The Ransomed Crown

by Wayne Grant

  He had ridden to London as soon as he was able after the fall of Chester to meet with the Prince and John had received him warmly. When he passed through the outer gate of the forbidding Tower by the banks of the Thames, the Prince had actually come from the keep itself to greet him at the top of the stairs.

  “My lord, William—I am most gratified to see you returned to good health. I have had my priests praying for your recovery every day!”

  “Your grace is too kind. I would have come sooner, but the physicians treat us all like old women.”

  John chuckled and placed a hand on his shoulder.

  “And the headaches and dizzy spells? These have departed?”

  De Ferrers almost froze. He had forbidden any word of these episodes to be spoken of and had hoped to hide their existence from the Prince.

  How did he know?

  “Yes, your grace. They are gone entirely and I am ready to be at your service.”

  “Good, good, my lord,” the Prince said as he led him into the arched entrance of the Tower keep. “Come with me. I would have you tell me how we lost Chester.”

  John led de Ferrers across the first floor of the Tower with its guard quarters and armorers workshop and up the winding stair to the sumptuous royal residence on the second floor. He waved de Ferrers toward a soft chair as they entered a richly appointed parlour. The Prince settled himself opposite the Earl of Derby. De Ferrers felt the first pulse of pressure in his temples as he looked into the eyes of Prince John and saw no warmth there. Nervously, he began to give his account of the loss of Chester.

  “Your grace, the traitor Ranulf crossed the Dee with a large host of Welshmen, hundreds of men—cutthroats all. I led my garrison out to meet them and we would have beaten them in a fair fight, but turncoats inside the city stabbed us in the back. They treacherously opened the gates to Ranulf’s henchmen and barred them to us when we returned. We assaulted the walls, but when I sustained my wound leading a charge, the men lost their nerve.”

  The Prince raised a hand.

  “My lord Earl, your account differs somewhat from others I have received,” he said, his voice soft, but with a steely edge, “but I suppose these other reports could be mistaken. No matter—the city is lost and must be taken back. Your neck and mine are at stake in this. I know not if or when my royal brother may return to these shores, but if we do not wrest the crown away before he does, our heads may be keeping company above the gates of London!”

  John leaned forward and placed a hand on de Ferrers’ knee.

  “We have lost a great deal of money with the loss of Chester. That money buys loyalty and it buys men. We must get it back. Do you understand? You must get it back!”

  De Ferrers recognized the blunt threat in the Prince’s words and was determined not to show weakness, though the throb in his temple was quickly growing into one of his pounding headaches.

  “Aye, your grace. It’s why I’ve come here at the first opportunity. Give me the army you have laying siege to Nottingham and I will take back Chester.”

  John slapped his hands together.

  “Ah, my mercenaries! They are the best money can buy and you shall have them shortly. I have prepared an order placing you in command of my army—once Nottingham falls. You will use it to take back the city you lost, but before you do, my lord Earl, you will march my men to the gates of York. I would remind the barons in the north where their interests lie.”

  “Of course, your grace. I will not fail you!”

  “See that you don’t, William.”

  The Prince rose, signalling the end of the conversation.

  De Ferrers rode away from London that day with pounding temples and a knot in his stomach. He arrived at Nottingham the day before the garrison surrendered and presented the Prince’s orders to the senior mercenary commander. Pieter Van Hese was a Fleming and a veteran soldier with a reputation for both bravery and cruelty—traits not uncommon among the men who sold their swords for silver. He was a gaunt man with a milky eye from some old wound. He looked at the scroll briefly and tossed it on the table with a grunt.

  “The Prince has ordered us to move on York,” de Ferrers said.

  “Aye, I can see that,” Van Hese said, irritation in his voice. “Your Prince is more prompt with his orders than with his pay. But we will move north as he asks—after we’ve settled with these bastards at Nottingham. But you, my lord, had best find some money soon, or my boys will go where they will.”

  That threat had come almost a fortnight ago. Van Hese had ordered his men as far as Sheffield and here they had sat for three days, refusing to move. He had called the leaders of the Flemings and those of the Irish together the night before and they had been barely civil to him. Several of them, he concluded, were drunk. They had made their position clear—the army would not move until paid and, in the event no further payment was forthcoming, they might simply march to ports on the Channel or the Irish Sea and go home. Or perhaps they’d march to York on their own accord and plunder the place.

  “We’ll not be leaving England without a profit,” the Irish commander slurred, “and if all else fails, we might see what price you’d fetch as a hostage.”

  De Ferrers had little doubt this threat was real. The men had filed out and he had listened to another night of revelry punctuated by screams. Now, as he paced about the room, he could barely control his despair. A sharp knock on his chamber door brought him back to the present.

  “Come.”

  It was the clerk he had elevated to replace Father Malachy. Young Jacob Booth was clever enough and knew his letters and figures, but de Ferrers found he missed the crafty priest—if a priest he had ever truly been. Malachy always had a strange ability to know what was happening in the Midlands and beyond and a gift for plotting. This new man had no such qualities and de Ferrers missed that.

  The priest had been called away in late June, supposedly on some ecclesiastical mission. De Ferrers had little understanding of the church and less respect for the men who laboured in its service, but Malachy…there was a man he understood and in this burnt-out town he could have used the cunning priest.

  “My lord,” young Jacob began. “There is a man downstairs claiming to be the Sheriff of Yorkshire. He demands to see you.”

  De Ferrers felt a small throb over his right eye.

  What now?

  “Bring him up, Booth, and do not leave us. Are you armed?”

  Booth looked nervous.

  “I have a blade with my things in the next room, my lord.”

  “Bring your blade when you bring the Sheriff.”

  “Aye, my lord,” the young man said and hurried away. A few minutes later de Ferrers heard footsteps on the stairs. Booth opened the door and announced the visitor.

  “My lord, Sir Hugh Bardolf, High Sheriff of Yorkshire.”

  A big man with a red face and a strong jaw strode into the room. His hair was mussed and his clothes were coated with dust, though attempts to brush his tunic had clearly been made. He had two leather bags slung over a shoulder. He made a short bow to de Ferrers, stepped forward and dropped the bags on the table. They made a sound that could only mean they were heavy with coins.

  William de Ferrers smiled, his headache forgotten.

  “My lord Sheriff. Welcome to Sheffield.”

  ***

  The bargaining had been hard. The Sheriff of Yorkshire had brought enough silver to pay off the back wages of the mercenaries and a month more. De Ferrers had flatly rejected the offer.

  “My lord Sheriff, do you not smell the burnt homes and shops of Sheffield? Did you not see the bodies growing ripe in the fields around the town? We would not want that for York, would we?”

  Sir Hugh looked like a man caught between a fire and the frying pan.

  “My lord, the people of York have scraped together all they could. It is a generous offer!”

  “Twice this would be generous,” de Ferrers said as he hefted the bags and dropped them with a sneer. �
�And twice this you will pay. It is common knowledge there is a fortune in silver in the vaults under the York Minster. You’d best squeeze your Archbishop and get it! In one month, you will deliver this same weight of silver, or, so help me, wherever these war dogs are, I will sic them on York! Am I understood?”

  De Ferrers had hardly finished speaking when a heartrending scream floated up from the streets below. Sir Hugh Bardolf thought of his daughters.

  “Yes, my lord. I understand. I will have the silver for you a month from today. Just keep these animals away from York.”

  “I knew we could reach a meeting of the minds,” de Ferrers said and slapped the Sherriff on the shoulder. The man looked ill.

  ***

  The Earl of Derby mounted his horse and looked at the long column of men forming up west of Sheffield. With back pay delivered, the mercenary leaders had suddenly become more agreeable to his leadership. The silver from York had bought its safety—for a time. No need now to frighten the northern barons—the silver proved they were already cowed.

  With York subservient, Chester was now the prize he must gain for the Prince. The road to Chester ran west through the narrow valleys and passes of the high country of Derbyshire and he had unfinished business there. De Ferrers smiled as he saw the sergeants move up and down the line, bawling at their men to close up the ranks.

  These were just the men he needed to pluck an old thorn from his side.

  The Choice

  The sun was low in the sky when they reached the sheltered valley on the western slope of Kinder Scout. As they came down the trail toward the clearing, Roland could see that over a hundred men had already gathered there and more could be seen coming in from the north and further west.

  “I’ve never seen this many of the men in one place,” Oren said. “It’s good. All will be affected by what is decided here, so the more the better.”

  They found Thorkell sitting on a stump and running a sharpening stone over an ancient broadsword. Oren left his brother with the war leader and went off to explore an appetizing smell coming from a cook pot across the clearing.

  “Your blade takes a good edge,” Roland said, looking at Thorkell’s work on the old sword. “You don’t see many of those here in the mountains.”

  Thorkell looked up and grinned at him.

  “I took this off of one of Lord Robert’s men when we fought them twenty years ago. I wrapped it in oilcloth and buried it in one of the caves north of here. Hoped I’d never need to dig it back up, but…”

  Roland watched the man draw the stone over the blade with long steady strokes.

  “My father never spoke to us about the rising twenty years ago. Tell me about it. Tell me about him.”

  Thorkell stopped his labours and looked up at Roland, his expression somewhere between pride and sadness.

  “We rose back then for the same reasons we now go armed for war in our own land. The Normans would not leave us be. Lord Robert was a young man then, and headstrong. He controlled all of Derbyshire with an iron hand, except these mountains. It irked him, so he sent men here to enforce his will. They did not come back, so he sent more men with the same result.”

  “And my father?”

  Thorkell’s face looked pained.

  “I was angry the people chose your father to be our war leader over me. If Earl Robert was spoiling for a fight back then, I was more than ready to give it to him. I was young and bold, with a thirst for glory. I thought I could lead the Danes to victory. Your father had a new bride—your mother, Mara. He was troubled by what war might bring to our people. I was spoiling for a fight and thought him a coward because he counselled caution, but the people chose him to lead us, not I.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  Thorkell nodded. “We few who survived among the fighters never spoke much of those days after it was all over. We just went back to our farms and families—those that had them.”

  Thorkell paused once more. His eyes seemed to look beyond the valley and the present.

  “You know, your father and I became fast friends. Rolf was a brave and clever man. He seemed to understand, better than any of us, how the Normans fought and he used that knowledge to help us kill a great many of them. He was not a bloodthirsty man. I think he felt sorry for the poor Saxon lads Lord Robert sent into the hills to catch us. In time we actually came down out of the mountains and took the fight to them. The farmers in the valleys, most of them Saxons, joined us. We besieged Peveril Castle for two months.”

  “Friar Tuck said he fought with the Danes back then.”

  “Aye, he was one of the youngest of us. He was the miller’s son in Castleton. His name was Bernard as I recall, but all called him Tuck—I’m not sure why. When the King sent his men in to rescue Lord Robert and break the siege, we had to scatter. We never knew if Tuck survived until he appeared as Father Augustine many years later. I was surprised to see him as a churchman. As a boy, he was deadly with a blade.”

  “He still is,” Roland said.

  Thorkell stood up and touched the edge of his sword with a thumb. Satisfied, he slid it back into a leather scabbard.

  “Most of the men should be here before nightfall,” he said, gazing around the clearing and doing a quick estimate of the numbers in the valley. If you count the boys of twelve and older among the men, we are a dozen short of two hundred fighters in all.”

  “Enough to save Chester,” said Roland.

  “Enough to defend our mountains as well. The Earl’s men have ravaged the valleys and have come further into the mountains than at any time since your father and I fought them twenty years ago. They’ve burned a few farms, but we have always turned them back. They are not over fond of our bows—but you know that.”

  Roland nodded.

  “Aye, in this the Normans are fools. The King once told me that if he had five thousand longbowman he could conquer China, but they only see the bow as a danger to their rule. They are blind.”

  “True enough, lad. With only twenty or thirty good bows we almost beat Lord Robert and his men. Now we have five times that number.”

  “Enough to make a difference when Earl Ranulf meets Prince John’s men. It’s why he is willing to grant you the land. He needs you.”

  Thorkell nodded.

  “That’s clear enough, but do we need your Earl? That is the question our men will answer tonight. All have been told the gist of your offer, but I will allow you to speak a last time to make your case.”

  “Will you speak, Thorkell?”

  “No. The men must decide for themselves and I will abide by their choice. No doubt Svein will have something to say. He is angry with me for calling this gathering to consider your bargain. He is convinced you are false and we should have just killed you. That boy thirsts to kill Normans—as I once did.”

  “Stay or go, Thorkell, there will be Normans enough to kill I think. Perhaps I can convince him of that.”

  “Perhaps, but he is stubborn—has been since he was born.”

  “You know the family?”

  “Aye, I know them all too well. Svein is my son.”

  “Your son…I didn’t know.” Roland started to say more, but a loud greeting from across the clearing stopped him.

  “Roland Inness!”

  Roland turned to see a tall lean man hurrying toward him. It was Odo, their old neighbour.

  “Odo! It’s good to see you, though I wish it was under better circumstances.”

  Odo grinned and placed two large, gnarled farmer’s hands on Roland’s shoulders.

  “It’s good to see you, boy, and damn the circumstances. It’s been lonely over on the eastern slope since…well, since you left. Your father and mother were good people We heard from Tuck that de Ferrers had not caught you, but have only heard rumours since—most of them said Brun had killed you in York. Tuck took your brother and sister into his care and we thought that it was the end of the Inness clan on Kinder Scout—until your Oren came home in the spring.”


  Roland returned the man’s smile.

  “Oren tells me he stays with you when he is not patrolling these days. I hope you work him hard for his bread.”

  “Oh, you can be sure of that. He eats a lot, but he earns his keep. We had hoped to clear some of the weeds from your farmstead next spring and put in a crop. The boy has his heart set on farming your old place, but now…”

  Oren hadn’t mentioned that.

  ***

  It was full night when the last of the men trailed into the camp. Roland stood with Oren and Odo at the edge of the clearing and watched them come. A few of the new arrivals who had known the Inness family in earlier days came forward to greet him, but none offered an opinion on the issue to be decided this night.

  Three sizable fires had been started to provide light for the assembly and Thorkell stepped forward to begin the proceedings.

  “You men have been summoned to decide upon a matter of great weight. My messengers have given you the gist of the offer that has been placed before us, but you should hear it directly from the man who has brought it to us.”

  He turned to Roland.

  “Present your offer, sir.”

  Before he stepped forward, Roland saw Svein separate from a knot of men and walk into the circle of light from the fires. A low buzz rippled through the crowd and the young Dane raised a hand for silence.

  “I will speak!” he said, his voice thick with passion. “We must not take this bargain, for to my eyes it is nothing more than a trick to lure us from these hills to the lowlands where we will be cut down like sheep. Has any man here cause to trust the word of a Norman?”

  The soft buzz of the crowd had swelled to an angry hum.

  “I trust the word of a Norman.” Roland shouted above the uproar and the crowd quieted a little.

  “I have as much right as any to hate the Normans. They killed my father and almost killed me, but it was a Norman who saved me.”