The Iron Castle

by Angus Donald

  Also by Angus Donald

  Outlaw

  Holy Warrior

  King’s Man

  Warlord

  Grail Knight

  COPYRIGHT

  Published by Sphere

  ISBN: 9781405525886

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © Angus Donald 2014

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  Sphere

  Little, Brown Book Group

  100 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DY

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Table of Contents

  Also by Angus Donald

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Maps

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Part Two

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Part Three

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Epilogue

  Historical Note

  Acknowledgements

  For Mary, Emma and Robin with all my love

  Part One

  Chapter One

  This is a tale of blood. This is a tale of slaughter and sacrifice, of betrayal and loyalty, of the magnificent deeds of noble warriors and the miserable deaths of those decried as traitors. This is the tale of a rich homeland beyond the shores of England, a cradle for so many of our greatest knights, and how, through bad faith, bad leadership and the schemes of bad men, it was lost. It is not an easy tale to write, no joyous task to recall the futile deaths of so many good comrades, but I feel honour-bound to set it down on this parchment so that future generations will learn of these fighting men, the good and the bad – what they struggled for, what they died for and what they achieved in their short time here on this sweet, green earth.

  My own time in this world is, I fear, drawing to a close. I have lived nearly three score years and ten – far longer than most men – and I have seen much of battle and hard living, both of which exact a heavy tax from a man’s soul. My whole body hurts in these end days of my life: my legs swell red and ache, my fingers tremble and throb, old bones broken years ago complain when I try to sleep, in whatever position; my back twinges when I move swiftly and when I do not move for long stretches of time, my breath is short and foul, and my kidneys give sharp expressions of protest every day just before dawn, even though I piss five times or more during the night. I am old, that is all, and nothing can be done for it – my physician seems to have no inkling of what exactly ails me and mumbles about my humours being out of balance and the unfortunate alignment of the stars, the damned ignorant quacksalver, before taking a pint of blood from me, and a purse of silver, too, for his trouble.

  I am hampered in my efforts to set down this tale, not only by my failing health, but by the presence of my grandson and namesake, Alan, here at the manor of Westbury, in the fair county of Nottinghamshire. The lad is now eighteen years of age – a fully grown man and a trained knight, skilful with sword and lance. But he has lost his place with the Earl of Locksley at Kirkton Castle. He trained there as a squire for five years or more and last year the Earl did him the honour of knighting my grandson himself – he did this, I believe, not for any prowess that young Alan showed at arms, but as a mark of respect for the long friendship I had with his father, Robert Odo, who was my lord before him and who is now, sadly, in his grave. The young Earl has a great respect for tradition, and as I loyally served his father, it seemed he wished for my grandson to serve him as a knight. But something has happened, I know not what, and young Alan has returned to Westbury in disgrace. He refuses to tell me what is amiss and I must summon up the vigour in these old bones to ride up to Kirkton, in south Yorkshire, and find out for myself what has caused this grave rift between our two families.

  Meanwhile, young Alan has decided to fill his life with noise and merriment. He has invited a pack of young, well-born louts to stay at Westbury – he calls them his comrades-in-arms, though neither he nor they have ever fought in real battle – and they spend their time hunting deer, hares, wild boar (anything that moves swiftly), all over my lands, and then returning to Westbury, filthy with mud, their horses blown, and with a thirst that would rival a Saracen’s camel train. Since they arrived, a week hence, they have been working hard to drink my wine cellars dry night after night. I have already had to place a fresh order for another two dozen barrels with my Bordeaux merchants, the second one this year, and it is not yet October. I will need to order again before Christmas, I make no doubt.

  Their wild antics, their drunken bellowing, their endless inane laughter keep me awake at night, even though their revels take place in the guest hall fifty yards from my quarters; and, poorly rested when I rise at dawn, my irritation grows with each passing day and my rising bile prevents me from concentrating satisfactorily on my labours on this parchment with quill and ink. I should admonish him, I know, but I love him – he is my only living issue, his father, my only son Robert having died of a bloody flux more than ten years ago – and I too was young once and enjoyed a cup of wine or two with friends, and a little mirth. So I believe I can endure a measure of youthful rowdiness for a little while longer.

  And for now, at this hour, Westbury is mercifully quiet, praise God. It is not long after dawn, a pleasingly chilly, misty morning, and young Alan and his friends are sleeping off their surfeit of wine. I must seize this opportunity and begin to scratch out my tale, the tale of the great battle, perhaps the greatest battle of them all, a long and truly terrible siege, that I took part in forty-odd years ago in Normandy; and the part played by my lord, my friend, the former outlaw, the thief, the liar, the ruthless mercenary, Robert Odo, the man the people knew as Robin Hood.

  The great hall of Nottingham Castle was warm and dry and, for once, adequately illuminated against the shadows of the raw spring evening. A large rectangular building in the centre of the middle bailey of the most powerful castle in central England, the hall had been the scene of many uneasy moments for me over the years. I had been insulted, mocked and humiliated here as a youngster; I had fought for my life several times in its shadow. This beating heart of the castle had once been a place that I fea
red and avoided. But on this day, on the ides of March, in the year of Our Lord twelve hundred and one, I was a privileged guest within its embrace. It was bright as noon within, with the cheerful yellow light of scores of fat beeswax candles held fast on spikes in a dozen iron ‘trees’ – six along each long wall – and a leaping blaze of applewood logs in the centre of the open space. Had it not been for the presence of fifty English and Norman knights standing awkwardly in murmuring clumps and dressed in all the finery they could muster, it might have been a cosy, domestic scene.

  Clearly the newly appointed Sheriff of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and the Royal Forests, Sir Hugh Bardolf, the constable of the castle, wished his most honoured guest to be at ease, and wisely so: for this guest was none other than the King himself – John, only living son of old King Henry, and lord of England, Ireland, Normandy, Maine, Anjou, Poitou and Aquitaine.

  I must admit I despised the fellow, King or no. To my mind, John was a cowardly, cruel, duplicitous fool. He had tried to destroy me on several occasions and I had survived only by the grace of God Almighty and the help of my friends. I had no doubt that if he ever brought himself to recall some of our past encounters, and he thought there would be no repercussions, he would seek to have me dispatched forthwith. I felt the same about him. Indeed, I would have happily danced barefoot all night on his freshly filled grave. But I continued my existence on this earth, as a minor knight of the shires with only one small manor to his name, because I was just too insignificant for the King to notice. I was, indeed, beneath his royal contempt. I also had a powerful protector in the form of my lord, Robert Odo, erstwhile Earl of Locksley, a man who, at this very moment, was kneeling humbly before the seated King, his arms outstretched, palms pressed flat together as if in prayer. My lord, I knew for certain, hated King John quite as much as I did. And yet here he was on his knees in humble submission before him.

  Robin was bareheaded and unarmed, as is the custom for these ceremonies, dressed only in a simple grass-green, ankle-length woollen robe. His light-brown hair was washed and neatly cut and combed, his face freshly shaven. He looked solemn, meek and pious, almost holy – if I had not known him so well, I’m not sure I’d have believed that this clean and spruce and humble fellow was once the famous thief and murderer Robin Hood. I was still having difficulty encompassing in my mind what I knew was about to happen. My lord, once good King Richard’s most trusted vassal, and more recently the scourge of wealthy travellers in Sherwood, was about to swear homage to the Lionheart’s cowardly younger brother. Incredibly, before my eyes, Robin was about to make a solemn vow that he would always be King John’s man.

  I was shaken to my boot soles when Robin told me, a month earlier, of his decision to give up his outlaw life in Sherwood and make his peace with the King.

  ‘I’m tired of all this, Alan,’ Robin said, over a cup of wine in the hall of my own small manor of Westbury, half a day’s ride north of Nottingham. His clothes were little better than greasy rags. His hair was shaggy, hanging past his shoulders and I could see burrs, twigs and clots of dirt in it. A fuzz of brown beard hid the lower part of his lean, handsome face – but his eyes blazed silver in their intensity as he told me his plans.

  ‘It was wonderful when I was a youngster,’ he said. ‘I was truly happy – living free of all constraints, doing whatever I wished, whenever I wished to do it. The danger was a tonic to my soul. I danced each day on the edge of a sword blade – and adored every moment. But, now … now, I miss my wife and my children. I think about Marie-Anne and Hugh and Miles far away in France. I want to see their faces and hold them. I want to watch Hugh and Miles grow tall. I want to live at Kirkton – all of us together. I want the quiet life, Alan, the dull life of the good man; I want to husband the Locksley lands, see the sheep sheared in spring and the crops brought in in summer; I want to bring justice and peace to the people who live there, and sleep safe in a warm bed at night. I don’t want to be constantly in fear that I will wake looking up at the killing end of a spear-shaft, surrounded by the Sheriff’s men. I don’t want to end my days on a gibbet, rough hemp around my neck, slowly choking out my last breaths in front of a jeering crowd. I want…’ He huffed out a breath, lifted his chin and straightened his shoulders. ‘I want, I want, I want – by God, I sound like a whining brat. My apologies, Alan. I must be getting old.’

  That was exactly my interpretation, too. Robin, by my calculation, had now seen thirty-six summers – a goodly age, and one at which a man has one eye fondly on his wild, adventurous youth and the other on the loom of his dotage. I understood my lord’s impulse. I was ten years younger than Robin, but I too felt the lure of domesticity and secretly hoped that my years of battle, bloodshed, constant fear and mortal danger were behind me.

  ‘William is going to fix it,’ Robin said. ‘My brother is well with King John, it appears. He has spoken to Bardolf, who seems a decent man – for a damned sheriff – and although I must pay an enormous bribe and bring myself to kneel and do homage to King John, I will eventually be allowed to take up my lands and titles again in Yorkshire, and Marie-Anne and the boys can finally come home.’

  ‘Eventually?’

  ‘Yes, eventually. John, for all his many faults, is not a total imbecile. He wants me to serve him faithfully in France for three years – he has even drawn up a charter to this effect – and then I will be allowed to retire to the Locksley lands. He’s also giving me the lands in Normandy that Richard promised – do you remember? – as a sweetener. It’s a good arrangement for both of us. Three more years of fighting, then home with Marie-Anne and the boys. Don’t look at me like that, Alan; while John might not be, let us say, the most palatable fellow, he is still our rightful King.’

  I breathed in a mouthful of wine, coughed, spluttered and mopped my brick-red face with a linen napkin.

  ‘Not the most palatable fellow? Our rightful King? Are you quite well?’

  Robin looked annoyed. ‘Don’t climb up on your high horse, Alan. What am I supposed to do? Spend the rest of my days living alone like a hunted beast in the wild? Staying outside the law because John behaves like a petty tyrant from time to time? He’s the anointed King of England, sovereign over us all, he’s entitled to be a little high-handed. And I can change him. I can. If I’m at his side, I can curb his excesses, guide him, help him be a better man, a better King…’

  I said exactly nothing. I cautiously took another sip of my wine.

  Robin frowned. ‘Damn you, Alan, I am doing this whether you approve of my actions or not. The King wants me to raise a mercenary force in Normandy, nothing too unwieldy, two hundred men-at-arms or so, some archers and cavalry, too. The money is very good, and…’ Robin cleared his throat and smiled slyly. ‘Well, I wondered whether you would care to climb down from that lofty horse and agree to serve for pay on a hired mount on the continent. Good wages for a knight: John is paying six shillings a day; there would be the usual spoils, too. It might be fun…’

  This was a most generous offer from Robin. I held the manor of Westbury from him, as the Earl of Locksley, and I was, in truth, obliged by custom to serve him as a knight for forty days a year, if he called upon me to do so. But Robin had never asked me to fulfil this obligation and, although I had served him in many a campaign and fought many a bloody battle under his banner, it was always out of love and loyalty rather than duty.

  ‘By your leave, sir, I will remain here at Westbury,’ I said formally. ‘The manor is in poor condition and urgently needs my attention, as does baby Robert. But, more than that, I believe my fighting days are behind me at last. I’ve had enough of pain and bloodshed, enough of foul food and festering wounds, of good men dying for bad reasons. I would be a lord of the land from now on.’

  ‘As you wish, my friend,’ said Robin. ‘I will not force you. If you change your mind, there will always be a place for you in any force that I command. Just don’t go around speaking ill of our noble king. Apart from being most offensive to those of us who w
ould be his loyal vassals, it’s treasonous. John is very alive to threats of treason. Royalty should be shown the proper respect.’ Robin grinned at me to show he was jesting, and I could do nothing but smile back.

  I tried my hardest to show the proper respect to royalty, and to Robin, to the extent of donning my best clothes and attending this royal ceremony of homage at the great hall in Nottingham Castle that cold March evening. Yet in the peacock swirl of the nobility of all England, I felt very much like a drab nobody. I was not nobly born myself and had very little wealth in either lands or silver – my father Henry Dale had been a monk, then a musician, then a peasant farmer before his early death – and I earned my knighthood on the battlefield with King Richard. On that day in the great hall, I was conscious of the fact that my only good cloak had recently been torn on a nail, then mended by one of my elderly female servants. The stitches were crude and lumpy; they showed up like a stain, proclaiming: look, this gutter-born oaf cannot afford a new garment even for a royal occasion.

  The mending of my cloak made me long once again for my sweet wife Goody, who had been killed in a terrible accident the year before. My lovely girl would have repaired it, quietly, efficiently and no one would have been the wiser. But it was not only for her needlework that I missed her. I had known her since we were both children; we had, in a way, grown up together, and I had loved her with all my heart – her loss was sometimes overwhelming. I still wept from time to time, alone in bed, when I suffered the lash of her memory.

  ‘I never thought I’d see the day Robert of Locksley would bend the knee to King John,’ said a deep voice at my shoulder, shaking me from my sad reverie. I turned to see a tall, gaunt form, with grizzled grey-white hair, muscular shoulders and big scarred hands. He was dressed richly, in silk and satin and velvet, as befitted one of England’s richest men, and yet on William the Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, the outfit looked absurd, like a broad-shouldered, hairy soldier got up in a woman’s dress for a fair-day lark. I felt that he’d have been much more comfortable in well-worn iron mail from top knot to toe, a garb I had seen him don on countless occasions on campaign.