Longsword

by David Pilling

  They didn’t come empty-handed. A long line of ox-drawn wagons and mules trailed over the dreary fenlands, loaded with chests full of silver and gold, expensive cloths, rich vestments and ornaments stripped from churches. D'Eyvill’s need for funds had only been partially sated by the ransom money from the families of his Jewish prisoners, so he had turned to robbing fellow Christians.

  He kept the frightened men on their knees while his knights inspected the loot. “No false or clipped coin here,” remarked Sir Robert Peche. “The people of Cambridge have paid their Danegeld.”

  “It is well they did,” d'Eyvill growled, “or else Cambridge would go the same way as Sheffield and Lincoln. Do you hear me?”

  He trotted forward to spurn one of the kneeling citizens with his boot. The man lifted his head, and d'Eyvill was amused to see a flicker of defiance in his sallow, wizened face.

  “We have brought all the town can pay,” the old man hissed. “If you plundered our streets now, you would find nothing but bare walls and empty coffers.”

  D'Eyvill snorted. “I’m not a fool. There will be gold and silver enough hidden away. Perhaps I should send Sir Robert here to have another look.”

  Peche grinned. He and another of d'Eyvill’s outlaw knights, Sir David of Uffington, had recently led a raid into Cambridge. As d'Eyvill had done at Lincoln, they ravaged the merchant’s quarter and plundered the Jews.

  “You can do as you wish,” the burgher replied sullenly. “We have asked the

  king for his protection.”

  “If you are foolish enough to look to this king for salvation,” d'Eyvill retorted, “then God help you.”

  He rested his mailed hands on the cantle of his saddle. “So long as Cambridge is for King Henry, I will continue to rob the town. You could try fighting us, of course, except you have no soldiers worth the name and your levies would be cut to pieces. Your future is bleak.”

  “Unless,” he added, lifting a finger, “you join with us. Our cause is just.”

  The burgher and his fellows glanced at each other. Some looked astonished at d'Eyvill’s offer, others furious or horror-struck. One or two wore thoughtful expressions.

  “Did you bring us out here to make game of us, Sir John?” the old man replied angrily.

  “No game,” said d'Eyvill. “We are not thieves for the sake of it. If the King will see sense, and agree to be governed by the Provisions of Oxford, then we will lay down our arms.”

  Another of the townsmen piped up. “And if His Majesty will not agree to negotiate with murderous felons and robber knights, you will no doubt continue in your present course, and claim to be fully justified in doing so!”

  D'Eyvill grew impatient. He had come here to collect tribute, not engage in debate. “We are at war,” he said. “A war that must be fought to the bitter end, for the sake of the kingdom, and the memory of Earl Simon. You are caught in the middle of it. I have offered you a way out.”

  “You dare – you dare to invoke the name of Earl Simon!” exclaimed the citizen. “You shameless, Godless…”

  D'Eyvill waited for him to subside. “I was Earl Simon’s man from the beginning,” he said, “and would gladly die a thousand deaths to have him back again. Did any of you ever raise a sword in his cause? No. In his hour of need, when he was desperate for money and men, you and all the other bean-counters did nothing. Otherwise we would not be here now.”

  He turned to Peche. “Gather up the tribute, and take it back to the Isle,” he said, “we’ll keep the beasts and wagons.”

  “And these?” said Peche, indicating the townsmen. “Do we string them up?”

  “Don’t be a fool. I’m not about to make martyrs out of shopkeepers. The halters were just for show. They can walk home.”

  D'Eyvill was silent during the journey back through the twisting pathways to the Isle. An intolerably hot summer had slipped into a scarcely less roasting autumn. Lost in thought, he ignored the heat and the buzzing clouds of flies that chafed his horse and tried to crawl inside his mail.

  His offer to the people of Cambridge was a genuine one. Violent, grasping man though he was, d'Eyvill was no hypocrite, and believed in all the things he claimed to fight for. If King Henry refused to be ruled by a council of wise heads, then d'Eyvill and his fellow diehards were resolved to fight on until they were all dead or another man sat on the throne.

  D'Eyvill mulled over the war. The garrison at Kenilworth was still stubbornly holding out against anything the besiegers could throw at them, but couldn’t last indefinitely. He had his agents in the royal camp. From them he was aware that a great assembly of clergy and barons had recently met at Coventry, to discuss peace terms. D'Eyvill had little confidence in whatever dismal set of compromises was cooked up. He knew King Henry well enough, and that he would never agree to any genuine limits on his authority.

  His thoughts turned back to military matters. There was still no word of Simon the Younger’s reinforcements from France. It wouldn’t surprise him to learn the dissolute young man had failed to collect any. All of de Montfort’s sons were a disappointment.

  Crushed under the weight of their father’s shadow, he thought.

  D'Eyvill took heart from the number of men that flocked to join his camp at Ely. Yet he was under no delusions. A few hundred rebels holed up in the fens were an embarrassment to the crown, and a holy terror to local towns and garrisons. Nothing more.

  He needed more allies. Where to get them? Perhaps an open letter to the people of Cambridge would be effective. Whatever that pompous citizen said, d'Eyvill suspected there were plenty of potential turncoats inside the town.

  He plodded on, his slow but stubborn mind grappling with the fate of a kingdom.

  22.

  The outlaws took Hugh north, bypassing Northampton and Leicester and heading deep into Charnwood Forest. Esther wasn’t with them. Walter Devyas had packed her off back to the Isle of Ely with six of his men as an escort. Back to the custody of Sir Robert d'Eyvill, and God only knew what fate. Hugh preferred not to speculate.

  “If he has any sense, he’ll keep her on a leash this time,” sniggered Walter, “or tied to a kennel like a dog. Regular beatings. That’s how I’d serve the bitch.”

  Hugh didn’t doubt it. An hour of Walter’s acquaintance was enough to confirm that the outlaw chief was a terrible man, every bit as cruel and violent as the Beast. Like the Beast, Walter delighted in inflicting pain and humiliation, but with an extra element of perversity. He had Hugh’s wrists tightly bound behind his back, and an iron bit stuffed into his mouth.

  “Now one horse shall ride another!” the outlaw laughed as he admired his handiwork. He clearly found this a great joke, and chuckled to himself as they rode up the king’s highway. None of the drovers or groups of travellers they encountered dared to challenge Walter and his men.

  Hugh despaired at his ill fortune. Had he known the likes of Walter and his men were prowling the roads between East Anglia and the midlands, he would have turned south and made for London.

  It was late in the evening by the time they reached the outlaw camp inside Charnwood. Hugh was saddle-sore, dizzy with pain and weariness. He was only half-conscious of his horse being brought to a halt, and of himself being lifted down and dumped on the grass.

  “Put some salve on his wrists, and make sure he eats something,” he heard Walter say, his voice tinny and distant. “I want him fit for the sport tomorrow.”

  That was the last Hugh knew before plunging into the chasm of sleep, where his exhausted mind conjured up fresh nightmares.

  He saw the anguished mask of Esther’s face, pale and shrieking as faceless men dragged her into shadow. Hugh reached out to pull her back, but the mask crumbled away under his fingers and left him in darkness. The shadows cleared and revealed an oak tree. A man dangled from the lower branches, while another lay dead at its foot. The dead man was grossly overweight and wore the habit of a friar. His belly had burst open, spilling his entrails over his fat thighs. />
  As Hugh gazed in horror, the dead man’s eyes winked open and his blue lips hitched into a lunatic grin. His thick white fingers twitched and began to play with the disgusting mess pouring out of the hole in his belly. He started to sing The Lament of Simon de Montfort in a rolling baritone:

  “By his death the Earl Montfort gained the victory,

  Like the Martyr of Canterbury he finished his life,

  The Good Thomas would not allow Holy Church to perish,

  The Earl fought a similar cause, and died without flinching…”

  Hugh had heard the song before, from the lips of crippled soldiers in the stews of London after the battle at Lewes. The hanged man’s feet jerked in rhythm to the tune. A gust of wind blew back his hood and revealed the face of Hugh’s father. The old man’s tongue was black and protruding, eyes bulging, virtually forced from their sockets.

  Hugh covered his face with his hands. The awful vision faded, and he became conscious of a growing pain in his wrists. At first it was a mere itch, quickly intensified to searing, unbearable agony. It felt like a serrated blade sawing through his wrists.

  He cried out, and a rough hand clapped over his mouth.

  “Stop your noise,” grunted a rough voice, “you’ve been shaking and whimpering all night. I’m trying to help you, aren’t I?”

  Hugh’s eyes snapped open. He lay on damp grass. Above him was the gnarled trunk and spreading branches of an oak tree, similar to the one he had seen in his dream. Thankfully there were no dead men.

  He looked up at a face almost as gnarled as the tree, half-hidden inside a leather hood. One of the outlaws, no doubt. His sinewy brown hands were rubbing some vile-smelling ointment on Hugh’s wrists, raw from their bonds.

  Hugh tried to think. Walter Devyas’s words from the previous night surfaced in his memory. “I want him fit for the sport tomorrow.”

  What manner of sport would a man like Devyas devise? Whatever it was, Hugh had no hope of escaping it.

  “That should do,” grunted the outlaw, “now get this inside you.”

  He thrust a wooden bowl full of cold pease pottage at Hugh, who took it with both hands. His nose wrinkled at the stale odour that rose from the bowl, but he was too ravenous to care and wolfed the cloying mess with gusto, scooping it up with his fingers.

  “That’s the way,” the outlaw chuckled, standing up to watch his prisoner eat. He was short and pot-bellied, broad as an ox.

  “Are you done?” he said as Hugh scraped out the bowl. “Good lad. You’ll need all your strength, I promise you. Come along.”

  He hooked one hand under Hugh’s elbow and dragged him to his feet. Hugh swayed for a moment, wincing at the sudden rush of blood to his head. The sounds of raised voices and laughter reached him, mixed with the crackle and smell of burning wood. Then he heard the howls.

  “Wolfhounds,” he muttered, stopping dead as the burly little outlaw tried to pull him along. The awful memory of those grey shapes flitting through the woods hit him again, and the teeth marks on his leg throbbed.

  “Not quite,” the outlaw grinned, “we’ve got something even better. Come along, or do I have to carry you across my shoulder?”

  Hugh fought down his nausea and went along quietly.

  The trees opened out onto a wide clearing. Walter and his band were gathered on the far side, standing or sitting in little groups, like an audience waiting for the show to start. Walter sat on a fallen log with an overflowing tankard in his hand, his eyes full of malice.

  “Here’s our challenger!” he roared, pale yellow mead slopping from his tankard as he raised it in mock greeting, to cheers and catcalls from the men around him.

  Their voices were submerged under a chorus of animal howls. Hugh looked around wildly, expecting to see a pack of wolfhounds straining at their leashes to get at him. The ugly little outlaw gently took his arm and led him forward.

  He recoiled as the ground suddenly fell away. A roughly circular pit, twice the height of a man, was dug in the middle of the clearing. The doleful howls came from seven rangy, yellow-eyed, foam-jawed grey wolves prowling about the floor of the pit.

  “Those are my daughters,” cried Walter. “They look hungry, eh? We keep them on short commons here. One meal every few days, that’s all they get. Maybe two if the sport is good.”

  This inspired another gale of drunken laughter. Even as his bowels dissolved in terror, some part of Hugh’s mind remained cool. He noticed how the outlaws were careful to greet their chief’s every witticism with unbridled mirth. Like the Beast, Walter clearly ruled by fear and little else.

  “Bring forward our current champion!” Walter ordered. There was movement from the trees to the left. Two big, well-armed men appeared, holding a smaller between them.

  Their captive was Brother Stephen. He still wore his monkish habit, now bedraggled and filthy, and his tonsure had outgrown into a ludicrous ring of greasy tufts on top of his head. Otherwise he appeared to be whole and unharmed. Hugh thought this a miracle until he saw the expression on Stephen’s face.

  The ex-monk stared at Hugh with purest hatred, mouth working in spittle-flecked fury. Despite their superior size, his guards had difficulty holding him back.

  Hugh was bewildered at Stephen’s animosity. Walter enlightened him. “He hates you for abandoning him on the road,” the outlaw explained. “Either that, or he has simply lost his wits. Difficult to be certain, with a mute. We have not been kind to him.”

  Walter paused to take a slug of mead. “He’s also our current champion,” he added cheerfully, smacking his lips. “I’ve lost count of the number of men he’s knocked into the pit. A right killer, is our monkish mute. Not that he hasn’t taken a few hurts, of course. Show him.”

  One of the guards ripped back the sleeve of Stephen’s left arm, exposing a stump where the hand used to be. Hugh was no surgeon, but even he could see the dreadful wound hadn’t healed properly and would soon turn gangrenous.

  “One of the wolves got his hand,” said Walter. “She licks her lips every time she sees him now, wanting the rest of him.”

  Hugh fought for words. “You animals,” was all he could say, “you filthy, depraved animals. None of you deserve to live.”

  His words only provoked more roars of laughter. Tearing his eyes away from Stephen, Hugh looked at the flushed, bearded faces and drink-addled eyes of the outlaws, and knew his time had come.

  “Take off that gambeson,” Walter told him before taking another hefty draught of mead. “Then commend your soul to God, or the Devil, which ever you like best. Jocelin, fetch the staves.”

  Jocelin was the stocky little man who had brought Hugh to the pit. He waddled away and returned carrying two thick staves, one six feet long, the other cut to half that length. Each was sharpened at both ends.

  Two more outlaws fetched a long plank of timber measuring about twelve feet long and two across. Grinning at the wolves that snapped and snarled at them below, they carefully laid the timber across the middle of the pit and retreated to the edge of the clearing.

  Hugh reluctantly tugged off his heavy leather gambeson and dumped it on the grass. Underneath he wore rumpled hose and a thin woollen under-shirt. The outlaws cackled at the sight of his pale flesh.

  Jocelin handed him the longer stave, and cautiously approached Stephen to offer him the shorter. The crippled man’s right hand snatched the stave from Jocelin’s grasp. He started to tremble, like a dog eager to be let loose on its prey.

  “Stephen,” Hugh said earnestly, “I’m sorry I left you on the road. I can see you have suffered terribly. We had a mission to fulfil, do you remember?”

  It was useless. Stephen’s eyes as his guards led him to the opposite end of the pit showed no spark of recognition. They were red-rimmed and feral, much like those of the wolves who waited in the pit, slavering and whining for their next meal.

  “Now, then, my boys!” cried Walter. “The laws of the game are simple. Both of you must advance across the plank and h
ave at each other with the staves. The aim is to knock your opponent into the pit. There is no calling quits, or pleas for mercy. Go to it!”

  The bloodthirsty cries of men and wolves rattled in Hugh’s skull as he stepped cautiously onto the trembling wooden bridge laid over the pit. For all his eagerness, Stephen showed similar caution. Hugh quickly learned why.

  His right foot skidded as he put his weight on the timber. He might have come to grief, but his left was still planted firmly on the grass. He swore as he righted himself, and peered closely at the bridge. Its surface glistened with some damp, oily substance.

  “He’s sprung our little trap!” he heard Walter cry. “A sharp one, this!”

  Bear’s grease, Hugh realised, trying to block out the outlaw’s hated voice. He kicked off his soft brown shoes and shuffled carefully onto the bridge in bare feet, stave held diagonally across his chest.