The Iron Castle (Outlaw Chronicles) (25 page)

To my surprise, his signal was repeated back to him twice, and up ahead there was a patch of darkness fuller than the rest. The earth wall. And was there someone there? I heard a click of trodden stone on stone and Robin rose silently to his feet. I got to mine, put my left hand on his shoulder and followed him and soon I could make out the shape of a man greyer than the surrounding gloom. I put my right hand on the handle of the misericorde, but remembered Robin’s ominous words and did not draw the weapon. The man was standing by a stout wicker gate in the earth wall and, as far as I could tell, he was alone.

The gate opened just the width of a man, Robin and I slipped through and I found myself face to face with a small, very ugly middle-aged man in a dark hood. ‘This way, monsieurs,’ he said in a rough regional French accent. ‘You are late. I expected you an hour ago.’

Robin made no excuse. He clapped the man on the arm and said, ‘Lead us to him, Gerard!’

As we walked on, into the light of campfires and standing torches – almost blinding after the darkness – I realised we had just strolled, well, crawled, into the heart of the French camp. We were paid no mind by the few figures we saw crouched around campfires murmuring to comrades, nor did we interact with the men walking between the shacks and tents; no challenges were issued, we were merely three more shadows moving through the night.

In the time it would take to say ten Hail Marys, we were outside a simple white oiled-linen tent, illuminated from the inside by the light of many candles. Gerard said, ‘One hour, and I’ll be back. That is enough?’

Robin nodded and gave him a coin from his purse. Then my lord held back the flap of the tent and indicated I should go inside.

Mystified, curious and not a little nervous, I stepped through the gap between the folds of the fabric with my hand on the hilt of my dagger and there, seated on a camp stool cleaning a long sword with an oily cloth, was my cousin Roland.

He stood, and we embraced. Then he held me at arm’s length and we looked fondly at each other. Apart from that glimpse at the riverbank, I had not seen my cousin for four years. He looked healthy, fit and only a little older. A tall, blond man, similar to myself in colouring and looks, except that he had a large shiny scar on the lower left side of his face.

‘Well, you don’t seem to be starving just yet,’ said Roland amiably. ‘This siege seems to be agreeing with you, Alan.’

‘I would find it more agreeable if you would persuade your master Philip to leave us in peace,’ I said.

‘That will never happen in a thousand lifetimes,’ he said and turned away to fill a goblet with wine for me. I turned to say something to Robin but to my astonishment he had disappeared.

Roland handed me the goblet. ‘He has gone to snoop around our camp like a dirty spy,’ he said with a grimace of distaste. ‘My lord of Locksley likes to talk to the men-at-arms, though God knows what he hopes to discover. The truth is plain. We are here, we are staying here, and soon you will be forced to surrender your walls.’

I shook my head. ‘We will outlast you, cousin. I promise. But I pray we will not meet on the battlements because…’

‘Yes, if that happens we must fight. I know it. We must do our duty. But for now, for this night, let there be a private truce between us – what say you, cousin?’

‘For tonight,’ I agreed. ‘But how comes Robin to know your serving man, to be met by him and to be guided like an old friend to your tent? And what am I doing here?’

‘As for the first part, I do not wholly know. My lord of Locksley appeared, like a revenant, one night some weeks ago. Just popped into my tent like a country neighbour paying a friendly call. I was too surprised to sound the alarm, and then he gently reminded me of our comradeship and the great service he had done me when I was captured by Richard’s mercenaries after Gisors – do you remember? – then he wanted a cup of wine and something to eat, and, well, soon it was too late to call for my men without looking a fool – not that I wished to. He stayed, we spoke of this and that, we drank a cup of wine, ate a little. He swore not to cause harm to any of our men in his wanderings. I asked after you and he promised he would bring you to me at the next dark of the moon. So, though honour demands we must be enemies in this unfortunate business, there is no need for us to forget our kinship, for this night at least.’

I smiled at him. I was fond of Roland, and while it was fantastical, absurd even, to be sharing wine with a friend in the heart of the enemy camp, I was very happy to be there.

We talked for a while, comfortably, quite naturally, about his family – the Seigneur d’Alle who was in Paris at the King’s side, and his beautiful mother Adele, who very much wanted to introduce me to a young unmarried cousin of hers. We shared a few sorrowful words about the death of my lovely Goody, too. He asked after my little son Robert, and Thomas Blood, now a knight, who had shared our adventures in the south in pursuit of the Grail. And I told him the sad news about Little John and the terrible wound he had taken at Mirebeau. We drank to his speedy recovery but without much true conviction. Before too long the hour was nearly up and, suddenly, Roland was all briskness.

‘Alan, I have something that I must tell you – I do not think I am betraying any great confidences by saying this, and I believe it will save the world a great deal of misery if I share it with you. The King has heard about the wretches you released from the castle and whom our men allowed to pass. He is extremely angry. The message I have for you is this: we will allow no more of the occupants of Château Gaillard to leave. You must all surrender, or none. That is the King’s word. We are all aware these people are mostly women, children and elderly folk, but they are your responsibility and we have been giving an advantage to you in this bloody game of ours by allowing them to pass. No more shall be allowed through, do you hear me? No more.’

I could see his point. I nodded slowly.

‘I have one more thing to tell you. Please listen carefully, cousin. King John cannot come to your rescue. He is even now making plans to withdraw to England, our spies tell us. You must persuade Roger de Lacy to surrender the castle to us, to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. Simon de Montfort will accept his capitulation, despite de Lacy’s insults. You need have no fear, Alan, you can surrender to me and I will guarantee your safety; your life will be as sacred as my own.’

‘If King John is truly going to England, as you say, he must be going to gather fresh men. He will come to us; he must come to us.’

‘Monsieur!’ The ugly little fellow was at the flap of the tent. ‘It is time. We must away. The other monsieur is outside.’

‘King John cannot save you,’ Roland said. ‘You must trust me on this.’

I said angrily, ‘Is this a ruse? Is this Philip’s way of sowing discord behind our walls? I think this is most dishonourable of you, cousin – that you should seek to trade on our kinship to gain advantage over your enemies.’

‘I do not lie. On my honour. Stay here with me, I beg you, or surrender very soon, or we will be forced to face each other in the fire of battle and only God knows what that outcome will be. I do not want to have to kill you, my dear Alan.’

‘You could not, even if you tried!’ I snarled at him.

I had no more to say and strode out of the tent without thanking him for his wine or his company. With Gerard and Robin, and feeling like an ungrateful boor, I hurried across the silent camp and back towards the wicker gate.

A little before dawn, when I was back in the outer bailey and wrapped in my blankets, I thought deeply about Roland’s words. It must be a ruse, I thought, it must be. King John, bad as he is, could not abandon Château Gaillard to the enemy. It would spell disaster for him. Roland had lied. But, even so, I could not hate him for long. He was honour-bound to serve his King, as I was to serve mine. It was his duty to persuade me to surrender by whatever means, fair or foul.

I informed Roger de Lacy the next day of what Roland had said, along with my conviction that it was a ruse, and also passed along some scraps of information Robin had gathered from his campfire chats with the French soldiery.

‘It is a murky game you and Locksley play, Sir Alan,’ said de Lacy. ‘But I believe you have fathomed your cousin’s intent. Do not fear. King John will come. He might take a few weeks to muster all the available forces from England but he will come. He knows well that if Château Gaillard is lost, then so is Normandy. Also, he gave me his word of honour that he would do so. He will come and he will sweep these dogs from our walls. We must be patient, hold true to our purpose, and the King will surely come.’

I was cheered by the castellan’s words. Not because John had given his royal word to de Lacy but because it was in truth unthinkable for the King to abandon the Iron Castle and, so, Normandy. King John, in his own sweet time, when he had mustered sufficient strength, must come to our aid or lose all.

I gave de Lacy Roland’s message about the Useless Mouths.

‘Hmm,’ said the castellan, ‘we shall see about that, too.’

Two days later I slept late after a night watch on the north tower and, rising at nearly noon and climbing to the battlements, I was puzzled to see a vast gathering of townspeople, mostly mothers and their children, but a few elderly men and women as well, in the courtyard of the middle bailey. By chance the man standing next to me was Stefan, the former denizen of Petit Andely who had spotted Robin’s nocturnal antics outside the walls. I asked what was happening. ‘They are sending them out,’ he said. ‘The last of them. My grandfather is down there, with my wife and baby son. I am so glad this is over for them, they will be safe at last.’

I looked at him in amazement. Surely de Lacy could not have misunderstood the information I gave him. Surely de Lacy could not be expelling them when he knew what he knew? My head was spinning; I wasted precious moments cudgelling my brains to unravel the castellan’s true intent and, as a result, was far too late to do anything – for as I looked on, the gates of the castle creaked open and the last of the Useless Mouths, many hundreds of souls, eight hundred, nine hundred, perhaps as many as a thousand, limped out of the gate and began slowly to make their way down the path towards the river and the town.

I raced for the stairs, tumbling down them, knocking a man-at-arms flying as I charged across the open space. Up the steps I went, across the drawbridge separating outer from middle bailey, and skidded to a halt in the middle of the courtyard just as the last of the Useless Mouths was shuffling out of the gate, and the doors were swinging shut behind him.

I sprinted for the gatehouse, spotting de Lacy’s broad back high up on the gallery above the portal, the man himself evidently looking out on the departing folk. I managed to calm myself and climb the stairs. A deep feeling of dread filled my bowels. When I reached the gallery, I saw that Robin was standing beside de Lacy, with Vim beyond him. I half-expected my lord and de Lacy to be whispering darkly like murderers but both stood perfectly still, their shoulders square, heads up, watching the raggedy procession wend its way towards the French ramparts. Vim nodded at me, but his face was grim, and he took up a position at Robin’s shoulder, facing me, as if he wished to prevent me from coming close to my lord. I went to the stone rim of the gallery, a few yards from Robin and the castellan, and looked at the stream of humanity filing down the path.

When the first of the Useless Mouths came within fifty yards of the French, my wildest hopes were dashed. The gates set in the earthen hill remained firmly closed and the heads of half a hundred men-at-arms appeared on the ramparts. The foremost of the pathetic horde called to the enemy and indistinct replies were made, but the gates stayed shut.

Then, to my horror, I heard a shout of command in French, and an evil cloud of bolts flew up from the earthen walls, hung in the sky and came down upon the unfortunate herd of frightened, unarmed, unarmoured women, children and old men. As the Useless Mouths were crowded together, almost every bolt found a mark. People staggered and dropped as the deadly bolts punched through their miserable rags and into vulnerable flesh. They cried out piteously, mewling and calling that they were not belligerents but harmless citizens of Petit Andely seeking mercy. Mercy! The French reply was another flight of missiles. Again the bolts soared, hung and dropped – I saw a child of no more than five years spitted through its skeletal arm, and heard his mother’s howl as she snatched him up and ran to the ramparts shouting madly and holding out her wounded child so the crossbowmen could see the results of their work. Yet more quarrels lashed the crowd, plucking souls from the earth, here and there, maiming others, pinning yet others to the ground, and at last the mob splintered and the people dropped their meagre belongings and fled back up the slope, leaving more than two dozen still on the ground before the French walls.

I was frozen, aghast. The wretches scrambled up towards us, some on all fours in their haste to escape, ignoring the winding path and coming straight up the hillside, clawing at the rock and turf like scurrying animals, hundreds of souls, many wounded, trailing blood, surging upwards, crying out for us to open the gates and let them back inside, begging for the protection of the Iron Castle.

A mass of humanity soon formed outside our main gate, hundreds upon hundreds of bewildered men and women, their lined faces and wide, rolling eyes looking up at Roger de Lacy as he stood like a statue above the gate – which also remained firmly shut. They called to their lord, begging him to re-admit them. De Lacy looked down on them, his face a mask of implacable calm.

He raised his hands to still the babble of the Useless Mouths. An uneasy quiet descended over the multitude below.

‘I cannot admit you. I cannot feed you,’ he said. ‘Your fate is in God’s hands.’

A chorus of howls broke out. I could see old men and women I had passed the time of day with in the castle courtyard; I could see children I had watched at play on the ramparts with our men-at-arms. Now they were shouting that they had been tricked; that it was de Lacy’s duty to protect them.