The Iron Castle

by Angus Donald

  The belfry leaned further to the left. The French on the bridge were screaming in terror now – some tried to turn back but the flow of men against them was too strong. The belfry swayed back, leaned again and, with a crash that seemed to shake the foundations of the earth, it tottered, toppled and thundered down into the half-filled ditch. The siege tower burst apart under its own weight, and the weight of its unfortunate occupants, as it hit the earth and clouds of white dust boiled up, along with the muffled screaming of hundreds of men.

  We roared our approval and surged forward hungrily at the score of bewildered French men-at-arms now isolated on the battlements. We killed them all, I regret to say – for not a man among us was in the mood to take a single prisoner.

  The toppling of the belfry, and its destruction and the destruction of all its fighting men, should have signalled the end of the attack. But Philip had somehow put a holy fire into his troops. Indeed, I saw the King himself at the end of the causeway, wisely out of range of Old Thunderbolt, with a group of his household knights. I believe I even spotted the blond locks of my cousin Roland among them, and I willed him to stay away from these walls, not to join in the assault, for the attack was resumed within a quarter hour of the belfry’s fall.

  I do not think I have ever been more exhausted. I could barely lift my sword and shield after that bloody onslaught on the battlements. My ears were ringing. I counted seventeen fresh dents on my helmet. But Robin came among us with a dozen of the archers and brought buckets of watered wine with honey – God knows where he found it – with sops of bread mixed into the liquor, and we scooped wine and bread into our parched mouths with our hands. It was ambrosia. And it gave us strength for a little while longer.

  The French came at us with long ladders: an old-fashioned escalade. A couple of hundred men charged along the causeway. They leaped into the ditch, leaned their ladders against the walls and, joined by the survivors of the fall of the belfry, the pitiful few who had been hiding among its dusty ruins, they swarmed up the walls.

  It was difficult to take the escalade seriously, after the grave danger of the belfry. Robin’s archers picked the climbing enemy off from both sides; Aaron’s lethal springald smashed into the flanks of the packed ladders, wiping away men and leaving hideous red smears on the grey walls. We showered them with spears. We hurled rocks and timbers on their heads. In short, we slaughtered them.

  To make matters far worse for the attackers, their ladders were too short. It seems they had miscalculated the depth of the ditch before the outer bailey, and the raised ladders were still a good ten feet from the top of the battlements. We killed them at our leisure as they gazed up at us with impotent rage. A few brave souls, perhaps a couple of dozen men, used daggers to climb the final part of the wall, jamming the blades into crevices in the stonework and hauling themselves up. We killed them, too. By the time each of these bold men had hauled themselves to the top, there were at least five of our fellows waiting to dispatch them.

  So the French attack on the outer bailey ended. The survivors limped back along the causeway to Philip’s Hill in shame, the dead and dying lying in thick drifts below our unbroken walls.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  The heralds came within the hour. They congratulated us civilly on our victory and begged a truce for the recovery of the wounded. De Lacy, pride-swollen like a bullfrog because we had seen off a major assault with relatively little loss of life, agreed the terms of the truce happily. Twenty-one Wolves breathed no more and another thirty-eight were wounded to varying degrees, including Vim, who had suffered a broken leg; many were likely to die of their wounds. But Robin had his archers out the minute the heralds rode away, recovering as many arrows as possible and searching the corpses and the wounded for any scraps of food. De Lacy decreed that the belfry must be broken up and brought inside the castle for firewood.

  I was shocked by the loss of life on the French side – some four hundred, perhaps five hundred good men had been destroyed. And nothing, from the French point of view, had been achieved. It had been a great victory for us, I realised dully, and found myself being hailed as something of a hero. It was not, I must admit, entirely disagreeable.

  Tilda came to seek me out in the outer bailey as I was having my wounds tended by Kit on the first-floor chamber of the north tower. Thanks to my expensive Rouen mail, I had nothing more than a few scrapes, cuts and bruises, but Kit, who was also mercifully unharmed, insisted on daubing the broken skin with witch-hazel. That meant I was dressed only in my braies, the none-too-clean linen undergarments that covered my loins, when Tilda came into the room.

  My body was a pitiful sight; our scanty diet had stripped away the fat from my torso, leaving the muscles starkly outlined like twisted ropes, and I was dappled with reddish bruises from neck to waist. My bare legs had equally been knocked about. I looked like one of those unfortunate men who make their living by going from fair to fair and challenging local men to fistfights or wrestling bouts, and who must take a battering in every parish to earn their bed and board – not at all like the fine gentleman I hoped Tilda to take me for. But she seemed fascinated by the ugly patterns of bruises and lacerations on my body, and when she spoke she seemed unable to tear her eyes from my chest and look into my face.

  I was embarrassed by my near nakedness and asked Kit to fetch my chemise so as to cover myself. But Tilda forbade it.

  ‘I have interrupted you while your squire is tending to your hurts, the fault is mine, I insist you continue your physicking as if I were not here. But if you would be so good as to give me an account of the battle, Sir Alan, while you are being tended to, I would esteem it a great favour.’

  So I told her how the French had come on, and how we held them at the battlements, only very slightly exaggerating my own heroic stand against the open door of the belfry and the disgorging horde of ferocious French men-at-arms. I took care to praise her father’s timely arrival with reinforcements, too.

  Tilda was no fool. ‘Surely, Alan, it was the toppling of the belfry that was the key to our victory. Can you tell me how that came about?’

  Slightly irritated that she did not want to hear more about me single-handedly stemming the tide of howling foemen on the battlements, I explained that Robin had conferred with Aaron and constructed, with the help of the castle blacksmiths, a few special iron bolts for the springald with a ring at one end to hold a rope and a barb at the point so that once fixed into the side of the belfry it could not be pulled out.

  ‘After that,’ I told her, ‘it was just a question of hauling on the rope. Brute strength, really.’

  ‘Well, it was a famous victory,’ said Tilda, ‘and you are all to be congratulated on your prowess. Perhaps, now, Philip might be persuaded to leave us in peace.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I said. But I did not believe it.

  The bombardment of Château Gaillard by Philip’s castle-breakers began again the instant the truce was over. With renewed zeal. Perhaps at royal urging, the five machines ranged against us increased the frequency with which they loosed their missiles, and all of their balls were targeted at one spot: the south tower of the outer bailey. All day missiles cracked against the limestone of the tower and while the construction of that bastion was mighty, the bombardment frayed at our nerves and sometimes I imagined the walls were shaking under the almost constant impacts.

  On the afternoon of the second day of the renewed attack, I was in the south tower with Kit checking over the arrangements for a feast for the council and the senior knights to celebrate our victory over the belfry, when a ball cracked against the outer wall and I heard an ugly, splintering sound like a tree being felled, and the floor planks seemed to shift under my feet.

  I ran across the courtyard to the north tower and climbed the spiral staircase to the flat roof. With Kit holding my legs, I leaned out over the parapet to try to see the outside of the wall on the south tower. And I saw something; it might have been a shadow or a stain on the walls, or it mi
ght have been something a good deal more ominous. I could not be certain.

  After nightfall, when the most important men of the castle had been summoned by Robin to the south tower for a feast – or what passed for one in those straitened days: horse stew, a thin bean and onion pottage, oat cakes sweetened with honey and some weak ale brewed from herbs and a little malted barley – I decided to step outside the bailey and take a closer look at the odd mark on the wall of the south tower.

  I had not been invited to the feast. Robin had required me to take command of the outer bailey while he was busy with his guests: Roger de Lacy, Sir Joscelyn Giffard, Father de la Motte and a dozen knights of illustrious birth – even Sir Benedict Malet had been invited. But I did not resent this lack of inclusion. I was in no mood for company – indeed it seemed to me foolhardy to tempt Fate with victory celebrations when we had done no more than see off an attack. Besides, I was glad of the opportunity to make a thorough examination of the damage done to the walls. I placed Vim in charge of the watch on the towers, dressed myself in dark hose and tunic, and stepped out of the postern gate at the base of the north tower and on to the planks leading across the ditch. In the darkness the stench of the battlefield seemed stronger. Although the bodies had been removed three days since, the ditch reeked like a market shambles. It was an eerie feeling to be outside the walls, but it felt strangely liberating, too, and for a moment I entertained the fantasy of just walking into the darkness, never to return to the confines of the Iron Castle. It was vain fancy, of course; the French earthworks surrounded us, though I could not see them, and I might well have been hanged as a spy if I stumbled into a French patrol. It would have been dishonourable, too, to abandon my lord and my comrades to their fate. There was Tilda to consider as well. But, for a few brief moments alone in the darkness, I admit I harboured these cowardly thoughts, and had to force myself back to my duty with no little difficulty.

  I walked on the outer edge of the ditch before our walls, climbed over the causeway and found myself standing before the pale round walls of the south tower. I could not see anything in the masonry, except a good many fresh dents and divots where the missiles of the enemy had struck over the past three days. My fear that a gaping crack had opened in the base of the tower seemed unfounded. But to be absolutely certain, I turned and walked twenty paces from the walls to grant myself a different view.

  And I saw it.

  From an arrow slit halfway up the tower, a flash of yellow light and then a pause, then another blaze, another pause, and another gleam of light. Three flashes with two heartbeats of darkness between each. How curious, I thought, someone is playing with a dark lantern, opening and shutting the panel to allow the candlelight inside to glow briefly.

  Out of the corner of my eye, away to my left, from the French lines, there came an answering flash, a pause, a flash, a pause, and a final flash of light. The notion hit me like a kick to the belly. Somebody inside the castle was signalling to the French. Someone was conversing with the enemy in a code written in light. I had no idea what the message might mean, but I did know one thing.

  We had a traitor within our walls.

  Part Three

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Young Alan was defiant when he came to see me the next day. He was also badly hungover, with dark bruises under watery red eyes and a yellowish pallor to his skin. I had little sympathy – but his mother Marie fussed about him and brought him a posset with eggs beaten up in milk. He drank it down in one.

  ‘Have you made this girl Agnes pregnant?’ I asked him outright.

  He stared at me, our eyes locked, but he said nothing.

  I repeated the question, fighting the urge to crack my open palm against his cheek. My old eyes bored into his. Finally, he broke our contact, dropped his head.

  ‘You have nothing to say to me?’

  More silence.

  ‘It was not my fault,’ he said eventually.

  So, I asked, had he slipped then and fallen prick-first into her?

  The boy glared at the rushes on the floor of the hall.

  ‘Did you force her?’

  ‘No, no.’ Alan’s head jerked up; he was quite shocked by the suggestion. ‘She said she loves me. I believe she does.’

  More angry silence. Then: ‘I did not mean to get her with child, it was a mistake … We were kissing in the hay barn, a harmless kiss; and she was warm and soft and lovely; we lay down together…’

  I tried for conciliation. ‘Surely you can see this from the point of view of the yeoman Godwin. All his hopes for a good marriage for his daughter are dashed. He raised her, he cherished her, he had plans for her. Now they are destroyed. Who will want her with another man’s child in her belly?’

  Alan merely stared at the floor in sullen silence.

  ‘Listen to me, boy: she is ruined now and it is your fault. You have dishonoured her; you have taken her maidenhood from her, her most precious badge of honour – some might say that you have stolen it, if you will not replace her maiden status with that of wife. You must make things right with her and with her father, too. I take it that she would marry you, if you asked.’

  ‘I will not marry her!’ Alan was suddenly all fierceness. He looked me hard in the eye again, like an enemy, almost.

  ‘Why not? She seems a fine girl, beautiful, loving.’

  ‘Her father is a sheep farmer! She spends all day with her hands in a milk bucket. And I … I am the grandson of a knight, I am a gentleman, I am heir to these very Westbury lands.’

  ‘So? You think you should only marry some great lady?’

  He said nothing for a while, then: ‘It is beneath my honour, Grandpa, surely even you can see that.’ He went quiet again, contemplating the floor-rushes once more. ‘I cannot be with her.’ He sounded almost wistful. ‘My friends would laugh at me; they would say she is a farm girl, far beneath my dignity.’

  ‘Your friends – ha! Those drunken popinjays.’

  ‘They are my best friends.’

  I realised then what his problem was.

  ‘Those boys, those sons of great men whom you call your friends, have no idea who they really are,’ I said. ‘And they certainly cannot say who you are. They talk about their honour and their lineage and tell themselves they are noblemen, better than all others, but are they even men at all? Who knows? They have never been tested. They tell themselves they are better than others because they fear that they are not; they fear, deep in their hearts, that they might even be worse. You should not listen to such nonsense, not from them. Their mockery is no more than the honking of frightened geese. Find your own honour, prove it to yourself. You must show yourself to be a better man than others, it will not do merely to tell people that this is so.’

  ‘Do you truly think I should marry her, Grandpa?’

  ‘I cannot force you to wed, but I confess that I would think less of you if you did not. A man’s honour is not the same as his rank – remember that. And, if you marry her, you will gentle her condition – she will be Lady Westbury one day. I’d wager that she would make you a fine wife and a fine mistress for this old place. We know, at least, that she is fertile.’

  I raced back to the postern gate, scrambling up and down the ditches either side of the causeway using my hands and feet. I bounced across the plank, blew through the courtyard of the outer bailey and into the south tower, my legs pumping, brain spinning like a windmill in a gale. If I were fast enough, I thought, I could catch whoever was signalling to the enemy in the very act – what the royal foresters who found poachers in Sherwood with their hands bloody used to call red-handed. In the map of my mind, I knew exactly which window had been used for this treachery. It was on the spiral staircase between middle floor, where Robin was entertaining his noble guests, and top, a few yards along from the alcove that was used as a latrine, just below where the men of the watch ought to be keeping a sharp lookout.

  When I reached the middle floor – my hose covered in mud from the causewa
y ditches – the party was just breaking up. Indeed, several knights pushed past as I was coming up the spiral stairs, including a sneering Benedict. I could not think of a reason to halt him or any of the knights – and to demand outright if they had been communicating with the French from an arrow slit by candlelight seemed absurd. When I came in to the feasting chamber, I sketched a bow at Robin, who raised an eyebrow at my filthy attire, and ran straight up the stairs to the arrow slit but, of course, there was no one there. When I came back down, almost all the gathered knights – a dozen or so men – had left and Roger de Lacy was thanking Robin for his hospitality.

  ‘My lord, I must speak with you on a matter of urgency,’ I said to Robin, who was bidding the castellan farewell. ‘Perhaps my lord de Lacy should hear this too.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Robin. He called to one of the archers who had been serving the feast. ‘Simon, bring us another jug of that filthy ale, will you?’

  Robin ushered us to the long table and pushed out the bench with his foot. De Lacy and I sat down while Robin took the jug from his archer-servant and poured out three goblets of a truly foul-tasting brew.

  ‘I believe there is a traitor inside the castle communicating with the French, perhaps telling them of our weaknesses,’ I said, and told them about the flashes of light from the arrow slit. Robin and de Lacy listened in silence until I had finished.

  ‘You took all that from seeing a gleam of candlelight at a window?’ said de Lacy, his disbelief obvious.

  ‘And the response from the French lines – an identical pattern of flashes.’

  ‘Could be a coincidence,’ said Robin.

  ‘It’s preposterous. It is out of the question that any of our men should be a traitor,’ said Roger de Lacy. He rose from his bench and put down his ale. His face was the colour of a freshly cut beetroot. ‘We have lived alongside each other in this castle for the best part of a year – for long before you two washed up here. I have patrolled and fought and starved and suffered alongside these men, these good men that you now accuse, for long enough to know the secrets of their hearts. I cannot believe any of them would be a traitor. I am disgusted by the very notion, Sir Alan, and I do not wish to hear another word on the matter. I bid you goodnight.’