“Spoke like a good Christian brother,” said Hugh, with a brief,grey smile, and fetched a grunt and a blush out of Cadfael to his small butwelcome pleasure. “No, Owain has judgement and sense, but alas for him,he has a brother. Cadwaladr was there with a swarm of his archers, and Madog apMeredith of Powys with him, hot for plunder, and they’ve sunk their teethinto Lincoln and swept the field clear of any prisoner who promises the meansof ransom, even the half-dead. And I doubt they’ve got Gilbert among therest.” He shifted, easing his stiff, sore body in the cushions.“Though it’s not the Welsh,” he said grimly, “that havegot the greatest prize. Robert of Gloucester is halfway to his own city this nightwith a prisoner worth this kingdom to deliver up to the Empress Maud. God knowswhat follows now, but I know what my work must be. My sheriff is out of thereckoning, and there’s none now at large to name his successor. Thisshire is mine to keep, as best I may, and keep it I will, till fortune turnsher face again. King Stephen is taken at Lincoln, and carried off prisoner to Gloucester.”

Once his tongue was loosed he had need to tell the whole of it, for his ownenlightenment as much as theirs. He was the sole lord of a county now, holdingand garrisoning it on the behalf of a king in eclipse, and his task was tonurse and guard it inviolate within its boundaries, until it could serve againbeyond them for an effective lord.

“Ranulf of Chester slipped out of Lincoln castle and managed to getout of a hostile town before ever we got near, and off to Robert of Gloucesterin a great hurry, with pledges of allegiance to the Empress in exchange forhelp against us. And Chester’s wife is Robert’s daughter, whenall’s said, and he’d left her walled up in the castle with the earlof Lincoln and his wife, and the whole town in arms and seething round them.That was a welcome indeed, when Stephen got his muster there, the city fawnedon him. Poor wretches, they’ve paid for it since. Howbeit, there we were,the town ours and the castle under siege, and winter on our side, any man wouldhave said, with the distance Robert had to come, and the snow and the floods tohold him. But the man’s none so easily held.”