Warlord (Outlaw 4) (44 page)

We crossed the bridge, our necks cricked back as we gazed upwards at the castle, and passing through a gatehouse on the other side of the Seine, where we were briefly challenged and then allowed to pass, we rode past a village for the workmen and their families that cowered under the huge bulk of stone above it, and took the narrow road in front of Château-Gaillard, between the castle and the Seine, that wound up to the main entrance.

Above us, atop sheer limestone cliffs, the inner bailey at the north end of the castle with its gigantic towering keep was already constructed and I could see bright banners flying from the battlements and the stick-like figures of men-at-arms standing guard a hundred yards above my head. The walls of the middle bailey were almost complete, but hundreds of men still laboured to construct the circular towers that punctuated its stout fortifications. As we rode up a steep track towards the main gate I saw that an extra layer of defence, an outer bailey, roughly triangular in shape with the beginnings of massive towers at each corner, was in the early stages of construction at the south end of the castle, joined by an arched passage above our heads but separate from the middle bailey. We rode through the narrow road between the middle and outer baileys and turned left to enter the castle through the main gate. The noise in that enclosed passageway was deafening, the shrill ringing of steel chisel on masonry, the shouts of overseers, the crack of raw stone splitting, and the dry stench of dust filling my nostrils – memories of Paris flooded my mind and I felt once again the ache of Hanno’s loss.

King Richard greeted us in his big, round audience room on the first floor of the mighty keep. He was in very high spirits, as usual, but I could see too that while he was animated, he was tired, and more than a few silver flecks were now plainly visible in his red-gold hair. He greeted Robin jovially, slapping him hard on the arm, and laughing hilariously, almost maniacally at some comment
from my lord of Locksley, and then turned his feverish brightness on me and said: ‘Well, my good Blondel, you are here at long last – and what do you think of my one-year-old daughter?’

The world shimmied and seemed to rock beneath my feet. Had the King run mad? Surely he had no children. We would have heard about a royal daughter, for certain, long before she had survived a twelve-month.

A quiet voice murmured at my shoulder. ‘I believe His Royal Highness is referring to this castle, sir,’ said Thomas. ‘He only began its construction last summer – and so it is very nearly one year old.’

The world righted itself. I stammered out something along the lines that it looked to be in a good strategic position, easy to defend …’

‘Easy to defend?’ roared the King, half-laughing, half-shouting. He seemed rather put out by my tepid answer. ‘Is that all you can say, Blondel? When this place is finished, I could defend it with one old man on a lame donkey. Why, I could defend this place if these walls were made of butter!’

Robin stepped in smoothly: ‘People speak of the Château-Gaillard as the greatest fortress in Christendom, Sir Alan,’ he said. And the King beamed at him, and slapped him hard on the back again. ‘And so it will be, Locksley, so it will be, if I’m only allowed to finish it.’

‘It is most impressive, sire,’ I said, the courtier in me finally coming awake. ‘A noble achievement.’

The King was mollified. ‘I am glad that you approve of it, Blondel,’ he said. ‘It is the key to our fortunes in Normandy, I believe. From here we can sally out and attack Philip’s castles with impunity. And if those French rogues challenge us in vast numbers, we can withdraw here, and defy them for months. It is from here, from this fair rock, that I shall retake Gisors! And when I have Gisors again, I shall have the whole of Normandy and the French
Vexin in the palm of my hand. Do not get too comfortable here, Sir Alan. Tomorrow we shall leave for Gournay to show the enemy a thing or two about warfare, and I want you beside me. Reminds me, Locksley, I need to ask something …’

The King gave me a curt nod, and I was dismissed. I bowed, and withdrew a few paces. But as I was turning to go, the King spoke again, in a softer, less abrasive tone: ‘My good Blondel, did you remember to bring your vielle with you from England?’

‘I did, sire.’

‘Will you give us some music after supper tonight?’

‘Gladly, sire.’

The King nodded, and I bowed again and walked out of the keep into the weak May sunshine of the inner bailey.

In a castle bustling with hundreds of knights, squires and men-at-arms – not to mention the innumerable swarms of low-born workmen: carpenters, quarrymen, masons, smiths, diggers and carters, who were hurrying to complete the fortifications – I was very glad to run into an old friend. While Thomas was organizing accommodation for me and my men, and stabling for Shaitan and the other horses – I had brought a palfrey and a pack animal with me from England – I wandered into the courtyard of the middle bailey and watched a knight in a dark-blue surcoat with three golden scallop shells and a dolphin on the chest putting two dozen men-at-arms through their manoeuvres with sword and shield. The knight – my old friend Sir Nicholas de Scras – was demonstrating various cuts to the men-at-arms on a paling, a stout pillar of wood set into the ground in the centre of the middle bailey. I was struck, once again, by Sir Nicholas’s mastery of the art of the blade; his flowing cuts and parries, as he demonstrated a variety of blows on the paling, and the dancer’s grace of his footwork.

As I paused in the shadow of a wine-seller’s awning to admire Sir Nicholas’s skill, I sensed a presence beside me. Turning my
head, I saw a tall man with mop of jet black hair atop a lean dark face bisected with a long white scar: Mercadier was watching with me.

For a few moments neither of us spoke, as the line of men-at-arms advanced, slashing the air with their swords, killing an army of invisible Frenchmen. Then the mercenary leader looked directly at me with his blank brown eyes and said, ‘Hoping to pick up a few new tricks, Sir Knight?’

His tone, with its slight Gascon twang, was just on the polite side of sneering, and though it irked me a good deal, I was determined not to allow him to provoke me into a fight. ‘A gentleman can never learn too much about the skill of arms, I believe. One never knows what scrap of knowledge may one day save one’s life in battle.’

‘A gentleman,’ said Mercadier. ‘Is that what you call yourself now?’ He stared at me, and despite myself I could feel the first spikes of rage blooming behind my brow.

‘I am Sir Alan Dale of Westbury, a knight of Nottinghamshire …’ I began, hating my own foolish pomposity even as the words tumbled from my mouth.

‘I know
what
you are and
where
you come from,’ said Mercadier. He paused, and then drawled: ‘Sir … Knight.’ There was almost no emotion in his voice: he might have been remarking on the price of the wine in the vats behind us. But I could sense a deep, deep fury inside him; a volcanic anger that he kept from erupting only with some difficulty, only by exerting a vast icy control over his whole being. He was what my friend Tuck would have called a cold-hot man: the most dangerous type of individual, according to him. I could well believe the stories that I had heard about Mercadier – his cruelty to those enemies that fell into his power; his disdain for mercy. I thought about Brother Dominic, the monk of the Holy Trinity Abbey in Vendôme, and knew in my heart that I was looking at his killer.

I said nothing but made to turn away. However, Mercadier was speaking again, in that cold, stony voice: ‘I held Normandy for him when he was in prison, you know. When almost everyone else had forsaken him, and sided with John – including you, I believe, and that traitorous creature over there.’ Mercadier nodded at Sir Nicholas de Scras, who was now demonstrating a high lateral block to the crowd of men-at-arms. ‘When everyone else had forsaken the King, I remained loyal. When the rest of his fine
gentlemen
–’ Mercadier pronounced the word with deep contempt – ‘had changed their allegiance as easily as a pair of soiled hose and sided with his renegade fool of a brother, I remained steadfast. My men bled and died on this very soil for the King while he was in the power of his enemies. I took this for him.’ He made a short chopping gesture with his left hand towards his scarred face. ‘And I held his land against the full might of Philip of France, as best I could. Later I took Loches and Bigaroque and Issoudun for him, and killed half my men in doing so – and yet he made
you
a knight. He ranked
you
over me! He gave you Clermont-sur-Andelle – a fine manor that he knew I had long coveted – and a knighthood! You, who are as base-born as I; you, who are no more that the scrapings of a Nottingham gutter, were given a gentleman’s rank …’

My right hand had gone to my hilt, and I think I would have taken my blade to him, had the scarred man’s dull, poisonous flow not been suddenly interrupted by Sir Nicholas de Scras’s familiar cheery voice: ‘Sir Alan Dale, my friend, how wonderful to see you! When did you get here? And Captain Mercadier, greetings – what an honour to be observed at my labours by such distinguished men of the sword.’

I turned to look at Sir Nicholas and managed a tight smile, and when I turned back to Mercadier to say something – I know not what, probably something fatuous about my grandfather the Seigneur – in reply to his insults about my origins, I saw that he
had turned his back on the both of us and was walking briskly away across the courtyard.

‘What an ill-bred, loutish churl,’ said Sir Nicholas, as he stared after Mercadier’s broad retreating back.

‘He is only a little worse born than I,’ I said.

‘Well, you at least have decent manners and a proper sense of honour,’ Sir Nicholas said casually. And I smiled gratefully at him.

The erstwhile Hospitaller and I took a cup of wine together at the seller’s stand, and my friend gave me the mood of the castle. The men-at-arms had been worked hard in recent weeks but remained eager for the fight. They loved Richard for his mad ambitions and reckless disregard for his own safety, and were prepared to fight to the death for their lord and King. Richard had recently returned from a raid at the port of St Valéry. He had found English ships there trading with the French, and had seized their cargoes, burned the vessels to the waterline and hanged the crews. The men had thoroughly approved of the King’s actions, and almost all of them had profited from a day or two of unrestrained looting in the captured French town.

‘You saw the King this morning, Alan – how was his temper?’ asked Sir Nicholas. ‘Is he ready to press the fight against the French once again?’

I answered my friend honestly. ‘He’s more than ready. In fact, I must confess, he seemed rather too enthusiastic, almost hectic; not as calm as I have seen him previously.’

Sir Nicholas nodded thoughtfully. ‘He appears so to me, also,’ he said. ‘But then he has so much that he wishes to achieve this season, and too little time in which to do it.’

And there we left it.

That evening, I played my vielle for my King. It was not a happy occasion. I was not well attuned to the mood of the hall, and perhaps wishing to impress the assembled barons with my sophistication, I played some new compositions. They were perhaps too
mournful, coloured no doubt by my months of melancholy soul-sickness, and I struck the wrong note with that brisk, healthy gathering. The King did not care for them at all, they did not suit his current mood of frenzied optimism, and worse, Mercadier sat next to him during the performance and whispered in his ear. At one point, the poignant climax to a tale of doomed love, Richard actually laughed out loud at something Mercadier had said. I barely managed to finish the piece before withdrawing from the hall with a bow and an excuse, and as much grace as I could scrape together. The next morning we rode off to war.

Chapter Twenty-four

We sallied out of Château-Gaillard joyously and in great force; Richard himself and a hundred knights and two hundred mounted men-at-arms under a forest of spears and brightly coloured banners. The King was accompanied by the grizzled Earl of Striguil and his knights, but not by the Earl of Locksley, who had been ordered to hold Château-Gaillard in place of his royal master. I had been given the honour of leading a contingent of Locksley men in green, fifty strong, as well as my own fourteen men-at-arms, who all sported fresh red surcoats with my snarling boar device on their chests.

Before we left, Robin had taken me aside: ‘John and I are staying here,’ he said, ‘we must hold Château-Gaillard in case it all goes wrong and Richard has to retreat; but in truth we could do with the rest. I’m giving you a company of men, who are a little more rested than the others. And I want you to know that I have full confidence in you. Don’t feel you have anything to prove to anyone. Don’t throw the lives of
any
of my men away – particularly not this one.’ And he clapped me hard on the shoulder.

Mercadier, I was glad to see, was not to accompany the King; the mercenary captain had been dispatched with his own force of
paid men before dawn on a mission of some kind in the direction of Beauvais, deep into enemy territory, while we followed in his tracks making north-east for the border castle of Gournay.

The countryside we rode through had been much ravaged by three years of war – by our men and Philip’s – and there was barely a farm beast alive or a cottage unburnt that we passed on our march that day. We travelled light and fast – all the men well mounted and the column unslowed by baggage or a siege train. By early evening we had travelled the twenty-five miles to Gournay and were greeted at the gate by none other than Richard’s brother Prince John, Count of Mortain and Earl of Gloucester.

My old enemy was a humbled man these days; he saluted his royal brother respectfully, without a trace of his former haughtiness, and bore him away, with William the Marshal, to his private chamber to discuss a plan he had concocted for the imminent assault on Philip’s domains. Prince John did not acknowledge me in any way, although I caught him staring at me when he thought I was not looking, and I was content to busy myself with finding adequate quarters in that crowded castle for the men and our horses. Thomas and I dined poorly on a thin cabbage soup from the castle kitchens, which we supplemented with bread, a soft Norman cheese, and a brisk red wine, from our rations.