Winter Siege

by Ariana Franklin

  It was late morning on the second day of their journey and they were riding through a beech wood carpeted in bluebells, its canopy interspersed with shafts of warm golden sunshine. The scene, the scent, the whole enchantment of the place made Milburga smile with pleasure and she glanced sideways at Maud to see whether it had lifted her spirits too, although judging by the bowed head and listless droop of the girl’s shoulders it had not.

  Milburga sighed. It pained her to look at her mistress, who looked as if all the stuffing had been knocked out of her; not that you could blame her, of course; what with losing poor old Girly and the castle and everything, she had every reason to be miserable; nevertheless, it shouldn’t be allowed to go on too long and Milburga vowed then and there that the moment they got to Bristol, she would set about putting it right. In the meantime – and this would be difficult – she would hold her tongue, leave Maud to her sorrows and give her time to grieve, the poor love.

  She sniffed, then turned her head away to dab surreptitiously at her eyes; these were dreadful times right enough and they didn’t even end with Maud. There was William too, looking like a wraith these days, so pale and skinny and refusing to eat or drink or talk to anyone either; but then God only knew what he’d suffered! Penda too, for that matter, smothered in a pall of grief just like Maud, only hers, if that were possible, was even thicker and more impermeable.

  Oh well, she comforted herself, not too much longer now; they should be at Bristol any day and in the meantime, there being nothing she could do for any of them, it was probably best not to look.

  On the fourth morning, as dawn broke, cold, hungry and almost blinded by exhaustion, they arrived at last on the outskirts of Bristol where an enormous golden castle rose out of the early morning mist like a miracle to greet them.

  ‘Wait here!’ Alan held up his hand and drew rein by the ochre banks of a huge river. A murmur of relief rippled through the procession like a breeze as they watched him clamp his heels hard against his horse’s flanks and gallop off towards the gatehouse to announce their arrival.

  ‘Welcome, welcome, my poor, poor darlings!’ Countess Mabel, the Earl of Gloucester’s doughty wife, stood beneath the portcullis holding out her arms as they staggered wearily over the drawbridge towards her.

  ‘You must be Maud,’ she said, clutching her to her bosom. ‘So sorry, so terribly, terribly sorry to hear what a beastly time you’ve had of it, my dear; I do know how it is. Robert and I have had such trouble in the Marches. Quite, quite horrid, I do know.’ And before Maud could respond or, indeed, extricate herself from the embrace, she felt the countess’s mighty chest rise against her cheek as a pair of enormous lungs filled like bellows and a voice, which could doubtless be heard in those distant Welsh Marches, bellowed: ‘MATILDA! MATILDA! THEY’RE HERE. COME QUICKLY.’

  It was all too much.

  Perhaps it was relief that they were safe at last, a belated reaction to what they had endured, extreme fatigue or simply the idea of the Empress being so unceremoniously summoned but, whatever it was – and even Maud herself didn’t know for sure – she began to laugh; quietly at first, an easily suppressible shuddering counterbalanced, in its early stages anyway, by Mabel’s solid bulk against which it rose like a voluptuous wave gathering mirth and momentum until finally – just as the Empress came gliding into view – she was so convulsed by it that the countess was forced to let her go. And there Maud stood, to the open-mouthed amazement of everyone else, insensible with laughter, tears spurting helplessly from her eyes, shaking like one of Gorbag’s jellies.

  Milburga came to the rescue, although whether Maud’s or the countess’s nobody knew.

  ‘My lady is tired,’ she said, taking her mistress’s hand and giving its palm a sharp, surreptitious pinch. ‘A rest perhaps?’

  ‘Indeed,’ said the bemused countess. ‘What a very good idea.’

  Once Maud had composed herself – a few sharp words from Milburga later – they were led to the keep through three enormous baileys, each one lined not with the ramshackle timber buildings of Kenniford but with stone-built constructions gleaming with modernity. Every spare inch of every quarter of the place was vibrant with well-ordered industry, a cacophony of sounds and a dazzling array of people.

  As they walked into the inner bailey an invisible wall of warm air blasted their faces like the breath of God from a vast kitchen housing three ovens, each one large enough to roast two oxen side by side and around which scores of cooks, bottlers, bakers and scullions buzzed like bees around a hive. Further on, beyond the great hall, teams of masons and painters were putting the finishing touches to a glorious chapel whose curved painted ceiling met the arches of its walls in a frieze of sculpted marble punctuated by windows of coloured glass. Milburga had never seen so much glass – or so much colour, come to that! And in the wards, among the many huntsmen, herdsmen and verderers who peopled the place, groups of outlandishly dressed men and women darted, bearing exotic silks and hides, furs and spices.

  ‘Merchants,’ Alan explained, amused by her open-mouthed wonder as they passed. ‘Foreigners.’

  Despite the grandeur of Bristol and its assault on their senses, Penda remembered almost nothing of her early days and weeks there, just as she remembered nothing of the flight from Kenniford; everything from Gwil’s death onwards was blank. Only the sharp pangs of grief reminded her that she was still alive; everything else was buried and apparently quite dead.

  ‘Alan it was come back to find you,’ Milburga told her later, although she had not asked. ‘And there you was, weeping like a baby and clinging to Gwil’s dead body and poor little William there clinging to you. Dragged you both away, he did, and you making all kinds of fuss and then not speaking nor eating, not for days and days; and I was afeared as how you was going to die of a broken heart.’

  Left to herself she would have done so but Milburga simply wouldn’t allow it.

  It was Milburga who undertook to chide and cajole her back to the living; reminding her of the necessity of food and rest; coercing her back to the rituals of life that, left to herself, she would otherwise neglect.

  ‘Ain’t no sense in all this flopping about,’ she would say brusquely, as she took a comb to Penda’s hair or tied the belt around her kirtle to stop it falling around her ankles like a sack round a stick. ‘Ain’t going to bring ‘im back, is it?’ And Penda would smile and shake her head, pretending, though only for Milburga’s sake, that it would not.

  Him … Gwil … Her grief for him was unremitting, sucking her to unholy depths like an unsuspecting traveller into a bog, only to spew her out again just as she prepared to drown. His memory infused everything she did and became the prism through which she was reluctantly discovering a world without him. She thought constantly about how much he would have loved this castle, its opulence and elegance and especially the calm order imposed throughout by the venerable Earl Robert.

  ‘You’d really like him, Gwil,’ she said, lifting her face to the heavens – despite Milburga’s chiding that a dialogue with the dead wasn’t healthy, she persisted. ‘Nothing like his sister; real charming he is, kind too, clever like her but nowhere near as haughty with it.’ Gwil would have approved of the Countess Mabel too, another of those redoubtable, aristocratic females by whom Penda was surrounded.

  Whether or not he would have noticed the change in the Empress, she wasn’t sure. He had never observed her quite as keenly as she had and the changes were subtle; nevertheless, she had changed as they all had.

  She was still beautiful, of course, in that glacial way of hers, but her hair was a little more grey-flecked nowadays and although her presence was still intimidating, somehow its ferocity had calmed, lending an impression of increased contentment. And the reason for it? By all accounts an unkempt, stocky, russet-headed boy of about William’s age who ran hither and yon all day with an energy which even Penda found ageing: her son, Henry.

  She got her first glimpse of them together in the hall at breakfast on
e morning, the Empress’s still elegance a sharp contrast to the fidgeting, chattering scruff of a boy beside her, who leaped up from his stool every so often as some new idea or other struck him, only to be forced back down by his mother. It was exhausting to watch but however badly he behaved, and his tantrums were infamous, the Empress would merely incline her head and patiently entreat him to do as he was told, wearing, at all times, an expression of such indulgent amusement that it was obvious to all who saw it that she adored him.

  ‘Future king. That’s what they say,’ said Milburga, following Penda’s gaze. ‘Little sod more like! Bright though. Very. They say it’s his brains what singed his hair red.’

  Indeed Henry’s precocious thirst for knowledge was such that his pursuit of his tutor – a certain Master Matthew – who was reputed, under normal circumstances, to have the wisdom of Solomon and the patience of saints – bordered on persecution. Henry was often seen chasing him around the castle battering him with question after question until the poor man appeared near collapse.

  And yet, however exasperating Henry could be, Penda was grateful to him for his kindness to William, whose grief, like hers, seemed boundless. The bright, self-possessed child of Kenniford days had dwindled to a listless shadow of himself. According to Tola, who attended him, he wet his bed nowadays, beset by night terrors in which he cried out in his sleep begging his dead father’s forgiveness for some imagined crime.

  ‘Blames hisself for what happened, poor little devil. Always the innocent what suffer, ain’t it?’ she said with a sorrowful shake of her head after one particularly bad night. And Penda could only agree that it was; and yet, to her shame, she found herself unable to console him. To be reminded of that night when they had clung together while the Devil did his work was more than she could bear and she could not speak about it.

  Fortunately, however, Henry Fitzempress had decided, quite unilaterally, that he and William were going to be friends.

  He appeared out of nowhere at Mass one morning, shuffling noisily into the pew beside Penda, whom he acknowledged with a broad grin, before leaning across her to engage William, sitting beside her, in an astonishingly loud whisper. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked, unabashed by the tutting and shushing which had struck up almost immediately around him.

  ‘William,’ William mouthed back, anxious not to offend his inquisitor but equally nervous about invoking the disapprobation of the other worshippers.

  ‘Good,’ said Henry cheerfully. ‘Well, I’m Henry. Do you know much about Vegetius?’

  William, looking bemused, turned to Penda, who could only shrug.

  ‘Oh, it’s all right,’ Henry added quickly, sensing the other boy’s discomfort. ‘Not many people do, but when I’m king all my soldiers will study him because he was very clever.’

  ‘Oh,’ said William.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Henry. ‘I’ll teach you all about him, if you like.’ Then he picked up the book he had brought with him and spent the rest of the service reading it, and Penda, who knew very little about letters, was nevertheless fairly certain that whatever it was, the Bible it wasn’t.

  After that the two became inseparable and Penda watched them, with a mixture of relief and gratitude, scampering out of the hall after breakfast every morning to go either to the tiltyard, or hunting, or the dreaded ‘vegetable lessons’ – as William referred to them – with Master Matthew.

  Time passed. A warm spring and a fine summer led to an exceptionally early harvest and for several days at the end of July the air in the wards hung thick with trailing clouds of chaff and dust, echoing with men’s sneezes as grain-laden carts trundled over the cobbles to bring in the harvest.

  One particularly glorious afternoon, Maud was enjoying a rare moment of peace, standing at the solar window overlooking the river, watching a kingfisher dart through the willow trees, its iridescent blue wings sparkling like sapphires in the late-afternoon sun.

  For the first time since their arrival in Bristol, nearly three months ago, she had managed, for almost an entire day, not to think about her future or dwell too much on her past and was feeling unusually happy. Of course she still grieved for Father Nimbus and for the loss of Kenniford, always would, and knew that at some point she would have to address her future – not that Lord Robert and Lady Mabel hadn’t been hospitable, they had, uncommonly so, it was just that now she was feeling better, she also felt redundant and bored and it didn’t suit her. Just for the moment though, just this afternoon, she would refuse to think about anything …

  It was remarkably warm for so late in the day; a haze of spent sunshine still hovered on the horizon and she yawned, leaning dreamily on the window sill, her chin in her hands, tasting the sweetness of the air.

  An unexpected knock on the door made her jump and she turned round, surprised to see the room behind her empty. She must have nodded off while the other women left. She was just about to call out, ‘Come in,’ when the door opened of its own accord and the Empress walked in.

  ‘No, don’t bother,’ she said as Maud’s hands flew to her head in a futile attempt to straighten her circlet. ‘It looks rather fetching drooped over your eye like that. Who knows? We might all be wearing them that way soon. Besides, I shan’t be here long. There was just a little matter I wanted to discuss with you.’ Then she stalked towards a chair in the middle of the room and sat down. Maud’s heart sank.

  ‘Now,’ said the Empress when she had made herself comfortable, her elegant hands folded neatly in her lap. ‘I remember you asked me once not to marry you off …’ She was looking up with that enigmatic, faint, cold smile which had chilled Maud’s spirits once before. ‘Remember?’

  Maud nodded, a fearful anticipation rendering her speechless. She had dreaded this moment since that terrible night, all those months ago, when they had waited together in the postern and she had made her plea.

  ‘Well, I’m afraid’ – the Empress continued looking beyond Maud to the window – ‘I have bad news …’

  Maud opened her mouth but before she could say anything the Empress raised her hand. ‘It’s no good remonstrating,’ she said firmly. ‘You are a prize, madam. Even without Kenniford your dowry is considerable; besides you have other estates and the fact of the matter is that one of my knights is in need of a reward, a rather substantial one too, so I’m left with no alternative but to give you to him.’

  Maud, by now leaning against the wall for support, clamped her hand to her forehead. In a single stroke her beautiful afternoon, her life had been ruined and she was powerless, once more, to do anything about it.

  ‘Oh, don’t look so glum.’ The Empress tutted, rising from her seat and turning to the door. ‘It’s not as bad as all that. Sir Alan of Ghent would make a rather pleasing husband, I would have thought. Better than your last one anyway.’

  Maud’s legs began to buckle under the shock. ‘SIR Alan!’ she repeated, gaping like a fish at the Empress’s retreating back.

  ‘Indeed,’ she replied over her shoulder. ‘Hasn’t he told you? I knighted him this morning.’

  ‘S’pose it shouldn’t ’ave come as a shock,’ Milburga confided to Penda later that evening as they prepared for bed. ‘But it did.’

  ‘But I thought she wanted to marry him?’ Penda asked, frowning; after all, or so it seemed to her, it was fairly obvious that they were in love.

  ‘Oh she did!’ Milburga replied. ‘Does! It’s just the way the Empress done it. Come as a bit of a shock, poor little love.’ She sniffed loudly, wiping her eyes with the back of her sleeve. For the rest of her life Milburga would regale anyone who would listen with the story of how her beloved mistress broke her heart for ever more when she told her that she was to be married again and whisked off to France.

  The days passed quickly after that in a flurry of wedding preparations. Milburga, with Penda as her underling, established herself at their forefront, setting about them like a whirlwind even though the slightest mention of the impending day sent her int
o a fit of sobbing.

  ‘Just give me a moment,’ she would say, her face raised to the heavens to breathe deeply of whatever it was that sustained her until the next bout. ‘Be all right in a moment.’ At which point Penda would put her arms around her and hold her until she was.

  Before they knew it, Lammas Day was upon them, the eve of harvest festival, and that evening, in the dwindling heat, as swallows swooped above their heads picking off the last of the day’s midges, they all sat down to a banquet on the lawn.

  Penda sat beside Maud on the dais, opposite Henry and William who, like many of the other diners, proudly sported the cuts and bruises sustained during the course of that morning’s game of football. It had taken place on a large strip of land on the demesne – ostensibly, a contest between two rival parishes who were bitterly disputing the rights to a local stream – but actually involved almost every able-bodied man and boy for miles around. Its aim, as far as Penda could make out, was to chase a spherical object the size of a large pumpkin, made from a leather-clad pig’s bladder stuffed almost to bursting with dried peas, the length of the field and pass it, by any means possible, between two posts at either end. It was both brutal and anarchic – she lost count of the number of bloody-nosed, broken-limbed casualties dragged past her during the course of it – but utterly compelling, somehow reminiscent of the Kenniford ramparts during the siege, and she had longed to join in.

  ‘What you fidgeting about like that for?’ Milburga asked at one point, as bored and disapproving of the game as Penda was excited.

  ‘I want to know what’s going on,’ she replied, stretching her neck and jumping up and down in an effort to see over the head of a tall man who was blocking her view. ‘I don’t understand the rules.’