The Iron Castle

by Angus Donald

  King John nodded as if agreeing with the boy. ‘Yet if you truly were the rightful Duke and King, then God Almighty, His son, His mother and all the saints would not let this happen to you.’

  The King shifted his gaze to meet that of Humphrey. ‘Do it!’ he said. In one swift movement, Humphrey drew the keen blade across Arthur’s neck. Blood jetted from the terrible wound, arcing into the air in thick, pulsing spurts.

  Robin took his hand off my shoulder. I fumbled at my waist but found no weapon there except a small eating knife. Nevertheless, I drew it and made to step forward into the cell. I felt Robin’s arms lock around my arms and chest, and his voice hiss in my ear. ‘Alan, if you love life even a little, and if you want to continue to enjoy it, I tell you in all earnestness – walk away from this now and never think or speak of it again.’

  Arthur had fallen to the floor, the blood still pumping from the yawning gash in his throat, a red pool swiftly forming beneath his pale cheek. King John leaned forward on his stool, fascinated; a tiny river of blood wended its way across the stone floor towards the kidskin-shod royal foot. Both Humphrey and Hugo stepped back to keep their feet clear. The blood trickle reached John’s immobile shoe and seemed to try to bury itself under the sole. Arthur was still, at the other end of the blood trail connecting him to the King, lying in his own gory lake. I gave a cough of rage and sorrow, a wordless noise, like the expression of a dumb beast, and Robin lifted me off my feet and turned me around so that I was facing the upward curve of the stairs. Then he released me. ‘Go now, Alan, for all our sakes,’ he said quietly, giving my back a gentle shove. ‘Go now, and do not look back.’

  I ran from that bloody chamber, away and up the staircase almost as fast as I had tumbled down it. But I was not fleeing in horror from King John and his butchers in that blood-splashed dungeon.

  I was running to fetch my sword.

  Chapter Eleven

  I ran from the castle, through the narrow streets of the town, directly to Robin’s tall house by the cathedral. I burst through the doors and pounded up the stairs to the chamber at the top that Robin and Marie-Anne had put at my disposal. As I strapped Fidelity around my hips and tucked the misericorde into my right boot, tears ran freely down my cheeks. Duke Arthur had not been my friend, indeed he had been my enemy, but the tragedy of his last few months on this earth had wrung my heart, and his murder at the hands of his drunken captors filled me with a fury that could be quenched only by blood.

  I knew what to do. White-hot rage and bull-at-a-gate stampeding would not achieve it. So, half an hour later, back inside the castle, I made myself calm, loitering in the long shadows by the well-house in the courtyard, the hood of my cloak hiding my face, drinking from time to time from the dipper in the bucket, watching the entrances to the keep. It was near dusk by then, and the bells of Vespers were ringing mournfully across town, but I had to wait another full hour in the growing darkness before I saw two men, carrying a large, long object wrapped in blankets, emerge from the side door to the keep. I stepped into the deepest shadow behind the well-housing and forced myself to breathe easily, in through the nose, out through the mouth.

  Humphrey and Hugo marched their burden straight out of the western gate of the castle, unchallenged by the guards thanks to their status as the King’s bachelors. They passed across the lowered drawbridge over the moat and took the road heading west along the right bank of the Seine. At the gatehouse I told the guards I’d be sleeping in the barracks with my recruits that night and was grudgingly allowed through, although it was well past the curfew hour.

  I stayed some fifty yards behind the murderers and I doubt if they noticed me once we left the lights of the castle and the town of Rouen behind. We passed the barracks of the Wolves – I saw the gleam of tallow candles leaking through the cracks in the structure and heard the sound of ill-tuned singing. It crossed my mind, only for a moment, to summon some of the recruits to aid me. Then I dismissed the notion: I would do this alone. I would not taint my new men with this night’s foul work.

  There were few folk about then; the day was dead and well-earned slumber beckoned all good Christians to their beds. Some passed me on the road, going east, heading to the gaggle of huts that had spread outside the walls of the town, refugees from twenty years of bloody fighting across Normandy who had made their own encampment in the shadow of the capital city. But these were wary, dirt-poor folk, who minded their own affairs as a matter of survival, and not one so much as gave me a second glance. They trudged past, eyes down, hoods pulled forward like mine, mute as mice. A pair of noisier fellows passed, too, men-at-arms swaggering in drink, but they also ignored the bachelors and their limp burden fifty paces ahead of me – or did not notice them in their inebriation – and I stepped off the track and into a dark stand of trees to allow them to pass.

  When the soldiers had been swallowed by the gloom, I strode forward again, silent as a shadow. I was a dark wraith behind the two men and their cloth-wrapped load on the road by the Seine – only locked inside my heart was the bright hot flame of rage.

  About half a mile outside Rouen, Humphrey and Hugo stopped and laid down their parcel. They looked before and behind them, but nobody else was on the road by then, and the nearest boat on the Seine was more than two hundred paces hence – a wherry pulling away from us and heading for the far bank. I was thirty yards behind them, unseen behind a rowan bush, crouched on one knee.

  I stood tall, then slipped Fidelity from its scabbard and stepped on to the road. As I approached them on fairy-light feet, they bent to the long bundle, hoisted it between them and swung the body, once, twice, three times, and hurled it into the Seine, where it splashed noisily in the black waters and sank almost immediately. I realised they must have weighed it down with iron chains from the dungeon. Thus disappeared the mortal shell of Arthur, Duke of Brittany, claimant to the throne of England, a brave man, a man of honour. May his immortal soul rest with God.

  I was ten feet from them by now and still unnoticed.

  I called out softly, ‘Hold, you murderers. Hold there, my bold assassins.’ Humphrey spun round and peered at my shape in the darkness. He saw the wink of my long blade and gave a cry and fumbled for his own sword. Hugo, likewise, a short round shape in the gloom, was drawing his own weapon.

  Good, I thought, arm yourselves. It should not be black murder.

  ‘Did you think yourself brave, Humphrey, when you slew a bound man? Did you? Did you feel like true men when you cut Arthur’s throat, when you killed a prisoner who could not defend himself? Would you boast to your friends of your valour? No? I thought not. For you have none, cowards.’

  The bachelors separated, each with a drawn sword, going left and right, Hugo on to the road, Humphrey along the riverbank. They meant to attack me at the same time – the right move for them, more dangerous for me – but I cared not. They would die this night. I knew it in my bones, in my blood, in my vitals. They could have had a dozen comrades with them and I would have felt not the slightest trepidation. My rage warmed me and made me invincible – at least to scum such as these.

  ‘I shall feel very good about cutting your throat,’ said Humphrey. ‘That pleasure is long overdue.’ Even as he uttered these words, his companion hacked at my head with his sword. I was distracted momentarily and saw the movement only by God’s grace out of the side of my eye – I ducked, as Hugo’s blade sliced through the air an inch over my skull. I came up, leaning back, towards him, and drove my elbow hard into his face. He was coming forward, impelled by his strike, and I was going backwards, and my elbow crunched into his nose like a padded mason’s hammer. He sat down heavily as if his legs had been cut from under him. Then Humphrey was on me, aiming to split me from crown to crotch with a fast, vertical blow, but I was already moving, and had slipped half a step right and twisted to the side even before his blow was halfway done. These men are not fighters, I thought. Cutting the throats of bound prisoners was the limit of their skill: they were executioners
, not warriors.

  As I was.

  Humphrey swung his sword at my neck, and I blocked it easily, our blades ringing out like hammer on anvil in the darkness. He pulled back, then rushed forward again, flailing at my head, backhanded this time, from my right, a wild swipe with his sword gripped in both hands. I swayed back out of reach and, when the tip of his blade had whistled past my nose, and he was off balance and as wide open as a country barn door, I stepped in and hacked Fidelity into his waist. My blade sliced deep, above his left hip, through bowel and belly and kidney, and I felt the jar of bone as sword was halted by spine. The air came out of his lungs in a long, soundless blast and he dropped to his knees. I planted a boot on his chest and tugged Fidelity out of him, kicking his half-severed frame to the turf as my blade came free.

  I turned to attend to his friend.

  Hugo was still down, half-stunned and trying to scramble away on all fours. I walked after him and stamped on his back, knocking him flat to the ground. He pushed himself up again with his short arms, still trying to scuttle free. I carved Fidelity straight down through his neck, set his head rolling free of his body and buried the tip of my sword into the earth. The torso remained at a crouch for five or six heartbeats, blood gushing from the neck over my blade, until his elbows relaxed and it thumped down on the riverbank. I pulled Fidelity free and strolled over to Humphrey, lying on his back in a pool of black liquid. He still lived. His pale face looked up at me beseechingly, his mouth open and oozing blood, his eyes wide and dark. I hawked and spat, showering his cheeks with spittle.

  ‘That is for Arthur,’ I said.

  He looked bewildered. As if he had never heard the name before.

  ‘And so is this,’ I said.

  I lifted my sword, double-handed, point downward and drove it into his chest with all my strength, piercing him through and through, pinning him to the turf.

  When my heart had calmed itself, I looked left and right, and saw we were still alone, praise God. I dragged their corpses to the river’s edge, although I had some trouble finding Hugo’s head in the dark. Then I kicked their mortal remains over the lip of the bank into the dark, memoryless Seine.

  Arthur was avenged, at least in part.

  Robin was waiting up for me when I returned to his house. Marie-Anne, Kit and the servants were all in bed, but my lord was sitting at a trestle table by the hearth with a jug of wine at his elbow. He said nothing as I clumped in in my muddy boots and sat beside him at the table. But I saw him eyeing the blood on my tunic and hose. He poured out a big cup of wine and shoved it over to me.

  ‘Feel better now?’ he said.

  ‘Not really,’ I said. ‘But it needed to be done.’

  Robin nodded absently and took a sip from his own cup.

  ‘I’m sorry for knocking you down in the castle,’ I said.

  ‘It is no matter. What did you do with the bodies?’

  ‘They are in the river. No one saw me do it.’

  ‘Good. When their disappearance is noted, I will say to the King that I have long had my suspicions of the pair of them, and I have heard rumours they have gone over to Philip’s banner.’

  ‘The King,’ I said dully.

  A vast exhaustion suddenly came over me. I finished my wine, longing for the oblivion of sleep.

  ‘Do not even think about harming the King, Alan. I am serious. I will not support you, do you hear me? Leave the King be or risk my wrath.’

  His silver eyes bored into me. I stood, all my limbs weighted with weariness.

  ‘Remind me, why do we serve this King?’ I said.

  Robin let out a hot breath. ‘I swore an oath to him, and you…’

  ‘Oh yes, our sacred oaths. I recall now. Good night, my lord, sleep well.’

  For the next few months I avoided the King as much as I could. It was not difficult, he spent a good part of the spring and early summer on the move, and I was planted in Rouen training the recruits to the Wolves. But, whenever he was in Rouen, and I might have been summoned to the hall to dine with him and his barons, I found some excuse not to attend. I went out on exercises in the Norman countryside with the recruits, long, exhausting patrols, or feigned a sickness of the stomach. I did not trust myself in his presence. I did not trust myself not to attack him with my bare hands or rip his scrawny throat out with my teeth. How Robin could stand it, I do not know – or perhaps I did understand a little when I saw him at training with Miles and Hugh in the courtyard of the house.

  Hugh was then thirteen years old, a solemn lad who adored his father and strove in all things to be like him. He took his training to be a knight extremely seriously, practising with sword and shield, and with lance on horseback, in any spare moments that he had outside the hours prescribed by the master-at-arms who had been hired to instruct him. But, for all his hard work, he was not a natural swordsman; he was clumsy and slow, and when he fought his attacking moves were dangerously predictable. While he strove to be as much like his father as he could, copying Robin’s dress and habits of speech, he bore absolutely no resemblance to the Earl of Locksley at all. He was short and dark, while Robin was tall and fair. He had no time for mischief and whimsy, while Robin sometimes seemed to live for both. He loved books and studied as hard at his schooling as he did on his training for war. But he was no milksop – he could take a hard blow from a wooden sword without weeping – and he had a determination that many older men might have envied. I liked him, and I spent some time with him each week working on his sword play. While he might not be a gifted warrior, he was dogged, and I was able by patient repetition to teach him some of my own tricks that I hoped might save his life when he went into battle.

  Miles was, in looks, character and temperament, the very opposite of his brother. Although not yet nine years old, Miles was almost as accomplished a fighter as Hugh. He did not have the strength yet, but he was nearly as tall as his sibling, and much faster and more inventive with a blade. He was lively and quick-witted, fair and willowy in build – one of the laziest boys I have ever met, yet also one of the most energetic. Hugh would often rise before dawn and practise his sword work in the courtyard before the household was awake. Miles had to be dragged from his cot with curses and blows, and if not supervised minutely, he would find a quiet corner to curl up in and take a nap. On the other hand, of an evening, while Hugh was sitting in his chamber with a candle and his nose in a book of Latin grammar, Miles would have escaped the house, ignoring the curfew imposed on Rouen by King John, and by his father on him, and be running about the darkened streets and scrambling over rooftops with a gang of wild friends. With a sword, even at his tender age, Miles could surprise his master-at-arms with a cunning new trick that he had invented, some unheard of combination that slipped like quicksilver past his teacher’s guard. Then he would lose interest and be easily overcome by his adult opponent. Miles was frequently beaten for his misdemeanours; Hugh almost never. Yet the two boys, for all their differences, were devoted to each other.

  Robin doted on them both, and when his duties permitted would take them out hunting in the woods and come back bone tired, happy and with a couple of bloody deer carcasses across their saddles. Robin played chess with them; he worked on their sword skills when he had time; he sang with them and Marie-Anne after supper, occasionally with me providing the musical accompaniment on my vielle. He had been away from them far too much, he confided in me, while they were growing and he was outlawed or on campaign, and he had refused to send them off to some other knight’s household for training as was customary for most lads of their age and rank. It would have been a little dangerous, to be honest, in his outlaw years, for his enemies might have taken it into their heads to capture them and hold them for ransom. But the truth was that, unlike so many powerful men in the King’s court, he loved his sons and wanted to spend as much time with them as he could.

  ‘If I die in battle, I want them to remember my face,’ he told me. ‘I don’t just want them to inherit my lands and ti
tle.’

  This, of course, was the reason why Robin served King John; this was why he had sworn an oath to be his loyal man. Why he put up with John’s behaviour. For them. He wanted to make a home and a future for his boys, and for Marie-Anne.

  ‘Only one more year to go, Alan,’ he told me a few weeks after Arthur’s murder. ‘One more year of nurse-maiding the King and I shall take Marie-Anne and the boys to Locksley and never stir from there again.’

  ‘If John keeps his word,’ I said nastily. Robin scowled at me.

  ‘He’d better. For, if he doesn’t, I’ll set you on him.’

  There were no repercussions from the deaths of Humphrey and Hugo, which I found a little strange. The King seemed to accept the premise fed to him by Robin that they had gone over to the enemy, as had so many other men already, and the next time the King was drunk, Robin told me, he fell on his neck, crying that Robin was his only true follower and wailing on about treachery in those closest to him.

  The murder of Arthur was another matter. Word spread fast that the Duke of Brittany, John’s nephew, had been slain – some said by John’s own hand – but, of course, there was no proof of his murder. The only living witnesses to the crime were Robin, myself and the King. Robin had impressed on me the importance of keeping silent on this matter, and I had agreed reluctantly. So the disappearance of Duke Arthur remained a mystery. The Bretons were certain that John had killed him, or ordered his death, and were incensed. Their depredations on the western border of Normandy, and in the south, where they had joined forces once again with the Lusignans, increased in violence and frequency. Worse than that, any chance John might have had to make peace with them, even a temporary truce, so that he could concentrate his force against King Philip in the east, was long gone. In Rouen, and in English court circles, the name Arthur was never mentioned. Not once. But King Philip, the sly dog, from thenceforth insisted that before there could be any negotiations over Normandy, John must produce his prisoner and demonstrate to the world that Arthur was alive and well.