Brother Cadfael 15: The Confession of Brother Haluin

on the bench against the timber wall, and dangled his hands between his knees in a gesture of helpless resignation.
    "A courier got through from the south this morning," he said, raising his eyes to his friend's attentive face. "She's gone! Out of the trap, and fled away to join her brother at Wallingford. The king's lost his prize. Even when he has her between his hands he lets her slip through his fingers. I wonder, I wonder," said Hugh, opening his eyes wide at a new thought, "whether he did not turn a blind eye and let her go, when it came to the point! It would be like him. God knows he wanted her badly enough, but he may have taken fright when it came to puzzling what he could do with her when he had her. It's one question I'd love to ask him - but never shall!" he concluded with an oblique grin.
    "Are you telling me," asked Cadfael cautiously, eyeing him across the brazier, "that the empress is escaped out of Oxford, after all? With the king's army all round her, and stores down to starvation level in the castle, from what we last heard? And how did even she contrive it? Tell me next she's grown wings and flown over the king's lines to Wallingford! She could hardly walk through his siege vallations on foot, even if she managed to get out of the castle unseen."
    "Ah, but she did, Cadfael! She did both! She got out of the castle unseen, and passed through some part at least of Stephen's lines. To the best they can guess, she must have been let down by a rope from the rear of the tower towards the river, she and two or three of her men with her. There could not have been more. They muffled themselves all in white to be invisible against the snow. Indeed by all accounts it was snowing then, to hide them the better. They crossed the river on the ice, and walked the six miles or so to Abingdon, for it was there they got horses to take them on to Wallingford. Give her her due, Cadfael, this is a rare woman. From all accounts there's no living with her when she's in high feather, but by God I can see how a man could follow her when she's down."
    "So she's back with FitzCount, after all," said Cadfael on a long, marvelling breath. Barely a month ago it had seemed certain that the empress and her most faithful and devoted ally were irrevocably cut off from each other, and might never meet again in this world. Ever since September the lady had been under close siege in Oxford castle, the king's armies drawn tightly round her, the town in his hands, and he content to sit back and starve out her battered garrison. And now, all in one bold bid and one snowy night, she was out of her chains, free to remuster her forces and take up the fight again on equal terms. Surely there never had been such a king as Stephen for conjuring defeat out of victory. But it was a quality they shared, perhaps native to their blood, for the empress, too, when she was gloriously installed in Westminster, and her coronation but a few days away, had borne herself so arrogantly and harshly towards the obstinate burgesses of her capital that they had risen in fury and driven her out. It seemed that as often as either of them got within touch of the crown, fortune took fright at the prospect of being in the service of either, and hurriedly snatched the prize away.
    "So after all," said Cadfael more placidly as he lifted his bubbling pot to the grid at the side of the brazier, to simmer in peace, "at least Stephen has got rid of his problem. He need worry no longer what to do with her."
    "True," agreed Hugh wryly, "he'd never have had the iron in him to put her in chains, as she did to him when she had him prisoner after Lincoln, and she's proved it would take more than stone walls to hold her. I fancy he's been bunking the issue all these months, looking no further than the moment when he would force her surrender. He's eased of all the troubles that would have been no more than beginning the day he made her prisoner. Better, perhaps, if he could winnow away her hopes so far that she'd be forced to go back to Normandy. But we've come to know the lady better," he acknowledged ruefully. "She never gives up."
    "And how has King Stephen stomached his loss?" asked Cadfael curiously.
    "As I've come to expect of him by this time," said Hugh, with resigned affection. "As soon as the lady was well out of it, Oxford castle surrendered to him. Without her, he'd lost interest in the rest of the starved rats within. Most men would have taken out their rage on the