“The rumors are true then,” she said. “My cousin Harry is in grave peril.” When they nodded, she cried impatiently, “And what are you going to do about it? You do mean to go to his aid, do you not?”
Bennet de Malpas and Ivo de Coventry were more than willing to defer to Chester’s brother. William de Roumare was irked by this abrupt female interrogation, but he found himself answering as if she’d willed it. “Of course we want to help him, Maud. And indeed we will, if only we can find a way. We cannot meet Stephen on the field, though, for we lack enough men for a pitched battle.”
“Then stir up trouble for Stephen elsewhere and take the pressure off Harry and Marshal and the others under attack. You must draw Stephen away from Wiltshire ere it is too late!”
“I assure you we’ve already thought of that,” William de Roumare said stiffly. “But it will not work.”
“Of course it will! Remember how Baldwin de Redvers attacked Corfe to lure Stephen west whilst my aunt and my father landed at Arundel? And then there was-”
“You are forgetting Oxford. When Stephen had Maude trapped in the castle there, not even the Lord Christ could have drawn him away, for nothing was more important than capturing his enemy, the empress. You may be sure that he wants her son no less badly, and he’ll let England go up in flames ere he lets the lad get away.”
Maud stared at him in dismay. He was as cautious as Chester was reckless, the anchor to Chester’s sails, but his argument held the ring of truth. At that moment, her husband emerged from the privy chamber. “I thought I heard your voice,” he said. “Let me guess…you want me to swear a blood oath that I’ll rescue your cousin and uncle, preferably by nightfall.”
“I cannot jest about this, Randolph, not when the danger is so great. Will says nothing can be done, but surely you can come up with a plan if you keep on trying.”
“I already have.”
That got the men’s attention, too. “What mean you to do, Randolph?” his brother asked, sounding perplexed. “If we cannot chase Stephen away and cannot lure him away, what in God’s Name is left?”
“But we can lure him away,” Chester insisted. “It is just a matter of finding the right bait.”
He seemed so pleased with himself that Maud knew this was no empty boast. What was he up to? Whatever it was, she did not doubt he’d benefit by it, too, for that was ever his way. And after a moment’s reflection, she knew what he had in mind, a stratagem at once ruthless and vengeful and sure to succeed. The look she gave him then was one she’d rarely bestowed upon any man but her father and never before upon her husband-one of awed admiration. “Lincoln,” she breathed, and Chester grinned raffishly.
“Just so,” he said. “Lincoln.”
MEN were gathering outside Stephen’s command tent, eavesdropping upon the quarrel raging within. A newcomer jostled the man next to him, wanting to know what was going on. “That hellspawn Chester has attacked Lincoln, and the townspeople are pleading with the king to come and save them ere the city falls. The king wants to set out straightaway and the Lord Eustace is trying to talk him out of it. If you come closer and keep still, you can hear for yourself.”
Stephen hated to argue, and Eustace was often able to use that to his advantage. But not this time. His father remained adamant, determined to come to the aid of the besieged Lincolners, and nothing Eustace could say would sway him.
“Those people suffered dreadfully after the Battle of Lincoln, Eustace. Hundreds drowned when they tried to flee the city and their boats overturned in the flooded river, and countless others were slaughtered by that whoreson, Chester. Through it all, they stayed loyal to me. How can you expect me to ignore their plea for help?”
“Catching Henry is more important, Papa! If we can get rid of Maude’s whelp, we’ve won our war, and we can deal then with Chester. Why can you not see that?”
“Because by then it would be too late for the people of Lincoln!”
“So what?” Eustace was being deliberately, brutally blunt; he prided himself upon his candor, upon daring to say what other men would not, and he hoped that a dose of unsparing honesty might bring his father back to his senses. “So what?” he repeated. “People die all the time, Papa. Why are the Lincolners more important than the Wiltshire villagers who’ll starve this winter? We agreed to do whatever we must to end this war, even if it meant innocent people would die. For England’s greater good, we agreed; for a peaceful land. If that was true yesterday, it is still true today. Let the men of Lincoln fend for themselves.”
Stephen slowly shook his head. “I cannot do that, Eustace. They trusted me once before and I let them down. I could not help them then, but I can now. I’ll not turn away from them in their hour of need.”
Eustace’s frustration served now as fuel for his anger, blazing beyond his control. “It is your pride you want to save, not the Lincolners! Ever since your defeat there, you and Chester have been snarling over that wretched city like two dogs over a bone. Go ahead then, abandon our campaign and race north to their rescue. But it will avail you naught. Men will still remember how badly you were beaten at Lincoln!”
Eustace had meant to wound, and yet he felt an odd pang of remorse when he saw the hurt on his father’s face. He did not know how to make it right, though, for an apology would be an admission of weakness.
Stephen looked at his son, saying nothing. Eustace could feel his face getting warm. Just when he thought he could endure it no longer, his father brushed past him and lifted the tent flap. “Make ready to depart at first light,” he commanded someone beyond the range of Eustace’s vision. “I will be riding for Lincoln on the morrow.”
The citizens of Lincoln put up such a desperate defense that they were able to stave off Chester’s attack until Stephen came to the rescue. Chester withdrew his forces, but he did not go far, and the battle shifted from the city to the shire. Lincolnshire became a bloody ground, as the king and his mightiest subject fought a series of inconclusive skirmishes, ambushes, and raids. In the words of the chronicler of the Gesta Stephani, “They alternated betwen success and disaster, never without the greatest injury to the county, never without loss and harm to its people.”
Stephen’s failure to subdue the rebel earl was observed in other quarters, and the erratic Hugh Bigod was emboldened enough to stir up trouble again in East Anglia. This was his third uprising, but this time he got more than he bargained for. Chester was keeping Stephen busy in Lincolnshire and the task of dealing with Bigod fell to Eustace. He raced north and soon had Bigod in full retreat.
Henry and his allies were quick enough to take advantage of all this chaos and unrest. He and Ranulf joined the Earls of Hereford and Gloucester and raided deep into Devon and Dorset. They set about making life as miserable as possible for Henry de Tracy, Stephen’s chief supporter in the West Country, with some success. Tracy prudently refused to do battle, though, withdrawing behind the fortified defenses of his castle at Barnstaple. But Henry then bloodied his sword for the first time in the capture of the town and castle at Bridgport.
Nature showed the southwest of England more mercy that year than Man did, and November, usually the least welcome of visitors, was blessedly mild-mannered. But the reprieve was brief for the homeless and the hungry, and by mid-December, winter was stalking the war-ravaged shires in earnest. In the mornings, the ground was glazed with a killing black frost, the winds soon stripped the trees bare, and ponds and lakes began to ice over.
The more weather-wise of Henry’s men were keeping a wary eye upon the gathering clouds, for a mottled mackerel sky was a harbinger of rain or snow. They were riding fast, heading back toward Devizes, having gotten word that Eustace was once again on the prowl in Wiltshire. A second warning from John Marshal had alarmed Henry enough to send an advance guard ahead to reinforce the castle garrison. Roger and Will had thought he was being overly cautious. But Henry had insisted, and Ranulf had backed him up, reminding them that Robert had always been one for taking extra precautions, too.
In supporting one nephew, Ranulf inadvertently offended the other, for Will had become very thin-skinned since his father’s death, twisting any praise of Robert into an implied criticism of himself. Roger ought to have understood Will’s insecurities if any man could, for Miles had also cast a smothering shadow, but he’d so far shown little patience with Will’s defensive outbursts. And Henry was too young and too confident to comprehend such crippling self-doubts. So it fell to Ranulf to act as peacemaker. He did not mind, for he truly did feel sorry for Will; he knew that men were indeed thinking what Will feared: that the son would never measure up to the sire.
The wind had picked up as the day wore on, gusting from the northeast, another sign of unsettled weather on the way. They’d halted to give their horses a rest, but it was too cold for the men to enjoy the respite themselves. Ranulf joined Henry in the shelter of a massive gnarled oak. “Are you still uneasy about Devizes, lad? You could not have picked a better man to leave in command than Hugh de Plucknet. He was utterly fearless during our escape through the snow at Oxford. I’ve told you about that, have I not?”
