Dropping his head into his hands, Hereford stared dully at the earth between his feet. Commands for her, he thought wearily; he wished he had some for his own men that would have some profitable purpose. But the true nightmare had not yet begun.
When Chester left Yorkshire, Stephen too was freed. The king was an exceptionally good-natured man, slow to anger and slow to take any type of action. Once aroused, however, he seemed to have been driven insane. He descended upon the south of England, not to fight Henry but to destroy completely the already ravaged land. No restraints at all were placed upon the royal troops; they had license to commit every atrocity and special instructions to scorch the earth. Wherever they arrived, not a hut remained standing, not a blade of the newly reaped or standing crops was permitted to survive, not a beast suitable for work or food escaped destruction. What they could not consume themselves, they heaped together and set aflame. The men and children were slain outright, the women used, then slain. A black horror of burnt hovels and vegetation and putrefying bodies covered the land.
Hereford rode one way, Henry another, but nowhere could they catch the king or bring his troops to stand and fight. They rode through the burning days and sultry, smothering nights of one of the hottest summers England had known in a long time. They rode until Hereford looked like a gaunt wraith with burning, horror-filled eyes and until even Henry's iron limbs twitched and shuddered when he fell off his horse to snatch the unrestful slumber of exhaustion and despair. Hopeless of conciliating or vanquishing Salisbury and John FitzGilbert as well as Henry of Anjou and the Earl of Hereford, Stephen had determined to destroy them by starvation, and he was well on his way to accomplishing his purpose.
Roger of Hereford pushed off his helmet and unlaced his mail hood. His golden curls were a muddy brown, so soaked was his hair with filth and sweat, and his face was wet with mingled rivulets of perspiration and unashamed tears. Once more he was too late, and the fields and hamlets around the great keep of Devizes itself were nothing but smoking ruins. He sat and sobbed like a tired child, too hopeless and helpless even to be angry. Within the keep, a half hour later, he found Henry, also sobbing and half hysterical with rage and frustration.
"We were here," he shrieked, "here, right here, yet we saw nothing. heard nothing, until all at once the entire countryside was in flames. I swear by the bloody hands and feet of Christ that we were not above half an hour in arming and issuing forth after them. They melted away like smoke before our very eyes. We combed the countryside; we looked under the very stones seeking them. The devil must be his partner; the devil himself alone could perform such works of evil."
Or God, Hereford thought, sinking into a seat, silent and sick. Stephen was God's anointed king. Had they offended the Almighty by opposing him? Was this their punishment—to starve, to see their lands rot? Henry continued to rave, storming up and down the great hall; Hereford sat silent, possessed by that one horrible thought and incapable of voicing it, studying his dirt encrusted hands as if he could read the future in the streaks and smears of filth.
"My lord." William Beauchamp put a hand on his master's shoulder and shook him gently. He often had to do that these days to attract Hereford's attention, and his heart ached at the dull, lackluster look of the blue eyes that turned up to his. This will kill him, Beauchamp thought, remembering the vibrantly alive man he used to serve who before this had laughed in the face of every adversity. "Letters, my lord," he said; there was nothing else to say.
"My wife?"
William handed over several brief notes from Elizabeth. Her father was still doing nothing, sulking in his favorite castle, hunting, and complaining to his daughter, but he was possessed, said Elizabeth, of a "black and bitter bile" which boded his attachment to his son-by-marriage’s cause little good. Chester, Elizabeth wrote, must be forced into some action, and she pleaded with Roger to tell her which way to push him to separate him irrevocably from the king lest he leap into action that would do just the opposite. Hereford did not even feel a quiver of emotion as he read. He was too played out, mentally and physically, to feel anything, even his wife's appeal for help.
Roger did not even notice or care what was written between the lines, of how Chester's behavior, together with his own bad news or sullen silence, was wearing on Elizabeth's nerves. He merely put the letters aside and reached for the others William still held. At least all was well with his own lands; Stephen had not yet had time to turn his attention to them, and his mother wrote only ordinary news and asked only minor advice about serfs' misdoings and good or bad crops. Thus, far he had been spared the blow of personal loss. Apparently Stephen was saving his property for the deathblow to Henry's attempt.
The seals on the last two letters brought a frown to a countenance that previously had been rigid with exhaustion. One had been written by a clerk for his sister Anne, the other the Earl of Lincoln's. He tore open Anne's letter first and read hastily. Casting the parchment aside with a low exclamation of irritation he then virtually devoured Lincoln's missive.
"Oh, God," he groaned aloud, "that was all that was needful. I warned him—I warned him."
Startled by a sound from Hereford, whom he had begun to think had lost the power of speech, Henry came away from the window out of which he had been moodily staring. "What more can have befallen us?"
"Not us, praise Mary. This blow is mine alone, a personal one. I did not tell you when I spoke to you of Nottingham that I was there because my wife was taken by Peverel. I regained her in a trial by combat with de Caldoet who was Peverel's champion and whom I took prisoner. I yielded him to the Earl of Lincoln for private reasons, warning Lincoln that de Caldoet was a treacherous cur. How he has done it, I know not, but he has wrested several strongholds from Lincoln and turned the city itself against its master."
"Why should you care?" Henry asked impatiently. "From what I hear of Lincoln his vassals are looking for any excuse to turn on him. If Lincoln willingly took de Caldoet and you warned him, it is no problem of yours."
"Lincoln is the father of my sister's husband, and as such has blood claims upon me. My sister Anne is married to his third son, Rannulf. He asks my aid, relying upon that bond, and, what is more, here is a letter from my sister, frantic because her husband has answered his father's call to arms—most rightly—and she is with child."
Henry stopped his restless movements and stared at Hereford, his gray eyes narrowing. "Well, do you send him aid?"
"Have I the men?" Hereford asked bitterly. "Can I spare so much as a cook's helper from our task here? I can do no more than write to my mother to squeeze the serfs. Belike she can wring some gold from them to send him, or perhaps I could borrow of Chester for Lincoln is Chester's …
Merciful Christ," Hereford cried suddenly, starting to his feet, and the words carried no blasphemy but a note of prayer and entreaty.
He spoke no more aloud, shaking his head in reply to Henry's questions, for he had not yet confided in Henry the tale of Chester's vacillation, but his thoughts continued the sentence. Merciful Christ, perhaps de Caldoet's treachery is the answer to our troubles with Chester. It is true that Lincoln and Chester do not overly love each other, but for this kind of trouble—the revolt of a servitor—I am sure Chester will go to the support of his half brother. Then, if Elizabeth can spur them on, they will not stop with subduing de Caldoet, but will ravage the province. She might even be able to urge them south to attack Nottingham. God willing, such action may draw Stephen north and leave us only Eustace to deal with.
"Roger, I am speaking to you. Would not Lincoln already have appealed to Chester?"
Henry's sharpness jolted Hereford into speech. "Perhaps. I cannot tell. There is no hatred between them, only little love. However, Chester takes time to decide things, and even if Lincoln has written he knows that Chester will not act at once, specially to part with money. I am quicker to say yea or nay. You must pardon me, my lord, I must write to Chester, to Elizabeth, and to Lincoln to find out what I can do and what is going forward—oh, yes, and to poor Anne too. Poor child. I can offer her little comfort save my assurances that her husband is doing what is right, and little enough will she care for that."
The sun had set and the moon was high before Hereford was through with his correspondence for by and large the letters were difficult to write. Elizabeth's was the easiest. He gave her flat instructions as to what he wished done and told her the plain unvarnished truth about the seriousness of their situation without any attempt at beautiful words or phrases. She was to drive her father to support Lincoln and even ride north with him if necessary, but under no circumstances was she to take part in the fighting, and, if possible, she was to leave once Chester seemed well involved and return home to Hereford. He was afraid, of course, that if Chester and Lincoln should by some chance be beaten that she would be taken prisoner.
The beautiful words Hereford reserved for his letter to Anne, striving to raise her courage and build her resignation with a combination of sympathy, reason, and praise. That he would not be successful was a foregone conclusion, but he guessed correctly that seeing his seal when the clerk read his words would be of some comfort to her.
Before Hereford started writing to Chester, he sat for some time gently pulling his ear and running his hands through his hair. He needed to relate Lincoln's situation and apply what pressure he could to Chester, without hinting that there could be any benefit to himself other than personal satisfaction. That was not so difficult; what held him back was the struggle with his conscience about whether he should say that he was asking Chester to fight for Lincoln because he was personally occupied with Stephen in the south. Literally, of course, this was true, but to say it was to suggest that he would keep Stephen where he was if he could, which certainly was not true. Hereford sighed and wrote. This war had now made a liar of him also. Radnor was right when he said that once you were drowned in the mud it was easier to keep sinking lower. Would there be anything left of him, Hereford wondered, when it was over?
Last of all and most difficult was Hereford's letter to Lincoln, which must contain sympathy and encouragement without any direct promise of aid and certainly without indication that he planned to use his sister's father-by-law as a cat's-paw in his rebellion. If Stephen did ride north to stop Chester, Lincoln would suffer great losses, win, lose, or draw.
In spite of his revulsion at his own dishonesty, Hereford saw his last courier ride off with a certain sense of satisfaction. At least he was doing something, attempting to direct events rather than being swept along like a helpless chip of wood on the tide of circumstance. As he returned to the great hall where the exhausted men-at-arms slept strewn over the floor on straw pallets or on the bare rushes alone, Hereford's brain started to operate again. He had been pursuing a vanishing foe for so long that the reality of his effort had become entangled with the hopeless and unending pursuit of the phantoms of his recurring nightmare. If he was not to go mad, Hereford thought suddenly, he must stop this dream action and break free of his sense of inevitable futility because it was plainly leading him to the defeat of exhaustion and starvation that Stephen planned.
Instead of pursuit, hoping to catch the king and defeat him in one large battle, they could try dividing part of their forces into smaller parties that would be stationed in any unravaged areas sure to draw Stephen sooner or later. But not stationed in the keeps, Hereford thought. The uselessness of that method had been proved by the scorching of the area around Devizes. The men would have to make do in the villages, in the very huts of the serfs themselves, for to set up camps would be to display their presence and numbers openly.
The danger to the troops would be, of course, far greater, since they would have neither the stone walls nor the supplies and armaments of a castle to support them, but that knowledge should make them watch all the more keenly. Furthermore, even if one group was destroyed, the loss would not be serious because the groups would be small. Slowly the idea evolved even further. He and Henry could wait with a reasonably large force in some central place and each fighting group could be supplied with several couriers on fast horses. Perhaps thus, if fighting with the small force delayed Stephen, who would think he could hurt his enemies without danger to himself, they could reach him in time to inflict a punishing defeat upon him. Perhaps not, but at least there would be someone other than the defenseless serfs to protect what crops and land remained to them.
Hereford went to get his long unused charts and, stimulated by the first ray of hope he had seen in weeks, settled down to study them in spite of the late hour and his fatigue. Almost as if his personal feelings had some incalculable effect on external events, matters began to mend for Roger and his overlord. The day after his decision was made, Walter, whom he had not been able to contact for two weeks, turned up at Devizes, bloody, disheveled, with one third of his men dead or incapacitated, but with the heartening report that he had met Stephen's forces by accident moving southwest again and had trounced them soundly.
"Their losses were at least double mine," he reported, his dark eyes flashing with pride, "and I swear we would have taken the king himself except that darkness came and they slipped away to one of Henry de Tracy's keeps. Tired and wounded as we were, I dared not follow lest they send out a fresh force from the castle against us."
"God bless you, Walter, you are like a bright fire on a dark winter's night. We have not had such heart-warming news from anyone. Come and have your hurts dressed before you fall into a fever from them."
"You are like an old woman, Roger. I am barely scratched." Walter laughed. "It would be better for us to make haste back to where I left Stephen. My men are weary, but yours are fresh. Come, I am not so worn. I will make shift to show you the way."