Lady of the English - By Elizabeth Chadwick Page 0,122

as a basic store for times of privation and siege, there was nothing better.

As well as the stockfish, there were barrels of beef in brine and sausages smoked and dried in long loops. Crocks of honey; bladders of lard, tallow and beeswax, butter and cheese. Oats and grains. Two stone querns stood in a corner, ready to hand-grind flour should the mills be destroyed. And then there were the weapons. Barrel upon barrel of arrows were stacked against the far wall and the fletcher was busy making more. There were mail shirts, many of them given to him by Matilda, fashioned by the famed hauberk-makers of Argentan and transported in LadyofEnglish.indd 302

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leather sacks as part of the ballast on the ships that had come from Normandy. Matilda had given him one as a personal gift, the rivets black as midnight and hemmed with bronze. It was a beautiful, deadly thing, sinuous as snakeskin, with a helm of the same colour. He had donned it to check the fit and had seen the admiration in men’s eyes and he had not known himself. From boyhood, despite being trained to fight, his clever fingers had worn only the ink stains of the written word, never the blood of other men.

“We have enough for years to come, should it be necessary,” William said grimly.

Brian made a face. “I hope it will not come to that.” Leaving the undercroft, he stepped out into the smoky autumn air. His wife was returning from the henhouse with a basket of eggs. At this time of year the birds were not laying in large quantities, but there were enough for the lord’s table. Her dress was spiked with straw and her figure resembled a lumpy sack with a knot tied in the middle. She cast an assessing look at the men. Earlier she had eyed Brian in his fine armour, humphed, and said that looks were all very well, but it was what lay within that mattered.

“Two of the hens have stopped laying,” she grumbled.

“Time to neck them. We cannot afford to keep anything that does not work for its living.”

Brian bit the inside of his mouth, uncertain whether this was a dig at him or just her natural thriftiness coming out. “I will look forward to chicken frumenty then,” he said with a courteous smile. “I appreciate your skills in using all our resources to their best advantage.”

She gave him a hard glance “Someone has to. Fine hauberks, especially when given as gifts, come at a price.” There was a shout from the walls and a serjeant came running across the bailey to Brian. “Sire, it is King Stephen’s army,” he panted as he arrived. “Here, outside the walls!” 303

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Brian set off at a run for the battlements with William hard on his heels. Gazing out between the merlons at the approaching silver line of soldiers, with Stephen’s banner snapping in the wind, his dark imagining became reality. It was not just an undercroft stuffed with supplies and weapons, it was an army spreading out on the opposite bank of the Thames and he felt as if someone had punched him in the stomach because he could not breathe.

His wife joined him on the battlements, still clutching her basket of eggs. “Let us hope Waleran de Meulan does not hold it against you that you kept him prisoner here,” she said, eyeing the fluttering banners.

“I care not if he does,” Brian snapped. “They won’t take Wallingford. I have known this day was coming ever since Stephen usurped the crown.”

“But are you ready?” He gave her a hard look, which she returned with aplomb. “I am a soldier’s daughter,” she said,

“and my first husband was as tough as horseshoes. You talk fine words, and you write them too, my lord, but can you stand?

That is what we will find out now. You had best go and put on that fine hauberk of yours.” With a curt nod to drive her words home, she left with her basket of eggs. A feather floated in her wake and gently drifted to the ground at Brian’s feet.

He watched it land, and then raised his head to the besieging force. He had no choice but to stand, because he was doing this for Matilda, and he had promised.

ttt

A raw wind blustered through the king’s camp. The soldiers had laid down pathways of straw between the tents because the intermittent rain and the