“They should curse us,” whispered Herr Hartmann, “and knock us about a little, for the look of the thing. Else the Baron might think something is amiss.”
“Speak for yourself,” hissed Grono, “I’ve had my fill of hard words and blows from these clods.”
He patted the sleeve of his filthy tunic, where he had hidden his dagger. “The next one to raise a hand to me will lose his eyes. I care not for the consequences. Today I shall win my freedom or go to meet my ancestors.”
It was a suitably warlike oath, and warmed my blood a little. I exchanged looks with Sir Thomas, who had a look of grim purpose on his raddled features. A naturally big, fleshy man, weeks of privation had reduced him to a skeletal figure, gaunt and bearded and dishevelled. There was still considerable strength in his deep chest and broad shoulders, and long-banked fires smouldered in the pits of his sunken eyes.
After so many weeks underground, I was temporarily blinded by the sun. Unable to see, I reached out to support myself against the wall.
“Welcome,” rasped the hatefully familiar voice of the Baron, “I see life as my guest agrees with you, Sir John. Why, you are as fat as butter. We must whip some of that unsightly weight off you.”
When the glare of the sunlight had subsided, I opened my eyes a crack to see the Baron seated at his usual place, under the expanded arch of his hall.
His condition had deteriorated since I last saw him. He sat with the poise and grace of an old sack, his head lolling forward, and was only held upright by two lengths of rope passed around his trunk and the back of the chair.
Most of his loyal guards stood either side of the chair, armed with spears and shields. One man stood ready with a crossbow on the battlemented roof of the hall. I wondered if the Baron had smelled treachery in the air, and taken steps to guard against it.
“Chain them up,” he ordered, his voice hoarser and weaker than before, “chain them up, and let me see them dance.”
Time seemed to slow as we were ushered towards the scaffold. Every detail of the world around me suddenly came into sharp focus. The battlements of La Tour Sombre were topped with snow, sparkling like crystals in the blue-grey light of dawn. More snow crunched underfoot, and I trod carefully to avoid cutting myself on the dagger hidden inside my left shoe.
There was no birdsong. There never was at La Tour Sombre during my time there as the Baron’s prisoner. His evil presence filled the castle like a noxious cloud, driving away the essential goodness of nature.
I was made to stand under the centre of the scaffold. My breath came in short gasps as I remembered the agony of the torture I had suffered on that exact same spot. I started to shiver, not just with the cold, and my throat dried up. The pain in my side, which had ebbed in recent days to a dull, persistent ache, suddenly flared hot again.
The bald brute with the whip stepped out of his little hut. He had the temerity to wink at me. I ground my teeth in silent rage, and prayed he was not one of Sir Roland’s allies. It was high time to settle old scores.
“What means this delay?” the Baron squealed irritably, “chain them up, I said! Let us be about our sport! I will not dine this morning until I see blood on the snow!”
“Then you shall see yours!” yelled Grono.
He stood to my left, where the guards pretended to fumble with the manacles on his wrists. They waited for Sir Roland’s signal to attack, but Grono had other ideas. He ripped his hands free, drew the dagger from his sleeve and leaped towards the Baron’s chair with a shrill cry.
The crossbowman above was alive to the danger. A shout of warning rose to my lips as he levelled his weapon at the unkempt, wild-eyed Welshman charging straight at his master.
I shouted in vain. The bolt flew straight and true and thumped into Grono’s breast, lifting him clean off his feet. He landed heavily and coughed blood as he struggled to pull out the missile embedded up to the quarrels in his flesh.
Bright steel flamed in Sir Roland’s hand. “Now!” he bellowed. “Avaunt! Avaunt! No quarter!”
‘Avaunt’ was his watchword, the signal for his men to tear off their masks of loyalty and set about their comrades.
Shouts of rage and alarm filled the air. The Baron’s guards closed around their master and locked shields, forming a protective half-circle. Two of Sir Roland’s turncoats had fetched crossbows from the armoury, and took aim at the man on the roof.
The guards near the scaffold charged at the wall of shields, leaving myself and Sir Thomas free to seek our own quarry. Like me, he had hidden his dagger inside his shoe. We both knelt and fumbled for the blades while the war-yell rose around us, and the ancient walls echoed to screams, oaths and the clash of steel.
Our chief tormentor, the bully with the whip, proved himself craven as well as sadist. As the courtyard erupted into violence, his face changed colour and he fled back inside his bolt-hole.
“Mine!” I shouted at Sir Thomas, and gave chase as fast as my legs could carry me.
I should have known better than to dive recklessly through the narrow doorway of the outbuilding. My blood was up, and I gave no thought to danger. All I wanted was to lay hands on the villain who had broken my ribs and murdered my friends, and tear him limb from limb.
Even a rat, when cornered, will show fight. His whip cracked in the shadows, and my face exploded with pain as one of the lead balls caught me across the jaw.
Blood filled my mouth, and red lights spun before my eyes. The ball had broken a tooth. I reeled against the fragile timber wall and knocked over a barrel. My foe launched his weight at me, roaring like a crazed bull.
We went down together, our bodies rolling over and over on the dirt floor. One powerful hand clutched at my throat, while the other tried to gouge my eyes.
The sergeant-at-arms at Kingshook had trained me in all the knightly arts, including unarmed combat. Against a bigger and stronger opponent, the trick was to use guile, and turn his advantages against him.
Easy to say, harder to execute when fighting for your life in darkness, pressed down on the floor with a raging monster on top of you. His sheer weight crushed the air from my lungs, and I was still dizzy from the blow to my jaw.
I managed to extricate my right arm. He might have pinned my wrist to the floor, but the oaf had lost his head completely, and seemed intent on stifling me to death.
My dagger slid home, angled through the back of his neck, sliced through layers of well-padded muscle and flesh. He gasped, treated me to a final blast of his pungent breath, scented with garlic, bad wine and meat larded with spices, and started to go into spasm.
With a grunt of effort, I rolled his enormous body off me. While he twitched and jerked his last, I lay on my back for a moment, waiting for my heart to stop racing. I gingerly explored my tender jaw, and spat blood as I worked loose broken bits of tooth.
When I felt able, I crawled over to the dead man and tugged the dagger out of his neck. The blade was dark with his blood, so I wiped it clean on the back of his jerkin.
The sounds of battle still raged outside. I was tempted to lie low until all was over. Dazed and bleeding, still weak from long imprisonment, and armed only with a pig-sticker, I could be of little use.
There were gaps in the planks of the shed wall. I peered through one to see how Sir Roland’s men fared.
They had the upper hand. Several of the Baron’s men lay strewn about the courtyard, staining the snow with their lifeblood. As yet the turncoats had suffered no casualties, save one man who stood leaning against the wall of the tower, nursing a wounded arm.
The Baron was hidden behind a mob of fighting men, though I could see the peaked top of his chair. Incapable of defending himself, he could only sit and curse.
Once again I felt a twinge of pity for him. Villain though he was, bloodthirsty lunatic who had long since forsaken his vows of knighthood, he should at least have been able to die on his feet, like a man, sword in hand. The curse of leprosy had robbed him of dignity as well as pride.
<
br /> His end was not long in coming. Sir Roland’s esquire had run down to the dungeon to release the rest of the prisoners, and these ragged, vengeful ghouls snatched up fallen weapons and streamed into the fray. They set about their tormentors with frenzied relish, hacking the Frenchmen to pieces as they lay helpless on the ground, smashing in their skulls with maces and flails.
Aided by these reinforcements, Sir Roland and his turncoats made quick work of the thin line of shields. The outnumbered loyalists were cut down, dragged aside and butchered, while four men laid hands on the leper.
He squealed, he writhed, even as they severed the ropes that held him upright in his chair. Sir Thomas Braham, it grieves me say, was one of those who pulled the helpless Baron from his chair and flung him to the ground.
At no point did the Baron ask for mercy. His shouts were borne of pure indignation, and he roundly cursed those who had served him, ate his bread and drank his wine and took his wages, and finally turned on him.
Sir Roland reached down and whipped off the hood covering the Baron’s face. A cry of horror went up, and my eyes caught a mercifully brief glimpse of what lay beneath: a skull, essentially, still with a thin cover of grey flesh, the hair mostly fallen away, one eyeball rotted to nothing, the nose gone, most of the upper lip rotted, exposing black teeth and black gums.
He should have been granted a quick death. Instead Sir Roland chose to make a ritual of it. At his command, some of the guards fetched the vat of blood from the smithy.
“He lived by blood,” cried Sir Roland, “let him end in it!”
They picked him up, thrust him head-down into the vat and held him there until his hideously swollen legs ceased to quiver. The turncoats cheered and laughed, echoed by the feeble shouts of the prisoners. One or two danced in celebration of the Baron’s demise.
I watched awhile, and was then violently sick in a corner.
24.
“Tell me, sir knight,” said King Henry, “what would you ask of me?”
His voice was soft and steely, and his eyes full of disdain as they looked upon Sir Roland.
The Frenchman failed to heed the royal mood, and rushed straight in among the stakes and caltrops. “If it please you, sire,” he replied with an enthusiasm that made me wince, “I would renounce my fealty to King Charles and swear loyalty to Your Majesty. In return for my service, I would request to be confirmed in the barony of Rougemont-sur-Seine.”
“The barony is my right,” he added when Henry didn’t respond, “I am the previous Baron’s only living kin.”
Myself, Sir Roland and Sir Thomas Braham knelt inside the royal pavilion outside Rouen. We had just returned from La Tour Sombre. It was a strangely mixed fellowship that journeyed north to Rouen, prisoners side by side with French soldiers and servants. The latter were Sir Roland’s turncoats, who accompanied their new master in the hope of reward from the English king.
Sir Roland had the luxury of a horse, while Sir Thomas rode the late Baron’s charger. There were no other mounts in the castle stables, so the rest of us had to slog on foot.
Not far outside Louviers we met with an English patrol, who furnished us with horses and as much of their rations as could be spared. I had not ridden for months, and sat athwart the saddle of my borrowed rouncy with all the grace and skill of a bag of coal.
The English pickets were astonished to see such a beggarly company of men, and even more so when Sir Thomas told them of our recent history. One hastened to inform the king, another to arrange food and clothes and medicine for us. Meanwhile we gratefully collapsed onto the grass and lay strewn about like so many corpses, our ordeal finished.
The Frenchmen sat apart in a huddle, casting fearful glances at the distant sprawl of Rouen, and the forest of English banners and tents that had grown up around it.
King Henry sent a herald and a troop of archers to summon myself and Sir Thomas into his presence.
“Can it not wait until morning?” I groaned, “look at us. None of us are in any fit state to meet the king.”
The herald was the same sly, fair-haired young man who had escorted me to the royal pavilion, half a lifetime ago.
“That is for His Majesty to decide,” he said firmly, “come, on your feet. The King has much business to attend to, and does not like to be kept waiting.”
Sir Roland strode over. “I shall come too,” he announced, “Sir Roland de Rougeville, at your service.”
The herald looked him up and down. “I don’t know you, sir knight,” he said coldly, “the king said nothing about a third party.”
Sir Roland smiled. “Perhaps not, but these men owe me their lives. King Henry will, I am sure, be pleased to hear my story.”
“Follow, then, if you wish,” the herald said, with a shrug of his narrow shoulders, “though you had best make the tale a good one.”
“Good luck, mein kamerads,” said Herr Hartmann as we trooped off, escorted by a double file of archers, “if you can, put in a kind word for one poor German knechte, who has fallen on hard times.”
The king sat in his loose black gown, just as he had in my last audience with him, and listened intently to Sir Roland’s account of what had passed at La Tour Sombre. If he was pleased to see me alive and relatively whole, he didn’t show it. Instead his attention was fixed on the French knight and his testimony.
Sir Robert Umfraville and Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick flanked Henry’s chair. Umfraville was as grim and taciturn as ever, and Warwick a tall, lordly man with a coffin-shaped face, full of stern disapproval. The three of them were as formidable a trio as could be imagined, and made me feel like some miserable sinner, brought for judgement before a court of Old Testament prophets.
“Am I to understand,” said Henry, slowly and deliberately, “that having slain your cousin, and broken faith with your liege lord, you now expect me to accept your oath of fealty? To set you up as a baron?”
Sir Roland paled a little. “Sire,” he began, stumbling over his words, “my cousin was a beast in human shape. He tortured your soldiers after taking them prisoner, and would have killed them all if I hadn’t intervened. I...”
Henry held up a hand to silence him. “I am aware of that. Sir Thomas has already told me of the debt he and his fellow prisoners owe you. For my part, I am pleased my men were rescued. Those that survived.”
He leaned forward. “Do not imagine, traitor,” he went on in a voice as cold as the grave, “that you can place the King of England in your debt, and barter with him over the corpse of a murdered kinsman. You came here seeking a reward for your crimes. You have found justice instead.”
“Take this man out,” he commanded, “and hang him as he deserves.”
Sir Roland half-stood, red in the face, as two halberdiers stepped forward to lay hold of him.
“Wait...wait!” he spluttered, “this is not just! I never swore fealty to Your Majesty. You cannot be my judge. Send me to King Charles in Paris, or the Dauphin at Bourges, so I might stand trial before my peers.”
Warwick uttered a short bark of laughter at this desperate line of defence, and Henry’s full mouth twisted in contempt. “I am the rightful King of France,” he said harshly, “not the madman Charles de Valois or his idiot son. There is no question of fealty. You are my subject, as all Frenchmen are, and mine to judge as I see fit.”
The halberdiers roughly seized Sir Roland’s arms and dragged him outside to meet his fate. Sir Thomas and I made no effort to speak up in the French knight’s defence, even though we owed him our lives. The king had spoken, and it was a brave man who questioned his judgements.
“Now, we may turn to more pleasant matters,” said Henry, with one of his rare smiles, “I congratulate you both on your survival. From what Sir Roland told me of his cousin’s behaviour, you and your fellows were treated with great cruelty.”
“The Baron de Rougemont was a madman, sire,” replied Sir Thomas, “disease robbed him of his wits.”
Henry relaxed slightly, and fold
ed his hands on his lap. “France appears to be rife with madmen,” he said, “I think God has seen fit to make their leaders insane, so we may conquer them all the more easily. What say you, Umfraville?”
The Border knight, who until now could have been mistaken for a statue, stirred into life. “The French choose their leaders poorly, sire,” he said in his thick Northumbrian accent, “and there is no du Guesclin to save them this time.”
He referred to Bertrand du Guesclin, the great French mercenary captain who had almost single-handedly reversed the tide of English military successes in France, back in the days of Henry’s great-grandsire.
My father, according to the ballads, fought alongside and against du Guesclin during the wars of Pedro the Cruel in Castile and León. This was by no means uncommon among routier captains. Both men were professionals who sold their swords to the highest bidder.
Henry nodded in agreement with Umfraville. “Indeed,” he said, “our enemies are badly led. I mean to show better judgement.”
“Sir Thomas Braham,” he added after a moment, “what lands do you hold in England?”
“Three manors in Suffolk, Your Majesty,” my companion answered.
Henry turned his attention to me. “What of you, Page?”
“No lands, sire,” I replied, “I am bastard-born, and my mother’s manor of Kingshook, where I grew up, was taken by her kin before I came to France.”
Sir Thomas glanced sidelong at me. I hadn’t yet informed him that I was a mere esquire, and that my claim to knighthood and a barony were convenient fictions.
Henry gave another little smile. For the first time I wondered how much he really knew of my background. Had my uncle sent a message across the Channel, informing the King that I was wanted in Sussex for homicide? Then there was the list of other offences I committed in the company of Robert Stafford and his outlaws. Enough, all told, to hang me several times over.
First and foremost, Henry was a practical man. He cared for justice, true, but only when it suited him. Even if he was aware of the full extent of my crimes (and I never discovered how much, if anything, he knew) I was too useful to be given over to the hangman just yet.
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