The interest of such an appeal was, of course, far too great to resist just to annoy Hereford. William went with Henry, hoping to learn something new but perfectly willing to listen to anything the young man said, and Henry kept him interested by applying to him for information on the various prisoners taken at Bruton and for advice on how to treat those who seemed ready to join him.
Hereford sighed with relief. William always revolted him, but usually he could control his natural recoil. He laughed a little wryly, promising himself not to snap so irritably in the future. After all, the man could scarcely ravish him against his will. Nonetheless, the small additional distraction in his present state of nervous irritation made him careless. After ordering the scribes to write the summonses and writing some of the more important ones himself, Hereford scrawled a note to Elizabeth warning her of Stephen's move and urging her to make all reasonable speed consonant with her safety to return to Hereford Castle. Just as he was about to address this, he was interrupted for what seemed like the twentieth time by the need to settle a minor dispute about the division of spoils and the distribution of supplies. Cursing his men roundly, he sent them about their business, seized what he thought was his letter to Elizabeth to direct it and hand it to a waiting courier.
"With all haste possible to my wife, and enjoin her by mouth that I bid her heed most strictly what I wrote herein."
"Yes, my lord. Shall I return with her reply?"
"There will be no need for an immediate reply if she is able to obey my orders. If not, she will direct you or another. Make haste and bid her make all possible haste also."
Some twenty-four hours later the exhausted rider gasped out his message–when Hereford said to make haste his men were prone to kill horses in an effort to obey him–and Elizabeth broke her husband's seal in a trembling hurry. What she read made her open her eyes to their fullest extent in blank amazement. Without salutation or address, in a hand that was obviously not Roger's, the letter she received was a formal summons for her to appear at Gloucester to perform her military duties to her overlord.
"Is this for me? You are sure there is no mistake?"
"My lord gave me the letter with his own hand, madam, and bid me tell you that you should strictly obey his orders and that with all possible haste."
"But—" Elizabeth bit back what she had been about to say and dismissed the messenger with a gesture.
It was ridiculous to question the courier further for he could plainly tell her no more. What in the world, she wondered, had gotten into Roger? Surely however pressed for time he was he could have written a line in his own hand, and she was not, after all, a military vassal. The only thing she could think of was that things were so bad that he was afraid to describe them for fear of the letter falling into enemy hands and guessed that she would understand what he meant by his unusual proceedings. Whatever the explanation, it behooved her to go to him at once, for surely he must be in an extremity of need to summon her in such a way. Elizabeth hurriedly sought out her chief vassal and gave orders that would start them on their way south immediately.
"Now, madam? Through this hostile country?"
Elizabeth's heart quailed. Those words were almost identical with what Alan of Evesham had said before they started for Castle Corby and, indeed, it was the same country—a little north—through which they would ride. Her resolution did not falter long, however.
"Yes, through the night also. My husband and your liege lord has great need of us. We are too strong a force to be lightly taken. Do not be so fainthearted. Shall I don armor and protect you? Are you not shamed that a mere woman should need to urge you to your duty? Fie, is this manhood?"
"As you say, madam. All shall be as you order," the grizzled warrior said hastily, before his mistress could get her tongue well warmed. As Elizabeth turned away to find her father, he shook his head. "Mere woman," he mumbled, "mere woman. God save me from being on the opposing side if she ever should have cause to lead a force in battle. Her father is a milkmaid compared with his mere daughter." He went to summon the men and order the packing for the long ride. "Woman," he muttered under his breath again, "devil is more like, and the only one who is worse is that husband of hers who is not only madder than she, but can make the craziest things seem like an ordinary matter."
Chester was somewhat harder to convince than her vassal, and Elizabeth did not dare show him her letter for fear he would think Roger had gone mad. Chester, of course, knew nothing of the ceremony of homage she had gone through and would see no sense in the summons at all. She prevailed at last, naturally, because there was nothing her father could do to hold her short of imprisoning her. She was, after all, her own mistress, and the men would obey her orders. The only reason she argued and pleaded at all was that she loved him and did not wish to part from him on bad terms.
"Dear Father, I must go if Roger needs me. You know I must. More particularly since you do not need me any longer. Lincoln's vassals have at last heeded his call, you have men and money sufficient—"
"Elizabeth, I am not trying to hold you here. Of course you must go to your husband. But through the night? His need could not be so great as that."
"I do not know," Elizabeth replied softly, but with frightened eyes. "It is not like him to call me so urgently. My men have almost completed their time of service and I know he planned that I should return to Hereford when I left you. Yet his letter urges haste and his messenger brought orders from his own lips more straitly urging haste. I dare not delay even an hour more than necessary."
"Mayhap if necessity presses so hard it would be well for me to come also?"
"He would have asked if he desired that. But I thank you for your kindness, Father. Do you hold yourself in readiness for a day or two. If I find that the case is desperate, I will send you word."
"Very well, Elizabeth." Chester drew his daughter close and kissed her fondly. "You were ever one to go your own way. Whatever happens, I will help you, my love. Do not fail to send me word, one way or another."
That evening Elizabeth's courage nearly failed her. A slight drizzle was falling and the light was failing just as it had that March when she was taken. Her vassals, like Alan, also asked more than once whether they should stop, and Elizabeth, again feeling that to go back was more dangerous than to go forward and stopping most dangerous of all, again urged them onward with barbed words. It was only externals that were similar, however, and Elizabeth comforted herself with that knowledge. Her troop this time was almost strong enough to fight off an army and her travel was for far different reasons.
The outcome of her journey was also quite different, and despite the trepidation of her vassals they arrived toward evening in sight of the great walled city of Gloucester. Elizabeth looked long and searchingly at the terrain, sighed, and motioned her men forward again. At least Gloucester was not under siege. She was shaking with fatigue by the time she dismounted but still in full possession of her wits and her nerves and prepared for anything. Anything, that is, except what greeted her, which was a husband whose eyes blazed and whose face was distorted by fury.
"What in the name of the unholy are you doing here? What does this mean?" he roared, and then, giving her no time to reply, "What disordered freak has taken possession of you now?"
"But Roger—" Elizabeth expostulated with eyes all but bulging with surprise.
"God, oh, God, how did I ever come to marry such a mad woman! Can nothing restrain you from following your own willful path to our mutual disaster?"
"God curse you, Roger, shut your mouth," Elizabeth shrieked, her higher-pitched voice overriding his at last. "My willful path!" She fumbled in the purse that hung from her belt. Extracting the parchment upon which his last message had been written, she threw it into his face. "There, there are your own orders which brought me here. Do you really think I would ride two feet of my own free will to be with you?"
Tired and shaken as she was, Elizabeth could not help being amused at the comical expression of chagrin which overspread her husband's countenance as he read the summons. It did not last long, however, for he became angry again almost immediately.
"That is ridiculous, Elizabeth, and you know it. You are no idiot or perhaps you are if you did not realize that this summons could not possibly be meant for you."
"So I thought, my lord," she replied with a deadly sweetness of tone that should have warned Hereford what was coming. "And I asked the messenger if there was not a mistake." Elizabeth paused, her golden eyes going fiercer and fiercer. "But he replied to me that you had given him that letter with your own dear, careful hands and that with your own sweet, clever lips you had added a verbal message that I must straitly obey what was in the letter, and with all haste." Her words had come quicker and quicker, louder and louder until in the end she was screaming.
If Roger's previous expression had been comical, the dismay that now covered his face was ludicrous. He remembered only too well having given that message and he knew what an effort Elizabeth must have made to arrive so soon. But now she was beyond laughter, and before he could find his voice she had flounced out of the hall calling for the vassal who usually transmitted her orders to the men. That gentleman, however, had been present at the foregoing scene and deliberately made himself scarce because he knew what Elizabeth's temper was. Undoubtedly if she caught him within the next half hour or so they would be ordered to ride out again. Possibly if he could avoid her for a while, her husband could calm her down; he devoutly hoped so for they had already been thirty-six hours in the saddle, barring the stops they had made to feed and rest the horses.
Roger caught his wife in the passage and, failing to hold her with words, pinned her physically against the wall. She struggled only for a moment, telling herself that useless struggles were undignified, but really being only too anxious to accept his explanation. He was not explaining, however, he was laughing.
"Good God, Elizabeth," he gasped finally, gazing with tear-filled eyes into his wife's rigid face. "I have not laughed like that since we parted. You are always the best thing in the world for me."
"I am very happy that I can afford you amusement, if I have failed in my intention of bringing you needed help," she replied coldly, but with a slightly suspicious quiver in her own voice.
"It is not you at whom I am laughing, Elizabeth, and you know it, so stop pretending you do not think it is funny too. Lord, what an ass I must have looked reading that silly summons. I must have picked up the wrong letter, but how I can have done so … Well, it is too late to worry about that now. My poor darling, you must be half dead. It is less than three days since I sent that message out."
"Looked an ass," Elizabeth said trenchantly, "you are an ass."
"I am anything you like, my love, if you will forgive me." Roger laughed again, suddenly, leaning forward against his wife. "My God, I wonder who got the letter I sent to you? Which of Gloucester's vassals did I address as 'dear love' and tell that I kissed his gentle hands and slender feet."
"Roger, you did not!" Elizabeth was convulsed, thinking of the. stunned amazement of some hard-bitten, battle-scarred veteran as he consumed that piece of information.
"The letter must have gone to someone," Roger gasped, and they clung together, laughing. He sobered finally. "In truth it might have been less of a jest if you came to harm. Come, you must not stand here. Will you go up to Lady Gloucester's solar or would you prefer my room?"
"I am in no fit temper to listen to Isabel's whining just now, Roger."
"Very well," he said a little doubtfully, "but I am afraid you will freeze. I chose the north tower of the old keep and the hearth smokes so badly that I have done without a fire. Still, if that is what you desire …"
"You can stop hemming and hawing, Roger. If you have a woman there, just go and tell her to get out. I can sit in the hall for a few minutes."
Hereford leaned forward again and kissed his wife on the lips with great tenderness. "There is no one there now."
He made no claim of having been faithful, which Elizabeth, quite reasonably, would not have believed anyway, but explained that his retreat was from Gloucester whose attentions he could no longer bear with civility nor reject with impunity in the manner he would like. He then busied himself so completely in giving orders for her comfort that his wife had no time to observe him until washed, scented, and beautifully gowned she relaxed on the bed and gestured him to her.
"Come here, Roger, I have something to tell you."
"And I have many things to tell you," Hereford answered obtusely, sitting down on the bed. "It is a little over three months since I spoke with you. So much has happened that I could not write about."
What little light came into the room from the arrow slits and from the candles near the bed fell full upon his face and Elizabeth, who had glanced lovingly up at him, found that what she had been about to say had better be delayed. This was no time, she realized, to introduce any new emotion, even of joy, to her husband's mind. He looked like a thread so finely drawn that the slightest pressure would snap it.
CHAPTER 18
THE SOUND OF THE WIND RUSTLING THE DRY LEAVES OF LATE OCTOBER
came clearly to Roger of Hereford as he lay awake in the rough cot in his tent. Beside him Elizabeth's even breathing both soothed and surprised him. The thick, curling blond lashes dropped over his eyes, bluer and brighter than ever in his thin, tired face, as he wondered for the thousandth time how he had been cozened into bringing her with him. Bringing a woman to the very edge of battle …
It was crazy, and it certainly had not been his wish to bring her. No, that was not completely true; he had desired it although he knew it to be wrong, and because he had desired it he had yielded to Henry's urging and Gloucester's. He could not understand a bit why they did urge that Elizabeth remain with them. They did not need her men, and her presence in her present temper was certainly no social pleasure.