by Angus Donald
The Stoppers rushed forward as a tight group, myself in the lead, unsheathed sword in my right hand and poniard in my left. I cut hard at a man just as he was rising from the floor of the roof, hacking into his neck with my sword, and then whirled and plunged the poniard, underhand, into another man’s belly. I felt the hot spray of blood on my fist, twisted the foot-long blade and pulled it free. I blocked a cut at my head with my sword and punched forward again with my poniard, hearing a scream close to my ear as the blade licked into the flesh of a man’s upper leg. I was moving automatically, blocking and cutting, hacking and slashing, never still, always trying, as I had been taught, to think not about the move I was making at the time but about the counterstroke, the natural follow-on from a strike, and even sometimes the third and fourth plays as well.
I felt as if another man was controlling my body; the thousands of hours of training making my body move and react like some mechanical device. I had no thoughts in my head; I just cut, and parried and stabbed and dodged in the midst of my enemies. Blood spurted, men screamed, faces loomed before me and I smashed them away with my sword. I was aware that there were several enemy men-at-arms around me, behind me, but I left them for Reuben and the other Stoppers and cut my way forward, ever forward, hacking, grunting, heaving mail-clad men aside, heading straight for the ladder top which was still disgorging enemy men-at-arms. I nearly slipped on a slick of fresh blood, but recovered and pounded my sword hilt into a bearded face at the top of the ladder - he disappeared and I leaned out over the edge and cut down into the forearm of another man standing lower down clutching a rung. He screamed and fell away. An arrow whizzed past my face from the mound below and I jerked my head back from the ladder top. The blood was singing in my veins, I felt as if I was in the grip of a powerful apothecary’s drug; I could hear Reuben and the men behind me grunting and screaming as they fought enemies I had already wounded. But I ignored their struggles, trying to dislodge the ladder with my weapons still in my hands.
A man-at-arms already on the roof lunged suddenly towards me from the left, an axe in his bloodied hands, and I drove him away with two feints and then a flick-fast sword-lunge that opened his throat. As he dropped to his knees, gurgling and spewing blood, another head had appeared over the parapet, and I desperately turned and stabbed at his eyes with my dagger. He pulled back from the poniard thrust and swinging round I thumped my sword into the side of his helmeted head. I must have half-stunned him for he released his grip on the rung and dropped straight backwards like a stone, knocking the man below him off his precarious perch. As I peered over the battlements, I saw that the ladder was almost clear, save for a nervous man near the bottom, who was in no hurry to climb up to his death, and so I dropped my weapons at my feet and grabbing the wood, twisted the rungs at the top of the ladder, to the left and then right, until he jumped clear; then I hurled the wooden frame away from the walls with as much force as I could muster.
I gathered up my bloody blades and turned to see what had happened to my men. The roof was now thick with enemy dead - townsmen and men-at-arms, perhaps a dozen, lay entwined and still in their own gore, while few more men were twitching and groaning, flopping about in agony. One man-at-arms was on his knees, disarmed, badly wounded and being gradually hacked apart by two of the Jews, who were screaming in rage and holding their swords two-handed as they battered at his ripped chainmail, slicing into his naked hands as he tried to ward off their blows. The third Jew from my little troop of Stoppers was standing upright, swaying slightly, unbloodied sword by his side, a huge crimson stain in his side where an enemy sword had pierced him. He was dying on his feet, his eyes wide with fear as the dark, wet patch widened and grew until it soaked the whole side of his tunic. He dropped to his knees, then tipped over, face forward to the wooden roof, and lay still.
And then there was Reuben. Reuben was dueling with a mail-clad man-at-arms, no mere angry townsman with a rusty rake but a professional soldier. Reuben’s slim, girlish blade was everywhere, feinting high and cutting at his ankles, lunging for the eyes and then suddenly turning the blow into a sweep at the neck. He was masterful; I should have gone to his aid but it was clear that he did not need my help. The soldier had no chance, his clumsy swings with his heavy, straight-edged sword came nowhere near Reuben’s body. And then, in a flash, it was over: Reuben took two small steps forward, knocked the man’s weapon out of the way with a steely snap of his wrist and almost delicately passed his curved sword through his throat. The man dropped to one knee, white hands clasped at his neck, his life pissing away in great, spurting red arcs.
The attack was over, too. I could see defeated men - townsmen and men-at-arms — streaming back into the bailey, and looking over the parapet I saw the mounds of dead - scores and scores, some sprouting black quarrels like hedge pigs - and a host of wounded who were unable to walk. Many had broken legs from falling from the ladders. The Jews were unmerciful and Robin did not try to stop them. They loaded crossbows, leant out over the parapet and shot bolt after bolt into the injured men below. And then they hurled the enemy dead, and the wounded too, over the parapet to crash and roll down the grassy slope of the mound twenty feet below.
We had taken casualties as well. Apart from my Stopper, who was being tended to by his comrades, we had two dead men killed by thrown spears, one with a bad arrow wound and several men slashed by the swords of our attackers as they pushed the ladders away from the wall. But, all things considered, the damage done to us was slight; and we had held them off once again.
As the sun set on our battlefield, the mood in the Tower was fiercely defiant. The men had been attacked twice and had fought off their enemies with great courage. As always for me after battle, I felt a great wash of sadness, and was almost close to tears. And when the excitement was over, and my heart returned to its normal state, I felt a great weight on my soul; a sorrow for all those Christians who would never see another sunrise. I fell to my knees on that rooftop and prayed to Almighty God to receive the souls of the slain into His Grace, and to forgive them for their sins. I also offered up a small prayer of thanks for keeping me safe through the blood and carnage of that day. Then I began to clean and oil my weapons. I knew I would need them again before long.
Chapter Five
We kept watch that night, by companies - two companies on watch, one resting - but they did not come again. The enemy picket lines around the Tower remained; we could glimpse bodies moving about in the light of small campfires, but there was no attack. Instead, in the centre of the bailey courtyard, they built a great bonfire and by means of a tripod, they suspended a great cauldron over the blaze and filled it with river water. It took several hours for the water in the huge iron bowl to come to the boil, but by the time it was merrily bubbling away, a crowd had formed in the darkness around the fire and the great cooking pot. I had assumed that the Christians were making some great pottage to feed the hundreds that had gathered to watch the Jews in the Tower being murdered, but I was wrong. Horribly wrong.
In the crowd around the cauldron I saw two men in the dark vestments of priests and the tall figure of Sir Richard Malbête; one of the priests seemed to be holding a service of some sort, he was chanting psalms and leading the crowd in the recitation of prayers; then there was a ripple from the crowd and a large oddly shaped parcel was ejected from the mass and plumped down on the ground beside the bonfire. Then it moved and I saw that it was a girl, thin, terrified, badly beaten and tightly bound.
Someone gave a sharp cry of pain beside me on the parapet and I turned to see a portly Jew in a good quality robe, mouth hanging open in anguish, pointing out at the bailey and the girl bound on the ground. He was soon surrounded by his fellows who comforted him and tried to pull him away from the battlements. ‘It’s his daughter,’ said a voice beside me and I turned to see Robin, looking grim, and leaning on his bow staff. ‘Whatever they do to her, it’s not going to be good for him to see it,’ he said. His voice was icy and flat.
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nbsp; A young man leaned out over the wall and shouted into the darkness below in the direction of the nearest picket fire. ‘Hey, Christian! Hey, you.’
No reply. So the man leaned out even further, his comrades holding his legs. ‘Hey Christian, talk to me.’
There was a short silence and then a voice shouted back from the darkness. ‘What do you want, you damned Jew? Stop making so much noise and let us sleep.’
‘What’s going on in there, in the castle, they’ve got Mordecai the silversmith’s daughter; what are they going to do with her? Tell me, Christian, for the love of God, tell me. She is only ten years old, and has never hurt a soul.’
There was a muttered conference in the darkness below. Then there was raucous laughter and a new voice spoke. ‘She’s a dirty Jew and they are going to thoroughly wash her, you pig. They are going to baptise her, and send her soul to Jesus, who will no doubt take one look and send her to Hell where she belongs!’ There was more laughter, not a pleasant sound, a ragged cackling like the mirth of devils.
Robin and I stared over at the far side of the bailey, where the religious service seemed to be coming to an end. ‘How far would you say that distance was, Alan,’ Robin murmured to me, ‘here to the cauldron, two hundred and twenty-five yards?’ he might have been asking a question about the weather for all the emotion in his voice.
‘Nearer to two thirty, I’d say,’ I replied, trying to emulate his lack of concern. But then I was held in rapt horror by the unfolding scene before me.
As the two men-at-arms picked up the bound girl, her head fell back and I caught a flash of her white, terrified face as her dark hair tumbled behind her. The men-at-arms lifted her high, the priest made the sign of the cross, there were scattered shouts from the crowd - and with a heave they plunged her into the boiling water. I can hear her blood-curdling scream of utter torment even now after more than forty years. It shriveled my soul, my ball sack contracted violently and every muscle in my body became taught as iron. But beside me Robin was moving. As the awful howls of that scalded girl echoed round the Tower like a Banshee riding the wind, Robin had pulled an arrow from his bag, nocked it to the bow and loosed in one swift fluid movement. The arrow flew in a shallow arc, the white ash wood flashing as it passed through pools of light in the darkness and smacked home right on target into the chest of the unfortunate girl. The screaming ended as abruptly as if her head had been cut off with an axe. It was a staggering bowshot, impossibly accurate at that distance and in that light, miraculous, and yet Robin had made it. The figures around the cauldron were frozen in shock; one minute they had been watching a Jewish girl scream her lungs out in excruciating agony, the next she was a corpse floating in the bubbling water, bobbing in the roil like a loose white dumpling in a pan of stew.
Robin loosed again, and again his shot was almost supernatural. The arrow thumped home into the belly of the priest who had conducted the service; his horrified expression as a white shaft appeared in his fat stomach was truly comical, but as he stared down at his midriff in disbelief, the crowd realised the danger and split into fragments, finding cover where they could. There was no sign of Richard Malbête. Once again, at the first signs of trouble he had disappeared.
I heard Robin curse softly beside me, and turned to look at him. He was looking into his empty arrow bag and muttering to himself a stream of utterly foul obscenity. I saw then that he had only one arrow left, the one in his hand. He caught my eye, and shrugged, as he nocked it, and then he loosed it at a man-at-arms who was running across the bailey to the shelter of the chapel. The arrow took the man full in the back, even at two hundred yards piercing his chainmail hauberk and hurling him to the ground. He was still moving feebly but Robin ignored him and turned to me.
‘I should have brought more shafts, Alan. That was a mistake.’
‘We didn’t plan to fight a full-scale battle,’ I said.
‘True; but mistakes like that that can get a man quite badly killed.’ And then, with a wry smile, he turned away and made his way towards the staircase and the hall below.
I stayed at the wall, standing that whole night as a mad, pointless, utterly foolish tribute to that little girl; thinking about the her and the swift, merciful death that Robin had given her; and thinking of Sir Richard Malbête, too.
In the first grey light, Ruth came to me, bringing ale and bread, and I finally eased my stiff legs down, lowered my rump to the floor and began to eat. But I was started from my breakfast by the sound of trumpets. With my fellow warriors, I gathered at the parapet to watch a cavalcade of fifty knights and a hundred or so foot soldiers, followed by a great train of ox-wagons carrying what seemed to be huge squared lengths of timber, ride into the bailey through the eastern gate. Sir John Marshal had returned to his castle.
Feelings were mixed among the besieged Jews of the Tower: some men assumed that they were saved now that the King’s representative had returned; others of a darker cast of mind saw only reinforcements for our enemies.
‘At the least now we should be able to negotiate,’ said Reuben to me as we stood side-by-side, leaning on the battlements and looking over the bailey. He had brought his own breakfast and was munching on a crust as we surveyed the soldiers spilling into the courtyard. Directly below us the bodies of the dead lay undisturbed, except by the ravens who had gathered in their scores and who pecked at Christian flesh with a glassy avian disregard for human dignity.
‘May I see your sword,’ I asked Reuben presently. And he obligingly pulled the slim curved blade from its ornate scabbard and passed it hilt first to me. It felt light, too light in my hand. I made a few experimental passes in the air. It was like waving an ash wand; it had none of the brute power of my own weapon. But, by God, a man could strike fast with this blade. Then Reuben took a flimsy silk scarf from around his neck and asked me to hold out the sword at arm’s length. He held the scarf over the weapon and dropped it. The silk was cut in two, merely by its own weight. I was astounded. I had never seen a blade as keen in my life; I tested the edge of the sword and immediately cut deep into the ball of my thumb. Sucking the injured digit ruefully, I asked Reuben where he had obtained such a fine weapon.
‘It is a scimitar, in the Arabian pattern,’ he replied, not quite answering my question. ‘If we live through this siege and you travel with the King to Outremer, you will see many more swords of this type - and perhaps you may wish you had not. It is a common weapon in the great army of the warlord you Christians call Saladin.’
I asked him again, looking directly at him: ‘But where did you get it?’
He sighed. ‘Where do you think I am from, Alan?’
‘Why, York, of course. Although I have heard it said that you also have a dwelling in Nottingham.’
‘Look at my skin, my eyes, my hair - do I look as if I come from the north of England?’ he said.
‘Well, you are a Jew,’ I said, acknowledging the hazelnut hue of his face and his midnight eyes, ‘so I suppose that at one time your family must have come from the Holy Land.’
‘Do I resemble these others?’ he indicated the Jews at the battlements beside us.
‘Of course, well, a little ... actually, not very much.’ I could not believe that I had not noticed it before but Reuben was much darker than all the other Jews; some of the crossbowmen at the battlements had red-gold hair, some even had blue eyes.
‘We are all equally the children of Israel,’ Reuben said, ‘but these good Jews are from northern France and their families lived there for many generations before they came to try their luck in England.’
‘So you are from Outremer?’ I asked. I was fascinated. I had never really thought about Reuben’s antecedents before, He had just been Robin’s friend, the Jew, the merchant and moneylender from York. To hail from Outremer, where Christ’s blessed feet had walked, the sacred land of John the Baptist, and Moses, and King David, and Samson and Delilah, and all those other figures from the Bible ... it seemed impossibly exotic and mysterious.
‘I am of the Temanim, a Jew from the far south. I come from a land far beyond Outremer, which the Arabs call al-Yaman — it was once known as the land of the Queen of Sheba,’ he said, a note of pride in his voice.
This seemed even more fabulous. Beyond Outremer? He might have said that he came from the Moon. Tuck had told me the story of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, but it had all seemed so long ago, so far away. A legend. It was as if I had just come face to face with a unicorn.
‘What is it like - al-Yaman?’ I asked, stumbling over the unfamiliar name, but imagining a perfumed land flowing with rivers of wine, where jewels grew in the earth like flowers, and sweet cakes grew on trees.
‘It’s a desert, mostly, sand and rock and merciless sun. But it is home, I suppose, in a way. Or it would be home if any of my family still lived.’
I said nothing at this point, and just stared at him, willing him to tell me the story; listening with my eyes. He smiled at me again, indicated that we should sit with a graceful wave of his hand, and then, settling himself down, with his back to the battlements, his beautiful sword across his knees, he began.
‘My father, may his soul rest with God, was a sword-maker. He made this very weapon,’ he said laying a hand reverently on the ornate silver-chased scabbard. ‘We were a wealthy family, business was very good, and for the most part there was harmony between the Jews of our town and the Arabs. I was trained in the use of arms by the best teachers my father’s money could buy; and taught languages - Greek and Latin - as well as history, philosophy, a little medicine and courtly manners. I was happy. It was my father’s dream that I should be a gentleman, a poet perhaps, or a musician like you, Alan, not an artisan, not a sword-smith such as himself, sweating over a forge fire all day in a leather apron. And I was content with that ambition; I attended the best parties, mixed with the sons of other rich men, and there was talk of a marriage between myself and the daughter of a wealthy merchant from a neighbouring town. Life was very good.’ He paused here and closed his eyes, savouring that youthful happiness for a moment or so. Then he continued. ‘When I was sixteen, a wandering Muslim cleric came to our town. He was dressed almost in rags, but his eyes burned with passion and he preached with great eloquence to the faithful in the local mosque. His preaching was considered sublime; people came from far and wide to hear his words. He was inspired by the Prophet himself, praise be upon him, the people said. But what he preached was purity. Only by keeping himself pure, he said, could a Muslim reach paradise at the end of his life. Only by living a saintly life and eschewing all defilement, could a true Muslim honour God in the proper way. All impurity was to be shunned; it must be swept away, banished, and if it could not be banished then it must be destroyed. And we Jews, said this so-called holy man, were impure.’