"I say this is a womanish folly. There is no need to read a letter which is a pack of lies because a serpent of a woman has worked on a child to do her will. Listen to her no more, I say. Take her out of here."
Catherine shrank back against Sir Giles under the violence of Eustace's voice and gesture, but she did not drop her eyes from his face. "If it be womanish folly to desire to have my husband out of a place—an indefensible place—to which he was sent so that he might be killed or taken prisoner—then womanish folly I gladly do."
She released Sir Giles and sank to the ground tensing her muscles deliberately until her whole body trembled visibly.
"I
am a woman and weak," she cried. "I cannot compel strong men to follow me, but upon my knees I cry out to my vassals and to Lord Soke's that they succor their lord who so well has cared for them—"
"Begone, you foul bitch!"
Eustace leapt to his feet, beside himself as he saw all his carefully laid plans being torn to tatters by the feeble hands of an idiot woman. Enraged beyond reason, he clapped a hand to his sword hilt. It was extremely unlikely that he realized what he was doing or even that in his blind rage he would have used the weapon, but the gesture was most ill-advised. All of Rannulf's vassals as well as Catherine's rose as one man, their hands also on their swords. Sir Giles, alone unmoved, bit the inside of his lip until the blood ran. She had done it again! Every man would follow her like sheep follow a Judas goat to the slaughter, and he had not believed her when she planned it and told him how it would be.
CHAPTER 21
"My lord!"
Andre's voice was shaking with excitement, and Rannulf looked up from the lists he was studying. He was annoyed at the interruption because he had been trying to calculate how long the supplies in the small hold would last. That was ordinarily woman's work, and Rannulf, unaccustomed to thinking about food portions, was encountering difficulties. He heaved himself to his feet, however, and began to draw on his mail hood.
"Where do they attack from this time? How many?"
"There is no attack, my lord. I would not break your rest for that! The king has sent us succor."
"What!"
"Aye, come and see. There are some hundreds of knights fallen on our besiegers and driving them from their earthworks."
"What do you mean, come and see, you idiot. We are not helpless. We must issue out to add our strength to theirs."
"Yes, yes. I have so ordered, and the men will ride out as soon as the drawbridge can be got down in safety. You must not go, my lord, but if you—"
A blow sent Andre staggering halfway across the hall. "I am not dead yet!" Rannulf roared. "While I am alive, no men of mine shall ride to battle unless I lead them. Go bring my horse."
It could not be the king, Rannulf thought, it must be Geoffrey. Bless him and blast him! Beyond that one swift passing idea, Rannulf wasted no time in trying to identify his supporters. It was sufficient that they were belaboring Henry's men with such ferocity as to draw all their attention. It was sufficient to ride out with couched lance and take revenge for insults flung up at men penned helplessly behind walls. It was sufficient when the lance was shattered to draw sword and see blood flow, to ease the pangs of body and heart in a furious expenditure of energy.
Above mere sufficiency, there was deep satisfaction in making a wall of men against which the Angevin troops beat fruitlessly and between which the heavy baggage wains moved safely into Crowmarsh. There would be no need now to count food portions—not for months. There were the last of the wains now. Rannulf shouted the commands that would make the men wheel in behind the carts, back up, and form a rearguard action.
One more charge to drive the attackers well off and they could retreat into the hold. Even in that there was satisfaction, for with this augmentation in strength they could do more than defend themselves. If Henry sent no more men, they could attack and drive this small force away.
Rannulf's mood was as near mellow as it had ever been in the past year. He greeted his own vassals with hammer-like blows of affection and bear hugs, the men of Soke with a little more restraint but no less warmth. In a little while, however, he began to look around and frown.
"Very well," he said loudly, "come forth, oath-breaker. I will not eat you."
The men nearest him looked very much surprised and glanced at each other, but no specific reply came to his remark. Rannulf's frown of puzzlement was quickly exchanged for an agonized anxiety.
"Where is my son Geoffrey?" he asked Sir Giles, who happened to be closest to him.
"In Sleaford keep, I suppose, unless he is out gathering troops. Did you desire him to come? Lady Catherine told me you had strictly forbade it."
"How come you here then? Who summoned you from Eustace's camp? Where did you come by these supplies?"
Sir Giles uttered a half-laugh. "By the Lady Catherine's doing is the answer to all questions, but if you wish to know whys and wherefores, ask her yourself. There she sits."
Too stunned to utter a sound, Rannulf limped forward a few paces. There, indeed, she did sit, garbed in a travel-stained riding gown with a big smudge of dirt on her nose and her hair dark with dust. Rannulf opened his mouth, then closed it when he could get no sound out. Catherine raised her eyes to his, and there was a trepidation in them, but there was also a—a twinkle.
"Woman," Rannulf bellowed, "are you mad?"
That was obviously a rhetorical question which required no answer, being only an opener for a tirade to follow, but Catherine did not wish to be scolded in public. "No, my lord," she replied in a low, respectful tone.
Thrown off his stride by her reply, Rannulf looked around. "Why did you bring a woman to a besieged—"
There was no sense in finishing that question because Sir Giles, to whom it was addressed, had retreated to the safety of the other end of the hall. Rannulf gaped at his wife again.
"If you will take a deep breath," Catherine said gravely, "you will be better able to speak."
She knew the further impudence was likely to make Rannulf completely speechless with rage. Catherine did not care if Rannulf bellowed until the roof rose. She could even love his roaring anger. Anything was better than the cold rejection she had suffered when he was last at Sleaford. She did, however, prefer to be bellowed at in private. Since he seemed to be safely paralyzed, she rose and came to him.
"Do not blame Sir Giles," she said. "I forced him to take me. Moreover, there was no reason why I should not come. My lands, as you know, are settled on Geoffrey and Richard in the event that I die without an heir of my body. All that I love and desire is in this place. Wherefore should I not come?"
Rannulf's complexion could not change. The two fever spots burned in his cheeks above the all-pervading ugly gray, but his eyes went blank as if a shutter had closed in his soul. She had said she loved him, and he believed her, but he had not believed that love to be strong enough to make her ruin herself and the children for him.
"Come above to my chamber—such as it is," he muttered. "This is no place to speak of private matters."
When they had climbed the uneven, ladderlike stairs, he waved her to the one seat in the room. She was so calm, smiling at him, that Rannulf guessed she had not accepted defeat. Some new plan to recruit him into the rebel force was fermenting in that brain that should have belonged to a man.
"What do you think you can gain here?" he asked her. "What do you want of me?"
Perhaps Rannulf was not as sick as Geoffrey thought, but he had much fever. It was no time to quarrel about loyalty and expediency, Catherine decided.
"Lie down upon the bed," she replied, frowning at the dirty pallet. It was a poor place for a sick man to lie, but she had brought no bed, grudging the baggage space. "Let me see to your hurts. You have one wound that festers already, and all the others are like to do so."
A wave of unutterable fatigue swept Rannulf. He watched as Catherine began to open a little casket. She had not denied that she wanted something.
"You came here for some purpose," he insisted. "I owe you a great debt. Ask, and let me make answer. If my answer does not please you, you can still go."
It was well to humor a feverish man; to make him angrier could only hurt him. Catherine began to lay out her drugs and simples while she searched her mind for something to ask that would not be too obviously a sop.
"If you are so yielding," she soothed, "then give some dower to your daughter Mary. You are not well and this is a dangerous place. If aught befalls you here—or elsewhere—she will be penniless."
Rannulf could have wept with pain and weakness and weariness, yet he had a greater impulse to laugh. She was offering him a comfit as if he were a sick child. Such a woman! She saw she could not accomplish her large purpose just now, so she would accomplish a smaller one while she bided her time.
"Let me sit to write," he said thickly. "I will give her the manor and farms of Donnington. Will that content you?"
"Most suitable, my lord. That will content me full well. While you write, I will go down to order hot water to wash you."
The water was an excuse for Catherine to find Sir Andre. "My lord has given Mary Donnington," she said pointedly. "I have spoken to your brother, and he will not approach Soke for you. There is no other way but that you screw up your courage and ask him yourself, and that in haste. Now that he has dowered her, others will ask for her, or he may begin to think on it himself. At least put it in his mind that you desire her."
When Rannulf woke from the sleep of exhaustion which followed Catherine's careful treatment of his wounds, Andre was beside him. He looked around at the bare chamber, wondering whether his wife had really been there or whether he had been dreaming.
"Have I been out of my head?" he asked huskily.
"No, my lord."
Rannulf turned his head sharply at the trembling voice. "What ails you?"
"Do not slay me, my lord," Andre whispered, going down on his knees by the pallet. Rannulf went rigid, wondering if Catherine could have opened the keep to their enemies while he slept.
"It is not because of the manor," Andre hurried on, stumbling over the words, "but because I was afraid someone else would offer first. Also, I spoke to my brother, and he says that I dishonor us all by my secrecy. He says that I must ask you or leave your service, and although I fear it will come to the same thing in that you doubtless have the right to drive me forth, yet I must ask. Do not cast me out, my lord. You may say me nay, but I love you also. I would never do your daughter a hurt, even though I desire her—"
"Mary!" Relief swept Rannulf, a relief so acute that it left his body bathed in sweat and his limbs trembling.
Andre swallowed convulsively. "I have cast my eyes on your daughter," he gasped, "and my brother says I am damned. I know I had no right, but I meant no harm, and so good is she, so sweet, so—"
"Be quiet!" Rannulf ordered, afraid that he would burst into laughter and offend the poor trembling suitor.
Andre dropped his forehead to the edge of the cot, his neck stretched as if he awaited a sword blow. So here was the secret behind Andre's devotion, and a simple secret at that. It was true that an earl could look higher for a husband even for a bastard daughter, but to Rannulf's mind it was a fitting reward to bestow on the young man for having saved Geoffrey's life.
"In part you are of better blood than she," Rannulf said. "You know that her mother was a serving wench?"
Andre nodded, his heart beating so hard with hope now that it nearly choked him.
"Go to," Rannulf said after a rather long pause. "Send your brother to me, and if he does not object to your throwing yourself away on a maidservant's daughter, we will see what can be done."
Rannulf had planned to offer Andre vassalage and a keep of his own anyway, so that he would lose nothing by this arrangement. To be tied in blood to Fortesque would be very useful also, in case Catherine was taken with any wild notions of which he did not approve.
He lay quietly waiting for Sir Giles, but it was Catherine who came in when the door opened. She smiled down at Rannulf and brushed the hair back from his face.
"You have agreed. I saw it in his face when he came down. How kind you are. I have been trying to tell you that those children desired each other for a year, but you snapped at me every time I mentioned Mary's name."
Rannulf burst out laughing, and lifted himself so he could eat the soup she brought. "You have won this battle, but you will have time for no others. When the men are rested, I will send you home and the vassals of Soke back to their own lands. They will obey me in this, Catherine, for you have no business here nor have they. I have supplies sufficient and, with my vassals here, men sufficient."
Eustace was on the road himself only a day after Catherine. He could not stop her by force, he could not take the keep he had been besieging without the men she had spirited away, and he saw the failure of his entire plan to secure the east resulting from her action. Stephen's authority as king was his last hope to retrieve the situation. If the king ordered her and the men back, perhaps they would obey.
He found his father deep in the state of lethargy that had overcome him periodically since his mother's death. Stephen listened to him, but only shook his head.
"Oh, let them go. Take men from my forces. It is more necessary that Henry be detained than that we take this or that keep quickly."
"But Henry will not be detained. Do you think Rannulf will hold Crowmarsh now that his men are there? They will yield to the Angevin and turn upon us."
Something flickered in Stephen's eyes. "Nay, they will not. Besides, if Henry takes him prisoner, you need trouble about him no more."
For one long moment Eustace stared at his father as if he had changed into a serpent before his eyes. Then he burst into roars of laughter.
"Wonderful," he gasped, "wonderful. I would never have thought of that way to be rid of him without a stain upon our honor."