Winter Siege by Ariana Franklin

homes, or form the hue and cry that would have chased down the despoilers, had been forced into service to build the unlicensed castles – despite the fact that even to fortify a manor with battlements without the King’s permission was against the law – which were now springing up like so many hydra heads as men took the opportunity provided by the general anarchy to defend themselves and at the same time increase their power over their neighbours.
    ‘Who we chasing, Gwil?’ Penda had asked.
    ‘Fellas that stole my crossbow,’ Gwil said shortly.
    Oddly enough, the answer satisfied her. During their sojourn in a rented room in Cambridge, he had made a crossbow, buying the glue and tools in order to save time, but doing the shaping and laminating himself, a process producing an article of such beautiful craftsmanship that the girl, fascinated by it, could imagine no greater loss than to have it stolen.
    ‘Ain’t goin’ to catch ’em though, are we?’ she said. ‘They’re months ahead of we.’
    ‘They’re going to settle,’ Gwil told her. ‘Sooner or later, they’ll settle.’ He was convinced of it. Ramon’s daring was growing with each raid, and so was his booty; raging through countryside would become wearing; eventually the man would attack some vulnerable motte and bailey, fortify it and establish himself over its land as a robber baron. He wouldn’t be the first; disaffected mercenary bands setting up their own lordships were destabilizing England as much as the war itself.
    ‘If peace ever comes, it’s going to take a bloody strong king to put this country back together,’ Gwil said.
    What he was going to do when he caught up with the gang, he had no idea; he wasn’t going to let Penda come face to face with it, he was sure of that – to re-encounter the men who’d damaged her so badly could only damage her more. Yet to let them just disappear without some sort of accounting for what they’d done, would, he knew, cause a dissatisfaction that would never let him lie easy.
    Actually, the girl was improving; she still had no memory of who she was and he’d stopped asking because the question disturbed her, but she was beginning to show interest in the world around her. While she insisted on being taken as a boy, there’d been a surprising display of femininity when, in Cambridge, it had come to buying masculine clothes. He’d expected her to wish to remain inconspicuous, shrinking into the sartorial shadows, afraid of being noticed. But no, at the fripperer he’d taken her to in the market square, she’d spent an age hunting through piles of clothes until she’d found a stylish, slim woollen tunic in a colour that made Gwil blink. ‘It’s
scarlet
.’
    ‘I know. I think it’s pretty.’
    It clashed horribly with her hair but the choice suggested that, as a male, she could gratify a delight in colour that had been unsatisfied in the fens where men and women only wore clothes dyed in woad, if they were dyed at all. He didn’t have the heart to refuse her, though the bright-green mid-thigh stockings she chose to cover the gap between sky-blue trousers and elfin, black leather boots were, he felt, literally going a shade too far. So was the purple cap with a jay’s feather in it. ‘Look like a bloody popinjay, you will,’ he grumbled.
    ‘What’s a popinjay?’
    Gwil drew the line at a cloak that could have rivalled a rainbow and bought instead a hooded and voluminous thing in serviceable brown wool that concealed an otherwise eye-dazzling ensemble.
    All this, with two sets of linen underclothing for her, a new cloak for himself,
plus
the outlay on the crossbow,
plus
the rent for the Cambridge room,
plus
packs in which to carry equipment for life on the tramp,
plus
food and drink while they were doing it – and prices were getting high – had severely depleted the stolen coins from Ely. Sooner, rather than later, if the search for Ramon and the monk were to continue, they were going