by Angus Donald
The King had come to Verneuil with most of his strength, and among the faces that I glimpsed through the smoky hall were of some of the noblest and most powerful men in Europe: William the Marshal was there, his battered soldier’s face split with a huge grin at my impudence to French royalty, while Sir Aymeric de St Maur, representing the English Knights Templar, and Robert, Earl of Leicester, both seemed a little shocked at the crudity of my fabliau. Scar-faced Mercadier, Richard’s fearsome mercenary captain, stared at me steadily and soullessly. Gloomy John of Alencon seemed to be almost cheerful for once, and Sir Nicholas de Scras, an old friend and former Knight Hospitaller, who now served the Marshal, applauded my music vigorously whenever I paused, while Sir Aubrey de Chambois looked on, pale but contented, sipping his wine slowly and savouring his continued existence. A couple of Anglo-Norman barons whose names I did not know peered at me quizzically through the smoky gloom as I sang and played my vielle for Richard’s travelling court, but they laughed in all the right places — while the Earl of Locksley watched me perform with the air of a proud older brother.
I had recovered my composure during the course of the feast, and I followed my raucous performance of ‘King Philip’s Folly’ with a tender canso directed at my lovely Goody. King Richard was especially kind to me when I had finished, uprooting several barons from their places and seating me beside him; sharing his golden goblet of wine with me and asking me to recount the tale of the siege and my part in it. He was treating me as a hero, and I must confess that I did not find it a distasteful experience.
I took the circumstance of my King’s good favour to ask his permission to travel to Vendome and seek an audience with Cardinal Heribert at the earliest opportunity. I told him of my desire to discover my father’s killer, but the King, to my surprise, was guarded in his response. ‘We will see, Alan, we will see,’ he said. ‘I am going to need every fighting man I have to push Philip and his allies back in Normandy and in my lands to the south as well. So, I regret that I cannot allow you at this moment to go galloping off on a private quest — however important it might seem to you. But we will see how things turn out. It may well be that I shall be heading in that direction myself in the next few days, and perhaps I shall be able to grant you the freedom to follow your heart then.’
And I had to be content with that.
The next morning Richard summoned all his knights and barons for a council of war in the castle courtyard. It was another bright spring day, and I stood beside Robin in glorious sunshine to hear what our sovereign had planned out for the coming campaign.
The King was in a buoyant mood, seemingly glowing from within, as if lit by the inner torch of his own enthusiasm. Without the slightest formality, without even a prayer from one of his priests, the King began: ‘Many of you already know this, but I think it is worth repeating so that we are all clear about the situation as it stands. For the past two years, King Philip has been pushing west-wards into Normandy, taking my castles, either by treachery or force, and extending his rule into my dominions. He has taken Gisors, perhaps the most important castle on the border, the key to the whole of eastern Normandy, and has fortified and reinforced it so that it is virtually impregnable. He also now holds a tongue of land thirty miles deep inside Normandy to the north-east of here from Tillieres on the Avre, north to Beaumont-le-Roger and Le Neubourg, and east to Vaudrail — but for the moment his advance has been stopped here at Verneuil by the gallant actions of Sir Aubrey de Chambois and Sir Alan Dale. And I salute them both for their exemplary valour!’
There was a murmur of congratulation from the assembled knights; I could feel my cheeks flushing with embarrassed pleasure. I was aware that it was a rare honour to be praised by the greatest monarch in Christendom in front of the cream of its knighthood.
King Richard continued: ‘This is the turning point. While I have been indisposed, Philip has advanced. That stops now. From now on we go on the attack. From now on he is on the defensive. From now on, we start to win.’
The King said these words casually, without any special emphasis, but I found that I believed him utterly. He had that quality, a quality that made you enormously confident of success just because he was with you. It was absurd, of course, but it worked. Richard’s presence on the battlefield, it was truly said, was worth a hundred knights.
The King was still speaking: ‘The heart of the French enclave of conquered land is the castle of Evreux, which until recently was held by my brother John, for Philip.’
There were a few murmurs, grumbles and muttered oaths, but Richard’s face was a picture of seriousness. ‘For those of you who do not know this already, my brother has seen the error of his ways and has renewed his allegiance to me. I have forgiven him. I have absolved him of his crimes. He has since returned to Evreux with a strong force of our knights and that fortress is now back in our hands.’
Once again a restrained babbling broke out, but as Richard raised a hand to quiet the crowd of barons and knights around him, a strong voice cut through the general murmuring. ‘Is it true that Prince John slaughtered all the French inhabitants of the town of Evreux? Cut down all of them — peasants, merchants, artisans, monks, nuns, priests — men, women and children…’ I recognized the familiar growling tones of William the Marshal, and sensed a hum of righteous anger behind his question.
‘Why would he do that?’ I said, without taking time to think. ‘What would be the point of such savagery?’
For the tiniest part of a moment, Richard looked uncertain; he opened his mouth to speak but he was superseded before he could utter a word.
A cold, lapidary voice spoke instead. ‘It is true. He killed them all. Slaughtered every one of them. And I helped him do it,’ said Mercadier, who was standing at the King’s elbow. ‘They were traitors, they were scum who served Philip and they all deserved to die.’
The scarred man seemed to be speaking directly at me. I was drawing a deep breath, ready to condemn his brutality, when King Richard spoke: ‘Yes, my brother and Mercadier killed many in Evreux — and God may well judge them for it in the next world. But you should consider this, Sir Alan: in doing so, Mercadier and John saved your life.’
I was completely wrong-footed, baffled, and it must have shown. How could a massacre of townspeople thirty miles away have saved my life?
Richard smiled sadly at me: ‘Why do you think King Philip disappeared so quickly with most of his army? Did you think your handful of men had frightened him away?’
‘No,’ I said, a little nettled, ‘I thought that you had.’
‘It was neither of us, I am afraid,’ Richard replied. ‘It was John. When King Philip heard what my brother had done in Evreux, he hurried there with all possible speed to avenge his people. And while we still hold the castle there, Philip is now furiously besieging our loyal men inside it.
‘But not for long. I will come back to that in a few moments, if I may. For now, let us continue.’ Richard cleared his throat. ‘There are three main areas of operation in this war against Philip. The first theatre is here in Normandy; the second is south around Touraine and the Loire Valley; and the third is in the far south in Aquitaine, my mother’s homeland. In all three areas, Philip will seek to cause mischief, either in person or through his allies; he will bribe and buy support from my vassals where he can, and intimidate others. He will be up to his knavish tricks from Rouen to Toulouse, and I must show my vassals, wherever they are, that I will not forgive treachery and I will put down any rebellion with speed and determination, and I will smash Philip’s armies wherever and whenever they can be brought to battle. And so, we must be prepared to tackle him on all three fronts — simultaneously, if necessary.’ The King took a deep breath. ‘Accordingly, I’ve decided to split the army into three parts.’
There was another outbreak of muttering among the assembled knights. Dividing an army weakened it and if the entire enemy force was able to concentrate against any one part, it could prove disastrous.
&n
bsp; ‘I have no choice,’ Richard said, answering a rumble of half-asked questions. ‘I must act immediately in several regions hundreds of miles apart, and I cannot be in all places at the same time. Anyway, I have made my decision. This is how it will go: firstly, Prince John and the earls of Leicester and Arundel will hold Normandy for me. They will protect Rouen from Philip’s depredations, and attempt to take back as much territory as they can without endangering their own ability to operate effectively in the northern theatre. Secondly, in the centre, Alencon, I want you to go down to Maine and link up there with my knights from Anjou, who are presently at Le Mans. Your task is to take Montmirail and destroy it and, if he ventures out of his bolt-hole at Chateaudun, I want you to give Geoffrey of the Perche a bloody nose. Thirdly, the earls of Striguil and Locksley, Mercadier and myself, and the bulk of the army will push on further south. We will join my ally and friend Sancho of Navarre and retake the castle of Loches.’
It was a good plan, clear and simple: and despite their reservations about splitting the army, the barons recognized it as such. Sancho, the heir to the King of Navarre, a small country on the far side of the Pyrenees, was King Richard’s brother-in-law. He had been a staunch supporter of Richard since his marriage to Sancho’s sister Berengaria in Cyprus three years ago. While the Lionheart was imprisoned, the Spanish warlord had guarded the southern flank of Richard’s huge dukedom of Aquitaine, battling restless local barons who had been encouraged to revolt by King Philip.
Loches was a powerful fortress with a massive keep, the stone walls of which were reputed to be twelve foot thick. It had been held time out of mind by the counts of Anjou, Richard’s forefathers, and was the key to the County of Touraine, guarding the frontier with the King of France’s territory in the centre. Quite apart from the issue of family pride — which had been badly dented by its loss — our King could not ride south to reconquer the rebellious parts of Aquitaine so long as Loches remained garrisoned by scores of enemy knights, like a dagger at his back. He had to take it as the first step in subduing the south — pride and practicality, for once, marching perfectly in step.
So, in the sunny courtyard of Verneuil, the barons reluctantly accepted Richard’s plan to split the army and began to confer with him individually on various points of detail — such as which castles should be reduced first, which could be safely ignored, which territories should be ravaged, known areas of enemy weakness, the numbers of men and horses, quantities of fodder and supplies, spare weapons, siege engines and the like that they might take with them — and all the crucial minutiae of warfare. Meanwhile, Robin dispatched Little John and myself to prepare the Locksley men for travel.
For in the morning we would march south. To Loches.
There was a final episode to my time at Verneuil, a strange and chilling event that set my mind racing. On the evening before our departure for the south, I called into the makeshift infirmary to bid farewell to Father Jean de Puy and to thank him for being so generous with his memories.
I walked into the stable block and scanned the lines of wounded men on the straw-strewn floor, some asleep, others gently moving and moaning — cursing their injuries, or calling for their wives or mothers. There was no sign of Father Jean. I brought water to a few of the men who requested it, talked quietly to a pair of injured men-at-arms who were awake and in only moderate pain, and waited a full hour for Father Jean to return. It was most unlike him, I thought, to neglect his charges for so long.
After turning over and over in my mind the mystery of the priest’s absence, I determined that I would search the castle to see if I could discover his whereabouts. And it did not take long to find him — or what remained of him.
I found Father Jean lying behind the stable block, huddled in a narrow space between the rear of the infirmary and the dirty-grey stone wall of the castle. His face was bone white, his eyes were half-open, yet he looked strangely peaceful. He was dead, of course, and, as I reckoned it, he had been so for several hours. He had been stabbed in the chest; there was a deep puncture wound a little to the left of the sternum, caused by a single thrust directly into the heart. Jean de Puy had been murdered; killed quickly and quietly by what I judged to be an expert hand.
Chapter Six
It took until mid-morning before King Richard’s column was ready to march. We were about three thousand souls — proud knights and their harassed squires, scarred men-at-arms, broad-backed archers and gaudily dressed crossbowmen; rough-tongued routiers and refined priests, long-nosed chaplains and pungent friars, raw-fingered washerwomen and saucy, giggling whores — butchers, bakers and candle-sellers, pardoners, fortune-tellers, beggars, black-smiths and jongleurs… men and women of all ranks and every calling. And at the apex of this heaving, seething mass of jostling humanity stood the King and his senior barons and his household knights. Inevitably the column would be a slow-moving one: King Philip’s captured trebuchets, mangonels and onagers swelled Richard’s already far more impressive siege train of a dozen heavy pieces of stone-throwing artillery. Thirty-foot high and constructed of foot-thick oak beams, these machines were affectionately known as the ‘castle-breakers’ and were attended by a swarm of experts as well as the sappers, miners, carters and the common ox-herdsmen of the siege train. The main column would only move as fast as the slowest trebuchet ox-team, pulling the heaviest piece of artillery, and even then a wagon might be stuck in a morass of mud or lose one of their massive solid oak wheels and the entire column must wait for it to be repaired or rescued before the march could resume.
I was happy, therefore, that Robin’s men formed their own column in the vanguard of the King’s army. My Lord of Locksley had orders to send men on ahead to scout out the land and report intelligence back to the main column. He knew this land, as did I, having travelled through it four years ago on our way to the Holy Land.
Robin had brought reinforcements with him from Yorkshire: another hundred and fifty men, once again mixed archers and light cavalry, and all well mounted. And when my advance troop, those who had survived the siege of Verneuil or who had been only lightly wounded, was rejoined to Robin’s command we numbered more than two hundred fighting men. Robin had banished the hangers-on from our column, and the baggage and better-quality horses — including my beloved gelding Ghost and Shaitan my destrier — remained with the supply train of the main army. I rode a fast courser belonging to Robin, a horse better suited to rough riding and scouting work than my two more valuable warhorses. We were to be an exploring column, a light, fast-moving unit whose task it was to see what was beyond the next hill, report back to the King and his advisers, relay messages, and warn them of any trouble.
We were heading south-west, along the line of the River Avre, and we would soon cross that natural barrier and enter the realm of Count Geoffrey of the Perche, a vassal who had renounced his allegiance to King Richard and sided with Philip. Geoffrey was now our enemy and the troops had the royal licence, as long as they did not stray far from the slow-moving column, to raid farms, empty barns, and collect domestic beasts — in short, to steal anything that they wanted while we travelled through his territory. We did not expect to meet the count and his forces; they were holed up down in the south at Chateaudun and Richard did not want to waste time in reducing the minor castles of the county. His thinking, Robin told me that morning, was that Geoffrey was a trimmer who would always go with the prevailing wind. If Richard were in the ascendant, then Geoffrey would come back to our side. There was no need to squander men, resources and valuable time in reducing his fortresses when, if we triumphed in the south, he would come meekly back into the fold anyway. And Richard harboured no personal grudge against the man — Geoffrey was Philip’s cousin, after all, and while Richard was his lawful lord, his lands bordered on those of the French King. A victory in the south was what we needed, Robin said, not petty vindictiveness against a man who, anyway, would have had little chance of resisting the might of King Philip’s armies.
The sun
shone brightly as we rode, but a keen wind prevented the day from becoming oppressively hot, clad as we were for battle in heavy mail and helmets. I had spoken to Robin about Father Jean’s death before we left Verneuil, and he had informed the King, but there was no time to make a proper enquiry. So the great column had departed, lumbering its slow way south-west, leaving Sir Aubrey de Chambois to recover from his crossbow wound with a fresh garrison of men-at-arms and two experienced masons whose task it was to repair the castle’s walls. Sir Aubrey had been shocked by Father Jean’s death — and he had vowed that he would make all the necessary enquiries and discover whatever he could about the murder. But I had no high hopes that he would uncover the man who had killed my father’s old friend, and I said as much to Robin as we crossed the River Avre by a mossy wooden bridge and rode into the foothills of the County of the Perche.
‘I think you are right, Alan,’ said my lord. He seemed distracted that bright morning, almost fidgety. ‘I fear we shall never know who killed the man. And perhaps it would be best to put the matter from our minds.’ And then he fell silent, shading his eyes to scan the forested country ahead.
I was puzzled by his answer. ‘Surely we should seek justice for the poor fellow?’ I said. ‘He was a good man, a fine priest, and he did not deserve such an ignoble end.’
‘He was a priest, yes — so surely you believe that he is in the Kingdom of Heaven now. So he’s happy, isn’t he?’
I was a little taken aback by Robin’s words; I had long known, and indeed it was an open secret among his friends, that Robin was no Christian — indeed, he often mocked the Church — but I did not expect him to be so offhand about murder. I bit my lip, and Robin, sensing my discomfort, glanced over at me.