He passed unnoticed between a long, low stone building and the corner of the keep, and was swallowed up by the blackness beyond. The darkness here was total. No lights burned. The cold light of the moon did not penetrate, nor the glow of the distant flames. He was in the Tower’s cold shadow.
As his eyes grew accustomed to the inky black, he began to make out shapes over by the outer wall: a couple of wagons, a heap of rubble, a jumble of upended wooden planking – evidently for the use of the masons and labourers working on the new fortifications. This was, for the most part, a forgotten place. A dumping ground. Beneath his feet, the iron-hard ground was uneven, the ruts dotted here and there with brittle, icy puddles and dusted with undisturbed snow. The ground was also higher here than at any other point about the keep’s walls. It was this fact that brought him here.
Upon reaching the halfway point of the keep’s wall, he set his back hard against the stone, walked a carefully measured number of paces from it, then stopped and turned. He heaved the crossbow off his shoulder and slid the rope carefully off his arm, placing both upon the frozen ground. With the outer rampart to his back, and the White Tower’s north wall filling the view before him, he finally straightened and allowed his eyes to wander over the soaring stonework, all the way up to the battlements. The air around him was still; the shouts and curses outside the quiet enclave seemed far distant. From somewhere wafted the dank smell of human waste. High above and to his left, he could now see a dim light in one of the upper windows. Now, so close to his goal, the seeming impossibility of the task struck him full force. Suddenly, he was painfully aware of every physical limitation: the cold sweat beneath his arms, the stiffness in his left shoulder, the smallness of his body before this unending slab of stone. He flexed his muscles and stretched his arms, as if pushing the thoughts from him. He could not let doubt get in the way of action. Not now. This was the lowest section of the keep’s walls. The equipment was built for the task. He had prepared and tested everything a dozen times, and nothing now was any different from every one of those successful attempts in the forest. He need only keep a clear head, and repeat everything as he had done before.
Taking a deep breath of the cold, clammy air, he stooped, raised the crossbow on its end, and began to turn the windlass, leaning into it with all his weight as the bow reached its limit and the rhythmic, dull clicks of wood against metal slowed to a stop.
“Hey!”
At the sudden cry, he almost dropped the weapon. To his right, silhouetted against the feeble light from the courtyard, stood a figure of a man. By his outline, a tower guard, a conical helm upon his head, a crossbow across one arm.
“What’re you doing here in the dark?” came the voice. It was jovial rather than challenging; even now, even here, he had aroused little more than bemused curiosity. He might have only moments before it coalesced into suspicion. A wave of something like regret, or even sadness passed through him as he laid the primed weapon gently upon the ground and turned towards the guard. The man before him had no idea what he faced, or what was coming. As he strolled towards him, he heard the man actually laugh, as if expecting to share a joke – or perhaps it was because the man had finally taken in his oddly macabre appearance. Then, as he neared, he could discern the man’s features clearly enough to make out a frown just seconds before he smashed his forehead into the guard’s face. The guard collapsed heavily, his helm bowling across the hard ground, a sound of laboured, sticky breathing coming from him as he slumped.
There was no time for internal debate now. Crouching on one knee, he hastily arranged the coiled rope to ensure there were no snags, then loaded the shaft of the metal hook into the crossbow. He set one end of the weapon on the ground, his right foot behind it, and raised it until the angle satisfied him. This was the critical moment: too high and it would fall short of the battlement. Too low and it would glance off the stone. At ninety feet, this was at the very limit of even this weapon’s effective range; the projectile was heavy, the drag of the trailing rope severe. The rope had been made as thin as possible to reduce weight, but that also made it more likely to catch in the wind, or to become tangled in itself as it unfurled. If either happened, it would fail; and there would be no second chances. He held his breath.
The guard groaned and shifted where he lay. He would come to in minutes. But by that time, his quarry would be long gone.
Still not daring to breathe, he released the trigger. The crossbow thudded, recoiling violently against his foot. The bolt flew, the slender rope whipping freely into the air in its wake. For a moment he lost sight of it completely, and was gripped by panic. Then he heard a dull impact far above – the sound of metal against stone, muffled by leather. He pulled upon the rope. It gave, slackened suddenly, stopped again – then held. He pulled it taut, able now to pick out its curved line snaking up to the battlement high above and slightly to his left. Going hand over hand, he kept the strain on the rope as he hurried to the wall, then, in the moment of truth, put one foot upon the stonework, pressed the spikes in the palms of his gauntlets firmly into the rope’s fibres, and allowed it to take his whole weight. He felt it stretch – but it did not give.
Slowly, he began to climb.
IV
JOHN BREKESPERE WAS tying up his breeches when the sky caught fire. A moment before, he’d been quietly relieving himself in the crook of the north wall and the northeast tower, contemplating the hot steam rising from the icy stone, when a distant, dull crash intruded upon his meditation. It was at once familiar and strangely incongruous. A cooking pot? A flagon of the prince’s wine? He couldn’t quite imagine it being either, at this time of night. He pitied the poor sod who’d let it slip, whatever it was. Then, as he’d finished, there had been cry of alarm from somewhere near the river, and before he could turn, the entire expanse of the stonework before him was lit by orange flame. He wheeled around, baffled, gaping across the sunken, pitched roofs of the keep to see huge tongues of fire leaping above the darkly silhouetted parapet opposite – so fierce he fancied he could feel their heat upon his face.
At first, he had the bizarre impression that the south wall of the White Tower itself was ablaze. Only gradually did he realise that the conflagration – whose roar he could now hear, as well as he could see the flames – was somehow situated on the river. The sound was now interspersed with distant shouts which grew rapidly in urgency and number, expanding from their point of origin until it seemed they were coming from every part of the inner ward below, and spreading like a flame up and along the adjacent battlements. Instinctively, fearing some kind of attack (Longchamp?), he roughly knotted the laces on his breeches and set off in a heavy, flat-footed run along the walkway towards the southern rampart. Glancing across to the west, he couldn’t see any guards on the far side of the northwest tower. Nor could he see one at the southwest turret. All, he supposed, among the cluster of figures he saw arrayed along the southern battlement overlooking the river, starkly silhouetted against the glow. His big, numb feet almost skidded from under him as they made clumsy contact with the uneven, slippery stone. He wasn’t made for running at the best of times, and the narrow walkway – its surface now turned to ice, and with a fresh dusting of snow – was hardly conducive to it, either.
The thin, worn soles of his boots lost their feeble grip again and he slithered perilously close to the edge, his arse clenching as he righted himself awkwardly with his flailing spear. What a ridiculous way to go... The thought came in such a bizarrely detached manner that it actually made him chuckle. I survive the Hell’s oven of Hattin, only to end my days slipping on ice and dashing my bloody brains out on the roof of the King’s chamber. For a moment the possibility struck him that, given his weight, he might crash right on through it. If he landed on their royal guest and survived, he thought that might be worse.
Finally reaching the southern rampart without either fate befalling him, he grabbed at the frozen wall of the southeastern tower for support. If it had been possible, h
e’d have hugged it. As he crept around it to join his fellows, some impulse made him glance back across the roofs toward the post he had just abandoned. He wasn’t entirely sure what made him do that. Some movement or sound, he later thought. But there was nothing. Turning back, he jostled with his comrades, staring out over the blazing hulk of the ship, immersed in their various exclamations of bafflement and defiance.
Within this – though none spoke of it – was a sense of apprehension. Nothing was following in the wake of this inferno. There was no assault, no act of violence, not even a specific enemy that any could identify or respond to. All attempts to form a plan of action were frustrated before they began. They could only stand uselessly and wait for what happened next – if there was anything. Already, the possibility of it being a tragic accident was being entertained among one or two of the more optimistic men gathered on the parapet.
Nevertheless, an inexplicable and deep sense of unease was growing in John Brekespere’s mind – something that nagged and nagged and shouted at him to return to his station. He glanced briefly back again. His vision, dazzled by the brightness of the flames, struggled to penetrate the gloom – but in that glance he swore he saw, in the flickering half-light at the edge of his vision, some dark thing slither over the battlement and crouch motionless upon the walkway. He felt his flesh creep, and the hair on the back of his head bristle. He lowered his eyes, blinked hard, trying to clear his vision, and looked back. Of the black shape, there was now no sign.
The impression had been fleeting, only forming fully in his mind once he had looked away. But the unsettling image would not leave him. Without a word, his mouth suddenly dry, he turned and began to walk steadily back to the north wall.
While the hazardous, headlong run along the eastern rampart had felt all too hectic, the return journey seemed almost supernaturally slow. It was like something in a dream – a weirdly still moment during which every possible explanation flitted through his mind. Rats. A raven. Something blown by the wind. One by one he tried to make the explanations fit what he had seen. But the shape was far bigger than any of those creatures, and the wind was now barely more than a breeze. With the attention of the world entirely elsewhere, he felt a sudden sense of dreadful isolation, and an inexplicable dread, as of some impending disaster. With each step, tales of the vengeful ghosts and malevolent demons that were said to stick to the stones of this place crowded his brain.
All this time, his eyes had been fixed on the walkway of the northern wall, scanning it for something – anything. But nothing had moved. Nothing was out of the ordinary. As he approached the northeast tower, he realised that his pace had unconsciously quickened, to the extent that, as he rounded its curving wall, he was almost breaking into a run.
The dark figure was suddenly inches from him – appearing so unexpectedly, as if out of nowhere, that he had to draw up sharply to avoid crashing into it. For a moment he balanced unsteadily on his toes, eyes wide, mouth open, staring straight into the shadowy features.
“Get down there and help with that fire!” barked the man, gesturing impatiently towards the northeast tower. John Brekespere flushed hot with embarrassment as recognition of the face sank in. Responding instantly to the voice of command, hoping to make amends by the swiftness of his compliance, he muttered feebly in acknowledgement and ducked away through the tower’s low doorway, hurrying down the narrow, spiralling steps.
Shit, shit, shit... He cursed his own stupidity as his big feet stumbled clumsily down the cramped stone stairs, his spear clattering awkwardly against the curved wall. What an idiot. He’d been caught on the hop. For the first time in his life he’d abandoned his post without being ordered to do so – a cardinal sin – and had been found out. What had he been thinking? But a kind of relief washed over him too. He’d let his imagination get the better of him up there. After all he’d been through in his life, to be spooked by shadows... To his surprise, he found himself laughing at the thought. He’d get a bollocking for this, all the same. Maybe in all the confusion it’d be overlooked – though that depended, he supposed, on what happened next. And how forgiving the man on the battlements was. He just hoped that the knight – he must be a knight; that much was obvious from his tone – was fair-minded. In his experience, though, knights were rarely as fair-minded as they fancied themselves. So, who was this one again? Some part of him had instantly acknowledged the man’s face as familiar. Now he thought about it, though, he couldn’t quite place it. One of Prince John’s men? If so, what was he doing up here? What was his rank? His name? His attire was rather odd, he now realised. The material of a strange sort. Not really like anything he’d seen before. Certainly not about the Tower...
As he descended the relentlessly turning stairs towards the foot of the tower, the growing doubts that spiralled around and around in his head were, he now understood, leading him towards a single, inevitable and ghastly conclusion. He was overwhelmed by a sick, hot feeling; a feeling like molten lead pouring into his stomach. The feeling that he had just made the worst decision of his entire life.
Before he could think further, the stocky figure of William Puintellus, red-faced and literally roaring with consternation, barged into him and past him and charged on up the ill-lit stairs. He was followed closely by a crossbowman named Thomas, who John Brekespere knew well, but for a confused moment struggled to recognise; the man’s face was deathly pale, his eyes red-rimmed and swollen, his nose smashed, blackened and bloody, with everything beneath it from lip to waist glistening red in the dim glow of the flambeaux. In his white-knuckled, blood-flecked hands he clutched a crossbow, cocked and loaded. Once again that night, John Brekespere turned back to return the way he had just come, blundering behind his furious master and feeling sicker with each rising step.
On the battlements, at that part of the king’s palace which John Brekespere was solely charged to protect, his worst fears were realised. Between the third and fourth merlon he could now make out a slim, dark protrusion hooked over the edge of the stone. Puintellus grabbed at it: a long, slender grapple to which was attached a rope, and which to Brekespere’s increasingly baffled eyes appeared to be made of brown leather. Puintellus, purple with rage, hurled the hook back over the battlements with a cry of disgust and, drawing his sword, ran for the northwest tower.
When they reached the king’s chamber, the door was already open. Five more guards were approaching in haste from the other direction, but Puintellus did not hesitate. He barged on through, sending the heavy door crashing back on its hinges – then stopped so suddenly that both Brekespere and his bloodied comrade Thomas cannoned into the back of him. The three of them stood, wide-eyed, motionless, barely breathing, transfixed by the sight that met them. Into the back of them crashed the arriving reinforcements – then they, too, stopped dead, the heat from the chamber’s log fire flooding past their still bodies as it was sucked into the cold passageway.
In the fire’s flickering glow – dressed in a loose, green robe and seated in a chair that had been deliberately turned from the hearth to face the door – was Prince John, the flames glinting in his dark eyes, his hair hanging loose about his shoulders. His expression was unaccountably calm, under the circumstances. For, across his throat, its edge resting against the exposed white flesh beneath the neatly trimmed beard, gleamed the double-edged blade of a broadsword – and gripping it, looming over the prince like a great shadow, stood the Devil.
John Brekespere wondered how he had ever let himself think the intruder’s appearance was normal. Here, in this ordered, serene interior, the figure now seemed outlandish. He was tall and broad-shouldered, garbed in a cloak belted at the waist, and hooded like the habit of some dark monk. Its material, Brekespere now saw, was thick – like leather – but of such a rich black that it seemed to render the wearer hardly more than a shadow, possessing about it a kind of velvety sheen, like the feathers of a crow. In the midst of this shadow, though hardly detracting from its nightmare qualities, hovered an e
ntirely normal, human face. Its features were chiselled and handsome, but hard and impassive – as only those tempered in battle could be – and to Brekespere, still troublingly familiar. But there was one final, bizarre detail that completed the overall impression, that almost made Brekespere shudder to look upon: from the hood of this grim figure, silhouetted in the low glare, protruded two leathery, black points like shrivelled ears, looking for all the world like the tiny horns of some demonic creature.
Brekespere could only stare, his flushed, sweating face that of a man who was watching his life collapse in smouldering ruins before his eyes. The intruder had made no demands, nor given any clue to his identity or purpose. But of one fact Brekespere was now certain: that the prince would be killed before they could do anything to prevent it, his white throat slit open in one swift movement, the hot blood splattering upon the stones. Poor Thomas – eyes still streaming, crossbow ready but only half-raised – seemed impossibly torn between surrender and action, bereft both of orders or any independent grasp of what it was they faced. Even the normally pragmatic Puintellus stood stunned and useless, quivering with indecision, as if he, in turn, were awaiting some word from his royal master.
Word did not come. Instead, an entirely unexpected sound issued from prince’s throat. A chuckle. Then a snort of gleeful amusement. And finally, a belly laugh – and a slow clap of congratulation. The dark figure withdrew the sword, placing its point to the floor, both hands resting gently upon the pommel, while Prince John, still applauding, rose from his chair.
“Good, good!” he said as his laughter subsided, and turned a small circle, beaming his smile alternately between the black figure and the stunned guards. He spoke in English, ensuring that the whole group could understand him. “You may stand your men down, Sir William,” he added, and waved a dismissive hand. “Things are not as they seem.” The clenched figures in the doorway visibly slackened. Weapons were lowered. Shoulders slumped. Brekespere seemed actually to diminish in size. But if anything, the draining of tension from the knot of men only allowed their utter bafflement to show through all the more. Puintellus, still flabbergasted, moved his mouth as though to respond – but no sound emerged.
Guy of Gisburne- The Omnibus Page 3