Sir Giles uttered a half-laugh. "By the Lady Catherine's doing is the answer to all questions, but if you wish to know whys and wherefores, ask her yourself. There she sits."
Too stunned to utter a sound, Rannulf limped forward a few paces. There, indeed, she did sit, garbed in a travel-stained riding gown with a big smudge of dirt on her nose and her hair dark with dust. Rannulf opened his mouth, then closed it when he could get no sound out. Catherine raised her eyes to his, and there was a trepidation in them, but there was also a—a twinkle.
"Woman," Rannulf bellowed, "are you mad?"
That was obviously a rhetorical question which required no answer, being only an opener for a tirade to follow, but Catherine did not wish to be scolded in public. "No, my lord," she replied in a low, respectful tone.
Thrown off his stride by her reply, Rannulf looked around. "Why did you bring a woman to a besieged—"
There was no sense in finishing that question because Sir Giles, to whom it was addressed, had retreated to the safety of the other end of the hall. Rannulf gaped at his wife again.
"If you will take a deep breath," Catherine said gravely, "you will be better able to speak."
She knew the further impudence was likely to make Rannulf completely speechless with rage. Catherine did not care if Rannulf bellowed until the roof rose. She could even love his roaring anger. Anything was better than the cold rejection she had suffered when he was last at Sleaford. She did, however, prefer to be bellowed at in private. Since he seemed to be safely paralyzed, she rose and came to him.
"Do not blame Sir Giles," she said. "I forced him to take me. Moreover, there was no reason why I should not come. My lands, as you know, are settled on Geoffrey and Richard in the event that I die without an heir of my body. All that I love and desire is in this place. Wherefore should I not come?"
Rannulf's complexion could not change. The two fever spots burned in his cheeks above the all-pervading ugly gray, but his eyes went blank as if a shutter had closed in his soul. She had said she loved him, and he believed her, but he had not believed that love to be strong enough to make her ruin herself and the children for him.
"Come above to my chamber—such as it is," he muttered. "This is no place to speak of private matters."
When they had climbed the uneven, ladderlike stairs, he waved her to the one seat in the room. She was so calm, smiling at him, that Rannulf guessed she had not accepted defeat. Some new plan to recruit him into the rebel force was fermenting in that brain that should have belonged to a man.
"What do you think you can gain here?" he asked her. "What do you want of me?"
Perhaps Rannulf was not as sick as Geoffrey thought, but he had much fever. It was no time to quarrel about loyalty and expediency, Catherine decided.
"Lie down upon the bed," she replied, frowning at the dirty pallet. It was a poor place for a sick man to lie, but she had brought no bed, grudging the baggage space. "Let me see to your hurts. You have one wound that festers already, and all the others are like to do so."
A wave of unutterable fatigue swept Rannulf. He watched as Catherine began to open a little casket. She had not denied that she wanted something.
"You came here for some purpose," he insisted. "I owe you a great debt. Ask, and let me make answer. If my answer does not please you, you can still go."
It was well to humor a feverish man; to make him angrier could only hurt him. Catherine began to lay out her drugs and simples while she searched her mind for something to ask that would not be too obviously a sop.
"If you are so yielding," she soothed, "then give some dower to your daughter Mary. You are not well and this is a dangerous place. If aught befalls you here—or elsewhere—she will be penniless."
Rannulf could have wept with pain and weakness and weariness, yet he had a greater impulse to laugh. She was offering him a comfit as if he were a sick child. Such a woman! She saw she could not accomplish her large purpose just now, so she would accomplish a smaller one while she bided her time.
"Let me sit to write," he said thickly. "I will give her the manor and farms of Donnington. Will that content you?"
"Most suitable, my lord. That will content me full well. While you write, I will go down to order hot water to wash you."
The water was an excuse for Catherine to find Sir Andre. "My lord has given Mary Donnington," she said pointedly. "I have spoken to your brother, and he will not approach Soke for you. There is no other way but that you screw up your courage and ask him yourself, and that in haste. Now that he has dowered her, others will ask for her, or he may begin to think on it himself. At least put it in his mind that you desire her."
When Rannulf woke from the sleep of exhaustion which followed Catherine's careful treatment of his wounds, Andre was beside him. He looked around at the bare chamber, wondering whether his wife had really been there or whether he had been dreaming.
"Have I been out of my head?" he asked huskily.
"No, my lord."
Rannulf turned his head sharply at the trembling voice. "What ails you?"
"Do not slay me, my lord," Andre whispered, going down on his knees by the pallet. Rannulf went rigid, wondering if Catherine could have opened the keep to their enemies while he slept.
"It is not because of the manor," Andre hurried on, stumbling over the words, "but because I was afraid someone else would offer first. Also, I spoke to my brother, and he says that I dishonor us all by my secrecy. He says that I must ask you or leave your service, and although I fear it will come to the same thing in that you doubtless have the right to drive me forth, yet I must ask. Do not cast me out, my lord. You may say me nay, but I love you also. I would never do your daughter a hurt, even though I desire her—"
"Mary!" Relief swept Rannulf, a relief so acute that it left his body bathed in sweat and his limbs trembling.
Andre swallowed convulsively. "I have cast my eyes on your daughter," he gasped, "and my brother says I am damned. I know I had no right, but I meant no harm, and so good is she, so sweet, so—"
"Be quiet!" Rannulf ordered, afraid that he would burst into laughter and offend the poor trembling suitor.
Andre dropped his forehead to the edge of the cot, his neck stretched as if he awaited a sword blow. So here was the secret behind Andre's devotion, and a simple secret at that. It was true that an earl could look higher for a husband even for a bastard daughter, but to Rannulf's mind it was a fitting reward to bestow on the young man for having saved Geoffrey's life.
"In part you are of better blood than she," Rannulf said. "You know that her mother was a serving wench?"
Andre nodded, his heart beating so hard with hope now that it nearly choked him.
"Go to," Rannulf said after a rather long pause. "Send your brother to me, and if he does not object to your throwing yourself away on a maidservant's daughter, we will see what can be done."
Rannulf had planned to offer Andre vassalage and a keep of his own anyway, so that he would lose nothing by this arrangement. To be tied in blood to Fortesque would be very useful also, in case Catherine was taken with any wild notions of which he did not approve.
He lay quietly waiting for Sir Giles, but it was Catherine who came in when the door opened. She smiled down at Rannulf and brushed the hair back from his face.
"You have agreed. I saw it in his face when he came down. How kind you are. I have been trying to tell you that those children desired each other for a year, but you snapped at me every time I mentioned Mary's name."
Rannulf burst out laughing, and lifted himself so he could eat the soup she brought. "You have won this battle, but you will have time for no others. When the men are rested, I will send you home and the vassals of Soke back to their own lands. They will obey me in this, Catherine, for you have no business here nor have they. I have supplies sufficient and, with my vassals here, men sufficient."
Eustace was on the road himself only a day after Catherine. He could not stop her by force, he could no
t take the keep he had been besieging without the men she had spirited away, and he saw the failure of his entire plan to secure the east resulting from her action. Stephen's authority as king was his last hope to retrieve the situation. If the king ordered her and the men back, perhaps they would obey.
He found his father deep in the state of lethargy that had overcome him periodically since his mother's death. Stephen listened to him, but only shook his head.
"Oh, let them go. Take men from my forces. It is more necessary that Henry be detained than that we take this or that keep quickly."
"But Henry will not be detained. Do you think Rannulf will hold Crowmarsh now that his men are there? They will yield to the Angevin and turn upon us."
Something flickered in Stephen's eyes. "Nay, they will not. Besides, if Henry takes him prisoner, you need trouble about him no more."
For one long moment Eustace stared at his father as if he had changed into a serpent before his eyes. Then he burst into roars of laughter.
"Wonderful," he gasped, "wonderful. I would never have thought of that way to be rid of him without a stain upon our honor."
A quiver of shame passed through the weary king. Eustace thought that Henry must destroy so inveterate an enemy. That would have been his way because he would believe he could then win over the vassals. Rannulf's heir was only a boy. With his wife in the keep and available to be married to anyone the victor chose, Eustace would think he had all in his hands.
Stephen did not believe that Henry would choose that path. He would rather try to cozen Rannulf into joining him or, if he could not make him yield so far, take ransom and an oath of neutrality from him.
Stephen was not a murderer; to him it seemed that no one else could be.
Eustace, on the other hand, never doubted that Henry would murder a prisoner to achieve a purpose of his own. Nonetheless, he shook his head.
"It will not do," he said. "You must stop his vassals or Henry will have them and the east will never be secure."
"I will recall them in time. Let them at least bring Soke supplies. He will obey my orders. There is time."
"But there is no time! I tell you Henry is on the move toward Wallingford. I wrote you that I had that news last week."
Stephen rose and walked away from his son, his gait like that of a sleepwalker. "For me there has been too much time. Oh, God," he murmured, "release me from this torment. Let me die."
With those words repeating themselves like a litany in his brain, Eustace returned to his own quarters where he found a messenger from London awaiting him. The seal was his wife's and he very nearly cast the scroll aside, but he had to do something or burst. He broke open the letter and began to read.
After five minutes of perusal, he threw the parchment to the floor with a muffled scream of rage. How could a man be so cursed? To have an idiot wife as well as an idiot father. Who could conceive of the stupidity of women? She had received Gloucester, had she, and Gloucester had spoken of how regrettable it was that Eustace alone did not have the management of the war. Gloucester, the foremost rebel spy.
Eustace kicked the scroll into the empty fireplace and tore his hair. His hand fell on an empty goblet and he hurled it across the room. A stool followed that, and he had just grabbed the edge of a table to overset it when he paused and put the end he had lifted gently on the ground.
Ordinarily, whatever Constance was, Gloucester was not a fool. Ordinarily Gloucester did not make useless conversation. Therefore, if Gloucester had approached Constance, he must have had some reason. It was impossible that he should wish to seduce Constance; she was not sufficiently desirable. It was impossible that he should believe he could learn anything from her.
Hurriedly, Eustace picked the letter out of the fireplace and began to read it again. Puzzling out what Gloucester had been hinting at through the fog of Constance's misinterpretation was not easy, but after a third reading he shuddered and sought for a safe place to hide the parchment. It could not happen, he thought, but he did not reply to the letter.
Instead he applied himself to a plan for meeting and defeating Henry. The Angevin's troops had been moving and fighting steadily for months; they must be weary. The area around Crowmarsh was more familiar to Eustace than to Henry. Rannulf's vassals had to be rescued from Crowmarsh. Rannulf himself would have to be dealt with in another way, but the idea of rescue was good for it would make the men grateful to him.
Eustace rushed north again to fortify the land he had taken from Bigod, hurried back south to prod his father into taking similar precautions. He had news that confirmed his expectations. Henry's forces had arrived at Wallingford, but instead of assaulting and destroying Crowmarsh they had settled down to besiege it. Henry did not want to hurt these men; he wanted them to yield to him and join his forces.
The siege might have another purpose. When there are sufficient supplies a siege is very restful to men weary of fighting. Eustace speeded his preparations, and soon all was ready. Men and arms were ready, the route was decided upon, the plan of attack perfected. Still Eustace did not communicate with Constance. If she went ahead with such a shameful plan, a plan to murder her father-by-marriage, on her own, it was no affair of Eustace's. The immunity and large favors she might promise Gloucester were not binding upon him. If they met Henry and defeated him, Eustace planned to string Gloucester from the ramparts of the White Tower by his thumbs or his heels.
***
"You should never have come here," Rannulf sighed, twisting restlessly on the hard pallet. "How many are there now encamped about us?"
"I do not know, my lord," Catherine replied indifferently.
She had been in the hold five weeks, five weeks in daily and nightly attendance upon her husband, and they were further apart than ever. Rannulf had permitted the men and horses to rest for several days; he wished to try once to drive off the small force that was besieging him. But the force did not stay to fight.
When they were gone and Crowmarsh was free, Catherine had pleaded to stay one week—only one week to see if she could cure Rannulf's fever. Then she would go willingly. Otherwise, she said, her face burning and her eyes flashing, he would have to beat her unconscious or tie her screaming to her horse. Rannulf did not like the alternatives and he wished to be well. Her ministrations had already done him more good than any other treatment he had received. Before the week was out, however, Henry and his full army were upon them. Then they had really quarreled bitterly.
"You cannot withstand a whole army," Catherine had cried. "Yield."
"I have not been offered a chance to yield," Rannulf replied. "Can I yield if the terms are death? What terms will be offered, if I show myself ready to accept defeat without fighting?"
"You will never yield. You will see us all die to salve your pride."
"So much will I humble my pride, that I will beg safe-conduct for you and for your men. When you are free, you can make what terms you like."
"No, Rannulf, no. I had rather stay with you."
But Rannulf quarreled no more. He sent a herald with his petition. The herald returned with the reply that there was yet no one in the camp with sufficient authority to give or to deny safe-conduct. When Henry came, they would give him the message. Rannulf did not change his quarters as Catherine had feared, but he withdrew into some fastness within himself and thrust back every attempt of Catherine's to make amends. He resisted her with kindness, with more courtesy than he had ever shown her before, but with iron-hard determination. Five weeks had passed, but still there had been neither an attack nor an answer to Rannulf's request. He was certain that Henry was now in the besiegers' camp and that the refusal to communicate with him was deliberate, but there was nothing more he could do.
"I should go myself and see," he said restlessly to Catherine.
"You have two able captains on the walls at this moment. Is no one but you able to count? With your ears you can hear that there is no fighting. The Angevin's men do nothing today that they did
not do yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. They build a dike and a palisade."
"You should not have come here, Catherine."
"Is that the sixteenth or seventeenth time you have said that this morning?"
Rannulf turned restlessly again. "Are my arms and armor laid ready?" Catherine did not reply but shifted her body so that he could see the pile of accoutrements. "I cannot understand why they do not attack. Now they have more than enough men, and the defense here is laughable. Or why do they not ask us to yield? What nonsense is this earthwork with spikes above? We could not come out and do battle with a whole army, so why do they expend so much labor to keep us in? There must be some purpose in this. They can scarcely do it to give us the pleasure of picking off their men with our crossbows."
"Oh, Rannulf, you have told me the purpose yourself. They hope that Stephen will come to save the keep."
"He would be a fool to come. To keep Henry here while he swallows Bigod is his purpose."
"Does not all the world know that Stephen is a fool?"
"Your life and liberty are as much at stake as mine, since the safe-conduct has not been granted. Catherine, you should not have come here."
"Eighteen," Catherine said, and could not help but laugh in spite of her weariness and depression.
Rannulf cast a sharp glance at her, looked away, and laughed also. A moment later, however, he had lifted himself upright and reached for a shirt. There were footsteps hurrying up the stairs. Catherine frowned angrily, but made no protest except to hold him back with one hand so she could tighten the bandage on his thigh.
"Do not rise, my lord." Andre's voice came up the stairwell before his body appeared. "Nothing is yet taking place, but a large army is corning from the east, and—"
"Do not rise!"
Andre stood well out of range because Rannulf's voice was that which usually preceded a well-placed clout. "But there is nothing to disturb yourself for. They must have come to relieve us, not to attack. The men have all been called from the earthworks and are facing the river in arms."
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