Fires of Winter (46 page)

Later, when I could speak again, I said, “You do not need a bath. I love the woman smell of you.”

She laughed and answered that I would not love it long if she did not bathe at all, but I saw the way she was looking at my shoulder, where the rings of my mail had cut through my arming tunic and into my skin under the pressure of a blow I did not even remember. There were a number of other bruises on my body, and despite the sweet sated feeling that filled me, I began to wish I had left our loving until the dim light of a night candle would have concealed the marks.

“That was a bad fall,” Melusine said, frowning. “Were you drunk?”

“No, it was on the palisade,” I said, recalling what I had told her and delighted that she seemed to accept it. “I fell against a broken part, and rolled down—well, it may be that we had been celebrating our victory with a bit of wine. If you will let me up,” I added quickly, “I will show you something prettier than scrapes and scratches.” The less she thought about my story the better I would like it.

“Beast,” she remarked. “You think I am too big and heavy.”

“God, no!” I exclaimed. Then I laughed uneasily, remembering that I had thought that at first. Had she felt it and said nothing until now? I hoped not, but the rack would not make me admit it. I said what I knew would please—and it was true too, “But if you do not let me up, I will have more swellings.”

“A threat or a promise?” she asked, but she slid off me and sat up, pulling the blanket around her.

I did not answer that, only reached under the top of my pallet and drew out a roll of cloth, which I opened and set in her lap to show a headband of gold set with pearls. To my surprise, she did not touch it, and her eyes went all black and dull.

“You have been fighting,” she said.

“It is not loot,” I assured her. “I bought it here. I will take you to the goldsmith—”

She threw her arms around my neck then and hugged me. “Forgive me,” she cried. “I cannot bear to wear what was torn from some poor woman's grief.”

“No, dear heart,” I soothed, “but I am glad you told me. You may be sure that I will bring you no gifts that will burden your spirit.”

I did not say that the money I had used to buy the headband had been an exchange for my share of the cattle in Sudeley, which I could not use because I had no land. I had thought at the time of sending them to Jernaeve to be kept until Ulle was ours, but in the black cloud in which I had been living then I had lost hope of Ulle and did not think it worth the trouble to have the cattle driven all those miles north. I did not regret that now, seeing the pleasure with which Melusine set the band on her head and preened herself as I admired aloud how fine it looked against her dark hair. But she was not truly vain, and in a moment she had taken it off, dropped the blanket on me, and pulled on her clothing.

After I sat up and laced her gown, she bound up my foot and helped me dress. Then she laid out our dinner. At first we both ate with too much appetite to talk, but when the first edge of hunger was dulled, she said, “Tell me how bad our state is in the west.”

“Actually we have gained more than we have lost,” I replied. “Stephen is a great battle leader.” I saw her hand hesitate in bringing a piece of bread to her mouth, and I added hastily, “Even when he does not fight. Our trouble is not taking keeps nor defeating our enemies, it is meeting them.” And then I explained about the holding back of information, if not open treachery, of the sheriffs and the bishops and that because of that, even the yeomen and minor knights were afraid to support the king. Before I had even finished Melusine was nodding her head.

“You will not have that trouble in the south and east,” she said. “The queen has been busy.” Then she sighed. “We have traveled and traveled and traveled. I think we have been in every shire—and in every chartered town—from Durham to Dover.”

“Every town?” I echoed. “But—”

“Men!” she exclaimed. “You say burghers will not fight—”

“I say nothing of the kind,” I protested. “They will fight, but only to protect their own town.”

“But you do not need men, you need news—and where does news come quicker than to a town?”

I sat staring at her, remembering that it was the townsfolk of Malmesbury who came to the king for help, and it was again the townsfolk of Worcester who had brought the news of the attack—too late, but they had not been told to watch and warn the king; he had expected that service from the officers of the Crown. And Bath held steady for the king despite the nearness of Bristol and the rebels; the townsfolk had helped Stephen's garrison fight off many attacks.

“The burghers favor Stephen,” Melusine continued, “and they have reason to love the queen. I do not think any army will move east of Oxford without the king knowing. And I think the barons will be more faithful too. Some did not greet us very warmly—oh, did you know the queen has a small army of Flemings?—but I saw how they were eased and their loyalty confirmed after she spoke to them.”

I doubted much could be done with the barons of the west unless the king had a great victory there, but the towns were another matter. Surely it could do no harm to use the queen's idea, and I was certain Maud would convince Stephen to do so without difficulty. The king had little pride of birth, perhaps because he was sure of his nobility, and he had always valued and treated well and fairly the burghers of the realm. The trouble was that the west was less populous than the east; there were fewer towns, and many of those were already in rebel hands.

Still, there were free towns, and they did favor Stephen. I will not say that hope leapt free and full in my breast. To speak the truth, I still saw nothing ahead but years of battle, but with the southeast at peace and solidly for the king, the situation looked much different. I felt less concerned at the idea of a long confrontation with the rebels, and Melusine brought snippets of news that, always good, supported hope.

For more than a week, I kept to that single chamber so my foot could heal. I did not once ask to leave. I did not want to know how the court progressed. While I was with Melusine I was at peace. We played games—chess, and when we felt silly, riddles, or fox and geese, or nine man morris—we played other games too, in which no pieces or boards were needed, only soft words and soft touches. And we talked of many things, of her family and of mine, such as it was, which, of course, brought us to Audris and Hugh and Eric and Jernaeve…and Ulle.

It was strange that it should be I who remembered most vividly the beauty of the land, of purple hills against the sky and deep tarns with glints of silver streams falling into them from cliffs. Melusine saw Ulle as it must be now—so quiet it must be in the hills now with all the passes filled with snow and the lakes frozen over. I even told Melusine about the cattle, not saying they had been my share of the loot, but speaking of another man with land in the north and his doubts about having the beasts driven home. She smiled and said it was fortunate I had no part of that herd for such cattle were useless for Ulle. They needed a hardier breed, like the little wide-horned red cattle of Scotland—a good reason, she added, why Cumbrian men seldom raided south or east and had so little interest in the wars of England.

At the time I was aware of only the faintest twinge of discontent at my prospects of sweat and blood and pain compared with the long pleasures of holding Ulle and
not
caring a whit about wars. It was only a twinge, but it left a little sore place in my breast, and over the dreadful year that followed that twinge grew to an ache that gave me no rest. It was then that I realized what Melusine had done. She was much too clever to place hands on hips and scream at me like a shrew that all loyalty to Stephen could bring me was death; she had not that quicksilver lightness with which Audris could bedazzle and get her way. Melusine, dark and warm and sweet, held out peace and joy and pleasure to wean a man from a hard duty turned bitter with shame.

Mary the Merciful knows how that memory of Ulle ached within me, but the pain did not come at once, for the king and queen did not separate immediately after Epiphany and I still had Melusine. Then, too, despite the poor attendance at the court, at first the situation looked hopeful. A huge treasure had been uncovered in Salisbury's strong room, and Stephen had determined that so much could not belong to the Church but must have come from state revenues. I thought that likely, not that I would have cared much if it was Church coin, for the son of a whore does not get a very good view of priests and the Church. Moreover, neither my father nor Sir Oliver paid more than lip service and the smallest tithe they could manage to the Church. The one priest I knew as a child who was all good, Father Anselm, did not know what money was, I think. He had never taken more than the food he ate and the pallet he lay upon. He never asked even for a new robe, though his own was in such rags that Audris took it away and replaced it.

Everyone benefitted—although one of the benefits made me anxious because it meant that Melusine would have to go to France with the queen. There had been some talk about betrothing Eustace, the king's eldest son, now fourteen years of age, to the sister of the king of France. I knew Stephen desired it, hoping that Louis would help him recover Normandy from Matilda's husband, Geoffrey of Anjou, if he made Eustace duke of Normandy. But promises for the future, particularly when they can only be made good by large expenditures for armies, are a poor inducement to forming a relationship. Now with a huge bribe (called a bride price) available, Maud and Stephen were able to plan for the queen to go to France as soon as a safe passage seemed possible.

I was not pleased at the thought of losing even the chance of seeing Melusine for months, but I knew we would be fighting most of the time and comforted myself that she would be less likely to discover my lies and be worried if she were in France. Also, the benefits from Salisbury's hoard even trickled down to me, and when the king offered me the two payments of my pension that he was in arrears and a third for the coming quarter, I took it gladly and did not worry about where the coin came from. It was very welcome, because I found I spent far more than was sensible when I was with Melusine. She scolded, but I could not resist buying her little things that caught my eye—beads and thread for embroidery and rich cloth, red and gold; I loved to see her dark beauty glow in those colors.

After the queen left for France in February, the well of joy that had bubbled through my blood as long as I had Melusine died down. The spring was darker than the winter. It seemed as if a contagion of greed and madness tainted the whole land. All bonds of loyalty and reason burst asunder. Every little man who could raise an army turned on any other weaker than himself. And the king could not prevent it because great lords, some of whom he had favored and had no reason to rebel and indeed did not declare for the empress, suddenly seized royal property.

The summer was worse than the spring. There is no use in trying to recall exactly where we fought or how many marches we made—many to no purpose because before we arrived at our objective, we had to turn back to some more urgent fight. I had always enjoyed a good fight, at least after my blooding, in which I came to terms with the fact that use of my sword and lance would bring pain or death to other men whom I did not know and wished no harm. Now, for the first time in many years, I needed to find that place inside myself very far away from the blood and the stink of loosened bowels and the screaming. But worse even than the battles were the constant signs we stumbled upon as we crossed and recrossed the realm of that madness of greed, that loss of all honor, all mercy, all humanity. Again and again we found whole villages and manors where every person had been ripped and disemboweled and burnt for what could not be more than a few coins, a few ells of cloth, or for nothing at all.

Yet in the blackest moments of that summer and into the autumn there had been some hope of peace. The queen and the bishop of Winchester were attempting to negotiate a truce with Robert of Gloucester. But it came to nothing. Waleran de Meulan played on the king's too optimistic nature, reminding Stephen of our many successes and saying that all would think him faint of heart to give up half a royal crown—and to a woman too. Perhaps the queen could have changed the king's mind, but she was not with us and within the week news came from the townsfolk of Lincoln that the earl of Chester and his half brother, William de Roumare, had taken Lincoln keep by a strange stratagem. They had sent their wives to visit the wife of the constable. After some hours, the earl of Chester had arrived, saying he had come to fetch the ladies. He was unarmed, except for the sword by his side, and he was accompanied by only three knights, so he was welcomed without any uneasiness—whereupon he and his knights turned on the guard, seized every weapon they could find, and held gate and drawbridge until his brother came galloping in with a strong troop, with which he ejected the royal garrison.

Stephen rushed north, but Chester and Roumare had not been idle. They had brought in more men, many more, enough to hold not only the keep but to cow the burghers and hold the walls of the town. Now Waleran spoke for peace. He pointed out that Chester and Roumare had not declared for the empress and that it would truly be a disaster if so powerful a baron changed sides. Then he reminded Stephen how bitter Chester was about the treaty with King David that had given Cumbria, which Chester felt was his, to Prince Henry. If Chester and Roumare would swear loyalty and swear to defend Lincolnshire against Matilda and Gloucester, it would be better to let them hold the keep and town.

It was sensible advice. I remembered how troubled I had been about that treaty with King David and how I had even mentioned Chester's claim to the king when I spoke against the treaty. Yet now I had to bite my tongue to keep from crying out against Waleran's ideas. I had begun to feel that Waleran was the king's evil genius, a clever, perverted creature that brought ill even when what it suggested seemed fair. But in this case all agreed with Waleran. I do not think there was one dissenting voice, except for the displaced constable, and his prejudice because of his shameful expulsion from his keep made his objection ridiculous.