Rhuddlan (16 page)

Not that it would have saved them because
when the attack came, it was from their right flank, not from the
front. Suddenly, where there had been only silent field before,
there were archers and crossbowmen aiming their deadly weapons
straight at them. Squinting against the sun, the Bretons realized
that the attackers had literally been lying in wait for them,
obscured by the tall grass. Now they stood in a long line which
stretched almost the length of the convoy. After one split second
when the whole world seemed to stand still, someone shouted and
then the air was full of flying arrows.

The line of bowmen was sparse but the Bretons
were unprepared and suffered heavily from the barrage. The Normans
aimed mainly for the horses, the largest targets, and the foot
soldiers, who were protected only by leather.

The Breton knights spurred their horses and
grabbed hastily for swords and shields. The crossbowmen in the
company took up defensive positions behind the wagons. They
attempted to shoot back but the sun was in their eyes and thwarted
their aim. The Normans restrung their bows, waited coolly for
another command and unleashed a second barrage. Meanwhile, the
Bretons were readying themselves for an assault on the archers but
as they maneuvered their mounts, a roar sounded from behind them
and to a man they turned in confusion. And horror. From nowhere
there appeared a line of Norman cavalry in the east, racing across
the field with deadly intent.

Delamere urged his mount to greater speed
with a harsh dig of his spurs. The long grass was more difficult to
wade through than had been considered when Longsword had sketched
his plan for them but it was imperative that the factor of surprise
was not lost. They were so outnumbered that if they didn’t reach
the Breton contingent before the knights had the chance to organize
and initiate a counter-attack, the ambush would quickly become a
rout—against them.

His eyes never left the object of his charge.
The bowmen had done their job well. Longsword had instructed them
to shoot the horses first. It was more tricky to hit a man
protected from the top of his head to his ankles with metal in a
vulnerable spot than it was to kill his horse. And the knights who
tumbled heavily to the ground as their horses collapsed beneath
them were no match for the double threat of a fifteen-hundred pound
animal with four powerful legs bearing down on them and the force
of all that massive impetus behind the swipes of the Norman swords
raised to cut off their lives.

The lazy afternoon was no longer peaceful. By
virtue of his swift horse, a fierce, unfriendly creature which
Delamere often suspected of being as eager to murder and maim as
its owner, Longsword reached the Bretons before anyone else. He
bellowed wildly with pure exhilaration, seeming to offer a
challenge to every man who stood before him. He’d already sent the
tip of his blade through the throat of one Breton and knocked
another, senseless, to the dirt with a vicious kick to the head by
the time the rest of the Normans reached the fray. The crossbowmen
trapped by the wagons were the easier targets for the knights. Some
crawled beneath the wagons, only to find them a precarious shelter
when the oxen, snorting with fright, stepped this way and that in
an attempt to shake off their burdens and escape.

Meanwhile, the Norman foot soldiers moved
toward the convoy with crossbows cocked and bows strung. At close
range, the arrow from a crossbow could penetrate the hauberks worn
by the knights. The Bretons found themselves assailed from either
side and even though there were more of them than Normans, they had
been overwhelmed by surprise and were already tired out by a day
spent traveling under a hot sun. Then, too, they had recognized the
colors and creatures painted on the Norman leader’s shield as the
emblem of the house of Anjou, which meant Henry, contrary to what
they’d been told, knew exactly what they were doing. Most of them
offered only a feeble resistance, expecting to be taken prisoner
and later ransomed. But Longsword had ordered all the enemy
slaughtered and those who put up the butts of their swords were
merely cut down more easily than those who put up a fight.

The whole fracas lasted less than a quarter
of an hour. The corpses of Breton soldiers lay in muddled heaps on
the ground. Wounded horses whinnied and snorted. The first few
teams of oxen had lumbered out of sight; the remainder bellowed
anxiously. Longsword slipped down from his saddle and walked among
the bodies, kicking at legs and heads for signs of life.

Sir Walter, a happy smile on his face, rode
up to him. “My lord, good work! But some men managed to escape.
Will you give me permission to chase them down before they cross
the border?”

“No,” Longsword answered. He stuck his
stained sword into his belt, pulled his helmet off and pushed back
his coif. His hair was plastered with sweat to his scalp and he ran
his fingers through it several times. “I want Chester and de
Fougères to know what happened.”

“But they’ll know when their convoy doesn’t
show up,” Delamere pointed out. “Why lose the advantage of one or
two days’ surprise? There are things we could do with that time to
prepare for their attack.”

“We don’t need time!”
Longsword retorted. “We don’t need to prepare for anything!” The
body of a Breton bowman lay at his feet; he glanced and spat at it.
“We’ve just proven we can demolish an army twice our size. I’m not
going to sit back and wait for de Fougères to make his little plan
and attack Pontorson, Richard.
I
am going to attack
him
.”

Chapter 11

August, 1173

Dol, Brittany

“Don’t look so glum!” boomed a hearty voice
into Hugh’s ear. An arm landed heavily around his neck. “An
inconvenience, that’s all! Unexpected, but we’ll take our
revenge.”

Hugh continued to stare over the wall in the
direction of the Normandy border. It was late evening; the sun was
slowly sinking into a haze in the west and the lack of a breeze
promised a night as damp and hot as the day.

“I’m not worried about that,” he answered,
wishing the man would remove his arm. He shifted on his feet, but
his companion didn’t take the hint.

“Oh—upset about your money and armor, then.
Well, don’t be—” the arm jiggled, “—we’ll soon have it back for
you.”

But it wasn’t the money. What had been lost
was only a mere fraction of Hugh’s revenues and besides, he had
known from the start that he risked everything—lands, titles,
money; even his life—in this venture. No, it wasn’t anything
material which gave him pause. It was the strong feeling that his
brief period of freedom was coming quickly to an end.

Strangely enough, he felt calm as he looked
back at the past and considered the future. A grievance against
Henry and the desire to extricate himself from the insidious grip
of Robert Bolsover’s ghost had compelled him to throw in his lot
with the Young King. For months he and de Fougères had run amuck
throughout Avranches and it had actually given him satisfaction to
ravage his hereditary lands, the lands where his ancestors, all
loyal servants of the dukes of Normandy, had been born. It was a
revolt against his past as much as against the king.

It seemed to him that all his life the
important decisions had been made for him. He was the earl of
Chester by birth. His family history obligated his adherence to
Henry II. Robert Bolsover had wooed him. Even his damned wife had
been chosen for him. When he’d made up his mind to join with the
Young King, an immediate thrill had pulsed through his veins. He’d
felt free.

But all that was to change now. He was
certain of it in a calm, fatalistic way. Riders had hurtled into
the fortress only a few hours before with the news that Hugh’s
convoy of weapons, gold and perishables had been set upon by
knights from Pontorson who were led by the king’s bastard son,
William Longsword. The escort, with the exception of a swift
handful, had been massacred and the wagons confiscated. It had been
completely unexpected and judging from the reactions of de Fougères
and his men was as great a shock to the rebels at Dol as it had
been for the guard of the convoy.

De Fougères looked almost pleased by news of
the ambush. He’d boasted loudly and interminably at the supper
board that he was glad someone had at last made the decision to
meet the rebels’ challenge in the west. He was tired of Louis and
Flanders getting all the attention. He didn’t know much about this
William Longsword except that the Bastard was barely past youth and
couldn’t match the battle experience of the men at Dol. He couldn’t
know the wily strengths of Ralph de Fougères. Still, this taunt by
Longsword would not go uncontested. If the king’s bastard thought
his mere presence would send the rebels scurrying into submission
he was dead wrong. De Fougères had burst out laughing at his little
joke. ‘Dead wrong’. The Bastard and his puny band would all soon be
dead.

Hugh had remained quiet as usual. He hadn’t
eaten much and had drunk even less. Neither did he, he thought,
have as much battle experience as the Bretons. He wasn’t afraid of
testing himself in a real skirmish, however; he was confident he
could swing a sword as well as the long-haired, long-nosed,
middle-aged, pot-bellied man sitting next to him and ripping apart
meat and bone as though he might never eat again. Did the fool
truly believe they could hope to beat Henry? In retrospect, Hugh
supposed that once he, too, must have believed it possible but then
it had been secret messages and clandestine plots. Now reality was
staring them in the face and Henry seemed invincible as ever.

De Fougères’ arm jiggled around his neck
again and roused Hugh from his thoughts. He didn’t care much for
his partner in rebellion, considering him crude and loud, but the
Breton obviously liked him well enough. Haworth had said it was
because Hugh, although the much more important magnate, permitted
him to do all the talking. As long as de Fougères treated him with
respect, Hugh was satisfied with the arrangement. But that damned
arm was maddening.

“…sundown tomorrow, we’ll have the castle
surrounded!” de Fougères was saying, his voice excited.

“A siege?” questioned Hugh slowly. “I thought
you were of the opinion that a siege is a waste of our
resources.”

“It is! If we just wait them out, it is. But
I have a feeling we won’t have to wait. The Bastard wants to make
his mark and meeting our challenge is how he’ll do it.”

“Surely he wouldn’t be stupid enough to leave
the security of the fortress to take on an army three or four times
his size!”

The arm squeezed Hugh’s neck. “Exactly! This
is the beauty of my plan, Chester—the army the Bastard will see
from Pontorson’s towers will only be a fraction of the whole. We’ll
put forty or fifty men in the field, draw the loyalists out of
their sanctuary and the rest of us will swoop down on them from our
hiding place in the forest and slaughter the lot of them!”

Hugh shrugged noncommittally. It all sounded
too simple to him. What if the Bastard didn’t rise to their bait
and stayed put behind the walls? But he didn’t make any objection.
After all, it didn’t matter what they planned; Henry would make
short work of them.

“Are you married, Chester?” asked de Fougères
so abruptly that Hugh turned his head sharply to look at him,
uncertain if he’d heard correctly. The movement had the effect, at
last, of causing the Breton’s arm to slide off his neck.

“Married? No, not now. I was, but just before
last Christmas, my wife lost her wits and wandered into the hills
beyond the castle. She never returned.”

De Fougères sucked in his breath. “What a
tragedy!” he murmured, sounding too concerned for genuine
sentiment.

“Yes; a tragedy,” said Hugh drily. The
Bolsovers had an unlucky talent for dying young. “Her cloak was
found by my men after a lengthy search, ripped and torn as though a
pack of wild animals had got to her.”

“Wolves,” nodded de Fougères knowingly.

“Yes; wolves,” said Hugh. He stared blandly
at the other man. “Why do you ask?”

“Well, it’s just that we’re getting along
together so well that I thought I might bring my daughter up to
meet you. Sixteen years old, ripe for marriage.” De Fougères gave a
little laugh. “What an honor it would be for her to meet such a
powerful and respected man as yourself! But perhaps the death of
your wife is still fresh in your mind.”

De Fougères had two sons with him at Dol, one
just on either side of twenty, whom Hugh was more interested in
meeting than another colorless daughter of another poor knight. But
while he didn’t respond to de Fougères’ probing last comment, he
didn’t wish to alienate his ally.

“It would be
my
honor to meet
her,
I’m sure,” he said.
“Perhaps when the situation in Normandy has been resolved in the
Young King’s favor you might bring her here.”

The Breton beamed. “Yes, yes—when we have
finally crushed that witch’s son, Henry, and demolished his empire!
When Brittany is finally released from its servitude!”

Hugh breathed an inward sigh of relief. Good,
he thought; he wouldn’t be subjected to the girl any time soon.

Hugh met with his knights to inform them of
de Fougères’ plan without detailing his own misgivings. Back at
Chester, he’d been somewhat surprised when, to a man, his vassals
had chosen to support him rather than remain loyal to the king. He
knew he was not a charismatic leader like Henry (despite Haworth’s
fervent assertion), but he also knew he wasn’t as demanding an
overlord as the king. Apparently, just as he did, his tenants
preferred to keep things the way they were.