Suddenly I found myself face to face with Peter the vintenar, a battle snarl on his lips, a bloody sword in his fist — and the red fog in my mind slowly began to clear; I realized that the walkway was now clear of living enemies. Taking a huge gulp of air, I looked over the wall and saw that the whole attacking force was in full retreat. The surviving men beside me atop the gatehouse wall jeered them as they ran, our faces ruddy, and streaming with sweat from the heat of the conflagration below the front gate. My mail was thickly clotted with blood, my sword felt as heavy as a bar of lead, and my beloved boar-adorned shield had been battered and hacked out of shape and was now mangled almost beyond recognition.
But we had won.
With the sun low in the west, a mere two fingers above the horizon, I knew the enemy would not come again that day. But our victory had come at a heavy price. On my side of the gate, there were fewer than a score of our men still standing, and many of them were sorely gashed and bleeding. And below us, in the centre of the wall, the big wooden gate, our bulwark, our main defence, was beginning to char and blister and burn. Unless we acted swiftly, the fire that was consuming the ram and its penthouse would take the gate with it and leave our entrance open to attack the next day.
I organized the whole and only lightly wounded men — and there were not fifty of them among the entire castle’s garrison — into a bucket chain and we relayed water from the River Avre to men at the top of the gatehouse which they used to sluice down the outside of the front gate to keep it from burning all the way through. It was hot, dirty, sopping work, and I took my place in the chain, too. The men could only stand at the top of the gatehouse for a few moments before being driven back by the heat — but the water kept coming, bucketful by bucketful, and gradually the blaze was defeated. It was well after dark when the oily fire was finally doused, and the ram was left a charred, smouldering spine among the blackened ribs of its housing. Even then I did not let the men rest: we built a ramshackle inner gate behind the scorched outer portal, not much more than a breastwork of boxes, tables, chairs, empty barrels, bales of straw… anything that a man could stand behind and fight. Hanno bullied the men with urgent energy and no little cruelty to keep them at their tasks: but even he was haggard and drawn when at last we agreed that there was nothing more that could be accomplished that night. After organizing a skeleton sentry roster, we went in search of food and water and somewhere to curl up and sleep.
In the morning, we would fight again — and I was certain that we would not be able to keep them out this time.
In the morning, the French knights, hungry for their vengeance, would easily smash through the charred gate, leap their great destriers over the chest-high tangle of barrels and chairs and stable-yard detritus, and the final slaughter inside the castle would begin.
In the morning, we would all die.
Chapter Four
In the morning, when I awoke — stiff, my whole body bruised and aching, my blond hair and eyebrows singed — King Philip and the bulk of his army were gone.
It seemed a miracle, and I gave thanks on my knees to God and St Michael, the warrior archangel, whom I felt certain had preserved us. We were still besieged, of course, but the great royal tent with the fluttering fleur-de-lys was nowhere to be seen, and more than half the enemy’s strength had departed. The siege engines were still there, the trebuchets and the mangonel; companies of men-at-arms still marched about the camp; French breakfasts were still being cooked over hundreds of small fires; and scores of horses were still tethered in their neat lines — but, astoundingly, our doom had been lifted. I watched the enemy encampment with Sir Aubrey from the roof of the tower, and though I tried very hard, it was impossible not to believe that we were saved.
Sir Aubrey was pale — he had had the crossbow quarrel removed the night before and he was walking only with great difficulty — but he managed the climb to the top of the tower without a word of complaint. He was clearly a man with steel in his spine.
‘Where do you think they have gone?’ I asked him.
He shrugged — then tried to disguise a wince. ‘I think they must have overestimated our strength. They cannot know how weak we are or, as we speak, they would be tearing down the gate and bursting into the courtyard.’
‘We must not relax our vigilance,’ I said, trying to appear the stern warrior, quite unmoved by our unexpected reprieve from certain death.
‘Indeed,’ said Sir Aubrey. ‘They would still have more than enough men to take this castle if they had the strength of will to see it through.’
‘Indeed,’ I said, but I found that I was beaming at the older man, and I saw that a relieved smile had wreathed his leathery, pain-marked features as well.
The enemy, it seemed, were not of a mind to try conclusions with us again that day; and having seen that wakeful sentries were posted, and all the men had food and watered wine, and our horses were as comfortable as we could make them, I set off for the makeshift infirmary to check on the wounded and visit Father Jean.
I took Thomas with me, and found the priest cradling a dying man, giving him the comfort of absolution. The fellow was one of my men-at-arms, a former farmhand from the Locksley valley who had sought adventure in the ranks of Robin’s men and become a good, steady cavalryman. He had been eviscerated by an axe blow in the last attack against the right-hand side of the wall, Sir Aubrey’s section, the evening before. With that gaping wound, and the pink-white ropes of his guts plainly visible, I was surprised that he had lasted this long. He was in agony but gripped my hand hard and died almost silently, weeping few tears and only crying out once — ‘Oh Lord Christ Jesus, save me’ — as Father Jean made the sign of the cross on his forehead. I found I was much moved by his courage, and felt my own eyes begin to moisten. I thought grimly that one day it would be me lying on a mound of dirty, bloody straw, in a draughty stable somewhere far from home, surrounded by other stricken men, riding into the next life on a wave of white-hot pain. I shuddered; I hoped I’d make as brave a death as he did when my time came. As I looked away from his corpse, I saw that Thomas was standing by the side of the open stable door and sobbing openly and without the slightest sense of shame.
I stood and went over to him and put my arm around his shoulders. ‘Do not weep, Thomas,’ I said. ‘He was a good man, a good soldier and a good Christian, and he is at peace in Heaven with God and his angels now.’
Thomas stared up at me with his deep, oak-brown eyes. ‘It is not him, so much as all of them. All those dead men; and the ones I killed, especially.’