“Olivier has been a very profitable man to our cause,” urged Yves strenuously, evading provoking her with ‘your cause’ just in time. It would have sounded like censure, and that was something not even those nearest to her and most regarded would have dared. “My lords,” he appealed, “you know his mettle, you have seen his valour. It is an injustice that he should be held in secret when all the others from Faringdon have been honourably offered for ransom, as the custom is. And there is more than one man to win, there is a good castle, and if we move quickly enough we may have it intact, almost undamaged, and a mass of arms and armour with it.”
“A fair enough prize,” agreed the marshall thoughtfully, “if it could be done by surprise. But failing that, not worth a heavy loss to us. I do not know the ground well. Do you? You cannot have seen much of their dispositions from a cell underground.”
“My lord,” said Yves eagerly, “I went about the whole place before I rode here. I could draw out plans for you. There’s ground cleared all about it, but not beyond arrow range, and if we could move engines to the ridge above…”
“No!” said the empress sharply. “I will not stir for one captive, the risk is too great, and too little to gain. It was presumptuous to ask it of me. Your sister’s husband must abide his time, we have greater matters in hand, and cannot afford to turn aside for a luckless knight who happens to have made himself well hated. No, I will not move.”
“Then, madam, will you give me leave to try and raise a lesser force, and make the attempt by other means? For I have told Philip FitzRobert to his face, and sworn it, that I will return for Olivier in arms. I said it, and I must and will make it good. There are some who would be glad to join me,” said Yves, flushed and vehement, “if you permit.”
He did not know what he had said to rouse her, but she was leaning forward over the table now, gripping the curved arms of the stool, her ivory face suddenly burningly bright. “Wait! What was that you said? To his face! You told him to his face? He was there this very morning, in person? I had not understood that. He gave his orders, that could be done from any of his castles. We heard that he was back in Cricklade, days ago.”
“No, it’s not so. He is there in La Musarderie. He has no thought of moving.” Of that, for some reason, Yves was certain. Philip had chosen to keep Brother Cadfael, and Brother Cadfael, no doubt for Olivier’s sake, had elected to stay. No, there was no immediate plan to leave Greenhamsted. Philip was waiting there for Yves to return in arms. And now Yves understood the working of her mind, or thought he did. She had believed her hated enemy to be in Cricklade, and to get at him there she would have had to take her armies well to the southeast, into the very ring of Stephen’s fortresses, surrounded by Bampton, Faringdon, Purton, Malmesbury, all ready to detach companies to repel her, or, worse still, surround her and turn the besiegers into the besieged. But Greenhamsted was less than half the distance, and if tackled with determination could be taken and regarrisoned before Stephen’s relief forces could arrive. A very different proposition, one that caused the fires in her eyes to burn up brilliantly, and the stray tresses escaping from her braids to quiver and curl with the intensity of her resolution and passion.
“He is within reach, then,” she said, vengefully glowing. “He is within reach, and I will have him! If we must turn out every man and every siege engine we have, it is worth it.”
Worth it to take a man she hated, not worth it to redeem a man who had served her all too faithfully, and lost his liberty for her. Yves felt his blood chill in apprehension. But what could she do with Philip when she had him, but hand him over to his father, who might curb and confine him, but surely would not harm him. She would grow tired of her own hatred once she had suppressed and had the better of her traitor. Nothing worse could happen. There might even be a reconciliation, once father and son were forced to meet, and either come to terms or destroy each other.
“I will have him,” said the empress with slow and burning resolve, “and he shall kneel to me before his own captive garrison. And then,” she said with ferocious deliberation, “he shall hang.”
The breath went out of Yves in a muted howl of consternation and disbelief. He gulped in air to find a voice to protest, and could not utter a word. For she could not mean it seriously. Her brother’s son, a revolted son perhaps, but still his own flesh and blood, her own close kin, and a king’s grandson. It would be to shatter the one scruple that had kept this war from being a total bloodbath, a sanction that must not be broken. Kinsman may bully, cheat, deceive, outmanoeuvre kinsman, but not kill him. And yet her face was set in iron resolution, smouldering and gleeful, and she did mean it, and she would do it, without a qualm, without pause for relenting.
King David had turned sharply from his detached contemplation of the darkening world outside the window, to stare first at his niece, and then at the marshall and the steward, who met his eyes with flashing glances, acknowledging and confirming his alarm. Even the king hesitated to say outright what was in his mind; he had long experience of the empress’s reaction to any hint of censure, and if he had no actual fear of her rages, he knew their persistency and obstinacy, and the hopelessness of curbing them, once roused. It was in the most reasonable and mild of voices that he said: “Is that wise? Granted his offence and your undoubted right, it would be well worth it to hold your hand at this moment. It might rid you of one enemy, it would certainly raise a dozen more against you. After talk of peace this would be one way to ensure the continuance of war, with more bitterness than ever.”
“And the earl,” added the steward with emphasis, “is not here to be consulted.”
No, thought Yves, abruptly enlightened, for that very reason she will move this same night, set forward preparations to shift such of her siege engines as can be transported quickly, take every man she can raise, leave all other plans derelict, all to smash her way into La Musarderie before the earl of Gloucester hears what is in the wind. And she will do it, she has the hardihood and the black ingratitude. She will hang Philip and present Earl Robert with a fait accompli and a dead son. She dare do it! And then what awful disintegration must follow, destroying first her own cause, for that she does not care, provided she can get a rope round the neck of this one enemy.
“Madam,” he cried, tearing King David’s careful moderation to shreds, “you cannot do it! I offered you a good castle, and the release of an honourable soldier to add to your ranks, I did not offer you a death, one Earl Robert will grieve for to his life’s end. Take him, yes, give him to the earl, prisoner, let them settle what lies between them. That is fair dealing. But this, this you must not and cannot do!”
She was on her feet by then, raging but contained, for Yves was only a minor insolence to be brushed aside rather than crushed, and at this moment she still had a use for him. He had seen her blaze up like this to flay other unfortunates, now the fire scorched him, and even in his devouring anger he shrank from it.
“Do you tell me what I can and cannot do, boy? Your part is to obey, and obey you shall, or be slung back into a worse dungeon and heavier irons than you’ve suffered yet. Marshall, call Salisbury and Reginald and Redvers into council at once, and have the engineers muster the mangonels, all that can be moved quickly. They shall set forth before us, and by noon tomorrow I want the vanguard on the road, and the main army mustering. I want my traitor dead within days, I will not rest until I see him dangling. Find me men who know the roads and this Greenhamsted well, we shall need them. And you,” she turned her flashing eyes again upon Yves, “wait in the anteroom until you are called. You say you can draw us plans of La Musarderie, now you shall prove it. Make it good! If you know of any weak spots, name them. Be thankful I leave you your liberty and a whole skin, and take note, if you fall short of delivering what you have promised me, you shall lose both. Now go, get out of my sight!”