was wordless, heartfelt. And then Maude stepped back, beckoning for Ranulf to help her mount. Her head high, her back ramrod-straight, armored in pride, she rode out to confront her enemies.
They were waiting for her, the bishop at his most courtly, Waleran making no effort whatsoever to mask his frustration or his fury. Maude was staring past them as if they were both invisible, though, staring at the man on a splendid roan stallion, tawny hair gilded by a sudden flare of sun, looking composed and confident and very much a king. Maude gave Stephen one intense, burning look, all but scorching the air between them, and then urged her mare on. But Stephen spurred his stallion forward, blocking her path. It was utterly still, all eyes locked upon them, all ears straining to hear what was said. The audience was to be disappointed, for their exchange was too brief and low-pitched to be overheard. A moment, no more than that, and then Stephen was moving aside, Maude was sweeping past him without a backward glance, and the siege of Arundel Castle was over.
As they headed west along the Chichester Road, none intruded upon Maude, for it would have taken a very brave man, or a very insensitive one, to breach her shield of silence. Ranulf, his sister’s self-appointed protector, still held to his vigil, but from a discreet distance. Whistling to his dyrehunds, he slowed his stallion’s pace, planning to drop back and ride with Gilbert; they’d had few chances to talk in these past turbulent days. But Amabel was beckoning to him, and he urged his mount in her direction.
“You know Stephen as well as anyone does, Ranulf. What possessed him to let Maude out of his trap? Rumor has it that the bishop is claiming credit for Maude’s reprieve. Now I admit I know little of military matters; I leave that to Robert. But if the bishop’s argument sounded so outlandish even to me, how did he get Stephen to swallow it?”
Ranulf laughed. “You may be sure he did not. Stephen’s one failing as a battle commander is his lack of patience. He loses interest if a siege drags on too long-unless the prize is well worth the taking. And what prize could be greater than his royal rival for the throne? No, whatever stirred him to offer Maude a safe-conduct, it was not his brother the bishop.”
“Well…what, then? A sudden fit of madness? Was there a full moon that night?”
Ranulf grinned. “I think a sudden fit of chivalry is more likely. Wait…hear me out. Stephen is not a man who’d willingly make war upon a woman. And at Arundel, he’d be making war upon two of them, one his own aunt and a former Queen of England in the bargain.”
“Are you saying, then, that he freed Maude for Adeliza’s sake? I find that rather improbable, lad.”
Ranulf shrugged. “Of course it is improbable, all of it. Give Stephen credit where due; he can always surprise. He’s ever been one for the grand gesture, and you must admit, Amabel, that as gestures go, this was about as grand as you get!”
Amabel caught those grudging echoes of admiration, but she did not share it. “I grant you it was gallant beyond belief. But it was also unforgivably shortsighted, Ranulf, for he had a chance to end the war ere it began, and he let that chance escape with Maude.”
“Thank God he did,” Ranulf retorted, so fervently that she smiled.
“Yes,” she agreed, “Maude must feel truly blessed by the Almighty’s Favor, for nothing less than a miracle got her safe away from Arundel. So why then is she not rejoicing in it?”
Ranulf gave her a surprised look; after all this time, how little she still understood Maude. “Because the Almighty’s Favor comes disguised as Stephen’s, and Maude would starve ere she’d take crumbs from Stephen’s table. It is well nigh killing her to owe her deliverance to his forbearance.”
Amabel marveled she hadn’t seen that for herself. “I wonder,” she mused, “what they said to each other…”
Ranulf wondered, too, and riding by Maude’s side later that afternoon, he seized his first opportunity to ask her. She glanced toward him, then back to the road ahead. “Stephen said, ‘Any debt I may have owed you, Cousin Maude, is now paid in full.’”
Ranulf stared at her. “So he does have an unease of conscience about you!” he exclaimed, and discovered then that he was glad it was so, glad that the Stephen who was his cousin and the Stephen who was king were not such strangers, after all.
“His conscience be damned! He owes me more than a debt. He owes me a crown,” Maude said grimly, and they rode on in silence.
On an overcast afternoon five days later, Robert rode out to meet his sister on the Bristol-Bath Road, so that her entry into Bristol could be a triumphant one. At sight of the approaching riders, Maude reined in her mare. “Well, my lords, it seems this onerous duty of yours has been discharged. You are welcome to accompany us to Bristol if you so choose. I am sure we can find a comfortable night’s lodging for you within my city.”
Waleran smiled sourly. “I would rather,” he said, “beg my bread by the roadside.”
Maude matched Waleran’s smile with an acerbic one of her own. “Keep to your present course and you very well may,” she said, to Waleran’s fury and the bishop’s amusement. He cut off Waleran’s wrathful reply, saying smoothly that he would indeed accept her hospitality.
Waleran choked on an extremely virulent obscenity, and the bishop swung around to admonish the other man, only to find Waleran staring past him in dismay. Turning in the saddle, he saw why. A number of the men riding with Robert were familiar; he recognized Rainald Fitz Roy and Baldwin de Redvers and Shrewsbury’s rebel baron, William Fitz Alan, and Robert’s eldest son, William, who’d been holding Bristol Castle for him. But it was the identity of the two men flanking Robert that had unleashed Waleran’s strangled profanity: Miles Fitz Walter and Brien Fitz Count, come to Bristol to pledge faith to their queen.
Maude saw them now, too, and laughed, suddenly, joyfully. Waleran slowly shook his head. “God forgive you, Stephen,” he muttered, “for what have you loosed upon us?”
Stephen wasted no time in besieging Brien’s castle at Wallingford. Leaving an armed force to continue the siege, he moved on to attack Trowbridge, held by Miles’s son-in-law. While Stephen was occupied at Trowbridge, though, Miles outflanked the royal army, raced for Wallingford, and broke the siege. He and Robert then turned their fire upon Waleran, newly named by Stephen as Earl of Worcester.
At daybreak on November 7th, they assaulted Worcester, breaking through its defenses on the north side of the city. Fires were set, looting was widespread, and a number of the luckless citizens were taken hostage back to Bristol. Waleran arrived in his plundered town three weeks later, and in the words of the Worcester Chronicle, “When he beheld the ravages of the flames, he grieved, and felt that the blow had been struck for his own injury, and wishing to revenge himself for this, he marched with an army to Sudely,” whose lord was an ally of Robert Fitz Roy. There his men pillaged and burned, and, again in the words of the Worcester Chronicle, “returned evil for evil.”
And so began for the wretched people of England, a time of suffering so great that they came to fear “Christ and his saints slept.”
11
Bristol Castle, England
July 1140
For Stephen and Maude both, it was to be a frustrating year, one of advances and retreats, thwarted victories and inconclusive defeats, check and mate. Matilda scored a diplomatic coup in those early winter months; sailing to France, she negotiated a marriage for her eldest son, Eustace, with Constance, young sister of the French king. But that good news was soured for Stephen by a rebellion in the English Fenlands, instigated by the Bishop of Ely, who’d been nursing a grudge since the Oxford ambush. Stephen raced north, and the bishop fled south, taking refuge at Bristol.
More trouble was already flaring for Stephen. William Fitz Richard, the sheriff and greatest landholder in Cornwall, declared for Maude, and sealed his new allegiance within the sacrament of marriage, offering his daughter, Beatrice, to Maude’s brother Rainald. After wedding and bedding his bride, Rainald joined his father-in- law and they set Cornwall ablaze. Stephen hastened west, and soon had them on the run. He had the greater resources, those of the Crown, and could put more men into the field than any of his enemies. But he’d begun to feel much like the “crazed firefighter” of his brother’s taunt; no matter how he struggled to quench these flames,
