“Can he live?” whispered the boy, shivering in the doorway.
“If God wills,” said the chaplain, and shooed the boy away, not unkindly, going with him the first paces with a hand on his shoulder, and dropping hopeful words into his ear. But in such circumstances, thought Cadfael grievously, remembering the fate that awaited this erect and stubborn man if God did please to have him survive this injury, which of us would care to be in God’s shoes, and how could any man of us bear to dispose his will to either course, life or death?
Guy Camville came, the burden of leadership heavy on him, made brief enquiry, stared down at Philip’s impervious repose, shook his head, and went away to do his best with the task left to him. For this night might well be the crisis.
“Send me word if he comes to his senses,” said Camville, and departed to defend the damaged tower and fend off the inevitable assault. With a number of men out of the battle now, it was left to the elders and those with only minor grazes to care for the worst wounded. Cadfael sat by Philip’s bed, listening to the short, stabbing breaths he drew, painful and hard, that yet could not break his swoon and recall him to the world. They had wrapped him well against the cold, for fear fever should follow. Cadfael moistened the closed lips and the bruised forehead under the bandages. Even thus in helplessness the thin, fastidious face looked severe and composed, as the dead sometimes look.
Close to midnight, Philip’s eyelids fluttered, and his brows knotted in a tightly drawn line. He drew in deeper breaths, and suddenly hissed with pain returning. Cadfael moistened the parted lips with wine, and they stirred and accepted the service thirstily. In a little while Philip opened his eyes, and looked up vaguely, taking in the shapes of his own chamber, and the man sitting beside him. He had his senses and his wits again, and by the steady intelligence of his eyes as they cleared, memory also.
He opened his lips and asked first, low but clearly: “The boy, was he hurt?”
“Safe and well,” said Cadfael, stooping close to hear and be heard.
He acknowledged that with the faintest motion of his head, and lay silent for a moment. Then: “Bring Camville. I have affairs to settle.”
He was using speech sparingly, to say much in few words; and while he waited he closed lips and eyes, and hoarded the clarity of his mind and the strength left to his body. Cadfael felt the force with which he contained and nursed his powers, and feared the fall that might follow. But not yet, not until everything had been set in order.
Guy Camville came in haste, to find his lord awake and aware, and made rapid report of what he might most want to hear. “The tower is holding. No break through yet, but they’re under the wall, and have rigged cover for the ram.”
Philip perceptibly gathered his forces, and drew his deputy down by the wrist beside his bed. “Guy, I give you charge here. There’ll be no relief. It is not La Musarderie she wants. She wants me. Let her have me, and she’ll come to terms. At first light, flag FitzGilbert and call him to parley. Get what terms you best can, and surrender to her. If she has me, she’ll let the garrison march out with honour. Get them safe to Cricklade. She’ll not pursue. She’ll have what she wants.”
Camville cried in strong protest: “No!”
“But I say yes, and my writ still runs here. Do it, Guy! Get my men out of her hands, before she kills them all to get her hands on me.”
“But it means your life, ” Camville began, shaken and dismayed.
“Talk sense, man! My life is not worth one death of those within here, let alone all. I am within a hair’s breadth of my death already, I have no complaint. I have been the cause of deaths here among men I valued, spare me any more blood on my head in departing. Call truce, and get what you can for me! At first light, Guy! As soon as a white banner can be seen.”
And now there was no denying him. He spoke as he meant, sanely and forcefully, and Camville was silenced. Only after he had departed, shocked but convinced, did Philip seem suddenly to shrink in his bed, as if air and sinew had gone out of him with the urgency. He broke into a heavy sweat, and Cadfael wiped it away from forehead and lip, and trickled drops of wine into his mouth. For a while there was silence, but for the husky breaths that seemed to have grown both easier and shallower. Then a mere thread of a voice said, with eerie clarity: “Brother Cadfael?”
“Yes, I am here.”
“One more thing, and I have done. The press yonder… open it.”
Cadfael obeyed without question, though without understanding. What was urgent was already done. Philip had delivered his garrison free from any association with his own fate. But whatever still lay heavy on his mind must be lifted away.
“Three keys… hanging under the lock within. Take them.”
Three on one ring, dwindling in size from large and ornate to small, crude and plain. Cadfael took them, and closed the press.
“And now?” He brought them to the bedside, and waited. “Tell me what it is you want, and I will get it.”
“The north-west tower,” said the spectral voice clearly. “Two flights below ground, the second key. The third unlocks his irons.” Philip’s black, burningly intelligent eyes hung unwaveringly upon Cadfael’s face. “It might be well to leave him where he is until she makes her entry. I would not have him charged with any part of what she holds against me. But go to him now, as soon as you will. Go and find your son.”
Chapter Thirteen.
CADFAEL DID NOT stir until the chaplain came to take his place by the bedside. Twice the sick man had opened his eyes, that now lay sunken in bluish pits in the gaunt face, and watched him sitting there unmoving with the keys in his hand, but given no sign of wonder or disapproval, and uttered no more words. His part was done. Cadfael’s part could be left to Cadfael. And gradually Philip sank again beneath the surface of consciousness, having no more affairs to set in order. None, at least, that it was in his power to better. What remained awry must be left to God.
Cadfael watched him anxiously, marking the sunken hollows beneath the cheekbones, the blanching of the brow, the tension of drawn lips, and later the heavy sweat. A strong, tenacious life, not easy to quench. These wounds he had might well put an end to it, but it would not be yet. And surely by noon tomorrow FitzGilbert would be in La Musarderie, and Philip his prisoner. Even if the empress delayed her entry a day or two more, to have proper apartments prepared for her reception, the respite could last no longer. She would be implacable. He had made her of none account, and she would requite the injury in full. Even a man who cannot stand and is barely alive can be hoisted the extra yard or two in a noose, for an example to all others.
So there were still vital affairs to be set in order, as is proper before an imminent death. And under the prompting of God, who was to make provision?
When the chaplain came to relieve his watch, Cadfael took his keys, and went out from the comparative quiet of the keep into the din of battle in the ward. Inevitably the besiegers had pursued their assault upon the same spot they had already weakened, and this time with a hastily constructed sow to shield the ram and the men who wielded it. The hollow, purposeful rhythm of the ram shook the ground underfoot, and was perforated constantly by the irregular thudding of stones and iron flung down on the sow’s wooden roof from the damaged brattice above, and the embrasures along the guardwalk. The soft, sudden vibration of bowstrings and hiss of arrows came only very rarely from the air above. Archers were of less use now.
From wall to wall the clash and roar of steel and voices washed in echoing waves from the foot of the damaged tower, round the bulk of the keep, to die in the almost-silence under the other tower, that north-western tower under which Olivier lay in chains. But here where the hand-to-hand battle was joined the mass of men-at-arms, lancers, swordsmen, pikemen, heaved round and within the base of the breached tower. Above their heads, framed in the grotesque shapes left standing in the shattered outer wall, Cadfael could see fractured spaces of sky, paler than the opaque black of masonry, and tinted with the surviving glow of fire. The inner wall was pierced, the door and the stonework that surrounded it battered into the ward, lying here and there among the massed defenders. Not a great gap, and it seemed that the onslaught had been repelled, and the breach successfully filled up with men and steel; but a gap none the less. Not worth repairing, if tomorrow the castle was to be surrendered, but still worth holding to prevent further dying. Philip had dealt in accordance with his office; from the situation he had created he was extricating as many lives as he could, at the expense merely of his own.