Brother Cadfael's Penance (27 page)

"If you are in earnest," said Cadfael, carried away in this gale, "something might be attempted. Once there's truce, there can be movement in and out, and traffic with the village. For all I know, there may be local men within here, and some wounded or even among the dead, and their kin will be wanting to get news of them, once the way's open."

Olivier paced, hugged his body in embracing arms, and considered. "Where is the empress now?"

"She set up her court in the village, so they say. I doubt if she'll make her appearance here for a day or so, she'll need a degree of state, and a grand entrance. But even so," said Cadfael, "all the time we have is the rest of this night, and the first few hours of truce, while there's still confusion, and no such close watch."

"Then we must make it enough," said Olivier. "And say we do begin well... Where would you have him taken? To have the care he needs?"

Cadfael had given thought to that, though then without much hope of ever being able to pursue it. "There is a house of the Augustinians in Cirencester. I remember the prior at Haughmond has regular correspondence with one of the canons there, and they have a good name as physicians. And with them sanctuary would be inviolable. But it is a matter of ten miles or more."

"But the best and fastest road," said Olivier, gleaming brightly in this fury of planning, "and would not take us near the village. Once through Winstone we should be on the straight run to Cirencester. Now, how are we to get him out of the castle and keep him man alive?"

"Perhaps," said Cadfael slowly, "as a man already dead. The first task, when the gates are open, will be to carry out the dead and lay them ready for burial. We know how many there should be, but FitzGilbert does not. And should there be a man from Winstone shrouded among them, his kin might very well come with a cart, to fetch him home."

With his eyes burning steadily upon Cadfael's face, Olivier voiced the final question and the final fear: "And if he is in his senses then, and forbids, as he might, what then?"

"Then," said Cadfael, "I will remove him at least into the chapel, and we'll put her and any other under the ban of the Church if they dare break his sanctuary. But there is no more I can do. I have no medicines here that could put a man to sleep for hours. And even if I had, you said that I had cheated you by laying you in my debt without your knowledge. He might accuse me of forcing him to default on a debt, to his dishonour. I have not the hardihood to do that to Philip."

"No," agreed Olivier, and suddenly smiled. "So we had better make a success of it while he is still senseless. Even that may be straining our rights, but we'll argue that afterwards. And if I am going, as well go quickly. This once, my father, will you be my squire and help me to arm?"

He put on the mail hauberk, to make one more among the besiegers who were massed outside the walls, drawn off for a few minutes to regroup and attack yet again, and over it the surcoat of linen that bore the lions of Anjou plain to be seen. Cadfael buckled the sword-belt round his son's loins, and for a moment had the world in his arms.

The cloak was necessary cover here within the walls, to hide Geoffrey's blazon, for no one but Cadfael yet knew that Philip had set his prisoner free, and some zealous man-at-arms might strike first and question afterwards. True, it bore on the shoulder the imperial eagle which the empress had never consented to relinquish after her first husband's death, but the badge was dark and unobtrusive on the dark cloth, and would not be noticed. If Olivier could inveigle himself successfully in among the defenders in the obscurity and confusion within the tower, he must discard the cloak before attempting to break out and venture among the attackers, so that the lions might show clear on the pallor of the linen, even by night, and be recognized.

"Though I would rather pass unrecognized," admitted Olivier, stretching his broad shoulders under the weight of the mail, and settling the belt about his hips. "Every moment of this night I need, without wasting any in questioning and accounting. Well, my father, shall we go and make the assay?"

Cadfael locked the door after them, and they climbed the spiral stair. At the outer door Cadfael laid a hand on Olivier's arm, and peered out cautiously into the ward, but in the shelter of the keep all was still, only the movements of the guards on the wall came down to them almost eerily.

"Stay by me. We'll make our way close along the wall until we're among them. Then take your moment when you see it. Best when the next thrust comes, and they crowd into the tower to fend it off. And no goodbyes! Go, and God go with you!"

"It will not be goodbye," said Oliver. Cadfael felt him tensed and quivering at his back, confident, almost joyous. After long confinement his frustrated energy ached for release. "You will see me tomorrow, whether in my own or another shape. I have kept his back many a time, and he mine. This one more time, with God's help and yours, I'll do him that same service, whether he will or no."

The door of the tower Cadfael also locked, leaving all here as it should be. They crossed the open ward to the keep, and circled in its shadow to reach the threatened tower on the other side. Even here the clamour of battle had subsided into the shifting murmur of recoil between onsets, and even that subdued, to keep the hearing sharp and ready for the next alarm. They stirred restlessly, like the sea in motion, spoke to one another briefly and in lowered voices, and kept their eyes fixed upon the foremost ranks, filling the jagged gap in the base of the tower. Fragments of masonry and rubble littered the ground, but the torn hole was not yet so big as to threaten the tower's collapse. The fitful light of torches, such as still burned, and the dull glow in the sky outside the wall, where fire had burned out half the roof of the sow, left the ward almost in darkness.

A sudden warning outcry from within the tower, taken up and echoed back over the ranks within the ward, foretold the next assault. The mass drove in, tightening in support, to seal the breach with their bodies. Cadfael, on the fringe of the throng, felt the instant when Olivier slipped away from him like the tearing of his own flesh. He was gone, in among the men of the garrison, lithe and rapid and silent, lost to view in a moment.

Nevertheless, Cadfael drew back only far enough to be out of the way of the fighting men, and waited patiently for this assault, like the last, to be driven back. It never reached the ward. Certainly there was bitter fighting within the shell of the tower, but never a man of the attackers got beyond. It took more than half an hour to expel them completely, and drive them to a safe distance away from the walls, but after that the strange, tense quietness came back and with it a number of those who had fought the foremost came back to draw breath in safety until the next bout. But not Olivier. Either he was lurking somewhere in the broken shell, or else he was out into the turmoil of the night with the repelled invaders, and on his way, God grant, to cover in the woodland, and thence to some place where he could cross the river, and emerge on the road to the mill at Winstone.

Cadfael went back to the chamber where Philip lay, the chaplain nodding gently beside him. Philip's breathing scarcely lifted the sheet over his breast, and then in a short, rapid rhythm. His face was livid as clay, but impenetrably calm, no lines of pain tightening his forehead or lips. He was deep beyond awareness of any such trivial matters as peril, anger or fear. God keep him so a while yet, and prevent impending evil.

There would be need of help in carrying this body towards its peace along with the rest, but it must be in innocence. For a moment Cadfael considered asking the priest, but discarded the idea almost as soon as it was conceived. There could be no embroiling this tired old man in an enterprise which could incur the empress's deadly disfavour, and place him in reach of her immediate and implacable rage. What was to be done must be done in such a way that no one else could be blamed, or feel any betraying uneasiness.

But now there was nothing to be done but be still and pray, and wait for the summons to action. Cadfael sat in a corner of the room, and watched the old man drowse, and the wounded man's withdrawal into something far more profound than sleep. He was still sitting there motionless when he heard the sound of the blown trumpets, calling the attention of the investing forces to the white banners fluttering from the towers of La Musarderie in the first dim light of predawn.

FitzGilbert rode down from the village, ceremoniously attended, and talked with Guy Camville before the gate. Brother Cadfael had come out into the ward to hear the terms of the exchange, and was not surprised when the first words the marshall uttered were: "Where is Philip FitzRobert?" Blunt and urgent: patently he had his orders.

"My lord," said Camville from the walk above the gate, "is wounded, and has authorized me to make terms with you to surrender the castle. I ask that you will treat the garrison fairly and with honour. Upon reasonable conditions La Musarderie shall be yielded to the empress, but we are not so pressed as to accept shameful or ungenerous usage. We have wounded, we have dead. I ask that we may have truce from this hour, and will open the gates to you now, that you may see we are prepared to observe that truce and lay by all arms. If you are satisfied we are in good faith, give us the morning hours until noon to restore some order here within, and marshal our wounded, and carry out our dead for burial."

"Fair asking so far," said the marshall shortly. "What then?"

"We were not the attackers here," said Camville equally briskly, "and have fought according to our sworn allegiance, as men owing fealty must. I ask that the garrison may be allowed to march out at noon and depart without hindrance, and that we take with us all our wounded who are fit to go. Those with worse injuries I ask that you will see tended as well as may be, and our dead we will bury."

"And if I do not like your terms?" asked FitzGilbert. But it was plain from the complacency of his voice that he was well satisfied to be gaining, without further effort or waste of time, what all the empress's host had come to win. The common soldiery here within would have been only so many more mouths to feed, and a continuing risk if things went wrong. To have them depart was a satisfaction.

"Then you may go back empty-handed," said Camville boldly, "and we will fight you to the last man and the last arrow, and make you pay dear for a ruin you may have intact if you choose well."

"You abandon here all your arms," said the marshall, "even personal arms. And leave all engines undamaged."

Camville, encouraged by this indication of consent, made a token objection, hardly meant to be taken seriously, and withdrew it when it was rejected. "Very well, we go disarmed."

"So far, good! We allow your withdrawal. All but one! Philip FitzRobert stays here!"

"I believe you have agreed, my lord," said Camville, "that the wounded who cannot go with us shall be properly tended. I trust you make no exceptions to that? I have told you my lord is wounded."

"In the case of FitzRobert I gave no assurances," said the marshall, goaded. "You surrender him into the empress's hands unconditionally or there will be no agreement."

"On that head," said Camville, "I am already instructed by my lord Philip, and it is at his orders, not at yours, FitzGilbert, that I leave him here at your mercy."

There was a perilous silence for a long moment. But the marshall was long experienced in accommodating himself to these embarrassments endemic in civil warfare.

"Very well! I will confirm truce, as I have already called a halt to action. Be ready to march out by noon, and you may go unhindered. But hark, I shall leave a party here outside the gates until noon, when we enter formally, to view everything and every man you take away with you. You will have to satisfy them that you are keeping to terms."

"The terms I make I keep," said Camville sharply.

"Then we shall not renew the quarrel. Now open the gate to me, let me see in what state you leave all within."

By which he meant, Cadfael judged, let him see that Philip lay wounded and helpless within, and could not slip through the empress's fingers. Cadfael took the hint, and went back hastily to the bedchamber, to be there in attendance when FitzGilbert reached it, which he did very promptly. Priest and monastic flanked the bed when Camville and the marshall entered. Philip's shallow breathing had begun to rasp hollowly in throat and breast. His eyes were still closed, the full, arched lids had an alabaster pallor.

FitzGilbert came close, and stood looking down at the drawn face for a long time, whether with satisfaction or compunction Cadfael could not determine. Then he said indifferently: "Well..." and shrugged, and turned away abruptly. They heard his footsteps echoing along the stony corridors of the keep, and out into the ward. He departed assured that the empress's arch-enemy could not so much as lift a hand to ward off the noose, much less rise from his bed and ride away out of reach of her vengeance.

When the marshall was gone, and the trumpets exchanging their peremptory signals across the bleached grass of the open ground between the armies, Cadfael drew breath deep, and turned to Philip's chaplain.

"There'll be no worse now. It's over. You have watched the night through. Go and get your proper rest. I'll stay with him now."

Chapter Fourteen

Alone with Philip, Cadfael searched the chest and the press for woollen rugs to swathe his patient against cold and the buffeting of the roads, and wound him in a sheet, with only a single thickness of linen over his face, so that air might still reach him. One more dead man prepared for burial; and now all that remained was to get him either into the chapel with the rest, or out among the first to the turf of the meadow, where several of his men-at-arms were digging a communal grave. And which was the more hazardous course was a moot question. Cadfael had locked the door of the room while he went about his preparations, and hesitated to open it too soon, but from within he could not determine what was going on. It must be mid-morning by this time, and the garrison mustering for their withdrawal. And FitzGilbert in his rapid tour of the damage within must have taken note of the perilous state of one tower, and would be bringing masons in haste to make the stonework safe, even if proper repairs must wait.