‘Five gold coins apiece,’ Joscelyn said, ‘for the first five men up the steps and into the keep.’ Why the hell did the gun not fire? He was sweating. It was a cool day, but he was hot because the greased leather coat under his plate armour was thick. That armour was the best that any of the attackers owned, but it was also the heaviest and Joscelyn knew it would be a struggle to keep up with the men in the lighter mail. No matter. He would join the fight where it was thickest and he relished the thought of cutting down screaming, desperate archers. ‘And no prisoners,’ he said, wanting his day to be crowned by death.
‘Sir Guillaume?’ Robbie suggested. ‘Can we take him captive?’
‘Does he have estates?’ Joscelyn asked.
‘No,’ Robbie admitted.
‘Then what ransom can he promise?’
‘None.’
‘So no prisoners!’ Joscelyn called to his attackers. ‘Kill them all!’
‘But not their women,’ a man suggested.
‘Not their women,’ Joscelyn agreed, and regretted that the golden-haired beghard was not in the castle*.. Well, there would be other women. There were always other women.
The shadows lengthened. It had rained all morning, but the sky had cleared since and the sun was low, very low, and Joscelyn knew that Signor Gioberti was waiting until the last bright rays shone clean through the gate to dazzle the defenders. Then would come the noise, the evil-smelling smoke, the terrible crash of the iron striking the courtyard wall and, while the defenders were still stunned by the tumult, the armoured men would erupt in pitiless fury through the gate. ‘God is with us,’ Joscelyn said, not because he believed it, but because he knew such a sentiment was expected of him. ‘Tonight we feast on their food and women.’ He was talking too much because he was nervous, but he did not realize it. This was not like a tournament where the loser could walk away, however bruised and cut. This was death’s playground and, though he was supremely confident, he was also apprehensive. Let the defenders be sleeping, or eating, he thought, but let them not be ready.
And just then the world was filled with thunder, flame-seared iron screamed through the gate, smoke boiled up the street and the waiting, thank Christ, was over.
They charged.
Chapter 10
Sir Guillaume, the moment the gun first appeared in Castillon d’Arbizon, had readied the garrison for an attack. He gave orders that ten archers were to be in the courtyard at all times, five on each side of the yard so their arrows would slant in at the open space where the cannon’s bolts had demolished the main gate. The castle’s curtain wall, which was undamaged, sheltered them from any crossbowmen in the town. Then, during the morning that the gun demolished the gate, Sir Guillaume tore down most of the stable walls, but left the posts supporting the roof in place so that the archers had a place to shelter their bow-strings when it rained. The horses were taken up the steps into the lower hall, which became their new stables.
The timber from the stable wall, the byres and the shattered main gates were used to make a barricade across the courtyard. It was not as high as Sir Guillaume would have liked, and there was not enough timber to make it heavy enough to withstand a determined assault, but any kind of obstacle would slow down a man in armour and give the archers time to place another arrow on their cords. The first iron bolts shot from the gun were added to the barricade, and then a barrel of rancid olive oil was fetched up from the undercroft. With that, Sir Guillaume was ready.
He suspected Joscelyn would attack sooner rather than later. Sir Guillaume had spent enough time in the new Count of Berat’s company to understand that Joscelyn was an impatient man, too eager for victory, and Sir Guillaume also reckoned the attack would either come at dusk or dawn and so, as the first full day of the gun’s firing tore down the gates and cracked the bastion at one side of the archway, he made sure the whole garrison was armoured and ready well before dusk.
In mid-afternoon he had been certain the attack would come very soon for, in the long space between the gun’s shots, he had crouched on the undamaged part of the gate rampart and heard the strange sounds of hammers and splintering, and he guessed the enemy was breaking a path through the house walls so they could approach the open space in front of the castle unseen. And when evening came and the gun did not fire, Sir Guillaume knew it must be waiting until the attackers were ready. He crouched by the gate and heard the chink of armour from the houses across the square, and when he peered round the arch he saw that more men than usual had gathered on the ramparts above the west gate to watch the castle. They might as well have sounded a trumpet, he thought scornfully, to announce their intentions. He ducked out of sight just a heartbeat before a crossbow quarrel slammed into the arch where he had been lurking.
He went back to his men-at-arms. They’re coming,’ he told them and he pushed his left forearm into the leather loops of his shield that showed the faded badge of the three hawks.
There was a relief in that knowledge. Sir Guillaume hated being besieged, and he had hated the calm menace of the first days when Sir Henri had kept to their agreement for, even though that was a safe period, there was still the frustration of being mewed up in a castle. Now he could kill some of the besiegers, ‘ and to a soldier like Sir Guillaume that was far more satisfying. When the gun had first come to the town Sir Guillaume had wondered whether Joscelyn would offer him terms, but then, when the gun first fired to wrench the heavy gates askew, he understood that Joscelyn, hot-blooded, incautious and ungenerous, wanted nothing but death.
So now he would give it to him.
‘When the gun fires,’ Sir Guillaume instructed his men, ‘that’s when they’ll come,’ and he squatted beside the gate, on the enemy’s side of the barricade, and hoped he was right. He waited, watching the sunlight creep across the flagstones of the courtyard. He had eighteen fit archers and all of them were behind the barricade, while sixteen men-at-arms waited with Sir Guillaume. The rest had deserted, all but half a dozen men who were ill. The town was quiet except for a barking dog that suddenly yelped as it was struck to silence. Beat them off here, Sir Guillaume thought, and then what? He had no doubt he would beat them off, but he was still hugely outnumbered and his garrison was far from any help. Perhaps, if the besiegers were well beaten here, then Joscelyn would talk terms. Sir Henri Courtois would certainly take an honourable surrender, Sir Guillaume thought, but did Sir Henri have influence over the hot-headed Joscelyn?
Then the gun fired, the noise of it seeming to shake the castle, and an iron bar hammered through the gateway to drive a great chunk of stone and white dust from the tower wall next to the steps leading into the keep. Sir Guillaume tensed, his ears ringing with the echo of the terrible sound, and then he heard the cheers and the sound of heavy boots on the cobbles of the square outside and he prised the loosened lid from the barrel of oil and then kicked the tub over so that the greenish liquid spilt across the flagstones by the gateway. Just then he heard a voice bellowing outside. ‘No prisoners!’ the man’s voice was distorted by a helmet with a closed visor. ‘No prisoners!’
‘Archers!’ Sir Guillaume called, though he doubted they needed to be alerted. In Thomas’s absence the bowmen were led by Jake who did not much like the responsibility, but he liked Sir Guillaume and wanted to fight well for him. Jake said nothing to his archers; they did not need any orders. Instead they waited with bows half drawn, bodkin arrows on their strings, and then the gateway was filled with a group of crossbowmen, and behind them were the men-at-arms, already shouting their battle cries, and Jake, as ordered, waited a heartbeat until the first men slipped on the olive oil and only then did he shout, ‘Loose!’
Eighteen arrows tore into the chaos. The first attackers through the gate were sprawling on the stones, the men behind tripped over them and then the arrows ripped into the confusion. The assault was still ten paces from the barricade, yet already it was checked because the castle’s narrow gateway was blocked by the dying and the dead. Sir Guillaume stood t
o one side, sword drawn, doing nothing as yet, just letting the archers finish their work. He was astonished at how fast they had another arrow on the string, then watched as the second and third flights pierced mail and skewered flesh. A crossbowman crawled out from the tangle and bravely tried to raise his weapon, but Sir Guillaume took two steps and brought his sword hard down on the nape of the man’s unprotected neck. The other crossbowmen, evidently sent in the front rank to deliver a volley at his archers, were dead or dying. Joscelyn’s men-at-arms were mingled with them, arrows jutting from mail and shields, and in the gateway the crush of men could make no headway. Jake now directed his arrows at them, volley after volley, and then Sir Guillaume waved his men-at-arms forward. ‘They want no prisoners,’ he shouted to them, ‘you hear me? No prisoners!’
Sir Guillaume and his men were attacking from the left side of the courtyard, so Jake took his archers to the right and shot only through the gateway at the few figures left under the arch. And after a few seconds all the arrows stopped, for so many of the attackers were dead, and those that lived were trapped by Sir Guillaume’s sudden assault from the corner of the yard.
It was a massacre. The attackers, already half beaten by the arrows, had assumed any defenders would be behind the barricade, and instead the men-at-arms came from their flank, and Sir Guillaume’s men, informed that the enemy had wanted all their deaths, were in no mood to offer mercy. ‘Bastard.’ John Faircloth stabbed at a fallen man-at-arms, working his sword through a rent in the man’s mail. ‘Bastard,’ he said again, cutting the throat of a crossbowman. A Burgundian was using an axe, crushing helmets and skulls with one efficient blow after another, spattering the oil-slicked stone with brains and blood. One enemy rose snarling from the pile, a big man, strong and useful, who stepped on bodies to carry the fight to the garrison, but Sir Guillaume took the man’s sword blow on his shield and plunged his own sword into the man’s throat. The man stared at Sir Guillaume, his eyes wide, his lips trying to frame an obscenity, but there was nothing in his mouth except a lump of blood, thick as lard; then he wavered and fell, and Sir Guillaume was already past him to kill another man-at-arms. And now the archers, discarding their bows, had come to join the slaughter, using axes, swords or knives to despatch the wounded. Shouts for mercy echoed in the courtyard, screams sounded, and the few unwounded attackers at the rear of the assault heard them, heard the triumphant English shouts. ‘St George! St George!’ They fled. One man, dazed by a sword blow to his helmet, fled the wrong way and John Faircloth met him with a sword thrust that ripped through the iron rings of his mail to rip his belly open. ‘Bastard,’ Faircloth said, dragging his blade free.
‘Clear the gate!’ Sir Guillaume said. ‘Pull them clear!’ He did not want his men to be shot by the crossbow-men outside the castle while they plundered the corpses of their armour and weapons, and so they dragged the bodies to the side of the yard. There were no wounded enemy that Sir Guillaume could see. It was the enemy that had shouted the call for no prisoners and the garrison had obeyed them. And now the attack was over.
Yet the danger was not past. There were still two bodies in the archway. Sir Guillaume knew the cross-bowmen lower in the town could see into the gateway, so, using his shield to protect his body, he stooped and sidled into the arch and dragged the first body back towards the yard. There was no sign of Joscelyn and that was a pity. Sir Guillaume had dreamed of taking the Count prisoner for a second time, and then he would have doubled Joscelyn’s ransom, doubled it again and then doubled it a third time. Bastard, Sir Guillaume thought, and a crossbow bolt slammed high into his shield, banging the top edge against Sir Guillaume’s helmet. He crouched lower, grabbed the last man’s ankle and pulled, and the man stirred and tried to fight back so Sir Guillaume hammered the shield’s pointed lower edge into the man’s groin and the man gasped, then stopped struggling.
It was Robbie. Once Sir Guillaume had him in the courtyard and was safe from the crossbowmen in the town, he could see that Robbie had not been wounded. Instead he had been stunned, probably by an arrow that had struck the lower edge of his helmet and left a fierce dent in the thick rim, which had thumped onto Robbie’s skull and hurled him back. One inch lower and there would have been a dead Scotsman. As it was there was a very confused Scotsman who twitched in search of his sword as he realized where he was.
‘Where’s my money,’ Sir Guillaume growled, threatening Robbie with the Scotsman’s own sword.
‘Oh, Jesus,’ Robbie groaned.
‘He’s no damned use to you. If you want mercy, son, ask me. Ask them!’ Sir Guillaume pointed at the archers and men-at-arms who were stripping the dead and injured of their weapons, armour and clothes. Cross-eyed Jake was grinning because one of the enemy dead had been wearing a ruby ring. Jake had sawn off the finger and now held the jewel aloft in triumph. Sam, the proud new owner of a fine coat of German -made mail, came to look at Robbie. He spat to show his opinion of the Scotsman.
Robbie, tears in his eyes because of his humiliation, looked at the dead men, their undershirts laced with blood. Forty attackers had crossed the square outside the castle and over half of them were dead. He looked up at Sir Guillaume. ‘I’m your prisoner,’ he said, and he wondered how he was supposed to pay one ransom to Lord Outhwaite in England and another to Sir Guillaume.
‘You’re bloody not my prisoner,’ Sir Guillaume said in crude English, then he changed back to French. ‘I heard the shout outside. No prisoners. And you might remember that when we do take prisoners, we don’t get ransoms. We just get pieces of parchment. Is that what honour means in Scotland?’
Robbie looked up into the savage, one-eyed face and shrugged. ‘Just kill me,’ he said wearily. ‘Kill me and go to hell.’
‘Your friend wouldn’t like that,’ Sir Guillaume said and saw the puzzlement on Robbie’s face. ‘Your friend Thomas,’ he explained. ‘He likes you. He wouldn’t want you dead. Got a soft spot for you, he has, because he’s a goddamned fool. So I’ll let you live. Get on your feet.’ Sir Guillaume prodded Robbie up. ‘Now go to Joscelyn and tell that spavined bastard that he can pay us what you owe us and then we’ll leave. Got that? He pays the money, then you watch us ride away.’
Robbie wanted to ask for the sword that belonged to his uncle and concealed a precious relic of St Andrew in its hilt, but he knew he would be refused and so, still dazed, he went back to the arch, followed by the jeers of the archers. Sir Guillaume bellowed at the crossbowmen in the town that the man coming out was one of their own. ‘Perhaps they’ll shoot you anyway,’ he said to Robbie, then shoved him out into the dusk.
None of the crossbowmen shot at Robbie who, with an aching head and a throbbing groin, stumbled down the street. The survivors of the attack were gathered by the still smoking gun; some of them had arrows in their arms or legs. Joscelyn was there, bare-headed; his hair had been flattened by the helmet’s liner and his round face was slick with sweat and red with anger. He had been among the last to crowd into the gateway, had seen the chaos in front and had then been knocked over by an arrow strike on his breastplate. He had been astonished by the force of the blow, like being kicked by a horse, and the plate had a bright gouge in it. He had struggled up only to be hit by a second arrow which, like the first, had failed to pierce the thick plate, but he was knocked back again, and then the panic of the survivors had enveloped him and he had stumbled away with them. ‘They let you go?’ he greeted Robbie who he saw had a dark bruise on his forehead.
‘They sent me with a message, lord,’ Robbie said. ‘If they receive their money,’ he went on, ‘they will leave without more fighting.’
‘It’s your money!’ Joscelyn snarled. ‘So you pay them. Do you have it?’
‘No, lord.’
‘Then we damned well kill them. We damned well kill them all!’ Joscelyn turned on Signor Gioberti. ‘How long will it take you to bring down the whole archway?’
Gioberti thought for a second. He was a small man, nearly fifty, with a deeply li
ned face. ‘A week, lord,’ he estimated. One of his bolts had hit the side of the arch and ripped out a barrowload of stones, suggesting that the castle was in ill repair. ‘Maybe ten days,’ he amended his answer, ‘and in another ten days I can bring down half the curtain wall.’
‘We’ll crush them in ruins,’ Joscelyn snarled, ‘then slaughter the damned lot.’ He turned on his squire. ‘Is my supper ready?’
‘Yes, lord.’
Joscelyn ate alone. He had thought he would eat in the castle’s hall this night and listen to the screams of the archers having their fingers cut off, but fate had decreed otherwise. So now he would take his time, reduce the castle to rubble, then have his revenge.
And next morning Guy Vexille and Charles Bessières came to Castillon d’Arbizon with over fifty men. It seemed that Vexille had failed to find his heretic but, for reasons Joscelyn neither cared about nor understood, he believed the man and his beghard woman would be coming to the besieged castle.
‘You catch them,’ Joscelyn said, ‘and the man’s yours. But the woman’s mine.’
‘She belongs to the Church,’ Vexille said.
‘Mine first,’ Joscelyn insisted, ‘the Church can play with her next and the devil can have her afterwards.’ The gun fired and the castle gateway trembled.
—«»—«»—«»—
Thomas and his companions spent a wet night under the trees. In the morning three of the coredors had vanished with their women, but fourteen men were left with eight women, six children and, most usefully, seven crossbows. They were all old bows with goat-leg levers to draw the string, which meant they were less powerful than the steel-shafted bows that used cranked handles to draw the cord, but in a fight the old sort were quick to reload and lethal enough at short distances.
The Grail Quest Books 1-3: Harlequin, Vagabond, Heretic Page 111