The Iron Castle (Outlaw Chronicles) (11 page)

‘Thank you, my lord,’ I said.

‘Don’t thank me, just don’t make my life any more difficult than it has to be.’

I turned to go, but at the flaps of the tent, I turned back.

‘Robin,’ I said, ‘remind me – why do we serve this King?’

‘I serve him because I swore a solemn oath to do so. You serve me for the same reason. Is that good enough for you?’

‘I’m not sure,’ I said and pushed my way outside.

I left the next morning, accompanied by a score of the Wolves, our spare horses and baggage and the ox-cart that held the cage of Arthur, Duke of Brittany, heading north. I went to visit Little John before I left but he was deeply, unnaturally asleep on his bed of bloody straw and I did not care to awaken him. He looked worse than the night before – painfully gaunt, with white strands mixed in with his yellow hair, and blackberry bruises under his eyes. But when I bent down and put my ear to his lips, I felt the tiniest waft of his breath.

I prayed to God as we rode away from the column that He would spare Little John’s life, but I do not believe He heard me. A dozen miles out, I halted the march and burst open the prisoner’s cage and allowed Arthur to stumble into the warm August sunlight. He was very weak – from despair at his capture, mostly, and from lack of food over the past few days since the battle at Mirebeau.

I said, ‘If you will give me your word of honour not to try to escape, I will let you ride to Falaise as a member of my company. We will feed you and give you our fellowship. But you must know that if you do try to run, these men will hunt you down and I will bind you and drag you the rest of the way at the tail of my horse.’

‘I will ride,’ said the young man. ‘I give you my word of honour that I will not try to escape.’

The Duke of Brittany was as good as his word. For the next three days he rode with the Wolves, he ate and drank with us, and he made no attempts to run for freedom. My squire Kit, and Christophe, Richard the Lionheart’s grey-bearded veteran, kept a close eye on him at all times, even when the Duke went into the woods to relieve himself, but it proved unnecessary. The boy quickly realised I would not mistreat him and there stood a very good chance his countrymen would soon raise the colossal sum necessary for his ransom, and he would be freed. After a couple of days riding beside him, I began to like the fellow. He had shown himself brave in the fight at Mirebeau, and though he was rather undernourished, he had the strength, speed and enthusiasm of youth. He was not as haughty as he might have been for the grandson of a king, and once he had had a couple of decent meals, his natural good humour shone out like the August sunshine. We had stopped in a woodland glade, just inside the borders of Normandy, to breathe our horses and to take a drink from our wine-flasks, when I noticed him watching a pair of squirrels play-fighting in the branches above our heads. As the two nimble animals squabbled and chased each other through the leaves, I saw him laughing with pleasure at their antics. When we rode hard and fast for long periods, he never complained of fatigue. On the other hand, he clearly never forgot his exalted rank and position, and one evening as we ate round the camp fire, he tried to buy my loyalty.

‘Are you a wealthy man, Sir Alan?’ he asked, when I had a mouthful of roast hare.

I laughed and shook my head.

‘Would you like to be?’ he said bluntly. ‘I could grant you lands and titles in Brittany, if you so chose. Instead of heading for Falaise and a prison cell, we could all ride west to the Brittany border and I would reward you – all of you – handsomely.’

‘Watch your tongue, youngster,’ I said, swallowing the meat.

‘No, I suppose not,’ he said sadly. ‘You are King John’s loyal man. A good and decent knight, I can tell. You have chosen his side in this contest and taken oaths, no doubt, and it is wrong of me to try to tempt you from the path of honour.’

I was glad I had finished the mouthful of rabbit. It might have choked me when he called me one of King John’s loyal men. He did not mention the subject again but in my heart of hearts I did actually, for a few moments, consider his offer – and I asked myself once again why I was fighting for a King I despised.

On the ride north, as we trotted through the pretty woodlands, well-kept barley fields and apple orchards of lower Normandy, I noticed Arthur and Little Niels seemed to spend a good deal of time riding beside each other. They were as far apart in rank as it was possible to be, but close in age and they both seemed to find amusement in the same small things. Little Niels taught the Duke some of the rough Flemish slang the Wolves used, mostly concerning sex and excretion. And I admit I was rather shocked when Duke Arthur burned his hand on a camp-fire coal to hear him cursing and using the word for a lady’s most private parts in a thick Flemish accent. Little Niels thought it the funniest thing imaginable and nearly made himself sick with laughter. The other Wolves seemed to have a high regard for our prisoner, too, and I overheard grizzled Christophe remarking to Claes that it seemed a pity the lad was to be incarcerated when we arrived at Falaise.

Claes said, ‘He might be a charming lad, Scarecrow, but he’s our enemy and our prisoner, and don’t you forget it. He and his Bretons would have carved you into butcher’s meat at Mirebeau given half the chance.’

I thought a good deal about Tilda on the ride. I wondered if she would be at Falaise when I got there, a vain wish as she was far more likely to be in Rouen with her father or back home in Avranches. But I allowed myself to hope. I was still determined not to dishonour her in any way, although I must admit I longed to glimpse her face, even for only a few minutes. She seemed to find me pleasing company. Or was I mistaking a natural friendliness for something more?

Sadly, a match would have been impossible: her father was a wealthy lord and I was an impoverished knight forced to sell his sword. There was no possibility of Sir Joscelyn agreeing to a marital connection with me, I realised gloomily. And I would not take her in a base fashion, much as I wanted to. I tried, therefore, to put her from my mind, as my horse steadily ate up the miles beneath us.

I thought about Robin instead. I was grateful to him for saving me from the King’s hangman. I did not care much about the month’s pay being docked, nor about being ordered to become a gaoler to a Duke – but I did care about being sent away from the main army. Little John’s fate was in my mind a good deal and I feared I would never see him again in this world, but also the prospect of a return to dull garrison duty in Falaise had little appeal. I would have enjoyed it if Robin and I could have served together in the east – on the marches where King John must surely project his full strength now the south was pacified. If I was stuck in Falaise, I would miss out on the final victory, and the loot and ransoms that would entail.

We arrived at Falaise in the middle of the afternoon, four days after leaving the army, and I reported directly to Hubert de Burgh and informed him of the identity of my illustrious prisoner and of the King’s order that he be safely housed in the castle.

‘We’d better put him in the cells below,’ he said. ‘It’s not really a fitting place for a Duke, but we dare not let him escape. He will not lack for company – Benedict is already back, and he has brought Hugh and Geoffrey de Lusignan with him. So the three of them can roost down there until the ransoms are arranged. See they are safely installed, would you, Sir Alan, with all reasonable comforts due their rank.’

Before I left the lord of Falaise, I rather timidly asked after Sir Joscelyn Giffard and his household.

‘Oh, he’s back in Avranches, keeping the border safe. The Bretons are apparently furious about the loss of their Arthur and they have been raiding, looting and burning the farms within half a day’s ride. Sir Joscelyn and his men will soon have them back in line, though, I have no doubt.’

He paused and scratched his grey beard. ‘It’s remarkable how much stock they put in the Duke, given that he’s not much more than a boy. Strange. Must be because of his name.’

As I gathered up the Duke of Brittany and ushered him to the lowest depths of the keep, I reflected on de Burgh’s words. The songs and stories about King Arthur were popular throughout Christendom but, in certain places, Wales for example, and Brittany in particular, they had assumed an almost religious aura. The Duke, despite his Angevin blood, was half Breton, and perhaps his people believed he really was the great Arthur of legend reborn and restored to them.

The real, flesh-and-blood Arthur tried to hide his dismay when I showed him down the stone steps at the base of the castle, some twenty feet below ground, along a right-angled corridor, passing storerooms, the armoury, the pantry and buttery, and into a low, dark, square space in the bottom of the keep. The windowless room, lit only by a pair of cheap tallow candles, was perhaps ten paces on each side, but about a third of it had been separated off with a square latticework of iron bars set firmly in the ceiling and the floor and the walls on either side. This third was again divided into three cells, each perhaps three yards square. Two of them were occupied: I could make out pale faces in the gloom, at the bars and looking out. Geoffrey and Hugh de Lusignan, uncle and nephew, heads of the powerful clan. The two prisoners said nothing as the gaoler, a shapeless oaf called Rollo, and his assistant, a scurrying rat of a boy, showed Arthur into the cell in the corner of the room and clanged the door behind him, locking it with a big iron key. Two castle guards sat yawning on stools beside an unlit brazier. On the wall, heavy chains and manacles had been fitted and hung down, each set a couple of yards apart, and a wooden rack held the implements of torture: knives, saws, long iron pincers … I looked away quickly. Each cell held only a basic cot – a wooden box resembling a coffin filled with none-too-clean straw, a stool and an earthenware jug, filled with water presumably. Once again the pale face of the Duke of Brittany looked out at me from behind stout bars.

I turned to the gaoler. ‘Do you feed them regularly?’

‘Yes, sir,’ he said smartly. ‘Bean pottage every day at noon – with a nice piece of bacon in it on Sundays. As much water as they can drink.’ He smirked at me. ‘There’s many a free man who’d be grateful for as much in these troubled times.’

I merely grunted. He was right, a peasant might well consider this an adequate diet; many folk managed to survive on much less – we had at Westbury. But for a young lord of gentle upbringing it would be a hardship. God knew how long he might be here while the ransoms were arranged. It could be a year, or two, even ten.

‘I will be bringing food and wine for the prisoners from time to time,’ I told Rollo, ‘when my duties permit.’ He looked uncertain at this. I fumbled in my pouch, pulled out several silver coins and gave them to him.

‘They are not to be mistreated, hear me? I shall be angry if they are harmed.’

The coins had disappeared and the fat little man was beaming at me. ‘Yes, sir, whatever you wish, sir.’

I turned to go. That dank, dark place was corroding my soul.

‘Sir Alan,’ said the Duke. ‘I thank you for your kindness – in this foul place and on the road with your men. God will surely reward you, even if I cannot.’

I merely nodded at him, unable to speak. I could not wait to get out of that fetid dungeon and into clean fresh air and sunlight.

The summer that year was glorious. Long golden days with little work to do except for the odd patrol around the surrounding countryside with the Wolves. I visited Arthur about every other day, bringing him wine or cider and a piece of meat or cheese, sometimes fruit. I hated to go down those stone steps and enter that dark place, but I forced myself to. The truth is, I felt sorry for the boy. I sat with him for an hour or so, and sometimes we played chess to while away the time – he was an awful player and I beat him so easily the first few times that I was forced to play without a queen and a castle, just to make a decent game of it. I still won almost all the time. He was not a bright lad, certainly brave and good-humoured, but not bright.

One conversation I had with him, however, stuck in my mind. We were playing chess one day and he was playing so badly that I had no need to concentrate very hard on the game. I said, idly, ‘Tell me, Your Grace, do you truly believe you are the rightful King of England?’

He looked up from the board, surprised. ‘But, of course.’

‘How so?’ I said, taking his queen with a pawn.

‘My father was Geoffrey, Duke of Brittany, as you know, and he was granted the duchy by his father, my grandfather, King Henry of England, Duke of Normandy. I never knew my father, alas; he died in a tournament before I was born.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘I’m sorry, too, but it was God’s will. Yet I feel his spirit with me wherever I go.’

Unwisely, he advanced a pawn to threaten my knight. My bishop sliced down diagonally and took his castle. He took my knight.

‘When old Henry died, Richard, my father’s elder brother, became King of England,’ he continued.

I moved my castle. ‘Check.’

He stared at the board blankly and said, ‘And when the Lionheart died, my father would have become King, had he been alive but he was already with God. And so I believe that I, as his son, am the rightful King in his place. The rights pass from King Henry, my grandfather, through my late father to me. So, by the laws of God and man, I am King of England and Duke of Normandy. John is the usurper.’

He said this with such firmness and passion that I was a little taken aback. He truly did have a royal glow about him despite the rags he wore and the filthiness of his surroundings. For a brief moment, I allowed myself to wonder how things would have been if he had been made King on Richard’s death.

On the board, he moved his king to the left.

‘King John is both the brother of King Richard, and the son of King Henry, so surely he has a stronger claim than you?’ I moved my bishop back into the centre and murmured, ‘Checkmate.’

Arthur glared at me. ‘I should be King of England and Duke of Normandy! And no other. It is God’s will. It has been so decreed by God and the Church.’ Such was the ferocity in his young eyes that I dared not contradict him.