by Angus Donald
The sun was high in the sky, about halfway to its zenith, and the bells of York were ringing out for the office of Terce, when Brother Ademar, the mad white monk, began to preach again. As had been the case the night before, the foxy knight Malbête stood beside him, towering over the short monk as he ranted about God and the Devil, the Holy Pilgrimage and the deaths of Jews. I could not actually make out the full sense of the monk’s words, but small snatches caught on the breeze and wafted his hatred to my ears like the smell of rotting filth. His audience, however, seemed to appreciate his speech. At one point, he bade everyone kneel and he blessed them before leading the crowd in the Pater Noster. Then he resumed his hate-filled ranting, thumping the ground with his cross-staff.
Robin had divided his fighting men into three groups, or companies, of about fifteen men, a mix of ages and abilities. At all times, one company would be resting on the ground floor and two would be on duty defending the castle. There were enough crossbows for each man on duty to have one, and several men had found swords and even a spear or two with which to defend themselves.
‘When they come,’ said Robin to the thirty-odd Jewish men, the two companies who were to take first turn at the Tower’s defence, ‘they will be confident. We let them come close, closer than is comfortable and then we smash them. Utterly. With luck we can make them regret they ever challenged us. Does everybody understand?’ There were murmurs of assent.
‘I’m going to repeat it anyway. When they come we let them get close. Nobody is to shoot until I give the order. Is that clear? If anybody shoots before I give the order, I will personally throw him off the walls and feed him to the Christians. Is that clear?’
The man who had interrupted Robin’s speech the night before muttered something inaudible into his big, red bushy beard. But when Robin looked hard at him, he said nothing. I caught Reuben’s eye in the throng of Jewish warriors and we exchanged wry smiles. He looked tired, but he held the crossbow casually as if he had been born with it in his hands.
‘Now it’s just a question of waiting,’ said Robin and he sat down in the shade of the battlements and stretched out his long legs. Pulling his hood over his eyes, he appeared to be readying himself for sleep. He had his long war bow unstrung beside him, and he put one hand on it, lifted up a corner of his hood with the other hand and glanced at me. ‘Keep an eye on things, will you Alan,’ he said, and yawned. ‘Wake me in two hours if nothing has happened.’ And then he fell asleep.
The Jews were mystified by his nonchalance. But they too began to find comfortable places to sit with their backs to the battlements. Food was passed around, and wineskins, and some men even began to sing quietly to themselves, a weird and wonderful tune of the like I had never heard before. Their eerie music did not seem to obey the golden rules of that art that I had so painstakingly learnt from my former music master, the French trouvère Bernard de Sezanne, who now served Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, the mother of King Richard - and yet it was truly beautiful.
As ancient Jewish music drifted around me, I looked out over the bailey at the crowd of misguided Christian fools listening to the hate-blasted preaching of Brother Ademar, and loosened my blades in their scabbards. My own loaded crossbow was propped against the battlement, and I had a dozen quarrels stuffed in my belt. There were times when I could almost understand Robin’s mistrust of the Christian faith - times like these, when a holy representative of God on earth was exhorting Christians to slaughter their fellow countrymen - but I knew in my heart that it could not be Jesus’s teachings that were at fault. The evil did not come from Him, it must come from the Devil, or from Man’s original sinfulness. Only Christ held the answer, only Christ could rid the world of evil, I was sure. Or almost sure.
The attack came not long after noon. I had been half-listening to the sounds of the crowd as Ademar whipped them with his words, while Robin snored gently at my feet. The crowd sounded like the roar and crash of the sea breaking on a shingle beach; in a strange, horrible way, it was soothing; just a big ceaseless, sound, seemingly unconnected with any evil. Then suddenly there was movement in the bailey; Brother Ademar had ended a long harangue with a great shout, there was a louder that usual roar from the masses and he plunged into the crowd of listeners, and forced his way through the bodies like a man swimming in a sea of humanity. He was followed by Malbête, surging forward through the populace in the wake of the monk, and surrounded by a knot of half a dozen men-at-arms, wearing surcoats in scarlet and sky blue, the colours of the Evil Beast himself.
Ademar emerged from the press at the gate of the bailey, and entrance of the rammed-earth causeway leading up to the Tower. He turned to the packed masses behind him and shouted a last exhortation; at this distance I could hear him clearly, and I swear he bellowed: ‘These Christ-killing lice must be swept from the earth! The earth must be cleansed! God wills it! God wills it!’ And his words were answered by another great roar from the crowd. He raised his six-foot wooden cross and, alone, he charged up the earth ramp, and on to the wooden steps that led the last few yards up to the Tower. And with a crazed howl that froze my heart, the crowd of screaming Christians, the good citizens of York, rushed after him like a river in spate.
I had long since woken Robin and he was passing along the file of Jews lining the parapet, giving encouragement. Each Jew was clutching a crossbow, but many looked terrified. ‘Do not shoot, do not shoot,’ Robin was shouting, his freshly strung war bow in one hand, and it was hard to hear him over the deep booming hatred of the crowd below. ‘When I give the signal, we will crush these vermin, not before, hold your peace until I give the order. Do. Not. Shoot.’
Miraculously, not a Jew fired his crossbow, not a javelin or stone was hurled. ‘Wait for it, wait for it,’ Robin was shouting, and then I noticed him doing a strange thing. He put down his bow and reached for a boulder, one of hundreds that had been piled in heaps around the battlements. He took it in both hands, holding it to his chest. It was about the same size as a man’s head. Then he looked out over the parapet and down at the surging mob below. The white monk was at the iron-bound gate of the Tower; he was hammering at the oak door with the butt end of his cross, ordering the Jews to open it in the name of Christ, and making no discernable impact at all. Robin leaned out over the battlements, lifted the great boulder out over the edge, paused for a second to take aim and then hurled the great lump of stone almost straight downward on to the head of the white monk.
The monk’s head exploded like a smashed egg, splashing glistening blood and brain over the dull wood of the steps. His body collapsed, the feet jerked once and then he was still.
I swear, I swear on Mary the Mother of God that for just an instant, the whole blood-crazed mob stopped, stock still, frozen in shock at the holy man’s death. And then, Richard Malbête, who was in the middle ranks of the mob, raised his sword and bellowed ‘Kill them, kill them all,’ and the crowd screamed as if in terrible pain and surged forward again.
‘Now shoot,’ yelled Robin. ‘Shoot. Reload, and shoot again.’ And with a leathery ripple of noise, the defenders fired as one man, and a hail of black quarrels sliced down and smacked into the crowd below. Dozens of Christians dropped out of the press before the Tower door, staggering back punctured by deep wounds in the neck, shoulders and head. One man in a red hood snarling up at the Jews on the battlements received a quarrel through the eye. He fell to his knees and was trampled by the mob. Some of our men followed Robin’s example and, after firing their crossbows, picked up stones from the piles by the battlements and hurled them down on the attackers with terrible force. Others methodically reloaded, hauling back the powerful cords with their leg and back muscles, loading a quarrel into the groove, leaning over the parapet and shooting into the mass of folk below again and again.
The slope was now littered with wounded and dying townsmen, and a few women, too, caught up in the fire of zealotry. More Christians surged over the earth and log causeway from the bailey, taking the places of thei
r fallen neighbours, boiling around the little iron door and battering at it with axes, swords, even plain wooden staves. They had no chance. The black quarrels flew thick and fast, a swarm of death, punching into the unarmoured bodies of the people below and doing appalling slaughter. Robin, beside me, had regained his bow. He had an arrow nocked and was searching the crowd for a particular target. And I knew who it was. Richard Malbête, surrounded by men-at-arms, was urging the mob forward from the back of the press around the door with oaths and loud cries of ‘God wills it!’ I saw Robin mark him, pull back his bow cord the final couple of inches to his ear and loose. It flew straight and true but, at the last minute, the man-at-arms next to Malbête threw up his kite-shaped shield and caught the arrow, with a flat thump, an inch or two below the curved top edge. Robin cursed and pulled another arrow from his bag. I saw Malbête staring directly at us, his feral eyes glittering madly, and then he began to move away, squirming backwards through the crowd like an eel, keeping low. He gave us one parting glance of sheer hatred before he turned and disappeared back across the causeway into the bailey courtyard.
The fight below us was not over, but there were signs that the people’s ardour was fading under the terrible onslaught of quarrels and stones. A young man, thin and agile, his face burning with religious fervour, in desperation tried to climb the rough wooden exterior of the Tower using two thick knives, driving them into the wood to give him handholds. I leaned over the parapet and shot him in the throat with a bolt from my crossbow. It was the first shot I had loosed, and I watched with a numb feeling of regret as he tumbled away, rolling down the slope, choking on his own blood, dying and scrabbling at the thick black shaft that protruded from his neck.
And then suddenly it was over. The townspeople were streaming back over the causeway to the bailey, helping their wounded friends to limp along, but leaving more than two score of bodies scattered on the bloody grass of the mound below us. A few of the Jews loosed bolts at their retreating backs, but they missed, and Robin shouted: ‘Cease shooting, stop! Save your quarrels.’ And suddenly we were a gang of grinning, cheering men, panting and sweating, slapping each other on the back, shaking but alive and, for the moment, victorious.
The sound of hammering was relentless, a ceaseless pounding that seemed to attack directly a spot at the base of my skull. It began almost as soon as the last citizen had retreated into the bailey and continued for hours. Worse than the noise was the knowledge of what they were building: ladders. We had not defeated them in the bloody skirmish by the Tower’s gate; they would return, and in a much more business-like fashion.
The Jews were jubilant, however, and as one company was sent down to the ground floor to rest, replaced by a fresh group of warriors, there was much singing and joking, and men exaggerating the numbers they had personally slain. I went down with them, out of the sunlight, and took bread and cheese and a mug of ale from Ruth in the dim ground-floor hall. She was glowing with happiness, eyes sparkling as she passed around food to the hungry men.
I had an uncomfortable feeling that she thought the battle was over. But I could not bring myself to disillusion her: I knew we were in for a much harder fight before we could count ourselves the victors. And every Christian we killed would harden opinion against us when Sir John Marshal and his troops finally returned from wherever they had been.
Robin found me dozing against the wall of the hall; he had brought Reuben with him and three other Jews. They were all armed with swords, and two of the men I didn’t know carried shields. Reuben’s sword was unlike any I had ever seen before: it was slim, delicate even, and slightly curved. I stared at it wondering how a man could wield such a girlish weapon.
‘They will attack again soon,’ Robin said without any preamble. ‘And they will attack from all sides, with ladders.’ He stopped and looked speculatively at the three men with Reuben. ‘We may be able to hold them, but if they do get over the parapet, you Alan, with the help of Reuben and these good men, must repel them. Stay back from the fight, the five of you, and watch for breaches. Your job is to be a stopper, Alan, like a cork in a bottle, to fill any gap that may open in our defences. Clear?’
I nodded. Robin grinned at me. ‘Good. Alan, you are in command, and - remember - we’re all relying on you,’ he said with a grin and then he was gone. We clumped up the stairs again to the roof and took up a position in the centre of the open space. It was mid-afternoon, and even in the weak March sunlight it was pleasantly warm up there. We were fifteen paces from each of the four sides of the battlements; and I could see the logic of Robin’s decision to deploy us as he had. If the enemy got over the wall, we five could charge them in a few heartbeats and should be able to push them back. I pulled out my old battered sword and began to run a whetstone along the long blade. The shriek of stone on metal made a counterpoint to the hammering from the bailey, a sort of unearthly martial music. I found I was timing my strokes of the stone to fit in with the sound of the hammers. And then, all of a sudden, the hammering stopped.
I got up and walked over to the parapet, telling my little troop of ‘Stoppers’ to stay where they were. The courtyard of the bailey was once again filled with men, but this time there seemed to me many more men-at-arms in scarlet and sky blue in the throng and fewer townsmen. I could see ladders being passed hand to hand over the tops of people’s heads and then suddenly there was the blast of a trumpet and the whole mass of humanity began to move towards the Tower.
‘Here they come again,’ shouted somebody and, glancing to my left and right, I saw the grim faces of the Jewish defenders, knuckles white on the stocks of their crossbows, bracing their legs on the wooden floor as if to resist a physical impact. Once again Robin insisted that they did not shoot. ‘Wait till they begin the attack,’ he was yelling. ‘Wait till I give the signal. Wait.’
The attackers split into two groups and, ignoring the steep wooden steps up to the iron-bound gate that had defeated them before, two streams of men flowed around the base of the huge earth mound on which the Tower was built. They were almost out of effective crossbow range and, anyway, Robin insisted that we should save our quarrels for a proper attack. But they were within earshot. Some shouted curses at us as they passed by at the foot of the mound, others waved swords and spears and jeered, others grimly ignored us. They formed up in two loose bodies, to the west on the banks of the Ouse, and to the north on the flat piece of ground before the beginning of the town itself. Then a figure stepped out from the mass of men to the north, accompanied by a man-at-arms holding a white flag. It was Sir Richard Malbête. I saw Robin with his war bow in his left hand reaching for an arrow from the linen bag at his waist and Josce putting a hand on his arm to restrain him. ‘Let us hear what he has to say,’ said the old Jew in a low, reasonable tone. Robin frowned but let the arrow fall back into his bag.
‘Jews of York,’ shouted Malbête; his words were faint but quite audible. ‘Jews of York,’ he repeated. ‘Release the Christian children you hold captive, come down from the King’s Tower and we shall be merciful.’
There was a murmur of astonishment on the roof of the Tower. ‘What children?’ somebody shouted. ‘What are you talking about? Are you mad?’
‘Release the Christian children: give us back the two boys you have kidnapped; our two little blond Christian angels. Restore them to their mother unharmed and we shall be merciful,’ boomed Sir Richard.
Josce stepped up to the parapet. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted. ‘We have no Christian children here. Whoever says that lies. There are no Christian children in this place. Why do you make war on us?’
Malbête turned his back on the Tower to face the crowd. A man-at-arms stepped forward protectively, raising his shield to cover the knight’s back. ‘They have murdered them,’ he shouted. ‘They have murdered our little angels. Shall we leave them in peace? Shall we walk away and leave these baby-killers, these unbelievers to work their foul sorcery?’
In unison, the crowd yell
ed back the negative. A trumpet blew, two blasts, and both enemy forces, to the east and the north, lumbered forward towards the Tower, ladders held high.
I saw little of the attack as I stood back to back with my Stoppers, our swords drawn, in the centre of the roof. But the noise was nearly deafening: the shouts of rage from the attackers, the screams of the wounded, the snap and hiss of a crossbow bolt being fired down on to the enemy, the occasional crash of sword on shield. All three companies of Jewish crossbowmen had been called to the roof to defend the Tower, but my Stoppers and I were aloof from the fray. A pair of parallel poles with perhaps one or two crossbars would appear at the top of the battlements, and immediately a mob of Jews would rush over to it and shoot, reload and shoot again down the length of the ladder, clearing it of attackers. Then someone would grasp the ladder and hurl it away from the walls. Another one would appear and the rush would begin again. Robin was shooting his war bow, but sparingly. I knew he had only brought two dozen arrows with him and, by the look of it, his arrow bag was already half-empty.
Despite the mad energy of our crossbowmen, there were many hundreds of enemies and they had dozens of ladders. The time gap between the appearance of a ladder-top and its rejection by the Jews began to grow and sometimes we could even see a head appear at the top of the ladder before it was transfixed by a hasty quarrel. And then, suddenly, as if in a dream, there were enemy spilling over the parapet to the west in a three heartbeats, there were half a dozen Christians on the roof; and more men were tumbling over the wall, picking themselves up, lifting their weapons ...
