The Iron Castle

by Angus Donald

  I managed to sit a horse as we rode down the chalky path away from the Iron Castle as Roland’s prisoners, and I looked back at the place that had been the doom of so many good men. Once the pride and joy of King Richard, the fortress was now shabby, burned and broken; the breach of the inner bailey, like a gap in an old man’s teeth, was still splashed red with the blood of French, Norman and English fighting men. Scavengers swarmed over the citadel, picking through the ruins and gleaning what valuables they could: spent arrows, broken swords and old cups and plates, scraps of armour … So many comrades had died here, I reflected – Kit, Little Niels, Christophe and scores more. And for what?

  Robin and I travelled with Roland, and the handful of surviving Wolves, back to Paris. Claes, I was very glad to see, had survived the final slaughter at the breach, as had Vim. After a dozen miles, and once we hit the royal roads of France, Roland made me get down from the horse and I passed that journey in a covered wagon with Vim, whose broken leg had largely exempted him from the later stages of the fighting, and three other wounded Wolves. A fever had taken hold of me and I must confess I was raving for much of the way. Within a week, however, we were ensconced comfortably in Roland’s father’s luxurious house in the Rue St-Denis.

  The Seigneur d’Alle was an affable host – it was impossible to think of him as our gaoler – and he and his beautiful wife Adele made sure we had every comfort. Robin quickly agreed his ransom with the Seigneur; it was, by no coincidence at all, the same price in silver that Robin had once paid as a ransom for Roland, and my lord was released after only a few days to return to England with his surviving men where he would gather the money and have it delivered to Paris. My own ransom was fixed at a single shilling – only a token amount, of course, since we were family – but both Roland and his mother pleaded with me to stay with them for some weeks to recuperate from my fever and heal my broken arm, and I gratefully acceded to their wishes.

  Roland was embarrassed about our duel in the breach; he had not realised how weak I was and felt a keen guilt at having broken my arm and knocked me unconscious when I was so enfeebled. I discovered from Robin he had used the flat of the blade in the blow on my helmet that rendered me insensible. For my part, I could not bear him any ill-will at all. We were soldiers on opposite sides in a war – we had been so before and, God forbid, we might be so again – and he had dealt honourably and mercifully with me. It irked me, in my secret heart, that Roland had bested me – but that was hardly his fault. Roland, when he saw me dressed only in my braies, after the fall of the castle, was shocked at how thin and sickly I had become during the siege. And he protested that he would never have fought so hard if he had known of my condition. But I knew he was secretly proud of having beaten me, nonetheless, and I did not begrudge him his victory. Much. The outcome could have been a good deal worse – I could have killed him, and how would I have been able to look into Adele’s green eyes and watch them fill with tears as I told her that her only son was dead at my hand?

  While Roland’s mother was still as radiantly beautiful as ever, the Seigneur’s best days were clearly behind him. He suffered from pain in his feet and toes that made him limp a good deal when an attack was on him. His doctors had told him this was due to an imbalance of the humours in his body and he must eschew red meat and red wine – but he scoffed at the diagnosis, ate what he damn well chose, and suffered for it. He was by this time very close to King Philip, one of his chief ministers, and he could afford the finest meat and drink that money could buy.

  Roland and I got along very merrily. We went riding that spring in the woods around Paris; we played at chess a good deal and went drinking in the taverns on the Left Bank; and he took me to the great cathedral of Notre-Dame to hear the famous singers of the choir there – which was something of a pilgrimage for me, for my late father had sung in that very choir and the cathedral had loomed large in my previous visit to the French capital. My broken arm healed cleanly; I availed myself of the Seigneur’s excellent meat and drink; I wrote letters to friends, and received them; I slept long in the mornings and sparred occasionally and only gently with Roland in the exercise yard, and put on my old muscle and fat in a most pleasing manner.

  The war seemed very far away. Indeed, it was nearly over. After the fall of the Iron Castle, King Philip showed himself a true master of strategy: instead of attacking north-west up the Seine valley to take Rouen, which is what everybody was expecting, King John’s few remaining loyal forces in Normandy most of all, Philip lunged south and west, looping around to take Argentan by surprise in early May. Falaise fell next – unwisely, Lord de Burgh, that prickly man of honour, had been dispatched south by King John to hold Chinon, and his place had been taken in Falaise Castle by a mercenary captain of particularly evil repute. When Philip’s forces approached the castle, the mercenary switched sides and, for only a modest payment in silver, he and his men fell in with the King of France’s host. Meanwhile, the Bretons under Guy de Thouars, still furious at the assumed murder of Duke Arthur – nobody was certain what had really happened – attacked once again from the west. They sacked Mont Saint-Michel and took Avranches and rampaged across western Normandy, looting and burning, to link up with Philip at Caen.

  In June, having subdued the whole of Normandy, except for Rouen, Philip turned his armies east and finally surrounded the capital. The people of Rouen, demoralised by Philip’s skilful prosecution of the war and by King John’s cowardly refusal to leave England and set foot in the duchy, swiftly capitulated. And, just like that, within three months of the end of the siege of Château Gaillard, King John was no longer the master of his patrimony. The ancient independent duchy that had spawned his forebears, including the Conqueror of England, was no longer his to rule. It had been swallowed by the Kingdom of France.

  I thought of all the struggle, the pain, the bloodshed, the good men now under the earth in the cause of Normandy – and I confess I wept when I heard the news that Rouen had fallen. But Roland consoled me and we spent a few raucous nights drinking in the wine cellars of Paris, making toast after toast to the end of the war, to the end of all war. That thought gave me a great deal of happiness – I would never again have to face Roland in battle; and I might never have to fight again for the rest of my life. I would be free, God willing, to return to Westbury and husband my lands and raise my son Robert in tranquillity. I was happy.

  I had by then understood and forgiven Tilda for her lapses during the siege – I, too, knew what it meant to be hungry and to be prepared to do almost anything to assuage that hunger. Little Niels had died for his hunger. It was clear to me she and her father had been led astray by that greedy villain Benedict Malet, who had had the castle’s stores under his hand for the whole length of the siege. God knew what had made them decide to fall in with Benedict’s thievery, but it was over now. Recrimination would not bring back the men who had starved or died because they were weakened by lack of food. The small amounts of food they had stolen would have made scant difference to the result of the siege anyway. I forgave her for her other sins too; I felt I could see her clearly now for the woman she truly was. I had fathomed all her actions, even the most shameful, and yet I found I could honestly forgive her and, when I recovered fully, I meant to seek her out and offer her my hand in marriage. I could picture her at Westbury, playing with little Robert, becoming a mother to him and a loving and faithful wife to me, presiding over the table in the hall, running the place smoothly. And, when the household retired for the night, I confess I thought about her naked, warm and loving in my bed.

  However, one dark cloud hung over my happiness that spring and early summer in the year of Our Lord twelve hundred and four, as Philip conquered Normandy and my body slowly healed. The traitor. The Sparrow. When I asked about how Roland came miraculously to be at my bedside in the keep, Robin had told me that some unknown person let the French into our stronghold. In the dark of night, just a day after the inner bailey had fallen, this person merely tugge
d back the bolts on the iron-bound door like a common porter and invited the waiting French into the keep. And, while the enemy rushed inside the last bastion of the Iron Castle and began taking every man a prisoner, he had melted into the crowd, unidentified, unknown; months of murderous service to King Philip a secret to the end.

  I knew then that Little Niels could not have been the Sparrow. For as well as opening the door to the keep, the real traitor had almost certainly informed the French about the counter-mine, which caused them to be ready to bombard the weakened walls above their mine and ours and bring the whole wall roaring down. Both of these events occurred after Little Niels had been hanged.

  The Sparrow was directly responsible for the death of Kit and old Christophe Scarecrow – and for hundreds of other men who had fought beside me on the walls. He made a mockery of their sacrifice. And that I could not forgive.

  One evening in late June in the house on Rue St-Denis, when the Seigneur was taking a final glass of wine before the fire in the upstairs hall and resting his swollen and aching right foot on a large cushion, which sat upon an iron-bound chest in the corner of the room, I raised the subject of the traitor in the Iron Castle, as naturally as I could. We were talking about the ease with which some of the Norman lords surrendered their castles to Philip, some without even a token fight. I deplored it as cowardly and disloyal.

  ‘That is the modern way of war, Alan,’ said the Seigneur. ‘The heroes of old – the Roland and Oliver, Arthur, Lancelot, Charlemagne and his knights – they are all gone, and their ways are gone with them. A knight does not fight to the death for his lord any more; he compromises, he negotiates, he makes deals with the enemy and sets his seal on legal charters. He looks to his own long-term advantage.’

  ‘Is that not dishonourable?’ I said.

  ‘Perhaps, but it can also save a good deal of bloodshed. If it is clear that a castle will fall eventually, why not recognise that fact early in the day and save everybody a mountain of grief? We have had dealings with half a dozen Norman barons in the past few years and I like to think we have saved a good many lives and still achieved the same objectives. The outcome would have been identical if Philip had personally reduced each and every castle to a pile of rubble: he would still possess them but a great number of good fighting men would also be dead. Like anyone, a baron likes to be on the winning side and, if you will forgive me, Alan, we were always going to be the winning side.’

  ‘How do you know all this, sir?’

  The Seigneur sighed. ‘Part of my duties for the King was to arrange these matters. It is not the most honourable labour, as you have rightly pointed out, but a little guile and a lot of silver can do more than valour in certain circumstances. We knew many of your barons did not love King John – many openly despised him. It was not too difficult to persuade some to come over to our side. A duchy, even a kingdom, is held by the barons under their duke or king. If all, or even most of the barons desert their duke, or choose to give their loyalty to another, the duchy goes with them. A duchy or a kingdom is like a house, and the barons are the pillars that hold the roof up. If the pillars fall, or are destroyed or taken away, the house falls; if the barons are tempted away, the kingdom falls and the king is lost.’

  ‘I suppose there was one such disaffected baron inside Château Gaillard,’ I said, yawning, stretching my long arms and trying to affect a weary nonchalance.

  The Seigneur was not fooled for an instant. ‘I do not wish to speak about a specific man or men,’ he said just a little sharply. ‘The King and I promise them our discretion in return for service, and we must honour that promise – for ever.’

  ‘But there was a man of yours inside the Iron Castle?’

  ‘Alan, I cannot discuss this with you or anyone.’ The Seigneur was laboriously getting to his feet.

  ‘Does the name the Sparrow mean anything to you?’

  ‘Enough, Alan. I have probably already said too much. I must ask you not to speak of this matter to me again. I know that it is close to your heart – you fought and suffered there – but I cannot give you answers. If you have any respect for my honour you will strive to understand that. I bid you good night.’

  I was left alone in the hall with a half-empty wine glass and a dying fire.

  I did respect the Seigneur’s honour. I would not try again to badger the secret out of him. But I was equally determined to discover the name of the man who had betrayed all his comrades in the Iron Castle. For something the Seigneur had said gave me a clue to how I might discover it.

  I am truly ashamed of what I did next, and I pray that when I must answer for it at the Last Judgment, the Recording Angel will take pity on me. What I did was a clear violation of the trust between a host and his guest, a betrayal of a member of my own family. But I did it and it cannot be undone.

  I finished my wine, got to my feet, heading for my bed – and stopped. I found I was staring at the iron-bound chest in the corner of the hall. The velvet cushion on top was still imprinted with the Seigneur’s swollen foot. And my host’s words were echoing in my memory: ‘A knight does not fight to the death for his lord any more; he compromises, he negotiates, he makes deals with the enemy and sets his seal on legal charters…’

  The chest was where the Seigneur kept his most precious documents. For a moment I could not believe that I might find what I sought right there in front of my nose. It seemed incredible the Seigneur had been speaking about this man – or rather refusing to speak about him – while his painful foot rested over the place where his secret lay hidden. But why not? The workings of the human soul are strange indeed, perhaps having his foot on the chest put this matter into the forefront of his mind. As I knelt before the chest, I had half-convinced myself that the Seigneur was indirectly telling me where I would find the answer to my question by the placement of his painful foot.

  It was locked, of course. Secured by a heavy padlock through a half-ring fixed into the wood. But I already had the key. I blush to reveal this, but I was so much a part of the d’Alle household that sweet Adele, knowing I was often the last to go to bed, had handed me the big iron ring of keys earlier that evening and asked if I would be sure to lock up the great door to the street before I went upstairs. Could it be that Adele and the Seigneur were actively encouraging me to discover their secret? Did they want me to know the identity of the Sparrow but were unable in good conscience to tell me?

  I found the key among dozens of others on the big ring, a small iron item with a comb-tooth design, and fed it in the padlock and turned it. The lock fell open and with my heart thumping, and keeping one ear cocked for any sound of my hosts, I pushed open the lid of the chest.

  There were more than a score of parchments in there: deeds for the Seigneur’s several properties, charters of parcels of land he had granted to loyal men-at-arms, old servants and to the Church … and several charters sealed in red wax between His Most Royal Highness, Philip by the Grace of God, King of France and half a dozen of the barons of Normandy.

  I scanned through each document quickly, searching for the name and then discarding it. Some were men I knew well, some were men I did not – but none of these turncoats had been inside the Iron Castle during the siege.

  And then I found the one who was.

  I looked at the name. I read it twice, three times in disbelief.

  I sat back on my heels, stunned. I felt like weeping. I wanted to burn the charter with the Sparrow’s name on it. I wanted to unmake it, to make it untrue. I wanted to pretend I did not know his all-too-familiar name, to wipe it from my memory. Then I took a grip of myself. I was going to kill this man, this traitor. I was going to rip out his beating heart. I was going to be the agent of vengeance for Kit and Little Niels and all those who had died in the bitter months of siege and starvation. Whatever it cost, and I knew the cost would be unbearably high, the traitor must die.

  I put the documents neatly back into the chest and locked the padlock once more. Then I secured the gre
at door of the house, hung the keys on their hook and went upstairs to bed. As I lay sleepless between the fine linen sheets, I thought about the journey that I had to undertake. A journey north. To England. To Yorkshire. To Kirkton. To the home of my lord Robert Odo, Earl of Locksley. Where I would find the traitor who called himself the Sparrow; the man I must destroy.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  I bid farewell to Roland and Adele ten days later; there were certain matters I had to arrange before my departure. I could not look the Seigneur d’Alle, my kindly host, squarely in the eye when he embraced me and wished me well on my journey to England. To make my shame even worse, they made me costly gifts – a new full suit of iron mail, a lively rouncey to ride on the road, food and wine for the journey, letters of safe conduct that would get me though any road block manned by King Philip’s men-at-arms, and a heavy purse of silver for any expenses I might incur.

  I felt like a knave as I slunk from their loving smiles and fondly waving kerchiefs, and made my way north through the busy streets of Paris. But my mood soon lifted after I passed through the Porte St-Denis and found myself on the old Roman road heading north. My left arm was well-mended by then, and I was fit once more after months of good food, rest and exercise – it was early July, the sun shone in a cloudless sky, the roads were dry, and I had a pleasant encounter to look forward to before I crossed the Channel.

  Three days later I knocked at the gates of Fécamp Abbey and was granted admission. A servant took my horse and I was allowed briefly to wash and drink a jug of water, and then shown into the cloisters.

  I had expected a quiet, empty, columned square, covered on the four surrounding sides and open in the middle, perhaps paved with limestone blocks – and I was almost exactly right. But it was by no means quiet. Or empty.