Rhuddlan (17 page)

Over the course of several months in early
spring, nearly three score of the knights who owed him service made
their way to Dol. Others were sent to Chester, because the rebels’
plan was to create as much violent turmoil as possible, not only in
Normandy but in England as well. With his money, he had purchased
the services of mercenary knights, most of whom had come from
Flanders and Brittany. It was difficult to find Norman mercenaries;
these men were fiercely loyal to Henry.

With Hugh’s force and de
Fougères’ men, the rebels in eastern Normandy presented a
formidable army and if all went according to the Breton’s plan,
they’d have no problem wiping out the garrison at Pontorson along
with William Longsword and his tiny band of would-be saviors. “The
only trouble is,” said Hugh with a wry smile to Haworth after the
meeting, “part of de Fougères’ scheme depends on there being an
overwhelming amount of stupidity in the Pontorson camp.
He’s
the fool, Roger! Does
he truly imagine that the Bastard, who is well aware of our
numbers, will be tricked into rushing out of the fortress when he
sees only forty men cavorting on the road? No! He’ll just have his
bowmen make mincemeat of them!”

“In that case, we’d better make sure our men
are the ones among the trees,” Haworth answered seriously and Hugh
laughed. Robert Bolsover would have said the same thing but meant
it as a joke. But there was something comfortable and familiar in
Haworth’s humorless personality.

He eased himself up from his chair and moved
to the side table for a cup of wine. He was twenty-nine now and
beginning to feel the creaks of his bones and the soreness in his
muscles the day after hard exercise. At least he had so far escaped
serious illness. It seemed to him that sooner or later everyone
caught some dreadful scourge from which he might not recover. The
king himself had been so afflicted three years ago, to the point
where he’d made his Will and confirmed the Young King as duke of
Normandy and king of England. If only he’d died then, Hugh thought,
they would have been spared making this rebellion. He’d be home at
Chester planning the next day’s hunt rather than sitting in some
drafty chamber discussing the shortcomings of Ralph de Fougères’
scheme to take a royal castle.

And Eleanor would still be alive. He had felt
only relief when the messenger had come from Chester. Poor Miles de
Gournay had sent a letter devoid of his usual pretentious phrases
and intricate sentences which ran on so long that Hugh had to read
through them two or three times before he was able to understand
what the hell his steward was trying to tell him. This letter had
been plain and nearly hysterical in tone. He begged the earl to
believe that he had done everything possible to find her and it
wasn’t fear of what Hugh might do or say to him which prompted his
wrenching sentiment; the steward had been genuinely fond of his
mistress and keenly felt the guilt of his silent condonation of her
treatment by Hugh. For days every available man in the castle had
scoured the countryside and even the townspeople had been alerted
and pressed into service until, the letter read, “...On the fifth
day, my lord, we came upon her cloak, known to us by its color and
the dyed fox fur border, which we discovered to be horribly mangled
as if it had been pulled this way and that by a pack of savage
animals. It was found in the woods, a few miles from the church of
St. John the Baptist where she had gone to pray. My lord, I
bitterly regret allowing her to go but she had beseeched me very
humbly; she wished to ask Our Lord in the house in which you and
she were married to send her a child so that she might be a good
wife and fulfill her duty to you. How could I refuse? She went with
an armed escort which, as it was a cold day, she induced to visit
an alehouse while she prayed. When they returned, they waited
outside the church until it started to grow dark. When one of them
went inside to fetch her, he found the place deserted but for the
priest’s servant, who was lighting candles on the altar. The man
had not seen anyone.

“My lord, you cannot imagine the anguish from
which I have suffered these past weeks. I accept full
responsibility for the Countess’ disappearance and her untimely
demise. I knew she had not been herself since the summer.
Obviously, her mind was so unhinged that she simply wandered away
from the church and the escort, unaware of what she was doing. I
still cannot sleep from thinking of the horror which befell her in
the forest...”

Hugh had looked up from the letter, which
he’d been reading aloud to Haworth, and grinned. “De Gournay sounds
as though he won’t rest easy unless I have him dragged face down
through the mud from the back of a horse.” He scanned the remainder
of the missive. “He humbly awaits my judgment on his crime. Well,
what do you think, Roger? More land? Another estate?”

“She was never the same after we got rid of
that troublesome slut of hers,” Haworth had answered.

“Another job well done.” Hugh had clapped him
on the shoulder and laughed. “I wonder if it was the same pack of
wolves that got the both of them.”

Yes, if the rebellion hadn’t come to pass,
he’d still be at Chester and Eleanor would still be alive. At least
some good, then, had come out of this otherwise fruitless
endeavor.

As he stood there musing, idly swirling the
wine around in his cup, Haworth came up very close behind him. “We
are to march at dawn, my lord?” he said softly into Hugh’s ear.

Hugh turned his head slightly and looked at
him. “That’s the plan. Do you approve?” he asked with an amused
smile.

“It isn’t for me to approve or disapprove, my
lord.” Haworth’s breath tickled Hugh’s ear and a delicious shiver
ran down his spine. “I only thought that we should have an early
night.”

“Do you mean to say you don’t want to sit and
drink yourself into a stupor in the hall while de Fougères embarks
on another one of his never-ending stories?”

“No, my lord.”

That was as far as Haworth would go: an
unspoken invitation. Occasionally Hugh wished he’d be more forward
physically but knew Haworth would be appalled at the idea of a
servant seducing his master. “Hm!” he said. “Neither do I.” He
tilted his head and kissed Haworth’s yielding mouth. “Amazing that
such a soft thing can be surrounded by so much prickly beard,” he
murmured. “Aren’t you worried that we’ll exhaust ourselves for the
march tomorrow?”

“No, my lord,” Haworth whispered, his dark
eyes burning as he stared at Hugh. “It will strengthen us.” He
reached a hand to touch the side of Hugh’s face.

Hugh put down his wine cup.

But they needn’t have worried about the long
march to Pontorson because when the men of Dol woke up the next
morning and looked out of guard towers and stretched and yawned
before unshuttered windows, they saw arrayed before them on the
open field the army of William Longsword.

Chapter 12

August, 1173

outside Dol, Brittany

It was mid-morning and already Delamere could
feel the sweat trickling down the sides of his face. He squinted up
into the sky. No clouds, only that damned blinding orb. He would
have thought, being so close to the sea, the air would feel cooler
and there might even be a nice breeze or two, but no luck. The day
was beginning as relentlessly hot as the one before and here he was
standing unprotected in the middle of an open field, outfitted in
his battle gear.

He squinted over towards the sound of
Longsword’s voice, his vision temporarily obscured by light spots.
It was impossible to ignore Longsword; his voice was growing louder
with each little victory and right now, having succeeded in
astounding the rebels with his quick night march to Dol, it
positively boomed.

Longsword was speaking with Sir Walter.
Delamere went to join them, dabbing at his face with the back of
his hand. Longsword grinned at him. “Hot? Just wait till a few
hours from now.”

“Very funny,” Delamere said, unamused. “I’m
sweating so much, my coif is beginning to rust. The rebels don’t
have to fight us; they can watch us melt.”

“Richard, you said—”

Delamere held up a hand. “Yes, I know what I
said. Don’t worry; I’m not going to start complaining about your
plan again, not when I have the weather.”

He and Longsword had argued the previous day
after their successful ambush. Longsword had immediately proposed
their army chase the rebels all the way to Dol and Delamere had
thought that spreading their thin number across the plain would be
tantamount to issuing de Fougères and Chester an invitation to
massacre them.

“How many gates has the fortress got?”
Longsword had asked Sir Walter, who hadn’t been certain but
ventured only two: the main and the postern. “So, we put half the
men on either one, Richard. They can’t come out more than two or
three at a time, right? We’ll cut them down!”

“Good. So they don’t come out. They stay in
there for months while we sit outside in the heat and the rain and
then the snow.”

“At least it prevents them destroying
Avranches!” Longsword had snapped. “And that’s what my father
wanted. Listen, Richard—either we pin them down at Dol or they pin
us down at Pontorson. As long as I have an advantage, I want to
press it! And you can come with me or be the one to ride to the
king and let him know what we’re doing!”

Delamere wasn’t about to leave his friend’s
side no matter how foolish he considered the scheme. In the end,
Alan d’Arques had been sent off to the king with the news that
Longsword and the men of Pontorson were in the process of besieging
the fortress at Dol and awaited further instructions. Delamere had
suggested before he left that he be knighted. After all, the young
man was a good servant and had fought next to them in two
skirmishes. “Besides,” Delamere had added, “it would be an insult
to the king to receive a mere squire as a messenger.” So Alan
d’Arques became Sir Alan d’Arques and departed with strict
instructions not to pause for sleep or food but only to change
horses in order to get to Rouen as quickly as possible.

Longsword’s mercenaries and Sir Walter’s
knights had taken the well-kept road to Dol, their way made easier
by the ghostly light of a half moon. They’d reached the fortress in
the early morning and bivouacked about half a mile away from it, in
a field alive with the cacophonous melodies of what seemed to be
every mating cricket in the whole of Europe. No reason to believe
even the sharpest guard on duty in the fortress could hear them or
their horses over the racket, and they had removed their hauberks
and helmets and slung them, hidden by their cloaks, across their
mounts’ rumps, so that the moonlight wouldn’t reflect the metal and
give them away. Right before dawn, they’d donned their battle gear
and moved into positions about 500 yards from the fortress, just
out of crossbow range. Their arrival had been a total surprise.

The rest of Pontorson’s available
soldiers—the archers and pikemen—had followed on foot and had
joined the knights in time for a rough breakfast. But Longsword’s
biggest surprise had not yet arrived and wouldn’t until noon.

Delamere dabbed at his face again and
considered the fortress. The rebel defenders lining the walls
stared back. “I wonder why they haven’t decided to come against
us,” he said.

“Because they know they don’t stand a
chance,” Longsword said without hesitation.

“Then perhaps we should seek rapprochement,”
suggested Sir Walter.

“We’ll seek nothing! They’re the ones who
provoked this war, remember? If they want to negotiate, let them
come out. But,” he added less stridently and with a little smile,
“I hope to God they don’t. It would ruin my next surprise.”

The mood inside Dol was tense. De Fougères
and his men spoke with each other in a rapid dialect which Hugh
couldn’t follow. Not that he cared what they were discussing or,
for all he knew, planning. As far as he was concerned, it was
over.

The rebels couldn’t believe the royalists had
turned around and used their own plan against them. Although
Longsword couldn’t have known it, the fact that he had shown up
outside Dol with such a skimpy force was the cause of great concern
inside the fortress. The Bretons thought the Bastard must be a
madman to come against them with a quarter of their number—or
maybe, they thought, that wasn’t his full army. Maybe he had twice
as many more soldiers hiding beyond eyesight on the road, waiting
to swoop down on them if they opened the gate, just as they had
planned to do. And that he had turned up so quickly caused further
consternation, because it was exactly the sort of thing for which
his father was famous. They had believed they were dealing with a
neophyte but after the well-executed ambush and this surprise
confrontation, they realized that the education provided his son by
Henry more than made up for his lack of practical experience.

The rebels, therefore, did nothing for the
moment. De Fougères decided their best hope lay in waiting out the
siege. Longsword was in enemy territory and although it was true he
had a direct supply line, via the road, straight back to Pontorson,
it was also true supply lines could be cut. De Fougères gave him
two weeks; by then there would be a new moon, and if the royalists
hadn’t yet given up and departed, he would send men out to circle
around them.

He was optimistic Longsword would just get
bored by the inactivity and leave to join his father in the east
where the fighting was plenty. Hugh wasn’t so sure. He’d heard that
this bastard son was a stubborn, unforgiving man with nothing of
the diplomacy of his father, and he had the suspicion that
Longsword would want to finish—preferably to the death—anything he
started. But he didn’t venture this opinion; the Bretons, who had
been white-faced upon waking to the sight of the Bastard’s
vengeance, had regained much of their former bravado and Hugh
thought he’d be laughed out of the castle, earl or no.