The speed of the French invasion, and the ferocity with which they had attacked the out-lying farmsteads, had sent the villagers streaming along the southern approach and into the first of the three great baileys. Roger Lacy had admitted them, convinced that the enemy would soon withdraw, or that King John would send an army to the relief of his brother’s Insolent Castle.
But the French stayed put, whilst John’s flotilla had been washed downstream…
Throughout July and August, more peasants had deserted their fields, more villagers their homes. The enemy made no attempt to prevent them entering the castle, and it was not until the relief force had failed that Lacy realized he had been outwitted. The French had razed the farms for a purpose, and not merely to rid the world of a few more Normans. By doing so, they had caused panic in the district and sent the occupants of Les Andelys scurrying up the hill. It was a harsh observation, but the castellan remarked that Gaillard might as well be plagued by rats, for both refugees and rodents need to eat.
And so the message he sent to Marshal and Briouze:
‘We have heard of our king’s furtive departure for England, and we appeal to you to save us. There are now four hundred civilians within these walls, a number far in excess of the garrison. The daily ration is a half-filled bowl of barley mash, an inch of salted eel and, so far, thank God, an ample supply of water. But, by the time this letter reaches you, there will be no more fish, save what little has been put by for the soldiers. A choice must be made, my lords; to halve the rations, such as they are, or evict those who make the least contribution to our defence.
In the name of God and England, restore us, before we are forced to lighten the load.’
By that he meant the aged and infirm, the infants and children. Not that it mattered, for the warlords at Rouen were helpless. There had been too much falling away of support, and it was doubtful if the city itself could withstand an all-out assault. Marshal and Briouze had been left to do the best they could for Rouen. Roger Lacy must do as much for Gaillard.
* * *
The story Saldon had to tell brought a nod of commiseration from King John and an impassive stare from the Sparrowhawk.
The royal couple had been three days at Corfe, most of it spent sleeping or, in John’s case, wallowing in a bathtub. Their fish-tainted clothes had been burned, the saddle-bags unpacked, the queen’s gowns pressed and hung from wall-bars. One of the satchels had contained three pairs of boots – property of the king – and these had been cleaned and polished, then braced with iron trees.
Although Saldon himself was a bachelor, several of his knights were married, and the ladies of Corfe presented Isabelle with a chestful of girdles, linen stockings, pelissons and a variety of headgear. Just in time, someone remembered that King John was also a lover of finery, and a second chest was filled with cloaks and tunics, and a pointed Phrygian cap decorated with ostrich feathers. The gifts were well received, and the couple paraded for each other before making their first appearance in the hall.
The baths and fresh clothes had a remarkable effect upon the king. For the first time since his fleet had been swept away by the current, he regained his bearing and looked optimstic- ally to the future. Isabelle watched him, pleased that he could once again strut and smile, yet aware that England needed more than a high-heeled peacock. She had not forgotten the decision she’d made at Rouen. She would see her husband through the eyes of William Marshal, and judge him accordingly.
It did not occur to her that she was unequal to the task. She had neither Marshal’s experience of the world, nor his natural sense of probity. She had always disliked him, done everything in her power to loosen his grip on John, even stolen the silver buckle intended for his child. She might mimic him for a while, but so could any other sixteen-year-old who fashioned a mask depicting a knife-like nose and a scar on the jaw.
Nevertheless, the king and queen made a fine entrance into the hall, John’s reddish hair visible beneath the brim of his cap, Isabelle’s unblemished features framed by a silk barbette. The ends of the band were concealed by a flat-topped fillet, its sides sewn with colourless glass beads. The light from the fire and torches and candles was mirrored in the headdress, and it seemed that England was wealthy again, with jewels to spare.
Saldon had invited his closest companions to join him in honour of the royal couple, but had warned them to keep their tongues for the food. ‘When the king and queen wish to proclaim their presence, they’ll do so. Meanwhile, we shall entertain them and turn mute at the gates. Corfe is privileged to have been chosen as their refuge, and I know that none of us would care to see that privilege abused.’ He had glanced from knight to lady, recruiting their assurances, his smile pillowing his words. Declare the king’s whereabouts, he had suggested, and you risk a charge of treason. But, more perilous than that, you will earn yourselves the enmity of Corfe and its master.
Knowing Saldon as they did, it was the latter threat that had set them nodding…
The meal went well, the entire assembly captivated by the Sparrowhawk and heartened by John’s appraisal of the war. He admitted to a few reversals, then discounted them as the normal give-and-take of conflict.
‘The problem abroad is one of leaves and branches. But the roots are buried here, in England, where we are denied our proper support. It’s nothing to surrender a weak-walled castle, or cede a stretch of riverbank. We shall recapture everything we’ve lost, but we shall not do so until the English nobility stir themselves and cross the Channel. France is a pitiable nation and, if we stand disgraced at all, it’s because we have not yet whipped them home. Their impudence has gone unpunished too long, and it’s time we made them smart. And we will, my friends, just as soon as I have laid the stick to a few English hides.’
The talk of chastisement brought appreciative comments from the guests. The king was right; the French were in need of a thrashing, and it would not come amiss if a few homemade nobles danced from their chairs. However, the occupants of Corfe had no wish to be included, and they pounded the benches as Saldon said, ‘You know the reason that prevented us from joining you, lord king. A twenty-five-fold reason, at the start.’
John frowned momentarily, and it was left to Isabelle to remind him of the Lusignan prisoners, delivered to Corfe by the Arab. ‘Yes,’ he nodded. ‘The creatures who would have burned my mother at Mirebeau. I remember.’ Then, pointing with the peak of his cap, he asked, ‘Did anyone furnish their ransom, or are they still here, chewing your food?’
The guests fell silent, some glancing at the constable, others reaching for a wine glass or wiping their mouths with their hands. Saldon stared at the table, then looked up sharply at John.
‘The answer must be no and no. The lords of Lusignan and Exoudun – brothers, aren’t they? – well, they made no offer to buy back the prisoners, so they have only themselves to blame.’
‘Blame for what?’
‘For the desperation that led the captives to break free.’
‘Are you saying they escaped? From a place like this!’
‘No, lord king, I’m saying they tried. They overpowered the guards in the prison tower, seized their weapons and made a sortie across the yard. Whether by accident or design, they emerged at a time when I and most of my knights were absent, and we returned to find them in possession of the keep. Once there, or rather here, for they made their quarters in this very hall, they defied all attempts to recapture. Your frown deepens, though I don’t see why it should.’ He held John’s gaze, daring him to find fault with what had been said, then heard Isabelle murmur, ‘It’s understandable that the prisoners forced their way in here. Your guards would not have anticipated an attack from within the castle and, with you and your knights away, the garrison must necessarily have been depleted. Go on with your story, Constable.’
Saldon nodded, aware that he had hitherto been addressing the wrong person.
‘They made their nest in here and, as I’ve said, resisted all attempts at re
capture. The storerooms below where we sit contained enough food for a year, besides which the prisoners held two of my knights and eight men-at-arms, all of them taken in the attack.’ He sighed, milking sympathy from the queen. ‘The tables had been turned on us. It was we who had to forage for food, we who had to sleep in the vacant prison tower. A galling experience and one we imagined to be endless.’
Nudging him along, Isabelle said, ‘How was it resolved?’
‘How, my lady? By poison.’ Jabbing a finger at the floor, Saldon explained, ‘There’s a well down there, fed from a stream beyond the north wall. Few people knew about it, about the link between the river and the well, for it remains the weakness of Corfe. If our enemies learned that we relied on a visible stream, they too could poison the supply.’ A brief smile, to be shared by king and queen, and then he went on, ‘We ourselves had forgotten about it, and the prisoners sat here for a month, reigning supreme. Then we remembered our own vulnerability and spiced the water.’
‘A sensible move,’ John nodded, ‘yet you say they’re no longer chewing your food. Is this because they’re too ill to—’
‘The story is not finished,’ Saldon told him. ‘I did not say they surrendered.’
‘But without water—’
‘Without water they had nothing to drink. Save wine, which only makes a man thirsty for water.’
‘So they held fast, here in this room?’
‘Yes, my lord king, that’s just what they did. They held fast, chewing our food, as you put it, and sipping wine, until the last casks were empty.’
Again premature, the king said, ‘And it was only then that they surrendered?’
Saldon saw the queen rest a hand on John’s arm, a gentle reminder to be patient. ‘Get to the crux,’ she said. ‘Did they emerge, or not, master Saldon?’
‘No, my lady, not for the better part of a week.’
‘Surviving without water, or even wine?’
‘Some of them, yes, and some dying in the keep.’
John queried, ‘And how many—’
‘Three, my lord king.’
‘And of the ten they held hostage?’
‘Two, a knight and an archer.’
A nod from John, and an impassive stare from the Sparrowhawk. ‘It’s an acceptable loss,’ the king commiserated. ‘Five from, what was it, thirty-five?’
And now Saldon frowned as he told them they misunderstood. ‘I do not mean five were lost, I mean five emerged. The rest were poisoned, what else did you suppose?’
* * *
True to his word, Roger Lacy evicted the weaklings from Gaillard. The decision aged him beyond his years, and he went through the great southern bailey leaden-footed, nodding at an old man here, a group of scampering children there. His guards herded them together, the work made easy by the mothers who ran to join their enfeebled husbands, their squalling offspring.
As soon as the women had declared themselves they were fenced in by the guards, then jostled forward to the gate. It took a while to catch the more truant children, who saw the whole thing as a game, and to conduct the aged civilians across the windswept yard. But at last it was done, and the castellan climbed to the barbican tower and told the refugees from Les Andelys and the surrounding districts that Gaillard could no longer feed them and must therefore expel them from the castle.
The shrieks and groans set the children howling, and the guards stood silent, scarcely defending themselves against the clawing women and the clumsy blows of old men. Roger Lacy looked down at them, his sight mercifully blurred, his tears running cold in the air. He could do no more than gesture at the gate guards, then murmur over and over, ‘God preserve them, God preserve them...’
The well-balanced gates were swung open and almost four hundred civilians driven out on to the narrow southern approach. It was November now, and the wind keened across the ridge. The castellan forced himself to drive his knuckles into his eyes, then turn about and watch the results of his handiwork. The old and young, the weak and world-weary, the playful children and stumbling infants, all filing away down the zig-zag path, bound for their nearby homes or distant farmsteads, and the bleak prospect of winter.
The snake writhed away down the hill, a reptile that fed like a rat and could be cut into human form…
And then one of the wall-guards hurried alongside Lacy and said, ‘Look down there, my lord. You see those soldiers on the hill? You see those Frenchmen? I don’t think they’re going to let them pass. I think the people are being sent back! They’re being returned, my lord! Do you see that? They’re being returned!’
And so they were, as the second half of the trap sprang shut.
The French had terrorized the farmsteads, panicked the villagers, driven them into the castle – like rats, as Lacy had said, like rats to eat the food – and now the enemy would not let them leave. They were the castellan’s problem, Gaillard’s concern, England’s civilian allies, and the French wanted nothing to do with them. And the longer they stayed, the more they would eat, and the sooner the Insolent Castle would submit. If it was such a fine place, this towering monument to Richard Lionheart, then it could surely find bed and board for the families of those who had helped construct it. If not, Lacy and his garrison could join the zigzag line.
He peered southward, saw the enemy – sensibly beyond arrow-range – halt and turn the refugees, threatening them with clubs and the butt end of their spears. Oh, yes, he thought, you’ll buffet and bruise them, but you’ll leave them alive, and with their appetites intact. They’re of value to you, as rats who’ll gnaw us to the stem.
He turned to the wall-guard. ‘Tell me, do you know any of those people?’
‘No, sire, except to kick a path through when they clutter the yard. We’re well rid of them, I’d say. They’ve turned the place into a midden. When the weather was warmer, the stench—’
‘That’ll do. However, now you’ve declared your feelings, I’ve an errand you’ll enjoy. Go down to the gate and tell the guards to settle the bar.’
‘To close it? They’re to close it?’
‘Yes,’ Lacy said, ‘they’re to close it. Against all comers. Go on and tell them.’ He watched the man hurry away, then turned to lean against the crenellated battlements. The refugees were already filing back towards Gaillard.
* * *
By the end of November, the supplies of ink and wax were exhausted. As were the king’s clerks, and those supplied by Saldon. As was John himself, complaining that his head dinned with names and titles, while his wrist ached from pressing the seals. He had dictated more than a hundred letters, though so far only one had been dispatched.
This had been addressed to the elderly Archbishop of Canterbury, Hubert Walter. A tall, dour man, who matched William Marshal in both age and stature, Hubert Walter had held office as Dean of York, Bishop of Salisbury, and later as Richard Lionheart’s justiciar. From there he had risen still higher in Church and State, and had been England’s senior prelate for more than a decade. It was Hubert Walter who had crowned John and Isabelle and, even though the old man bore an unnerving resemblance to Marshal, the king had need of him. Walter knew the things John wished to learn; how much was in the Treasury, how wide the gap between monarch and magnates, how best to finance an invasion of the lost territories.
In his letter to the Archbishop, he had expressed his desire to spend Christmas at Canterbury, though he warned Isabelle she’d be in for a dull few days. ‘I once described Walter as “the spire to Marshal’s turret”, so you know what to expect. His own humour is unfathomable, and I never saw anyone else make him smile.’
‘Spare yourself a thought,’ she told him. ‘Remember you’ve a birthday due. Of all the days to be born, Christmas Eve. And of all the places to celebrate it, in the Archbishop’s palace.’ She shook her head in time with John’s drawn-out groan.
The unsent letters had been divided into two piles, the larger destined for those barons who had refused to join their king in Norman
dy. John made no reference to their inertia, but greeted each man as ‘our beloved and faithful subject’, inviting him to attend a council at Oxford, ‘on the first day of the blessed new year, in the fifth year of our reign’. He praised the barons for having kept the peace during his absence, then concluded, ‘We shall recompense you for the costs of your journey, both with coin and the warmth of our affection. Be with us if you will, so that we may embrace each other and the cause of England.’
He was not entirely satisfied with the final line, but Isabelle had lost patience after the umpteenth draft. ‘You have so far stood shoulder-to-shoulder with them, kissed and embraced them, invited them to join you for the sake of Christendom, the cause of England, the downfall of our foes. Make a decision, my lord, and stick to it.’
‘But the phrasing’s important.’
‘No, it’s not. The barons will not be sweetened by a kiss or a hug. All they need to know is that we shall receive them at Oxford on the first day of the year. The kissing can wait.’
The second group of letters were addressed to those nobles who had, in some way or other, responded to John’s pleas for help. A mere handful had made the crossing to Normandy, and then only to reconnoitre and return, whilst the others had contented themselves with a donation to the war-chest. Even so, the king singled them out as ‘our very special friends’, and assured them that ‘no man who ever served us went unnoticed’.
It was an extravagant claim, but with the mass of his barons set firmly against him, he was forced to woo those who had not yet hardened.
* * *
The skins, poles and cords had been thrown down from the ramparts, and there was no more to be done. The refugees had used the material to make shelters, but they could not stop the rain flooding the hillside, nor prevent the wind from shredding the fabric.
The Wolf at the Door Page 16