Fires of Winter (53 page)

We were ready by the middle of May. It was a poor time for such an escape because dusk lasted a long time, unlike winter when dark came swiftly on the setting of the sun. However, to delay would only make that problem worse, and we were presented with a temptation we could not resist only one day after I had assembled everything I could for our escape. Because the king was confined in Bristol keep, many more men than usual were quartered in the place. That meant that more supplies came in, that more garbage was created and needed to be removed. It was the coming and going of serfs and villeins who were not well known to the guards upon which I had counted to allow us to leave without question.

I had intended to make the king watch the behavior of these people and try to imitate it for a few days. He laughed at me at first, but when I insisted he come down to the bailey with me and pointed out the differences, he admitted grudgingly that the demeanor of the knights, who walked proudly erect with heads high and eyes either fixed ahead or staring haughtily at some person or object, was not like that of a serf. A serf, even the young whose bodies were still straight, always went with bowed head and with eyes that flicked here and there, watching for a summons or an order or a blow.

When we were alone again, Stephen praised me for my ability to notice such a thing and asked how I had come to look so carefully at the serfs. I reminded him flatly that so had my mother walked and looked and so would I had not Audris loved me and Sir Oliver been a good and honorable man. The king then looked a little embarrassed and agreed to practice that evening after we were supposed to be asleep, but he seemed to scorn his role. To my fury he laughed and appeared almost proud at his lack of success. After I pointed out that failure and a life in chains would be the price of his pride, he worked a little more earnestly at being humble and frightened. I think I would have given up then if I had not known that nothing could turn Stephen from this attempt.

Then, before my resentment faded, there came the temptation that seemed so good a stroke of fortune that we would deserve to fail if we ignored it. Not only were more supplies needed owing to the large garrison in the keep, but the garderobe filled more quickly so it was necessary to remove the waste often. Usually this was only done when the lords had left and the keep was near empty, but Gloucester was taking no chance of transporting the king around England. For one thing, there was no equally safe and strong place to keep Stephen; for another, taking him into the open was just asking for an attempt to rescue him by a strong attack. Thus, the very day after Stephen had taken so lightly the need to imitate a serf, a large group of them was admitted to clear out the garderobe in addition to the group delivering supplies and carting garbage out to be rotted and used on the fields.

Stephen saw them from the window of his antechamber and rushed out to find me on the walls. I had seen them also and cursed them for coming a few days too soon, but when the king gripped my arm and said, “Today I will go,” I did not protest. I knew protest would be useless; he was so set now on this escape that he would go without me if I refused, and that my duty would not permit. Besides, in such a crowd we might truly go unnoticed, and the need to clear the garderobe would not come again for several months.

“Very well, my lord, today,” I agreed. “Do not eat your dinner—I will give you mine if you are sharp-set—and go down several times to the privy wearing your cloak. If someone asks, say you are chilled. I will ask for a physician later in the day, saying you are purging. Do not let him bleed you. I will replace the medicine he compounds with wine or water. One of the times you go to the privy, I will come and we will choose a place for you to hide. Just before dusk, go again to the privy, hiding the serf's garments under your cloak. Change, and remain hidden. I will come in a few minutes, don your cloak, and return to your chamber.”

“Then how will you come out? I am not so sure of how to slip into a group of those people.”

“I will make your cloak and other garments into a body in your bed and just walk out, saying the physician's remedy has worked at last, that your belly gripes are finally stilled, and that you are asleep. I am so often in and out of your chamber that none will remember I have not returned, or they will think I am walking the walls, as I often do, even after dark.”

I was not very excited at first. Stephen's light attitude toward the details of our escape had lessened my hope of success, but as the day passed, my excitement grew. The king's acting of his illness was so fine that he not only fooled the physician into real anxiety but nearly convinced
me
his belly pained—enough so that when we were alone I asked if he were too sick to go. He laughed at me so hard, he nearly brought up what he had eaten of my dinner.

He was perfect too in groaning that this was an evil day for serfs to be working in the garderobe. He cursed the physician roundly for saying, sick as he was he should use the chamber pot, shouting that he was not a babe nor yet so weak—although he knew they all desired he grow weak and die—that he must perch on a pot. The physician swore a hundred times that the last thing any of them desired was that he die and that Gloucester would doubtless have his head if Lord Stephen did not recover. Then he bade him use the garderobe anyway, saying it would not matter to the creatures cleaning it if he shit on their heads, but the king said indignantly that he would not so treat a dog or a horse, nor even a pig, and would not so treat a human servant either.

Then he shouted at me that he needed no man to watch him and drove me out of the chamber. Nor would he allow me to help him to the privy when I offered to lend him my arm because he seemed doubled over with pain. Thus, out of courtesy the men looked aside and did not stare at him when he struggled down the stairs to shit and crept up again as if spent.

I managed to dispose of whatever medicine the physician compounded, and Stephen cleverly pretended that the dose had helped, sending for the physician and thanking him for his new ease. But late in the afternoon, he staggered out of his chamber again and called for another dose of the drug. Then he pretended to sleep until the last time. After I had crept back in his cloak, I came out in my own and went for a third dose. Then I remained in the chamber for a little while before I came out with my own serf's garments under my cloak. My heart leapt into my mouth when the constable stopped me, but it was only to ask how my master fared and I said he slept but lightly and I thought I would leave him alone until he was deeply asleep, so that any small noise I might make would not disturb him. I hoped, I added, that none other would disturb him.

When I had changed, I found a broken fork and a dull wooden spade and we went and joined a group that was dumping soil into a nearly full cart. Stephen did far better at looking cowed and frightened than I expected. We had smeared our faces with dirt and to my joy it had started to rain, so we could pull our hoods over our heads. Still when the cart moved out, I could not believe we would escape. I was so sure we would be stopped that I had to force myself forward as we drew near the gate, and I did not dare look back at Stephen, who was a step behind me, but I was sure he had forgotten to slump his shoulders like a beaten man and hang his head. But the guards on the gate of the inner bailey seemed indifferent, and the cart went onto the inner drawbridge with us behind it.

That changed everything. It was the guards on the inner gate that I feared most; they would be the ones most watchful for an attempt at escape. So when we came off the drawbridge, I began to shake with eagerness, needing to think of holding my feet to a dull, exhausted trudge when every instinct bade me run ahead out of the outer gate to freedom. It was torture to keep to the slow pace of the oxen, but they did advance foot by foot, and after what seemed like a thousand years, I heard a kind of echo of the creak and groan of the cartwheels that told me we were near the wall. Then I risked a glance and caught my breath. We were right at the gates, which were open, and the attention of the guards was on a group of men who seemed to have just entered.

Just as I lowered my head to better hide my face, I heard a cry of pain from one of the serfs ahead. I reached out for Stephen to remind him he must not resist—but it was too late. I saw a staff rise and strike him, heard his roar of rage, saw him leap on the man who had struck him and bear him down. I leapt too, knowing we were lost but throwing myself over the king to save him, I thought, from being beaten to death. But it was a knife not a cudgel that came down and struck me.

Melusine

Selfish! Self-indulgent monster! The voice was the queen's, but the words were those my mother had said to me after my brothers died of the plague that had taken so many lives in Ulle on my thirteenth birthday. I felt dazed and confused, most aware of the stinging of my cheeks where Maud's slaps had struck.

“But that was because of Papa,” I said. “Because I was making Papa sick with worry.”

“Your father is dead!” the queen shrieked, slapping me once more. “Long dead!”

I lifted my head and focussed my eyes on her face. She was bent above me, and to my surprise it was concern not rage that I saw, but I could not answer her.

“It is your
husband
to whom you owe your support,” she said fiercely, although she was no longer shouting. “He has supported you and protected you, even against my will. Do you owe him nothing? And he is in prison, chained like a beast by the order of that monster Matilda. Melusine, do you hear me?”

“I hear you, madam.”

“Then listen well. I will not stay long in Westminster. I will go first to Essex and root out any man who has ever been favored by Geoffrey de Mandeville and at the same time draw a heavy war levy, leaving some Boulognese troops to protect the province. As soon as I have news of where Matilda lies, I will follow. I will raise every city she enters against her, for the towns love Stephen, and I will hound her from place to place until she disgorges my man. You may not care that Bruno will rot in captivity, but I am not willing to accept that fate for my husband. I will be glad of your help and your company, Melusine, but if you wish to sit and stare at walls as you did when the king first put you in my care, I will leave you. I have no strength to carry dead wood with me now.”

She straightened up, turned, and left the room, and I suddenly realized that I was sitting on the floor in a chamber looted of everything. I put my hands to my cheeks, which burned anew, this time with shame. What kind of woman was I that my answer to a disappointment was to become mad? No more. Never again. If I could not face the horror and grief of my life, I would take my sister Mildred's path and walk into the water. I would
not
be dead wood, a burden to everyone, needing to be told to stand and sit, to eat and drink.

I tried to rise, but my whole body was stiff and my legs would not support me. How long had I been sitting thus? I tried again, but this time there were hands under my arms, helping me, and Edna's voice, trembling as she asked, “Are you well, my lady?”

“I am well now, Edna,” I said.

“I did not know the queen would be so angry,” she whispered. “I tried and tried to make you get up or tell me why you were sitting there, and then I grew frightened and…and I told the queen.”

“Thank God you did,” I said, leaning on her and walking about the chamber. Now I saw it was not totally empty. In the corner behind me there was a stool. I moved toward it, tempted to sit down again, but each step was easier, and in a few minutes I let go of Edna to walk on my own. When I was steady on my feet, I came to her and put my hand on her shoulder. “Thank you, Edna. That was a brave deed. Queen Maud is so busy, it could not have been easy to get leave to speak to her.”

“It was not hard.” She grinned up at me. “I did not ask for leave. I just walked up to the guards and called out to her. Everyone was so shocked that I should walk past all the great ones and cry for help, that no one tried to stop me.” Then she grew solemn, her eyes large with remembered amazement. “And the queen was so good. She bade all those high-born men wait and came at once when I told her you were sick and I could not rouse you.”

I felt tears sting my eyes. Maud
had
been very good to leave such important matters to come to me. Her words and blows were sharp, but so had my mother's been, and only for my good. “Yes,” I said to Edna, “she is a good woman. I am sorry I frightened you, but if it should happen again that I do not answer you for a long time, do as the queen did—I mean, cause me pain. That will wake me.”

“But my lady—”

“Never mind that now,” I interrupted. “I am famished. See if you can find me something to eat and drink. Anything will do.” As I spoke we walked to the door. I hoped Edna did not notice how my breath caught and I said quickly, “Bring the food here. I fear I will have no chance to eat if I go where the queen is.”

I was afraid to admit to Edna and to myself too, that I did not know where I was, so I turned my back on the huge empty chamber and gestured toward the small room. Edna ran off and I turned back to the great chamber. It was a hall, a hall in Westminster—surely the queen said we were in Westminster. I was not so mad as not to be able to remember what had been said to me only a few minutes before, was I? And the place was not completely empty. As in the smaller chamber, I had not noticed that there were broken bits of this and that—a leg of a stool, a strip of cloth that had been white and was now marked with smudges where someone had stepped on it, half a trestle for supporting tables. And then I suddenly knew where I was. I had not recognized the place because each time I had seen it before it had been crowded with tables and benches and people—people eating, laughing, talking, sometimes dancing. I was looking at the king's hall, and the chamber in which I had been sitting on the floor was the king's private closet.

My first sensation was shock, my second regret that my foolishness had forced the queen to come here; it must have hurt her to see the place empty and looted. Then I fetched the stool and sat down and asked myself what I was doing here. It was not a place that could have drawn me by familiarity; the place I knew best in Westminster was the queen's hall and her private chamber where I worked. Why should I come to the king's hall? Why should I, who had never entered it before in my whole life, sit down to wait—forever if need be—in the king's private chamber? What was I seeking here in my madness? I never came to the king's hall except…except in Bruno's company or to find Bruno.

Bruno. I had come seeking Bruno in my madness. I could not lie about that to myself any longer. And if I sought him when I was mad, then was he not the center of my life? The center of my life…yet he was the man who most likely killed my father and my brother. That was how it was done, to give the female to the victor. He had been the one to burst in the door of the hall at Ulle; he had taken the manor, that was certain. And I had been given to him, that was also certain. Was it not most likely that he had been allowed to take Ulle because in a sense he had already won it over my father's and brother's dead bodies?

I shuddered so hard the legs of the stool creaked, but I hardly heard that. I heard the queen. “Your father is dead. Long dead.”

Did that wipe out my duty to him? He had cared for me and protected me…But the queen's voice overrode that thought too, angry, demanding. “It is your
husband
to whom you owe your support…he has protected you even against my will.” It was true. But only because he wanted Ulle. No, that was a lie and I had come to the end of lying—that led only to a dark place where I sat on the floor and stared at the wall. Bruno wanted
me
—not Ulle, not even my body, although he took pleasure in both—he wanted my love. Papa had also wanted my love…Had he? Papa had wanted my devotion, which was a very different thing, not an equal sharing but a greater and a lesser—and Papa was dead. Dead. Bruno was in chains and might soon be dead.

I found myself on my feet, my hand on my eating knife and ready to run…to Bruno, to keep him alive. Papa was dead and Bruno was still alive. Papa was dead. I could remember him; I could still love him, but I could not let his cold hand again draw me down the path that led to sitting on the floor in an empty chamber, deaf, mute, and blind because my duty forbade me to do what I desired with all my heart, all my mind, and all my soul. The queen was right. I could no longer pretend that I was loyal to Papa as long as I did nothing myself to help Bruno.

My duty was a dead weight on me, crushing me; I must cast that aside. There were things, real things I could do to help Bruno. I could bring men from Ulle and there was silver in the strongbox. I could hire other men to fight with the queen. Sir Gerald could lead them. I could go to Audris. Jernaeve was rich; Audris would lend me or give me money to buy more men. Some might even come for the pure pleasure of fighting against Matilda, even though King David's son was now their overlord and King David was with the empress. But King Stephen was Henry's overlord, not his father, and I knew the men of Northumbria did not love the Scots.

Edna came with my food—cold meat and bread and ale—and I ate with an appetite that I had not felt since the news of Bruno's capture. When I was full, I went to the queen's private chamber and waited, thanking God that I had done my accounts before Ypres returned with the news that the empress had escaped him. The queen did not come in until very late, and she looked tired. Nonetheless, I came and knelt beside her chair and thanked her for her kindness to me.

“So,” she said, “have you decided who you are?”

“Yes, madam,” I replied. “I am the wife of Bruno of Jernaeve, and I love my husband as you love yours.”

“Very good.” She offered me a tired smile and leaned her head against the high back of her chair. Her eyes began to close, and her hand lifted to wave me away.

I caught the hand. “Madam, a moment more, I beg you.”

She turned her head a fraction. “Yes?” There was a weary patience in her voice, the patience of one who has begun a task, now almost regrets it, but cannot leave it unfinished.

“I can bring men to swell your army.”

Maud's eyes snapped open and she jerked upright. I almost chuckled with amusement although I had deliberately said that to catch her attention when I knew she expected me to trouble her with some silly personal doubts.

After staring at me for longer than I liked, she said, “Yes, I believe you have decided who you are. But have you told me the truth?”

I was not shocked. Little as I knew about armies and battles, even an idiot could understand that an open enemy is less dangerous than an ally who knows your plans and betrays you. I knew too that Maud had never fully trusted me although I felt she had come to be truly fond of me. I had had several hours to consider what to say, and now I smiled.

“I have told you the truth, but if you will give a moment's thought to the matter, you will see that it does not matter. The only thing I am sure Papa would want me to do—” A little chill went down my back as I thought of the kind of revenge Papa would really want on the man who killed him, but that had nothing to do with who was king or queen. “—is to regain Ulle. I have a good hope of getting Ulle, or of Bruno getting it, from King Stephen. I have no hope of that from Matilda, even if I could get King David to make his son enfeoff Bruno or me. She would see me dead first for refusing her command to accompany her into Bristol. And she hates Bruno worse than me because he flouted her will more than once on our journey. And even if that is a lie and she promised me Ulle to come and spy on you, do you think me such an idiot as to still believe she will keep a promise to me, who will not keep them to the bishop of Winchester or to Robert of Gloucester?”

Maud herself had to smile at my reasoning, but the smile faded as she went back over what I had said and saw that I had indeed covered every excuse for disloyalty. She frowned and looked uneasy and there was a pettish note in her voice as she asked, “How many men, and from where?”

“I can only be sure of about fifty from Ulle with a knight to lead them, but it may be possible for me to bring many more, several hundred I believe. Bruno's sister, Audris of Jernaeve, is rich. I am sure she will lend me, or even give me, money to buy mercenaries. There are many in the north who do not love the king of Scotland and who will come to fight against him—and against Empress Matilda.”

Maud knew that was true; she had received bitter and angry delegations from northern baronial leaders about the peace treaty she had made with King David. She shifted uneasily in her seat and finally said, “I will mention the matter to Ypres.”

“Thank you, madam,” I said. “That is all I desired. I would not have troubled you with this today when I knew you to be tired, only I was afraid I would have no chance to speak in the morning and that might cost me another full day. Jernaeve and Cumbria are far north and west.”

To my surprise, the queen suddenly looked very pleased, patted my hand, and promised that if Ypres thought my idea worthwhile and if I indeed did bring several hundred men who fought well in King Stephen's cause, I
should
have Ulle. It took me a while, lying sleepless on my pallet, to come to the conclusion that Maud's suspicions had been increased by my approaching her privately in her chamber. She had probably believed that I chose to speak when she was weary in the hope she would seize on my offer while her mind was muddled with fatigue and sorrow and let me go at once.

That gave me hope that the queen had found my offer very attractive—she always mistrusted herself when she had an instant liking for something—which meant my idea was good. Indeed, it proved so, for I was summoned from the queen's chamber to repeat what I hoped to do to Ypres. He did not seem much interested in the men from Ulle, thank God; I had been afraid to speak about Sir Gerald lest his connection with my father make the queen and Ypres more suspicious. What Ypres was most interested in was who I expected to lead the Northumbrian troops.

“I do not know,” I told him. “I know nothing of war, but Sir Hugh of Jernaeve—he that was Hugh Licorne before he wed with Bruno's sister—will find a man for me who will be wise, strong, and trustworthy, I am sure.”

“Licorne.” Ypres's voice became eager. “If you are wise, you will beg him to come himself, Lady Melusine.”