Winter Siege

by Ariana Franklin

  ‘You all right, Pen?’ Gwil looked down, extending his hand to help her up, but as he reached out there was a sudden flash of metal and a brutal thud as the monk’s sword scythed on to his wrist. She heard Gwil cry out and saw the quill case he had been holding drop to the floor as the fingers of his injured hand unfurled like broken strings.

  The quill case!

  She had never understood its significance; all she knew for certain was that it was a talisman to him and that whatever power it held he would need now more than ever. The fact that the monk so desperately wanted it too made it imperative she find it first.

  With one eye on Gwil as he reeled from his injury, she shuffled across the floor on her knees to where it had fallen, her hands sifting and scrabbling through the filthy rushes as she went until, at last, she felt a familiar shape beneath her fingertips. She clutched it tightly in her fist and was about to scramble to her feet when a shadow fell across her.

  ‘Give it to me,’ a voice hissed.

  She shook her head but dared not look round; instead, her eyes screwed shut so tightly she thought they were going to burst, she began to pray: for Gwil, for William, for her own quick and painless death, for the safe deliverance of Kenniford; but even as her mouth moved around the litany she heard a sword rend the air above her …

  Our Father who art in Heaven … Concentrate … concentrate … Damn! What was it? … Oh yes, Hallowed be Thy name …

  Any moment now the blade would fall … God! Let it be sharp! Oh, let it be swift! Any moment now … But instead of the blow she expected, the soft thud of metal on flesh, she heard Gwil’s voice summoning the monk, silence and then the clashing of swords.

  By the time she had risen to her feet and got her bearings again the men were on the other side of the room where the rushlights, burned almost to nothing, flickered so dimly that the two circling, feinting figures merged almost completely into the shadows. Only the occasional gasp and the brutal beat of sword against sword broke the silence. Even William, standing beside her, his face buried in her skirts, had stopped his dreadful keening, too frightened even to breathe … Then suddenly there was a cry, the clattering of a sword as it tumbled on to the stone floor and a shriek of vicious jubilation from the monk.

  Gwil!

  He was unarmed now and helpless … She must do something! But what? Without a bow and arrow she was useless, worse than useless; she was nothing; besides, William was clinging to her so tightly she could barely move.

  ‘I have to go,’ she pleaded, trying to prise herself free of the small arms around her waist. ‘I have to go to Gwil!’ And as she struggled from his grasp, she pushed him towards the open door. ‘Run!’ she screamed over her shoulder as she sprinted across the room.

  When she was close enough to see clearly in the gloom, she saw Gwil lying in a pool of his own blood, struggling against his failing strength and the slipperiness of the rushes to get up; the monk was hovering over him, stabbing at him viciously every time he tried to get to his feet.

  ‘Hey!’ Penda screamed, holding up the quill case. ‘This is what you want! This, not him!’

  The monk turned.

  ‘See!’ she called, waggling it at him like a rattle at a baby. ‘I’ve got the bloody thing!’ And, raising it high above her head, she started edging slowly backwards, luring him away from the stricken man on the ground. For a moment, the tactic seemed to work and the monk teetered on the brink of following her, until, with a sudden change of heart, he wheeled back to Gwil with one last devastating thrust of his sword.

  Penda heard a scream, a primordial howl of such profound grief and suffering that her hands flew to her ears to block it out; only when she tasted the blood it had scoured from her throat did she realize it was hers.

  ‘Gwil!’ she called, slumping to her knees. ‘Gwil!’ But he made no response, even as the monk turned again and began advancing on her.

  She could only watch as the harbinger of death came gliding across the floor towards her, each footstep drawing her inexorably to the conclusion of her life, yet she felt strangely unafraid, enveloped in a peculiar numbness, as though such close proximity to her own demise had inured her against all other emotion. The last blessing of the condemned, she thought; or was it simply that, without Gwil, nothing mattered any more …?

  He was close now, so close in fact that she could smell him, and grinning at her as though they were playing a game: a deadly game of cat and mouse, except that she refused to play. If these were to be her last moments on earth, she was going to spend every last damn one of them avenging Gwil; at least she’d die fighting.

  He stopped within a yard of her, black, pitiless eyes boring into hers, but she glared back, steadfast, unblinking, and thought she saw, just for a moment anyway, a flicker of confusion cross his face.

  The grin faded.

  ‘Run,’ he hissed, jutting out his chin in a feint towards her, but she stood her ground, unflinching, flexing her arm instead to throw the quill case high into the air above his head and, as his eyes flicked briefly from hers to follow its trajectory, she launched herself at him with a punch. There was a sharp exhale of breath as the surprise and force of it rocked him backwards but, just as she prepared to hit him again, he hit her back.

  It was a blow heavy enough to send her flying across the room but not so devastating that she had no time to wonder – before the flagstones rose up to meet her – why he hadn’t killed her. Why, instead of running her through with his sword as he could so easily have done, he had deliberately turned his arm to clout her with the flat of the blade instead. That he intended to kill her eventually she had no doubt; yet twice now he had deliberately stopped short of it and she wondered why …

  At that point, the back of her head hit the floor and the room went black.

  She lay where she had fallen, drifting in and out of consciousness. When she opened her eyes everything seemed distant and confused: the room, the monk, Gwil, William were tiny, fuzzy specks on a shifting, undulating horizon; one minute there, the next not. But when she closed them it was as though she was no longer even in the room but back on the desolate fen, the beat of horses’ hooves drubbing in her ears and the ghost of the little girl, who had died and been reborn there, running through the marsh.

  She remembered that child so vividly now, the terror and loneliness, but most of all the overwhelming sense of shame she had felt as she cowered helplessly beneath the monk while he raped her … And there was something else … something about her hand! She had been holding something then just as she was now! Only this time it was not the quill case but a cold, heavy object which another small hand was fervently pressing into hers.

  She opened her eyes. A small shadow knelt beside her, imploring her to wake up as it tried to manipulate her fingers around the hilt of Gwil’s sword.

  ‘I came back,’ William whispered. ‘I got this for you.’ She took the sword from him and scrambled to her feet, then tucked it quickly into her belt behind her back.

  If anything the room was even darker now; the candles and rush-lights had burned to nothing, but, as she blinked away the darkness, she could just make out the monk standing in the middle of the room, perfectly still but for his hands, which were working methodically around a knot in the belt at his waist.

  So that was why he hadn’t killed her! Suddenly an instinct she had assumed long dead began to stutter and spark to life inside her like the embers of a fire after a breath of air.

  ‘Get out,’ she hissed at William. ‘Get out! Now!’ And saw her transformation reflected in his eyes as he flinched from her like a frightened animal. She watched him retreat towards the door out of the corner of her eye, fighting the urge to call him back, to give him one last reassuring hug, but the next moment he had vanished from the room and she turned back to face the monk.

  The moon had reappeared, shining through the narrow windows on to the grotesque panorama of the room, its pale light delicately silvering the congealing pools and sprays of
blood, the mutilated corpses and the now naked figure of the monk.

  ‘Come,’ he beckoned. She nodded in response, lowering her head meekly as she stepped over the rushes towards him.

  ‘Here I am,’ she said softly when she was close enough to hear the groan of pleasure as he reached towards her, his long fingers quivering like tendrils as they stretched to touch her hair.

  ‘Still red,’ he murmured, caressing the curls around her face with his fingertips, eyes half closed in ecstasy.

  ‘Doesn’t come much redder,’ she muttered, slipping her arms behind her back to grip the sword. ‘Red as blood, in fact,’ she added, as, in one deft movement, she slid the blade from her belt, swung it in front of her and plunged it into the monk’s chest.

  For a moment they stood like lovers, conjoined by the blade in her hands.

  ‘This is for Gwil,’ she whispered, forcing the weapon deeper into his flesh, her breath caressing the side of his face. ‘And this is for me,’ she said, as she twisted the hilt and wrenched it free.

  She watched dispassionately as he crumpled to the floor, and then sank to her knees in exhaustion.

  A sudden movement behind her made her jump and she leaped up, turning abruptly to see Gwil swaying on unsteady legs as he peered at the monk’s body over her shoulder.

  ‘Bastard dead, is he?’

  ‘Gwil!’ she cried, throwing her arms around him.

  ‘You all right, Pen?’

  ‘I thought you were dead,’ she said as she wept into his neck. ‘Oh God, Gwil, for a moment back there, I thought you were dead.’

  ‘Nah, not me, Pen,’ he said, but even as he spoke his legs buckled and he collapsed.

  ‘Gwil!’ She knelt beside him and tenderly lifted his head on to her lap; and in the cold dawn light now seeping through the windows she saw the mortal wound in his chest.

  ‘Just need a little rest, is all, Gwil,’ she said, clutching him to her and rocking him like a baby. ‘Just a little rest now and then we can get out of here. You’ll be right as rain in a day or two if I know you.’

  He nodded, smiling up at her, but she turned her face away to hide her tears.

  ‘That’s it, Pen,’ he said, his voice little more than a whisper. ‘Just a little rest …’

  ‘Just a little rest,’ she repeated, wiping roughly at her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘Because we’re going to get out of here, you and me, and then we’re going to go and live peaceful like we planned. Remember? The fens, remember? Remember what we planned, Gwil?’ She was speaking quickly, urgently, almost gabbling as she reminded him of the plans they had made, hoping that their memory could somehow tether his soul to his body for ever more. But he only smiled and nodded, murmuring something she couldn’t hear.

  ‘What’s that, Gwil?’ she asked, craning towards him, her tears dripping on to his chest. ‘Can’t hear you too well.’

  ‘Christ’s blood, Pen!’ He grimaced. ‘Not … going … to … make me repeat it, are you?’

  ‘Hush now,’ she said, stroking his face. ‘No need to go tiring yourself out with talk. Plenty of time for that later.’

  But Gwil shook his head. ‘Got … to … say this now, Pen … Got to tell you that … might’ve took a while … but truth is … the truth is that I couldn’t have loved you more nor been more proud of you if you was … well … if you was my own.’ Then he smiled and sank back into her lap.

  She saw him blink as his eyes grew tired and she lifted his hand to press it against her lips. ‘Don’t you ever say that, Gwilherm de Vannes … Don’t you ever, ever go saying stuff like that … You’re just tired is all … Wouldn’t be talking like that ’less you were.’

  But Gwil was no longer listening; instead he was looking beyond and through her as though at some invisible presence above her head.

  ‘She safe now, Lord, is she?’ she thought she heard him ask. ‘I do right by her in the end, did I?’ And then, in response to a reply audible to no one but him, Gwilherm de Vannes, bravest of men, gave one last contented sigh and closed his eyes.

  Chapter Forty

  ‘BRAVEST OF MEN. Bravest of men,’ the abbot murmurs.

  Outside the storm has cleared, the wind and rain have ceased their battery of the abbey roof and the trees on the rise stand upright and still again.

  With the little strength left to him, the old man rises on to his elbows to peer through the window, his rheumy eyes squinting into the light as he searches for something. When, at last, he finds it he drops back on to his pillows with a sigh. ‘Well, well,’ he says.

  The storm has blown the last leaf off the old oak tree …

  He smiles sadly as he turns towards the scribe. The once upright, eager young man now sits slumped and bowed on his stool, tears dripping indecorously off the end of his nose on to the tablet in his lap. The abbot’s face clouds with pity.

  This is a misery I have inflicted, he thinks, and is sorry for it, yet he cannot waver now.

  ‘So Gwil dies,’ the scribe says quietly.

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ says the abbot. ‘And Father Nimbus and countless other brave souls besides. Death came to Kenniford that night, as I warned you he would, and did not leave alone.’

  The scribe is silent for a moment; then he turns to the abbot: ‘But who admitted him, my lord? Who was “the serpent” you spoke of, “the betrayer” of Kenniford? I must know …’

  Silence again. The abbot is looking through the window once more.

  ‘My lord?’ Perhaps he has not heard him. ‘The one who betrayed them all? You have not named him.’

  ‘Have I not?’ he replies eventually. ‘It was William, in the mistaken belief that the monk could cure his father. Kigva had so convinced him of the restorative powers of the monk’s prayer that he resolved to get him back by any means; so on the day they met – as if by chance – on the riverbank, it was all too easy for Thancmar to persuade the boy that his motive for returning to the castle was pure. William was just a child, after all, and, besides, he loved his father.’

  ‘He must have suffered greatly, though,’ the scribe says softly. ‘William, I mean.’

  ‘Indeed,’ says the abbot, wiping away a tear, relieved that the young man is too busy writing to notice it.

  The scribe looks up. ‘And the others, my lord? What became of them?’

  The abbot cannot speak, lest his tone betray what he dares not; instead he raises his hand to motion for some water, which Brother Infirmarian brings quickly, administering the sips with his usual care whilst scowling his eternal rebuke at the scribe above the old man’s head.

  He sips the water gratefully and is once more revived by it. Death’s fingers may be tightening their bony grip but he will resist them just a little longer … He sighs again. ‘The terms of surrender were reasonable, as these things go; the survivors were at least granted safe passage out of the castle along, of course, with all Maud’s “useless mouths” – she insisted on it. They left that very night, heading west to find refuge with the Empress, turning their backs for ever on Kenniford, which, from then on, I fear, became an important stronghold for the King as his main crossing on the Thames.’

  ‘And Penda? And William?’ the scribe asks, leaning forwards anxiously. ‘What became of them?’

  ‘They survived,’ the abbot replies. ‘And now – if, that is, you will indulge me just a little longer – we must head to Bristol.’

  Chapter Forty-one

  WILLIAM OF YPRES was in a very good mood on the morning of the surrender. The invasion had gone rather well: better than expected actually. His casualties were minimal, the King had his longed-for crossing on the Thames and, to be perfectly honest, he simply didn’t have the appetite for a mass hanging today. No, all things considered, he would happily grant Lady Maud of Kenniford – although she would have to forget the ‘of Kenniford’ epithet from now on – a safe passage out of the castle along with all those who wanted to leave with her.

  A cock crowed as he watched the party of dispo
ssessed ride across the drawbridge for the last time. He yawned; all his munificence had made him sleepy.

  The journey to Bristol took the ragged cavalcade through a landscape punctuated by the marks of war: every other village a ruin of burned houses, flattened crops and slaughtered animals. Alan led the way, retracing the route he had taken with the Empress, traversing the uplands by day, seeking refuge in the cover of woods and forests by night; their movements trammelled at all times by an acute awareness of the gangs of outlaws who famously roamed the countryside preying on unsuspecting travellers. Not, as Milburga was quick to point out, that there was much worth stealing: a few half-lame palfreys, a couple of flea-ridden hounds and a rickety old cart containing the few casks of water and stale loaves Gorbag had managed to smuggle out of the kitchen before they left. Other than that there were only the clothes they stood up in, although, judging by the odours emanating from some she could mention, most of those could probably stand up and run away all by themselves.

  ‘Right bunch of tatterdemalions we are,’ she told Maud, turning in her saddle as she cast a critical eye over the caravan of dejected souls following behind. ‘Look too poor to be worth robbing; wouldn’t give us a second glance if I was them.’

  Maud smiled weakly but said nothing. She had barely uttered a word since they left Kenniford, for which Milburga blamed Father Nimbus. It wasn’t that she wasn’t grieving for him herself, mind, it was just that getting cross – as she always found anyway – was a good deal more enervating than feeling sad; not to mention there being a certain irony in the fact that the only person who had ever truly been able to comfort Maud was the dead priest himself.