A Question of Honour

by Wayne Grant

  He threw down his sword and surrendered.

  ***

  Only five men managed to squeeze out of the Nag’s head door to join Barca in the square. The Gascon ran for his horse and they followed. The men he’d left to watch the horses now gaped at the sight of their captain fleeing from the inn door. Catchpole, who’d been passing the time shaving down his fingernails with a dagger looked up as the sounds of a commotion reached him. He sheathed his dagger and drew his sword, his pale eyes now scanning the square and the village buildings.

  “Shields!” Barca shouted as he ran and men scrambled to rip free the bindings that secured their shields to their saddles. Catchpole turned to do the same, but heard a strange voice behind him bark out a command in English. He turned in time to see the cloth that draped a line of stalls in the square ripped down. A score of archers stood there, with longbow strings drawn back to their ears. Catchpole fell to his knees and scrambled beneath his horse’s belly as the bowmen loosed their arrows.

  ***

  Magnus Rask and John Little drew their longbows and joined the Danes as they poured their arrows into the mercenaries struggling to free their shields. The effect was deadly. Half the men left with the horses went down in the first volley. Those left alive in Castleton’s square scattered in every direction trying to save themselves.

  The man who’d run from the inn shouting orders managed to avoid the hail of arrows and reached his horse. He did not mount. To do so would have exposed him to the deadly archers in the square. Shielded behind his horse, he grasped his saddle and slapped the animal on the rump. The horse bolted away down the road with the mercenary clinging to its side. Four men who’d survived the first volley of arrows managed to rip their shields free and that saved them. They mounted and, whipping their horses, followed their captain who’d managed to haul himself up onto his saddle. Together they galloped out of Castleton.

  Keeping low, Henry Catchpole managed to lead his horse into an alleyway to escape the slaughter in the square. Three of his men followed. Once out of view of the archers, they ran for their lives, leading their mounts behind them. In the square, the few men not dead or wounded saw Magnus Rask and John Little drop their longbows and charge toward them, one with an axe and one with a cudgel. The routiers threw down their weapons, calling for quarter.

  On the far side of Castleton, a church bell rang, calling the faithful to mass.

  For Millicent

  William de Ferrers watched the remnants of his mercenary troop straggle in through the west gate of Peveril Castle and tried to quell the rising terror that held his chest in a vise. Over thirty men had ridden into Castleton an hour ago. Only nine had returned. He watched Savaric Barca and Henry Catchpole dismount in the inner bailey and hurried to meet them.

  “Inness? Is he dead?” he demanded.

  Barca looked at the Earl and saw that the man’s hands were shaking. He tried to keep the disgust from showing on his face.

  “He was alive when last I saw him, my lord,” Barca said, and gestured to his men dismounting in the courtyard. “But most of my men aren’t! There were forty men or more lying in wait for us in that damned village. Inness led us straight into a trap. We were lucky any of us got out alive.”

  De Ferrers stood there speechless, his mouth agape.

  “Ye said we’d draw Inness here by taking his woman!” Catchpole said, glaring at de Ferrers. “Ye didn’t say he’d bring forty bowmen with him!”

  As if on command, clothyard shafts began to fall into the inner bailey from outside the walls. Men scattered for cover, none with more urgency than the Earl of Derby. De Ferrers pressed his body against the inner wall of the bailey as the shafts pinged off the cobbles in the courtyard. Barca stood beside him, watching the hail of arrows pouring over the walls He turned to the Earl.

  “Maybe you should give Inness back his wife, my lord.”

  ***

  A dozen men stood in the market square looking up at the castle. Behind them, five sullen routiers sat in a bunch, their hands bound behind them. The archers from the valley of the Weaver had gathered around the base of the hill and were pouring volleys of arrows over Peveril’s curtain wall.

  “We whipped ‘em good,” said Sir Roger, as he watched the hail of arrows arc through the grey sky and fall on the castle, “but we’ll still pay hell trying to storm the place.”

  The Sheriff nodded

  “De Ferrers has nothing to send out against us now. He can only hide behind his walls, but they’re very good walls and he has more than enough men left to defend them. I know those garrison lads up there well,” he said. “I trained ‘em. They’re not veterans, but they’ll do their duty.”

  “Then we don’t storm the place,” Roland said.

  “Shall we lay siege?” Tuck asked. “When your father and I rose against Earl Robert, we kept him and his garrison bottled up in Peveril for six weeks and could have starved them out, if King Henry hadn’t sent a relief column.”

  “And King Richard is too occupied in France to concern himself over a local dispute in Derbyshire, “ Sir Robin added. “Peveril might fall to a siege before the King stirred himself to send help.”

  Roland raised a hand to end the discussion.

  “I won’t leave Millicent up there for months! We have to get her out.”

  “How, lad?” asked Tuck.

  Roland didn’t answer Tuck’s question. Short of sprouting wings, there seemed to be no answer. Then the only man among them who’d ever been inside the castle spoke up.

  “I have a notion,” said Sir James Ferguson.

  ***

  They retired to the Nag’s Head as men from the village were hauling away the heap of dead bodies by the door. Sir James pulled up a stool and the rest gathered around his table.

  “They’d likely keep her in the great hall,” the old knight began. “There are servants’ rooms there. We put a lock on one to detain any man who broke the King’s law. Never used it much, but it would be a handy place to keep your lady. They’d likely leave a guard there, but hardly more than one since they’ll need to man the walls.”

  “One guard we can handle,” said Roland. “but how do we get to her?”

  “Peveril has a blind spot,” the Sheriff said, “and it always worried me. Years ago, when Earl Robert built his new hall into the northwest corner of the bailey, its roof blocked the view of that section of the curtain wall from anywhere within the castle. You can’t see it from the tower at the opposite corner of the wall or from the top of the keep. I warned the Earl that it might one day give an enemy an advantage, but Lord Robert was a stubborn man. He said the cliffs there were all the protection needed.”

  “I know the spot you speak of, Sir James,” said Tuck, “and I can see why the Earl gave it no heed. It’s a good two hundred feet from the base of those cliffs up to the wall and nearly sheer!”

  Sir James nodded.

  “Aye, but it can be climbed. As a boy, I did it myself. On a dare, I climbed from the ravine to the base of the wall. I don’t recall ever being as frightened on a battlefield as I was on that cliff, but I reached the top! My sire found out and gave me a good hiding, though he needn’t have. I’d have never done it again.”

  “But you did it,” Roland said flatly.

  Sir James nodded.

  “So you find her and free her,” said Sir Robin. “How do you get her out of the castle?”

  “The same way we got in—back down the cliff,” said Roland.

  “You’d have the lady climb down those cliffs?” Robin asked, a sceptical look on his face.

  “You’ve not met my wife, have you, Sir Robin.”

  That brought a hoot from Sir Roger.

  “Millie could climb a greased pole if needs be!” he declared.

  “There is one more thing,” Sir James interjected. When I climbed the cliff it was in daylight. You’d need to do it at night. For once you clear the wall, you’ll be on the roof of the great hall. Anyone could see you there in da
ylight.”

  Roland stood and looked at the men gathered around the table.

  “Then we go tonight,” he said.

  ***

  Millicent heard a soft tapping on her cell door and leapt up from the cot.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s me,” a quiet voice came back.

  “You have news?” Millicent asked and steeled herself for whatever the boy might say.

  “Aye, miss. Seems the foreigners got badly bloodied this morning in the village. They say Inness…your husband…led them into a trap there. Only eleven came back.”

  Millicent felt a small quiver of triumph, but it was short-lived.

  “Was there news of Sir Roland?” she asked, hesitantly. “Did he survive this fight in the village?”

  “I can’t rightly say, miss. I think the foreigners were too busy running for their lives to count casualties on the other side.”

  Millicent sighed, but then brightened. If they’d killed the man they’d set out to kill, they surely would have boasted of it, particularly after taking a beating in the process. Perhaps no word was good.

  “And after the foreigners rode back in, there was an awful rain of arrows that come over the wall. Hundreds of them! We all had to run for cover. Never saw the likes of it before!”

  The Danes! she thought. Roland had not come alone!

  On the other side of the door, the guard continued recounting the startling events of the day.

  “I peeked over the wall down by the east gate and saw the old sheriff, the one the Earl threw out, down the hill with a goodly number of men behind him.

  Millicent pondered that news.

  “How many men were with this sheriff?” she asked.

  “Oh, a lot, miss. More than two score I’d say.”

  Two score? She’d seen enough of Peveril Castle when they’d brought her in to know it couldn’t be taken with forty men. So what were they planning? She doubted they’d lay siege. Neither her father nor her husband would have the patience for that! It was puzzling.

  Then an old memory came back to her—the memory of a wooden fort deep in the Clocaenog forest where she’d been held captive by Welsh raiders. On that occasion, a young squire had climbed over the wall in the night to free her.

  Good God! she thought. Would he try to sneak in?

  “Tell me your name, lad.”

  There was a long pause on the other side of the door.

  “Harold, miss.”

  “Same as the old Saxon king,” Millicent replied.

  “Don’t know nuthin’ about that, miss.”

  “Well, Harold, my husband will be coming for me soon. If you wish to live, stay close to me. It will be the safest place to be.”

  ***

  Two men stood at the bottom of the gorge looking up at the cliffs as the last rays of the setting sun dropped behind Mam Tor. They’d sorted through their equipment while the light was still good. Now it was time to begin the climb. The Sheriff said it had taken him over an hour to reach the top of the cliffs, but that had been in daylight. He’d guessed it would take three times that long in the dark.

  After studying the climb ahead, Declan checked the broadsword he’d strapped to his back and the iron grapnel affixed to his belt.

  “It looks worse than I expected,” he said with a straight face.

  Roland shook his head. For once, Declan was not making light of a grim prospect. His friend was frightened and, looking up at the soaring heights, so was he. He slipped a thick coil of rope over his head and under one arm and checked the short sword at his hip. He felt naked without his longbow, but climbing a cliff at night with a six foot length of yew strapped to his back would be foolish. He reached down and touched the hilt of a dagger hidden in his boot. Ivo Brun’s blade had been with him since the assassin had dropped it in a stable in York. He’d never had cause to use it, but it felt good to have it there.

  Roland looked back up at the cliff, studying the best route to the top. The face was not absolutely sheer and he could see there were handholds and footholds, though these would be difficult to see once it was fully dark. The cliff was dotted with small saplings and bushes growing in clumps that clung precariously to small ledges. He slowly let his eyes travel from the base of the cliff to the top, plotting a route from one ledge to the next. It could be done, he knew, but once they were high up on the face there would be little chance of recovery from a slip.

  Grabbing an exposed root, he hauled himself upwards.

  ***

  Darkness had fallen completely when a procession marched out of Castleton and back up the path to the castle. Dozens of torches bathed the column in an eerie, flickering light as it approached the east gate. Somewhere in the rear of the column a man pounded out a steady rhythm on a makeshift drum as the column marched up the hill. Lookouts atop the gatehouse could see that there were ladders in the crowd.

  Suddenly the drumming stopped, the last beats echoing off the walls of the castle. As silence fell over the scene, the defenders of Peveril saw the deadly archers spread out and nock their arrows. All along the east wall, men slid down behind the parapets and waited for the storm to begin.

  Captain Barca stood atop the gatehouse and watched this ragtag force advance up the hill. Other than the damned archers, it didn’t look like much of a threat. As the bowmen deployed, he watched as de Ferrers’ garrison troops cowered behind the battlements. For not the first time, he regretted leaving France.

  Atop the keep, William de Ferrers heard the drumming and watched the column wend its way up the hill from the village. The sight set his nerves on edge. Surely forty men couldn’t storm Peveril Castle, but he hadn’t thought his mercenaries could be cut to pieces in Castleton either. He hurried down the steps and out into the bailey, crossing over to the east gate. He saw Henry Catchpole leaning against the gatehouse wall. Outside the gate the drumming seemed louder. He turned to the pale Englishman.

  “Catchpole, take the girl to the keep and put a guard on her,” he ordered. Millicent Inness was his final bargaining chip and he would keep her secure should he need her.

  ***

  Roland grasped Declan by the wrist and hauled him up the last steep pitch of the cliff face. It had taken them over two hours of difficult climbing to reach this spot. From here there was a short incline up to the base of the castle wall. The two men lay back against the slope, winded from the climb. Somewhere in the distance, Roland heard a drum start up and the faint sound of cheering. Sir Roger and the Sheriff had promised to put on a show at the east gate to keep the garrison’s attention focused there. From the sound of it, the show had begun.

  It was a moonless night and the sky had grown full of stars in the clear cold air. Roland looked out across the valley to the north, toward the brooding bulk of Mam Tor. Beyond that long ridge and out of sight was another valley and rising up from that valley was Kinder Scout, his old home. It was there that a hungry boy had killed a deer, setting his life on a course that would bring him here. He shook his head. He didn’t know if the God who lived up there above the stars had ordained all that had happened to him. He only knew he’d done what he thought he must. God would have to sort out whether he’d done right.

  Roland got to his feet.. He looked up the slope to the wall of Peveril Castle. The cliff had been a difficult climb, but the castle walls here rose twenty feet straight up from the bedrock of the ridge and could not be scaled without a rope. Roland took up his coil and climbed half way up the slope. Declan climbed up beside him and handed over the iron grapnel. Roland threaded the rope through the eye of the shaft and knotted it tight.

  Declan stepped away as Roland played out the rope and began to swing it in long lazy loops, keeping its arc at the same angle as the slope at his feet. With each swing, he increased the speed and on the fifth loop, he let the grapnel fly. It sailed up and over the parapet, landing with an audible clank on the roof of the great hall.

  The hall had been built into the very corner of the inner ba
iley, using the existing curtain wall for its north and west sides. The pitched roof was laid over the existing wall walks, using them for buttresses to support its considerable weight. When the iron grapnel struck the roof it slid down to rest where the roof butted up against the parapet of the west wall.

  Roland began to pull gently and the grapnel, with its three sharp hooks, inched up the inside of the parapet. As it neared the top of the wall, one of the hooks caught a gap in the stonework and lodged there. Roland felt the rope grow taut in his hands and pulled harder. The rope held. Keeping the tension on the line he hauled himself up the slope with Declan trailing after him. At the base of the wall, Roland gave the rope a final jerk. I didn’t move. He took a deep breath, slid his hands up the line as far as he could reach and planted his feet on the wall. The rope stretched, but held.

  Hand-over-hand, he started up the castle wall.

  ***

  Henry Catchpole ordered the guard at the door to open it and step aside. When the boy seemed hesitant to obey, Catchpole grasped him by the throat and shoved him against the wall.

  “Don’t go getting’ no ideas, lad,” he snarled, “or I’ll lay ye in the ground.”

  He released his hold and the young guard fumbled in his tunic until he extracted the key. His hands were shaking as he tried to fit it to the keyhole.

  “No wonder the Earl brought us over from France, if yer the best England can do these days!” Catchpole hissed as the boy struggled with the lock. “Give me that!”

  He wrenched the heavy key from the guard’s hand and thrust it in the hole. He gave a hard twist and yanked the door open. Stepping inside, he looked at the girl who had risen from her cot.

  “So, little miss. I’ve come back. Did you miss me?”

  Millicent said nothing. Catchpole walked over and grabbed her by the arm in a grip meant to hurt. She didn’t cry out and that seemed to disappoint him. He dragged her across the cell and through the door.

  Harold stood aside, his eyes on the floor, as she was led away.

  ***

  As he reached the top of the wall, Roland gripped the rope tightly with one hand and slid his free arm between two merlons. Grasping the cold stone of the battlement, he hauled himself over the wall and onto the roof of the great hall. For a moment he lay there, gasping for breath, then he stood and signalled for Declan to follow. As the Irish knight neared the top of the wall, Roland grasped him by the shoulders and dragged him over the parapet and the two ended in a heap on the roof breathing hard.