On the roof again, averting my eyes from the great hole in the floor, I felt the battlements rock unsteadily under the light touch of my hands. The ground floor I had just left was by now filled with the wounded, most with splinter wounds; as the boulders crashed into the walls with demonic force, spears of wood, sharp as a barber-surgeon’s knife, would burst free from the inside wall, lancing through unarmoured bodies like a hot needle through butter. The stench of blood filled the dank air inside the Tower, and the cries of wounded and bereaved, the frightened women and children, aye, and a few men, echoed around like the moaning of lost souls. We were in Hell. And there was no escape.
And then there was a miracle. I heard the great bells of the Minster ring out, their cheerful peal, a hideous joke in the blood and carnage of the Tower. It was Vespers. The bells rang out endlessly and as I listened, and offered up a prayer to the Virgin to keep me safe, I noticed that the bombardment had stopped. It must have been a quarter of an hour since the last shattering strike. The sun was very low in the sky, and I saw that the mangonel had been all but abandoned by the men who served it. A lonely man-at-arms sat on the front bar of the machine, looking up at the ramshackle remains of the Tower, hunched, battered and bleeding, wooden planks hanging off in crazy shapes. My prayer to the Mother of God had been answered — but as the Vespers’ bells continued to ring out I realised that there might be another explanation for our miraculous respite. It suddenly occurred to me that it was Good Friday, and our Christian tormentors were observing a Truce of God on this holy evening. The bailey was less full than before, though the circle of steel-clad men-at-arms around the Tower was still intact; all who could be excused from the task of keeping us penned in were attending Mass.
Chapter Six
By full dark it was clear that were we indeed being spared any further attack by the mangonel. And I guessed that we would be free from its depredations for the night, but that it would begin again in the morning; followed, when we were battered unrecognisable, by an assault on the ruins by the blood-lusting frustrated citizenry, backed by the trained soldiers of Sir Richard and Sir John. Robin agreed with me.
I suggested to my master that we might go below to help with the interior wall repairs, but he shook his head. ‘They are not going to repair anything,’ he said in a strange chilling voice. ‘They have decided to die. At this moment they are praying, and following the rituals of their faith on this holy day; we must leave them in peace for the moment.’
I stared at him in horror: ‘All of them,’ I asked.
‘All but a very few,’ he replied. ‘Tomorrow you and I, with Reuben and Ruth, will lead a handful out of Jews out of here, and we will surrender to the mercies of Sir John Marshal. Don’t worry, Alan, he will not harm us — you and me. At least, I don’t think he will. There would be… certain repercussions, and I am worth more to him in ransom than as a corpse. As for Reuben and Ruth, I have persuaded them to undergo baptism, and promised to protect them. It’s better than certain death…’
‘Let’s hope Sir John has not heard of Ralph Murdac’s munificent offer of German silver for your head,’ I said grimly.
‘Well, if you have a better plan, let me hear it,’ snapped Robin. I realised that he must have been feeling the strain just as much as I — but still it was an uncharacteristically sharp answer for my master. I had nothing practical to suggest, and so I held my peace.
We passed the hours sitting together in the lee of the rickety battlements, looking up at the stars. I was thinking of Ruth, the touch of her hand against my face, the way her body moved as she walked, and my idiotic promise to her to keep her safe. Below, in the Tower, I could hear the sound of solemn singing as the Jews celebrated their Passover and prepared for the appalling, unthinkable bloodletting to come. Just imagining that kindly faced venerable Rabbi cutting the throats of his family, the knife gripped in his trembling, purple-veined hands, the innocent blood spurting red and soaking his dark sleeve, the loved one slumping in his cradling arms… I couldn’t bear it. Then the singing from below stopped. For a long, long time there was silence; only the distant sounds of the men-at-arms down in the bailey and in the encircling picket lines, joking, cursing, ignorant of the tragedy taking place beneath only fifty yards away, that faint raucous soldierly chorus and the hooting of a distant owl. My scalp prickled and I heard the first cries of anguish. It was a long, sharp, anguished howl, from one throat, and then moments later the cry was taken up by many more: a chorus of the damned wallowing in unbearable torment.
I couldn’t stand it. I scrambled to my feet and made my way across the ruined space, littered with abandoned weapons, unneeded clothing and splinters of wood, to the staircase. ‘Alan,’ cried Robin behind me, sharply, ‘Alan, don’t go down there…’ But I ignored my master and began, with heavy unwilling feet, the leaden tread of a condemned man, to step downwards into the human slaughterhouse.
I have seen some sights, perhaps I have viewed more horror than I have a right to in one soul’s passage across this Earth, but this was one of the most heart-wrenching. Even these days, mind-scarred, jaded and ancient as I am, and tucked up safe in Westbury, I can barely bring myself to revisit that ground floor room in my mind.
But I will try: I owe it to Ruth. It is a debt I must pay.
After the noise, the animal howling of unimaginable grief, the first sensation to strike me was smelclass="underline" long before I had turned the last corner of the staircase I could scent the blood, clogging in my throat, steely, warm and disgustingly sweet. Gazing in on the square hall, I saw that the earth floor was awash, a shimmering crimson lake. And on this slick of human gore, bodies, dozens of bodies, scores; curled like babies, hands and finger most often crooked to their gashed throats, as if in an attempt to force back in the life-sustaining fluid that soaked their hair and lay in pools about their white faces and staring empty eyes. Some of the men were still standing, some looking dazed, appalled at what they had done, others on their knees, eyes raw with weeping, stroking the red-spattered face of a beloved wife or child. And there in the middle of the room was Reuben, eyes wild but focused in his madness, his left arm curled about his daughter, my sweet Ruth, a bright sliver of steel in his right fist.
I shouted ‘No!’ and launched myself across the room, slipping and sliding on the blood-greased floor. Reuben saw me and hesitated and I reached him and grabbed his right arm in my two hands. He was fearfully strong, but Ruth fixed her huge terrified eyes on mine and I managed to pull his arm away. She fell towards me and I wrapped her in my arms and held her sobbing face to my chest, crushing her against my chainmail hauberk, glaring with infinite hatred at Reuben’s exhausted, half-grateful grey-white face. Then Robin was there, he had his hands on Reuben’s shoulders, his blazing eyes boring into the Jew’s face. ‘We agreed,’ he snarled. ‘We had an agreement. You come out with me. Your life is in my hands; I will save you, you have my solemn word.’ He slapped Reuben hard around the face, a ringing blow that snapped the Jew’s head around. Once again Robin’s customary coolness appeared to have deserted him. Reuben shook his head to clear it from the blow but said nothing. I do not think, at that moment, he was capable of speech. He had just come back from the brink of some hellish pit, a mental state I do not even wish to contemplate. And Robin, sensing this, and once more in command of himself, began to bundle his friend’s long, unresisting body away from that charnel house and back up the stairs. I followed with Ruth, who was weeping and shaking uncontrollably in my arms.