Gunter gave the young townsman the pitying gaze of a seasoned traveler for a rank novice. “The Pope himself could be leading that army and I’d still burrow down till they’d passed by. It matters little if they be friend or foe. Would you trust your wife with a tamed wolf?”
Once they’d hidden the cart amid the sheltering trees, Gunter and Oliver crept forward to watch the road, hunkering down in the underbrush. After a while, the high grass began to ripple, and Gunter swore as his daughter crawled up beside them. “Get back to the cart,” he ordered, but then he grabbed her arm, pulling her down again, for it was too late. “Stay still,” he warned, and as they watched from their hiding place, the army’s scouts and advance guard rode by, sun glinting on the chain links of their armor, lean and fit and sun-browned and fascinating- at least to Monday, who’d never before seen men who looked like the heroes in her favorite minstrel songs, the ones about gallant knights errant who had amazing adventures and never failed to rescue highborn ladies in peril.
After the advance guard passed, the army followed, men-at-arms and mounted knights. Monday was so enthralled that it almost made up for missing Winchester. She wished she could squirm closer to the road, but her father held her in an iron grip. “Oh, look, Papa!” she whispered. “A lady rides with them!”
“Nonsense,” he said curtly, but when he raised up on his elbow, he saw that she was right. “Jesus wept,” he murmured, “it is the queen!”
Oliver gaped at him. “How can you be sure?”
“I’ve seen her before, once at the St Ives Fair and twice in London. It is Stephen’s queen and no mistake.”
Oliver had gone very pale. He stared after Matilda, and when Monday glanced his way again, she was startled to see tears in his eyes.
“Papa?” she whispered. “Why is he so distraught? Why does he weep?”
“For Winchester, lass,” he said softly. “He weeps for Winchester.”
20
Winchester, England
August 1141
The citizens of Winchester were still sifting through the ashes and charred debris of their homes and shops when the queen’s army descended upon them. Her forces augmented by more than a thousand Londoners, men from her lands in Boulogne and Kent, and the bishop’s vassals and tenants, Matilda posed a formidable threat, and Maude and Robert at once dispatched urgent messages to Geoffrey de Mandeville, the Earl of Chester, to all their allies not already in Winchester. Matilda was accompanied by several earls, but she entrusted the command of her army to William de Ypres, and he at once cast a net around the city, blockading all of the major roads leading into Winchester. With luck and knowledge of local terrain, a lone rider could still get through the lines. But cumbersome supply convoys were snared like flies in cobweb, and hunger soon stalked the streets of the beleaguered town. The besiegers had become the besieged, and the trapped citizens of Winchester could only pray for divine deliverance, entreating the Almighty to spare their city the fate that had befallen Lincoln.
William de Ypres was returning from a foray into Winchester. That was not as reckless as it sounded, for their arrival had forced Maude’s men to withdraw into the city, thus raising the siege of Wolvesey. He had been admitted into the palace by a postern gate in the outer wall, and as he’d gazed down from the battlements at the deserted city streets, he’d marveled that the smell of smoke was still so acrid, three weeks after the fire. Looking out over the ruins of Cheapside, he’d laughed exultantly, for the scent of victory was in the air, too.
Riding back to Matilda’s encampment south of the city walls, Ypres encountered William de Warenne, Earl of Surrey, who reported gleefully that yet another of Maude’s supply convoys had been captured. They’d soon be scouring the city streets for stray cats and dogs, he predicted, and as the siege dragged on, they’d be eating mouse soup and rat stew and thanking God for it.
“As much as I’d love to see Maude gnawing on a mouse leg,” Ypres grinned, “it is not likely. In a siege, the townspeople starve first, for what food there is goes to the army. Ere the castle larders get bone-bare, they’ll try to break out of the trap. I’d say in a fortnight or so…assuming, of course that they do not get help from some of Maude’s missing barons. Any chance of a few of your kinsmen showing up on the wrong side, my lord?”
There was no real malice in Ypres’s gibe; it was merely force of habit. It did no damage, though, for Warenne was not thin-skinned about the propensity of his kindred for fence-straddling. Waleran and Robert Beaumont were his half-brothers, the Earl of Warwick was his first cousin, and his sister was the wife of the Scots king’s son and heir, so their family history did indeed present a complex mosaic of contrary and uncertain loyalties. Warenne’s own allegiance to Stephen was shadowed by past conflicts and an outright betrayal: he was one of the earls who’d fled the battlefield at Lincoln. Like Ypres and Northampton, he was seeking now to make amends for that abandonment, and for that very reason, Ypres trusted him. Shame was a powerful inducement, even more of a goad than self- interest.
They were passing Holy Cross, the hospital founded by the Bishop of Winchester to aid men indigent and infirm. The hospital had been far luckier than Hyde Abbey and the nunnery and much of Winchester, for the fires set by the bishop’s men had never spread south of the city; protected now by Matilda’s army, Holy Cross seemed likely to be one of the few buildings to survive the siege intact.
Warenne glanced back at the hospital precincts, floating above the fray like an island haven in a storming sea. “I do not understand,” he said, “why the queen refused to stay at Waltham. She’d be safer for certes at the bishop’s castle, and more comfortable, too. Why did the bishop not insist upon it?”
“The queen has a mind of her own, or so rumor says,” Ypres said blandly, but his mouth was twitching in an involuntary smile, for he was hearing again Matilda’s private comment, that she’d sooner seek shelter in a lazar house than under her brother-in-law’s roof. “She says she can do more good in our camp, and I’d be the last one to dispute that. She comforts the wounded, prays for the dying, never misses an opportunity to remind them-ever so gently-that they are fighting for their lawful king…and if she asked them to sprout wings and fly into Winchester, at least half would start flapping their arms for take-off!”
Warenne laughed. “She does inspire devotion in the unlikeliest of men! Let’s hope that is a trick Maude never learns, for if-” Breaking off in surprise. “What is going on?”
By now they’d reached the camp, and both drew rein, for men were bustling about, horses being unsaddled, additional tents being set up. “It looks,” Ypres said, “as if we have gained some new allies. Your brother Leicester?”
Warenne shrugged; he knew Robert Beaumont wanted to see Stephen restored to the throne, but he also wanted to protect what was his. Dismissing their escorts, they dismounted before Matilda’s tent, entered, and halted abruptly at the sight that met their eyes: Matilda sharing a wine flagon with the Earl of Northampton and Geoffrey de Mandeville, Earl of Essex. Matilda greeted them with a tight smile, saying, “The Earl of Essex has come to pledge anew his allegiance to my lord husband.”
“In truth,” Geoffrey de Mandeville said placidly, “my allegiance to the king never wavered. But when the Bishop of Winchester ordered all Christians to accept the Countess of Anjou as queen, I felt compelled to obey, as a good son of the Church, however little I liked it. You can well imagine my relief when the bishop recanted, for I was then free to follow my own conscience, to do whatever I could to gain the king his freedom.”
Warenne looked dumbfounded by the sheer effrontery of it, but Ypres was delighted; his only regret was that the bishop was not present to hear himself blamed for Geoffrey de Mandeville’s defection. As for the unrepentant defector, he seemed equally indifferent to Warenne’s amazement and Ypres’s amusement. He was already on his feet, kissing Matilda’s hand with ostentatious gallantry. “By your leave, my lady, I ought to get my men settled in.”
Northampton had risen, too. “I will keep a close eye upon him, madame,” he promised as soon as the Earl of Essex had departed, and ducked under the tent flap. Warenne followed, leaving Ypres alone with Matilda and her lady-in-waiting, for Cecily had stubbornly insisted upon providing Matilda with female companionship, mindful of the proprieties even in the midst of war.
Matilda was staring down at her hand with an expression of distaste, as if she could still see the imprint upon her skin of Geoffrey de Mandeville’s mouth. Ypres helped himself to some of the wine, then refilled the women’s
