by Angus Donald
‘Shalom aleichem,’ the old man said. ‘I am Josce of York, and you are most welcome here.’ The thick oak door slammed behind us, closing out the buzz of the angry world, and the locking bar slid home with a reassuring thump.
Chapter Four
The King’s Tower was packed with Jews - from doddery old crones to strapping young men and suckling babes in their mother’s arms, there must have been at least a hundred and fifty souls squashed into the three storeys of the keep like salted fish in a barrel. And two good Christians. Well, one Christian and Robin. I had never seen so many Jews in one place before, and it was a strange experience for me. They spoke English or French to each other but occasionally dropped briefly into another guttural language that I could not understand; very few of them had brought arms with them when they had come to the Tower, which seemed strange to me for people under threat of violence, but it was no matter as the keep was already well stocked with weapons. And they argued constantly about everything. But the strange thing was that, although they could be shouting at their fellows or family members one minute, the next, they had hugged and kissed and all was calm again; and they never came to blows with each other no matter what insults had been exchanged. I was astounded. In a Christian community, the aggressive tone of their disputations alone would have been enough to start the fists flying.
They were a sober, orderly lot, too, courteous and kind to me; and so I liked them. They had all brought food too, and it was comforting to know that while we had to shelter in the Tower, there would be plenty to eat.
There was precious little room in the lower part of the Tower for equine accommodation, but we managed to make our horses reasonably comfortable with food bags and water within reach of their noses. Then Robin and I climbed three storeys to the roof of the Tower by a narrow staircase in one corner of the building. As we surveyed the area around the castle keep, it dawned on me that we were surrounded. The King’s Tower had been built for defence, it was undeniably a secure fortress, but for us it was also a trap from which we could not easily escape. To the southwest ran the river Ouse, deep and slow; a fit man could swim it easily but what about a horde of Jewish grandmothers and suckling babies? There was no escape for us there. To the east ran the river Foss, once again unpassable except by one small bridge. To the north there was a line of campfires burning in the evening gloom around which milled scores of men-at-arms and townsfolk, clearly beginning to prepare their suppers. To the south was the bailey of the castle, now filling with the very people, the maddened Jew-haters, we had had to run from in the streets. It was full dark by now, but the bailey was so well lit with torches and fires that the scene was easy to make out. Hundreds of folk were milling around in confusion in the open space at the centre of the bailey, but a knot had gathered around a short speaker in a light-coloured robe by the chapel on the western side, who was holding a large wooden staff with a cross piece tied to it to make the holy symbol. He was haranguing the crowd and thumping the earth with his cross to emphasise his points, and I recognised the white-robed monk from that afternoon. His message seemed to be the same vile spew of poison as then, for every now and then he would fling out his arm and indicate the Tower. Beside him stood a tall knight in chainmail, a long sword at his waist, carrying a shield with the device of a scarlet clenched fist on a pale blue field. He looked familiar, but it was only when two men-at-arms approached with lit torches and stood beside him that I caught sight of his face. He had a shock of white hair in the centre of his forehead, standing out clearly from the russet mass of the rest, and I recognised the illiterate, feral-eyed foxy knight from my encounter with Prince John.
Just then Josce of York appeared beside us, his grey beard awry and out of breath from climbing the Tower’s stairs too fast, and the three of us stood at the battlements and stared out over the bailey. I was straining my ears to make out the white monk’s hate-filled words, when Robin spoke: ‘Who is that ill-looking knight?’ he asked Josce.
‘He is Sir Richard Malbête, sometimes called the Evil Beast,’ the tall Jew replied. ‘Some say he is part demon, for it is whispered that he loves the pain of other men more than he loves meat and drink. My friend Joseph of Lincoln holds his note for twenty thousand marks. He is a ferocious one, Malbête, and he hates all mankind, but especially he hates Jews. More than just for his great debts to us, I believe; he hates us with a passion that surpasses all earthly reason. Perhaps he really is a demon.’
‘He is a close friend of Prince John,’ I added. And both Josce and Robin looked at me in surprise. ‘He was at Nottingham two weeks ago.’
Robin nodded and then said to Josce: ‘And the other man, the white monk. Who is he?’
‘He is Brother Ademar, a wandering lunatic who formerly belonged to a Premonstratensian canonry; he escaped the cloister walls and has been preaching hatred against the Jews for a more than a month now, since your Christian season of Lent began. But the people listen to him for all his lunacy. They say he has been touched by God.’
Robin said nothing. But I remembered his comment earlier in the day: Someone should cut down that madman before he drowns the world in blood.
‘Can we hold out here until things become calmer - or the King sends help?’ asked Josce; he sounded more weary than worried. Robin looked around the small square of the Tower’s ramparts. About a score of angry-looking young Jewish men were watching the bailey from behind the crenellations, occasionally replying in kind to the insults from below. And every five yards or so along the parapet there was a pile of a dozen stones, each one about the size of a man’s head, which could he hurled down on any attacker with devastating effect. Robin always said that the main weapon in any castle’s armory was its height, and we were a good fifty feet above any adversaries. Stones that had been laboriously hauled up to the top by members of the former garrison could be sent back down again at great cost in blood to the enemy.
‘I believe so,’ said Robin. ‘We have enough men to see them off until help arrives or they come to their senses. It would be better if this place were stone-built. But I think we may hold them. As long as that rabble doesn’t get hold of any artillery.’ He looked at me. And I remembered with a shudder how, at the battle of Linden Lea, Sir Ralph Murdac had brought up a machine for throwing great boulders and how, once he had the range, the massive missiles had smashed through our wooden walls as if they were made of straw.
Josce seemed satisfied. ‘Will you come down and speak to everybody?’ he asked. ‘I think it would help.’
Robin stared at him for a second. His eyes were blank and metallic and the silence went on for an uncomfortably long time. ‘I will be down in a few moments. I must speak to Alan, first,’ he said finally.
Josce bowed his balding head. ‘Thank you. I will call everyone together,’ he said and he gathered up his robe to free his feet and moved away to the stairs.
When the old man had gone, Robin took me by the arm. ‘You must go, Alan. You can get out, you know.’ I merely stared at him in disbelief. He continued: ‘Wait until midnight, and take a rope from the stores. You just have to shin down the walls and swim the Ouse; even if you’re caught, as a Christian, you will be safe.’
‘We could both go,’ I said, testing him, although I knew what his answer would be.
‘I can’t leave,’ Robin looked me full in the face. ‘I need Reuben. Reuben is the money and the connection; I need to keep Reuben alive, or ... well, I must keep him alive,’ he said simply, then: ‘I think this is going to be very bad, very bad indeed, and so I must urge you to leave - tonight. This is not your fight.’
I squared my shoulders, and looked back into his pale, grey eyes. ‘When I first entered your service,’ I said stiffly, ‘I swore that I would be loyal to you until death. I will not break that oath. If you will stay here and face battle against these madmen, then I will remain with you.’
‘You really are an idiot, Alan,’ said Robin but in a kindly voice, ‘a sentimental idiot. But thank you.’ A
nd he smiled and slapped me on the shoulder. ‘So be it, then. We fight. Now I suppose I’d better go and rally the troops.’
With that, he was gone. I remained at the battlements staring out into the darkness and wondering whether I had made an enormous, possibly fatal mistake. The bailey seemed to be settling down for the night and I saw in the light of the few remaining torches hundreds of people making up beds under the eaves of the castle buildings while others, armed any-old-how with rusty spears and axes, rakes and scythes were standing guard, almost like regular soldiers. The white monk had ceased his shouting and gone, and of Sir Richard Malbête there was nothing to be seen. I looked down to my right, at the black Ouse, and saw that dozens of campfires had been now built between the bottom of the Tower mound and the river. The Jew-hating rabble had not dispersed, not at all: they appeared to have grown in number, and someone was organising them, almost certainly a soldier - for they surrounded us like a besieging army. Whatever Robin had said, it would not have been easy for me to escape. The blood-hungry mob had not gone away, back to their homes, calmed by the falling of night, they were there to stay. And, come morning, they would try to get into the Tower. We were in for a hard fight. My hands went to my waist, to the hilts of my poniard and sword on either side of my body. If I were to die the next day, I would take a few of these damned lunatics with me, I said bravely to myself, but the ice-snake in my belly gave a little slither of fear.
Just then a small hand touched my arm and I jumped like a startled rabbit, jerking the poniard half out of its scabbard. Ruth was at my side, and she was proffering a steaming wooden bowl. ‘Don’t do that,’ I said crossly, ‘don’t sneak up on people. I could easily have killed you.’
She frowned. ‘I am sorry for frightening you like that,’ she said.
‘You did not frighten me,’ I said, still annoyed. ‘I was merely regarding the enemy and considering our best stratagems for tomorrow.’ I was being pompous and I regretted it as soon as the words were out of my mouth.
She said nothing, but handed me the bowl of fish stew, gesturing that I should eat. I sank down on to the floor of the parapet, back against the thick wooden wall and began to spoon the mixture into my mouth. She crouched down beside me, watching. The food was absolutely delicious, and I was surprised that somebody had bothered to make a proper hot meal in these difficult circumstances. I flashed a smile at her, and she smiled back. Friends again.
‘I never thanked you for escorting us here,’ she said. Her brown eyes above her veil filled with warmth and gratitude. ‘I was so scared and you were so brave, like a hero, like Jonathan fighting the Philistines ...’
I seemed to be losing my appetite as I stared into those deep twin pools. Gruffly, I said: ‘I’m no Jonathan, I was merely doing my duty...’ I couldn’t think of anything more to say, there was a lump in my throat and my cheeks were glowing. I was secretly very glad that she thought me a hero. But I hoped she could not see my blushes in the darkness.
‘Will you stay and protect us against...’ she made a sideways jerk of her head, indicating the bailey of the castle, ‘... them?’ I put down the nearly empty bowl and took her hand. ‘My lady,’ I said awkwardly, too loud for the quiet of the night, ‘I shall protect you from these evil men, even at cost of my own life. They shall never harm you.’ Ruth lifted her free hand to my cheek and softly stroked the downy skin. ‘Thank you, Alan,’ she said.
I shudder now, looking back after more than forty years, to hear my young self making such rash promises. And I can scarcely bear to remember what happened afterwards - but recall it I shall, as I swore to do so. And perhaps by remembering the past unflinchingly, I shall be granted forgiveness by Our Lord for my sins in those dark days.
I followed Ruth down the spiral staircase in the corner of the Tower, watching with great interest the narrow waist and the way she swayed her hips as she walked, and on the ground floor, we came across a gathering of all the Jewish men of fighting age. They did not look a very formidable force. There were about forty of them, ranging in years from fourteen to fifty, mostly dark or grey haired and with a beaten, hangdog look. They looked ashamed, frightened; no one man wanting to meet another’s eye. Ruth slipped away and I watched as Robin, confidence personified, strode into the centre of the square space and stood on an old wooden box so that everyone could see him. He had an unloaded crossbow held casually over his shoulder, and began, as he had put it, ‘to rally the troops’.
‘My friends, be quiet and listen to me for a moment,’ he said loudly. ‘Give me your ears, my friends, and I will give you the good news, the excellent news about our situation.’ The Jews looked at him curiously, as if they had another madman in their midst. ‘We are fortunate,’ Robin began again, even more loudly, and there was a stirring and muttering in the crowd. ‘I say, we are fortunate because we are here — ’
One man stepped out from the loose circle that had formed around Robin; a big, sturdy man in a dark blue robe with a magnificent bushy red beard. His angry voice cut straight across Robin’s speech. ‘Fortunate, how? Fortunate to be hunted like wild pigs through our own city? Fortunate to be driven from our homes, our friends and family butchered, our silver stolen?’
‘You are fortunate that you are not dead,’ interrupted Robin coolly. ‘Would you not agree?’ He paused for a beat or two, but the red-haired man said nothing. ‘Fortunate that that pack of murderous lunatics’ — Robin flung out an arm and pointed to the door that led outside and down to the bailey — ‘did not tear you apart.’ There were growls of anger from the crowd. ‘But that aside,’ said Robin continuing calmly, ‘at this moment you are fortunate in other matters, too. Firstly, in this Tower; this is a stronghold designed to be held by a handful of warriors against a much bigger army. And we have those warriors. Before me I see men of courage; men who are willing to fight as hard as any knight and, if necessary, to die, in defence of their families, in defence of their pride, and their honour as men.’ I saw a few of the younger Jews nodding.
‘I see men of courage before me, men ready for battle, and in that we are most fortunate,’ Robin went on. ‘With good men such as you, we can hold this Tower until the heavens fall. We have food, we have water and ale, and we have brave men. So, I say, we are fortunate.’ I saw then that the mood had changed subtly; it was something that I had noticed before when Robin spoke. He could command men’s feelings; he had a trick of making them feel that they were better than they truly were. The Jews were standing more erect now, shoulders more square, stomachs pulled in, heads high. There saw themselves as warriors, not sheep to be driven by a hate-filled mob, but hard fighters, men of blood and iron.
‘The second piece of good fortune is that we have these,’ said Robin, lifting the crossbow off his shoulder and holding it up in the air. ‘We have more than three dozen of these weapons, and enough quarrels to send a thousand souls to Hell.’ He took the crossbow and cradled it in his arms. ‘With this weapon, and the others we have here, we can easily hold fast, until this evil sickness which has seized the townspeople releases them. We can keep the Devil at bay until they return to their senses or until help comes. So I say again that we are fortunate. We have the men, we have the weapons, and we have the guts to use them. God smiles on us. We ... are ... fortunate.’
The crowd of Jews actually cheered him. It was an astonishing turnaround: a few moments ago they had been a sullen, frightened herd of persecuted sheep, now they saw themselves as a band of noble warriors ready to do or die.
‘Now listen closely to me, my friends,’ said Robin. ‘These weapons are very simple to use, but quite deadly.’ As I watched him demonstrate how to load the crossbow, I caught his eye and he shot me a surreptitious grin and a wink.
It was indeed a simple weapon to use. The stiff crossbow cord is pulled back using the power of the whole of a man’s body. You put your right foot in the stirrup at the end of the machine and haul back the cord with both hands while extending the right leg, until the cord is locked into p
lace with a pair of iron teeth near the stock. Then you place a quarrel in the groove on the top of the weapon, put the weapon to your shoulder, aim and pull up the trigger, or tickle as it is known, below the stock. The iron teeth are pulled down by the tickle, releasing the bow cord, which springs forward and shoots the quarrel away at man-killing speed. It was quite accurate at close range, and packed enough power to penetrate chainmail at fifty paces.
‘Take off your hood, Alan, and hold it out to the side,’ Robin suddenly addressed me as I lounged against a stack of boxes by the wall, trying to look confident - and I felt my heart sink. I knew what he was in his mind. I sighed but, loyal as ever, I took my headgear off and held it out as far as possible from my body, close to the rough wooden planks of the wall.
There was a twang, and my beautiful hood was snatched from my grasp and pinned to the wood by a foot of steel-tipped oak. ‘Everybody see that?’ said Robin. ‘Right, form a line, everyone gets one shot at the hood,’ he gave me a grin of pure mischief, ‘and then Alan will issue each one of you with a crossbow and a dozen quarrels.’
I passed an uneasy but largely uneventful night, curled up below the battlements and sleeping only fitfully. Without my hood my head was cold. The one excitement during the night was that one of Robin’s bold new warriors had managed to shoot himself in the foot with a crossbow bolt and had to be carried down the stairs, weeping with pain, while his fellows jeered at his ineptitude.
Dawn broke on a dismal scene. More townspeople seemed to have arrived during the night to swell the ranks of the besiegers - there were now perhaps five or six hundred people milling around below the Tower, occasionally shouting up insults and making threatening gestures but largely ignoring us.
There was no sign of the garrison of the castle, or Sir John Marshal, the Sheriff of Yorkshire. One of the young Jewish men had told me that there had been a handful of soldiers when the first refugees arrived at the Tower, but they had departed as soon as the place began to fill with Jews. That made me uneasy. It sounded as if they had orders to leave the Tower to the Jews - why else would they abandon their posts? Had it been somebody’s plan to lure all the Jews into one place where they could more easily be killed? No, surely that was madness.
