Lord of the Sea Castle

  ‘Raymond!’ he called again, more desperate than before. He was becoming ever more anxious. Sunshine dazzled him while flies and sweat annoyed his face. In the distance, drums and horns irritated Borard’s ears. His stomach called out for ale. ‘For God’s sake, Raymond, are you alive down there?’

  As he was beginning to lose all hope he spied his captain’s shield. It was lying face up near the inner gates which, praise be to God, had again been closed in the face of the enemy. Of his captain he could see nothing and he prayed that he had made it through the gates and into the bailey before the archers had begun shooting. Several arrows stood proud in the crimson and gold shield. The last time he had seen him, Raymond had been outside the defences and on horseback alongside Bertram d’Alton. How he had managed to fight his way through the Ostman crew so that his shield was a few paces from the inner gate, Borard could not imagine. He turned away from the allure and looked down into the bailey. The survivors of the ten-strong conrois were strewn around the grass, tending to wounds and their horses. Esquires and pages ran to and fro, nervously handing out assistance and awaiting instruction.

  ‘We need to get someone out there, between the fortifications…’ His voice faded away for not one of the soldiers gave an indication that they had understood his order. He snatched his padded linen cap from his head and wiped it across his sweaty face.

  ‘Uffern ddiawl,’ one of the Welsh archers exclaimed and poked Borard in the arm with the top of his bow.

  ‘Oh, what now?’ Borard asked, angrily turning his back on the bailey to follow the archer’s outstretched arm as he gesticulated down into the valley between the walls. There he saw a man climb from his knees to his feet bearing Raymond’s shield. For a moment Borard’s heart leapt as he saw the crimson and gold armorial rise, believing Raymond to have survived by lying beneath the shield as the arrow storm had passed over him. Then Jarl Sigtrygg’s angry, bearded face appeared over the top.

  ‘Someone shoot that bastard dead,’ Borard ordered and two men close to him obediently nocked arrows on their bowstrings.

  Jarl Sigtrygg surveyed the movement atop the wall and, guessing what was about to happen, ducked down to his knees behind the shield so that Borard could only see the top of his helmet. He turned to the two Welshmen at his side on the allure.

  ‘Ready?’ he asked and received curt nods in response. ‘Next time he looks up I want to see an arrow in each of his eyes.’ He turned back towards his enemy. ‘On my command then.’

  If the Ostman had killed his friend Raymond, Borard would make sure Jarl Sigtrygg would pay with his life. He urged his enemy to raise his head but the Ostman positively refused to give the archers a clear shot. Borard could see him rummaging around at his feet, but Jarl Sigtrygg’s shield blocked sight of what he was up to. One of the archer’s at his side murmured something in his own tongue which the Norman did not understand. A flurry of movement amongst the bodies saw Jarl Sigtrygg suddenly climb to his feet again and cast aside Raymond’s shield.

  In his eagerness Borard almost dropped his hand to command the two men to loose their arrows, but he managed to stop himself when he saw that Jarl Sigtrygg had sheltered behind a shield of a different kind, one that could not be pierced. And to Borard’s right Alice of Abergavenny screamed in horror.

  Raymond skirted the cattle pens at a gallop, ignoring the terrified animals’ calls as he dashed the short distance to the inner gates. Men slumped inside the walls called questions in his direction as he passed by, but he did not stop, save to stoop for his sword which he had abandoned below the barbican. He threw himself at the ladder leading to the battlements, hitting the fourth rung before clambering upwards. The whole structure seemed to judder as he hauled his weight onto the timber platform above.

  Momentarily blinded by the late afternoon sun pouring down, Raymond turned away and searched for Alice on the inner barbican, but he could not see her and it was only when she screamed again that he caught sight of her. She was at the far end of the allure, clinging to the top of the timber posts and wailing over the wall in the direction of the outer gates.

  ‘Raymond!’ One archer hailed him and clapped a big hand on his shoulder, and within seconds the captain was surrounded by smiling Welshmen offering greetings and jabbering in their own tongue in his direction. He had to weave between the outstretched arms as all along the rampart the archers leapt to their feet to cheer his safety, clapping their hands, slapping his back, and cawing happily. The captain returned their welcome as he attempted to push past as fast as possible and go to Alice’s aid.

  ‘Raymond, thank God you are alive,’ Borard exclaimed as he planted a bear hug across his friend’s chainmailed shoulders. Raymond could only watch as Alice sank to her knees on the walkway, crying uncontrollably.

  ‘You must save him,’ she whimpered.

  Raymond shrugged off Borard and grabbed Alice by the shoulders, lifting her into his arms.

  ‘What has happened?’

  It was his friend Borard who answered. ‘See for yourself.’

  Reluctantly, he let go of Alice and rose so that he could see over the battlements to where Borard had indicated with a lift of his chin. He had known that an army was approaching their walls, but Raymond’s mind struggled to comprehend the sheer number that his eyes now beheld. It was a great flood of men, a tidal wave of steel and toughened leather against which even Noah’s great works could not have stood. The whole headland seemed to quake beneath their feet and from a quarter of a mile away the roar of their war songs was deafening.

  It was a horde.

  Drums rattled and trumpets blared as the warriors thumped the back of their shields to increase the noise assault on the wooden walls of Dun Domhnall. Jarl Sigtrygg had not been lying when he had taunted him during their fight between the walls, Raymond realised. An army of thousands approached the small Norman contingent crouching behind the fort’s creaking walls.

  ‘St David, preserve our souls,’ Raymond hissed as he stared at them. ‘It looks far worse from up here than it did from horseback.’

  ‘Aye. There is a terrible lot of them,’ Fionntán told him as he joined the captain on the wall, ‘but that’s not why Lady Alice is upset.’ He spat a long stream of spittle into the gap between the ramparts, nodding his head in the same direction.

  Raymond felt his stomach squeeze in anger and fear for there, not ten paces from the outer gates, was his enemy, Sigtrygg. At the jarl’s front was Geoffrey, with a knife pressed to his windpipe, the boy’s body held firm between Jarl Sigtrygg and any Welsh arrow which might otherwise have struck him down. Tears streamed down Geoffrey’s face as he gripped Jarl Sigtrygg’s muscled forearm.

  ‘Shoot and I’ll kill the boy,’ the jarl shouted up at the inner wall in the French tongue as he continued to carefully pick his way between the bodies of his crewmen towards the outer gates. Hands clawed at his leather-covered thighs. The jarl kicked his wounded crewmen away and struggled towards the gates.

  ‘You’ll not get an arrow away without hitting Geoffrey,’ Fionntán confirmed.

  ‘You must save him,’ moaned Alice. ‘You promised that you would keep him safe! At least William de Braose kept him locked up in a monastery – Geoffrey did not end up with a knife to his throat.’

  Raymond stared deep into Alice’s eyes. She held his gaze for several seconds, daring him to act, before her rancour turned to desperation and then to sadness as she broke down again. Her tears appalled Raymond and guilt scored through his body as he looked down on Geoffrey’s predicament. Jarl Sigtrygg was a few paces from safety under the barbican and if he was going to rescue his esquire Raymond knew that it would have to be immediate.

  He turned to a Welsh archer close by. ‘Quickly, bring me rope.’

  Borard was not quick enough to stop the young man from disappearing in response to Raymond’s order, but he did understand its implication.

  ‘You are not going down there,’ he told his captain.

  Raymond ignored Bo
rard, putting a hand to the side of his mouth. ‘Hurry up!’

  ‘You are not going down there, Raymond,’ Borard repeated.

  ‘I have to save Geoffrey. I promised I would keep him safe.’

  Fionntán shook his head. ‘You will be killed.’

  ‘I have the beating of Sigtrygg.’

  ‘He will lure you outside the walls where he still has some of his crew. They will kill you and then he will finish the boy off too,’ the Gael said matter-of-factly. ‘You will be killed.’ His eyes flicked towards Alice. ‘You cannot save Geoffrey.’

  Raymond shot Fionntán an angry look. ‘Rope!’

  The Irishman threw his hands in the air as the archer returned and handed Raymond a long length of sturdy rope taken from Waverider. With another venomous look at Fionntán, Raymond looped the rope around one timber column and knotted it tightly. He then cast the remainder over the side of the battlements.

  ‘You are our captain,’ Borard attempted. ‘If you go down there you condemn us all to death.’

  Raymond ignored his friend and placed his hands on the top of the wall, preparing to hoist himself up and over with three shallow breaths through his mouth. As he steeled himself to jump Borard’s palm landed on his own right hand. The delicacy of the warrior’s gesture surprised Raymond and stopped him in his tracks. He turned to look into Borard’s dejected eyes.

  ‘You would rob us of our captain when our need is greatest,’ he said.

  ‘There are better men than I who can lead you,’ Raymond said weakly as he turned away from Borard’s accusatory gaze to look at Jarl Sigtrygg. The Ostman was almost at the gates and Raymond bared his teeth in desperation. In a few seconds his enemy would have made it to safety. In moments Geoffrey would be dead. ‘Sir Hervey wants command? Then I give it to him.’

  ‘Do you actually believe that Sir Hervey can lead us to victory over the host of Veðrarfjord? For not one other man here trusts that he can. Yet if you tell these hundred souls that you will lead them to success, they will trust you, Raymond, and they will fight beside you without a moment’s hesitation.’

  ‘I am not their lord,’ he protested as he hoisted himself up onto the top of the wall, throwing his right leg over so that it dangled over the wall. ‘They have given me no oath.’

  Borard smiled. ‘A good lord needs no oath and nor would a good soldier offer one. It is enough that we can trust each other to stand at his side no matter the odds. I have done that for you, Raymond de Carew. Now I need you to lock your shield to mine and to stand beside me. Here and now at Dun Domhnall.’

  Raymond paused as he sat astride the walls of his fort, his chin hitting his chest as he tried to decide what he should do. Below him, Alice still sobbed for her brother, inconsolable with Fionntán at her side. He raised his head and looked past her, down the length of the inner wall lined with archers. They were hard men, the Welsh, but each looked terrified as they watched Ragnall’s army approach. Those closest grabbed glances of their captain and Raymond felt the impulse to explain himself to them, to make sure that they understood that he was not running away, that he only intended to save his esquire. They would understand that he had a responsibility to the boy, he told himself. These men, he thought, who spoke a foreign tongue and had crossed the sea to a strange land on the promise from him, an invader of their country, that together they would win great riches. Those men would understand him leaving their side when faced with annihilation by an army twenty times larger than their own.

  ‘Damn you, Borard,’ Raymond whispered through gritted teeth and shifted his gaze towards the outer gates. Jarl Sigtrygg had reached the barbican and there he paused, turning towards Raymond, perched high above him. The Ostman’s small, angry eyes met those of the Norman.

  Jarl Sigtrygg did not smile as he did it, but neither did he take his implacable eyes off the Norman captain. The slice of the knife across Geoffrey’s throat was deliberate and slow and blood gushed from the wound and down Geoffrey’s surcoat. When it was done Jarl Sigtrygg cast the dying boy onto the ground. The jarl tarried a second longer, his eyes still locked on Raymond, before stepping backwards into the safety of the shadow cast by the barbican where no Welshman’s arrow could find him.

  By Raymond’s side, Alice again began to scream.

  Chapter Twelve

  Fionntán grabbed Alice and pressed her face to his shoulder. Her agonised moan was muffled, but the lithe Irishman did not wait for her to struggle, lifting her legs and marching away from the scene of Geoffrey’s death with Alice bundled up in his arms. As they passed Raymond, still astride the inner wall, Fionntán gave him a livid look.

  ‘I have her. You deal with the Dubhgall.’

  Raymond ignored him and reached for Alice. ‘I’ll kill Jarl Sigtrygg. I swear it! I will get revenge for Geoffrey.’ He twisted his seat on the wall in the hope of catching Alice’s notice, but she and Fionntán were already ten steps away, the archers moving out of their path as the Gael carried Alice towards the ladder and off the fighting platform.

  Shame, sorrow and jealousy scored through Raymond. He wanted to chase after Fionntán, to rip Alice from his grasp and explain himself to her, to apologise and to tell her that he should have acted faster to save Geoffrey, that he should have bartered or negotiated, or even challenged Jarl Sigtrygg to single combat rather than simply watching from the safety of the wall while her brother was murdered. Raymond’s chin dropped to his chest. He closed his eyes. Alice had trusted him and he had failed her. He knew that she would never forgive him.

  The noise from Ragnall’s army suddenly reached a crescendo and Raymond turned his head to look at the enemy multitude as they marched on his walls. They seemed to fill the entire headland as the warriors streamed down from the north. Steel links of Ostman armour and metal blades sparked under the late afternoon sun while their colourful circular shields revealed where the men of Veðrarfjord were deployed amongst the mass of Gaelic warriors. Raymond was awed by their number, by the noise issuing from their drums and horns, from the stomp of their feet and the bellow of their voices. For almost the first time in his life Raymond was wracked by indecision and doubt. He simply stared across the outer walls at Ragnall’s army without any thought of what he should do to stop the coming onslaught.

  From his vantage point, he could already make out the features of those closest. They were Ragnall’s Gaelic allies, judging by their dress, and they had quickly outpaced those more heavily armed behind them. They wore long shirts bound at the middle which, like their strangely trimmed hair, billowed in the wind as they dashed towards the Norman fort. Some had removed the top half of their clothing so that it hung from their belts around their bare legs. Raymond could hear pipes playing and spotted one of the bearded performers at the front of the charge, his instrument under his right arm and a heavy javelin in his left. As he watched, the piper pointed his weapon in the direction of Dun Domhnall’s outer barbican and, like a murmuration of roosting starlings, the Gaels followed his order and flocked towards the yawning gates.

  There would be no siege of his sea castle, Raymond realised, no pause for respite. Ragnall’s army would not call a halt to their advance outside bow range and there make camp as would any besieging force in Henry’s kingdom. There would be no envoys and no parley, no exchange of threats or bombastic claims of martial strength. There would be no enticements to surrender. Ragnall would not spend a moment constructing defensive ditches, inching forward day-by-day to increase the pressure on the defenders and the likelihood of assault on their walls. The Gael would not dig tunnels to undermine his walls. They would not build counter-castles or siege-towers. They would seek to destroy his fortress with an overwhelming deluge of men that would fall upon his walls like the Red Sea closing over the army of Egypt.

  The piper was still playing, his song a manic crow-caw of sounds only just audible above the tumult of men who dovetailed towards the gates. It was not only their leader who was ardent in his desire to attack. Raymond could see that
each of the Gaelic warriors competed to be the first to reach the walls. They saw no outcome other than the annihilation of Strongbow’s bridgehead. Raymond felt the anger rise again. His enemy felt that they only had to raise their hand and Dun Domhnall’s fortifications would fall. Using the taut rope in his left hand to steady him, Raymond clambered to his feet on top of the inner rampart. He felt the wind off the ocean catch his hair and his bright surcoat as he stood taller even than those men stationed on the barbican above the inner gate. He wished for the enemy to see that there were still fighting men behind the walls of Dun Domhnall. The tails of his crimson and gold surcoat flicked wildly. He could feel his own army’s eyes settle upon him and he drew his sword from his side and pointed it at the horde of Veðrarfjord.

  It was Borard – dependable, honest Borard – who first began to cheer, but his call was quickly taken up by the Welshman next to him and then the warrior beyond that began to hurl abuse in the enemies’ direction. Soon ten, and then twelve men, were shouting defiance over the timber embattlements, and Borard was walking down towards the inner barbican slapping men on the back and urging them to show the enemy that there was fight in Raymond’s army, that they would battle to the last man.

  Their captain stood tall, like a great battle standard which cast its shadow over half the bailey of Dun Domhnall. The bright colours on his chest reflected the sun’s orange rays so that it seemed like Raymond glowed with power. As he turned to cheer defiantly with his men, he caught sight of the herd of frightened cattle still bounded by the twisted wattle fence close to the cliffs. Their sight caused a ploy to form in his mind. Strands of other ideas gathered together into a coherent plan and he put his hand to the side of his mouth and screamed for Borard to attend him. Providence had sent him a strategy that would turn the tide in the Norman’s favour, and he prayed to St Maurice and St David that it had indeed been heaven that had sent him inspiration in his hour of need. For it was a most desperate gambit that he had concocted, and it was only with divine help that he believed it could work.