“Why were you two spared?”
“We are not soldiers. We were unarmed.”
“All the easier to cut you down where you stood.”
“They preferred to keep us alive, Gervase.”
“For what purpose?”
“This is one,” said Omri, taking up the harp again to conjure some music from its strings. “There are no bards in England but they are revered in Wales.”
“Throwing you in here is an act of reverence?”
“I still breathe, I still eat, I still sing.”
“And your companion?”
Omri sighed. “I am more concerned about him than about myself.
Though I have sung at the courts of the great and the good, I have slept in barns and fields along the way. This dungeon stinks no worse than a stable. I can put up with it. My companion is less robust.”
“Young and vulnerable, then?”
“Do not bother about him, Gervase,” advised the old man. “Think only of yourself. Our case is different. We were brought here for one purpose, you for another.”
“You were ambushed in Wales and brought here,” said Gervase, puzzled. “Why to Monmouth? We have heard no rumours of insurrec-tion. Can the castle be in Welsh hands?”
Omri the Blind went off into a fit of laughter.
“Alas, no!” he said. “If it were, I would not be down here with you.
I would be up there in the hall, celebrating the occasion with a song of victory. Monmouth, I fear, is still a Norman castle.”
“Then why do they hold me here?” said Gervase with a burst of indignation. “Do they know who I am? What I am?”
“Only too well, I suspect.”
Gervase became restless. Rising to his feet, he picked his way around the little rectangle of stone and accumulated filth. When his foot met the pile of bones, he laid the skull gently beside them. Omri’s reconnaissance had been thorough. The window was high in one wall, set in a deep recess and slashed by thick bars. Standing on tiptoe, he could just touch the iron with his fingers. A welcome gust of air filtered in. Thin shafts of light would follow in time.
“That is not the way, Gervase,” murmured Omri.
“What?”
“You will never escape through that window.”
“How else?”
“Through the door.”
“We could never budge it.”
“They can,” said the old man. “With a key. It depends on how eager you are to get free of this foul.”
“I would do anything, Omri.”
“Even take a man’s life?”
Gervase hesitated. “Only if my own were in danger.”
“Practice with your weapon.”
“They took away my sword and dagger.”
“A piece of rope can be as deadly a weapon as either,” said Omri.
“And they left you with two lengths of it.”
Gervase stirred with excitement. There was hope.
Goronwy waited until first light before he ordered a more detailed search. He and his men had camped beside the clump of trees near Raglan. Dawn found them spread across a mile or more as they looked for more bodies. None were found. Goronwy gathered his soldiers in the shade of the trees and assigned new duties.
Two of them rode back towards Powys to take news of the ambush to Cadwgan ap Bleddyn. Two more carried the same message along the road towards Caerleon. A burial detachment was formed and the eight soldiers from the escort were laid in shallow graves to protect their bodies from scavengers. The stench of death was already begin-ning to spread.
Sleep had not dulled Goronwy’s rage. When he and his men rode up to Raglan itself, the young man’s temples were still pulsing madly.
He had found the reason for the delay and buried the victims of the attack. Rescue and retribution were now his twin aims. Raglan itself was a tiny hamlet made up of mean cottages. A mangy goat was tethered outside one dwelling. Chickens squawked outside another. Sheep ranged the hills all around.
The meagre population was dragged from its hovels to face Goronwy’s stern interrogation. They were simple souls. Their testimony was honest. They had seen the soldiers come down the road from Monmouth and they had heard the sounds of the attack. Beyond that, they had little to add. Violence had locked them indoors. They had been too frightened to venture out to see the results of the ambush.
Their description of the soldiers matched that of the shepherd boy who had been questioned in the night. Goronwy at least knew one vital fact. Welsh soldiers had been killed by Norman attackers. The armed escort from Caerleon had been ambushed by men from across the border.
Brandishing his sword, Goronwy rode up and down.
“Is there anything else you can tell us?”
“No, my lord,” said the one of the peasants.
“Did you not hear anything as they went past?”
“Nothing.”
“No word? No command? No name?”
Another man edged forward. “I heard a name, my lord.”
“What was it?”
“The soldiers rode past my door as I was putting the harness on my donkey. A name was spoken and they laughed.”
“What name?”
“Cruel laughter, my lord. It made my blood run cold.”
Goronwy knocked him over with the flat of his sword.
“The name, you idiot!” he snarled. “What was the name?”
“Richard Orbec.”
Richard Orbec led the retreat at full gallop, taking his men in a wide loop before powering down the hill towards the house. Forty knights were sweating in their armour in the morning sun. Some carried spears, but most had swords in their hands. Their horses sent up a flurry of earth and grass as they descended the hill in an ordered retreat.
Orbec himself was first across the drawbridge and first to dismount inside the palisade. His men poured in through the gates and tugged their animals to a halt before jumping from the saddle. The drawbridge was hauled up and the gates were shut. On their lord’s command, the knights ran to defend various points on the ramparts against an invisible enemy.
It was an impressive performance, but it did not entirely satisfy Orbec. He pulled off his helm and beckoned his captain across.
“We are still too slow,” he said, sharply.
“We can ride no faster, my lord.”
“The men can be deployed more effectively once they are inside the defences. The weak point is at the rear of the house.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Station four more archers there.”
“I will.”
“We’ll have fresh timber cut to strengthen the palisade.”
The captain nodded. “Is that all for today, my lord?”
“We will practice one more time.”
“We are as ready now as we will ever be.”
“That is what I once thought,” said Orbec, crisply. “In Normandy.
You can never prepare enough for any eventuality. Trouble may strike when we least expect it. The speed of our response must be decisive.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Mount up again! We’ll ride in from the east this time.”
Canon Hubert and Brother Simon were conscientious members of the commission. The Domesday returns for Herefordshire had thrown up a number of irregularities and it was their task to look into them. One of their number had unaccountably disappeared and a second had gone in search of him. Hubert and Simon felt it their duty to press on with the allotted task on their own. The village of Llanwarne could not provide them with a shire hall, but they could still examine a witness, if only in an informal manner.
Ilbert the Sheriff was very restive under questioning.
“I am not involved in this enquiry in any way!”
“We believe that you are, my lord sheriff,” said Hubert.
“The dispute is between Maurice Damville and Richard Orbec.”
“It also concerns Warnod.”
“His last remains are six feet below the earth.”
“A legacy yet survives.”
“Legacy?”
“Yes,” said Hubert. “Far be it from me to prefer the claim of a Saxon thegn over that of two Norman lords, but justice must be served here.
This great survey of ours is not simply an inventory of the nation’s wealth. It brings to light theft, fraud, forgery, wrongful annexation, and all the other appalling abuses that have taken place in the shires.”