Brother Cadfael 20: Brother Cadfael's Penance

hurling burning tar from end to end of the sagging timbers, and splashing the guardwalk through every embrasure. And instantly the battered wood caught and blazed, the flames leaping from broken planks and splintered parapet all along the wall.
    Philip was on his feet, hauling the winded boy up with him.
    "Are you fit? Can you go? Down with you, never mind fighting it. Go get axes!"
    There would be burns and worse to deal with afterwards, but this was more urgent now. The young man went scrambling down into the ward in frantic haste, and Philip, stooping under the shelter of the wall, went running the length of the blaze, hoisting his men up, despatching those worst damaged down to take refuge below and find help. Here the brattice would have to be hacked free, before it spread the fire within, flashed into the woodwork of the towers, spat molten tar over the ward. Cadfael went down the steps with a moaning youth in his arms, nursing him down stair by stair, his own scapular swathed round the boy's body to quench the lingering smouldering of cloth and the smell of scorched flesh. There were others below waiting to receive him, and more like him, and hoist them away into cover. Cadfael hesitated, almost wishing to go back. On the guardwalk Philip was hacking away the blazing timbers among his remaining guards, wading through lingering puddles of flaming tar to reach the beams that still clung to their shattered hold upon the wall.
    No, he was not of the garrison, he had no right to take a hand in this quarrel upon either side. Better go and see what could be done for the burned.
    Perhaps half an hour later, from among the pallets in the hall, with the stench of burned woollens and flesh in his nostrils, he heard the timbers of the gallery break free and fall, creaking as the last fibres parted, flaring with a windy roar as they fell, fanned by their flight, to crash under the tower and settle, in a series of spitting collapses, against the stones.
    Philip came down some time later, blackened to the brow and parched from breathing smoke, and stayed only to see how his wounded fared. He had burns of his own, but paid them little attention.
    "They will try and breach the wall there before morning," he said.
    "It will still be too hot," objected Cadfael, without pausing in anointing a badly burned arm.
    "They'll venture. Nothing but wood, a few hours of the night's cold. And they want a quick ending. They'll venture."
    "Without a sow?" They could hardly have hauled a whole stout wooden shelter, long enough to house and cover a team of men and a heavy ram, all the way from Gloucester, Cadfael surmised.
    "They'll have spent most of the day building one. They have plenty of wood. And with half the brattice on that side down, we'll be vulnerable." Philip settled his mail over a bruised and scorched shoulder, and went back to his guardwalk to watch out the night. And Cadfael, drawing breath at length among the injured, guessed at the approach of midnight, and made a brief but fervent office of Matins.
    Before first light the assault came, without the precaution of the shelter a sow would have afforded, but with the added impetus of speed to balance that disadvantage. A large party issued from the woods and made a dash downhill for the wall, and though the mounted espringales cut some furrows in their ranks, they reached the foot of the tower, just aside from the glowing remnants of the fire. Cadfael heard from the hall the thudding of their ram against the stone, and felt the ground shake to the blows. And now, for the want of that length of gallery, the defenders were forced to expose themselves in order to hoist stones over the embrasures, and toss down oil and flares to renew the blaze. Cadfael had no knowledge of how that battle must be going; he had more than enough to do where he was. Towards morning Philip's second in command, a border knight from near Berkeley named Guy Camville, touched him on the shoulder, rousing him out of a half-doze of exhaustion, and told him to get away into comparative quiet in the keep, and snatch a couple of hours of honest sleep, while it was possible.
    "You've done enough, brother," he said heartily, "in a quarrel that's been none of your making."
    "None of us," said Cadfael ruefully, clambering dazedly to his feet, "has ever done enough, or never in the right direction."
    The ram was withdrawn, and the assault party with it, before full light, but by then they had made a breach, not