The Sword and The Swan Page 32

  By the next morning Rannulf had recovered from his misery of guilt. He had spent the past two weeks bringing himself to acknowledge that he was a useless and dangerous encumbrance to his family. Catherine was neither timid nor helpless; she could scheme better than he could and her connection with the rebel cause would stand her in good stead. Geoffrey knew nearly all there was to know of military science, and Leicester would stand behind him as a political bulwark. Rannulf became almost cheerful, driving his wretched men from the miserable shelter they had been able to find with the grim humor of impersonal despair.

  The wind was such that they could scarcely move against it at all, and sleet fell in silver sheets. Rannulf's fur cloak was glazed with it and pressed on his shoulders with five times its normal weight; water, melted from the ice by his body heat, trickled down his helm and face, making its way under his mail hood to send chill rivulets onto his back and chest. Andre's mount fell and could not rise on the sliding, ice-coated ground without help; Geoffrey's placed one foot awry and slid uncontrollably down a small embankment oversetting his rider into a little stream. Rannulf laughed heartily at both mishaps while he directed the small rescue operations, making both his son and his devoted retainer long to kick him.

  They could see nothing funny in the situation at all, and it became less and less humorous as they struggled to advance toward the ford. The bank, which sloped gently into the water, was now a smoothly glazed slide, well coated with an even more treacherous layer of rolling hail. No horse or footman could prevent himself from careening down into the water once that surface was trodden on.

  The wind blew violently from the northwest, driving the sleet and hail so hard that it stung the eyes and lacerated the lips. To keep one's eyes open was torture; to close them was death. Both Andre and Geoffrey were willing to fight, but how they would be able to do so neither could imagine. Their sword hands were numb and they could not chance removing their cloaks. If the furred garments were laid aside, one invited death by freezing; to retain them, however, imprisoned one's arms and made fighting impossible.

  The men grumbled and cursed, murmuring rebelliously that they would not fight. Even a madman like Stephen, they said, should see that God had set His face against this battle. Geoffrey and Andre rode up and down the ranks, speaking cheeringly, pointing out that it sleeted and hailed on the other side of the river as well as on theirs. True, the men snarled, but there the wind came from behind and, if it drove a man, drove him forward. It did not blind his eyes, nor numb his hands, nor freeze his heart. Andre made what replies he could, but he was chilled with a cold that had nothing to do with the weather. Never before had his confidence in his own skill and strength deserted him, not even on the bridge before Wallingford. When he met Geoffrey crossing through the ranks, he stopped and plucked at the huddled figure.

  "Will you do me a favor?"

  Geoffrey turned surprised blue eyes on him, tried to reply, and found that he could not speak because his teeth were chattering. Unwilling to display what might be taken as fear to his father's retainer, he simply nodded.

  "If I come not alive from this meeting, will you greet your sister Mary from me and tell her—tell her—" Tell her what? He had no right to love, less right to confess that love to his lord's heir when he kept the secret from the earl—a remarkably foolish afterthought he realized, since to mention Mary's name was to confess. "Tell her," Andre said defiantly, "that my last thought was of her." If he died, it would not matter, and if he lived and Geoffrey carried the tale to Soke so much the better.

  Again Geoffrey nodded, the surprise dying out of his eyes and a kind of romantic respect taking its place. As yet he, himself, had not been touched by the new-style passion called love, but the conventions of l'amour courtois, although new, were already familiar to him from the tales he had heard. No wonder Andre was so brave and devoted to his father. He was doing his devoir to his lady.

  Soon, the boy thought, I will find a lady of my own and I will be stronger and braver for her sake. No thought of marriage intruded into the romantic notion. Marriage was a thing apart from love, a thing to be arranged by one's father or one's overlord. Marriage was for the breeding of children, for the increase of lands, and for linking blood lines. Love, Geoffrey glanced at Andre’s face, love was something else.

  Rannulf heard the men grumble also, but he made no attempt to lift their spirits or stiffen their courage. He shivered impatiently in the saddle, wondering why the farce of forming the battle lines had been ordered. Surely it was impossible to attack. He wiped the sleet from his face again, and then cursed himself as the hail stung more bitterly while a new coating formed. What were they waiting for? To freeze solid where they stood? It took him two tries to kick his horse into movement, because his legs were so numb he could not direct them, nor really tell when they had connected. When he reined in again, it was directly to Stephen's left, and he no longer needed to ask for what they waited. The group around the king sat with their eyes anxiously fixed on Malmesbury keep.

  "Perhaps the flames will not rise in this storm," Stephen muttered.

  "There should at least be some smoke," an unknown voice replied.

  A cackle of near-hysterical laughter rose in Rannulf's throat and was suppressed. The king had believed Jordan. He was waiting so that his army could see the keep of Malmesbury destroyed, see the discomfiture of Henry's troops, and take heart from the knowledge that what seemed like an Angevin victory could be turned into a defeat by strategy. As if any man could take heart from seeing a castle wantonly destroyed, a strong haven leveled into nothingness.

  If only it were not so cold! Rannulf pinned his eyes on the opposite shore, on the ranks of men drawn up to resist them if they tried the crossing. Brief snatches of sound came across in the blasts of wind, rough but good-humored curses and bursts of laughter. The force was smaller than theirs, but Henry's men were in good heart. There were sudden howls of cheerful greeting as a group of four men rode across the front of the line.

  One of them, Rannulf thought, must be the young Angevin. They stopped nearly opposite Stephen's group and looked across the river. Some discussion was taking place; the voices were too low to be carried even by the fierce wind, but the gestures were open and confident. Rannulf watched with a growing sense of envy, the longing to follow someone sure and bold struggling with his old affection.

  Now a rider broke through the ranks of men and interrupted the talk of the four leaders. From his excited gestures it could be guessed that he was a messenger with important news. Rannulf, for one, did not need, although he heard nothing, to guess what that news was. The last drop of warmth faded from his being, the little spot that had clung to hope that men were not as weak and faithless as he expected them to be.

  "There," Stephen cried excitedly, "the keep must be burning and we cannot see—Oh God, no!"

  The drawbridge, plainly visible over the moat fed by a canal from the river, was being lowered. A hoarse, exultant cheer broke from the Angevin force, many of whom had turned their backs on Stephen's army to watch Malmesbury keep fall into their hands without a drop of blood being shed. Slowly a number of the men around Stephen drew back so that when the king turned his haggard face to his vassals, Rannulf was the closest man to him.

  "He swore," Stephen choked, "on the Cross, on the Body and the Blood, on the relics of the martyrs. Traitor! All are traitors! He swore!"

  There was a murmur of halfhearted consolation, an uneasy shifting of eyes and seats in the saddle. To some it did not matter at all; to some it mattered too much.

  "Go and leave me alone," Stephen screamed, "That is what you wish to do. Go! Desert me! Traitors all!"

  Now the murmurs and looks were angry on the faces of those in whom indifference did not rule. A number of men, some taking the words for a dismissal deliberately, some truly angered, lifted reins and set spurs to their mounts. Stephen's eyes, blazing, swept over the men who remained and fixed at last on the closest.

  "What d
o you here, Soke? Do you remain to triumph over my discomfiture?"

  "I remain to receive your further orders, my lord," Rannulf replied woodenly. So much he still owed Stephen, for he had caused at least part of the trouble. "Perhaps we can—"

  "We can do nothing!" A sob broke the voice. "You warned me—you alone."

  In a moment Stephen would begin to weep, and this was not the time or place for it. Rannulf spoke with deliberate stolidity. "Well, Henry cannot remain forever in Malmesbury, and it is profitless for him to move west. He must cross the river and come to us. If we withdraw and wait for him, we may yet withstand him. Even the attempt to do so will put heart into the lords of the midlands, and—"

  Stephen was shaking his head stubbornly. "We have no food, no shelter, and it is so bitterly cold. I must have time, time to gather my strength and to think what to do. I will return to London."

  It was useless to argue, useless to say that he understood the difficulties concerning food and shelter, useless to explain that standing firm would bolster men's faith while the defeatist move Stephen planned would drive more men into Henry's arms.

  "Very well, my lord," he replied.

  "Not you," Stephen said softly, and when he looked at Rannulf his eyes were clear and sane and knowing. "Can you not see that I am like a plague? Get you gone from me, lest the ill that I have become slay you. Go guard your own lands against Bigod, and release my son to come to me."

  Rannulf swallowed sickly. If Stephen had spoken one more harsh word, if his eyes and heart had remained shuttered, perhaps he could have freed himself. Now he was bound to the death or prison or exile that was Stephen's future. It did not matter. No one else needed him. "I have taken the contagion already," he muttered. "Let me bide with you."

  "No, for I cannot withstand him." Stephen did not name his son, but there was no one else of whom he could be speaking. "And through him I might do you a hurt. Only Maud could have saved us—and Maud is dead." Stephen's eyes held no tears, only such an emptiness of grief that Rannulf's throat closed and he could plead no more.

  CHAPTER 19

  If the day and night spent at Malmesbury had been a cold purgatory, the trip from Malmesbury to Sleaford was a freezing hell. It did not seem to matter whether Rannulf's troop drove their horses to exhaustion, as they did in the first stretch between Malmesbury and Oxford, or whether they waited patiently in a friendly keep. The storm that had caught them, as if it were some malevolent, half-intelligent thing, seemed to lie in wait until they showed themselves and then attack with renewed fury.

  Rannulf accompanied the king from Malmesbury to Oxford, hoping that Stephen would change his mind and order him to follow on to London. Not realizing he was sealing his vassal's fate, Stephen urged him passionately to care for himself. As the despair grew in Rannulf's eyes, Stephen changed his tune. He spoke cheerfully of new meetings when the turning of the tide should come, but he did not rescind his original order. Rannulf waited on the weather at Oxford, having no particular desire to be anywhere except at home.

  There Catherine would wake his desire to live, not for the things for which a man should live, not for duty and service, but for carnal pleasure. For the joy of seeing the sun rise and smelling the new-turned earth of spring, for kissing a woman and seeing grandchildren grow. Those things were well enough, but they should not draw a man from the path of duty.

  Rannulf's long agony was over. He was not now torn in two, but he ached for those joys he had not even known were joys before Catherine awakened him to them. Catherine had given and Catherine had taken away. Rannulf was not aware of the blasphemy of his substitution.

  He knew only that her strength and courage had given him a glimpse of burdens shared so that they became pleasures and yet had removed his last excuse for clinging to the life he desired. He almost hated her for being what she was instead of the helpless, clinging thing that needed his protection.

  Nature itself had seemed to set its face against Rannulf's desire to avoid his home. Northampton's troop arrived the day after Stephen left, and the sun came out the next morning. Perhaps the sun alone could not have forced Rannulf to move on, but he could not refuse to accompany his old friend, for Northampton was now nearly totally paralyzed.

  It was under twenty miles to Towcester where Northampton's son met them, and it took three long days to cover the distance because Northampton had to be carried in a litter every step of the way. To make matters worse, no sooner were they too far from Oxford to make a return practical when it started to sleet and hail again. Rannulf would have been happy to go to Northampton's keep, but Simon's son was so plainly ill at ease in his presence that they rode forward the next day in spite of the inclement weather.

  Warwick was their next haven. It was slightly out of the straight path home, but closer than any other place where they might rest. Here, too, they stayed only one night; here, too, Rannulf found that he was not welcome. Warwick was not at home, true, but it was not that which made the countess stiff and cold as the ice that bordered the river.

  Gundreda did not like him nor he her, yet it was Rannulf's habit to stop at Warwick keep in any journey he made, and Lady Warwick had often played hostess to him when she was alone. Ordinarily she was warmer than usual at such times, finding any masculine company that provided news and sensible conversation valuable when her husband was away. This desire to be rid of him in haste had nothing to do with their mutual dislike and was something new. Bitterly Rannulf thought how swiftly even those one had known for years changed with the breath of favor.

  Gundreda did not know that he and Stephen were reconciled, and Rannulf was too proud to tell her. He gathered his men and moved on toward Leicester's keep. Rannulf was almost afraid to stop, but here at last he found someone who was glad to see him.

  "I had begun to think that I was carrying the pox," he said, sipping hot wine and standing well away from the fire.

  "Why?" Robert laughed.

  "Northampton's eldest boy could not sit nor stand quiet while I remained with him, and Warwick's lady all but told me to go."

  Leicester dropped his eyes. "You had better let my daughter see to those hands of yours, Rannulf. They are so chilblained that they are bleeding. That is what comes of waging war in the winter. Are your feet as bad?"

  "No," Rannulf replied indifferently. "Robert—"

  "Then why are you limping so much?"

  "I was hurt in the taking of Wallingford bridge, and the wound does not heal. Robert, there is no use dragging in side issues, particularly such bad fish as old wounds and chilblains. I must ask and you must answer. Is it the end?"

  Leicester did not look up. "For some it is the beginning."

  "For you, Robert?" The heavy, stolid man remained silent. "Do you think I would ask such a question of you if my knowledge of the answer could hurt you?"

  "No. I was wondering if I could find words with which to explain the unalterability of events and the uselessness of resistance. There is a pattern in things. Once a new pattern is formed, no amount of clinging to the old will save it. Those who will not change are only destroyed."

  "So much I know, but there are many ways of being destroyed, and all different for all men. For me to save life would destroy the soul. It is not so for others—I understand."

  "And Geoffrey and Richard?"

  Rannulf smiled. "Geoffrey's decision is different from mine, and he understands that my oath binds him only so long as I live. No one can blame a boy for loyalty to his father." There was a hesitation, and then Rannulf continued steadily. "I hope you will make so much clear where it will help my son in the new pattern of things."

  Leicester's mouth thinned angrily, but he nodded.

  "There is something more, Robert," Rannulf continued. "I believe Simon is dying."

  "Northampton dying? Of what? Was he hurt?"

  "No, he is only old. His body is—frozen. He may linger a while, but not in a state to steady a youngling in his path. Will you guide Geoffrey and take Richar
d into your household?"

  "I would do that without asking. But Rannulf, you talk as if you were already dead. You are not as old as Northampton."

  "No, but there will be more fighting. Eustace will not permit Stephen to make the truce he desires."

  "You have done your share and more, Rannulf. You cannot think you owe more to an overlord who—"

  "Do not missay Stephen to me. He is torn in two—and that I understand too well. No, Robert, I have a lust to fight. I desire it. I need it. It will take no urging to thrust me into the thickest press."

  Leicester sighed. He would try once more. "Rannulf, you see how the wind blows, but do you see how strongly? Do you know why Lady Warwick desired to be rid of you?"

  "Of course. She thinks Stephen has thrown me aside and that Eustace waits only the merest chance to send home the death thrust. She did not wish to be tainted by me."

  "No. You must not speak of what I tell you now. You could not prevent it anyway. Do I have your word on it?"

  Rannulf nodded. "I will die for Stephen, but no man can save him. I will make trouble for no one."

  "I have already sent messages to Henry, and when the time is fitting for us both, I will do him homage." Sure as he was that Rannulf had guessed so much, Leicester was relieved when his foster brother again nodded without emotion. "If my vassals' keeps offer no resistance, Henry will most swiftly move eastward. To come back to Gundreda at Warwick—I know that she will yield all after a token siege or only a threat."

  "Warwick! But Warwick is with Stephen now."

  "Warwick knows nothing of this, and if he were told, he would not believe it." Leicester shook his head. "Even if he were there, he could not stop her. She does this for her children. You tell me Northampton is dying. His son waits only for that before he, too, gives Henry fealty. Who is left?"