formally offered his sword. “Oxford Castle is yours, my liege.”
Stephen accepted the sword with appropriate gravity and did not keep Rob on his knees any longer than need be. Say what you will about the man, Rob thought, he knew how to play his part. But he did not yet know that Maude had rewritten the ending. And when he did?
“Where is the Countess of Anjou?” the Bishop of Winchester demanded, and Rob found himself-oddly enough-taking umbrage on Stephen’s behalf, that his partisans should feel so free to usurp his role. He hesitated and was not sure whether to be relieved or resentful when Alexander de Bohun spared him the dangerous duty of revelation.
“You were expecting to find the empress here?” Alexander queried blandly. “You are in for a disappointment, then.”
There was a brief moment of stunned silence, and then, uproar. Stephen had to shout to make himself heard above the din. “How witless do you think we are? She must be here-unless she has learned to fly! Now where is she? I’ll have the truth from you,” he warned, adding ominously, “one way or another!”
Rob gulped, saying nothing, but thinking all the while of the garrison hanged at Shrewsbury Castle. Alexander was not as easily intimidated; he even smiled. “I do not expect you to take my word for it. See for yourselves.”
Several of the men seemed ready to fling themselves at Alexander de Bohun and Rob, threatening to beat the truth out of them if need be, and Rob took an involuntary backward step. But Stephen stopped them with a peremptory gesture, “Search the castle,” he commanded. “Take it apart stone by stone if you must, but find her!”
They took Stephen at his word, all but tore the castle apart. Rob and Alexander de Bohun and the rest of Maude’s men were herded into the great hall under guard. Those who showed too much pleasure in the frantic search were soon nursing bruises and split lips, and Rob warned them hoarsely that prudence was the order of the day. Sidling up to Alexander, he asked softly if they ought not to remind Stephen of his promise to free the garrison. But Alexander shook his head. “No, just stay quiet till their fury burns out. Only once has Stephen sent men to their deaths in a rage, and it is said he later regretted it. I do not doubt Ypres or the bishop would hang the lot of us before breakfast without blinking an eye, but Stephen will not let them take out their anger on us-if we are half as lucky as the empress!” It was sound advice and Rob took it. For the remainder of the search, he and his men kept as low a profile as they could.
“The bitch is gone,” the Earl of Northampton reported, sounding as if he could not believe his own words. “We’ve looked in every corner and cranny of this accursed place. If she is still here, she is in one of those fresh graves out in the bailey, for we’ve not missed so much as a mousehole.”
Stephen turned away without answering. His brother was beside him now, ranting in his ear again. Listening to Henry was like pouring salt into an open wound. Swinging about, he headed for the stairwell, taking the stairs two at a time up to the chamber he’d been told was Maude’s. His spurs struck sparks against the stone steps, and his heart thudded in rhythm to the dirge echoing in his brain. Gone. She is gone. But how? Christ on the Cross, how?
Maude’s chamber had been demolished, bedding slashed, coffers spilled open, her clothes strewn about, ripped into rags. William de Ypres had backed a heavyset woman against the wall, pinning her by her wrists. Her hair had been shaken loose, falling over her face in salt-and-pepper dishevelment, and there was blood welling in the corner of her mouth. But she showed no fear, and that seemed to goad the Fleming all the more.
“Where is she, old woman? You’d best tell me now, whilst you still have a tongue to talk!”
“I do not know! And if I did, I’d never tell you!” she spat, before calling Ypres a name that sounded German to Stephen, and clearly no compliment.
“Let her go, William,” he said angrily, and Ypres spun around to protest, but saw something in Stephen’s face that silenced him. Moving to an overturned coffer, he picked up a woman’s chemise, tore it in half, and flung the pieces contemptuously at Minna’s feet.
Minna expelled an audible breath as Ypres stalked out, watching Stephen warily as he moved about the chamber. “I know who you are,” he said. “You have been with Maude for a long time. It surprises me that she could leave you behind like this. Had she no fear for your safety?”
“She knew you’d not harm a woman,” Minna said calmly, retrieving the torn chemise and using it to daub at her bleeding mouth.
“Did she, indeed? I find it passing strange,” Stephen said, with sudden bitterness, “that my enemies value my virtues more than my friends do.”
Minna continued to watch him closely, rubbing her chafed wrists now that Ypres was not there to see. “I was not lying,” she insisted. “I do not know where my lady is.”
“I do,” Stephen said, “Wallingford. Where else could she go? But I need to know how she did it. You owe me that much.”
He did not truly expect her to answer him, but she did, saying readily, “She had us lower her from St George’s Tower, down onto the ice outside the walls.”
“And then what? She just walked past my army?” Stephen asked incredulously, and she nodded proudly. “I see…so you are telling me she escaped from a besieged castle in the midst of a snowstorm. I suppose I should say that if she could endure such an ordeal, take such a mad risk, then she deserved to get away. But I will not. I cannot,” he said, his voice cracking with rage, and another emotion, one more raw and revealing than anger.
Minna was folding the bloodied and shredded chemise neatly, as if it were still a whole garment and not a fragment beyond salvaging. “Even if you had captured my lady,” she said, “you would not have won your war.”
He turned to look at her, and she continued quietly. “You’d only have gained yourself some time. The empress is fighting for her son, and even if you were to confine her in the Tower until she died, men would still see young Henry as the rightful heir.”
“That may well be,” he said at last. “But Maude had best understand this, that I am fighting for my son, too.”
At Wallingford, Maude was still enjoying her newfound celebrity status. The garrison could not do enough for her, and on the few occasions when she’d ventured beyond the castle walls, the townspeople flocked around her, the way Londoners had once trailed after her mother, “Good Queen Maude,” on her visits to the city’s lepers and Christ’s poor. Maude was no saint, nor did she want to be one. But she’d been popular with her German subjects, and it had stung her pride when the English acknowledged her so grudgingly, with suspicion and scorn instead of approval. So there was a healing balm in this belated acceptance, even though she knew that nothing had truly changed. Men might praise her courage, admire her intrepid escape, but they were still not willing to obey her.
The sun was blinding on the snow, so bright that it hurt Maude’s eyes. Some of the younger men were having an exuberant snowball fight, but they waved and held their fire until she’d safely passed by. As soon as she entered the hall, a young page offered to fetch her an almond milk custard from the kitchen, and when she declined, he confided that the cooks were planning a special Christmas Eve subtlety in her honour: they were baking a cake shaped like Oxford Castle, surrounded by sugared snow. Up in her bedchamber, Maude found she’d been given extra pillows, and yet another gown was spread out on the bed, a soft wool in a flattering shade of green. As Maude was too tall to borrow any clothes from Brien’s wife, he had engaged some of the townswomen on her behalf, and to judge by the way her wardrobe was expanding, they must be sewing day and night. Maude had never been treated so well as she had during her stay at Wallingford, and she wanted nothing so much as to get as far away as she could.
Ranulf was in the solar, decorating it with mistletoe and evergreen boughs. Smiling at sight of his sister, he said “Catch!” and tossed Maude a wafer. It was hot from the oven and filled with honey, the aptly named angel’s bread. “If Robert does not get here soon,” Ranulf confessed, “I’ll not find a horse big enough to bear my weight. I’ve not been able to stop eating, spend more time in the kitchen than the cooks!” He was pleased when she laughed, for he knew she was not as cheerful as she would have others believe. He suspected that her victory had left a sour aftertaste in her mouth, and he thought he knew why. But Maude would never admit it, mayhap not even to herself.
“I saw Sampson in the stables this morning, Maude. Flying higher than any hawk, is that lad. He says he’s coming with us back to Devizes, sounding like a man offered a post guarding Heaven’s Gate!”
“Actually, he approached me first, said he had a yearning to see more of the world than Wallingford. I was going to take him with us, anyway, though, for I do not care to think what might have befallen us without him.”
