The merchants, eager to curry favor with their new conqueror, were able to provide eyewitness accounts of Stephen’s flight. He had ridden into the town at a flat-out gallop, they reported, pausing only to warn the bishop of his peril. He and the Fleming and the Earl of Northampton had then raced off down the road to the south, with the bishop and his retainers not far behind. They were not sparing their horses, could not long maintain such a killing pace, they predicted, but Robert spurned their crumbs of comfort, for he knew Stephen’s brother had a castle less than ten miles away at Downton, where they could obtain fresh mounts.
He went through the motions, sending John Marshall off in pursuit. But it was an empty gesture and he knew it. Stephen had only to avoid the main roads, then circle back and head for safety at Winchester. He’d had his chance and it had come to nothing. In time, he’d accept the loss with grudging grace-but not now, not yet.
Miles was herding prisoners into the marketplace, arguing all the while with several indignant priests. At sight of Robert, the bolder of the two strode over to lodge a complaint against this breach of sanctuary. Robert responded for once not as a diplomat, but as a hunter robbed of his prey, and he rebuffed the priest with a brusque reminder that not all churches could claim the right of sanctuary. The priest retreated, but his banner was snatched up then by a new adversary, no less determined.
“My lord earl, a word with you!” The voice was educated, peremptory, female, and furious. Bearing down upon him was a tall, stately nun, garbed in the stark black of the Benedictine order, coming at such a brisk pace that her flowing garments and wimple caught the wind, giving him the incongruous image of a ship under full sail. He knew without being told that this was the abbess, a woman with a legitimate grievance. But he was in no mood to hear her out, and he started to turn away, leaving Ranulf to mollify her if he could.
He’d taken but a few steps, though, before he heard his name echoing across the square, and this was a voice so familiar that he spun around in astonishment. He’d not noticed the second nun. As Ranulf deftly intercepted the abbess, her companion cried out again, “Robert, wait!”
He did, for she was family, Hawise Fitz Hamon, his wife’s younger sister. “What are you doing here?” he demanded. “We heard all the nuns had been moved to the convent at Amesbury.”
“I came back with the abbess, hoping to shame the king into returning our abbey to us. What we got for our pains, though, were smiles and fair words. And now…with your men swarming over the nunnery like bees at a hive, I shudder to think what we will find. We need to fight the fires you started if the town and abbey are not to burn to the ground.”
“It is being done,” he said, and she turned, saw that Ranulf was indeed responding to the abbess’s demand. But she did not seem satisfied, continuing to glare at her brother-in-law, arms akimbo, chin jutting out, looking eerily like Amabel, camouflaged for some unlikely reason as a nun.
“It will take our nunnery years to recover from this outrage,” she said angrily, and he reminded her, no less sharply, that the abbey’s adversity was Stephen’s doing, for he was the one who’d seized it for his own purposes.
“Of course Stephen is at fault,” she snapped. “But what does that matter now, with our town in flames and the abbey plundered? Look around you, Robert, at what you and Stephen have brought to Wilton. What did we do to deserve this misery? You think that burned-out wain-right cares whether the crown goes to Stephen or Maude? I assure you his only worry is how he is going to feed his family now that his shop has been gutted. Ask the draper in Frog Lane, his shelves plucked bare and every scrap of cloth stolen. Ask my sisters in Christ, forced to take refuge in Amesbury whilst God’s Acre is turned into a killing ground!”
“Hawise, enough! Innocents suffer in war. You think I do not know that? I sympathize, but-”
“Sympathy makes a poor gruel, Robert, fills no empty stomachs. Just tell me this, in all honesty. How much longer is this accursed war to continue?”
“I thought,” he said bitterly, “to end it here and now-at Wilton. Suppose you answer a question for me, Sister Hawise. Tell me why the Almighty chose to let Stephen escape, to let the war go on.”
She looked at him in silence, having no answer for him. But he’d not expected one.
AS hot and dry as July was, August was even more parched and scorching. A people usually starved for sun now had too much of it, and the crops began to wither in the fields. To a troubled, lawless land came new woes in this eighth year of Stephen’s reign-a fear of famine.
Matilda was walking across the garth toward Westminster’s abbey church, accompanied by Cecily, and her confessor, Christian. The subject was one dear to her heart, the distribution of alms to Christ’s poor, but she found herself increasingly distracted, for Eustace and Constance were quarreling again.
They had the sense to keep their voices low, but Matilda could still hear more than she wanted to. Constance’s usual weapon was silence, a tactical retreat into an inner fortress where Eustace could not follow. But this afternoon, she was speaking up, insisting stubbornly, “I did not!” “Yes, you did!” Eustace countered, with the certainty he brought to all issues, and Matilda shot them a warning glance over her shoulder.
She did not seek, though, to learn the nature of their quarrel, for she well knew they disagreed over trifles. Their arguments were superficial, their differences so deep they burned to the bone. Eustace was thirteen now, Constance a year older, and they were getting dangerously close to the day she dreaded, the day when they were old enough to share a bed as man and wife. She already knew the marriage was a mistake; consummation would be throwing clods of dirt upon the coffin.
“Eustace!” There was so much alarm in Constance’s cry that Matilda spun around, half fearful of what she would see. But for once Eustace was not the cause of his young wife’s dismay; she was staring across the garth at the men just emerging into the sunlight, her blonde fairness fading into an ashen, greyish pallor. Eustace pulled her in behind him, at once protective and defiant, for in this alone were they utterly united: in their shared loathing for Geoffrey de Mandeville.
Mandeville never even noticed them. He was carrying on an intense, angry conversation with William de Warenne, but he broke off at sight of Matilda and strode toward her. “I am glad you are here, madame. Mayhap you can talk some sense into the king.”
Matilda’s reply was icy enough to defy the oppressive August heat. “It is not my place to question the judgment of the King’s Grace, my lord earl.”
Mandeville did not have the sort of incendiary temper that started so many fires for the Earl of Chester. But it burned deep if not hot, and Matilda suspected that he stored away grievances for kindling. His dark eyes narrowing, he said with lethal courtesy, “Correct me if my theology is flawed, madame, but I was taught that infallibility is an attribute of the Pope, not the King of England.”
The temptation to lash back was a strong one, but Matilda had never lacked for control; she could wait. Her pressing need now was to learn the cause of his anger. Fortunately a more reliable source was approaching, and she hastened to intercept William de Ypres so they could speak together in private, with the candor queens were rarely allowed.
Ypres was no less provoked than Geoffrey de Mandeville, and he did not keep Matilda in suspense. “We finally heard from Robert of Gloucester, damn his soul. He has offered to ransom William Martel-for Sherborne Castle.”
“Oh, no…”
He nodded bleakly. “Without Sherborne, we cannot hope to challenge Gloucester’s hold upon the western shires. It is too great a price to pay for any one man, but your husband, God save him, means to pay it, and I doubt that even you, madame, can talk him out of it.”
“I am not sure,” Matilda confessed, “that I would want to try. We owe William Martel so much, Willem! If not for him, Stephen would have been captured for certes. How can we turn our backs on him now?”
“A king owes other debts, too, madame-to his supporters, to the men who’ve fought and bled for him, and to the subjects he rules. I’ll not pretend that I care tuppence for the English people, but I know that you and the king do, and yielding Sherborne Castle will prolong the war. Even Stephen admits as much.”
“What would you have him do, Willem? Abandon the man who sacrificed himself so he could escape? You know Stephen could never do that.”
“Yes, I do know…and so does Gloucester. But why does the cup always have to be brimming over or empty? Why will half measures never suffice? Offer a lesser ransom for Martel, one we can afford to lose, and in time, Gloucester will let him go. A year or two in confinement against the loss of Sherborne-I’d say that was a fair bargain.”
“But you’d not have to pay it, Willem. If you were the one being held in a Bristol dungeon, can you honestly say you’d not want Stephen to offer the sun and moon for your release?”
