Free Winter Siege by Ariana Franklin

his arm, gave orders and accompanied the two women as his commander was carried into the hall and laid on its table.
    Milburga tore Sir John’s nightshirt open all the way down, turned him over as if he were a roll of pastry and tore again. She rolled him back to peer into a face that drooped down one side. ‘He ain’t hit, he’s had a seizure.’
    ‘What’s it mean?’
    ‘Means he ain’t going anywhere.’
    ‘He’s crippled?’
    ‘Can’t walk, can’t talk. Maybe never will.’
    Maud pushed her to one side so that she could lean over her husband. His eyes pleaded with her. Gurgles came from his mouth.
    ‘It’s all right. We’ll make you comfortable,’ she said. It was an automatic response to a soul in terror. She felt no triumph that a man prepared to let his son and her villagers die had been reduced to a useless hulk, but she recognized God’s punishment when she saw it.
    The hall was becoming busy; wounded men were being brought in, one with an arrow sticking out of his nose being teased for it by another. Her head smith was holding his blackened, peeling hands up to her and grinning: ‘Got the fire out, didn’t I, my lady?’
    What fire?
    Lady Morgana was at the other end of the long table dealing with Stang. She glanced towards Sir John and Maud. ‘Better fetch Father Nimbus.’
    ‘Is he going to die?’
    ‘Best be on the safe side.’
    Going upstairs for the priest, Maud’s mind moved as fast as her legs. Yes, yes, it could be no worse than it had been. She could do that; she
would
do it.
    Her seven months of marriage had not been happy. Any authority she’d held in the castle had been taken away from her. Yes, she was permitted to oversee what food was served – as long as the meat dripped blood. (She’d stopped attending the feasts because of the behaviour of the men he brought to them; Sir John hadn’t cared whether she came or not.) Yes, she and her immediate household could take their meals in her solar, and remain there all fucking day as far as he was concerned; just stay out of his fucking way.
    By the grace of God, and possibly Kigva, he’d come to her bed less often than she’d feared – from the first they’d had separate rooms, he having turfed Father Nimbus out of his – though the occasions when he did so disgusted, humiliated and appalled her that she lived in horror of the next.
    Bursting through her solar door, usually drunk, Kigva wailing for him outside it, he uttered not a word, just penetrated her and jerked up and down for a while until a grunt told her he’d been satisfied, after which he went away again. He’d never asked why, as he left her, she began furiously munching the seeds from a bowl she kept nearby, though – and this had been alarming – he’d begun to enquire: ‘Your belly swelling yet?’
    For the rest, she was sidelined and could merely look on as what had been a functioning home of a castle became a fortified hell. Her orchard and herb beds disappeared into a new moat; guardhouses sprouted along the rose avenues. There was a barbarously early slaughter and salting of cattle, sheep and pigs in order to feed the increased garrison through a possible winter siege. Rents not due until December were called in early, while the coffers of money so carefully kept and accounted for by Sir Bernard, the chief steward, were put in the charge of one of Sir John of Tewing’s men.
    All this might have been forgiven on the grounds that Kenniford had to be put on a war footing. What was unpardonable was the behaviour of the mercenaries Sir John inflicted on the castle. They were mainly Brabançons, who, according to him, had more balls than fucking Flemings, which may or may not have been true. What they did have was savagery.
    It was like the Norsemen come again; if they didn’t think their food rations were enough, they raided the storehouses. Thirsty? They were always thirsty – they raided the cellars. Women? No maidservant was safe. Maud’s own men,