Cecily hadn’t thought about Adeline in years, not since her expulsion from Lord Esterby’s castle. She certainly had not expected Adeline to seek out her company, not after she had done her best to tarnish Cecily’s reputation and all but accused her of adultery in front of the baron’s entire retinue. Yet here she was, standing before her, a stricken look on her face.
“I had nowhere else to go,” Adeline said, keeping very still. She had been admitted into the courtyard, no doubt because the guards would not have considered such a bedraggled-looking woman capable of posing any threat to Sir William’s family. Cecily said nothing, but took her by the arm and led her into the house.
After ordering a maid to assist Adeline with a bath and a clean gown—she was much thinner than she used to be, all her pleasant curves planed into sharp angles—Cecily stopped on the stone staircase outside her bedchamber and gathered her thoughts. Her heart was racing, an inexplicable development, as there was no longer anything Adeline could do to hurt her. Was there?
She continued downstairs, going first to the kitchen to direct the cook to prepare a cold dinner for her visitor, and then outside and to the chapel, where she searched in vain for Father Simon. She found him in the rectory, bent over a table and carefully copying out the text of a manuscript she did not recognize.
“She’s come, hasn’t she?” he asked, without even looking up. “I suspected it was only a question of time.”
* * *
The siege of Harfleur had paled in terms of brutality to that of Rouen. King Henry’s army remembered all too well the disease and hunger that had plagued them during that earlier expedition into France. This time, their enemy was even better prepared, relentlessly pelting the English with crossbow bolts and cannon shot. A trebuchet protected every gate in the sturdy walls. Henry knew he could not break through the defenses, and instead of trying, settled in for a long siege, confident that he and his men could outlast the French. The great wealth of the city was useless to its inhabitants, for gold and silver and treasure of any kind cannot feed the hungry. Nor could it be used to purchase food after the English king, whose men had dragged ships across the land, laid thick chains across the river Seine, isolating the unlucky souls in Rouen.
Still, months would pass before these measures took a toll on the city, and in the meantime, there were attacks to be repelled. William well understood siege tactics, but he preferred a bloody fight to the infinite patience it took to wait for the food in a well-stocked city to run out. He hated the cries of hungry women and children, hated that disease would soon ravage the population. Plague came with the winter, and before Christmas, city officials expelled twelve thousand of the citizens of Rouen from the protection of its walls.
William had watched them make their way through the gates, women clutching small children, the weak and infirm following, unsteady on their feet. He turned away, not wanting to look, despising the French even more for this act. They hoped to take advantage of King Henry’s compassion and fairness, but they failed to realize he would be guided by military judgment. He could not give these refugees safe passage through the English army; they would cost him food and supplies that he could not afford to take away from his own men.
The dark clouds that hung heavy in the sky opened, drenching everyone below with a cold rain that continued for day after day, week after week. William hated the sounds of the dying exiles, who had nothing but trenches and dirt to shield them from the elements as they slowly starved to death. Still the nobles inside the city would not bend to King Henry’s will.
Respite—brief and not enough—came on Christmas itself, for the king would not fail to observe that holy day. He called for a truce and offered food to the starving. It was insufficient to change the sad course of those still clinging to life in the trenches.
They had been outside Rouen for nearly six months. How much longer would it take for King Henry to capture what was rightly his?