The Iron Castle (Outlaw Chronicles) (26 page)

‘I cannot admit you,’ de Lacy said again. ‘I cannot. You must depart these walls. Go with God!’

The confused shouting broke out once more.

‘Go from here,’ said de Lacy. ‘You must go hence from my walls or face the consequences.’ He made a gesture with his right hand as if plucking a low-hanging apple from a branch above his head. On the top of the towers to both left and right of the gatehouse, I saw men standing up and stringing bows. It was the archers. It was the Wolves.

The Useless Mouths saw them and wailed.

‘Go,’ said de Lacy. ‘Go with God!’

The archers had nocked arrows and were beginning to draw the hempen strings back on their bows.

‘Robin,’ I said, ‘you cannot do this. These are our people. We owe them our protection. Not … this!’

Vim was standing before me. Big, grim, calm-faced. ‘Let this go, Alan.’

I looked the mercenary hard in the eye. ‘Get out of my path, Vim, right now. I would speak face to face with my liege lord.’

‘No, Sir Alan.’ Vim sounded oddly sad. ‘I cannot. He is my lord, too, and he has asked me to make sure that you see sense.’

‘Out of my way, Vim. Last chance.’ My fingers were on the handle of my sword, and I believe I would have used it and taken the consequences, but I was distracted by a wild shout from inside the walls. Stefan was running across the courtyard of the middle bailey. He had a sword in one hand and a dagger in the other and was waving both madly as he ran towards the guard post where the men who operated the opening mechanism stood watch. He was calling for them to open the gates and yelling that if they would not he would slay them and undertake the task in their stead.

He got within a dozen paces of them before he was felled by four arrows that thumped into his belly and chest simultaneously, dropping him stone dead. I made to draw Fidelity, but felt a grip of iron on my wrist, and now Robin’s face was inches from my own.

‘Let this go, Alan. Think, just think for a moment.’

His extraordinary silver eyes were looking into mine with such an intensity that I was forced to close my own. I let out a great, shuddering evil breath, my shoulders dropped, my soul sagged, and I released the grip on my hilt.

‘Come with me,’ said Robin, and he half-pulled and half-guided me off the gallery into the little space at the top of the steps to the courtyard.

He stared into my face. ‘Have you mastered yourself?’

I nodded.

‘Do you understand why we cannot let them back in?’

I nodded again. I was on the lip of disgracing myself with childish tears.

‘I will tell you anyway. So that we are as clear as crystal. We cannot hold this castle and feed those hungry mouths. It is a cruel choice. King John will surely come to our aid. But we must do our part. We must hold this castle until he comes and we cannot do so if we are dead of hunger. We cannot feed them and also feed our fighting men. We cannot hold even another week against Philip if we must nourish those wretches down there. It is the castle or them. Tell me you understand.’

I nodded a third time.

‘Tell me in words. Say to me the words: “I understand”.’

‘Robin, you tell me, why do we serve this King?’

‘You know why, and if we are not true to our oaths, we are nothing. Our oaths are our honour. Now, tell me you understand.’

‘I … understand.’

‘Good, now go and find Kit and explain matters to him. And get yourself something to eat. But not too much. From now on, every morsel is a precious jewel.’

The Useless Mouths – oh, how I came to shudder at that name – built pathetic homes on the steeps slopes of the hill below Château Gaillard, to the north-east of the citadel, between the castle walls, the banks of the Seine and the earth ramparts of the French. It was a pitiful encampment: a few scrapes in the chalk to make shallow caves to keep the children out of the worst of the weather; a few shelters of crudely hacked out turfs supported by mud walls, sticks and stones; no food but what could be scavenged from the bare hillside – herbs, roots, a berry or two – and nothing to keep them warm but the rags on their backs.

It was early November then, cold and windswept, with a constant threat of rain or worse. After a few days the weakest among the Useless Mouths began to die.

Even inside the castle we had scant stores left. We had fed the people of Petit Andely for nearly two months, a dull and meagre diet, to be sure, but the vastly swollen population of the castle had eaten its way through nine-tenths of Château Gaillard’s stores. Winter was coming. But we had the fighting men to hold until John came and all those inside the walls shared the grim determination that the sacrifices made by the Useless Mouths would not be in vain. Or so our leaders told us.

De Lacy addressed the whole garrison from the wall of the inner bailey on the day after the last of the Useless Mouths had been expelled. It was a rousing speech, once again, about courage and fortitude, mentioning the strength of our walls and the rightness of our cause. He assured us once more that King John was even now collecting fresh men-at-arms from England to ride to our rescue. I did not pay much attention, to be honest. I could hardly bear to look at the castellan, let alone swallow his foul nonsense about the Christ-like sacrifice of the noble citizens of Petit Andely.

‘We have thirty-one valiant knights here,’ de Lacy said, ‘full of honour and prowess and armed with a determination that can never be conquered; we have two hundred and fifty-three brave men-at-arms. And we have a hundred and four strong and willing men who have bravely volunteered for this fight…’

And one brave woman, I thought to myself.

I looked up at the ramparts where Roger de Lacy was ignoring the drizzle and exhorting his garrison to fight on, and looked to his left at Robin, Father de la Motte and Sir Joscelyn Giffard standing there stern and silent – and at Matilda Giffard, who seemed to be smiling down only at me.

The rations were cut again, to a quarter of a loaf of bread per man per day and a piece of rock-hard cheese no bigger than a dove’s egg. A cup of dried peas or sometimes beans and a few shreds of salted beef were issued to each man once a week, and in the outer bailey we made big cauldrons of soup from it and all the members of a watch shared it equally. It was a watery, bland-tasting slop, but it was hot and, at least once a week, with our bread and cheese ration we could feel almost satisfied. The rest of the time we were hungry. Hunger crouched darkly beside us all day, every day, like our own shadows, ever-present, never forgotten. The weight began to fall from my body; I bored another hole in my belt, and then another. I dreamed of food; the men seemed to talk of it all the time – great feasts they had enjoyed, the feast they would like to have when the siege was over. It only made things worse. But, if there was little food and no wine to be had, there was at least plenty of water. I took to drinking it hot, in large beakers with dried herbs infused in the brew to give it some taste. Pints of it. It made the stomach feel, for a while, that it was full. The faces around me began to look gaunt. My belly skin became looser.

But, if we suffered hardships within the walls, it did not bear comparison with the fate of the Useless Mouths.

The weather grew colder; in December the rain turned to snow. The calls for mercy from the folk outside our walls never seemed to cease, day or night. One of the volunteers threw his bread ration down to his aged mother who called out to him piteously from the bottom of the east wall – the poor old woman was crushed to death in the riot as her fellow unfortunates, now thin as wraiths, stick-like confections of rags and burning, febrile want, fought each other tooth and nail for the crust. They had to be driven from the walls with crossbow bolts. Roger de Lacy had the volunteer hanged in the courtyard as an example. Wasting food became a capital offence. We closed our ears to the cries of the Useless Mouths, but hideous stories began to circulate – among these wretches, Kit told me, a woman had given birth to a stillborn child only to see it ripped apart and devoured still warm from her body by her own family and friends. I drank my hot water and herbs, munched my crust of bread and nibbled my nugget of cheese – and gave thanks for it to God.

Our one piece of good luck was that, in the middle of December, a few days before the Feast of the Nativity, the bombardment, which had slowed to a trickle in the previous weeks, a few missiles loosed a day, stopped altogether. Perhaps the siege-machines had broken down; perhaps they had run out of missiles. Perhaps the engineers who manned them had gone home to their families for Christmas to feast on roast goose and fat pork and fruit pies with thick cream, and to make merry with wine and cider, the Wolves muttered, eyes murderous with jealousy.

On Christmas day, Vim, Robin, Kit and I dined on a pair of fat rats that Kit had trapped in the storerooms, killed, skinned, gutted and stuffed with crumbled bread and herbs, smeared with a little oil and salt, and roasted. They were, I must confess, absolutely delicious. Robin begged, bought or borrowed, but most likely stole, a skin of good red wine from somewhere. My lord and I sang some of the jollier English folk songs together; Vim told us some blood-curdling stories of his life as a mercenary; Kit became dizzy and gigglesome on the single cup of wine he drank; and we were able to celebrate the birth of Our Lord in decent style.

One piece of bad luck in that bad time, was that Tilda took up a post in the underground storerooms acting as an unofficial clerk to Sir Benedict Malet. Her ability to read, write and calculate numbers meant that although, being a woman, she could not fight on the walls, she was valuable to the castle in the recording and husbanding of our dwindling stores – not that she would ever have been expelled as one of the Useless Mouths. Her father, and for that matter I, would never have allowed that to happen. But this also meant that, while I saw her twice a week when I went to collect the rations for the outer bailey, I could never be alone with her for any length of time. Benedict, that lardy pimple-garden, was always interrupting us in our private conversations and sending Tilda away on errands when I dropped by, asking her to fetch this sack or that box, to take a message to the guards in the keep or other such excuses to keep her out of my company. And I could not see much of her when she was not employed with the store work, for now she was the only woman in the castle, Sir Joscelyn kept an especially close eye on her and she was cloistered in his quarters in the inner bailey for many hours of every day, and for all of the hours of darkness.

I made matters worse between us by embarrassing her and making a fool out of myself on the third day of Christmas. I went to the storeroom in the middle of the afternoon meaning to ask her to take a stroll with me around the battlements, for the snow had made the surrounding countryside quite beautiful – and since the French bombardment had ceased, it seemed safe to do so.

I asked the man-at-arms who guarded the door where she was and he smirked knowingly and told me the Lady Matilda was in the back of the store-cave. I didn’t like his grin and pushed past him roughly, entering the cool limestone cave with its weird greenish walls. My heart sank to see the depleted state of the stores. Three months before this place had been packed tight, with boxes, barrels and sacks of grain piled high against the walls – now those near the entrance were bare and reflecting a ghostly light from outside, and one had to enter deep into the dim recesses, down wide tunnels that twisted and turned, to find anything worth consuming. I did not want to alarm Tilda, and so I called her name only softly, as I advanced.

After a dozen yards I saw a shape moving on a mound of grain sacks. Bigger than a woman, but I could definitely see arms and legs. I called Tilda’s name again and heard a sharp cry of terror as her face came into the light. It was my beloved and there was a man grappling with her, assaulting her, or so it seemed.

I took three fast steps, grabbed a handful of cloth with my left hand, and pulled the fellow away from Tilda. My right fist, with my full shoulder behind it, smashed into the man’s large, pale face – a beautiful punch, perfectly timed and containing all my strength – and he was hurled away to crash against the walls and fall limply to the floor.

At the instant of my hitting him, I realised the obvious. It was, of course, Sir Benedict Malet, and he had been trying to defile my beloved girl with his filthy fat-boy lust. I pulled Fidelity from its sheath and was preparing to slaughter the half-conscious dung-heap as he lay bleeding on the floor, when Tilda jumped on me and grabbed my sword arm with both her hands.

‘Do not do it, Alan, for my sake. Do not hurt him any more!’

‘After what he was trying to do to you? He needs to die.’

‘No, no, you mistake the situation. He was helping me. He was trying to help.’

I looked at her in confusion. She released my sword arm.

‘It is all just a silly misunderstanding, Sir Alan,’ she said, smiling prettily at me through wide, teary eyes. ‘Bennie would never hurt me. There was a spider caught in my hair; it had crawled in under my headdress, and I stupidly cried out and Bennie gallantly came to my aid. He was trying to help me get the spider out. That is all.’

I stood there feeling like the biggest fool in Christendom. Benedict was shaking his bloody head and trying to get to his feet.

I said formally, ‘Sir Benedict, I must crave your pardon. I acted rashly and without thought.’ I took a step towards him and held out my right hand to help him to his feet. He cringed away as if I had offered to strike him again. His nose streamed with blood; from its misshapen look, I guessed it to be broken.

I did not know what to do.

‘I hope you can forgive me, Tilda,’ I said. ‘I am truly sorry.’

‘Well, yes, I forgive you, Alan. But perhaps you might leave us in peace now and I will tend to Bennie’s hurt. Can’t you see you are frightening him?’

‘Ah, yes … Benedict, I am very sorry, old fellow, you see I thought that—’

‘Alan. You will leave us now. This instant, if you please,’ said Tilda, with more than a little steel in her tone.