to get a glimpse into her very soul. Even worse, she’d seen into his soul, too, discovered what she ought never to have known. She felt suddenly as flustered as a raw, green girl, she who was a widow, wife, and mother, a woman just a month shy of her thirty-ninth birthday, a woman who would be queen. Getting hastily to her feet, she drew her mantle close about her throat, chilled to the bone.
“I want to go in,” she said, sounding curt even to her own ears.
Brien had risen as soon as she did. “Of course,” he said. An awkward moment then ensued, for he started to offer his arm as chivalry demanded, but it was no longer a simple gesture of courtesy, and they both knew it. After a discernible hesitation, Maude let her hand rest lightly on his sleeve, and they walked in silence toward the great hall.
She would later wish fervently that she’d held her tongue. But she felt compelled to prop up her diminished defenses, and so as they reached the steps, she said coolly, “You should bring your wife with you the next time you come to Gloucester. It has been too long since I’ve seen her.”
She at once wanted to call her words back, for she saw the hurt they’d inflicted. His dark eyes searched her face, and in them she found a mute reproach. They had just shared all that they could ever have, a few brief moments of unspoken intimacy, cheapened now by her needless, heavy-handed rebuff. She understood, read his thoughts as if they were her own. But what he did not understand, and what she could never let him know, was that her pointed mention of his marriage was a reminder meant, not for him, but for herself.
“My wife will be pleased to attend you, madame,” he said tonelessly.
Maude was mercifully spared the need to respond, for a commotion had erupted up on the bailey walls. Shouts were echoing on the quiet night air, a challenge offered and met. Moments later, the drawbridge was going down, a lone horseman coming through.
Sliding from the saddle, the rider tossed the reins to the nearest of the guards. “You must awaken the Earl of Gloucester and the empress, for my news cannot wait!”
He was young, weary, and disheveled, but he was exhilarated, too, by the gravity of his mission, and somewhat nervous, now that his moment was at hand. He sounded bellicose, combative, for he was anticipating a refusal. But as he braced himself for a long, heated argument, he glanced across the bailey, recognizing the woman standing upon the steps of the great hall. “Madame, thank God and His good angels!” Unable to believe his luck, he hastened forward and dropped to his knees before Maude. “I am Sir Bennet de Malpas, my lady, cousin and liegeman to my lord Earl of Chester. I bring you his urgent appeal for aid, and his pledge of fealty.”
There was to be no more sleeping at Gloucester that night. Rumors assailed the castle, soon spilling over its bailey walls into the town. The great hall was a scene of confusion and turmoil, but all knew the solar was where the significant activity was occurring. They’d been sequestered above-stairs for hours-Maude, Robert, Miles, Brien, Ranulf, and Baldwin de Redvers-and what they decided would affect many more lives than their own.
Within the solar, there was no sympathy to spare for Chester; he had no friends in this room, and few indeed in the rest of the realm. Nor did they give credence to his sudden conversion, his belated recognition of the justice of Maude’s cause. They well knew that Chester would have embraced the Devil himself in his hour of need. But all of their foregoing feelings were irrelevant to the issue at hand. They would do as Chester wanted, march to Lincoln and confront the king. They had no choice, for the chance might not come again. At Lincoln they could catch Stephen off guard, force a battle that might determine once and for all who would rule England-Maude or Stephen.
The dark had faded away, the sky lightening to a shade of misty pearl, for dawn was nigh by the time Maude returned to her chamber. Minna had turned back the bed coverlets invitingly, and put out a selection of sugared wafers and watered-down wine to break the night’s fast. But Maude had no appetite. Nor could she sleep. Crossing to the window, she opened the shutters, staring down at the uproar below her.
The bailey was crowded and chaotic, at first glance resembling a fairground more than a castle ward. People were rushing about, shouting orders and yelling out questions, trying to dodge the dogs and children darting underfoot. Half the men in the castle were either in the stables or already in the saddle, for they had levies to raise, vassals to summon to arms, horses and carts and supplies to requisition, buy, or barter. Time was the enemy as much as Stephen, and speed of the essence.
Maude did not feel the cold, not on a conscious level, but then Minna draped a mantle about her shoulders and she realized she’d been shivering. The German widow was not one for fussing or coddling; Maude would never have stood for it. But Minna could not help noticing the sleepless smudges under Maude’s eyes, the greyish pallor of her skin. “My lady, you look bone-weary. Can you not spare a few hours to rest?”
“I’d not be able to sleep, Minna.” Maude watched as Miles Fitz Walter bade farewell to his wife, Sybil, then mounted and joined his waiting men. “Last night I told Brien Fitz Count that I saw no end in sight. Now it may well end at Lincoln, might even be over by the start of Lent.”
“Does that not gladden you, madame? I ask because you do not sound glad.”
“There is too much at stake for gladness, Minna.” Maude swung away from the window to face the older woman. “Do you not understand? My hopes, my crown, my son’s legacy-all are balanced upon the blade of a sword. My future will be decided at Lincoln, but not by me. I cannot even be there to watch whilst others decree my fate. Because the Lord God saw fit to make me a woman, I can do naught but wait.”
13
Nottinghamshire, England
January 1141
If winter was the enemy, January was its cruelest weapon. The weather was wet and raw, the road a quagmire of churned-up mud, the men sodden and cold and miserable. They were also uneasy, for warfare as they knew it was comprised of sieges and raids; pitched battles such as they faced at Lincoln were rare. But they kept slogging ahead, mile after plodding mile, impelled by the sheer force of Robert Fitz Roy’s will. He’d already done what many would have thought impossible; in just a fortnight, he’d assembled an army formidable enough to threaten a king. When he then announced that they must be at Claybrook in Leicestershire by January 26th, his men laughed among themselves and made skeptical jokes about sprouting wings. But they reached Claybrook on that last Sunday in January, just as Robert had determined they would, and found the Earl of Chester waiting for them.
They all had the same objectives in mind-the overthrow of the king and a soldier’s chance for plunder-and so there should not have been friction between the two forces. Yet there was. It was due in part to Chester himself, for he was not an easy ally, and some of the strain inevitably trickled down through the ranks. But Chester’s abrasive personality was only half the problem. Riding with his Cheshire vassals and tenants was a sizable contingent of Welsh mercenaries.
Nearly seventy-five years had passed since William the Bastard had led an invading army onto English shores, but those sons and grandsons born after the Conquest did not consider themselves English. English was a word with negative connotations, for it referred to a people who spoke an odd tongue and clung to odd customs, a defeated people. Those of Norman-French descent felt vastly superior to the subjugated English, and that muted their hostility. They had not been as successful, though, in subduing the Welsh. The Welsh were a vexing, unpredictable people, fiercely independent, and few of Robert’s soldiers were willing to embrace them as allies-with one singular exception.
To Ranulf, Wales was a mysterious, alien land of foreboding mountains and blood feuds and Celtic craziness. Much of the time, he even forgot that he was half Welsh, for his mother had been dead for fifteen years and her gentle, elusive spirit had faded long ago into the shadows, leaving him with vague memories of a sweet smile, bedtime hugs, and a lingering fragrance of spring flowers.
All that Ranulf now knew of Wales he’d learned from Robert, whose marriage to Amabel had brought him the lordship of Glamorgan. Wales, Robert had explained, was a hodgepodge of rival realms, each ruled by its own brenin or king. The least significant of these kingdoms was in the south, where the Normans had made the greatest inroads. North Wales was known to the Welsh as Gwynedd, and ruled for the past three years by a man Robert respected, Owain Gwynedd, while the third kingdom was Powys, governed by one Madog ap Maredudd.
According to Robert, theirs was a rural, tribal society, lacking cities or castles or comforts, for the Welsh
