Lionheart (43 page)

An alternative explanation of the siege is that Richard had his sights on capturing the largest gold mine in France, which was situated not far from Châlus. Whichever is true, he defied the Lenten truce by sending Mercadier to besiege the nearby castles of Nontron and Piégut, and thus ensure that his retreat from Châlus, if it became necessary because Viscount Aymar arrived with a superior force, would be unhindered. He himself then headed for Châlus with a force of about 100 mercenaries. At their approach on 25 March, the defenders were desperate because he had announced in advance that he would give no quarter.

It says much for the construction of the castle that the paltry force of defenders held out through three days of determined assault. What happened after its fall is a good example of the level of violence and bloodshed in the routine siege of a relatively unimportant castle. On the evening of 26 March, Richard was checking the progress of the sappers undermining the outer wall. With the tunnel entrance shielded by wattle fences to protect them from the defenders’ missiles, they had dug a huge cavern in the hillside. The roof was propped up with tree trunks copiously packed with pig carcases smeared with pitch and other combustible material which, when fired, would consume the props and bring down the wall above, making a breach through which the attackers could swarm.

Richard was wearing a helmet but no body armour. Instead, he was carrying a buckler to fend off stray missiles fired from the arrow slits high up in the walls of the keep. Their own supplies of arrows long since exhausted, the men of the garrison were reduced to scrambling about at risk to life and limb in the outer bailey, collecting missiles fired by the attackers that had not broken or been deformed on impact. Pierre Basile had spent the day doing this and dodging the incoming fire under the shelter of a huge frying pan from the castle kitchen, which he used as a shield. He was now on watch at the arrow slit, which is still visible in the wall of the circular keep, and waiting for a target of opportunity before daylight failed.

There are two versions of what happened next. In the first, Richard let his shield drop at the very second a reused arrow from his own armoury flew through the air to pierce his shoulder. The more credible version is that the missile that struck him was a reused crossbow quarrel. The accuracy of a crossbow was greater than that of a bow and the quarrel travelled faster than an arrow, so that a peasant might deliberately kill a king, which is why the weapon had been outlawed by the Lateran Council of 1139 as being unchivalrous. Ironically, Richard was one of the kings who had defied the ban; his troops had used this weapon both in Cyprus against Isaac Comnenus’ forces and against the Saracens in the Holy Land. He was also credited by William le Breton with having introduced the weapon into France when hiring mercenary Genoese crossbowmen.
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Caught literally off-guard, Richard was hit by the quarrel at the junction of the neck and left shoulder.
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Giving no sign to the mercenaries around him of the pain he was suffering, he mounted his horse and rode back to the house commandeered for his use. While it would have been difficult to conceal an arrow nearly 3ft long sticking out of his shoulder, a far shorter quarrel could have been hidden in the poor light in order not to affect the mercenaries’ morale. Richard had been wounded many times, and this was not the first crossbow bolt to pierce his skin. Back in his quarters, he was laid on a couch, where Mercadier’s medic attempted to pull out the missile in the flickering light of resinous torches. The wooden shaft broke off, as it was designed to do, and revealed the mark of the Angevin armoury at Chinon, leaving the pointed metal head still deep in the wound. Fortified with alcohol, the only analgesic available, Richard had to grit his teeth and bear the medic’s clumsy efforts to cut deeper and deeper into the shoulder muscles, hampered by a layer of fat: his patient had been putting on weight for some time.
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With a bandage to hold in place a poultice, Richard carried on directing the siege next day, unaware that infection had entered his tissues, whether on the quarrel itself or on the hands and knife of the medic. By the morning of 28 March the stench of gas gangrene and steadily increasing pain told him that an agonising death lay ahead. In his years of campaigning he had seen thousands of men, women and children dying at his command or in his cause. He therefore had no illusions about his condition and despatched to Eleanor at the abbey in Fontevraud a sealed letter written by his chaplain Milo, instructing her to hasten with all possible speed to Châlus.

Receiving the missive, Eleanor despatched the most discreet of messengers, Abbess Matilda of Bohemia, to fetch Berengaria from Maine. Once that duty had been discharged, Matilda’s orders were to seek out Prince John, wherever in the north he might be. Eleanor’s choice of a nun for the second part of this errand suggests that she had reason to suspect John of being in territory where an Angevin knight, or even a cleric from Fontevraud, might not be welcome.

Setting out herself with the abbot of Turpenay and a small escort, she covered the distance of more than 100 miles separating Fontevraud from Châlus by travelling day and night.
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Despite her speed, on her arrival at the siege the stink of the gases formed by bacteria in the wound and the discoloration of the necrotised tissue told her that her beloved son was beyond any help, apart from spiritual consolation from Pierre Milo, his chaplain and erstwhile crusading comrade.
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Ever the stateswoman, Eleanor had come not to give way to her feelings, but to safeguard the succession by recording discreetly the last wishes of the dying king of England. Who else was present is unknown. If a formal testament was dictated to Milo or the abbot of Turpenay, it was never to see the light of day, although Richard’s nephew Otto of Brunswick was afterwards said to have been generously remembered with the bequest of all Richard’s personal jewels and three-quarters of his treasure. What that was worth at this stage is a mystery. Bequests also went to Richard’s favourite religious foundations like the abbey of La Sauve Majeure. As to the succession to all Richard’s many titles, there is no record that the clause in the Treaty of Messina naming Arthur of Brittany was rescinded. Had Richard changed his mind and named John instead, Eleanor would almost certainly have acted differently in the immediate future.

The dying king had not confessed and been given absolution since 1194, before his second coronation at Winchester. This awkward fact was glossed over by the chroniclers pretending that the soul of the crusader king had been labouring under an un-Christian hatred for Philip Augustus, which he had not been prepared to renounce, and could therefore not make an act of contrition and receive absolution.
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The more likely reason is his refusal to pretend contrition for the forbidden practices against which the Norman hermit had warned him in order to take the sacrament. Only on his deathbed could he sincerely say that he would not sin again.

After the sap was fired and the wall breached – there is still a hollow in the hillside marking the spot – Richard told the mercenaries, who had slaughtered all the other defenders, to haul Pierre Basile before him in chains. As an act of charity before meeting his Maker, he then pardoned the sergeant-at-arms as being an instrument of God’s displeasure at the defiance of the Lenten truce constituted by the siege of Châlus.
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He ordered Basile to be given a purse of gold coins and released. Notwithstanding, the wretched sergeant-at-arms was later flayed alive by the mercenaries and hanged from the battlements of the castle he had defended, literally, to his last breath.
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As was the custom, Richard then ordered the disposal of the parts of his own body. His heart was to go to Rouen Cathedral, where Young Henry lay among the former dukes of Normandy. The rest of his body was to be buried in Fontevraud Abbey at the feet of Henry II, in symbolic atonement for a son’s betrayal of his father. To England he gave not a thought. In the early evening of 6 April, eleven days after suffering the fatal wound, he received absolution and communion from Milo the chaplain.

Thus, Eleanor’s favourite son died in agony at the age of 42, having bequeathed his genes only to one bastard, Philip of Cognac, who was alleged to be aged about 15 at this time. What happened to the treasure of Châlus, the greed for which had caused Richard’s death, is not recorded. Was the flaying alive of Pierre Basile an act of vengeance for daring to kill the king who pardoned him, or torture to make him betray the whereabouts of the treasure? Since it was never heard of again, either it never existed or else it was hacked up and shared out among the mercenaries, later being melted down as bullion.

In Normandy on 7 April William the Marshal received a letter dictated by Richard after his injury, appointing William castellan of the castle of Rouen and guardian of its treasure. Staying at the priory of Notre Dame du Pré across the river was Archbishop Hubert Walter. Guessing that the wound must be serious, they discussed the succession. With William supporting John and the archbishop’s vote going to Arthur of Brittany, these two men, who both knew Richard’s last surviving brother well, mirrored Eleanor’s dilemma.
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On 10 April another messenger brought them the news of Richard’s death. When this reached Paris, Philip proclaimed as suzerain of the continental possessions that Arthur of Brittany took precedence over Prince John as the son of his elder brother Geoffrey.

Eleanor knew that the succession must be settled before the news of Richard’s death sparked disaffection among his vassals, inciting Philip Augustus to profit from the death of his great enemy. For the second time, a king’s death had left her the only figure of regal authority in England and the continental possessions. Torn between the unsuitability of both Prince John and Arthur of Brittany, now a 14-year-old puppet of Philip Augustus, as successor to all Richard’s titles, she rode back to Fontevraud at the slow pace of the funeral cortège, hoping to find a way to ensure that the empire she and Henry II had built would not crumble to dust one short decade after his death.

Soon after the cortège reached Fontevraud, Berengaria arrived to officially mourn the husband she had hardly known, and whom she was to survive by a celibate widowhood of thirty-one years devoted to good works, including the foundation of the Cistercian convent of L’Épau near Le Mans, where her effigy can still be seen in the chapter house. With her came Matilda of La Perche, daughter of Matilda of Saxony, to press the case of a third contender for the succession: her brother Otto of Brunswick. Of the three, he had been the nearest to Richard, and for a while had acted as duke of Aquitaine, but Eleanor had found his performance sadly lacking in statecraft. The pendulum swung towards John, who at least spoke the language of England that Richard had never learned and even Henry had never properly mastered, using an interpreter for any important conversation.

Tracking John down, Abbess Matilda encountered Bishop Hugh of Lincoln on the road and took him into her confidence,
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which caused him to hurry south to Fontevraud, where he took precedence over the bishops of Agen, Poitiers, Angers and a host of lesser clergy swarming to the royal funeral like bees to honey. With them were the seneschals who had served Richard and now waited anxiously to know who was their new master: Arthur, John or Otto?
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The news of his brother’s death reached John as he dallied in treason yet again, attempting to form a new power bloc by exploiting Constance of Brittany and the Breton lords’ mistrust of Richard, Philip and anyone else who was not a Breton. Hurrying south, he first stopped at the castle at Chinon to find the treasury empty. Meeting Bishop Hugh returning from the funeral, he attempted to enlist the venerable churchman-diplomat’s support in his cause as Richard’s successor.
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Although he had enjoyed a relationship of mutual respect with Henry, the bishop disapproved of all the king’s sons and especially of John, whose experience as an oblate made him hostile to the Church. Despite John’s offer of bribes, Hugh consented only to return to Fontevraud with him and see how matters lay.

On arrival, John hammered on the abbey door demanding to be shown his brother’s tomb
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until restrained by the bishop, who diplomatically obtained permission for them to enter. On 18 April, Easter Sunday, Bishop Hugh gave a sermon in the abbey church on the duties of kingship. It was normal for the noble congregation to fidget and chatter among themselves – except at the three great feasts of Easter, Whitsun and Christmas, they did not take communion, but only attended the service – but John’s behaviour exceeded normal bounds. He twice yelled at the bishop to cut his sermon short, and was taken aback the third time when ordered to leave the sanctuary.
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It was an inauspicious beginning for a prince who needed all the support he could get from the Church.

He also needed Eleanor, as dowager queen and witness to Richard’s last wishes, to rebut Philip’s announcement that Arthur was the legitimate successor, but she withdrew into retreat instead. Was that to hide her grief? Given her six decades in political life, it is more probable that she was still wrestling with the problem of the succession. On 21 April, three days after John’s angry exchanges with Bishop Hugh, she resumed her public duties, granting to the abbey of Turpenay a fish farm at Langeais in consideration of its abbot’s help at Châlus. John was one of the witnesses to this charter, but is described in it only as her ‘very dear son’ and ‘count of Mortain’.
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Why was the abbot being rewarded at this fraught time, when there were matters of great import in abeyance? Had he been present when Richard dictated a will naming Arthur of Brittany or Otto of Brunswick to succeed him? Was the gift a reward for silence? Three months later, on 21 July, Richard’s confidant the chaplain Milo was also rewarded by gifts to his abbey of Le Pin. Was this for his silence too?