By Paul Carrier
There is a period in English history, from 1135 to 1154, that has become known as The Anarchy, thanks to a 19-year war triggered by dueling bids to succeed King Henry I following his death.
Henry had named his daughter Matilda as his heir, but Henry’s nephew Stephen seized the throne. Matilda did not go quietly. Their battle for control is well underway when The Siege Winter opens in 1141.
But this isn’t so much the story of Stephen and Matilda as it is a tale about The Anarchy’s impact on others in the realm, most notably two girls from vastly different backgrounds whose lives intersect during the winter siege of the title.
Emma, an 11-year-old peasant, is kidnapped and brutally raped by marauding mercenaries who leave her to die. She is rescued by Gwil, an archer from the same band of hired soldiers, who wins her trust, trains her in archery and dresses her as a boy to protect her. Emma has amnesia and cannot even remember her name; Gwil dubs her Penda.
Maud, a 16-year-old ward of King Stephen, commands Kenniford Castle in Oxfordshire until she is pressured into marrying one of Stephen’s supporters. When her husband suffers a stroke, Maud takes control of the castle once again, and throws her support behind Matilda.
The lives of Penda and Maud are joined after Gwil and Penda take shelter in an abandoned shack during a howling blizzard. Three strangers — two men and a woman — stumble upon the shack and Gwil lets them in, as an act of mercy. The woman is Matilda. Accompanied by her escorts, as well as Gwil and Penda, she seeks Maud’s protection in Kenniford Castle, prompting Stephen’s army to lay siege.
As this battle for the crown plays itself out, Gwil wages a private war of his own.
One of the men who raped Penda is a vicious renegade monk, from whom Penda secretly snatched a small wooden canister containing a document written in Greek. Thancmar later realizes that Penda has the parchment, and he’s desperate to reclaim it. As Thancmar pursues his quarry, Gwil struggles to protect Penda and get the parchment translated, to learn why it is so important to “the beast dressed in holy robes.”
Elevated to the rank of bishop and on the verge of winning even greater honors, Thancmar is a nefarious fiend of truly monstrous proportions. Compelling characters and a hard-charging plot drive The Siege Winter, as chivalry and villainy face off in a ravaged land where virtue has more than its share of deadly foes.
Ariana Franklin and Samantha Norman provide a chilling look at a nation that has been torn asunder. The England to be found in The Siege Winter is a kingdom where traveling unarmed is madness, where the courts have ceased to function, where self-serving barons wage war on their neighbors, and where the allegiance of mercenaries and nobles alike is as fickle as the winds of war.
But there’s humor here too. Magicians from Yorkshire dub themselves Abdul or Mustafa to placate their Norman overlords’ fondness for exotic entertainers. Fools are the pièce de résistance at such nobles’ banquets, thanks to their droll ways and “their ability to fart tunes.”
Franklin and Norman include just enough archaic and specialized language to convey a sense of time and place without overwhelming the reader. We encounter tatterdemalions (ragamuffins), lurchers (a type of dog), malmsey (wine) and scrying (divination by gazing into a reflective service). Although it isn't necessary to have a dictionary at hand while reading The Siege Winter, it does help, what with the sometimes esoteric terminology of castles and siege warfare.
Ariana Franklin was the pseudonym of the late Diana Norman, who also published under her own name. The Siege Winter, which was unfinished at the time of Norman’s death in 2011, was completed by her daughter.
