by Robyn Young
The sky over the distant mountains was flooding with rose-gold light, while over the waters of the Menai Strait and out across the narrow hump of Anglesey it was stony blue, still lit by a milk-white moon. Birds swooped, circling the banks of the estuary that flowed past the castle’s southern walls into the strait. Edward could smell the brine of the river over the sweeter odour of sawn timbers that came from the building he had left. The apartments had been built for him and his pregnant queen for their arrival in Caernarfon in the spring. Here, Eleanor had given birth to their son, as had been his wish; a testimony to a conquered nation that this land now belonged to him and to his heirs. The massive stone castle slowly taking shape around the timber apartments was still in its early stages, but already he could see the mighty structure it would become.
The moat had been dug and lined, the foundations for the great towers and walls laid by hundreds of diggers, the stone quarried from Anglesey and brought across the strait by boat. The walls of the castle and the town beyond were going up, block by block, every inch of the enormous site bristling with scaffolding, the air cloudy with dust. In places, the bases of the towers were visible, almost twenty feet thick. Doorways stood open on to nothing, postern gates made holes in unfinished walls, stairs spiralled to nowhere. Only one tower, the largest, that squatted before him and loomed out over the strait, had gone up to first-floor level. Edward had seen the plans his master mason, James of St George, had drawn up and could, with his mind, fill in the blank blue of the sky with a tower that soared three storeys high to be crowned by three angular turrets, topped at the heights with life-size stone eagles.
Built on the site where a thousand years earlier a Roman fort had glowered across the strait at the Druids’ stronghold on the Isle of Anglesey, Caernarfon was to be the greatest castle in the iron ring he had created around the coast, his presence fixed in stone. The strength of Rome was crumbling and moss-covered beyond the new town walls, but Edward had not ignored the power in that history and his fortress, fashioned in likeness of the Roman walls of Constantinople, would resonate with imperial might, deep in the heart of conquered Wales.
As he walked towards the unfinished tower people moved about him in the dawn, grooms tending horses, servants carrying baskets of provisions and squires stoking campfires. A line of women, laundry baskets hefted on their shoulders, headed for the river gate. Some men bowed as he moved across the muddy ground, others carried on their business, unaware that their king was passing by, a solitary figure in the dawn-washed shadows, taller than most of them, his eyes haunted by lack of sleep. Walking between the rows of tents that belonged to his knights, the canvas sodden with dew, Edward noticed discarded barrels of beer and caught the sour odour of vomit. The celebrations he had organised at the village of Nefyn, forty miles south of Caernarfon, were clearly still continuing here. He couldn’t begrudge them that, for it had been a hard campaign, his fourth in this unforgiving land, which had spawned so many rebellions against him and had caused him to delve so deeply into the purses of his subjects.
Seven years earlier, Edward had imagined he had dealt with Llywelyn ap Gruffudd once and for all. Having returned from the Holy Land to take up his father’s crown, he had wasted little time in tearing the self-proclaimed Welsh prince down to size, driving giant armies into Wales, undoing Llywelyn’s earlier conquests and confining him and his men to the fastness of Snowdonia. But events soon showed that Edward’s campaign had not been decisive enough. Just two years ago, the prince had risen again and all of Wales had risen with him. In defiant letters, Llywelyn declared that Wales belonged purely to the Welsh and that he ruled it as the true descendant of Brutus, the founder of Britain. This appeal to the ancient history set down by Geoffrey of Monmouth had angered Edward deeply, almost as much as the celebrated crown the prince wore on his head. And so he invaded Wales once again, this time bent on outright conquest.
Here, in Gwynedd, Edward had suffered one of the worst disasters of his life. His best commanders, sent out on a reconnaissance mission, had led a rash assault against the northern coast, reckoning on a quick victory against the inferior forces of the Welsh. Taken unawares in the unfamiliar terrain, they were overwhelmed by Llywelyn’s men and hundreds of English lives were lost. When Edward learned of the rebels’ triumph echoes of those songs the Welsh had sung of him, when his army had been annihilated by Llywelyn decades earlier, had taunted him from down the years. Grimly determined, his reputation once again threatened, he battled on through the Welsh winter, hampered by storms and the cunning of his adversary. While the Welsh evaded him in the hills, he employed hundreds of woodcutters to carve massive paths through the inhospitable forests, clearing the way for more troops and for the labourers who worked to raise up the massive stone fortresses that provided secure bases from which he could strike back at the Welsh.
Reaching the foot of the Eagle Tower, beneath a tight labyrinth of scaffold poles, past guards who saluted him, Edward entered the vestibule and climbed the steps that led up to the first floor. The grand, ten-sided chamber that opened before him was hazy with dust that lingered in the air in shifting layers. It was here that most of the royal belongings had been stored and the walls were lined with chests and furniture. In the centre was a round table, the bare wood creamy.
Edward went to it, his pale eyes following the Latin inscriptions around the edge, each skilful cut of the carpenter’s tools carving a name in oak. Kay, Galahad, Gawain, Mordred, Bors, Perceval. Twenty-four names for twenty-four knights. He’d had it made for the celebrations at Nefyn, to mark the end of the war and the beginning of a new order, an order of men who had followed him into hell, their loyalty fused to him in the endless circle of the table. Beyond, fixed to the smooth stone wall, was the dragon banner he once carried into tournaments in Gascony over twenty years earlier. He had been Arthur then in name alone, a tournament guise to inspire fear in his opponents and respect from his followers. Now, he was Arthur in reputation, his lands expanded, his reign over Britain almost complete. After two tough years, he had accomplished what so many English kings had planned for and desired but never achieved: the conquest and subjugation of Wales.
Llywelyn, whose forces had entrenched themselves in the hills above the River Wye, from where they were continuing to conduct raids against the king’s positions, had finally been pinned down, the prince’s location betrayed by one of his own people. Edward’s forces had crept by the frosty dark of a winter dawn into the heights of the hills, led by the informant, whereupon they fell hard upon the prince and his men, who were taken by surprise. In the bloody fight that followed, Llywelyn had been cut down, run through by an English lance. With the death of their prince, Welsh resistance had finally died.
As the gold sunlight filtering through the unfinished tower’s windows shone across the table and the dragon banner, Edward tasted the bitterness of that victory.
Llywelyn’s severed head now adorned the battlements of the Tower in London. The rest of his line had been destroyed, his men captured or killed. The bards were singing songs of despair, begging God to cover their land in sea. New towns were being laid out and English settlers were pouring in, driving the Welsh to subsist on the margins. Statutes were being drawn up for the English sheriffs and bailiffs who would govern the region under a justiciar and more of Edward’s fortresses were going up, block by block, around the coast. But, for him, one vital piece was still missing.
Going to one of the chests along the wall, Edward bent to retrieve something wrapped in black silk. Moving to the table, he placed it on the wood and unfolded the material to reveal a book. The writing on the cover caught the morning sun.
The Last Prophecy of Merlin
As he turned the soft pages, he could smell the ink, made from precious stones, powdered down and mixed with egg and wine. The colours were vivid, glorious. Around the words, fabulous beasts were entwined with flowers and birds. Edward had presented it to his knights at Nefyn, the place where the prophecies of Merlin h
ad been found, which Geoffrey of Monmouth had translated for the world. On one page was an image of a man standing before a great fortress, behind which towered green mountains. In his hands, he held aloft a simple, gold coronet. It was this image Edward had seen for months – more so when he lay down to sleep, the distractions of the day fading in the silence. He had questioned those followers of Llywelyn he had caught, then tortured them, but either they had not known, or else refused even into death to reveal the whereabouts of the thing he had vowed to seize twenty years ago: the object that had united Wales against him. The Crown of Arthur.
25
The fire flared as the guard stoked the embers. He screwed up his eyes against the heat, took two logs from the basket and tossed them in. The flames trailed along the edges of the wood, while insects rushed from cracks in the grain. They burned brightly as they caught, vanishing in the conflagration.
‘Hugh.’
The guard turned to see Simon holding out a cup of beer. The oldest, Ulf, was sitting back on one of the barrels, his leg, splinted from a fall, stretched out in front of him. His stick was propped against the wall and he had a cup wedged in his gnarled hands.
‘One each?’ questioned Hugh, rising with a wince and wiping soot on his gambeson. ‘Aren’t we sharing?’
‘Why share?’ Simon wanted to know, shaking the cup at him. ‘There’re more rations now the others have gone.’ He grinned, revealing brown stubs of teeth, as Hugh took it.
‘Don’t let the commander see,’ warned Hugh, taking up his place on a stool by the hearth.
‘Can he see from half a mile away?’ asked Simon, gulping back the beer that left a white scum on his lip.
Hugh sipped the malt-sweet liquid slowly in the fire’s glow. There were perhaps some benefits to being the ones left behind.
Simon sat forward with a wet belch, resting his arms on his thighs. ‘Do you think we would have got better pay in France?’ he mused, frowning at Hugh.
Ulf grunted from the shadows before Hugh could answer. ‘At our age? King Edward wanted destriers, not nags.’
‘I’m ten years younger than you,’ growled Simon.
Ignoring their banter, Hugh drained the dregs of the drink. ‘I’d better have a last look.’
‘Bed soon,’ muttered Ulf, resting his head on the wall. ‘I swear by God these watches get longer every night.’
‘It’s the autumn dark,’ said Hugh, heading past a neat row of swords, bows and shields placed against the wall and ducking through the arch that led up to the top of the gatehouse tower.
The air blowing down the curving stone stairway was frigid and Hugh shuddered as the warmth of the fire was leached from his face and hands. As he neared the top, dust scattered into his eyes and he was forced to duck his head. It was several years since the twin-towered gatehouse and the town walls from which it jutted had been completed, yet grit still filled the air. For a long time, Hugh had been able to smell the vinegar that had been soaked into the lime to make the grey mortar. One of the masons’ apprentices had told him it was to protect the walls from fiery missiles thrown by siege engines, but Hugh hadn’t known whether this was right.
Coming out on the windy tower top, he pulled his felt cap firmly around his ears. His breath foggy, he looked out over the town of Caernarfon. The night sky was obscured by slow-moving clouds, but in the tattered breaks between faint glimmers of blue revealed the dawn. Just another hour and he could sleep. His gaze moved over silent streets and dark orchards to the patchwork of market gardens, mostly stripped of produce preserved for the coming winter. There were shimmering points of light where people were waking and stoking fires or lighting candles, but these were few. The town had been quiet for the past month, after most of the garrison and many of the younger townsmen had left, summoned to Gascony.
Hugh’s gaze moved to the south-western walls that marched alongside the waters of the Menai Strait, the fires in the guard towers at long intervals, the garrison stretched thinly around the walls of the town and the castle, which loomed as a great, angular shadow in the distance. The towers on the castle’s seaward side were complete, but scaffold still shrouded the town-side walls, which in places were only twelve feet high. The ditch and wooden barricade that had protected the building for the ten years since work had begun remained, but were mostly redundant since the completion of the town walls. Soon it would be All Souls and work on the castle would finish until spring, many of the labourers returning to their homes. Hugh thought briefly of his own home, far away in Sussex, as he stared at the castle, wondering what it would be like to have something so monumental built at your word. There was something God-like about the process, yet King Edward, its creator, hadn’t seen Caernarfon since the early stages of building.
Hearing the bleating of sheep, Hugh crossed the tower top to gaze out over the moat that encircled the town to the gloomy landscape of huddled trees and mist-shrouded fields that gradually rose into far-off mountains. The ragged calls of the sheep echoed, louder now. Hugh frowned, squinting into the darkness, wondering what had disturbed them. It was too early in the year for wolves. It could be thieves, but the shepherds and their dogs usually saw them off. He could see them, a large flock scattering across a wide field. His eye was caught by more movement, away from where the sheep were fleeing. Dark shapes were moving quickly along the tree line. Hugh’s eyes darted, picking out more shadows, on the other side of the trees, hundreds of them. They were all running in the same direction: towards the moat, towards the town. Hugh’s skin tightened in shock. Pushing himself from the battlements, he plunged down the spiral of stairs, shouting as he went.
‘Raise the drawbridge!’
He stumbled in the dizzy descent and just managed to stop himself tumbling headlong down the steep steps, his fingers scraping dust from the walls. Recovering his balance, he continued on, still shouting. He collided with Simon near the bottom, who was sprinting up. ‘Raise the drawbridge!’ Hugh shouted in his face, pushing the man ahead of him.
In the guardroom, Ulf was on his feet, bleary-eyed and confused. ‘We’re under attack?’
‘Here,’ said Hugh, grabbing two swords and thrusting one at him.
Simon had gone pale, but took a shield and sword from the neat stack of weapons. ‘How many?’
‘Hundreds,’ snapped Hugh, ‘maybe more.’
‘Dear God,’ breathed Ulf, his eyes clearing as he followed Hugh and Simon to the archway that led down a tight twist of steps to the ground floor of the tower, where a small chamber, built into the thickness of the wall, contained the winch for the drawbridge, which adjoined the end of a long wooden bridge that spanned the moat.
In the early days of building, soon after the war, when the town walls and towers were slowly going up, the drawbridge had always been raised at night. But for the past few years, with the labourers coming and going so often, they relied instead on the portcullis to bar entry to thieves and beggars.
As Hugh reached the bottom, he shouted behind him to Ulf, who was limping awkwardly down on his injured leg. ‘Raise the alarm. We’ll work the winch.’
Faint sounds came from across the water, the dull thud of many feet pounding the frost-packed earth.
Hugh and Simon entered the winch chamber as Ulf stumbled down the last few steps, out into the arched vault between the towers, spanned by the portcullis. A torch burned from a bracket on the wall. Ulf halted in its glow, staring through the iron bars of the portcullis, across the bridge to the opposite banks of the moat. There was a tide of men flooding from the woods, visible in the growing light. Ulf’s eyes widened. He could see ladders being carried by lines of men and the weapons in their raised fists weren’t swords or spears, but axes, hammers and picks, as if they were a mad horde of labourers rushing in to start a day’s work. As the drawbridge ropes snapped taut and the boards wobbled, Ulf heard Hugh and Simon grunting with effort, the winch shrieking in protest, unused for so long. The first wave of attackers funnelled along the bridge.
Ulf, frozen in the glow of the torch, didn’t see one man on the bank tug an arrow from the quiver at his belt, didn’t see him fix it to the bow in his hands, aim and pull back. The missile shot through the darkness, invisible until the last second, when Ulf, who was turning towards the tower where the bell was stored, caught its blur. Too late. The old guard was thrown back as the arrow punched into him, piercing his gambeson. He didn’t have time to make a sound as the awful force wrenched through him, snatching away his breath. Beyond the portcullis the drawbridge was inching up, but the first attackers were leaping on to the boards, their weight forcing it back down.
‘Ulf! For the sake of Christ!’ Hugh shouted, as he struggled with the winch. ‘The bell!’ Hearing nothing but drumming footsteps, he left Simon heaving on the handle and ran out. Hugh threw himself back in as an arrow came flying past. Ulf was on the ground, a few feet away. Hugh breathed a curse and crouched, glancing round the edge of the opening. There were lots of men beyond, murmuring breathlessly. The Welsh only came into Caernarfon to trade during the day. Most of them had been banished when King Edward established the site for his new seat of government, their houses pulled down to make way for the town’s foundations, the timber used for building works. Hugh didn’t understand their language. Here in this English town in the heart of Wales he hadn’t needed to.
More men were vaulting on to the drawbridge. A ladder had been let down the side to the boggy bank that stretched around the curtain walls. Hugh heard splashing as men disappeared over the side, descending into the shallow mud. Simon was straining at the winch, shouting for help. It was no use. They could never raise it now. Their only hope lay in alerting the rest of the garrison to the attack. Hugh pushed himself back inside. ‘Leave it,’ he told Simon. ‘There’re too many. Ulf’s dead.’
