Lady of the English (38 page)

He drew a deep breath. “What if there do not have to be battles? What if we can negotiate a settlement?”

She eyed him sharply. “What kind of negotiation?”

“What if Stephen were to acknowledge your son as heir to Normandy and England?”

Matilda snorted. “Is that likely? Even if he did, his wife would refuse. I know my cousin Maheut. Stephen may have sat on the throne, but Maheut has her teeth in it.”

“But let us say this suggestion did come to the table.

Would you be willing to negotiate an agreement based on that premise?”

She arched her brow. “Forgo my crown you mean—the one you all swore you would honour?”

Brian gestured. “But your line would succeed, and everything would meld back together as it should have been.”

“I am not so certain of that.”

“But would you consider it?” he persisted.

“Yes, I would,” she said after a long pause. “But you will not find Stephen willing to do so, believe me.” They were nearing the hall door. He extended his arm in a courtier’s gesture and 298

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she laid her own hand lightly along it. She looked at his fingers.

“I am glad to see you still have your ink stains.”

“Writing preserves my sanity. Sometimes the only thing holding me steady is that line of ink between my mind and the point of my pen.” He lowered his voice and dipped his head towards her. “Sometimes I write words that I send to God in smoke and flame, because if I left them on the page to be seen they would consume the reader.”

Matilda believed in looking people straight in the eye, but she dared not look at Brian now. “I think you are wise,” she said. “Let the words become ash.”

“I do, domina, but it does not mean they were never written. Their imprint stays in my memory, and all you need do is ask me for them. My life and my honour are yours to do with as you see fit.”

“Then keep them both intact if you would serve me,” she said. “Other than your loyalty, that is all I want.”

“Is it?”

She stopped and turned. Her own voice was pitched low so as not to carry. “Do you think you are the only one with a pile of ashes in your hearth? I burned my dreams to build my nightmares.” Removing her arm from his, she swept indoors, walking briskly so that it looked as if she was moving on to the business in hand rather than running away.

ttt

Her sewing unattended in her lap, Adeliza gazed into the fire, watching the flames and trying not to think. It was a raw morning in early November with the trees almost bare of leaves and icy rain in the wind. Helwis the nurse was changing Wilkin’s swaddling while singing a nonsense song to him and blowing on his tummy, making him squeal.

Will arrived in a flurry of cold air. He was dressed for travel in his sturdiest boots and a thick wool tunic, with a heavy 299

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cloak over the top. He was also wearing his sword. The cloak sparkled with rain and his hair had twisted into tight curls.

Adeliza gnawed her lip as she watched him stoop to their son and tickle him under the chin. The baby giggled and waved his little arms. Will straightened and turned to her. The softness in his eyes and the broad smile given to the baby faded into caution.

Adeliza left her sewing and came to him. Last night they had lain together and it had been the sweetest thing. Now, in the cold, drizzly morning, he was leaving her to ride with Stephen in order to besiege Brian FitzCount at Wallingford. She was finding it difficult to reconcile these two parts of her life: lying with this wonderful lover, the father of their son, fulfilling her duties as a wife, all the time knowing he was going to war to prevent Matilda from claiming her rightful throne. He would be facing men with whom he had once been friends at court, and where an army went, death and destruction inevitably followed, usually of the innocent.

“I know you do not want me to go,” he said, “but it is my duty, even as you felt it yours to welcome the empress in the first place. My oath is to Stephen and I must obey his summons.”

“That does not make the situation less deplorable,” she replied. “When Henry ruled we had peace, and no one dared to break it.”

“But he left a legacy of bitter strife, and now we all suffer the consequences.” He touched her face. “All will be well, don’t worry.” They both knew it was a meaningless platitude. Words to glide over a surface of broken shards without repairing the underlying damage. She did not agree with him, but she was his wife and she would not send him off with sharp words and recrimination. Instead, she kissed him and bade him look after himself, but it was a pale imitation of the sensuous intimacy of the night and she hated the feeling of distance.

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She accompanied him to the courtyard to bid farewell, playing the formal role of chatelaine. She knew it looked to all their retainers as if she was endorsing all this, and it made her feel sick.

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Thirty-five

Wallingford, November 1139

Brian stood in the great undercroft at Wallingford Castle with his constable, William Boterel, and gazed at the piled stores he had been amassing ever since King Henry’s death. Even as he had been kneeling in homage to Stephen, his household officers were buying in stores and making plans to conserve supplies. He eyed the piled bales of dried stockfish, hard as stone.

“You could build walls with them and they wouldn’t fall down,” Boterel said, plucking one of them out of the bale and slapping it against his palm. “Last for years.” A faint fishy-smelling dust drifted under their noses and Brian grimaced. Stockfish had to be one of the most evil foods on earth, but as a basic store for times of privation and siege, there was nothing better.

As well as the stockfish, there were barrels of beef in brine and sausages smoked and dried in long loops. Crocks of honey; bladders of lard, tallow and beeswax, butter and cheese. Oats and grains. Two stone querns stood in a corner, ready to hand-grind flour should the mills be destroyed. And then there were the weapons. Barrel upon barrel of arrows were stacked against the far wall and the fletcher was busy making more. There were mail shirts, many of them given to him by Matilda, fashioned by the famed hauberk-makers of Argentan and transported in LadyofEnglish.indd 302

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leather sacks as part of the ballast on the ships that had come from Normandy. Matilda had given him one as a personal gift, the rivets black as midnight and hemmed with bronze. It was a beautiful, deadly thing, sinuous as snakeskin, with a helm of the same colour. He had donned it to check the fit and had seen the admiration in men’s eyes and he had not known himself. From boyhood, despite being trained to fight, his clever fingers had worn only the ink stains of the written word, never the blood of other men.

“We have enough for years to come, should it be necessary,”

William said grimly.

Brian made a face. “I hope it will not come to that.” Leaving the undercroft, he stepped out into the smoky autumn air. His wife was returning from the henhouse with a basket of eggs. At this time of year the birds were not laying in large quantities, but there were enough for the lord’s table. Her dress was spiked with straw and her figure resembled a lumpy sack with a knot tied in the middle. She cast an assessing look at the men. Earlier she had eyed Brian in his fine armour, humphed, and said that looks were all very well, but it was what lay within that mattered.

“Two of the hens have stopped laying,” she grumbled.

“Time to neck them. We cannot afford to keep anything that does not work for its living.”

Brian bit the inside of his mouth, uncertain whether this was a dig at him or just her natural thriftiness coming out. “I will look forward to chicken frumenty then,” he said with a courteous smile. “I appreciate your skills in using all our resources to their best advantage.”

She gave him a hard glance “Someone has to. Fine hauberks, especially when given as gifts, come at a price.”

There was a shout from the walls and a serjeant came running across the bailey to Brian. “Sire, it is King Stephen’s army,” he panted as he arrived. “Here, outside the walls!”

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Brian set off at a run for the battlements with William hard on his heels. Gazing out between the merlons at the approaching silver line of soldiers, with Stephen’s banner snapping in the wind, his dark imagining became reality. It was not just an undercroft stuffed with supplies and weapons, it was an army spreading out on the opposite bank of the Thames and he felt as if someone had punched him in the stomach because he could not breathe.

His wife joined him on the battlements, still clutching her basket of eggs. “Let us hope Waleran de Meulan does not hold it against you that you kept him prisoner here,” she said, eyeing the fluttering banners.

“I care not if he does,” Brian snapped. “They won’t take Wallingford. I have known this day was coming ever since Stephen usurped the crown.”

“But are you ready?” He gave her a hard look, which she returned with aplomb. “I am a soldier’s daughter,” she said,

“and my first husband was as tough as horseshoes. You talk fine words, and you write them too, my lord, but can you stand?

That is what we will find out now. You had best go and put on that fine hauberk of yours.” With a curt nod to drive her words home, she left with her basket of eggs. A feather floated in her wake and gently drifted to the ground at Brian’s feet.

He watched it land, and then raised his head to the besieging force. He had no choice but to stand, because he was doing this for Matilda, and he had promised.

ttt

A raw wind blustered through the king’s camp. The soldiers had laid down pathways of straw between the tents because the intermittent rain and the constant tramp of men, horses, and siege equipment had churned the ground to mud.

In Stephen’s pavilion, Will stood around a brazier with several other barons. He was whittling at a piece of wood, 304

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working it into the shape of a toy horse for his infant son, keeping his hands occupied. They had been bogged down for a week now, assaulting Wallingford to no avail, like little boys trying to knock down a wall with shingle. Brian FitzCount had made it plain he was not going to be lured out by acts of burning and pillage on the surrounding lands and it was also plain that the place could resist their assault for longer than they were willing to sit.

“I cannot afford to stay here.” Stephen testily plucked at his beard. “Wallingford is the key to London. We must either capture it, or render it useless to the rebels. FitzCount was building this up all the time he was playing the loyal servant at court. He never intended keeping his oath to me.”

“You could construct watchtowers to prevent provisions coming through,” Will said, “and garrison them with men to harass the supply route.”

Waleran de Meulan glared at Will “That woman and her brother should never have been allowed a safe landing in England.”

Will blew shavings off the little horse. “It was a matter of honour,” he said, refusing to rise to the bait.

“There is honour and there is folly,” Waleran snapped.

“Enough.” Stephen made a chopping gesture with his right hand. “D’Albini is right, although I could have wished for a better outcome. Next you will be saying I was foolish to let the Countess of Anjou join her brother in Bristol, when it was the only decision I could have made.”

“She is not in Bristol now though, is she?” Waleran sneered.

“She is holding court in Gloucester and encouraging all manner of rabble to join her. We should have taken her when we had the chance.”

A messenger drew rein outside the tent and swung down from his sweating horse. Entering the tent at Stephen’s command, he knelt and his gaze flicked to Waleran. “Sire, 305

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Miles FitzWalter has sacked Worcester. He has burned the suburbs and seized captives and herds.”

“What?” Waleran’s face suffused. He lunged to his feet and hurled his cup at the side of the tent. “The whoreson! I will rip him apart with my bare hands.”

Will stared at the heaving, frightened messenger. Worcester belonged to Waleran and this was more than just political strategy by the rebels; it was a personal attack on Waleran by Miles FitzWalter, who hated him. The war was spreading, like coals dragged from a fire and scattered abroad by a pitchfork.

“This confirms my decision to move,” Stephen said grimly.

“We shall ride to deal with this insurrection now and leave a detail here to build watchtowers. I want the garrison at Wallingford pinned down like a snake with a forked stick.”

ttt

It was very late. Brian stood on the wall walk and gazed out across the river. The night was moonless but there was a glimmer of cold starlight and the pin-prick wink of torches from Stephen’s watchtowers. Their garrisons were preventing new supplies from getting through, although they could do nothing to touch Wallingford itself. Brian had managed to send the occasional messenger out and receive information back in, but it was a dangerous and haphazard business. Two of his men had been caught and tortured before being hanged on a gibbet in full view of the Wallingford garrison.

Brian had ordered food to be rationed although they had plenty, because who knew how long this state of affairs was going to last? He was out on a limb here, cut off from communication, and it drove him mad, because communicating was his main skill, over and beyond his weapon play. They had begun to call him “the Marquis” because he was out on a March here, Wallingford pointing like a finger into enemy territory.

Maude said nothing, but her expression was enough. He 306