The She Wolf of France (3 page)

The Green was, being raked and the paved paths surrounding it swept, but the ravens were unconcerned. No one would have dared harm the birds, for rave
ns had lived here since time im-
memorial, and were the objects of a sort of superstition. The soldiers of the guard began emerging from their barracks. They were hurriedly buckling their belts and leggings and donning their steel
helmets to
assemble for the daily parade which had, this morning, a particular importance for it was August 1st, the Feast of St Peter ad Vincula - to whom the chapel was dedicated
and also the annual Feast Day in the Tower.

There was a grinding of locks and bolts on the low door of the Mortimers' dungeon. The turnkey opened it, glanced inside, and let the barber in. The barber, a man with beady eyes, a long nose and a round mouth, came once a week to shave Roger Mortimer, the younger. The operation was torture to the prisoner during the winter months. For the Constable, Stephen Seagrave, Governor of the Tower,' had said:' `If Lord Mortimer wishes to be shaved, I will send him the barber, but I have no obligation to provide him with hot water.'

But Lord Mortimer had held to it, in the first place to defy the Constable, secondly be
cause his detested enemy, King
Edward, wore a handsome blond beard and finally, and above all, for his own morale, knowing well that if he yielded on this point, he would give way progressively to the physical deterioration that lies in wait for the prisoner. He had before his eyes the example of his uncle, who no longer took any care of his person; his chin a matted thicket, his hair thinning on his skull, the Lord of Chirk had begun to look like an old anchorite and continually complained of the multiple ills assailing him.

`It is only my poor body's pain,' he sometimes said, `that reminds me I am still alive.'

Young Roger Mortimer had therefore welcomed barber Ogle week after week, even when they had to break the ice in the bowl and the razor left his cheeks bleeding. But he had had his reward, for he had realized after a few months that Ogle could be used as a link with the outside world. The man's character was a strange one; he was rapacious and yet capable of devotion; he suffered from the lowly position he occupied in life, for he considered it inferior to his true worth; conspiracy offered him an opportunity for secret revenge, and also enabled him to acquire, by sharing the secrets of the great, importance in his own eyes. The Baron of
Wigmore was undoubtedly the most noble man, both by birth and nature, he had ever met. Besides, a prisoner who insisted on being shaved, even in frosty weather, was certainly to be admired.

Thanks to the barber, Mortimer had established tenuous yet regular communication with his partisans, and particularly with Adam Orleton, Bishop of Hereford; again through the barber, he had learned that the Lieutenant of the Tower, Gerard de Alspaye, might be won over to his cause; and, through the barber once more, he had set on foot the dilatory negotiations for his escape. The Bishop had promised him he would be rescued by summer. And summer had now come.

The turnkey looked through the spy-hole in the door from time to time, not because he was particularly suspicious, but merely out of professional habit.

Roger Mortimer, a wooden bowl under his chin -
would he ever again have a fine
basin of
beaten silver as in the past?
listened to the polite conversation the barber made in a loud voice for appearance's sake: the summer, the heat, the weather continued fine, very lucky on the feast of Saint Peter.

Bending low over his razor, Ogle whispered in the prisoner's ear: `Be ready tonight, my lord.'

Roger Mortimer gave no sign. His flinty eyes, under his thick eyebrows, merely looked into the barber's beady black eyes and acknowledged the information with a wink.

'Alspaye?' Mortimer whispered. `He'll go with us,' the barber replied, attending to the other

side of Mortimer's face.

`
The Bishop?' the prisoner asked
again.

`He'll be waiting for you outside, after dark,' said the barber, who began at once to talk again at the top of his voice of the heat, the parade that was to take place that morning, and the games that would fill the afternoon.

The shaving done, Roger Mortimer rinsed his face and dried it with a towel. He did not even feel its rough contact.

When barber Ogle had gone with the turnkey, the prisoner put both hands to his chest and took a deep breath. With difficulty, he prevented himself shouting aloud: `Be ready tonight!' The words were ringing through his head, Could it really be true tha
t it was for tonight, at last?

He went to the pallet bed on which his companion in prison was sleeping.

`Uncle,' he said, `it's tonight
.'

The old Lord of Chirk turned over with a groan, looked at his nephew with
his pale eyes that shone with a
green glow in the shadowy dungeon and replied wearily: `No one ever escapes from the Tower of London, my boy, no on
e.
Neither tonight, nor ever.'

Young Mortimer showed his irritation. Why should a man who, at wor
st, had so comparatively little
of life to lose, be so obstinately discouraging and refuse
to
take any risks whatever? He did not reply so as not to lose his temper. Though they spoke French together, as did the Court and the nobility of Norman origin, while servants, soldiers and the common people spoke English, they were still afraid of being, overheard.

He went back to, the narrow window and looked out at the parade, which he could see :only from ground-level, with the happy feeling that he was perhaps watching it for the last time.

The soldiers' leggings passed to and fro at eye-level; their thick leather boots stamped the paving. Roger Mortimer could not but admire the precision
of
the archers' drill, those wonderful English archers who were the best in Europe and could shoot as many as twelve arrows a minute.

In the centre of the Green, Alsp
aye, the Lieutenant, standing
rigid as a post, was shouting orders at the top of his voice. He then reported the guard to the Constable. At first sight, it was difficult to understand why this tall, pink and white young man who was so attentive to his duty and so clearly concerned to do the right thing, should have agreed to betray his charge. There could be no doubt that he had been persuaded to it for other reasons than mere money, Gerard de Alspaye, the Lieutenant of the Tower of London, wished, as did many officers, sheriffs, bishops and lords, to see England freed from the bad ministers surrounding the King; in his youthful way he was dreaming of a great career; and, what wa
s more, he loathed and despised
his immediate superior, the Constable, Seagrave.

The Constable, a one-eyed, flabby-cheeked and incompetent drunkard, owed his high position in fact to the protection of those bad ministers. Overtly indulging in the very practices King Edward displayed before his Court, the Constable was inclined to use the garrison of the Tower as a harem. He liked tall, fair young men; and Lieutenant Alspaye's life had become a hell, for he was religious and had no vicious tendencies. Alspaye had indeed repelled the Constable's advances and, as a result, had become the object of his relentl
ess persecution. From sheer ven
geance Seagrave seized every opportunity to plague and vex him,
Slothful though he was, this one-eyed man found the leisure to be cruel. And now, as he inspected the men, he mocked and insulted his second-in-command over the merest trifles: a fault in the men's dressing, a spot of rust on the blade of a dagger, a minut
e tear
in the
leather of aquiver. His single
eye searched only for faults.

Though it was a Feast Day, on which punishments were generally remitted, the Constable, faulting their equipment, ordered three soldiers to be whipped on the spot. They happened to be three of the best archers. A sergeant was sent to fetch the rods. The men who were to be punished had to take their breeches down in front of the ranks of their comrades. The Constable seemed much amused at the sight.

`If the guard's no better turned out next time, Alspaye, it'll be you,' he said.

Then the whole garrison, with the exception of the sentries on the gates and ramparts, gathered in the chapel to hear mass and sing canticles.

Listening at his window, the prisoner could hear their rough untuneful voices
. `Be ready tonight, my lord ..
the ex-Lieutenant of the King in Ireland could think of nothing except that he might perhaps be free this very night. But there was a whole day in which to wait, hope, and indeed fear: fear that Ogle would make some silly mistake in executing the agreed plan, fear that Alspaye would succumb to a sense of duty at the last moment. There was a whole day in which to dwell on all the obstacles, all the hazards that might prejudice his escape.

`It's better not even to think of it,' he thought, `and take it for granted that all will go well. It's always something you've never even considered that goes wrong. Nevertheless, it's also the stronger will that triumphs.' And yet his mind, inevitably, returned again and again to the same anxieties. `In any event, there'll still be the sentries on the walls. ..'

He jumped quickly back .from the window. The raven had approached stealthily along the wall, and this time it was a near thing that it did not get the prisoner's eye.

`Oh, Edward, Edward, that's going too far,' Mortimer said between clenched teeth. `If ever I'm going to succeed in strangling you, it must be today.'

The garrison was coming out of the chapel and going into the refect
ory for the traditional feast.

The turnkey reappeared at the dungeon door, accompanied by a warder with the prisoners' food. For once, the bean soup was accompanied by a slice of mutton.

'Try to stand up, Uncle,' Mortimer said.

`They even deprive us of mass, as if we were excommunicated,' said the old Lord.

He insisted on eating on his pallet, and indeed scarcely touched his portion.

`Have my share, you need it more than I,' he said to his nephew.

The turnkey had gone. The prisoners would not be visited again till evening.

`Have you really made up your mind not to go with me, Uncle?' Mortimer asked.

`Go with you where, my boy? No one ever escapes from the Tower. It has never been done. Nor does one rebel against one's king. Edward's not the best sovereign England's had, indeed he's not, and those two Despensers deserve to be here instead of us. But you don't choose your king, you serve him.. I should never have listened to you and Thomas of Lancaster, when you took up arms. Thomas has been beheaded, and look where we are.'

It was the hour at which his uncle, having swallowed a few mouthfuls of food, would sometimes talk in a monotonous, whining voice, recapitulating over and over again the same complaints his nephew had heard for the last eighteen months. At sixty-seven, the elder Mortimer was no longer recognizable as the handsome man and great lord he had been, famous for the fabulous tournament he had given at his Castle of Kenilworth, which had been the talk of three generations. The nephew did his best to rekindle a few embers in the old man's exhausted heart. He could see his white locks hanging lank in the shadows.

`In any case my, legs would fail me,' the old man added.

`Why not get out of bed and try them out a little? In any case, I'll carry you. I've told you so.'

`Oh, yes, I know! You'll carry me over the walls and into the water though I can't swim. You'll carry my head to the block, that's what you'll do, and yours too. God may well be working for our deliverance, and you'll spoil it all by this stubborn folly of yours. It's always the same; there's rebellion in the Mortimer blood. Remember the first Roger, the son of the Bishop and the daughter of King Herfast of Denmark. He defeated the whole army of the King of France.under the walls of his Castle of Mortemer-en-Bray.
3
And yet he so greatly offended the Conqueror, our kinsman, that all his lands and possessions were taken from him.'

The younger Roger sat on a stool, crossed his arms, closed
his
eyes, and leaned backwards a little to support his shoulders against the wall. Every day he had to listen town account of their ancestors, hear for the hundredth time how Ralph the Bearded, son of the first Roger, had landed in England in the train of Duke William, how he had received Wigmore in fief, and why the Mortimers had been powerful in four counties ever since.

In the refectory the soldiers had finished eating and were bawling drinking songs.

`Please, Uncle,' Mortimer said, `do leave our ancestors alone for a while. I'm in no such hurry to go to join them as you are. I know we're descended from royal blood. But royal blood is of small account in prison. Will Herfast's sword set us free? Where are our lands, and are we paid our revenues in this dungeon? And when you've repeated once again the names of all our female ancestors - Hadewige, Melisinde, Mathilde the Mean, Walcheline de Ferrers, Gladousa de Braouse - am I to dream of no women but them till I draw my last breath?'

For a moment the old man was nonplussed and stared absentmindedly at his swollen hands and their long, broken nails, then he said: `Everyone fills his prison life as best he can, old men with the lost past, young men with tomorrows they'll never see. You believe the whole of England loves you and is working on your behalf, that Bishop Orleton is your faithful friend, that the Queen herself is doing her best to save you, and that in a few hours you'll be setting out for France, Aquitaine, Provence or somewhere of the sort. And that
the bells will ring out in wel
come all along your road. But, you'll see, no one will come to night.'

With a weary gesture, he passed his hands across his eyes, then turned his face to the wall.

Young Mortimer went back to the window, put a hand out through the bars and let it lie as if dead in the dust.

`Uncle will now doze till evening,' he thought. `He'll make up his mind to come at the last moment. But he won't
make it any easier; indeed, it
may well fail because of him. Ah, there's Edward!'

The raven stopped, a little way from the motionless hand and wiped its big black beak against its foot.

`If
I strangle it, I shall
succeed
in