“Here they come, boys,” I said, and we stood to protect Ralph and Richard as they worked on the door.
My sword was an unlovely and ill-balanced thing, but its weight felt good in my hand as I drew in anger for the first time. Two lanky youths stormed towards me, stable lads smeared in shit and with wisps of straw in their hair, but some of their eagerness died when they saw the bright blade in my hand.
The one on the left threw down his fork and fled wailing into the night. “A long life and a happy one,” I called after him, but the other lifted his fork and clumsily stabbed the prongs at my face. I side-stepped, slashing at his hands, and he screamed as my blade skinned his knuckles. That proved the limit of his courage, and he also ran away, whimpering and clutching his bleeding hand.
I looked to see how my companions were faring. A couple of over-eager grooms were lying in the mud with broken heads, and the rest of Sir Henry’s people milled about us, torn between loyalty to their lord and aversion to pain.
By now the axes had done their work, and the Bastard managed to jam his sword through one of the cracks in the timber and lever the cross-bar out of its sockets. He kicked the broken door in and ran inside, followed by Richard and my brother.
“Go after them,” said John Heym, a rat-like little man with pale eyes, “we can hold off these clods.”
I nodded gratefully, and ran through the doorway.
Somerton Hall had been built shortly after the Conquest, and the hall was a testament to its age. The massive rafters in the high, vaulted roof were blackened by generations of cooking fires, and the wall hangings woven with images of various Somertons hunting, jousting, feasting, wedding and dying.
The Bastard was already at hand-strokes with his brother. They were going hard at it in the middle of the hall, just below the dais where their father no doubt used to sit and contemplate how lucky he was to have two fine sons.
The contest was unequal, for Edmund was in full harness while Henry wore nothing but his shift, though he wielded an ancient broadsword that had probably belonged to their great-grandsire. His fierce blows scraped and rebounded off the Bastard’s metal shell, leaving scores and dents but doing no harm to the man inside.
Henry’s wife, a skinny black-haired creature, was screaming her head off at the foot of the stairs. Richard had her in a tight embrace, pinning her arms, though she was doing her best to struggle free by kicking his shins. I looked around for Ralph, and saw him standing guard over a frightened greybeard and two cowering old women. He had found an apple, and took bites from it as he idly watched the fight.
It was over quickly. The Bastard was a far inferior swordsman, but only had to be lucky once, and I winced as his sword plunged into Henry’s chest.
The lord of Somerton Hall groaned, his sword clattering on the flagstones as it dropped from his nerveless fingers. His life’s blood gushed from the fatal wound, staining his shift red, and his wife’s screams threatened to crack the ceiling.
Flushed with his victory, the Bastard gave his brother’s twitching body a kick and turned to deal with his wife. Richard still held her, and she was powerless to avoid what came next. The Bastard’s sword cleaved her skull in two, and Richard cried out in disgust as he was showered with gore. He released her body and it flopped to the floor like a ghastly, blood-spattered doll.
This time I did feel something at the sight of violent death. The filthy, needless murder disgusted me, and my belly cramped, threatening to make me vomit.
“Shut up,” Ralph ordered the three old servants, who had burst into tears, but his voice lacked conviction.
The Bastard was not a sensitive soul, but he could read the doubt in our eyes. “Well?” he demanded, as he wiped the blood from his sword with a hank of the dead woman’s hair. “Stop looking at me like that, unless you want to get one with this!”
The oaf shook his sword at us. A tense silence fell, punctuated by the whimpering of the servants, the muted hubbub from outside, and the slow drip of blood on the flagstones.
“If that mob outside learn what has happened here,” I said, “they might well go berserk, and they outnumber us three to one. Well done.”
He turned on me, snarling, and Ralph moved to bar his way. “Back, fool,” he warned, jutting out his chin, “you’ll shed no more blood tonight. I will, though, if you try anything against my brother.”
The Bastard looked at us both, his mismatched eyes flickering in their sockets like flies trapped in a jar, and for the first time that night made a wise decision. He lowered his sword and stepped back.
“You said you wanted to hold the knight and his wife to ransom,” said Richard in his slow, deliberate way. “You said nothing about killing them.”
“What do you care?” the Bastard cried. “I employed you to do a job, not lecture me on my conduct!”
“The Sheriff will care,” I said, “he won’t be able to ignore the murder of a knight and his wife. We’re dead men, thanks to you.”
“This is my house!” he shouted, “mine! I have done nothing but claim my lawful rights!”
It was only then I realised his mind was cracked, and that we had allowed ourselves to be led into danger by a madman.
“I wish you joy of your house,” I said, sheathing my sword, “for however long you can keep it. Alone.”
“Well spoken,” said Ralph. Richard looked uncertain, but my brother took him by the elbow and together we all three headed for the door.
“Go, then,” the Bastard cried as we showed him our backs, “cowards, traitors! Not a penny of my money shall you see! Nor shall you have anything from this house!”
We left him there, in the company of corpses and the shade of his father. The last words I heard him utter in this world were “My house! Mine! Mine!” over and over again.
We got out of Somerton Hall easily enough, for the people of the house scattered out of our path. Moments after we ran out of the gate a great wail sounded from inside, and I guessed that the slaughtered bodies of Sir Henry and his poor wife had been discovered. I didn’t learn the fate of the Bastard until much later.
“To the forest,” I suggested as we briefly paused for breath. The ominous silhouette of Somerton Hall was behind us, looking more like some devil-haunted fortress than ever.
“Why?” asked James, and I looked at his brutish face with exasperation.
“What do you think will happen now?” I demanded impatiently, “the people of the hall will carry the news of the murder back to Warwick. None of us wielded the sword that killed Sir Henry and his wife, but we were accessories. We must lie low for a while, until the storm has broken. The forest is our best refuge.”
“You mean live rough, like an animal?” said James, “to hell with that. Winter’s coming on. I’ll take my chances with the hangman rather than die of pneumonia.”
John Heym supported him, and a furious row broke out. They wanted to seek shelter in their home villages, which I thought was folly, but they were adamant. In the end, we let them go.
“Bastards,” spat Ralph as we watched the pair hurry away into the night, “James and John, a proper pair of disciples. I hope they die in a ditch.”
That left four of us, me and Ralph, the giant Richard Kelleshull, and Thomas Bacon, who was nervous about the servant he had knocked down.
“I split his head open,” he gibbered, “I didn’t mean to. He came at me with a rake, so I rapped him on the head with the flat of my sword. He went down, bleeding, and didn’t move again. Oh my God. Maybe I killed him.”
“Maybe you did,” Ralph sighed. We had been on our feet all night, blundering through the dark, wet woods south of the Hall, looking for any adequate shelter against the rain. The search had failed, for we were no woodsmen, and we were cold, hungry, tired and terrified.
I could hear Thomas’s teeth chattering. “They hang murderers. They will hang me!”
“Maybe they will,” my brother repeated. He was never much for giving comfort to others, and I sympathise
d, for we had enough to fret about. Sensing our mood, Thomas piped down, and confined himself to muttering fearful prayers under his breath.
3.
You have heard the English greenwood tales of Robin Hood and Gamelyn, Froissart? Of course you have, and probably the similar tales of Witasse le Moine in France, but a velvet-bottomed bastard like you will have never experienced the reality of living in the forest.
Let me tell you what it’s like. We lived in the forest for barely two months, surviving on what we could scavenge, huddling in caves or shelters that we made with our own hands, rickety dens of branches and leaves that any competent forester would have laughed to scorn.
The merry life of the greenwood reduced us to walking cadavers, hollow-eyed and gaunt from lack of sleep, our lean bellies aching from a diet of nettles and berries, leavened by the occasional rabbit too slow or stupid to avoid our clumsy snares. We stank, and our clothes stuck to us. They were shabby, torn and rotting, but we had nothing else.
We delved into the heart of the forest, thinking that the Sheriff would not dare to come looking for us there. No-one goes into the old forest unless they have no choice, for it is a place of shadows, monsters and whispering spirits, the last refuge of the pagan gods that ruled this island before the coming of Christ.
The green labyrinth was bearable during daylight hours, but at night we huddled together, praying like monks against a world of sin. October brought with it wind and rain, adding fresh torments to the miserable deprivation of forest-dwelling, and then came the snows of November.
“Perhaps James and John had the right of it,” said Ralph as we sat and shivered under a crude canopy of leaves and branches, “better to risk death in the warm than die by inches in the cold.”
Rather than linger and die in the deep forest, we decided to go in search of some barn or cottar’s hut that we might take refuge from the foul weather in. Anything with a roof and four walls. It was our only hope of life, but proved to be our undoing.
After some days of futile wandering, we found a grange on the fringes of the forest, a set of ruined outbuildings and storerooms that had once belonged to a local abbey. We made camp in the best-preserved of the outbuildings, a long, low shed that had once been used as a cattle byre.
God forgive us, but we were foolish enough to stay there for three days, and make fires to cook a brace of rabbits Ralph had been lucky enough to catch in his snares. Nothing could have been more stupid, but our minds were clouded by cold and exhaustion.
I did at least think to set a watch over the door. On the third night Ralph volunteered to take the first shift while the rest of us sank into a coma-like sleep by the fire, steam rising from our bodies.
The next thing I knew someone was shaking me, and I surfaced to the unwelcome sight of Ralph’s anxious, pockmarked face just inches from mine. He looked panic-stricken, which was unusual for him, and his eyes were filled with fear.
“Up, up!” he was shouting. “They have come for us!”
I scrambled groggily to my feet, buckling on my sword belt with clumsy fingers, while he yelled and put his boot into the ribs of Richard and Thomas, still snoring gently by the smouldering remains of the fire.
Ralph’s warning was far too late. I caught a glimpse of sunlight on steel outside, and heard a man’s voice, high-pitched and nasally.
“Lay down your arms, and surrender your bodies. If you refuse, my men kill the lot of you.”
Richard and Thomas were up now, looking baffled and rubbing the sleep from their eyes, while Ralph stamped on the fire.
“What good is that now?” I shouted at him, and jerked my thumb at the door. “How many are outside?”
“Many,” he replied, which was ominous, for he could only count to ten. Besides which, after weeks of privation we were in no condition to fight. A band of schoolboys armed with sticks could have taken us.
“We’ll have to go out,” I said, unbuckling my sword belt and letting it drop to the floor.
I expected a defiant response from Ralph, but he suddenly looked tired and beaten, while Richard had tears glimmering in his red-rimmed little eyes.
“I fell asleep during my watch,” said Ralph, “and they came on us while I slept. I’m sorry.”
Only Thomas showed any willingness to fight. “No,” he whispered, fumbling with his dagger as he backed away to the far wall, “they can’t have me. They will hang me! They hang murderers!”
“Stay, then, and die.”
I was the first out, blinking in the sudden glare of the sun as I ducked through the low doorway. Rough hands seized my arms and dragged me to one side, allowing four burly mailed soldiers to rush into the building, swords drawn. The edge of a knife was pressed to my throat, and I found myself staring into the malicious eyes of a beefy-faced sergeant.
The sound of raised voices and the scrape of steel came from inside our shelter, followed by a bubbling scream, and I guessed that Thomas had avoided hanging after all.
“Let me have a look at him,” said the nasally voice, and the man holding me stepped aside, though he kept his knife at my throat.
The owner of the voice was a tall arrogant-looking fellow perched high on a white destrier. He wore gleaming harness, and his fingers were curled about the grip of a beautiful silver-mounted sword in a black scabbard. Behind him were twenty sergeants in leather brigandines and kettle hats, mounted on rounceys.
I had seen the tall man several times before, cantering through the streets of Warwick with his pale nose in the air. He was Thomas de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick and High Sheriff of Warwickshire, veteran of Crecy and Poitiers and killer of more Frenchmen than the plague. He looked down at me with an expression of utter contempt on his narrow face, and then at Ralph and Richard as they were brought out of the byre, their hands bound behind their backs.
My eye was drawn from him to a crook-backed man in filthy rags standing next to Beauchamp’s destrier. His wrist was tied to the saddle via a length of knotted rope.
“You promised me a pardon if I brought you to them,” this one said eagerly, the grimy seams of his face creasing in hope, “I have fulfilled my side of the bargain.”
“So you have,” replied Beauchamp, “and shall have your pardon, as long as you vow to quit my county and never return.”
He looked well pleased with himself. “Soon I shall be rid of one poacher, and have four murderers in my gaol.”
“Three, lord,” said one of the sergeants who had entered the byre, as he wiped his bloody dagger with a cloth, “one of them showed fight, so we killed him.”
Beauchamp shrugged. “Three, then. We already have the shepherd, who cares how many of his sheep we round up?”
“You have caught Dalrigge?” I dared to ask, and was rewarded by the beefy sergeant driving his beefy fist into my gut.
“Condemned and hanged ten days ago,” said Beauchamp as I buckled to my knees, gasping for air, “the people of Somerton Hall delivered him to me. Tomorrow you shall join him in feeding the crows.”
4.
The coarseness of the rope bit deep into my neck, forcing me to stand on tiptoe and gasp for breath.
“May God have mercy on your soul,” said the priest, an unshaven, dog-faced fellow in a grubby cassock, standing at the foot of the scaffold in Warwick market square. He made the sign of the cross, stifled a yawn and flicked a few drops of holy water in my direction.
“Die like a man,” whispered Ralph, who was standing next to me on the platform. I swallowed, wincing at the pain of the rope constricting my throat, and managed to gasp out a few last words.
“What else can I die as, you bloody fool?”
The young knight who acted as the Sheriff’s deputy nodded at the hooded hangman, who kicked away the stool I was standing on. I dropped, and pain like I have never known before or since bit deep into my flesh. My legs kicked madly in thin air, provoking a desultory cheer from the spectators crowded into the square.
The last thing I saw before my vision
filled with blood and faded to black, was the rotting body of the Bastard of Somerton suspended in an iron cage above the scaffold.
Well, they hanged me, and the thread of my life should have been cut there and then, in Warwick market. But God or the Devil intervened, and I woke up to searing pain and the sound of a man singing and plucking at a harp.
The ring of fire constricting my throat prevented me from appreciating it, but the voice had a deep and pleasant timbre, and the place and events he sang of were familiar.
“To Somerton Hall they came by night,
And there the lord they slew,
Pity him, the good young knight,
Through the breast they ran him through.
But slain before he was,
He fought against them manfully,
Unarmed as he was,
His lady cried and shrieked withal,
When as from her they led
Her dearest husband into the hall
And there cut off her head.”
The singer plucked a little arpeggio to accompany the last line. “Not bad, not bad at all,” he said. His voice was that of a nobleman, cultured and educated, and with a pronounced lisp.
I coughed as I tried to draw in breath, tears prickling as I fought against the burning agony about my neck. My eyes flickered open.
Before me, seated with his back to the trunk of a large oak tree in the middle of a peaceful little forest glade, was a remarkable character. Dressed all in black and gold, his long slender legs crossed languidly, he was tall and stick-thin, his long face almost as gnarled as the tree he sat against, and adorned by a long flowing blonde moustache. His hair was the same colour, long and lank and flowing past his shoulders, and he held a beautiful harp across his lean belly, the wood painted gold and decorated with swirling leaf and flower patterns.
The Half-Hanged Man Page 2