The Iron Castle

by Angus Donald

  In January the old and the very young began to die. They sickened, a racking cough settling on their lungs and refusing to depart, and then they quietly passed beyond this hungry world, perhaps, with God’s forgiveness, to a better place. Babies and old men, mostly. But others too. In early March I came across a young woman, thin as a yearling ash, her limbs but pale twigs, lying dead beside the road not two miles from my hearth. Her mouth had been stained green as a result of her attempt to eat her fill of grass and weeds like a beast of the field. A living baby lay in her cold arms and I gathered it up and took it to the village to find a foster mother for the poor starveling creature. But no one would take an extra mouth into their home and so I brought it to the manor, and with the help of Ada, one of my late wife’s maidservants, I tried to feed it warm sheep’s milk. It died a day afterwards, silently, and though I was no kin to the poor mite, I was heartbroken.

  The spring came and, while the warmer weather lifted our spirits, our stocks of food were utterly exhausted – by then, even we privileged folk in the hall were eating nettle soup and bitter acorn bread, and drinking nothing but cold water – but with the April sunshine came a letter from Robin in Normandy.

  It said simply, ‘Alan, stop trying to be a damned farmer and come and fight.’

  With the letter came a fat purse of silver.

  We must have made a poor impression as we disembarked at the quayside in the town of Barfleur on the afternoon of the first day of May in the year of Our Lord twelve hundred and two – myself and my only accompanying man-at-arms, Kit, a bold freeman from Westbury, both of us thin, queasy and grey-looking from the rough sea journey. Indeed, I heard the sound of mocking laughter from the throats of several watching men as we led our horses down the gangplank and on to the stone jetty of the harbour – the beasts looking as ill and miserable as we did – and I straightened my spine and looked angrily to my left to see a crowd of rough-looking men-at-arms mounted and heavily armed and waiting beside the customs house. At the head of the group was a huge figure on an equally massive horse. He wore a short-sleeved iron hauberk that seemed too tight for his vast chest, and under a plain steel cap, dirty yellow hair tied in fat plaits framed a large battered red face. When I caught his eye, he bawled out, ‘Move along, you beggar-men, there are no alms for you here today! Move along! Knock at the church door yonder and you may get a few mouldy scraps to keep body and soul together. Ha-ha-ha! But only if you both get on your knees and offer to suck the priest’s cheesy cock!’

  The men-at-arms behind him duly guffawed at his cudgel wit.

  We did indeed look shabby. Under a patched and faded red cloak, my own hauberk hung loosely on me; my boots were scuffed; the shield slung over my back was sorely in need of repainting. My bay horse’s coat was dull and his eyes rolled with the remnants of his seasickness, and he skittered unhappily on the unmoving ground. I pointed his nose towards the group of men-at-arms and walked him slowly towards the blond giant. ‘It is true. We are hungry, you fat greasy capon. And, if you don’t mind your manners, I’ll eat you and your horse whole,’ I said. ‘Spurs, saddle, boots – and I’ll spit your cracked bones into the midden!’

  My horse was shoulder to shoulder with the big man’s, and at my words he opened his arms and threw them around my back. ‘God’s great dangling gonads, Alan, but it’s good to see you,’ said Little John, squeezing me almost hard enough to snap a rib. ‘Let’s go and get a bloody drink or two under our belts – there’s a tavern not far up the road – and I’ll tell you what’s what and who’s who in Normandy.’

  I pushed him off me and grinned happily into his scarlet face. ‘As long as you are paying, John, I’m your man,’ I said.

  ‘In truth,’ grinned the warrior, ‘I am your man. And so are these rascals.’ He gestured at the pack of three dozen smirking men-at-arms crowded behind him.

  ‘Robin’s orders. I am to serve you as I would him, he told me, and I am to try my very best to keep your dainty feet out of the shit.’

  The tavern had food – fresh bread, soft cheese, smoked ham and the light floury yellow apples of Normandy – and we ate outside at a scatter of tables in the spring sunshine, drinking flagon after flagon of tart cider as the shadows lengthened.

  ‘Robin is in Rouen with the King,’ said Little John. ‘The Wolves are scattered about Normandy – either patrolling the marches or kicking their heels doing garrison duty in the frontier castles.’

  ‘The Wolves?’ I asked.

  ‘These ugly buggers,’ said John, jerking his head at the men-at-arms who were by now dispersed around the tavern yard in various states of relaxation, some sleeping, some rolling dice, others merely drinking and talking. A couple of them, hearing John, threw back their heads and gave a fairly good imitation of a wolf’s howl. I noticed then that many of them had scraps of grey fur attached to armour and clothing, and some had wolf tails hanging from shields or helmets. But they seemed a disciplined lot, on the whole, for what they were – paid mercenaries. I could not sneer at them for I was now one too – Little John had presented me with another purse of silver from Robin and shown me a strong-box in the baggage that contained a hoard of coin I was to use to pay the men – two shillings and sixpence a day, for each mounted man.

  ‘They are calling him the Wolf Lord,’ John continued, smiling fondly. ‘On account of his banner. It’s his new nom de guerre – and so his men are the Company of Wolves. You remember Vim? Well, Robin found him in a tavern in Calais, drunk and penniless, and sobered him up and set him to recruiting fighting men.’

  I remembered Vim – or Wilhelmus of Mechlin as he was more properly called – a leathery Flemish mercenary who had taken part in a bloody adventure with Robin, John and me in the southern lands two years before. ‘I thought he had his heart set on becoming a wealthy Bordeaux wine merchant,’ I said.

  ‘Maybe he did,’ replied John, ‘but he found he had no head for the trickeries of trade, and he liked drinking his wines much more than selling them. He’s one of Robin’s lieutenants now. A good fighting man – when he’s sober.’

  ‘How is Robin?’

  ‘He’s all right – given that he has to lick that royal bastard’s crusted arsehole day and night. He’s set things up so that he’s making a little bit on the side, with various, um, enterprises.’

  My heart sank at this. I knew Robin of old. We had fallen out several times over his ‘enterprises’ – a polite name for outright robbery and extortion. I had hoped that now he was no longer an outlaw, that he was once again a well-rewarded royal servant, he would have given up these ruthless money-gathering games. Something of this must have shown in my face, for John said, ‘Don’t get all high and mighty, Alan. We all fight for money these days, even you. None of us has lily-white hands. I don’t. I know damned well you don’t either. And if Robin can accumulate a pile silver, we will all benefit when he comes in to his own as Earl of Locksley. He wants to give you another manor, did you know that? No? I didn’t think so. Somewhere plump, and closer to him in Yorkshire. Bear that in mind when you scowl so reprovingly at his actions.’

  ‘So what exactly is he doing?’ I asked, keeping my tone neutral. John smiled like a cream-fed cat. ‘Oh, it’s good, it’s very much our Robin’s old style: he is generously offering his personal protection to Holy Mother Church, and all its vast properties, across Normandy. If a rich monastery or abbey wants to avoid being ravaged by roaming bands of Godless men-at-arms, packs of lawless mercenaries, for instance, it has to pay Robin a fee in silver. Good, isn’t it?’

  ‘And what does the King have to say about this?’

  ‘Oh him,’ said John, with deep contempt. ‘That ginger shit-weasel doesn’t care what Robin does as long as our lord provides him with plenty of fighting men. Doesn’t trust his barons, see, but he does trust his paid men. Robin has carte blanche, as far as he is concerned – although there was a little unpleasantness recently from the Abbess of Caen…’

  ‘What happened?’

  Joh
n chuckled fondly. ‘She was a spirited old bird, that one. Plenty of guts, but not enough brains. She refused Robin’s kind offer of protection, rashly – threw him out of the Abbey, if you please – and called him a blackguard to his face. But then, sadly, an unknown group of ruffians – fearsome, desperate fellows, it seems – completely stripped her lands of livestock and grain. There wasn’t so much as a billy goat left untouched. She ended up paying the King forty marks to give her protection from future attacks by these unknown marauders – silly old duck. And John was well pleased, you’d best believe it, Alan. He was forty marks up on the game.’ Little John laughed like a delighted child.

  ‘No, Alan, you can be sure that our esteemed King doesn’t care a jot what Robin does. So long as he gets a buttered slice of the loaf and there are enough loyal swords at his command when the real fighting comes – as far as he is concerned, Normandy, and all its abbesses, barons, knights and peasants, can go hang.’

  ‘Doesn’t seem right,’ I said. ‘I know Robin has no love for the Church, but to extort money from an old lady, a holy person, too…’

  ‘Where do you think the money comes from to pay your wages, Alan – to pay for this fine meal, this liquor?’ said John, sloshing his cup of cider under my nose.

  I had nothing to say to that.

  The next morning we rode south – thirty-four Wolves, Kit, myself and Little John, heading for the Castle of Falaise. I was impressed with the Wolves: they did not drink themselves into insensibility the night before, as many a company of hired killers might have done, although there was drink enough and to spare; and they were all up before dawn, saddled and ready while I was still yawning and scratching and fumbling about for my boots. Kit was doing duty as my squire and had brought a breakfast of apples and cheese, and I munched them in the saddle as the sun rose and we jogged along the sunken lanes through the well-kept fields and pretty orchards of upper Normandy.

  Little John and I rode at the head of the column. He explained that we had been assigned to garrison duty in the formidable Castle of Falaise under its haughty and high-born castellan Hubert de Burgh.

  ‘I’d better warn you, we probably won’t see much action,’ Little John said with a grimace. ‘Lord de Burgh’s men and our lot are there only as a threat to stop the Bretons invading Normandy from the west. The war – what little of it there has been so far – is happening in the east. Or in the south…’

  ‘Let me see if I have this correctly,’ I said. ‘To the west we have the Bretons, loyal to their own young duke, Arthur – who despite being lord of all Brittany thinks he should be Duke of Normandy, too…’

  ‘And King of England,’ John said. ‘He is the son of Geoffrey, King Henry’s fourth son, now both rotting in their graves, and you might argue that he has as much right to the throne as our John, who is old Henry’s fifth and youngest son. But who has more right to the throne – the grandson or the son of King Henry? I don’t think anyone truly knows the answer…’

  ‘The man who is rightful King is the man who has the main strength to hold the kingdom,’ I said, and then paused, a little shocked by my own cynicism.

  ‘Very wise, young Alan,’ said Little John, nodding seriously, ‘very wise – and very bloody obvious, too. Have you noticed that the sky is blue? And that patch of grass over there – what colour would you say that was, O wise one?’

  We rode on for a few minutes in awkward silence, and I said, ‘So, we have Duke Arthur in the west, and in the east we have King Philip of France, who wants Normandy for himself and nothing more than the destruction of all the Angevin holdings on this side of the Channel all the way south to the Pyrenees.’

  ‘That is so,’ said John.

  ‘And in the south, what?’

  ‘In the south we have the Lusignans, a powerful old family – sure you’ve come across them before, some were in the Holy Land with us: cruel fighters, fond of women – theirs and other men’s – and vassals of King John nominally. They will side with Arthur or Philip, or whomever suits them best at the time.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Now they are in rebellion, supporting Arthur’s claims to the dukedom. But they are being held in check in the south by William des Roches – remember him from the Great Pilgrimage? Red hair? A madman with a mace…’

  ‘I remember him – but I thought he was loyal to King Philip, or was it Arthur?’

  ‘Used to be. Used to be Arthur’s man. He’s just like the rest of them – interested first and foremost in himself and his family. King John offered him cartloads of silver, more Norman lands and a permanent seat on his royal council, and William came running as swift as a hound. He did make one condition to our John, though. He insisted that if Arthur were defeated he be treated honourably – apparently, he’s a bit sentimental about the lad. Genuinely fond of him, if you can believe that.’

  ‘So he does have some honour?’ I said.

  ‘Honour? You’ve come to the wrong shop for honour, Alan. The barons on both sides in this war will go with whoever offers them the best price. The knights, too. Honour be damned. It’s cash that counts. Robin’s got it right, you know, fill your boots while you can – for God only helps those who help themselves.’

  Chapter Three

  The Castle of Falaise was the birthplace of William the Bastard, conqueror of all England – as the local Normans never tired of pointing out back in my great-great-great-grandfather’s day – It stood on a raised plateau above and to the south of the bustling town, and consisted of a massive square stone keep – ten times the height of a man and as wide as it was high – at the north-west corner, and a round tower of similar height attached by a fortified passage to the square donjon. A fifteen-foot-high curtain wall looped around a wide area stretching two hundred yards to the east, encompassing barracks, blacksmiths, bakeries, a deep well, cookhouses, storeroom and stabling for two hundred horses. It was an impressive fortification – not as fearsome as, say, Caen or Rouen or Château Gaillard, the Lionheart’s mighty castle that stood guard over the eastern marches of Normandy, but enough to daunt Arthur of Brittany if he showed his nose west of Dol. And with a garrison of some four hundred and fifty men-at-arms, knights, squires and sergeants, it could do more than daunt. If Arthur came across the frontier and attacked with all his forces, Falaise could hold out for months until help could be mustered by King John. If Arthur tried to bypass the powerful castle and venture further into Normandy, even perhaps to link up with Philip surging in from the east, a couple of hundred well-mounted, well-armed warriors could sally out and cut up his supply lines and ambush any stragglers in his army. Falaise was at the very centre of Normandy: if Rouen was the brain, the capital, the home of its mercantile activities, Caen thirty miles to the north, with its stalwart fortifications, might be said to be its heart; but Falaise – birthplace of its greatest Duke – was the loins; it was where people felt the most Norman. From Falaise, an army could swiftly march south into Maine or east into Brittany, but that army could also do valiant service by staying where it was.

  Lord Hubert de Burgh greeted me in his lavish audience hall on the middle floor of the keep. Rich tapestries hung from the walls; the furniture was carved with fantastic faces of animals and demons, painted in blues and reds and, though not yet dusk, the room blazed with light from a pair of trees holding good beeswax candles. Lord de Burgh stood by the fireplace on the far side of the hall, feeding scraps to an enormous gyrkin, a black-and-white spotted falcon two feet in height, that perched on his arm. The bird looked at me with flat, black eyes over a viciously curved beak, and then returned to gobbling flesh from its master’s hand. Lord de Burgh looked across the hall, appraising me from my boots to my brows in a manner similar to that of the bird, and in a similar silence. He wore a long black woollen robe with sable at the collar, gathered at the waist by a leather belt decorated with seed pearls, and observed me with dark-brown eyes, closely set above a long nose. His hair had once been black, but was now flecked with grey and white, a
nd his broad moustache and beard were similarly speckled. With all this, his beak-like nose, the cruel stare and the jut of his body, he looked extraordinarily like the bird on his gauntleted fist.

  After three leisurely days on the roads of Normandy, sleeping under the stars, laughing and joking with Little John and the Wolves, and getting to know them a little, I felt suddenly unnerved to be in an elegant castle hall in front of a fine Norman lord. I knew I did not look my best: my hair was disordered and dirty, and I wished I had taken the time to get out of my stained travelling clothes. My hose were marked with spatters of dried mud from riding and my only warm cloak was tattered at the hem. I had not even thought to wash my face and hands.

  Beside me Kit was openly gawping at his surroundings, and in a most unfair flash of anger, I wished that my old squire Thomas, a wondrously efficient young man, was still with me.

  ‘You might have reminded me to change my clothes,’ I whispered to Kit.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t think. It’s all so new and confusing.’ The boy looked set to weep. ‘I’ve let you down, sir; we’ve not been here a sennight and I’ve already shamed you.’

  ‘Shh! Hold your tongue.’

  Lord de Burgh was beckoning us over to the fireplace.

  I crossed the room and bowed low before the Constable of Falaise and said, ‘My lord, I am Sir Alan Dale, a knight in the service of the Earl of Locksley, and I present myself to you, at his orders, and those of the King, bringing an augmentation to your garrison.’

  I tried surreptitiously to smooth my hair and found a long straw stuck in it from the barn we had slept in this last night. I plucked it out and examined it briefly, and as I looked at it saw that my fingernails were black with grime. I swiftly hid both hands and the bumpkinish straw behind my back.

  ‘One of Locksley’s men – ah, that would explain your extraordinary … that is to say your … Sir Alan Dale, you said? Hmm. And you serve the King for pay? You are what they call a stipendarius? Interesting. Well, I must bid you welcome to Falaise Castle. Tell me, Sir Alan, how many paid fellows did you bring with you?’