Fires of Winter (43 page)

He must have paid them thrice or more too, because the house was all alight, though it was near to midnight. A man came hurrying to take the horses with a boy behind him to help him curry and feed them. Another man urged the men within the lower floor, and a woman showed us the way to the solar, where a warm pie and mulled wine were set on a table in the chamber as we entered the door. The woman curtsied deeply and withdrew and the girl followed her.

“Royal service, Bruno?” I asked, smiling. “Is this to accustom me to life with Matilda?”

“I wish it were, but I think it more likely you will play the girl who curtsies and goes out.”

“So much the better.” I laughed. “I will prefer your company to hers—and that is no great flattery, so do not begin to preen yourself.” He stretched and yawned, and I could see a greyness under the dark tone of his skin. “You look very tired. Come, sit and eat, if you will, or go to bed at once. Shall I help you undress?”

He touched my face. “You are my life and my joy, Melusine. I did not know that there were two such women in the world as you and Audris, never complaining and always kind. I must eat. I have had nothing since dawn, when I set out, but even my jaws are tired.”

I turned away and made myself busy at the table, pouring the wine into cups and setting pieces of the meat pie on trenchers of bread. “I hope your tongue is not as tired as your jaws because you will hear complaints very soon if you do not tell me why we need to hurry so fast.”

“I did not lie to the queen.” He sighed, lowered himself to the bench by the table, and drank off the wine. I filled the cup again and sat beside him. “But I did not tell her all the truth either.”

“I guessed that much,” I told him, breaking off a piece of the pie and beginning to chew.

“There really was no question of assault,” he said. His eyes were on the food, but I do not think he recognized it for what it was. I broke off another piece of the pie and put it in his mouth. He chewed slowly, not as if he were tired but as if he had little appetite. “The king is very angry. He wishes to fight, not to do Matilda harm; he would only send her back to Anjou if he took her prisoner. But he is bitter against Aubigny, and he thinks Winchester proposed freeing Matilda because of spite. It is true that Winchester was deeply hurt by being passed over for archbishop of Canterbury and also felt Stephen was wrong in his harsh treatment of Salisbury and his kin—in that there may be some private concern, for Winchester has built and fortified more keeps than Salisbury—”

“Never mind all the past causes,” I broke in. “I can guess that Winchester is the one who proposed that Matilda should be sent to Bristol rather than being taken prisoner, and I can guess also that there have been some voices whispering treachery. What I want to know is now the matter is decided, what difference could a day or two make? Why have we nearly killed our horses to get here a day sooner?”

“Not by order,” Bruno said, staring ahead at the small fire. “The king—Stephen always sees the sun shining, but I see the black clouds all around. There is an ugly feeling in the camp, Melusine. Half the men, or more, who answered the king's summons were connected in some way with Salisbury or owed him favors. I think they are wondering when Stephen will turn on them. I think many are beginning to ask themselves whether they were forsworn when they did homage to Stephen. I wonder, if Stephen had been a little slower in coming here in force, whether some or many of those now in his army would have risen in revolt to follow Matilda. I do not know whether Winchester's reasons for proposing this solution to being rid of Matilda are the same as mine, but I feel that an assault would more likely begin a war among the men supposedly supporting the king than take Arundel. I want Matilda away from these people.”

I put my hand on his and with my other put another piece of pie into his mouth. “I cannot see why,” I said, opening my eyes wide to achieve a look of innocence. “I think you should better encourage them to go to her, not try to prevent it.” And when he turned outraged eyes on me, his mouth being too full to allow speech, I laughed. “They would be back behind Stephen in a week, and they would never waver again. One taste of Matilda is usually enough. I know you have great and important reasons for the different things Robert of Gloucester has done—why, for example, he did not cry defiance at once after he was nearly ambushed by—oh, I do not remember his name—”

“William of Ypres.”

I waved a hand to dismiss the name, which was not important, and presented another piece of pie, which Bruno accepted, grinning, because he had already guessed what I was about to say.

“Yes, well the reason was, simply, that Robert could not stand Matilda either. It is a good reason for him to go ahead and leave her here too.”

Bruno contemplated that while he chewed, not seriously—I had not offered the notions seriously, only as an amusing fantasy in which there was just enough of a shred of truth to lighten the moment. We both knew that Matilda had stayed behind because she hoped to rouse the barons in the area to rebellion. Whether that would have happened, we would never know because Stephen had arrived too quickly with a show of force that pushed waverers to his side.

“Yes, well.” He drank most of the second cup of wine and sighed, the smile I had brought to his eyes disappearing. “That is the cause of my haste. I agree with the bishop of Winchester that Matilda can do little harm—” briefly his smile returned, “—and if you are right about her effect on people, perhaps she can even do our cause some good, once she is confined to Bristol. That city and the whole shire have been steadily rebel from the beginning. To my mind, the quicker she is gone, the more it will seem she fled from the king's strength.”

Others had come to the same conclusion, it seemed, because we wasted no time after arriving at the king's camp outside Arundel. Even Stephen seemed caught up in the need to remove Matilda from her present place as quickly as possible, for he spent no more time than to ask if I were willing and to hear me say I was, so long as Bruno accompanied me, before he sent us off to Arundel.

Despite my calm words and manner, I was not easy as Bruno and I rode alone to the keep. All that protected us was our insignificance; Aubigny knew that our fate could not influence the king in any way so it was useless to hurt or kill us—at least I hoped he knew. That could be why I had been chosen rather than a lady of more consequence.

When we approached the keep, the drawbridge came down and a large party of men thundered across. I gasped with alarm, but Bruno seized my rein and said, “Do not be frightened, Melusine. They will do us no harm. They are only taking precautions that our coming cannot be used as a cover for an attack. See, they have stopped. Now they will part to let us through.”

Everything happened as he said, but I did not like it when we were followed closely across the bridge, and I felt stifled—which was ridiculous, since we were in the open space of the outer bailey—when the bridge rose again, sealing us inside. We were, however, civilly greeted and asked with courtesy to follow the captain of the troop to the inner bailey and the keep itself.

“The empress is much concerned that this offer is only a trap,” the captain said.

I looked at him in some surprise, since troop captains did not usually discuss the affairs of important guests. He was a large man with a broad, fair face—what I could see of it around the nasal of his helmet—and worried blue eyes.

“It is no trap, my lord,” Bruno replied.

I realized then that this must be William d'Aubigny himself, and I thought, from his expression, that he was just as eager to be rid of Matilda as the king. That made me feel somewhat more confident.

“King Stephen,” Bruno went on, “desires no harm to come to his cousin. Even should worse come to worst and it be necessary to assault Arundel, Matilda has nothing to fear—you may assure her. In that case she would still have her choice, to go in honor and safety to Bristol or to be taken to France or Anjou, whichever she wishes.”

I nearly squeaked with surprise, thinking that if the empress were taken as a prize of war Stephen could not be so foolish as to release her, and if Aubigny had not been staring fixedly at Bruno, I might have ruined the impact of Bruno's remark. In the next moment I realized my husband was being clever again. He had deliberately omitted any assurance of pardon for Aubigny, who was looking more grim by the moment. Clever Bruno; Aubigny would now do all in his power to be rid of a guest who was about to bring destruction on him and escape scot-free.

“I do not think it would be wise to tell her that,” Aubigny said, “not if the king wants her to go. Here she could be a cause of unrest among his vassals.”

“It might be so,” Bruno answered indifferently, “but it would be of little account. The queen has already dispatched orders for her ships to bring more mercenaries, and then to lie at anchor to prevent reinforcements from reaching you by sea.”

I did not know whether this was the truth; likely it was what Bruno and the queen had been talking about while I was thinking only of how glad I was that Bruno would come with me. I saw, however, that the pleasant, calm manner in which Bruno made these statements added greatly to Aubigny's discomfort. He said no more while we crossed the inner drawbridge and dismounted in the courtyard. I looked up at the keep with a distaste that was growing stronger and stronger. I did not wish to be shut up in there with Empress Matilda, and I carefully ran over in my mind what I had heard and what of it I could use to convince her to go. She would not care about the harm that could come to her hosts, of that I was sure, but perhaps I could use Stephen's promise not to harm her in a different way.

It was just as well that I had given my thoughts to my new duty on our way in because as soon as I was brought to Matilda and had curtsied to the ground, she rose from the chair on which she was sitting and said, “You may rise, Lady Melusine, and come with me. I wish to speak to you in private.”

“But madam,” Aubigny cried, “it is almost time for dinner.”

And Lady Adelicia, who had also got up from a stool to the left of the chair, cried, “Matilda, let us allow Lady Melusine to take off her cloak and brush away the dust before we begin to question her.”

Matilda did not even glance at Adelicia. She raised her brows and uttered a thin, high laugh. “To give you time to tell her what to say, my dear William?” I had to swallow hard not to laugh myself at Aubigny's expression. He was remembering, I suppose, what I must have heard while he talked to Bruno, ignoring me as if I had no existence—as, indeed, women ordinarily did not in any talk of war and politics.

“Oh, no,” Matilda continued, her voice as sharp as her features, “I intend to hear what she has to say before she has been made to repeat it ten times over so it comes easily from the tongue. She may have been instructed in the king's camp—that I expect—”

The dislike I had cherished for years was renewed with new force as the empress called me “she,” as if I had no name, no being except to fulfill her purposes. “I beg your pardon, madam,” I interrupted in a faint, frightened—at least I hoped I sounded frightened—whisper. “I swear the king said no more to me than to ask if I were willing to come to you and to hear me reply that I was willing.”

“And no one else instructed you what to say?”

I let my eyes slip to Bruno, then pulled them back to her. “No, madam. There was no time for—for instruction. We came from Rochester yesterday forenoon.”

“Not one word about this situation or what you were being brought for?”

I shook my head. She did not believe me, I could see that. Again I glanced swiftly at Bruno and away. I hoped she would think I was afraid of him. “Oh, yes, Sir Bruno—my husband, you know—told me that I had been asked to be your lady on a journey if I were willing, and of course, I was.”

She smiled at that, a little softened by believing I was eager to renew the joys with which she had filled me the last time we met. I think the troubled look Bruno gave me, the mingled fury and anxiety on Aubigny's face, and the fear in Lady Adelicia's all helped confirm the idea that I was guileless and could be squeezed free of all information I had once I was alone, away from dumb-show signs to threaten and curb me.

I followed where she led, which was up the stairs and into what I was sure was her host's bedchamber. There she signed for the maids to leave and then at me to close the door behind them. She sat in a chair—I guessed it was Lady Adelicia's chair carried up from below, for there I had seen only one high seat. Since the lands were Adelicia's, willed to her on King Henry's death, there should have been two. Yes, I was right. I remembered there was a stool to the right of her chair as well as from the one which Adelicia had risen. So Matilda insisted her mother-by-law sit on a stool even though she had been a queen, and Adelicia got her revenge by addressing her as “Matilda,” without any title, as if she were a child. Not a happy household. I grinned at the door before I turned around, thinking of the rage Aubigny and Adelicia must feel at her ingratitude.

She treated me no better, seating herself and at once demanding that I tell her everything I had heard and seen from the time I was fetched. She must have known it would be a long history, but she did not ask if I wished to take off my cloak or whether I had ridden far to come to her, nor did she offer me a cup of wine or invite me to sit on the stool near her chair to tell the story as Queen Maud would have done. Since I had decided to play the role Matilda seemed to have envisioned for me—the poor knight's daughter who had cherished for years the glow lit in her heart by the empress's condescension—I did not plop down on the seat without her permission, as I would have liked. Instead, I began my tale, only emphasizing Maud's protest at letting a netted fish escape.