In one corner, an all-but-extinguished furnace. Set before it, an incongruously elaborate wooden chair, one side of it burned completely black, and by its side a small rustic table on whose surface were a number of human finger bones, a gauntlet constructed entirely of metal, a quantity of iron nails and a jar filled with something the colour of blood. In the other corner, hanging from a cord stretched beneath the vaulting, was a huge flap of brown leather screening off a tiny section of the room, whose surface was marked by silvery flecks of molten lead. Against one wall was a cluttered bench, strewn with tools and pieces of sculpted wood and cast metal; on the other, shelves packed from floor to ceiling with every kind of curiosity, from bottles of liquids and jars of coloured powders to animal skulls, antlers and lengths of bone. In between, every inch of the cramped space was filled with sacks, barrels, boxes and chests—and over all of it lay a veil of gritty dust.
“The crossbow worked, then,” said a gruff voice. Llewellyn of Newport shuffled out from behind the ragged flap partition and coughed. “I suppose it’s too much to ask for it back?”
“Murdac has it,” said Mélisande, apologetically. “I tried, but...”
Llewellyn grunted. “That bloody fool hasn’t the first idea what to do with it.”
“I think he mainly objected to the idea that I did,” said Mélisande.
Llewellyn chuckled, coughed again, then spat into a rag and looked away. “What can I do for you?” he said, suddenly officious.
“Nothing, really,” said Galfrid.
Llewellyn frowned at him. “Nothing?”
“We really just wanted a safe haven from all that.” He looked up. As if on cue, another great impact shook the castle.
The jars rattled on the shelves, and dust drifted down from the ceiling. Galfrid had thought they might feel less vulnerable down here, but in some strange way, he felt more exposed. This place had always seemed so separate from the everything outside, as if it existed in a dream. The trembling ground seemed to drag even this, their last refuge, and Llewellyn’s entire universe—a realm that had always seemed as constant as the stars—into the mire of reality.
“Sounds like the end of the world,” muttered Llewellyn.
“Perhaps it is,” said Mélisande.
“Murdac refuses to yield,” added Galfrid. “Soon that option will be closed to him, whether he wants it or not.”
“Stubborn bastard,” said Llewellyn. “So, who is it? The French?”
“You mean you don’t know?” said Galfrid.
“Of course I don’t know! It’s a trifling detail that my thousands of visitors must have neglected to pass on.”
Galfrid and Mélisande exchanged glances. “It is the Lionheart,” she said. “The King is returned.”
Llewellyn stared at her, so still he might have turned to stone. An unbearable sorrow seemed to pass behind the old man’s eyes. All knew how Richard dealt with enemies. With prisoners. “And you say Murdac refuses to yield?”
“He doesn’t believe it’s true,” said Galfrid. “Thinks Richard’s barons are trying to trick him.”
“And Gisburne?” said Llewellyn, looking around, as if he might see him lurking in a corner. “Is he alive?”
“Perhaps,” said Mélisande. “We don’t know. He’s out there somewhere.”
Llewellyn shook his head in dismay. “Then we’d better have a drink. I’ve a bottle here somewhere.”
Crossing the room, colliding with nearly every obstacle as he did so, he stooped over a willow basket near the table and drew out an oddly-shaped glass bottle. He winced as he straightened, and groaned. A frown creased his brow as he cradled the bottle in his hands and slapped the dust off it. Bobbing about within it was a greenish object, as big as his fist—and bigger by far than the neck of the bottle.
“What in God’s name...?” said Galfrid.
“French,” said Llewellyn, and sniffed, as if that answered everything. “A novelty produced over there, given to me as a curiosity. They tether the bottle to a tree branch and grow a pear inside it, then cut it free and fill the bottle with distilled liquor. The spirit preserves the pear, and the pear imparts its flavours to the spirit.”
“Is it any good?” said Galfrid.
“Revolting. I swore I would drink this wretched ornament only in a dire emergency. All things considered...” He went at the bung with the point of a knife.
Then they sat, deep below the earth, and drank in grim silence as the dust of ruin rained down upon them.
XLVIII
Nottingham Castle
27 March, 1194
GISBURNE HAD NOT expected to sleep, despite the fine lodgings the King had given them, but somehow the clunking, relentless rhythms of the siege engines had lulled him into dreamless oblivion.
A blare of trumpets awoke him, and he raised his head from Llewellyn’s wooden cylinder—it made a poor pillow, but he wanted it where he could see it. There was a second fanfare, closer this time. In a moment he was off his pallet and at the window where Aldric was already positioned, both shutters open.
“Reinforcements,” said Aldric. “As if we need them...”
Gisburne strained to see what was happening; de Rosseley and Asif stirring in the room behind him. Far down the muddy street men and riders were moving, but he did not recognise the banners. A small party broke from them and advanced up towards the King’s lodgings, and he spied the man at its centre. His bearing was arrogant—swaggering, one might even say—and the pouting lip and sour, jowly face were familiar.
“Oh, Christ,” Gisburne said. “Hugh de Puiset, the Bishop of Durham.”
“That is bad, I take it?” said Asif at his shoulder.
“It’s bad.”
Gisburne threw on his armour and hurried down below.
It was a strange state of affairs. So distracted was he by the siege, and how to aid Mélisande and Galfrid, that Hood, at times, slipped his mind entirely. Then he would remember that Hood’s army was somewhere out there, moving from village to village, being fed, being watered, and steadily swelling its ranks, and he was gripped by panic.
The previous day had been excruciating. Richard, excited by his new toys but frustrated at the lack of direct contact with the enemy, had amused himself by finding unusual things to hurl within the castle walls. He had experimented with one of the bloated, hanged corpses of the castle guards. Flushed with the success of this, but not wishing to further diminish the gallows, he had his men haul more bodies from the burial pit and flung those—until Mauger had advised against such actions, for the sake of Richard’s own men. Richard sulked, and had a wounded prisoner hurled against the battlements instead.
By great good fortune, it seemed, a horse died that same morning. Being unfit for food, Richard had ordered its fly-blown corpse to be flung into the castle, too, curious to see whether Master Elias’s trebuchet could cope with it. When it had proved too bulky, he’d had it cut in half, and shot it at the enemy a bit at a time.
He had called on his most loyal to name the engines. On crusade, he said, the King of France had a trebuchet named “Bad Neighbour,” something that amused Richard no end, though he insisted the name had been his idea. Amongst the idiotic suggestions from the sycophants and hangers-on that day were: Richard’s Revenge; The King’s Spoon; Pride of Nottingham; God’s Right Arm; Tree-Bucket; Zounds! and Wall Banger.
Richard had ultimately chosen The Lion’s Roar, and dubbed it such in a quasi-religious ceremony. He had insisted on doing so without interrupting its operation, and stood so close to the swinging counterweight that the engine crew had paled.
By the time Gisburne and de Rosseley emerged from the house, de Puiset was nowhere to be seen. But Gisburne heard the trebuchet’s great counterweight being ratcheted back into position, having made an early start on the day’s shooting, and was sure this was where he would find the King.
Before they had retired for the night, he had determined to approach the King again with a proposal to hasten the end of
the siege. The novelty of the siege engines was already wearing thin; the next logical step, once the engines had inflicted enough damage, would be for Richard to make a full assault upon the walls—but before he could do that, Gisburne hoped he might turn the day’s frustrations to his advantage and push for negotiation. That way, at least, someone from within might see the King face to face, and take the news back inside.
The arrival of de Puiset was a blow to the plan. The Bishop of Durham was, if anything, even more hawkish than his King.
Gisburne and de Rosseley arrived at the trebuchet to find him already holding forth. “This crime...” Gisburne heard. “This treachery...”
The King looked tired, and Gisburne guessed he had hardly slept. He did not wish to know whether it had anything to do with the upset in his bodily functions.
Several of Richard’s most trusted knights eyed the pair of them as they approached—but none made any move to waylay them. Gisburne was one of them now.
De Puiset had his sheathed sword in his hand and was shaking it at Richard as he spoke. “Just give me the word, my lord, and I will—”
“Yes, yes, Bishop,” said Richard irritably, as if de Puiset were stating the blindingly obvious. Of course, what the King said, de Puiset would do, except where the Pope’s dictates went against them. Richard counted himself a pious man, but like his father, his relationship with men who served two masters could be strained.
“I say we go now, while they are still bleary-eyed from half a night of bombardment,” said de Puiset. “Let me lead them. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to teach that upstart Murdac a lesson.”
This was the very last thing Gisburne wanted to hear—and the very last thing he wanted to happen was for de Puiset to come personally knocking on Mélisande’s and Galfrid’s door.
But then something occurred that he had not expected.
Richard—up to now, somewhat subdued and too weary to argue—said, “You’re surprisingly keen for the fight, de Puiset, considering you paid to be released from your crusader vows.”
De Puiset reddened—as much, Gisburne thought, from anger as from humiliation. “I judged matters in England to be the more pressing,” he said.
Whether he had intended it or not, this was quite the worst thing to have said to the man who had left his kingdom at the mercy of his scheming brother.
“Just remember how you came by your titles, de Puiset,” said Richard, darkly.
And there, Gisburne saw his moment.
“My lord,” he said. “May I suggest an alternative strategy?”
“Please do,” growled Richard.
De Puiset, who had not yet noticed the new arrivals, turned suddenly. If there were a point where horror, anger and contempt converged, it was writ across de Puiset’s face at that moment. “Guy of Gisburne?” he said, as if the words were: “You slept with my mother?” He looked at the King and back again, incredulous. “What in the name of Jesus Christ and all the Apostles brings you here?”
Richard stared hard at the Bishop. “I do,” he said. He looked back to Gisburne. “Out with it.”
Gisburne took a deep breath; he would have but one chance. “The bombardment proceeds well. But there is a danger of it proceeding too well. You do not wish the prize to be destroyed by the taking of it.” He knew better than to appeal to Richard’s mercy, for he had none. But perhaps if he appealed to his greed...
De Puiset huffed at this impertinence. “It is hardly your place to tell the King what to—”
“It’s not anybody’s place to tell me what to do,” spat Richard. “There’s sense in what you’re saying, Gisburne. Go on.”
“You have shown your clear intent,” he said. “But now you have a chance to take the castle before more damage is done. If you could only go to them now, to show yourself, to prove...”
“Show myself?” said Richard. “Prove? What need have I to do anything for their sakes? They are traitors and I am their King. I do not go to them. I do not have to prove to them... And before you try to persuade me further, know that Marshal came to me with the same suggestion. If I would not go for him, I certainly will not go for you.”
“I understand,” said Gisburne, biting his lip. “But if there were a way to convince...”
“Convince?”
Now de Rosseley intervened. “Perhaps if Gisburne could go to them,” he said. “Approach the walls to negotiate. He is known as Prince John’s man, and is well known to Murdac. If anyone can convince them, it is he.”
Gisburne stared at de Rosseley, completely taken aback, but Richard did not dismiss it. He turned back to the King. “You cannot be seen to go to them, my lord, it is true. But I can.” He looked Richard straight in the eye as he spoke, hoping he would hear in these words an echo of a rainy night in the paddock at Gisburne’s manor house.
“Really, my lord...” said de Puiset. “You heard it from their own lips. He is known as Prince John’s man, so can hardly be trusted to...”
“Do it, Gisburne,” interrupted Richard. Then, turning to de Puiset, a look of disdain upon his face, said: “He is my man now.”
Gisburne had to fight not to smirk. Thank you, Bishop. I could not have done it without you.
“But you know my terms,” continued the King. “No concessions, no favours, no negotiation. Surrender must be total.”
“My lord,” began Gisburne, “I have friends in the city, lately involved in my mission, who—”
“Total,” snapped Richard. “No favours.” Gisburne knew that to push further risked losing the opportunity altogether. He bowed his head.
“Sir John will accompany you,” added the King. “To ensure these conditions are met.”
While de Puiset continued to bluster, going progressively redder in the face, de Rosseley also bowed to his King.
“Have my herald bring two white wands,” called Richard. “And prepare their horses.”
XLIX
IT WAS ON the morning of the third day of the siege that Will Cobbe called Sir Radulph Murdac to the battlement of the inner bailey’s gatehouse. What the Constable did not know, however, was that the negotiation that was to change the course of the siege had already taken place.
It had been the sudden lull in the bombardment that had lured Galfrid up from the cellars. He had no reason to suppose that this one would last any longer than the others, but it was becoming close and airless down there and he had a sudden need for open air and daylight. Leaving Mélisande and Llewellyn to prepare a meal—if you could call barley porridge a ‘meal’—he had crept up the stairs and out into the courtyard of the keep, every minute expecting the terrible battering to resume.
The courtyard was deserted but for the rats. Three stinking, mangled lumps of meat lay upon the rubble-strewn ground, seeping red-black fluid into the mud, each host to a cloud of flies, and the chief object of the rats’ interest. Dead things, sent over in the last wave. So much for fresh air, thought Galfrid. He lifted his helm, pulled off his arming cap, put the helm back on his head and held the cap over his nose and mouth. At least that only stank of his own sweat.
Every minute the halt continued, his curiosity grew. Galfrid knew he could not really be alone up here. There were still guards on the battlements; that he couldn’t see them did not mean they weren’t there. When he did see movement, high on the gatehouse tower, he caught a fleeting glimpse of Murdac’s head, then what might have been de Montbegon. They were, in all likelihood, scanning the besieging army, looking for signs of an assault.
Galfrid ran up the steps to the battlement on the keep’s east wall and peered out. The besiegers appeared to be idle, the siege engines’ crews sitting upon their machines as if they had simply lost interest. No shields were being prepared, no ladders, no troops massing. Nothing. He looked up to the gatehouse tower again, to see two guards peering out, wondering, just as he had been. But Murdac had retreated below again. Perhaps he had contented himself that no attack was imminent. But Galfrid wasn’t content: so
mething, he was certain, was coming.
He ran back down into the courtyard, where men with rags across their faces had emerged to clear the dead things. They’d likely be tossed over the south wall onto the rocks below. But Galfrid was already heading north, towards the gate of the keep.
It took some minutes to get the porter to attend him and let him through the wicket gate into the outer bailey, and as soon as he had, Galfrid ran to the great, heavily fortified outer gatehouse tower and raced up the steps. This was the main gate into the castle; when the attack came—if it came—this would likely be their focus. But it was also the closest Galfrid could get to the attackers.
“All right, Will?” he said. “What’s going on?”
“Bugger all,” said Will Cobbe, staring out at the sprawling army. “No idea why, though.”
Cobbe was a decent sort. He had a good brain, too. Most of his peers simply breathed a sigh of relief at the end of the bombardment—but not him. Like Galfrid, he was growing more uneasy by the minute.
“So why have they stopped?” said Galfrid.
Cobbe shrugged. “Perhaps they’ve simply run out of things to throw at us.”
“Then why not attack? Why wait?”
“Perhaps they’re preparing to mine, to try to get into the tunnels.”
“Or perhaps a delegation is coming. Look.” Galfrid pointed, and there, in the thick of the army, towards the southern side, two horsemen were weaving their way forward. He watched in silence as the riders broke from the front line, and kept coming.
“Jesus...” said Cobbe. “I’d best send for Murdac.” And he ran and shouted down the stair.
Galfrid, meanwhile, squinted at the approaching horsemen. It was too far to make out faces, and the morning light threw them into shadow, obscuring further detail—but the shape of the lead rider on the black horse was suddenly familiar.
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