Blondel asked what his mistake had involved.
‘He chose exposed ground against advice, isolated the Queen’s force from the rest of the Christian army and ignored repeated requests to change his mind. The Muslims attacked and his men were cut to pieces. Like a coward, he escaped, but he was stripped of his titles and sent home to Europe. The only reason he is here is because Alfonso of Aragon has given him the silver to buy estates in Aquitaine.’
It was a devious plan. For Eleanor’s son to be seen to make the same mistake that de Rançon had made – and the prospect of getting the credit for humbling the Lionheart – was irresistible bait. Everyone nodded their agreement, and the plan was toasted with plentiful goblets of wine.
The Duke looked at Father Alun.
‘Will you pray for our success, Father?’
‘No, my Lord, I can’t pray for our success in battle. But I will pray that we are all delivered from it in one piece.’
I could see Mercadier bristle at Father Alun’s answer. After taking a breath, he spoke his mind.
‘What’s the point of having a priest with us if he won’t pray for our victories?’
Father Alun stood his ground and calmly, without rancour and without flinching, he looked Mercadier in the eye.
‘My Lord, priests who pray for victories in war are both hypocritical and immoral. I am here to counsel the Duke, not to provide him, or you, with a shield on the battlefield.’
Mercadier started to rise to the provocative answer, but the Duke gestured to him to hold his tongue.
‘Let us drink well tonight; tomorrow we will be sober.’
From early the next morning, Richard moved the majority of his army from its base camp nearby and pitched tents right under the walls of Taillebourg. We numbered 1,200 men, with another 600 in reserve. The siege engines were moved up a little closer and, late in the day, the cooks began to roast meat in the open. The girls appeared, minstrels started to sing, and the drink – or, at least, its poor relative – began to flow. Duke Richard and his Grand Quintet made sure they were prominent amidst the revelry, enjoying the feast as much as the next man.
My men and I waited in our tents, passing the time playing dice, cleaning our armour and sharpening our weapons. All the while, our activities were scrutinized with incredulity from Taillebourg’s walls. At close to midnight, a message came from the Duke to say that frantic activity had been heard behind the castle gates and to expect an attack at first light.
I organized a watch for the night and issued an order for everyone to be awake an hour before dawn. The trap was ready.
Geoffrey de Rançon took the bait at full light the next morning. The huge gates to the city, so big that they had to be opened with a capstan, inched their way back and a wave of cavalry spilled out from inside in a crescendo of noise. Horses reared, men screamed and hooves thundered down the cobbled approach to the gates.
Our attackers assumed they were falling upon an army of heavy-eyed men, the worse for wear after a night of debauchery. For a few moments, that is how it appeared. But the trap was sprung immediately. I led my men from our tents and we immediately began to unhorse our attackers with our pikes and lances. Duke Richard’s men soon followed us. They had gathered their weapons and armour and now ran from their tents in large numbers. Men who had been sleeping in the open had been lying on their swords and hauberks and were soon ready for the melee.
De Rançon’s men were still pouring through the gates in numbers. But when they saw that they were riding into a snare of men that significantly outnumbered them, some tried to turn back, causing mayhem in the barbican. Duke Richard saw the confusion and called on William Marshal and his other lieutenants to join him in a charge into the open gateway. I bellowed at Godric and my Little Quintet, and we joined the Lionheart in a sprint to the gates before they could be closed against us. We pulled down horses by their reins as we went and scattered men in droves as we forced a way through. Such was the awesome sight of Duke Richard and his senior knights, all of whom towered over their opponents, few stood and fought. Those who did were quickly despatched with efficient and deadly intent.
By the time we were in the interior of the barbican, we could hear the winches at work as the defenders tried to close the gates against us.
The Lionheart shouted his order.
‘Sir Ranulf to the right, Lord Mercadier to the left. To the capstans!’
The order was clear. As we turned to the right, we could see four large men with muscle-bound arms straining to turn the capstan as quickly as they could. They were defended by a posse of de Rançon’s garrison, who knew that if they were unable to close the gates, their day would be done. The space behind the massive gates was small and dark, too small for the effective use of swords, so Godric and the men wielded their English battleaxes, just like their Saxon ancestors. A look of fear immediately spread across the faces of our opponents. Penda and Leax formed a vanguard, with Modig and Rodor on the flanks, while Godric and I formed a second rank. We locked our shields like housecarls and advanced like a shield wall of old.
Our foes found it hard to swing their swords, and the brutal blows from our axes soon took their toll. We had to step over bloodied bodies to make progress, but we were soon within striking distance of the capstan. There was no need to assault the capstan men, as one blow from Penda’s axe was enough to sever the rope to the gate, thus rendering the mechanism redundant. Realizing that their muscular arms were of little value to them without a sword to wield, the burly winchmen soon held them aloft in surrender.
I called to the Sergeant of our army, which was now streaming through the gates of Taillebourg, to take the defenders of the barbican in hand so that we could rejoin the Duke, who was now fighting his way across the castle’s bailey against stubborn resistance. Geoffrey de Rançon’s portly frame was at the back of the melee, trying to form his men into a redoubt in front of the keep.
The fighting was at close quarters and vicious. Conscious of my primary responsibility to protect the Duke, I formed my men around him to make sure that his drive forward could not be outflanked. Marshal and Thornham led from the left, and Mercadier and Bethune from the right. As usual, Blondel took up his preferred position directly behind the Lionheart. Our advance was impressive; amidst a din of clashing blades and the cries of stricken men, we moved ever closer to the ground floor of the keep. The beaten-earth ground of the bailey was awash with blood, some it forming into pools before running away along the drainage gulleys in a crimson torrent.
I kept a wary eye on the Lionheart, but I need not have been concerned; he led the assault from the front, fighting in the best traditions of man-to-man combat. He swung his blade in powerful but measured arcs and used his shield perfectly to parry blows. His great height and powerful frame gave him a distinct advantage, but it was his training and technique that were most telling. It was an impressive sight, the stories of which would soon resonate across Europe.
Here was a lion rampant; I watched in awe, relieved that I was supporting his onslaught, not trying to defend against it.
De Rançon had managed to form a semi-circular redoubt. But as soon as it was set, he had banged on the small door of the tall keep and disappeared inside. There were immediate howls from his men, and the fight soon went out of them. Like ripples on a pond the raised hands of surrender spread across the entire redoubt within moments, leaving de Rançon trapped in his keep.
Although he undoubtedly had food and water within the keep, and perhaps a few loyal bodyguards, his capitulation was only a matter of time. The Duke, covered in blood from head to toe, steam rising from him like a stallion after a gallop, his chest heaving to suck in great gulps of air, raised his sword in triumph. Our men hollered and cheered and began to chant his name, ‘Lionheart, Lionheart, Lionheart…’ until echo upon echo rebounded off the walls of Taillebourg.
Even though he was just twenty-two years old, it was the moment that established the Duke in legend. All who witnesse
d it would never forget the image: with his sword proclaiming victory, the tall blood-stained hero had removed his helmet to reveal his golden-red mane. He was Achilles in front of the Gates of Troy, Alexander on the Plain of Gaugamela, Caesar at the Siege of Alesia. I shivered with emotion as I fully realized the power of the man to whom I had committed my future.
The Duke instructed that de Rançon’s men be disarmed and that order be restored to the castle and its occupants. Then he asked that tables be erected in the bailey and that a real feast, with full-strength beer and potent Teneraze, be prepared to celebrate the fall of the ‘impregnable’ Castle of Taillebourg.
An hour or so later, with his family skulking behind him and half a dozen knights in attendance, de Rançon emerged from his keep. He walked up to the Duke sheepishly and offered him his sword.
‘My Lord Duke, I throw myself upon your mercy. Please spare my family, I beg you.’
‘Your family has done me no harm; they have nothing to fear. In fact, they may join us for our feast tonight. As for you, I have a small group of unruly lords of Gascony under guard in my camp. You will join them. The food is adequate, but far from lavish; by the look of your girth, that may be a blessing. When my campaign ends, you and they will travel with me to see the King, where you can pay homage to your liege lord.’
De Rançon knew he had got off lightly, so just meekly bowed his head and walked away under guard.
Duke Richard’s ruse had been a clever one – not without risk, in placing his army within range of anything hurled from Taillebourg’s walls – but he had achieved what no one had ever done before and humbled the most formidable fortress in western Europe. The celebratory repast that followed that night involved no bogus revelry; the feast was truly bacchanalian, enjoyed by the citizens of Taillebourg as much as by their conquerors. With his usual panache, the Duke had made the local people beneficiaries of de Rançon’s ransacked treasury and thus ensured that they had no regrets about the demise of one lord and his replacement by another.
As our army began to move on, the Duke ordered that the fortress of Taillebourg be dismantled stone by stone. We repeated the same destruction at several more castles until Vulgrin, the Count of Angoulême, the last of Aquitaine’s rebels, rode into our camp with the keys to all of his fortresses, including Angoulême and Montignac, and begged that they be spared being razed to the ground. The Lionheart accepted the keys with gratitude and spared the Count the humiliation of paying homage to King Henry. But he destroyed the castles all the same.
His mission in Aquitaine complete, the Duke stood down his army and his Grand Quintet went home to their estates. With his little coterie of Gascon aristocrats in tow, we arrived in Caen in October of 1179, only to find that the King was in Winchester. Although he made it clear that he dreaded the prospect of crossing the Channel with winter approaching and the likelihood of being buffeted by autumn gales, the Duke was energized by his success in the south and nothing would have prevented him from presenting his father with the trophies of his hunting trip. He had two counts, three viscounts, four lords of tenure and several castellan chevaliers in his bag, and he was determined to display them in front of his father and the English court.
On the journey across the Channel, I realized how limited was the Duke’s English. He asked me to help him, but he struggled with it, saying that he found its mix of Celtic and Scandinavian vocabulary confusing and its pronunciation baffling – especially when compared to the harmonic vowels of his native Occitan. To his even greater consternation, when we made landfall at Fareham, England had already donned its autumnal cloak of leaden skies and cool temperatures. Within an hour of beginning our ride to Winchester, it began to rain – not just the usual drizzle of an October day, but the squall of a south-westerly storm.
Although I tried to reassure the Duke that such downpours were the exception, rather than the rule, he was not convinced.
‘Why does everyone keep telling me that England is the jewel in the King’s crown? I remember always being cold and wet as a child, and it appears nothing has changed!’
As if to prove his point, England then did its worst. As we climbed up on to the Downs, the driving rain turned to hailstones and cut into our faces like the lash of a whip. A miserable Lionheart said no more, just looked at me from under his sodden hood with all the contempt he held for my homeland.
Then I remembered that he had been born in England, and I chanced my arm with a quip.
‘Welcome home, my Lord.’
‘Don’t remind me!’
Mercifully, by the time we reached Winchester, the weather and the Duke’s humour had improved. Not only that: the King had prepared a welcome fit for the conquering hero. He had sent a royal squadron, complete with heralds and horns, to escort us into the burgh, the streets of which were thronged with people, mostly four deep. Usually such receptions were encouraged by generous inducements to the crowd, including gifts of food and drink, but on this occasion the warmth seemed genuine for a famous son of the realm whose exploits were already being written about by the scribes and related by the storytellers.
The King was overjoyed by his son’s success and particularly pleased that Duke Richard had brought him so many Gascon rebels to humiliate – a task he undertook with great relish. In front of a large gathering outside his Great Hall at Winchester, after berating them at length for their insolence and making each of them fall to their knees and swear an oath of allegiance to him, the King immediately sent the miscreants to Fareham to begin the long journey back to Gascony. For all of them, unless they could find a benefactor, it would be to face a life of penury, shorn of their wealth, their fortresses and their lands. These were the risks of challenging the might of the Plantagenet Empire.
For Duke Richard, the Little Quintet, Father Alun and myself, our immediate future was much more auspicious. The King had arranged for the Lionheart to undertake a grand progress across the length and breadth of the kingdom; it was a journey that we faced with considerably more enthusiasm than did the Duke. For us it was a nostalgic homecoming, for him it would be several weeks of purgatory.
His only comment when he heard the news was, ‘If I have to endure England in the depths of winter, you must make sure that all our hosts provide fine wine, fresh game and game girls.’
The Duke refused to travel as far as Durham and, despite my pleading, refused to travel to my homeland of Lancaster. But he did travel to York and Chester in the north, and to all the major burghs of the south. It was a triumphant cavalcade, with rapturous greetings in every burgh and village we passed; everyone wanted to see the man called ‘Lionheart’.
Our hosts, England’s all-powerful earls and bishops who enjoyed significant autonomy on their island with a King who spent a major proportion of his time in Normandy, were generous with their hospitality. Each knew that their guest was a man of rare stature who might well be their King one day, and they were keen to impress him. Their wine was outstanding, they provided excellent hunting, and the finest young women of their earldoms were paraded for the Duke. He was spoilt for choice and made many conquests, but one of them had such an impact on him that he began to warm to England’s charms after all.
She was called Ida de Tosny, and she first caught his eye in Norwich. In truth, everyone’s eye was drawn to her when she walked into the impressive Great Hall of Norwich Castle, the home of Roger Bigod, Second Earl of Norfolk.
She was visiting him at the suggestion of the King, who thought they would be a good match. Roger had just succeeded his redoubtable father as Earl and needed a wife, and Ida needed a husband. She was from the Anglo-Norman gentry, but she had lost both her parents as a child and had been made a ward of the King. However, when she reached womanhood, she became much more than Henry’s ward. Petite and slim, with striking blue eyes and chestnut hair, her perfectly symmetrical figure made men gasp. More than aware of her charms, she used them to great effect. Her dresses always clung tightly to her and she walked in a sensuous, s
inewy way that demanded attention. It was said that the King first seduced her when she was just fifteen and that he became infatuated with her. She had borne him a child, William, who was sent to the nuns in Lincoln to be cared for. Eventually, he tired of her and now a marriage to the Earl of Norfolk was an ideal solution for all three of them. The King would be rid of her, Ida would become the countess of one of the richest earldoms in England, and Bigod would acquire one of England’s most beautiful women.
However, that expedient plan was undermined when Ida’s curvaceous form glided towards the Lionheart. His eyes opened wide and he immediately got to his feet to greet her.
The Earl made the introductions.
‘My Lord Duke, Ida de Tosny. Her family’s domain is just to the south of Rouen, and her great-grandfather fought with the Conqueror at Senlac. She is now your father’s ward.’
With his usual flamboyance, the Duke bowed deeply and kissed her hand.
‘Madam, I am honoured to meet a woman of such rare beauty.’
Ida curtsied and smiled coyly. The attraction between them was apparent to everyone there, especially to Earl Roger – who must have known at that moment that his intended betrothal would either never happen, or have to wait.
As soon as he could, Father Alun took the Duke to one side.
‘Sire, she has had the King’s child and he intends her to marry the Earl. He will not be pleased if you upset his carefully laid plan.’
‘Don’t fuss, man. I’m only going to bed her. The Earl can have her when I’m done. He can hardly complain; she’s already been stretched by the King’s cock, a little more from mine won’t make any difference.’
There was nothing more Father Alun could say. He looked at me, but I just shrugged my shoulders; it was the only appropriate response.
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