The Siege of Salwarpe

by Veronica Heley

  ‘And now,’ said Benedict. ‘You must show me what you can do. I expect you know how to get into the armoury without rousing everyone. Go and fetch me a leather-lined, quilted jacket such as foot-soldiers wear and a long knife. Oh yes, and a plain basinet. I don’t want to be cumbered with heavy armour, so choose equipment which is plain, light and strong. The same for yourself. And be back here before I grow impatient.’

  The lad hesitated, torn between the instinct to deny that he could break into the armoury in the middle of the night, and a cocky pride that he could display his talents without being punished for it. Finally he grinned, and vanished. One moment he was there, emitting an unsavoury smell, and the next he was gone.

  ‘An excellent choice,’ said Benedict. ‘Now, these letters, Dickon …’

  The sun was high overhead before Sir Reynold de Cressi made his way, with many a yawn, out of his chamber. He had heard something said about a council of war at noon, but he was in no mood to hurry himself. He swaggered up onto the ramparts to look with complacent eye on the devastation his little force had wreaked the night before. Charred and blackened grass, smoking stumps of bushes, were everywhere. The thicket in which Hugo had hidden his archers was now a tangle of twisted, leafless branches, wherein not even a bird could hide.

  The cages which had held the Lady of Spereshot and her children were now in the hands of the men of Salwarpe. Carpenters sawed at bars, while a horse and cart plied between the gatehouse and the turn of the road, taking down hides and a brazier and bringing back various pieces of timber which were no longer required. Peter Bowman and five others were on guard beside the carts, which were being turned into an outpost for the besieged garrison.

  ‘A neat idea of mine, that,’ said Reynold. ‘That clerk Benedict would have wasted the carts …’

  Then his face changed, for he had caught sight of a gown that he thought he recognised. Was that Lady Ursula going into the keep? He hurried down the steps from the ramparts and went after that flicker of colour. There would be plenty of time for dalliance, now that he had cleared the slopes around the castle, and what better object for dalliance than Ursula de Thrave? Particularly since she would not expect him to marry her. … she being betrothed to Aylmer … most convenient. … good omen for the future …

  He hastened his steps.

  Reynold was mistaken in thinking he had seen Ursula enter the keep, because she had been closeted with her grandfather a long time before Reynold emerged from his room. For a while they had talked of domestic affairs.

  Then, when Benedict entered, she turned and smiled at him, holding out her hand in welcome. She had not intended to be so welcoming. Overnight she had reviewed her conduct and decided that it would be best to keep him at a distance. She had decided that it was only gratitude which made her feel so warmly towards him, and pity. It would be quite wrong to allow her emotions to get out of hand.

  Only, when he came in wearing his black and silver, with his hair neatly combed … his eye had sought hers, and she had turned as a flower does to the sun, and smiled at him. Even as she did so, she thought: I ought not to …

  The result was startling.

  Benedict’s face altered. The customary harsh lines of eye and lip vanished. It was like setting a torch to a beacon. He smiled. This was not the usual strained smile he kept for formal occasions, but a leaping-out of joy.

  She thought: What have I done? And put her hand to her heart, to still its insistence.

  He took a deep breath. She saw him take it. Then he steadied himself, and turned to Sir Henry with a formal greeting, but still with that smile on his lips.

  ‘I fear,’ said Benedict, ‘that I have been presumptuous. Last night—and this morning, too—I have given certain orders to your men, without first consulting you.’

  ‘My dear Benedict,’ said Sir Henry, with an answering smile, ‘you should try to say such things as if you really were sorry for what you had done.’

  ‘Well, I am,’ said Benedict, untruthfully. He tried to take the smile off his face and failed. He laughed.

  Ursula marvelled. He had laughed! Not with amusement, but from joy. His eyes sought hers, and as she met their silvery glance she, too, took a deep breath, and held her head higher.

  ‘Benedict,’ said Sir Henry. ‘Sit down. You are too energetic this morning. Here am I, a pitiable wreck of an old man, feeling all the worse for feasting and dancing till the small hours, while you come bouncing in as if you had had eight hours’ sleep—which I know you cannot have done. Sit, lad! Sit here beside me, and tell me what terrible thing it is that you have done.’

  So Benedict sat, and took his eyes off Ursula with an effort, and stumbled through a list of the orders he had given, with Sir Henry nodding approval.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Sir Henry. ‘They call the lad The Weasel. A bastard born of fisherfolk from the harbour. He was outcast at an early age, for stealing. His mother was no better than she ought to have been, and died young as such women often do. For what you want, the lad might do well enough, if only he will obey you.’

  ‘He is too afraid of Merle not to obey me at the moment, and perhaps he is a little tempted by the prospect of earning some money. And talking of money,’ said Benedict, losing his smile. ‘I did something else last night. I sent Dickon off …’

  ‘Now that was well done,’ said Sir Henry. ‘The Lord of Spereshot is a good friend of ours, and glad I am to hear that he has survived the burning of his manor. But his wife …! I wish the abbot joy of her company.’

  ‘It was not that,’ said Benedict, showing signs of nervousness once more. ‘I gave Dickon some money, to buy food.’

  ‘Oh? Ah!’ Sir Henry leaned back in his chair. He put his hand over his mouth, perhaps to hide a smile. ‘I will, of course, repay you.’

  Ursula shifted on her stool, and Benedict looked at her, and then away again.

  ‘Of course you will,’ said Benedict, looking down at his hands.

  ‘You should have sent to me,’ said Sir Henry, ‘and I would have given you money.’

  ‘The hour was late,’ said Benedict. ‘In my letter to the abbot, I offered to buy whatever grain or flour he had, and to pay for it partly in cash, and partly by a draft on the merchant who buys my fleeces every year.’

  ‘Indeed! I could have given the abbot a similar assurance that he would receive payment.’

  ‘Naturally,’ said Benedict, being polite. ‘We can settle the details when everything is quiet once more.’

  Ursula said, ‘The rents are due again at Michaelmas. We will repay you from them.’

  ‘First we must get Hugo off your land.’ Benedict looked around. ‘Where is Reynold? We must take counsel …’

  ‘He was sent for, and told his servant to say he would be along soon. Is there any hurry? Surely we have only to sit out the siege, now.’

  Benedict began to pace the room, hands clasped behind his back.

  ‘There is much to be done. Not for Reynold, perhaps. Though somehow we must devise means to keep him out of mischief, or he will be wanting to ride down the hill to tilt at Hugo’s archers … which would be disastrous. We must set every able-bodied man, woman and child to work. At once. No delay. If you have not lived through a siege, Sir Henry, you cannot realize how important it is to be prepared.

  ‘Let us review the situation. Hugo knows he has only twenty-nine days before Aylmer comes. Hugo does not know that we have insufficient food. He thinks his assault on the castle from the cliff yesterday nearly succeeded. He will have noted the smoke from our braziers, and he will believe that his assault force managed to set alight various buildings within the castle, before they were finally overcome. Remember that none of the cliff force returned to the harbour. His guard-boat did not return, either. Yet he will find another boat, I think. At some time he will set another guard-boat out there, and then the channel will be blocked once more …’

  ‘But the abbot will not send food to us, if he thinks the channel is blocked.’
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  ‘No, of course he won’t. Any replacement boat must be dealt with. But let me continue. Hugo thinks us much weakened in every way, and therefore he will go on to the attack. A ram, certainly. A trebuchet; possibly. Fire arrows. Possibly a mine. Yes. I must have a dozen large bowls set about the ramparts, with water in them. Lady, will you arrange that?’

  ‘Metal or pottery?’ asked Ursula, trying to keep up with Benedict’s rapid fire of ideas.

  ‘Either, so long as they hold water. And your women must have a place prepared for casualties, in a stone-built room. Beds, water, bandages. …’

  ‘Casualties inside the castle?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Benedict. ‘You would be surprised … no, I’ll say no more. Just be prepared for them. And the children—unless we can get some of them away to the abbey?—they must be kept out of the way and amused. They must not be allowed to run around, getting in the way of the carpenters and builders.’

  ‘Carpenters and builders …?’

  ‘But the older boys,’ said Benedict, unaware of the interruption, ‘must be given fishing-lines, and set to work at once. We need fish for tonight, and for salting down to eat later. We must take advantage of our access to the water, while there is no guard-boat in the channel. I had best set Merle to organise the boys, I think …’

  ‘Ah, you have met Merle, have you? And did he spit in your face?’

  ‘No. Or rather, he won’t do so in future. But it would be best to keep him and Sir Reynold apart. One thing … the most important thing … it worries me that you have no smith operating in the castle. There is a forge, but it is silent. I have urgent need of a smith …’

  ‘Then you must ask Hugo for him. He works below, in the town. His father used to work up here, but the son wanted to be nearer the ploughshares in the valley. …’

  Benedict rubbed the back of his neck. Frowning, he considered Sir Henry’s statement for as long as it took to count ten. ‘That’s bad,’ he said. ‘Very bad. Well, how many of your men can turn carpenter?’

  ‘The head carpenter is a good man, though somewhat slow. You must take his advice on that.’

  ‘Very well. I need a set of semi-permanent ladders for the cliff, for a start. Boats or a raft. All the wooden buildings inside the castle must be torn down, and the timber put in storage under the keep. No thatched roofs must be allowed to remain, unless—I shall have to inspect them myself—if they can be covered with wetted hides … But that reminds me! I doubt you have many hides here, have you? Then the remaining horses must be inspected and some must be slaughtered. Their flesh may be used for eating, the bones boiled for glue, and the hides … ah, the hides will be invaluable.’

  Ursula said, ‘You shall have my pony. There will be trouble, otherwise. I will lead him out, and you will slaughter him first.’

  ‘My old war-horse, too,’ said Sir Henry. ‘He is past his prime, anyway.’

  Benedict bit his lip. ‘It is the worst, always. This business of slaughtering the animals. But we do not need to do it yet. Perhaps we will not need to do it at all. That is one of the problems with a siege. You never quite know what is going to be needed. But if you don’t prepare well, then there is never enough time to take counter-measures, when the attacks come.’ He examined the rug on the floor at his feet. ‘You think me hard. I had a horse once, which I had gentled myself. But I swore when he was slaughtered that I would never again allow myself to grow fond of an animal in that way. A horse is only a horse. A dog is only a dog. If a man’s life can be saved by killing that horse or that dog, then …’ He nodded. ‘Then that is what we have to do. You won’t understand, yet. You will later, perhaps.’

  ‘We are in your hands,’ said Ursula.

  ‘Yes, I am afraid you are. I have sat through two sieges, and done some besieging on my own account. It is never pretty work. There is nothing of chivalry and knighthood in it. Nothing like the old songs. The most important men in this castle at the moment—after me and Simon Joce Joce—are Peter Bowman, Merle and your carpenter. And Dickon for communications. In fact, I would almost go so far as to say that if your carpenter is not a good craftsman, then we will be defeated.’ He gave them a silvery glance. ‘But I will have a boat ready and waiting at the foot of the cliff at all times, so that you may get away in safety, if the worst comes to the worst. That is why we can’t afford to move the trebuchet to the other side—where I feel sure we are going to need it, and we have no more long timbers to make another like it—but we must keep the channel in the river clear at all costs.’

  ‘You cannot think that we would leave!’ said Ursula.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Benedict. ‘You will have to, if I say so. You are not your own mistress any more. I would be failing in my duty to Aylmer if I allowed you to be captured by Hugo. And now, if you please, since Reynold has not seen fit to honour us with his presence, I will go seek him out and learn what he intends to do with himself for the next twenty-nine days.’

  So saying, he ducked his head at them and left.

  There was a long silence.

  Then Sir Henry said, ‘I feel my age today, Ursula. That young man has a knack of presenting unpalatable facts in an unpalatable fashion. I wish I could pick holes in his arguments, but I cannot.’

  She was leaning forward, her chin on her hand. She said, ‘He will save us, I am sure.’

  ‘Yes, I have no doubt of that. But at what a cost, Ursula! At what a cost!’

  ‘Cost, grandfather? Ah, you mean the buildings which will have to be pulled down, and the horses which will have to be slaughtered? Well, they are not important, after all.’

  ‘No, my dear. I wasn’t thinking of the buildings, or the horses.’

  He did not elaborate and she did not press him.

  Ursula had smiled at him!

  More, she had held out her hand and continued to smile! And he had been crass and insensitive in return. He could feel the blood rising in his neck now, as he thought how crudely he had put his demands. …

  What right had he to demand anything of them, anyway? Had he not been sent to help them? Certainly he had not been sent to impose his will on them, and they so kindly to an awkward stranger.

  But she had smiled.

  He passed down the stairs into the hall and stood, smiling at those who went about their business there. He did not see them, or only as shadows. Ursula’s face was before him all the time, and the sound of her voice in his ear.

  She would find him out, of course. Perhaps at that very minute she and Sir Henry were discussing him, laughing at his awkwardness, and his effrontery … his impudence in believing that he knew better than they did!

  Well, he did know more about sieges than they did, but he could have devised more tactful ways of letting them know the facts. If only he had been gifted with the social graces, as other men were. Think how much better Aylmer would have put the case … or even Reynold!

  Which reminded him, where was Reynold? And Merle, and Peter Bowman? Had he not bidden them all to meet him at noon, and none of them had done so? He looked about him. He was standing in the garth outside the keep by now. The sky was clear above. The braziers had burned out and only the faintest of blue hazes showed above the wall, where Reynold and his men had burned off the scrub the previous night. But there was no sign of Reynold. Benedict was not to know this, but Reynold had gone chasing Ursula’s tire-woman, who had a gown somewhat similar in colour to that of her mistress. Reynold had gone up into the keep by the outside stair as Benedict had descended through the hall. And so they had missed one another.

  Benedict pinched his chin. What next? A hundred things; but which first? He set off towards the gatehouse.

  Idonia had smiled at him like that once, before she found him out for what he was. Benedict remembered how he and Reynold had ridden out with Aylmer to fetch Idonia from the convent in which she had been educated. She had allowed Benedict to throw her up into the saddle and had smiled down at him. Her hair was a smoky black, her skin white, and her e
yes gleamed with mischief. She had shown her delight at being released from the convent in a dozen ways. He had ridden at her side all the way back, and she had smiled at everything he said, and had allowed him to dance with her that night in the hall.

  Five weeks of smiles. He had been so much in love with her that he had hardly slept or eaten, or thought of anything else. He had known he was become the talk of the castle, and he had not cared. Reynold had been piqued, for Reynold had boasted that he would win Idonia for himself. Five weeks, and Aylmer had said that Idonia and Benedict might be formally betrothed. And so they were. They had walked in the garden and he had cut her a rose. She had pricked her finger on a thorn. That was the first time she stamped her foot at him and frowned.

  But the frown had soon been smoothed away, and she had promised to ride out beside him the following day, when they were all to go hunting. And she had ridden by his side, and they had lagged somewhat behind the others on their return journey, and come back into the castle hand in hand …

  And as they returned it had begun to rain. And it had rained and rained. And Idonia had become restless, and hasty of temper at being shut indoors when she wanted to ride out. They had quarrelled … a nothing … she had quickly been appeased with promises and kisses …

  And then, the accident.

  Benedict came out onto the roof of the gate-tower and looked about him. He had been seeking Peter Bowman, but that tall man was not there. Instead, a largish, clumsy-looking man with a twisted mouth turned from his scrutiny of the valley below and ducked his head at Benedict in an abrupt movement which might have passed for a salute … or which might not, if Benedict chose to ignore it.

  ‘You are Merle? Tell me: where is Peter Bowman?’

  Merle jerked his head towards the valley.

  Benedict stepped to the parapet and looked down the road. Where two carts had stood yesterday, holding the hostages from Spereshot, a hide-covered outpost was being created. Peter Bowman was balancing on the topmost timber of one of the carts, clowning.

  ‘You’ll not be best pleased,’ said Merle, with satisfaction. ‘Told Peter so. Said you wouldn’t like it.’