CHAPTER NINE: THE KING’S MARSHAL 1194
William entered the plain room of the house in which King Richard had made his headquarters. It lay close below the castle rock above which the ramparts of Nottingham Castle reared. Hubert FitzWalter, Archbishop of Canterbury, coifed and coated in chain mail, stood next to the Earl of Huntingdon in the half-lit chamber and William nodded to both men after making his obeisance to Richard who turned from the window as William made his entry.
‘Hola, Marshal! D’you have news of the petraries and trebuchets?’
‘Aye, Your Grace, they are half a day’s march away on the Leicester road.’
‘Come hither,’ Richard peremptorily jerked his head. ‘What do you say to an immediate attack?’
Without ceremony the King summoned William to join him at the open casement, scarcely giving William time to draw breath from his ascent of the steep staircase. Such breathless action seemed the hallmark of the last few days for Richard had hardly arrived in London ere he was on the move, acknowledging only the welcome of the citizens, before giving orders for the forces mustered against Philippe turned north and west, to bring to an abrupt conclusion the rebellion of his brother, Count John of Mortain and Anjou. Although disbelieved in many quarters, the news of Richard’s return had swept through England like fire through brushwood, so-much-so, it was said, that the castellan of St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall, Henry de Pumerai, had died of an apoplexy on the spot.
William had been in no doubt of the truth of Richard’s arrival in England. Sending John de Earley to Marlborough and his brother’s widow, he had ridden north and east, to join the King at Huntingdon, along with other barons of the realm, including the Earls of Chester and Ferrers. Thereafter the main Loyalist force under the King marched on Nottingham where the garrison, still loyal to Count John, held out in the belief that Richard was dead.
William had ruined two horses in his headlong dash across country with only a handful of his household knights in train. Happily, his favourite destrier was reserved for battle and, unridden, was in good wind for whatever might befall. On the march north, De Earley had re-joined his master.
‘What news of the Lady Aline, John?’ William had asked him.
‘She is well enough, my Lord, and sends you greeting,’ De Earley had replied. ‘You will have no trouble from her respecting her husband’s office.’
Now William joined Richard at the casement and studied the outer barbican of the castle. It was a largely wooden structure and, given the fortress’s otherwise commanding position on its great rock above its river, was the castle’s weakest feature, a point obviously not lost on Richard. From time-to-time the head of a defender appeared as the garrison prepared for an attack and it was clear that with every hour that passed the advantage slipped from the attackers.
‘This must be swiftly concluded, Marshal,’ the King growled in William’s ear. ‘I am unwilling to invest the place and embark on a protracted siege. You have Ferrers and Chester with you?’
‘Aye, Your Grace, they are quartering their horses and will be with you directly.’ Richard grunted. And as footsteps sounded on the wooden staircase, marking the arrival of the two Earls, William asked, ‘Any news from Tickhill, Your Grace?’
‘Aye, Marshal, The Bishop of Durham, God bless him, has taken the place and marches to our reinforcement.’
‘Have we a ram sufficient to batter those gates?’
‘Aye, Two, both iron-shod, and Greek-fire should it prove necessary…’ Richard paused, considering. ‘My master-engineer Urric is on the road from London, but I am reluctant to await his arrival. We might force that barbican today…’
Something caught William’s eye and he cried out a warning. Both men instinctively drew back as a cross-bow bolt struck the timber window-sill with a thud and stuck there, vibrating.
Richard stared at William, then laughed. ‘Well?’
‘Attack, Your Grace.’ William snapped.
Richard turned from the window, addressing the assembled nobles and the Prelate. ‘Very well, messieurs, muster your men. We move at once!’
As they left the room and clattered down the gloomy staircase in single file William felt a hand like a vice upon his shoulder. He half-turned in the half-light as Richard, two steps above him lent forward. ‘I mislike what is happening here, Marshal,’ Richard said, his tone suddenly sinister. ‘Have you one to bear your standard?’
Uncomprehending anything more than he seemed to have incurred Richard’s displeasure, William met the King’s gaze and eased his shoulder so that the King loosened his grip. ‘Aye, my Lord,’ he replied evenly, ‘John de Earley.’
‘Very well, then tell John de Earley that he has the honour of bearing my standard and you, Marshal, have the greater honour of leading the assault.’
For a moment the two men, hidden from all others, stared at each other. This was the first moment they had had alone since the King’s return and William had no idea of how he had offended Richard. But this was no time for such considerations, and William nodded. ‘As you command, my Liege,’ he said, descending the stairs and hurrying out into the street where troops were milling and jostling under the cover of the adjacent houses. Shouting for John de Earley and finding him with William’s assembled mesnie, William passed Richard’s instruction and was met by incomprehension and then a dawning light.
De Earley frowned. ‘Doth he mean us killed, my Lord?’
‘Perhaps, but I think his greater purpose is to force that gate. We attack, and on foot. Get rid of this horse.’
Although the gate itself was out of sight, there was no mistaking the beetling ramparts of the castle. ‘By the Christ,’ breathed De Earley.
‘Go find the King’s standard, John and remember: “For Richard and the Marshal”. ’
‘And what of your own device?’
‘Tell Geoffrey FitzRobert to bear it.’ De Earley nodded, then William added, ‘and tell him to bear it close by the King.’
De Earley grinned. ‘For Richard and the Marshal then.’
‘Aye,’ William said slapping the haunches of De Earley’s horse. ‘And mayhap for England too,’ he muttered as he sought out his own squires, arming himself with sword and shield.
For twenty minutes the streets of Nottingham seethed with preparation as the barons and knights banneret sorted their mesnies and supporting troops, a riot of noise and suppressed fear and excitement. A few of the citizens stared from their windows, though most hid, for fear of the ravages of Richard’s war-host, though several taverns and a few whores did a brief but roaring trade as the leading knights laid about them with the flats of their swords, bringing order to the unruly mob.
John de Earley returned to William’s side on foot, the great red banner of England with its golden leopards, now three in number, floating about his steel casque.
William nodded and crossed himself. ‘God go with you, John.’
‘And with you my Lord.’
Then Richard was among them on horseback, lightly coifed as he had been wont to be in the Holy Land, silencing them and giving the order to move. Standing in his stirrups he roared: ‘Bring up the rams!’ There was a swirl in the crowded street as a party of foot-soldiers, covered by arbalestriers, drew out to the end of the street where it turned through a right angle leading up to the castle.
‘Advance my standard!’ bellowed the King.
William hefted his long shield covering his body with his left arm and took his post alongside the head of the battering ram, sword in hand. John de Earley marched close behind him, bearing the King’s standard with two squires covering him with shields.
‘En avant! Forward!’ William shouted. ‘For Richard and England!’
The shambolic muddle of knights, men-at-arms and foot-soldiers, moved forward, and in rounding the corner transformed itself into a purposeful column that stamped up the gradient towards the wooden barbican. Men fell instructively into step to avoid tripping over each other’s feet as they k
ept a close and mutually protective order and the speed of the column changed into a loping run. Above them flew a dark cloud of bolts and arrows, forcing the garrison to keep their heads down, but then one, two, three cross-bow bolts penetrated William’s shield. Their successive impacts forced him to stumble and the heads poked menacingly through the steel, but he recovered his pace as the wretched men carrying the ram, exposed as they were to the hail of fire from the top of the gateway, began to fall.
But it took a moment or two to load and fire a cross-bow, and the numbers the gate-tower and adjacent ramparts could accommodate were limited, particularly as those firing to enfilade the attack, must needs lean outwards, against the sky, where the arbalestriers of the King, now firing from good cover among the houses, picked them off.
Within a few panting moments the assault column fell under the shadow of the gate-house and with a steady thud-thud, the ram was put to work. Stones were now rained down, but those carrying shields, with aching arms, could give a measure of protection to the foot-soldiers coming directly under this hail of missiles as they battered at the gate.
Then up came the second ram, along with archers and arbalestriers, and the swarm under the arch of the gate-house began to gain ground as the timbers of the gate itself began to give way. The wooden barbican accommodated no portcullis and there was little William and De Earley could do beyond giving what support their shields might offer to those working the rams and urging them to greater efforts, until, with a sudden crack, the locking beam fractured and the shattered gates swung wide.
William forced his way forward, slashing left and right, Robert de Salignac’s sword light in his powerful hand. Behind him De Earley bawled at the men who had dropped the rams at the moment of their success to lug out their short swords and bollock knives and follow where William and his mesnie, now shoving past in close order under the protection of their shields, thrust the defenders back through sheer weight of numbers.
It was bloody work and William took an ear-splitting blow to his head before hacking down the man who administered it, cleaving the knight’s mail coat so that it split like a pig’s hide. There was neither quarter nor ransom given nor expected and as Richard led in reinforcements to keep up the momentum of the assault, the King and his followers had to clamber over a heap of the dead and the dying.
After two hours of strenuous fighting the gate-house was carried and the Loyalist forces had occupied the outer bailey, all but a few of the garrison retreating within the middle bailey as the sun set. The prisoners were herded back under guard into the town and locked up for the night.
Richard withdrew from the barbican for the night. The entrance to the outer-bailey was soon swarming with dogs and rats which rooted among the corpses, attracted by the stink of gore. Taking stock after nightfall the King stared at the loom of the central keep of the castle, his Barons gathered about him. William, aching from cuts, bruises and strained muscles, nursed a feeling of ill-will towards Richard, furious, in the anti-climactic aftermath of battle and the physical exertion that it had demanded of him, that the King had so privately ill-treated him.
Taking the King’s standard from John de Earley shortly after the fighting had died out, William had personally handed it back to Richard with the curt observation that: ‘By placing this in the hands of Sir John de Earley, Your Grace risked its loss as much as I risked the loss of a valued knight.’
But Richard had merely motioned to the Earl of Huntingdon to relieve William of the great flag and remarked, casually, ‘I did not think either in much danger, Marshal.’
The compliment was veiled, and at odds with the King’s earlier behaviour, further irritating William so that he attended the King that evening with something like resentment burning within him. Eventually the King turned and spoke to his Barons and the Prelate. ‘Messieurs we must eat,’ and, retiring into an adjacent and empty dwelling house, called for meat and wine. Here, in the parlour of an unknown and absent merchant, the flower of English chivalry shuffled for somewhere to hunker down with a bowl of warm mutton stew brought up from the King’s camp-kitchen.
After finishing their meal and setting guard, they all settled down for the night, being woken an hour before dawn when the knight commanding the middle-guard entered the crowded chamber and announced that the garrison had salled and set fire to the barbican, whereupon Richard leapt to his feet. Summoning William and FitzWalter to follow him, the King strode out to reconnoitre.
‘This is much to our advantage unless I am much mistaken,’ Richard observed. Turning to William he ordered timber brought up from the town in order for a large gallows to be erected in the outer-bailey as soon as possible and as soon as the sun threw a baleful light over the outer ramparts and into the outer bailey, Richard sent a herald forward to summon the Constables, Ralph Murdac and William de Weneval to surrender.
They returned a defiant response. They were not fooled, the herald reported, by the advancing of the King’s standard, for it had been the device of William Marshal, one of the co-Justiciar’s, - that had been conspicuous. Had the King been with them they should have observed the fact.
During the forenoon, as the siege engines arrived from Leicester, Richard and William began a close investment of the castle, the King sent Archbishop FitzWalter forward under the protection of a pair of heralds and again summoned the garrison to surrender. The Prelate, caparisoned for war and riding a huge bay charger, informed the Constables that Count John’s cause was lost, Tickhill had fallen and that His Grace the King was indeed present.
‘Surrender to the King’s mercy!’ the Prelate shouted up at the walls surrounding the middle-bailey. ‘Your cause is not only unjust, it is lost! You have been deceived, for thanks be to Almighty God, King Richard is restored to the throne of his father!’
‘Give us proof!’ came a hail from the gate of the middle-bailey and, under safe-conduct, the Archbishop brought back to the King’s presence two knights, Fouchier de Grendon and Henry Russel. The two men shuffled awkwardly as Richard stood in the merchant’s parlour, surrounded by his chief commanders.
The King seemed amused for he remarked, ‘I know neither of you and neither or you know me.
‘Are you not William FitzMarshal? De Grendon asked.
Richard turned. ‘Would you dare wear the leopards of England, my Lord Marshal?’ he asked as William stepped forward.
‘No, your Grace.’
The two knights now stared at William, then, turning back, bent their knee to the King.’
‘Go, tell the Constables what you have seen. You have half an hour to capitulate.’
But Murdac and De Wenneval remained unconvinced and night fell without any resolution of the affair.
Now Richard called for the timbers assembled by William to be made into a gallows by carpenters newly arrived the day before with the siege-engines from Leicester. That night the Loyalists occupied the brunt wreckage of the barbican as the gallows were erected in the outer-bailey so that the garrison might wake-up to see what the King had hung from it.
Shortly after daybreak the King had two of the prisoners taken at the first day’s assault brought out of their confinement and strung up, to die of slow strangulation. One, a plain-hauberked sergeant-at-arms, took three minutes, struggling against the inevitable, writhing horribly, his legs streaming with piss and shit, to the delight of the watching Loyalists. The other took rather longer, affording perhaps greater amusement to Richard and his men. He was a Norman-French knight, Alain de Gisallon, a man of stocky build, enormously powerful shoulders and thick neck, who sought to cheat death for as long as possible by hunching his shoulders and drawing his head down to keep his wind-pipe open. Those on both sides watched in open-mouthed admiration as, in a remarkable display of self-control, De Gisallon seemed to succeed for some long minutes, until at last he could no longer support the weight of his body from his neck. Twitching at first, his legs soon began to kick uncontrollably, and the air started to wheeze and then whistle i
n his slowly contracting throat.
As the affair reached its climax a rising roar of appreciation greeted the spectacle until, in a great spasm, De Gisallon gave-up, his bowels opened and in a terrible arching of his back he snapped his own spine at the neck. Hanging, his head on one side, his body swayed slightly from his last exertions on earth.
‘There dies a brave man,’ Richard was heard to remark as he turned aside and called for victuals to break his own fast.
William watched this spectacle, his face grim. Richard’s ruthlessness had accomplished far worse, but this was the first time William had seen it for himself. ‘Doubtless more will hang before sunset,’ he remarked savagely to De Earley as the two men followed the King in search of viands.
But none did. It seemed the expression of callous savagery proved Richard’s identity and the Constables sent word asking for terms. Having so barbarically executed the two prisoners, Richard then offered generous conditions, accepting the Constables’ excuse that they had been misled by Count John’s misinformation and the unwitting effect of Richard’s ruse de guerre employing William and his mesnie in his vanguard.
Ralph Murdac and William de Wenneval had little option but to accede and Richard entered the castle in triumph, followed by his principal Barons, Archbishop FitzWalter and Queen Eleanor who had arrived from Winchester. Here he convened a great Council, the first business of which was to deal with Count John’s garrison. Most of the knights serving under Murdac and De Wenneval were no more penalised than if they had been taken in a tournament.
The evening’s feasting was marred by a squabble between Archbishop Hubert FitzWalter of Canterbury and Geoffrey, Archbishop of York, the latter arguing that FitzWalter had no right raising his Cross within the great See of York where he, Geoffrey, was Primate. After allowing the two high churchmen to make fools of themselves, Richard put an end to their dispute and made them make the sign of Peace, declaring that: ‘I would have it that such dissensions are ended in this, my Kingdom of England.
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