A King's Ransom (68 page)

Crossing to the younger woman, she put an arm affectionately around her sister-in-law’s slender shoulders. “At least we’ll now have a trustworthy eyewitness account of Richard’s tribulations during this past year.” Berengaria brightened at that reminder. But when they looked around for Morgan, he and Mariam had disappeared.

“Well, we may have to wait awhile longer for that,” Joanna said, with such a mischievous smile that, although Berengaria felt fornication was a serious sin, she could not help returning the smile, thinking that she was so lucky to have Richard’s sister as her friend.

Even as she sought to reassure Berengaria, Joanna felt an unwelcome spark of envy. She did not begrudge Mariam her good fortune, her happiness with Morgan. It was just that she was twenty-eight and she’d been sleeping alone for more than four years. She was lonely. And against her will, she found herself thinking of a man with sapphire-blue eyes, an easy smile, and dangerously seductive charm.

O
N THE SAME DAY
that Morgan arrived at Poitiers, Richard reached Nottingham. From London, he’d stopped at St Edmundsbury to do honor to his favorite saint, and then continued north. At Huntingdon, William Marshal caught up with him. Marshal had chosen to meet his king rather than attend the funeral for his black-sheep brother, who’d not only been one of John’s men, but who’d played a suspicious role in the massacre of York’s Jews when he’d held the post of Yorkshire’s sheriff. Will was sure that Richard did not blame him for his brother’s sins, for the king had recently named another brother to the See of Exeter. But these were perilous times for those with more than one liege lord. Just as some of Richard’s vassals were also the liegemen of the French king, Will owed homage to John for his Irish estates, and he did not want the Angevin king to doubt where his first loyalty lay. Richard welcomed him with enough warmth to assure him this was not a concern, and they rode on together to the siege.

F
ROM THE CASTLE BATTLEMENTS,
the constables of Nottingham, Ralf Murdoc and William de Wendeval, watched the commotion below in the siege camp. Trumpets were blaring, horns blasting, drums pounding, and it was obvious even at a distance that something of note was occurring. William, who was shortsighted, struggled to make out what was happening. “Do you think the king could have arrived?” he asked uneasily, but the other man scoffed at that.

“Do not tell me you believe that nonsense about Richard coming back? They know the castle can hold out till Judgment Day, so they are trying to trick us with lies and falsehoods. Richard will never regain his freedom and that means Lord John will be England’s king. I know it, you know it, and those stubborn fools down there know it, too. We need only outwait them and pay no heed to their fanciful claims.”

What Ralf said made sense. With so much at stake, the French king and Lord John would pay any amount to keep Richard caged. Yet as William gazed down at the turmoil in the enemy camp, he could not stifle his inner voice.
What if the Lionheart really has returned?

T
HE WELCOME
R
ICHARD HAD
received in English towns and villages paled in comparison with the reception he got at Nottingham. Many of the soldiers had fought with him in past campaigns, and he was mobbed by men who were delighted that he was free, and even happier that he was here, for none doubted that his presence would guarantee victory; by now, Richard’s reputation as a battlefield commander had become a weapon in and of itself.

Once relative calm had been restored, Richard wanted to know all they could tell him about the castle. What he heard was not encouraging. Perched on a steep sandstone cliff a hundred feet above the River Leen, it had three separate baileys, separated by deep, dry moats; the outer bailey was enclosed by a timber palisade, but the middle and inner baileys were protected by stone walls and the square tower keep was on a rocky motte fifteen feet higher than its bailey. Continuing the bad news, David, the Earl of Huntingdon, told him that the castle was strongly garrisoned and Randolph, Earl of Chester, reported that it was said to be provisioned for a lengthy siege, making it unlikely the garrison could be starved into surrendering. But Richard had no interest in that approach, for the more time he spent in England dealing with John’s rebellion, the more time it gave Philippe to seize Norman towns and castles.

“Show me,” he said, and they led him out to see the stronghold’s defenses for himself. The siege camp was a large one, occupying the deer park to the west, the open field and hill to the north, and the streets closest to the castle gatehouse that faced the town. The people unlucky enough to live in this exposed area had fled to safer neighborhoods in the two boroughs of the city, their houses appropriated by the earls for lodgings and command headquarters. Richard studied the castle with a frown, for he saw at once what a challenge it posed. He felt anger stirring when the Earl of Chester said the garrison remained defiant, refusing to believe the king had truly returned.

“They will not be doubting for long,” he vowed and pointed to the house closest to the castle. “I’ll set up my quarters there.”

André grinned, remembering Richard’s first great military triumph, when at age twenty-one, he’d taken Taillebourg, a castle said to be utterly impregnable, pitching his tents so provocatively close to the town walls that the garrison could not resist the temptation and sallied forth for a surprise attack upon the young Angevin duke. Only it had not been a surprise, for Richard had been expecting it, and when they tried to retreat back into the town, Richard and his men forced their way in with them and soon had the victory. The garrison at Nottingham would not be so foolish, but André felt sure many of them would be unnerved to see the Lionheart’s banner flying so close to their walls.

They’d been joined by Richard’s uncle, Hamelin, the Earl of Surrey, who’d returned from escorting Eleanor to the Holy Trinity priory in Lenton, a mile to the south. But as he started to assure Richard that she’d been given a warm welcome by the prior, crossbowmen up on the castle walls began to shoot down into the camp and several soldiers were struck, one of them collapsing almost at Richard’s feet, a bolt driven through his eye into his brain. Looking from the dead man to the cocky defenders, cheering their success, Richard’s eyes darkened to slate, his hand closing around the hilt of his sword.

“We attack now,” he said. “Arm yourselves.”

T
HE EARLS HAD ALREADY
filled the outer moat in preparation for an assault, although they’d not yet launched one. Since the first ring of defenses was timber, Richard called for a battering ram, his crossbowmen giving such effective cover that the defenders on the wall were unable to offer real resistance. When the wood splintered under the impact, Richard was one of the first to clamber through the shattered gate into the outer bailey, with his knights right behind him, shouting the battle cry of the English royal House,
“Dex Aie!”

Men up on the middle bailey walls began to shoot at the invaders, but they were carrying large shields that deflected most of the bolts and at first they advanced almost unopposed. When the besieged realized they were in danger of losing the outer bailey, they hastily organized a sortie and came running through the barbican to confront the attackers.

Richard maimed the first man to challenge him, the downward sweep of his blade taking his foe’s arm off at the elbow. Since regaining his freedom, he’d occasionally worried that his skills might have become rusty from all that time in captivity, but he found now that his body and brain still functioned in lethal harmony, his instincts and reflexes as sharp as ever. Feeling like an exile who’d finally come home, he wielded his sword with such ferocity that he left a trail of bodies in his wake and his men were hard-pressed to stay at his side.

Hand-to-hand fighting was always bloody and it was particularly vicious as Richard and his men cut and slashed and pounded their way toward the barbican, his soldiers inspired by his example and the rebels showing the desperate courage of the cornered. Their crossbowmen could no longer shoot down into the mêlée, unable to distinguish the enemy from their own, and that freed Richard’s arbalesters to launch their own offensive. Whenever a man dared to pop up in an embrasure to aim at the attackers, he was targeted with such deadly accuracy that they soon cleared the walls. Those watching from the windows of the tower keep realized with horror that the castle’s fate hung in the balance.

What saved them was the coming of dark. The tide of battle had turned in the favor of the attackers, and the defenders were being inexorably forced back toward the barbican. Some men bravely held their ground to allow the others to retreat into the middle bailey, but that meant the fleeing soldiers could not raise the barbican drawbridge without trapping their comrades, and the fiercest combat of the day happened in the constricted space of the barbican. By the time the king’s men had secured it, the sun had set and dusk was chasing away the last of the light.

The bailey was strewn with the wounded and the dead. Once they’d tended to the injured, retrieved the bodies, and put their prisoners under guard, it was full dark. They were exhausted, bloodied, and jubilant, theirs the intoxicating survivor’s joy of men who’d triumphed over their enemies and over Death. They knew the worst still lay ahead, for even though they now controlled the outer bailey, the rebels were ensconced on high ground behind sturdy stone walls. But for tonight, they wanted only to savor the day’s victory, none more than Richard.