by Angus Donald
But I was pleased with my conclusion; I would have something crucial to confide to Thomas when I saw him again. If I saw him again. Suddenly my spirits plunged once more. Would they hang me as an outlaw before I got a chance to talk to the ugly one-eyed brute? Where were my friends? I had been lying in this black pit for hours and nobody had come to visit me. My bladder was full and aching. I was determined not to wet myself but the prospect of sweet release, even if it meant warm wet hose, was almost too tempting. I bit my lip and held fast.
I dozed for a while and the next thing I knew the cell door was opening, blinding me with the yellow light of torches, and there was Murdac and his God-forgotten lackey, Guy. They stood silhouetted in the doorway for an instant, Guy towering over Sir Ralph, and then they entered that stinking room, followed by two men-at-arms. I sneezed violently; even above the dungeon stench I recognised Murdac’s revolting lavender scent. He came close to me and stared down at my curled form on the filthy floor. I sneezed again. Under Guy’s supervision, the men-at-arms lit torches and set them in beckets in the wall. Ominously, one of the men-at-arms set up a brazier, filled it with cordwood and oil-soaked wool and set it alight with a flint and steel. I knew it was not to keep me warm during the long, cold night. Another man-at-arms attached my bound arms, with a rope, to a hook in the ceiling and adjusted the length so that I was partially suspended from my wrists, which were still bound behind me. The strain on my arms was enormous, but by leaning far forward and standing on my tiptoes, I could make it just bearable. Then the soldier cut my new clothes from my body with his dagger, leaving me as naked as the day I was born. I was filled with shame at my nudity and kept my eyes on the straw below me. But worse than the shame was the fear. Rising like a river in spate was sheer skin-tightening terror. Somewhere in the corner, in the foul shadows of the dark cell, the Greek demon Pan was taking shape. And he was silently laughing. As I tried to control my dread, I was aware that Murdac was watching me, studying me with his extraordinary pale blue eyes.
The brazier was burning merrily by now, and Guy set three stout iron pokers in the blaze. He caught my eye and grinned unpleasantly. ‘Are you scared, Alan? I think you are. You always were a coward!’ he jeered. Then he pulled on a pair of stout leather gloves. I tore my gaze away from the heating irons and looked down again at the straw-strewn floor. I knew what was coming, I knew it would be bad beyond my imagining and I found that I was shivering with fear. I bit my tongue and determined that I would hold out against the pain, transport myself to a better place with my mind, refuse to tell Murdac anything. Nothing, particularly nothing about my suspicions about there being a traitor in the camp. That was something I had to bury deep in my brain; so deep that even I did not remember it. Then Ralph Murdac spoke, his sibilant French whine filling the damp stone cell, somehow defiling even that repugnant place.
‘I remember you. Yes, yes, I do.’ He sounded pleased, excited to have placed me in his memory. ‘You are the insolent thief from the market in Nottingham. You sneezed on me, you foul creature. And you escaped, did you not? I think I recall someone telling me. You ran off into the forest to join Robert Odo and those scum. Well, well, and now I have you again. How gratifying, how very gratifying.’ He laughed, a thin, dry chuckle and Guy immediately joined in the mirth, with a false sounding cackle, too loud. Murdac gave him a sharp look and snapped, ‘Hold your noise,’ and Guy cut short his guffaw in mid-breath.
My shoulder joints were on fire, but I gritted my teeth and said nothing. ‘So you have been with the outlaw Robert Odo’s men this past year?’ said Murdac, as if he were making conversation. I said nothing. Murdac nodded to Guy who walked over to me and punched me as hard as he could, swinging his fist up into my unresisting naked stomach. The blow winded me, but worse, it was more than my bladder could take and, involuntarily, I released a hot stream of urine down the inside of my leg. The liquid spattered and dribbled into a pool at my feet. Guy laughed and punched me again, a hard driving blow with his shoulder behind it, but then stepped back with a curse of disgust as he realised he had trodden in a pool of my piss. ‘You will answer my questions, filth,’ continued Murdac in the same dispassionate voice, as if he was merely stating a fact. I kept my silence, but my mind was whirling. The bastard was right. In time, I would talk, I knew that, when the hot irons made the pain unbearable, I would talk. But I had to work out how to order my knowledge, so that I gave out the least important information first. They might grow tired of interrogating me - if I could hold out long enough, perhaps the Constable or the Queen would intervene. Anything might happen, I just had to hold tight and stay silent.
Guy walked away from my bent naked body towards the brazier, and my eyes followed him. By now, the tips of the irons were glowing a deep orange-red. He shoved one deeper into the fire and pulled out another, tracing small circles in the air with its gaudy point.
Murdac slowly repeated: ‘Did you join Robert Odo’s band of murderers?’
Again I held my tongue and Guy moved forward with the glowing iron in his right hand. ‘This will make you sing, little trouvère,’ he sneered, and he laid the burning metal against the naked skin of my ribs on my left side. A white whip of pain shot through my whole being. I jerked my body away from Guy and screamed - a long howl of agony and fear that echoed round the stone room long after I had controlled myself and snapped my mouth shut.
‘Did you join Robert Odo’s band?’ asked Murdac again. ‘It’s a very simple question.’ And I shook my head, teeth clamped hard on my lips to stop myself from speaking. Guy touched me again on the ribs with the iron with a fresh burst of indescribable pain and once again I screamed until the sinews in my jaws were cracking.
Guy returned the first iron poker to the flames and pulled a second from the crackling blaze. The tip glowed the colour of ripe cherries. He came and stood close to me; I could feel the heat from the metal on my chest. He whispered into my ear: ‘Keep silent, Alan. We can do this all night, if you do. I do hope you will keep silent, for my sake.’ And he giggled. Then Murdac spoke again, his siblant voice cutting through the pain in my ribs. ‘Did you join Robert Odo’s band?’ I said nothing but tensed my body and cringed away from Guy, who was still beside me with a yard of red-hot iron in his gloved fist. He paused for a few heartbeats and I held my breath and then, deliberately, he rubbed the iron lightly up and down against my right side, smearing the skin like a man spreading butter on a piece of bread. I howled like a madman while the skin blistered and burnt, and a gout of steam and a foul smell of cooking meat attacked my nostrils. He pressed the burning metal harder against my raw body and I bellowed: ‘Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you both . . .’
Guy stepped back, and replaced the iron in the fire. He looked enquiringly at Murdac, who nodded. Guy grabbed a handful of my hair and pulled my face up and brought his close in so that our noses were inches apart. ‘No, no, no, Alan,’ he said, leering at me. ‘It is not us, it is you who is going to be fucked.’ And he made a gesture of command to the men-at-arms.
Two soldiers grabbed me and wrenched apart my legs, holding them steady in a steel grip. Guy took another bright-hot poker from the brazier and moved behind me. Murdac said: ‘For the last time, Alan, did you join Robert Odo’s band? Answer my questions and this pain will stop, I swear it. It is entirely up to you. Just answer my question; who will it hurt if you talk a little? I already know the answers. Just answer my questions and the pain will stop.’ I bit my lip and shook my head. Then my buttocks were roughly pulled apart by the soldiers, and I could feel the immense heat of the iron against my shrinking ball bag, and the strip of sensitive skin between it and my arse, the glowing iron not touching, thank God, but radiating with a huge malevolent intensity at my most intimate areas. Then the molten tip of the poker just grazed the soft skin on inside of my right buttock cheek and, though the pain was less than the burns to my ribs, I screamed long and loud enough to wake the dead: ‘Yes, yes, by God, I joined his band. Yes, I joined it.’ I was babbling, shrieking
with terror and pain, all self-control suddenly lost. ‘Stop, please, stop. Don’t do it. Don’t burn me there, I beg you.’
Murdac smiled, Guy actually laughed, and I felt a great, joyous relief as the heat of the poker faded away from my private regions. My buttocks were released from that terrible grip and I clenched them tight shut, bunching the muscles as tight as a fist, as if that could protect me. Suddenly, I was engulfed in a black wave of shame, a cold, sinking sadness at my own want of courage. I wanted to die, for the earth to swallow me up. I had been stripped so easily of my last shreds of dignity by that obscene threat. I was a coward; I was the traitor in Robin’s camp, if anyone was. Then, as quickly as it was born, I pushed that thought away. That was one secret I would never give up, even if I suffered this night all the torments of damnation.
Murdac was asking another question: ‘Where is Robert Odo now?’ I said nothing. I gritted my teeth. The little man sighed; he looked genuinely disappointed. Then he nodded at Guy who plucked a fresh poker from the brazier and came towards me. As the soldiers once again laid hold of my backside and pulled the cheeks apart, I found myself babbling: ‘He’s at the Caves, at the Caves, dear God please . . .’ and then I stopped in sheer surprise as the cell door opened with a thunderous crash, and through my tears of pain and humiliation, I made out a commanding figure in the doorway. Stepping forward into the light came Robert of Thurnham, clad in grey mail, his long sword at his hip.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said loudly. ‘Please excuse my intrusion. But the screams of this fellow are disturbing the Queen’s rest. She commands that the interrogation cease forthwith, to be recommenced tomorrow at a more suitable hour.’ He walked forward, drawing his sword, and cut through the rope that held my arms up behind me. I collapsed in a shaking heap in the dirty straw on the floor of the cell, my poor burnt ribs and the burn on my arse cheek chanting a melody of anguish. But, for the moment, it was over. I stole a glance at Sir Ralph and saw in his pale eyes a monstrous anger that he was trying to conceal. Guy seemed merely irritated by the turn of events. Murdac looked at me, curled baby-like on the floor, and said: ‘Till tomorrow, then,’ and suddenly Sir Robert was ushering him and Guy and the men-at-arms out of the cell. ‘Don’t get too comfortable, Alan, we’ll be back soon,’ sang out Guy as he was leaving the cell. The knight paused at the doorway to give me a final glance and, in the flickering light of the brazier, as I shivered on the filthy floor, drowning in self-hatred, he silently mouthed a single word at me: ‘Courage!’
I must have passed out, or maybe my mind just retreated into blackness from the horror of that night, for, when I next came to my senses, Marie-Anne was at my side. At first I thought I was dreaming. There were tears on her cheek and, as she cut through the ropes at my wrists with a small knife, she was murmuring: ‘Oh Alan, Alan, what have they done to you?’ She had brought an old monk’s robe to cover my nakedness and had dressed me and begun to chafe my swollen wrists before I really came to my senses. I had lost all feeling in my hands, and the shooting pains as she massaged them back to life was almost as bad as the irons. Almost.
When she saw that I had recovered a measure of feeling in my limbs she said: ‘Come, Alan, we must go quickly. Before the guards return. I have bribed them to let me have a few minutes with the prisoner. I think they believe I have a tendresse for you.’ And Marie-Anne actually blushed. ‘Come, this way,’ she said and taking my arm we stumbled together out of that stinking cell and into the dim light of the passage outside.
She led me through a part of the castle that I hadn’t known existed. Down corridors, and up stairs, through twisting cob-webbed ways, until we paused finally in the shelter of a little annex at the head of a narrow passage that sloped downwards. I peered round the corner and saw that at the end of the passage there was a small wooden door in the castle wall. ‘Thomas is waiting outside, beyond that door,’ whispered Marie-Anne. That was the good news, but I could see that, on this side of it, there was a very large problem. Two problems to be precise.
Seated on two wooden stools, playing dice by the light of a guttering candle, were two strapping men-at-arms with swords at their waists. One of them I recognised as the man who had brought the brazier into my torture cell, and held my arse cheeks apart while my dignity was ripped away. The other I did not know, but there was a good chance after the fuss in the hall the day before, that he would know me. Marie-Anne whispered: ‘Maybe, if I could distract them . . .’ But I shook my head. I could feel a tide of purple rage rising from my bowels up into my chest. I had been tied up, stripped, burnt and humiliated; tortured and forced to speak against my will. But now my hands were free. My head felt dizzy with what I knew I was going to do, but a great wild joy was growing inside me. ‘Thank you, Marie-Anne,’ I whispered, ‘I thank you with all my heart for what you have done, but I must do this myself.’ And pulling the deep hood on the monk’s robe forward to cover my face, I stepped out into the passage way and walked confidently towards the soldiers, hands held together in front of me in the attitude of prayer.
My steps were light, but my heart felt huge in my chest and I was aware of every inch of my body, from my poor burnt ribs, and the blistering inside my bum cheeks, to the sweat on the skin of my fingertips. I felt as if I were buzzing like a swarm of bees with dark, joyous fury.
As I approached the two men-at arms, they rose from their seats; one of the men scooping the dice and hastily putting them away in his pouch so that a man of God, as they assumed me to be, would not know that they had been gambling.
‘Can we help you, Brother?’ asked the man on the left, the taller of the two, the man who had been in the torture cell. I walked right up to him and tilted my head back as if to peer shortsightedly up at his face, and then as fast as a snake I went up on to my toes, whipped my head forward and smashed it into the bridge of his nose in a short hard arc. It was a colossal blow, with all the anger at my recent humiliation ringing through it and, coming from what appeared to be a monk, it was totally unexpected. I could feel the crunch of bone and gristle as my forehead powered into his face and and he dropped like a stone at my feet. Then I turned, the blood roaring in my veins, and launched myself at the second man, grabbing him by the shoulders and trying for a second massive headbutt, as effective as the first. His mouth was wide in total surprise, but he moved his head sideways just before my strike and all I achieved was a glancing blow as my forehead raked across his cheekbone. Then we were both on the stone floor, grappling like madmen. My rage found an outlet and I knew I was screaming incoherently as I pounded again and again at his head with both my fists in turn. But he was stronger than me and, like myself, he was no stranger to street fighting. As we rolled on the hard floor he caught my forearms, crushing them in his meaty hands, ending the rain of blows that had left his face bloody and bruised. So I brought my knee up into the fork of his legs, my kneecap driving hard into the pelvic bone and, catching him by surprise, I mashed his balls between that bony mortar and pestle. He screamed in agony, doubled up and tried to protect his ruptured privates with his hands, which meant releasing my arms. So I grabbed a hank of his long, greasy hair and smashed his head down as hard as I could against the stone floor. He was only mildly stunned, but it was enough and I took his head with both hands by the ears and smashed it twice more against the flagstones. His eyes rolled back in their sockets and suddenly I was on my hands and knees, panting, my burnt ribs bleeding, and looking down at two battered, unconscious men. Neither had had time to even draw their swords. I staggered to my feet, waved goodbye to Marie-Anne who was goggling at me with her pretty mouth wide open, unbolted and pulled open the door and stepped out into the cool night air - and tumbled straight into the arms of Thomas.
He glanced at the unmoving bodies of the men-at arms with a look of disbelief, closed the wooden door tightly behind me and said: ‘Can you walk?’ And, half supporting me, he led me down the steep path from the castle and into the dark narrow streets of Winchester itself.
For two
days I hid in a back room of the Saracen’s Head, nursing my wounds with a concoction of goose-fat and herbs, waiting for the one-eyed man’s return. Thomas had collected my poniard and sword from the castle and returned them to me before disappearing off to gather information from his contacts. I wore my weapons night and day - even when I slept. Something had changed in me since that terrible night of fire and pain. I was harder; something of the boy had been burnt out of me. But I also knew myself better. I knew that I would have told them anything if Robert of Thurnham had not intervened when he did. So I vowed I would not be taken alive again to undergo more of that treatment. I would die first. On the morning of the third day, Thomas came with news.
We sat at the rough table in the common room of the tavern, eating bread and cheese. He was silent for a few moments and then he sighed and said, ‘First things first: the King is dead. God rest his soul. He died ten days ago at Chinon and his body is being taken to lie at rest in the abbey at Fontevraud. Duke Richard will take the throne now, when he decides to return to England. But that could be months away.’
I was shocked. I had known the King was ill but for my whole life Henry, God’s anointed ruler, had been a fixture of my world. I could hardly comprehend that he should be no more.
‘The castle is like a kicked ants’ nest,’ said Thomas, ‘with messengers coming back and forth. Eleanor has been formally released by FitzStephen, though she is staying at Winchester for a few more days.’ He paused, sighed and said: ‘But I have worse news than the King’s death.’ He breathed out heavily again. ‘The lady Marie-Anne has been taken. Sir Ralph Murdac and his men snatched her while she was out hawking with her ladies yesterday morning. We think that little black-haired shit-weasel is, as we speak, hurrying to Nottingham with our master’s lady. And when he gets there he will marry her.’
