‘Is he recovered?’ I asked anxiously. A wound, even a small one, could easily become infected and gangrenous on campaign. I had seen several good men die from mere scratches in the Holy Land, and quickly too, sometimes only in a matter of days.
‘Oh, you can’t keep Richard down for long,’ Robin laughed. ‘He’s back on his feet now and still taking big risks as if he were some brash young knight trying to make a name for himself. Come to think of it, he reminds me of you! But he has changed his strategy of late. The few weeks he was incapacitated gave him time to think: since then it’s been more about diplomacy than mad dashing about.’ Robin glanced about him quickly to check that we were not overheard. ‘Richard’s planning to suborn Philip’s new northern allies. If we can get the counts of Boulogne and Flanders away from the French and on to our side, Richard believes that we can outflank the French King and attack him from the north and the west simultaneously.’
We had left the coast behind us and were entering an area of scrubby woodland. Robin halted his horse and summoned his fat-headed squire Gilbert from the column of a hundred or so men behind him. He issued a rapid series of orders; Gilbert seemed not to understand them, but after several repetitions the oafish lad finally managed to grasp what was required and galloped off to the rear of the column.
Robin looked at me and grimaced: ‘He’s very nearly an idiot; but I can’t get rid of him. His father is an old friend. Where were we? Oh yes, the King. The other thing that is greatly occupying our sovereign’s mind at the moment is his damned “saucy” castle.’
‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘Nothing. Brilliant idea – a large forward base, packed with well-armed knights and powerful enough to resist a siege for months, if not years. A big, looming threat right on the edge of the French lands. It’s an inspired strategy. But the King seems to want to have it constructed in a matter of months. A castle that size, with its many layers of defences, might ordinarily take ten years to construct: Richard wants it done by tomorrow morning – before breakfast. He is stripping materials and men from across Normandy and sending them to Andeli, and now bringing in craftsmen from England too,’ Robin jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the marching masons behind us, who were singing a jaunty song in time to their steps.
‘He is spending everything he has on Château-Gaillard, and more – he seems to have no money left for anything else. No money for bribing Boulogne and Flanders to come over to our side; no money to feed the troops; no money to spend on new siege engines or weapons or replacement horses. Mercadier’s ruffians haven’t been paid for months. They take their living by force from the French lands – or from our own Norman peasants, when they can get away with it. And the other paid men are drifting away from the army day by day. Meanwhile, the rest of us are being worked to the bone to keep Philip’s men at bay. On top of that, he asked me to make him a large loan.’
I gave an involuntary snort of laughter, and regretted it immediately. ‘It’s not funny,’ Robin said crossly. ‘All the barons were asked to make a contribution to the building of his precious Château-Gaillard and I had to hand over five hundred marks. No way of getting it back either. Richard hinted that he knew about the Tourangeaux arrangement – you remember that? – and also suggested that I had hogged more than my fair share of the booty from the royal wagon train we took at Fréteval – and when I countered that the manors he had “given” me were deep in French territory, and that I had many hungry mouths to feed, he merely replied that that should inspire me to strive harder to drive back the French and claim what is rightfully mine.’
I stifled a grin, and said: ‘But surely, Robin, as the Earl of Locksley, you can easily spare the money …’
‘Is that what you think?’ Robin glared at me. ‘When you grow up a little, Sir Alan of Westbury, you will realize just how fragile the dignity of a title really is. What counts is land and revenues and cold, hard silver in your coffers. Thanks to Richard, I have given up the golden frankincense trade, and have not been recompensed for it, and Locksley is a minor honour, compared with some English earldoms, and the income it provides is relatively meagre. And it could be taken away from me like that’ – he snapped his fingers under my nose – ‘at the whim of the King. I cannot spare the money for Richard’s grand designs. For the security of my family, for my sons, I need to keep every penny. But I cannot afford to refuse him either.’
We walked our horses on for a while in silence. I had never really concerned myself with money – having been truly penniless as a young boy, my small fiefs seemed to me to generate an abundance of wealth. But then I was not an earl with a certain style to be kept up at the royal court, and the lord of several hundred men who needed to be fed and clothed, armed and encouraged, housed and horsed.
‘I am sorry for my shortness with you, Alan, and for my ill humour,’ said Robin unexpectedly. ‘I am bone weary – we all are – and this campaign against Philip seems as if it will never be decided.’
I looked at him in surprise: it was very unlike him to apologize to me, or to admit any weakness.
‘It is I who must beg your pardon, my lord,’ I said. ‘I have been absent from the fight for too long, but I shall try from here on to take up my share of your burdens.’
‘You are welcome to them, my friend,’ said Robin. He gave me a brilliant smile that almost belied his exhaustion.
We approached Château-Gaillard from the south-west, with the River Seine rolling slowly along on our left flank. After five days of talk with Robin’s troops about Richard’s extraordinary building endeavour as we trundled uneventfully across Normandy, I was eager as a schoolboy to see this ‘saucy’ castle. In truth, I was not disappointed.
The castle rose before us on the far side of a bend in the river with all the gravitas of a mountain – grey, massive and brooding over the landscape. Even unfinished it was a formidable presence, and as we drew nearer I could see hundreds, in fact, thousands of men swarming around the castle’s roots and scaling the half-built walls. An army of workmen, summoned from the four corners of Richard’s empire to unite with one purpose: to build this mighty fortress in the shortest possible time. We stopped at the far side of the bridge across the Seine that led to the castle, and gazed up in wonder at our King’s pride and joy. I heard the muttering and gasps of the workmen behind me, and unbidden, an image of the cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris flashed into my head: both that great church and this monumental stronghold were extraordinary structures, awe-inspiring, colossal and conjured up by the will of one man.
We crossed the bridge, our necks cricked back as we gazed upwards at the castle, and passing through a gatehouse on the other side of the Seine, where we were briefly challenged and then allowed to pass, we rode past a village for the workmen and their families that cowered under the huge bulk of stone above it, and took the narrow road in front of Château-Gaillard, between the castle and the Seine, that wound up to the main entrance.
Above us, atop sheer limestone cliffs, the inner bailey at the north end of the castle with its gigantic towering keep was already constructed and I could see bright banners flying from the battlements and the stick-like figures of men-at-arms standing guard a hundred yards above my head. The walls of the middle bailey were almost complete, but hundreds of men still laboured to construct the circular towers that punctuated its stout fortifications. As we rode up a steep track towards the main gate I saw that an extra layer of defence, an outer bailey, roughly triangular in shape with the beginnings of massive towers at each corner, was in the early stages of construction at the south end of the castle, joined by an arched passage above our heads but separate from the middle bailey. We rode through the narrow road between the middle and outer baileys and turned left to enter the castle through the main gate. The noise in that enclosed passageway was deafening, the shrill ringing of steel chisel on masonry, the shouts of overseers, the crack of raw stone splitting, and the dry stench of dust filling my nostrils – memories of Paris floode
d my mind and I felt once again the ache of Hanno’s loss.
King Richard greeted us in his big, round audience room on the first floor of the mighty keep. He was in very high spirits, as usual, but I could see too that while he was animated, he was tired, and more than a few silver flecks were now plainly visible in his red-gold hair. He greeted Robin jovially, slapping him hard on the arm, and laughing hilariously, almost maniacally at some comment from my lord of Locksley, and then turned his feverish brightness on me and said: ‘Well, my good Blondel, you are here at long last – and what do you think of my one-year-old daughter?’
The world shimmied and seemed to rock beneath my feet. Had the King run mad? Surely he had no children. We would have heard about a royal daughter, for certain, long before she had survived a twelve-month.
A quiet voice murmured at my shoulder. ‘I believe His Royal Highness is referring to this castle, sir,’ said Thomas. ‘He only began its construction last summer – and so it is very nearly one year old.’
The world righted itself. I stammered out something along the lines that it looked to be in a good strategic position, easy to defend …’
‘Easy to defend?’ roared the King, half-laughing, half-shouting. He seemed rather put out by my tepid answer. ‘Is that all you can say, Blondel? When this place is finished, I could defend it with one old man on a lame donkey. Why, I could defend this place if these walls were made of butter!’
Robin stepped in smoothly: ‘People speak of the Château-Gaillard as the greatest fortress in Christendom, Sir Alan,’ he said. And the King beamed at him, and slapped him hard on the back again. ‘And so it will be, Locksley, so it will be, if I’m only allowed to finish it.’
‘It is most impressive, sire,’ I said, the courtier in me finally coming awake. ‘A noble achievement.’
The King was mollified. ‘I am glad that you approve of it, Blondel,’ he said. ‘It is the key to our fortunes in Normandy, I believe. From here we can sally out and attack Philip’s castles with impunity. And if those French rogues challenge us in vast numbers, we can withdraw here, and defy them for months. It is from here, from this fair rock, that I shall retake Gisors! And when I have Gisors again, I shall have the whole of Normandy and the French Vexin in the palm of my hand. Do not get too comfortable here, Sir Alan. Tomorrow we shall leave for Gournay to show the enemy a thing or two about warfare, and I want you beside me. Reminds me, Locksley, I need to ask something …’
The King gave me a curt nod, and I was dismissed. I bowed, and withdrew a few paces. But as I was turning to go, the King spoke again, in a softer, less abrasive tone: ‘My good Blondel, did you remember to bring your vielle with you from England?’
‘I did, sire.’
‘Will you give us some music after supper tonight?’
‘Gladly, sire.’
The King nodded, and I bowed again and walked out of the keep into the weak May sunshine of the inner bailey.
In a castle bustling with hundreds of knights, squires and men-at-arms – not to mention the innumerable swarms of low-born workmen: carpenters, quarrymen, masons, smiths, diggers and carters, who were hurrying to complete the fortifications – I was very glad to run into an old friend. While Thomas was organizing accommodation for me and my men, and stabling for Shaitan and the other horses – I had brought a palfrey and a pack animal with me from England – I wandered into the courtyard of the middle bailey and watched a knight in a dark-blue surcoat with three golden scallop shells and a dolphin on the chest putting two dozen men-at-arms through their manoeuvres with sword and shield. The knight – my old friend Sir Nicholas de Scras – was demonstrating various cuts to the men-at-arms on a paling, a stout pillar of wood set into the ground in the centre of the middle bailey. I was struck, once again, by Sir Nicholas’s mastery of the art of the blade; his flowing cuts and parries, as he demonstrated a variety of blows on the paling, and the dancer’s grace of his footwork.
As I paused in the shadow of a wine-seller’s awning to admire Sir Nicholas’s skill, I sensed a presence beside me. Turning my head, I saw a tall man with mop of jet black hair atop a lean dark face bisected with a long white scar: Mercadier was watching with me.
For a few moments neither of us spoke, as the line of men-at-arms advanced, slashing the air with their swords, killing an army of invisible Frenchmen. Then the mercenary leader looked directly at me with his blank brown eyes and said, ‘Hoping to pick up a few new tricks, Sir Knight?’
His tone, with its slight Gascon twang, was just on the polite side of sneering, and though it irked me a good deal, I was determined not to allow him to provoke me into a fight. ‘A gentleman can never learn too much about the skill of arms, I believe. One never knows what scrap of knowledge may one day save one’s life in battle.’
‘A gentleman,’ said Mercadier. ‘Is that what you call yourself now?’ He stared at me, and despite myself I could feel the first spikes of rage blooming behind my brow.
‘I am Sir Alan Dale of Westbury, a knight of Nottinghamshire …’ I began, hating my own foolish pomposity even as the words tumbled from my mouth.
‘I know what you are and where you come from,’ said Mercadier. He paused, and then drawled: ‘Sir … Knight.’ There was almost no emotion in his voice: he might have been remarking on the price of the wine in the vats behind us. But I could sense a deep, deep fury inside him; a volcanic anger that he kept from erupting only with some difficulty, only by exerting a vast icy control over his whole being. He was what my friend Tuck would have called a cold-hot man: the most dangerous type of individual, according to him. I could well believe the stories that I had heard about Mercadier – his cruelty to those enemies that fell into his power; his disdain for mercy. I thought about Brother Dominic, the monk of the Holy Trinity Abbey in Vendôme, and knew in my heart that I was looking at his killer.
I said nothing but made to turn away. However, Mercadier was speaking again, in that cold, stony voice: ‘I held Normandy for him when he was in prison, you know. When almost everyone else had forsaken him, and sided with John – including you, I believe, and that traitorous creature over there.’ Mercadier nodded at Sir Nicholas de Scras, who was now demonstrating a high lateral block to the crowd of men-at-arms. ‘When everyone else had forsaken the King, I remained loyal. When the rest of his fine gentlemen –’ Mercadier pronounced the word with deep contempt – ‘had changed their allegiance as easily as a pair of soiled hose and sided with his renegade fool of a brother, I remained steadfast. My men bled and died on this very soil for the King while he was in the power of his enemies. I took this for him.’ He made a short chopping gesture with his left hand towards his scarred face. ‘And I held his land against the full might of Philip of France, as best I could. Later I took Loches and Bigaroque and Issoudun for him, and killed half my men in doing so – and yet he made you a knight. He ranked you over me! He gave you Clermont-sur-Andelle – a fine manor that he knew I had long coveted – and a knighthood! You, who are as base-born as I; you, who are no more that the scrapings of a Nottingham gutter, were given a gentleman’s rank …’
My right hand had gone to my hilt, and I think I would have taken my blade to him, had the scarred man’s dull, poisonous flow not been suddenly interrupted by Sir Nicholas de Scras’s familiar cheery voice: ‘Sir Alan Dale, my friend, how wonderful to see you! When did you get here? And Captain Mercadier, greetings – what an honour to be observed at my labours by such distinguished men of the sword.’
I turned to look at Sir Nicholas and managed a tight smile, and when I turned back to Mercadier to say something – I know not what, probably something fatuous about my grandfather the Seigneur – in reply to his insults about my origins, I saw that he had turned his back on the both of us and was walking briskly away across the courtyard.
‘What an ill-bred, loutish churl,’ said Sir Nicholas, as he stared after Mercadier’s broad retreating back.
‘He is only a little worse born than I,’ I said.
; ‘Well, you at least have decent manners and a proper sense of honour,’ Sir Nicholas said casually. And I smiled gratefully at him.
The erstwhile Hospitaller and I took a cup of wine together at the seller’s stand, and my friend gave me the mood of the castle. The men-at-arms had been worked hard in recent weeks but remained eager for the fight. They loved Richard for his mad ambitions and reckless disregard for his own safety, and were prepared to fight to the death for their lord and King. Richard had recently returned from a raid at the port of St Valéry. He had found English ships there trading with the French, and had seized their cargoes, burned the vessels to the waterline and hanged the crews. The men had thoroughly approved of the King’s actions, and almost all of them had profited from a day or two of unrestrained looting in the captured French town.
‘You saw the King this morning, Alan – how was his temper?’ asked Sir Nicholas. ‘Is he ready to press the fight against the French once again?’
I answered my friend honestly. ‘He’s more than ready. In fact, I must confess, he seemed rather too enthusiastic, almost hectic; not as calm as I have seen him previously.’
Sir Nicholas nodded thoughtfully. ‘He appears so to me, also,’ he said. ‘But then he has so much that he wishes to achieve this season, and too little time in which to do it.’
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