Brother Cadfael 20: Brother Cadfael's Penance

hesitate to approve the death. But she was in ruthless haste to be about the business before any word of her intention could get to her brother's ears, all the same. Not that she was afraid of Robert, or willing to acknowledge that she could do nothing effective without him. She had been known to humiliate him in public, on occasion, as arrogantly and ruthlessly as any other. No, what she aimed at was to present him with a death already accomplished, past argument, past redemption, her own unmistakable and absolute act, the statement of her supremacy. For surely all these years, while she had used and relied on him, she had also been jealous of him, and grudged him his pre-eminence.
    Yves slept the few hours left to him after the council ended rolled in his cloak on a bench in the darkened hall, without a notion in his troubled head as to how to circumvent the empress's revenge. It was not simply that such an act would disrupt and alienate half her following, and fetch out of their scabbards every sword that was not bared and blooded already, to prolong and poison this even now envenomed warfare. It was also, though he had not the penetration to probe into motives after such a day, that he did not want Philip's death. A daunting, inward man, hard to know, but one he could have liked in other circumstances. One whom Olivier had liked, but equally did not understand.
    Yves slept fitfully until an hour before dawn. And in the bleak morning hours he made ready, and rode with the main body of the empress's army, under John FitzGilbert, to the assault of La Musarderie.
    The deployment of the siege force around the castle was left to the marshall, and the marshall knew his business, and could get his engineers and their mangonels into position along the ridge without noise or commotion enough to reach the ears of the watchmen on the walls, and his companies strategically placed within cover all about the site, from the bank of the river round to the fringes of the village above, where the empress and her women had taken possession of the priest's house, rather than face the ardours of a camp. The operation might have been much more difficult, and the secret out before the end of the day, had not the villagers of Greenhamsted fared rather well under the Musards, and felt no inclination at all to send warning to the present castellan of La Musarderie. Their complacency with the present total occupation would stand them in good stead with one faction, the one that had appeared among them with convincing strength. They held their peace, sat circumspectly among their invading soldiery, and awaited events.
    The dispersal went on into the darkness, and the first fires in the camp above, insufficiently covered and damped, alerted the guards on the wall. A round of the guardwalks discovered a number of similar sparks dispersed among the trees, all round the perimeter of the cleared ground.
    "He has brought down the whole mass of her army on us," said Philip dispassionately to Cadfael, up on the south tower, watching the minute glints that showed the ring of besiegers. "A lad of his word! Pure chance that she seems to have mustered a council of earls about her in Gloucester, with all their companies, when I could well have done without them. Well, I invited him to the feast. I am as ready as I can be, with such odds against me. Tomorrow we shall see. At least now we're warned." And he said to his monastic guest, very civilly: "If you wish to withdraw, do so freely, now, while there's time. They will respect and welcome you."
    "I take that offer very kindly," said Cadfael with equally placid formality, "but I do not go from here without my son."
    Yves left his station among the trees to northward when it was fully dark, and with a sky muffled by low-hanging clouds that hid moon and stars. Nothing would happen this night. With such a show of force there would certainly be a demand for surrender, rather than set out from the beginning to batter a valuable asset to pieces. At dawn, then. He had this one night to make contact if he could.
    Yves's memory was excellent. He could still repeat word for word what Philip had said of his unexpected guest: "He can keep the hours as faithfully in my chapel as in Shrewsbury. And so he does, even the midnight matin." Moreover, Yves knew where that chapel must be, for when they had plucked him out of his cell and brought him forth from the keep to the hall he had seen the chaplain emerge from a dim