He stroked his moustache. “How many men should I send after you?” he mused. “Ten horse, let’s say, and men on foot with dogs. That should look convincing.”
Hugh suddenly felt uneasy. He had just volunteered to be the subject of a man-hunt in the forest. Sham or not, the notion of being chased by horses and dogs was not an appealing one.
“Come and see my hounds,” said Grey.
The Sheriff turned out to be a keen huntsman. He kept a small army of dogs in his kennels, and enthusiastically pointed out each breed; alaunts, hounds, terriers, spaniels, kennets, and Irish wolfhounds. To Hugh they were all hair and teeth and slobber. His guts churned at the thought of being pursued like a deer through the depths of Sherwood by these ravenous, stinking beasts.
Grey’s kennels were on the ground floor of a large stone building inside the inner bailey, next to a bread oven and below the dovecote. The heat from the oven warmed the room, and the smell of freshly baked bread drove the dogs wild.
“They’re fed on brom bread,” Grey explained. “No meat, save the entrails of the quarry. Got to keep the beasts sharp, eh?”
To Hugh the hounds looked more than sharp enough, and fed rather better than the dirty kennel boys who had to feed and exercise them.
“What animal would you like to be tomorrow?” Grey asked as they stopped beside one pen occupied by three enormous wolfhounds. Recognising their master, they jumped up, barking frantically, and did their best to drown him in saliva.
“Be?” Hugh replied absently. He was distracted by one the hounds, which had stood up on her hind legs to sniff at him. She loomed over him, and he couldn’t help noticing the size and sharpness of her yellow teeth.
“Tomorrow you will be the prey,” Grey said cheerfully, “so we need to decide what kind. If you’re a fox, then we send the Alaunt Gentil after you. Irish Wolfhounds for a deer, hounds for a badger, talbots for a rabbit or a hare, terriers for a rat, spaniels for a bird. Don’t suppose you know anything about the laws of the chase, do you?”
“Very little,” Hugh admitted.
“Well, then, let’s say you’re a deer. Noble beasts. Better than a rat, eh?”
He patted the long muzzle of the wolfhound with the yellow teeth. “This one’s named Marion,” he said. “Seems to like you. That’s good. Once saw her bring a cornered stag down, all by herself. Got her teeth locked around his throat, wouldn’t let go. Had to whip her off the body in the end. Splendid animal.”
Hugh looked at Marion. In his mind’s eye he pictured lean grey shapes sprinting through the deep forest at dawn, yellow drool foaming over their chops. He saw himself, clinging to the back of his terrified courser as she galloped just a few yards ahead of the pack. Saw the horse stumble and throw him from the saddle. Heard the pack close in.
He could almost feel Marion’s terrible yellow teeth, powerful enough to scissor through bone and tear out a stag’s throat, close on his flesh.
Grey’s youthful face shone with enthusiasm. Away from the routine of his office, some of the weariness had dropped away from him.
“Now,” he said, clapping his hands together. “Let’s go to the stables and pick out a horse for you.”
Hugh was grateful to leave the kennels, though the frenzied barking of hounds continued to echo inside his skull.
14.
Kenilworth
King Henry stayed up long into the night, deep in talks with a papal envoy and waiting anxiously for news of his son. He sat huddled in a thick fur and restored his spirits with cupfuls of spiced wine. It was a warm night in early August, yet he felt cold. He was always cold these days. A chill had seeped into his bones the previous winter and refused to leave.
“They should be back by now,” he muttered.
Interrupted in mid-flow, the envoy gave a polite duck of the head. His name was Orazio. An Italian, and like his master in Rome a member of the powerful Fieschi merchant family of Genoa. They had money – a great deal of money – and wielded considerable influence in Rome. Henry had put a great deal of effort into cultivating their friendship.
“Courage, Majesty,” said Orazio, “the Lord Edward will soon return in triumph, his arms crowned with victory.”
“He should not have gone at all,” Henry snapped irritably.
The jewels on Orazio’s long white fingers flashed as he smoothed his robe. “Patience, Your Highness. Let us concentrate our minds on the matter at hand. A settlement with the Disinherited. Peace in England.”
“Peace,” Henry said bitterly. “His Holiness wishes me to grant mercy to the traitors who have ravaged my kingdom for so many years. We shall have peace when they come crawling on their knees and beg for mercy.”
He stopped, realising how petulant he sounded. Orazio smiled thinly. “If we could return to discussing my master’s proposals,” he said, smoothing out the long white roll of parchment on his lap. “He suggests a commission be appointed to draw up an arrangement that will be acceptable to all parties…”
Henry let him drone on. He was too tired and befuddled with wine to concentrate, and full of concern for his son. His head was stuffed full of political crises and personal anxieties, and felt close to splitting.
A ghostly wind rustled through his pavilion. The enormous tent was decorated as sumptuously as any of the royal apartments at Windsor, with rugs on the floor and tapestries depicting Daniel’s adventure in the lion’s den. King Henry’s mail and helm gleamed on a rack, and a hooded falcon brooded motionlessly on its perch.
A chessboard stood by his bed. He was fond of the game, and insisted on taking on Orazio before they turned to politics. Henry’s king stood on the verge of checkmate, which did nothing to improve his mood.
“I need some fresh air,” he announced.
He rose, wincing at the rheumatic crackling in his joints, and shrugged off the heavy fur. A page boy materialised from the shadows and draped a crimson robe over Henry’s narrow shoulders.
“You look truly royal, Majesty,” Orazio said as Henry picked up a slender golden coronet from the table beside his bed and jammed it on his head. “The troops will take new heart from the sight of you.”
“Don’t fawn on me, Orazio,” Henry snapped.
The king had no time for flattery and less for deception. He knew what he was. Wizened, round-shouldered, grey-haired and fading under the weight of the crown he had worn in the teeth of fate for so long. A trained bear, required to perform the same old tricks until he dropped.
He shuffled out into the night, followed by the envoy and his page. Please God, he pleaded silently. Preserve Edward’s life.
The guards outside the pavilion straightened as Henry emerged. He looked towards the growing silhouette of his son’s pet project. Teams of workmen were busily constructing a siege tower of gigantic proportions. Edward had christened it the Bear.
Henry shivered as he gazed at the enormous thing, illuminated by the glow of torches. The royalists took care to keep both encampments well-lit at night to discourage rebel sorties.
Edward was somewhere out there in the dark. The plan was of his devising and weeks in the preparation. A flotilla of rafts had been made, enough to carry five hundred men with ladders. Tonight was rainy and moonless. Perfect for the attempt. At midnight the rafts had crossed the lake to the north, where it was narrowest. The raiding party went in silence, with no lights to reveal their approach. To distract the garrison, Edward ordered his artillery to keep up their bombardment through the night.
Henry had approved the plan, but not his son’s decision to lead the raid himself. Nothing could dissuade Edward. He was an Angevin to his boots, stubborn and wilful and utterly convinced he knew best.
Distant shouts drifted across the water. Henry was seized by a terrible premonition.
My son is dead.
He started forward and almost blundered into a group of household knights eating their supper. He knocked over their spit and scalded his legs in the fire, cared nothing for the pain.
�
��Majesty, please,” said Orazio, pawing at his arm. Henry shrugged him off.
My son is dead.
The terrible thought drummed repeatedly through his head. Henry stumbled towards the lake, dimly aware of raised voices behind him.
He saw the barges straggle back across the water. The line of torches by the shore illuminated the pale faces of weary, beaten men.
Henry cried out in relief. His son’s towering figure was easily to pick out, stood at the brow of the nearest barge. Edward’s surcoat was spattered with gore, his helmet gone, but he seemed unhurt. The king smothered an impulse to dive forward and embrace him. Instead he mustered his royal dignity and raised a hand in greeting.
“Father,” Edward called out, “we managed to gain a foothold on the wall, but the garrison threw us back.”
He ruefully held up the shattered stump of his sword. “I broke this on one villain’s head. They fight like devils, though.”
Henry smiled and batted away a tear. His relief was swept away by a tide of guilt. God had seen fit to spare the heir to the throne, yet not his men. The barges were loaded with wounded soldiers. Others lay silent, and would never speak again.
God forgive me, he thought. How many of my subjects have died in this war? How many will die yet? All for the sake of pride.
Orazio materialised at his side. “Perhaps, Majesty,” he whispered, “we might return to our pavilion and resume talks?”
“Yes,” replied Henry. “Let us talk of peace.”
15.
The Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire
Esther had often wondered at the Christian notion of Hell as a place of eternal punishment, and how anyone could believe in something so monstrous. Perhaps it was the terror of eternal damnation, she reasoned, that made Christians so adept at creating Hell on earth.
Hell was the rebel fortress-camp inside the Isle of Ely. John d'Eyvill and his followers had brought her here after they sacked the Jewish quarter at Lincoln. Many of her neighbours were also abducted. The wealthiest Jews, able to afford the ransoms d'Eyvill meant to extract from them.
Their value as financial assets didn’t protect them being foully insulted and abused. Men and women were separated and made to live like cattle inside uncovered wooden pens in the outer bailey of the old Norman fortress. They were given buckets of murky water from the fens and loaves of coarse rye bread, forced to relieve themselves in the open.
Worse was to come. On the morning of the fifth day of captivity, two knights visited the pen where the women were kept.
Esther sat hunched in a corner, shivering in the same night-shirt and gown she had been abducted in. Cold, hunger, and fear had deprived her of sleep, along with the ghostly wind that sighed and howled ceaselessly through the fens. Nightmarish creatures were said to stalk the dreary mud-flats and salt marshes. Demons, lost spirits and the like. Esther wondered if the monsters outside could be any worse than the inmates.
She recognised both of the knights. One was John d'Eyvill’s younger brother, Robert, who had tried to calm her following Yosef’s murder. He was tall and handsome in a long-nosed, Norman sort of way, and treated her with a degree of courtesy. She considered him the best of the devils that garrisoned Ely.
But still a devil.
His companion, John Fitz John, was among the worst of them. A brutish, flat-faced lout with a poisonous hatred for Jews. Esther had often heard him boast of the time he murdered a rabbi in London, driving his sword into the man’s belly even as he begged for mercy. A few of the women inside the pen, their spirits broken by what they had suffered already, moaned in fear at the sight of him.
Fitz John leaned his heavy arms on the fence. “Nine healthy whores,” he sneered, “with nothing to do all day but squat in their own filth. Time they worked for their keep.”
Esther drew her gown tighter about her. Robert regarded his companion with an expression of grim disapproval on his hawk face.
Fitz John signalled at the soldiers behind him, five burly, coarse-faced men in leather and mail. They untied the gate and entered the pen. Their captain grasped the nearest woman by the hair and dragged her towards the gate. His men set about the others. One woman, a plump middle-aged matron, tried to flee and was beatsn to the ground. Fitz John crowed with laughter.
“My guards will have you first,” said Fitz John as she screamed. “Then you can be passed around the garrison. Only the common soldiers, of course. Christians of gentle blood don’t lie with dirty Jews.”
Esther looked around for a weapon. She spotted a lump of rock, lying submerged in the mud by her feet, and reached for it.
A powerful hand descended on her shoulder. She worked up some phlegm and spat at the face of the soldier who had grabbed her. Esther had no experience of spitting at people, and the volley went wide.
“Leave her alone,” said Robert. The soldier looked at him in surprise and then at Fitz John, who shrugged.
“Sir Robert is soft on Jewish filth,” he said. “Let the woman be.”
The soldier released Esther and stalked away to look for another.
“Your brother told me you were sweet on that one,” grunted Fitz John, scratching his bristly chin. “I could scarce believe it until now. A Christian knight lusting after some Hebrew bitch? Disgusting.”
“Be silent!” Robert hissed. His fingers curled about the grip of his sword.
“Fine,” Fitz John said mildly, “just as you like. I’m not one to stop a man taking his pleasure. I daresay she will be presentable enough, once you’ve scraped the mud off and got her into some fresh clothes. And out of them.”
He sniggered at his own jest. Robert ignored him and entered the pen to offer Esther his hand. “Come,” he said earnestly, “you will be safe. You have my word.”
Esther looked at the other women being hustled out of the pen. The unspeakable fate that awaited them made her skin crawl.
“You wish to make me your whore,” she said accusingly.
Robert placed a hand over his heart. “I swear on my knighthood, I will not harm or dishonour you in any way.”
His voice was solemn. Esther was faced with a choice of trusting a Christian knight or allowing his comrades to violate her.
She got up and brushed the mud from her skirts. “I won’t take your hand,” she said. He nodded, turned on his heel and strode out of the pen.
Esther followed him towards the inner bailey that crowned the motte. He filled the silence by telling her something of the history of the castle. It had once been made of stone, the stronghold of a turbulent bishop during old King Stephen’s reign, but was destroyed and replaced by a cheaper fort made of timber.
“There is a similar place in the Isle of Axholme,” Robert prattled on, “and another at Ely, some miles from here, called Aldreth. Aldreth is where Hereward made his stand against the Conqueror. The English peasants still sing songs about Hereward. He was their last hero. Do you know the story?”
“I do not,” Esther replied. She didn’t care to know it either, but was wary of angering him. Only Robert’s goodwill stood between her and death. Esther would slice her wrists before submitting to rape by Fitz John’s soldiers.
They mounted the slippery wooden steps leading to the inner bailey. The motte was crowned by a timber-and-wattle hall and surrounded by a wooden stockade. A sergeants were present, lounging in the yard or polishing their mail, which rusted easily in the damp of the fens. They looked up in surprise at Robert and the thin, bedraggled Jewess on his arm, and gave each other knowing looks.
“My brother rode out yesterday,” he said as they approached the hall. “He will return in a few hours and bring some friends with him. Our numbers increase daily. Soon the king will have to move against us.”
He clenched his fist. “Then we shall test our strength. There shall be no defeats this time, no surprise attacks.”
Esther felt that some comment was required of her. “Do you fear the king?” she asked, and almost choked as the stench of the hall caught in he
r throat.
Conditions had been bad inside the pen, but at least it was in the open air. The hall, a long, ill-lit room with a low ceiling, was rank with the odour of wood smoke from the fire, mingled with sweat and dung.
“Yes,” replied Robert, who had failed to notice the smell or her discomfort. “I would be a fool not to. Yet only a coward avoids that which he fears.”
Esther was repelled by his stupidity. She knew what his fine words meant. More fighting and needless bloodshed. While the knights took a sporting risk in battle, virtually invincible in their armour and reluctant to do each other any real harm, the people of England were plundered and slaughtered without mercy. To say nothing of the atrocities inflicted on the Jews. There would be more attacks on her people. Lincoln was just the beginning.
The hall was empty save for a pot-bellied knight lying on a filthy blanket next to a brazier. He mumbled in his sleep. There was a timber staircase at the far end that led up to private sleeping quarters.
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