The Iron Castle

by Angus Donald

  I took a breath. A trebuchet ball smashed against the wall, making a high, loud noise, like the cry of a wounded bird. I opened my mouth, filled my lungs and bellowed, ‘North tower first watch and south tower third watch to me! This instant. I want you all right here, right now. North tower first watch and…’

  Through the billowing dust and smoke I saw the obedient Wolves running towards me.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  We burned the outer bailey just before we quit it. Robin’s men piled furniture in each of the towers and the extra bedding, straw, old candle ends, and anything they could find that was flammable, and set it ablaze. And they torched all the buildings in the courtyard, too. I lined the breach with a score of Wolves and while Robin and the rest of the men scurried about behind us, carrying boxes and barrels, and litters for the wounded, we kept the French at bay for more than an hour – but, thank God, we were called on to do little in the way of actual fighting. The bombardment had mercifully ceased as the French approached, and I believe they could have easily overwhelmed us in one determined rush. But they did not. Instead, the crossbowmen were pushed forward and planted their pavises fifty yards from the outer bailey and showered us with bolts. Our bowmen exchanged shafts with them, and killed a few, but we lost only one man – I had made sure that every Wolf was in good cover, behind rubble or a piece of remaining wall, and that they kept their shields up. The French knew we were there, waiting for them to attack, and they hesitated. I took that as a compliment to our prowess. But, at last, the French spearmen forming up on the causeway for the assault were ready to advance. It was at that moment that Robin released us from our duty – and we pulled back, scrambling down over the broken rock and stone – as the smoke from the fires set by his men began to boil out of the doorways of the towers and leak from the arrow slits set in the round walls.

  By the time the horde of shouting Frenchmen was clambering out of the ditch and through the rubble of the breach, we were safe on the far side of the drawbridge that connected the outer and middle baileys, and were pulling it across behind us. The fire in the outer bailey had taken firm hold and all five towers were roaring. A few French spearmen climbed the walls and stared over at us in the middle bailey – but there was a vast ditch nine yards wide and a full thirty feet deep, between us and them, and the inferno we had left behind soon drove them out of the captured outer bastion.

  Roger de Lacy was there to greet us in person as we came tumbling over the drawbridge, coughing from the smoke, and to his credit, he had a word of congratulation for almost every man. I was the last across and he beamed at me like a father and said, ‘Bravely done, Sir Alan, bravely done indeed. It was a defence worthy of the Lionheart himself. You made them pay dearly for that scorched pile of stones and rubble. I congratulate you. And it will do them no good now. The dogs.’

  We might have been celebrating a victory, if one were to go by the castellan’s sternly happy expression, instead of watching our outer fortifications go up in flames. Perhaps it was a victory of sorts. We had held off the might of King Philip of France for nigh on six months, and only now had we been forced to give up a single outer bastion. The Iron Castle was still ours. Philip was, in some ways, no closer to having it than six months ago. The middle bailey, the inner bailey and the keep were formidable. We had not been defeated. It had, you might say, merely been a setback.

  The outer bailey burned for a day and a night – we had squads of men-at-arms on constant alert in the middle bailey with buckets of water to extinguish any flying sparks – and for a day afterwards it glowed too hot for the French to occupy. But soon enough we saw the broad blue and gold standard of Philip of France flying from the blackened shell of the western tower in the outer bailey, just a dozen yards from my new post on the south tower of the middle bailey, above the chapel. It was difficult to pretend that we were winning then, when I could almost have spat straight in the eye of the evil-looking French man-at-arms who peered at me over the parapet. We had to keep our heads down at all times, too. For while we were running short of arrows, the French crossbowmen seemed to have an ample supply and almost every day some unwary soul was spitted.

  But it was not the loss of the outer bailey that most exercised my mind in those grim days. I could not shake my conviction that there was a traitor within these walls. To my mind, the signalling by candlelight and the coincidence of the miner’s choice of words made a compelling case for an enemy within. I found myself in the chapel on the Sunday after the fall of the outer bailey attending the Eucharist service with Tilda and looking at the pious knights and noblemen around me and wondering who this person known as the Sparrow might be. Was it Father de la Motte? The priest, who was now blessing the bread and wine, had shown an inordinate amount of interest in the defences of the outer bailey. Had he been passing this information to the French? And if so, why? Why would a man of God break his oath to the King? That must be a very grave sin, surely? No, surely it could not be him. Could it then be Roger de Lacy, our castellan and commander? Had he made an arrangement with the French to save his life if the castle fell – or more, was he selling us out in exchange for rich lands and titles from Philip? Given the man’s iron character, it was unthinkable. Could it even be Vim, now hobbling up to the altar cheerfully on two sticks with his broken leg all strapped up, ready to receive the body and blood of Christ. The man was a mercenary and would serve any master if the pay was right. Had he made a more lucrative deal with King Philip? No, I knew he was completely loyal to Robin. He would not betray his lord in a thousand years. Could it be Sir Benedict Malet, then, praying so piously over there? That I could readily believe, though it did seem rather unlikely. Why would he do such a thing? Or Sir Joscelyn Giffard, now humbly accepting the chalice of wine? Or his daughter, my lovely Matilda, praying demurely beside me – a woman spy? That was quite absurd. It could be any one of these people, it could be none of them. It could be any of the score of knights gathered in the chapel for this holy sacrament. It could even be a disgruntled man-at-arms, or an unhappy squire, selling the information for silver and the promise of a knighthood and lands.

  Think, Alan, think! I berated myself. It had to be a person with both the opportunity to speak with the French and a motive to betray the castle. Or a motive to betray King John’s cause.

  As Father de la Motte chanted the holy Latin of the Eucharist, my eyes fell on my own lord Robin, Earl of Locksley, standing at the back of the chapel with an indulgent, unbelieving smile on his face. How deep was Robin’s loyalty to King John? The fellow was a soft, steaming turd for all that he wore a crown. We both acknowledged that. Yet Robin served him, apparently faithfully. And Robin had been in and out of the French camp many times; he moved among the enemy with impunity, each time returning with gifts of ‘intelligence’ for de Lacy. Was Robin wearing a mask to hide his treachery? Did he have a deeper purpose than loyally serving King John? Was Robin the secret servant of the King of France?

  I took a firm grip of myself. I had suspected Robin of heinous crimes before – and been utterly wrong. I must control my wilder fancies. I must be loyal to my lord, in thought as well as deed. Robin was not the traitor. He had done some bad things in his time, but he would never stoop to this. Robin could not possibly be the traitor.

  Could he?

  Chapter Twenty-six

  No more than forty-seven Wolves survived the fall of the outer bailey, along with eleven other men of our company, a mixture of men-at-arms, volunteers and engineers. They, along with Robin, myself and Kit, had been allocated lodgings in the south tower of the middle bailey. Aaron, who also lodged with us, was grimly cheerful. He had managed to find the time, with Robin’s help, to dismantle Old Thunderbolt and transport it piece by piece to safety. But rather than set it up on the south tower, he had reassembled it on the roof of the keep in the centre of the inner bailey where it had the range to dominate every part of the castle we still laid claim to.

  We swiftly settled into the south tower of t
he middle bailey, and once again I organised the men into three watches – making every man an honorary Wolf, even the three volunteer townsfolk, who were touchingly flattered to be able to call themselves such. There was no wolf fur to be had, of course – but the new Wolves sewed tatters of grey blanket to their clothes in imitation of their comrades. Lord de Lacy sent us a whole leg of horse meat, as a reward for our valour in defending the outer bailey for so long, a very small keg of wine and a dozen loaves of bread, and so, for the first time in days, we ate a hot and hearty meal.

  With the fires doused in the outer bailey, the French speedily occupied it, and it was strange and uncomfortable to see our enemies treading the very stones we had defended for so long and at such cost. But they did not confine themselves to that charred bastion for long – soon they were cautiously patrolling the outer edges of the ditches around the middle bailey and prowling the steep slopes of the cliffs to the north and west of the Iron Castle, looking for a way to get in. We were very short of arrows by this point, and quarrels too, and Robin repeated de Lacy’s order that all missiles be conserved against a full-on assault. But it was galling to see the French wandering about boldly within bow shot, even though we knew we would need every shaft when they came at us in anger.

  Another rascal who was far bolder than he should be was Sir Benedict Malet. He had formed some sort of attachment to Tilda during their time as guardians of the store-caves and I saw them together much more often than I liked. The stores were now all but exhausted and we were living on horse-bones soup and rock-hard twice-baked bread from the emergency reserve barrels in the inner bailey – and so there was no good reason I could see for them to associate with each other any longer. And yet I often saw him following her about, trailing a few steps behind her like a faithful hound. I asked Tilda once, on one of the rare occasions I managed to spend a few moments alone with her, if Benedict bothered her, and whether she would like me to tell him to leave her in peace.

  ‘That is very sweet of you, my dear Alan,’ she said, ‘but there really is no need. He is quite harmless.’

  I rather enjoyed the idea that she thought him ‘harmless’.

  However, my own relationship with Tilda had not progressed at all over the past few months. I was still as entranced by her as ever and I desperately wanted to tell her how I felt, then to take her in my arms, kiss her and claim her as mine once and for all. But it was proving extremely difficult to be with her alone. In the crowded castle there was very little privacy, almost none in fact, and furthermore there was the problem of her father.

  Sir Joscelyn Giffard was a good man, I knew, and more than that he was a friend and a comrade – and some unspoken warrior code made me reluctant to make any moves that might be construed as taking advantage of his daughter. It was not just his gentlemanly warning all those months ago in Falaise; it was the full-bodied decency of the man. I could not bear to behave in an underhand or dishonourable way and have him know it. I sorely needed to speak to Tilda, to reveal my regard for her, and test her feelings for me. But it is difficult to speak soft words to a lady when you are being jostled by a throng of filthy men-at-arms queuing for rations, or in a chamber crowded with sweaty knights and squires all noisily chatting, swearing and cleaning weapons and armour.

  Furthermore, these fine thoughts of tenderness and romance seemed a trifle absurd in the circumstances. We were surrounded by the mighty forces of the King of France and, with our stores down to scraps, we faced the real prospect of starvation. Despite our dire circumstances, it was clear that Roger de Lacy had no intention of surrendering to Philip. He repeated his message about being dragged out of the Iron Castle by the heels when the heralds came to parlay after the fall of the outer bailey, and the other members of the high council stood by him.

  To the garrison, in another of his robust battlement speeches, de Lacy announced the news that King John was in England gathering a fresh army of English barons who would return to Normandy in the spring and destroy Philip before our walls. Every man, even the lowliest, would be handsomely rewarded for his part in resisting the French, when the King returned in glory. The enemy, de Lacy said, were stricken with plague and despondent after failing for so long to take the castle. They were exhausted, beaten curs; any day they would pack their bags and go.

  I was not so certain. The French men-at-arms that I saw daily roaming carelessly outside the walls appeared to me healthy, strong, confident, even arrogant, and certainly not the beaten curs that de Lacy would have us believe in.

  The Wolves were responsible for the south tower and the section of walls on either side, including the common latrines and the small chapel perched above.

  It was my practice, when my watch was on duty, to make regular patrols with Kit. I had neglected his education during the battle for the outer bailey, and he had inadvertently reminded me of this when we shared a meagre evening bowl of soup together not long after taking up residence in the south tower.

  ‘When this is all over, Kit,’ I had asked him idly, ‘when the French are thoroughly beaten, what will you do?’

  ‘I will eat, sir,’ he said without a moment’s hesitation. ‘I will eat like a king.’ He scraped the last drops of liquor from the bowl. ‘I will eat until I can eat no more.’

  I smiled fondly at him. ‘Apart from filling your belly, have you no other desires for the future? Everyone should have hopes and dreams, Kit, however fanciful. We cannot be whole men without them.’

  ‘In that case, if you do not think me too forward, sir, too presumptuous, I believe I should like to be a famous knight some day, like you, sir.’

  ‘That is often decided by God, at birth.’

  ‘I would do some great deed of valour on the battlefield and be knighted by a grateful king, just as you were, sir.’

  I thought, then, about the day the Lionheart made me a knight after the siege of Nottingham Castle and I felt the swelling of pride in my breast.

  ‘I can’t guarantee you will ever be a knight, Kit, but I can try to make you into a decent soldier. The rest we will leave to God – and, of course, your valour.’

  So I vowed to pay special attention to my squire, taking him with me almost everywhere I went and instructing him in what I was doing and why.

  In the third week of the month of February, I found myself making the rounds at an hour or two after dusk, on a chilly night when most of the men not on duty were making up their beds. I found Robin and Vim together in the base of the tower earnestly discussing the storage of spare weapons, and wished them a cordial good night. Wearing full mail and a thick cloak against the wind, and with Fidelity hanging at my side, and Kit beside me, I climbed the stairs to the wall that overlooked the outer bailey. I stopped to speak with the sentry, a steady fellow named Simon who often did duty as Robin’s servant. He reported that the French were quiet and seemed to have settled down for the night. I walked further on to the drawbridge, once the link between the outer and middle baileys and now roped up tight against our walls. In the guardhouse there, three Wolves were taking their ease around a brazier and playing at knuckle-bones with four men I did not know from de Lacy’s garrison. They were all sober and alert, one man remaining outside in the cold and keeping a close watch on the enemy.

  We retraced our steps to the base of the tower and just outside the latrines, I nearly bumped into Sir Benedict Malet who had clearly been relieving himself inside. I gave him a stiff ‘God save you’ but he just glared at me and turned away. He did not depart, though; evidently he was waiting for some friend to finish their business inside the latrine. Climbing the steps to the chapel, with Kit hard on my heels, I entered God’s house and found the place brilliant with the light of candles.

  Father de la Motte was inside, in deep conversation with Sir Joscelyn Giffard. Tilda was arranging a display of dried bulrushes on a table beside the altar. When I greeted them cordially, all I received in reply was a quick smile and a friendly wave of the hand from Tilda’s father and a beaming smil
e from his daughter. I was about to leave when I noticed the big window on the western side of the chapel was wide open. I walked over to it and looked out. A rectangle of yellow light fell on the deep ditch outside the walls, which was about a quarter full with rainwater and filth – the latrines drained into the ditch there too, before flowing down a channel on the hillside. I could smell the faint, sweetish stench of human waste. I pulled the shutter closed and secured it with a stout locking bar.

  Father de la Motte and Sir Joscelyn had clearly finished their discourse. Sir Joscelyn took his leave of the priest with another genial wave in my direction; Tilda trotted obediently after her father, sending me another heartwarming smile at the top of the stairs. Father de la Motte nodded to Kit, then turned to me: ‘And how are you faring, my son?’

  ‘I am well, thank you, Father,’ I said. ‘A little hungry, but I believe we all are, aren’t we?’

  I caught Kit’s eye and winked at him.

  ‘Yes, we are all feeling the pinch of want,’ said the priest. ‘But, by God’s grace, it will be over soon.’

  ‘How so?’ I said.

  For a second Father de la Motte looked startled. ‘Ah, well, King John will soon be here with his relief force, won’t he? And then we shall feast like heroes.’

  ‘Do you really think so, Father?’ I said.

  ‘Have faith, my son, have faith that God in His wisdom will bring an end to our suffering. Now, tell me, how are your men holding up? Are they in good spirits? Are they content to fight on until we are delivered by our noble sovereign? Is there anything I can do to give them hope or comfort?’

  I assured him the Wolves were in good spirits and would fight for Robin as long as he commanded them. Then I wished the priest a good night and said, ‘Father, I will leave you in peace now, but please make sure the window remains closed when you leave the chapel and that all the candles are extinguished. We do not want to risk a fire.’