded mantle as white as milk…or newly fallen snow.
By now they were all laughing. Maude passed the white cloaks around for their admiring inspection. “I count four of these remarkable garments,” Hugh said, “and since two are already spoken for, I hereby lay claim to the third. Who gets the last one?”
Alexander de Bohun looked irked that it should even be open to question. But before he could speak, Maude headed him off. “I would like you to remain at the castle, Alex, so you might assist Rob in striking a deal with Stephen.” The words themselves were bland; the real message was relayed as their eyes met. They’d been together long enough to read each other without difficulty, and Alexander understood at once what Maude was telling him-that she wanted him to keep Rob from making any costly errors in the negotiations with Stephen. He did not like it any, but he did not argue; he shared her doubts about Rob’s judgment.
“The fourth man has to be a local lad,” Ranulf pointed out, “someone who knows every lane and deer track in the shire. Stephen’s sentries are not going to be the only snow-blind ones out there. Without a truly trustworthy guide, we’re likely to wander around out in the woods till we freeze to death.”
Their eyes all turned toward Rob, who was quiet for a few moments, his brow furrowed in thought. And then he smiled. “I know just the man you need. He was born and bred in Berkshire, could probably find his way to Wallingford in his sleep. And he is cocky enough to jump at the chance to show off his tracking skills. Moreover, he has a brother or a cousin-I’m not sure which-who took vows at St Mary’s Abbey. You will be heading for Abingdon first?”
Maude nodded, moved to the coffer chest, and drew out a small leather-bound book. “Rob, I want you to
keep this safe. There are two letters hidden in the binding, one to Robert, telling him that this was my doing and my choice, and one to my sons…just in case.”
They looked at one another, the edgy laughter stilled, acknowledging in their sudden silence the magnitude of the risk and the slim likelihood of success.
They gathered in an upper chamber of St George’s Tower shortly before midnight. The only light was a flickering oil lamp, and when they were ready to unlatch the shutters, Minna prudently blew upon the sputtering wick, for darkness was their only defense, the continuing snowfall their only hope.
Their preparations had been made. Hugh had a small sack filled with dried meat, Ranulf carried flint and tinder, Maude a pouch in which coins had been wrapped in cloth to keep them from clinking, and the men had wineskins hooked to their belts. The farewells had already been said, and Maude had coached Rob in how to deal with Stephen’s demands. “Tell him,” she instructed, “that you ask nothing on my behalf, that your concern is for the safety of the garrison. That way he cannot accuse you of lying later, once he learns I am gone.”
Their guide was a skinny, undersized youth, barely twenty, with an unkempt shock of fair hair, so blond it looked white, and as incongruous a name as they could imagine: Sampson. At first glance, he seemed an unlikely candidate for such a dangerous mission. But his slender build was deceptive; he was as lean and lithe as a greyhound and as eager to hunt. “Are we ready?” he queried jauntily, sounding for all the world as if they were embarking upon a grand adventure instead of attempting to cross through enemy lines in the midst of a snowstorm. “I’ll go first,” he offered, swinging his legs over the window ledge. A moment later, he was gone, climbing down the rope so rapidly that he made it look easy.
Ranulf was the next to go. “If any of you whoresons eat my dogs once I’m gone, I’ll come back from the grave if need be to make you pay,” he warned, and launched himself out into space to the accompaniment of joking threats about dyrehund stew. His trip was a lot rougher than Sampson’s had been; buffeted by the wind, he was bumped bruisingly against the tower, and slid the last few feet, leaving rope burns on his palms.
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