The Iron Castle (Outlaw Chronicles) (20 page)

The town itself was in turmoil, the narrow streets and small squares filled with panicking people hurrying about with large packages; there seemed to be a profusion of handcarts, too, piled high with bundles and being wheeled every which way, creating blockages by their sheer numbers. The bells of St James were ringing out in alarm, as if the townsfolk needed to be told that the end was near.

‘Vim’s down there somewhere,’ said Robin, who had appeared beside me. ‘And fifty of my Wolves.’ I merely nodded but I could see there were still disciplined soldiers huddled bravely on the battered ramparts, tucked down tight with shields over their heads, and men-at-arms collected together in squads of ten or so below the walls, waiting to repulse the attack when it finally came. In the square next to the church, a small group of mounted men had collected and I could see they were being instructed by a knight in a red surcoat. It was too far to make out the face of the knight but something about him struck a chord. Robin must have seen me frowning and peering at the distant figure, for he smiled at me knowingly and said, ‘You know that Sir Joscelyn Giffard has been given command of the town, don’t you?’

I looked at him in astonishment. He continued to grin at me as I asked. ‘His daughter, the Lady Matilda, is she in Caen or…’

‘She’s not in Caen. And she’s not down there among the ville folk, Alan. Do not worry yourself.’ And because he had a cruel streak that I knew all too well, he let five heartbeats pass before he said, ‘She is snug right here in the castle. I saw her in the great hall this very morning. I must say she seemed to be glowing despite our difficulties, in very fine looks indeed, in my opinion.’

I was saved from having to reply by a faint roar from the assembled ranks of the French beyond the town. I could hear trumpets and drums and the thin notes of whistles, as the whole mass of men, perhaps five hundred in all, began to move forwards towards the River Andelle, their bundles of straw and baskets of earth brandished before them. The attack on Petit Andely had begun.

I do not know what I was expecting. A heroic defence, perhaps, with the remaining men-at-arms in Petit Andely bravely rushing to the breaches now the artillery bombardment had ceased, filling the gaps with their bodies, their courage and their naked steel, and stemming the screaming horde of Frenchmen as they hurled their burdens into the moat and splashed across the makeshift causeway to climb the piled rubble that had once been the town walls. In fact, I was indeed expecting something like that. Or at least some sort of attempt to resist the enemy. What happened left me gaping in surprise. The moment the French signalled the attack, the gates of Petit Andely on the southern side, furthest from the assault, swung wide open; the drawbridge was swiftly lowered to cover the river-moat on that side, and the
conroi
of knights and men-at-arms I had seen in the square rode out of them. Then these thirty or forty men lined up on either side of the road to the castle and turned to face outwards. Through the gates of the town poured the entire citizenry of Petit Andely: men and women, grandmothers and tiny children, servants and squires, craftsmen, peasants, beggars, priests, whores … The whole population flooded out, hundreds upon hundreds of people, with their bundles and baggage, handcarts and packhorses, and this vast herd of humanity began to scramble up the winding chalk road towards the castle. A surprising number kept on coming, steaming through the gates, between the lines of mounted men who stood guard over them against roaming French cavalry, scrambling, running, pushing and shoving, every soul making his or her way up towards the safety of Château Gaillard.

Beyond the waves of refugees surging up the hill towards us, in the centre of the town, there was some sporadic fighting. Here and there swords flashed and knots of men struggled against the French who were pouring into Petit Andely through the breaches in the northern walls. I saw patches of grey wolf fur and knew that Vim’s men formed the rearguard, and those brave men I had known in Rouen and Falaise were dying by inches to allow the townsfolk to escape.

Robin had disappeared from my side, and I saw him striding across the courtyard of the middle bailey towards the gatehouse, roaring at the men-at-arms there to open the gates. I looked back at the town of Petit Andely and saw that it was almost completely overrun by the enemy now. Wolves and a few mounted men-at arms were urging the last of the stragglers through the open gates, fending off the bolder foes who menaced them. But, for the most part, the French men-at-arms let the townspeople depart in peace, quite unmolested; they seemed content to revel in their effortless possession of this rich Norman town. For once the fires that invariably accompany the sack had not been kindled, and French could be seen rushing here and there, their arms filled with booty, kicking down doors, no doubt marvelling at what they had captured at so little cost. They had stormed almost undefended walls and earned themselves a town devoid of souls but filled with costly goods: household furniture, fine tableware, rich cloths and draperies, silver pots and copper pans, barrels of wine, dried hams, wheels of cheese and all that could not be easily carried away.

In contrast, when I next looked down at the middle bailey of Château Gaillard, it was a babbling sea of humanity, packed as tight as a shoal of fish caught in a purse net. Almost all the former denizens of Petit Andely, some two thousand souls, had come to claim their right of protection in their lord’s castle.

I must tell you a little of the dispositions of the Iron Castle, its precincts and halls, its walls and towers, its tricks and secrets. For in those days I knew it as well as I know Westbury. One must remember that this castle was the pride and joy of King Richard: perhaps the greatest achievement of his short and glorious lifetime. He built it fast, in a little over two years, but he built it well. The lionhearted king lavished more treasure on this one castle than on all the others combined. It was the jewel in his crown; he loved it, and even playfully referred to it as his daughter – and he used all the vast store of military knowledge he had accumulated in thirty years of warfare from Aquitaine to Acre to make it impossible to conquer.

First, its positioning: it was perched high on a great limestone outcrop, fully three hundred and fifty feet above a broad loop of the Seine. The outcrop ran north-west to south-east, with the wide river below the north-western battlements. There was no attack possible from that side as sheer cliffs dropped from the battlements to the grey waters of the Seine. Indeed, the land fell away from the castle steeply on all sides, but the gentlest slope was at the far end, the south-eastern face, no more than a saddle of land between the walls and a low hill. This being the most obvious point of attack, King Richard had doubly fortified it with an outer bailey roughly triangular in shape and separate from the main castle. This outer bailey had five high towers and eight-foot-thick walls, and just by itself this bastion was as tough a nut to crack as many a fully grown castle. It was connected to the castle by a retractable wooden bridge, the idea being that if this bastion were to fall, the enemy would be no further forward in conquering the rest of the castle. This outer bailey was where Robin and I – and Vim, who arrived grinning and without a scratch after the retreat from Petit Andely – and eighty surviving Wolves had been lodged on our arrival by Roger de Lacy, Château Gaillard’s constable.

The retractable bridge over a deep dry moat led from the outer bailey to the middle bailey. This formed the defences of the castle proper and was roughly circular in shape, though the circle was a little flattened; again it had been built to take a battering, with thick walls and high towers and a formidable square gatehouse in the east, which formed the main entrance to the castle as a whole. The courtyard of the middle bailey held a well that provided an inexhaustible supply of sweet water; and it had deep and spacious underground storehouses clawed out of the soft limestone, and many wooden buildings erected around the walls to provide shelter and accommodation for a multitude of horses and men-at-arms. There was also a latrine block and, rather scandalously, a small chapel that King John had caused to be built on top of it, as well as blacksmiths’ forges and huts for armourers, fletchers, brewers, a bake house, several kitchens and even a wine seller’s counter under a striped awning that proved popular with off-duty knights.

If the middle bailey was deemed a difficult fortification to take – and, believe me, it was the envy of the greatest castle-builders of the day – the inner bailey was even more formidable. Set to the rear of the middle bailey, and protected not so much by very thick solid stone walls as by a series of linked D-shaped bastions – so constructed as to shrug off the pounding missiles from enemy petraries like water off a duck’s back – the inner bailey was the kernel of the castle, its core. But even that was not the final redoubt, for inside the inner bailey was a tall, high tower, with the thickest walls of any in the castle: the keep. This was built
en bec
, that is shaped like a teardrop for extra strength, and it was where the defenders could finally seek shelter if, by some malign trick of fate, the outer bailey, the middle bailey and the inner bailey were all somehow to fall. The keep had its own stock of food and water in casks sealed with lead and wax – enough to keep fifty men alive for three months.

This was why Château Gaillard was the greatest fortress in Christendom: as well as the great difficulty of attacking the place due to its formidable natural features, it had an astonishing four layers of defence that an enemy had to batter through before it would fall. King Richard was justly proud of it; King Philip justly in awe. You will remember that Philip had boasted he could take it if its walls were made of iron; and Richard had boasted he could hold it if its walls were made of butter. Yet they were not butter, but two layers of vast, well-cut, oblong-shaped limestone blocks, an inner and an outer wall, with the gap between them filled with flint, chalk and rubble, and the whole bound together by a strong sand, lime and clay mortar. The walls of Château Gaillard could easily stand up to months of cruel battering by the mightiest castle-breakers and, more importantly in my view, they were defended by good fighting men who understood their business as well as any.

Lord de Lacy gathered the inhabitants of the castle together in the open air of the courtyard of the middle bailey the day after Petit Andely was lost. With the massive influx of folk, there was not room enough for every man to find a place to stand and men hung from cresset hoops in the walls and perched on the roofs of the stables, kitchens and barracks to hear his words.

‘People of Petit Andely,’ he bawled, to make himself heard over the tumult of the crowd. ‘I bid you welcome to this castle and say this to you all: fear not the anger of the French. Our fighting men are most valiant. Our walls are impregnable. Our storerooms are full. They shall never subdue us – never!’

He paused to allow the shouts from the multitude to subside a little. And they did become quiet – or as quiet as any crowd of two and a half thousand souls can be.

‘We have the strength, we have the will, we have the courage to hold this castle and, by God, we shall hold it until this French rabble before our walls is dispersed.’

Roger de Lacy raised a hand in the air and pointed a finger north-west. ‘Our sovereign lord, King John himself, will never allow us to be defeated. Even now, he is mustering his armies, gathering his loyal men, and he will ride to our aid and crush our enemies like ants beneath his boot heel. Our task, and the task of every man and woman here, is to stand fast, to keep our courage high. We must keep the faith, keep a good watch from the walls, and put our trust in God and good King John!’

It was a short speech, plain but powerful – much like its maker. I must admit I was more than a little moved by it. Kit, standing beside me, had tears in his eyes when it was done. I noticed even Robin was smiling quietly as he listened to de Lacy’s stirring words.

Afterwards de Lacy paid us the honour of a visit in the outer bailey. He strode into the circular hall on the second floor on the big south tower, the largest chamber in the bailey, which Robin had appropriated as his headquarters, and formally bid us welcome before briskly making it quite clear what our duties would be.

‘This bailey is your responsibility, Locksley, you and your rascally Wolves. I can give you a few extra men-at-arms from the garrison, and some engineers for the springald, but you must defend this bastion against all they can throw at you. You must hold it.’ He fixed Robin and me in turn with his hot brown eyes to make sure we understood.

‘This, most likely, is where the hammer blow will fall,’ he said. ‘And you must suffer it, and repel them with all your strength. I’m counting on you – both of you. For if we can hold this bailey, if we can hold out
here
’ – he stamped a mail-shod foot on the wooden floor planks – ‘I truly believe we can hold Château Gaillard for the King until the Heavens fall.’

The constable’s words were put to the test the next day. For the French, flushed with pride with their victories on the pontoon, against the little fort on the Isle of Andely and by the easy capture of the town itself, came eagerly to attack our walls.

They did not attack the outer bailey, as we expected. Indeed, when they came they did so without science or skill, straight up the path to the main gate in the middle bailey in a sprawling horde. I believe a good many of the men who came against us that day were drunk, either on wine looted from the town or merely on the joy of victory.

The first I saw of it was a crowd of men-at-arms gathering and being harangued by a pair of energetic young knights in the wide hollow between the river and the gates of the town, at the bottom of the chalk track that led up to the castle. King Philip was not present; I am not certain he even knew about this attempt on our walls, for I could see his banner flying in the French encampment on the far side of the Seine.