Stewart Binns - Anarchy

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Anarchy: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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Anarchy
The Making of England
Ruthless brutality, greed and ambition:
The year is 1186, the thirty-second year of the reign of Henry II.
Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of London, has lived through long Henry’s reign and that of his grandfather, Henry I. He has witnessed the terrifying civil war between Henry II’s mother, the Empress Matilda, and her cousin, Stephen; a time so traumatic it becomes known as the Anarchy.
The greatest letter writer of the 12th Century, Folio gives an intimate account of one of England’s most troubled eras. Central to his account is the life of a knight he first met over fifty years earlier, Harold of Hereford.
Harold’s life is an intriguing microcosm of the times. Born of noble blood and legendary lineage, he is one of the nine founders of the Knights Templar and a survivor of the fearsome battles of the Crusader States in the Holy Land.
Harold is loyal warrior in the cause of the Empress Matilda. On his broad shoulders, Harold carries the legacy of England’s past and its dormant hopes for the future.
Stewart Binns’
is a gripping novel in the great tradition of Conn Iggulden and Bernard Cornwell, and is the third in
trilogy, following
and
.

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Maud had escaped Stephen’s clutches before; now she needed another miracle.

Three months passed, and Christmastide was imminent. We had introduced strict rationing and firm discipline within the castle. We had managed to keep disease to a minimum, and found space to bury the dead in the castle keep, but morale was the biggest threat. With a determined opponent camped outside in vastly superior numbers, hell-bent on bringing the castle to its knees, there seemed to be no salvation – except of course for Maud to surrender herself. With this in mind, I became as watchful inside our walls as I was beyond them. It also made me realize that if, somehow, we could spirit her away – as we had done before – we could live to fight another day.

Oxford castle was surrounded by a deep moat, fed by the Isis, which made our fortress strong. But this also made escape more difficult; in the icy depths of winter, the moat became a bridge instead of a barrier. I saw the potential late one evening as I was watching a fox begin its nocturnal prowl. It appeared through the undergrowth beside the moat and paused by the water’s edge, as it had done many times before. But then it proceeded to walk across the thick ice that had recently formed there.

The next morning, I gathered up Eadmer, Otto and Berenger and took them to Maud’s chamber, where she was being attended by Greta.

‘I think we have an escape route. It is not without risk, but it is imperative that we are away from here long before Stephen begins to hurl his missiles at our walls. We have to use the winter weather to our advantage. We’ll wait for deep snow and the dark of the moon, then camouflage ourselves so as to be lost in the blanket of snow. Using the frozen moat, we can walk away.’

Eadmer was sceptical.

‘And how do we get out of the castle without being seen?’

‘Down a rope! You and Otto will go first. Berenger and I will then lower Maud and Greta down to you. We’ll follow, and then throw the ropes back over the wall. We’ll make for Eynsham – it’s only five miles away – where we are sure to find horses. We’ll be deep in the Cotswolds before anyone notices we’re gone.’

Eadmer responded with his usual sarcasm.

‘Well, that sounds straightforward enough! Tell me, how do we get past Stephen’s sentries?’

‘We’ll follow the course of the river, and go through the water meadows; the sentries won’t have their braziers above frozen water.’

‘Of course, how simple! And the camouflage?’

‘Long cloaks with hoods, soaked in limewash.’

Eadmer’s expression changed. No longer sceptical, he began to smile. He looked at Maud, who nodded her approval.

‘Good, then we wait for the next heavy snowfall. Otto, Berenger, please prepare the cloaks and three stout ropes. We will need a few purses of silver, two lanterns and a little bread and water. The next dark of the moon is the week after Christmas. Let us all pray for a blizzard.’

It duly began to snow late on 28 December, the Sabbath, and did not relent for two days. By the morning of 30 December, the snow was a foot and a half deep with drifts piled up as tall as a man against anything that thwarted the wind. The landscape looked like a frozen sea, with waves held stationary in time. There was no wind, and the sky was heavy and grey; the night would be as black as Hell.

We went about our business as normal during the day and ate together as usual. Then, just after midnight, we made our way to the north-west wall of the castle and lowered our ropes. We were careful not to alert our own sentries, and maintained a strict silence.

I had left a note for the Castellan – a good man worthy of at least an explanation – asking him for forty-eight hours in which to make good our escape, before he surrendered the garrison to Stephen. I explained the reasons for our flight, asked for his understanding and wished him well.

Maud also left Edward’s Crown and the royal seals of state in her chamber. Having decided that the throne at Westminster was a lost cause, she had no need of them and would commission her own regalia in Bristol for her new realm in the west.

The limewash made our cloaks very heavy, but that was the only hindrance to our descent down the ropes. When we reached the frozen moat, it was almost impossible to see where we were going, even in the white landscape. But the limewash rendered us almost invisible – certainly beyond twenty yards.

Noise was our biggest enemy; the night was still, and even the slightest sound carried far into the distance. Our feet crunched the deep snow and the icy conditions made twigs and even fallen leaves brittle. Animals scurried from us and waterfowl took flight. These were probably sounds that seemed normal to Stephen’s sentries and thus aided our escape. But to us, it seemed as if we were waking the dead.

We paused many times to hear if we had been discovered and to let the creatures of the night settle again. The biggest temptation – especially when we had covered a hundred yards or so – was to make a run for it. But that would have been catastrophic.

When we reached a point just short of where I guessed the sentries would be, I sent Eadmer ahead to see if he could locate them. The last thing we needed at that point was to stumble into Stephen’s men in the gloom.

I looked at Maud and Greta; they looked petrified in both senses of the word. I found a piece of solid ground a few feet away, and the four of us huddled together to keep warm while we waited for Eadmer’s return. Over thirty minutes passed and I began to be concerned; my main worry was that he had been unable to find his way back in the dark.

At last he appeared, breathing heavily. With hand signals, he told us that the sentries were only thirty yards apart.

He then had to whisper the most important information.

‘The only way past them, even with our cloaks, is to walk along the frozen Isis; the gap between the sentries is more like fifty yards there. If we are any closer to them than that, the light from their braziers will reveal us.’

We all nodded that we understood.

‘Lead the way, Eadmer. But first, we must even out our weight. Stay two yards apart, in single file, and maintain complete silence from now on.’

It was a perilous trek. We could trace the course of the river because the snow was flat and even, and there was a complete absence of vegetation. We were walking through thick snow, which gave a firm footing, but every step produced a murmur from the ice below, as it cracked and moved to adjust to the pressure of our weight. Eadmer led, and I placed myself between Maud and Greta. Otto and Berenger, both huge men, brought up the rear, creating even more disconcerting creaks and groans from the fragile ice sheet.

Several times Eadmer halted us, making us freeze like statues. But we could not stop our hearts, which thumped like blacksmiths’ hammers. In such moments, it was easy to imagine us being given away by the deafening rhythm of six heartbeats, echoing across the water meadows like a peel of cathedral bells.

When we were almost midway between the sentries to our left and right, Eadmer signalled to us to kneel and move forward on our hands and knees. We could see the braziers easily, and the flickering shadows of the sentries. I prayed that they were cold and miserable and had eyes only for the fire.

Putting our hands on the ice made its squeaks even more noticeable. It also meant that our chins were brushing the top of the snow, adding hugely to our discomfort. Every time I looked at Greta and Maud, I could see them shaking themselves like dogs, trying to remove the loose snow which had by then invaded every layer of our clothing.

Eventually, after what seemed like an eternity, but was probably no more than two hours since we had left the castle, the sentries’ fires were long gone and our position was hidden by trees on either side of the Isis.

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