Winter Siege

by Ariana Franklin

  ‘It’s against custom,’ Merrygo grumbled. Custom was the law at Kenniford; its people lived by it, their memories of what they owed to its lord and what they were due in return going back for generations.

  ‘It may have escaped your notice that we’re at war, and that we’ve just been besieged!’ Matilda snapped at him. ‘Just work harder.’

  Pampi the gooseherd had also complained at extra duty because his geese were let out at night to patrol the walls and give a cackle of alarm if they heard an enemy approach. (Father Nimbus said it was how Rome had been saved from the Gauls.) She’d allowed him an extra penny for that – she couldn’t afford more and felt she’d been generous enough.

  It was a fine March day she looked out on, almost as warm as late spring. Daffodils were nestling in the fields’ balks and rooks were building nests in the elms on the Crowmarsh bank.

  Around the castle itself there were few birds, apart from some sparrows vying with the hens for insects in the moss between the cobblestones. The stone dovecote by the pond with its beautiful louvred turret of a roof was empty. After the bad and hungry winter, not one of its birds had remained uneaten. Gorbag had even cast a rapacious eye towards the mews, but Maud had told him that if any of her hawks were touched he would go into the cooking pot with them. Hadn’t her peregrine brought down a heron only that morning as a contribution to the communal stew?

  She grieved for the cherry trees, but the apple orchard behind the church still stood and some early bees were emerging from the skeps in the outer bailey to buzz around the small plumes of blossom emerging on its twigs.

  Despite lack of fodder for the castle’s stock during the winter, they’d been able to save a few animals from the annual slaughter – the rest were now in pieces, packed in barrels of salt – and a decent-sized herd was now grazing on the pasture down by the river bend under the eye of Wal, the cowherd, who was equipped with a hand-bell to be rung at the first sign of enemy horsemen, the threat from which was still present. In the sties, piglets were suckling from a fat, indolent sow.

  Bart the dairyman (sixpence a week and a seat at the hall table at Michaelmas) had set his daughter to turning the churn handle while he practised his archery in the outer bailey, and the clunk-clunk of forming butter inside it made a bass counterpoint to the tang-tang coming from the smithy where Jack the armourer (eighteen pence a week and four ells of cloth at Christmas) was mending hauberks. And here, with long strings of trout over their shoulders, came Tove and his son fresh from the river.

  On the whole, it was a satisfactory scene, considering. The gardens of the huddled reed-thatched houses that arched together down one side of the bailey were planted neatly with herbs, half of which had to be given to Maud’s kitchens. Their neatness emphasized the gimcrack cottage of Napper, where weeds sprouted even on his sagging roof. She’d had him whipped for laziness and drunkenness more times than either of them could remember, a punishment he’d taken in good part and without improvement, yet an exasperated fondness for him held her back from turning him out. On form nobody could make tablecloths and napery for the hall table like him, but his real genius when sober – after all, who needed napkins these days? – was for poaching. Keep him away from ale by day and, by night, he could creep out unseen and pheasants would come scurrying into his sack like ducklings following their mother.

  ‘Your sack, my pheasants,’ Maud said, taking all but one off him.

  Nevertheless, she thought, though they complained, not one of these people with her had ever begged her to desert the Empress’s cause and go over to Stephen for a quieter life. She was their overlord; they distrusted any other.

  The Empress herself was now safely ensconced in Bristol, reunited with her son under the protective wing of Robert of Gloucester.

  ‘Good,’ Maud said when the news reached her. ‘Hope she stays there.’ Which wasn’t strictly true; yes, she would be happy, for all the fealty she’d sworn, never to see the Empress again, but there was a certain mercenary she missed more than she would admit.

  Since the night he had galloped away, the ever-faithful Milburga had noticed that a certain spark had been extinguished from her mistress and that the blue bliaut in which she had been so gloriously vain was never requested again.

  Meanwhile, Penda’s physical recovery continued apace thanks to Milburga’s excellent nursing and no little fuss from Gwil. Her adjustment to life as a woman, however, was proving more difficult and she was haunted by an enormous sense of loss. It had, she realized, been a privilege to have shared in the lordship that belonged to all men, even the meanest, and now that she was forced to embrace the vulnerability of all women (and of all women Penda had known the most extreme form) she was frightened.

  During her early convalescence she and Gwil spent many hours weaving together the threads of her story; each consolidating gaps in the other’s knowledge. The only detail he withheld from her was the significance of the quill case because he still felt the monk’s ever-present threat deep within his bones like an impending storm.

  Only once did she ask about the strange object she remembered clutching as she staggered to the church, but when she did so he affected a sudden vagueness and pretended not to remember.

  ‘Blimey, Pen! Can’t expect me to remember every last detail; you kept me pretty busy that night.’ And bless her, she was easily diverted, never once connecting the curious scroll he carried with him at all times with the object she remembered.

  Sometimes, when the memories got too much and he saw the sadness in her eyes, he would tease her: ‘You was a proper web-foot – a real fenlander – when I come across you.’

  ‘Web-foot,’ she said wonderingly, ‘I was a web-foot.’ It made her smile.

  She needed an attachment, he realized, like a boat eddying in a storm needed an anchor to hold it fast, and he promised her that as soon as she was well enough and conditions were safe enough, they would leave Kenniford and head to the fens to find her family. She talked about them a good deal these days, now that she could remember, and clearly longed to see them again. Whatever the future held, he could not deprive her of that.

  ‘Oh, could we, Gwil? Could we really?’ she asked, her eyes lighting up. ‘I so want to. We could settle there, you and me, go wildfowling like we did before …’ And then she stopped mid-sentence, suddenly crestfallen. ‘I’m being selfish again, aren’t I?’ she added, staring miserably at the ground. ‘You’re happy here now, ain’t you? Important. What would you want to come away with me for? I should have thought …’

  He took her hand. ‘Course I do,’ he said and meant it. ‘Don’t forget, Pen, I’m a mercenary first and foremost. Never been one to stay in one place too long. Give it a little while longer, though, let it all calm down out there an’ then I’ll take you home.’

  She brightened again. It was settled.

  Inevitably the news that she was, in fact, female spread around the castle like wildfire, as she was afraid it would. She had dreaded most the reaction of her fellow archers but, oddly enough, they had greeted the discovery with I-told-you-so-no-you-never nudges at each other. For a while she had been unable to face them but it was Father Nimbus who reassured her that she should and told her that they’d be happy for her.

  ‘I think it came as something of a relief,’ he said one day, taking her aside after Matins. ‘They were becoming concerned by your lack of beard, the unbroken voice, afraid it might be a succubus who outstripped them, which would bring more shame than to be outstripped by a woman. You quite disturbed some who had begun to question their own desires, my dear …’ Father Nimbus heard confessions; he knew almost everything. ‘Yes, all in all, I think you need not be afraid; the most you will have to bear is banter.’

  And banter there was, heavy-handed some of it too: heads adorned with women’s bonnets, mincing walks, yes. But no molestation; they had been comrades too long.

  ‘So she’s got tits,’ they rationalized among one another. ‘Still the best archer we got.’
And eventually even the bantering died down and they accepted her.

  For a long time, however, she refused to give up her boys’ clothes.

  ‘It’s time,’ Milburga announced one morning before breakfast casting a scornful eye over her. ‘Getting on people’s nerves, you are, pretending to be what you ain’t. Father Nimbus, now, everybody knows he’s more womanish than a fella and they don’t mind acause of his goodness, but bein’ a boy don’t suit you.’

  ‘Well, I think it does,’ Penda muttered.

  ‘Not any more it don’t,’ Milburga said firmly. ‘Now, I got a nice piece o’ scarlet worsted as I can get sewn up pretty into a kirtle for you. I was saving it but my old broadcloth’ll still do – we ain’t got grand guests round here no more anyways.’

  When it was ready, some days later, Penda was summoned to the solar to try it on, but when the call came she was so reluctant that Gwil had to go too, cajoling her all the way.

  ‘Get off!’ she hissed, shrugging his guiding hand off her shoulder

  ‘What’s up, Pen?’ he asked, grinning. ‘Don’t you want a nice dress? It’ll make you look pretty. Want to look pretty, don’t you?’

  ‘No,’ she said truculently, ‘I don’t.’ But he pretended not to hear as he followed her up the stairs and chivvied her into the solar.

  Inside the room Maud and Milburga stood side by side proudly holding up a kirtle of such vivid scarlet that, to Penda’s eyes anyway, it looked more like a sheet of flame. She flinched and started backing towards the door. And yet even as her feet were dragging her to freedom she knew she must change; for one thing the reflection in Gwil’s highly polished shield that had always acted as her mirror had begun to show a distortion which was not simply due to the shield’s convexity. There was no doubt about it, she was becoming odd-looking, her face too old suddenly, too knowing for the juvenile cap and short cloak that was its pretence. And the lumps on her chest, now that she was no longer able to bind them flat – Milburga had confiscated the strips of cloth with which she had done so and forbidden their replacement – looked like a malformity. ‘You’ve gotten weird,’ she told herself and yet somehow it was an image of weirdness she wanted to cling to.

  And now here she was blinking like a baby in the bright light of the solar before another weird image, helpless as a hare in a trap as the women advanced on her waving the kirtle like a weapon. Suddenly she was in the grip of panic, and although she could see their mouths moving as they approached, she was unable to hear their words beyond the cacophony of the blood pounding in her ears.

  She was going to faint. She was going to faint like a bloody stupid girl and there was nothing she could do about it; but as her legs buckled and she turned to Gwil to save her the bastard grinned, shimmied sideways and disappeared through the door like a thief.

  ‘Stop screaming!’ Milburga shouted, grabbing her firmly by the shoulders and shaking her. And suddenly Penda could hear again. ‘Making such a silly fuss. Ain’t going to kill you.’ They both had hold of her now and were dragging her into the middle of the room. ‘Now you take off them silly clothes – we’ll turn us backs if that’s what you want – and put this on.’ And pressing the garment into her hands they turned their backs, folded their arms and stood waiting.

  Slowly, reluctantly, Penda took off her clothes to the accompaniment of two pairs of feet tapping impatiently behind her.

  Even the air felt hostile on her naked skin, cold, uncompromising; she could feel the goosebumps rising and began to wonder slyly whether they would notice if she kept her braies and stockings on underneath the dress. On the other hand, she knew only too well that there was not much which escaped Milburga, so, with huge reluctance, she removed them too, dropping them on to the pile of discarded rags which lay at her feet like a shroud.

  ‘I’m ready,’ she announced eventually, when she had fought her way through the mysterious, seemingly endless folds of worsted.

  Both women turned around and gasped.

  ‘Well!’ Milburga said with emphasis.

  ‘Well!’ echoed Maud.

  Penda squinted at them, trying to read their faces, but they were regarding her in a way she didn’t recognize; and they were smiling.

  The look on their faces wasn’t pity, she was pretty sure of that, not mockery either: she knew those expressions only too well; no, it was something else, something kindly, something warm, and suddenly it occurred to her that if she didn’t know better, she might mistake it for admiration or something very like it. It made her blush.

  ‘I think we should get Sir Gwilherm back,’ Maud said, turning to open the door, and before she knew it Gwil was standing there too and he was smiling at her in just the same way and when he spun his shield towards her she saw why.

  She was transformed. Her reflection now showed an elegant, sleek creature whose neck – though perhaps a little too sinewy from shooting – nevertheless added grace to the delicate head it upheld, and a face, a woman’s face framed by a dramatic cascade of scarlet curls.

  ‘I’m pretty!’ she said, amazed.

  ‘Very,’ said Maud.

  And when Penda started to cry it was Maud who stepped forward and put her arms around her and held her tenderly while she sobbed.

  ‘I’m not sure I can do this,’ Penda said.

  ‘Yes, you can,’ Maud said gently. ‘And I’ll help you.’

  She kept her promise too, surprising everyone with her patient pursuit of Penda’s rehabilitation. It was Maud who helped her dress in those early days, when it was still her instinct to rise before anyone else and slip into her boys’ garb, hoping no one would notice. Milburga was all for confiscating the pile of rags which she had kept bundled beneath her pillow ‘just in case’, but Maud insisted they were retained for comfort if not for wearing. It was Maud too who, from her own wardrobe, provided the long linen chainse for her to wear beneath the bliaut and it was she who instructed her how best to tie the double belt of cloth around her waist to make it fit more snugly.

  Inevitably there were occasions when her patience was tested; as when Penda, quite deliberately in Maud’s opinion, eschewed all femininity and reverted to trudging about the castle with a masculine gait and shoulders bowed.

  ‘You have breasts, woman!’ she would shout at her, poking her sharply in the back. ‘Stick them out.’

  Gwil watched the metamorphosis from a distance, sometimes with amusement but often with a sense of loss. Although she kept the name he had given her – she still didn’t feel like an ‘Emma’ she said – she was different now, beyond him somehow, and there were times when he caught sight of her across the bailey, a solitary, vulnerable figure, head bowed, kicking resentfully at the hem of her dress, which made his heart break.

  ‘What now, Lord, eh?’ he asked.

  Up to you as always, Gwil, the Lord replied, but you know what’s coming. You know who’s coming, so if I were you I’d get her away from here before it’s too late.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  ‘WHO’S COMING?’ THE scribe asks. ‘What did he mean?’

  His visits have become more frequent, more necessary, as his interest in the tale rises and the abbot’s health declines. He must hear the end of the story before the old man draws his last breath and yet it is a race against time. The breathing is more laboured now; the abbot tires more easily and the ever-watchful infirmarian is increasingly solicitous of his patient and disapproving of the scribe.

  The scribe sits closer to the bed to hear the voice which has become more faint; he dare not miss a word.

  ‘The Devil, that’s who,’ the abbot replies but the effort to speak, even to raise his head, exhausts him. He collapses back into the pillows with a heavy sigh and the infirmarian on the other side of the room looks up with a scowl. He disapproves of this business and will speak to the prior before the day is out. All this talk, all this questioning: it is too much for such a sick old man and should be stopped before it kills him. The scribe feels the disapproval emanating from him l
ike the wrath of God but although he shudders and shrinks a little he continues his interrogation anyway.

  ‘But the … er … siege, my lord.’ He is whispering now, which irritates the abbot, who has to crane his neck painfully to hear him. ‘It is … er … lifted, is it not? The castle is secure at last?’

  ‘Speak up!’ the abbot says sharply, revived by a sudden flash of temper. ‘Yes, yes, Kenniford is indeed secure for now. But let us not forget that it has thwarted the King once too often and that he cannot forgive. Remember, my son, he is vengeful.’ He gasps, gesturing weakly to the cup beside him, which the scribe lifts to his lips, cradling the old man’s head in the crook of his arm while he sips from it.

  ‘Thank you,’ the abbot says at last. ‘And now, I fear, we must prepare for the worst time. Beyond the brief peace at the castle, there is total anarchy. Private wars, a thousand or more unlicensed castles like a plague of deadly mushrooms sprouting over the countryside … plunder, pillage … devastation, starvation. And in the middle, hated most of all by a king and a fiend in the shape of a churchman, there is, alas, Kenniford.’

  Chapter Thirty

  ‘EIDER DUCK!’ SHOUTED Father Nimbus, hopping about so furiously in his skiff that he was nearly in danger of tipping himself into the river.

  ‘That were yesterday’s,’ Ben shouted back, ‘I ain’t letting nobody in on yesterday’s.’

  Gwil went down to the gatehouse to cuff the porter round the ear and set in motion the ponderous machinery that opened the gate. The traffic to and from the castle was flowing more freely again after the necessary restrictions imposed during the siege, but was not without its frustrations.

  ‘I am not a man who would deprive another of his employment lightly,’ Father Nimbus said as between them they pulled the skiff high on to the grass path that led round to the entrance, ‘but I do feel that Ben could be given a more suitable occupation than that of porter.’