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down to siege. He got precious little out of Geoffrey, maybe a
handful of knights, no more.”
    “If
he’s safe ashore and holds the town,” said Cadfael reasonably, “what does he
want with the castle? I should have thought he’d be hotfoot for Oxford to hale
his sister out of the trap.”
    “He’d
rather lure Stephen to come to him, and draw him off from his own siege. My man
says the castle at Wareham’s none too well garrisoned, and they’ve come to a
truce agreement, and sent to the king to relieve them by a fixed date, a
know-all, but truly well informed, though even he doesn’t know the day
appointed—or if he fails them they’ll surrender. That suits Robert. He knows
it’s seldom any great feat to lure Stephen off a scent, but I fancy he’ll hold
fast this time. When will he get such a chance again? Even he can’t throw it
away, surely.”
    “There’s
no end to the follies any man can commit,” said Cadfael tolerantly. “To give
him his due, most of his idiocies are generous, which is more than can be said
for the lady. But I could wish this siege at Oxford might be the end of it. If
he does take castle and empress and all, she’ll be safe enough of life and limb
with him, it’s rather he who may be in danger. What else is new from the
south?”
    “There’s
a tale he tells of a horse found straying not far from the city, in the woods
close to the road to Wallingford. Some time ago, this was, about the time all
roads out of Oxford were closed, and the town on fire. A horse dragging a
blood-stained saddle, and saddlebags slit open and emptied. A groom who’d
slipped out of the town before the ring closed recognised horse and harness as
belonging to one Renaud Bourchier, a knight in the empress’s service, and close
in her confidence, too. My man says it’s known she sent him out of the garrison
to try and break through the king’s lines and carry a message to Wallingford
for her.”
    Cadfael
ceased to ply the hoe he was drawing leisurely between his herb beds, and
turned his whole attention upon his friend. “To Brian FitzCount, you mean?” The
lord of Wallingford was the empress’s most faithful adherent arid companion,
next only to the earl, her brother, and had held his castle for her, the most
easterly and exposed outpost of her territory, through campaign after campaign
and through good fortune and bad, indomitably loyal. “How comes it he’s not
with her in Oxford? He hardly ever leaves her side, or so they say.”
    “The
king moved so much faster than anyone thought for. And now he’s cut off from
her. Moreover, she needs him in Wallingford, for if that’s ever lost she has
nothing left but an isolated holding in the west country, and no way out
towards London. She may well have sent out to him at the last moment, in so
desperate a situation as she’s in now. And rumour down there says, it seems,
that Bouchier was carrying treasure to him, less in coin than in jewels. It may
well be so, for he needs to pay his men. Loyal for love though they may be,
they still have to live and eat, and he’s beggared himself already in her
service.”
    “There’s
been talk, this autumn,” said Cadfael, thoughtfully frowning, “that Bishop
Henry of Winchester has been busy trying to lure away Brian to the king’s side.
Bishop Henry has money enough to buy whoever’s for sale, but I doubt if even he
could bid high enough to move FitzCount. All this time the man has shown as
incorruptible. She had no need to try and outbid her enemies for Brian.”
    “None.
But she may well have thought, when the king’s host closed round her, to send
him an earnest of the value she sets on him, while the way was still open, or
might at least be attempted by a single brave man. At such a pass, it may even
have seemed to her the last chance for such a word ever to pass between them.”
    Cadfael
thought on that, and acknowledged its truth. King Stephen