0.5 The Coming of the Wolf by Elizabeth Chadwick

Author:Elizabeth Chadwick
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2020-08-06T00:00:00+00:00

11

Stafford Castle, November 1069

Miles slid from the grey’s back and stood in the almost ankle-deep sludge of Stafford Castle’s bailey. A bitter wind drove his sodden cloak against his back and whipped the stallion’s tail between his mired hocks. A groom came running from the shelter of the stable building to take the reins and Miles handed Cloud into the man’s care.

The rain, which had held off for the last hour of their journey, began again, fine in the wind as wet mist, a rain to penetrate the bones until they would never be warm again. He removed his helm and absently touched a sore spot where his coif had chafed his skin. He commanded Leofwin to take the supplies they had foraged to the master marshal.

The pack horses squelched away in Leofwin’s wake. The light was fading fast although it was barely mid-afternoon, and torches glimmered in the main keep. Miles turned in the opposite direction towards one of the ramshackle cooking sheds set up on the edge of the bailey palisade. A bulky Flemish woman with two stringy brown plaits was tending the huge iron cooking pot suspended over the flames. Standing back to wipe her forehead on her rolled-back sleeve, she looked at Miles.

‘What you brought me this time?’ she demanded in a heavy Flemish accent.

Miles extended his hands to the heat from the fire and the bubbling rich stew. The smell of the food teased his nostrils and at the same time made him feel sick. ‘Enough to keep your cauldron simmering,’ he said shortly and sat down on the bench at the side of the cooking pot. He tried not to see the bewildered, frightened country people from whom the supplies to feed the Norman army had been taken, but his mind still filled with the vision of the homes burning beneath the bleak November sky, and he could still hear the wails of women and children, and the angry despair of the men.

Will it be like that? Christen had asked him with reproach in her eyes, and he thought he would not be able to meet her gaze ever again.

‘Nothing to match yesterday I’ll warrant, sire,’ said the woman with a chuckle, not in the least deterred by his abruptness. ‘Never seen so many sheep at one time.’

Miles grunted. He and Leofwin, ahead of the main foraging party, had come across a large herd of black-faced sheep guarded only by an old man and his grandson. As a sop to his conscience and with the thought of Christen’s damning gaze on him, Miles had left them a dozen ewes in lamb and their tup, and driven the remainder back to the castle to feed the troops.

‘Might as well have a share in your labour,’ she added as he said nothing, and ladled a generous portion of mutton stew into a bowl and gave it to him.

Miles took it automatically. Greasy chunks of meat floated amid a broth of onions, sage and barley. He thanked her and moved away as two men arrived dripping and cold from guard duty.

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