‘Why would he do that?’ I said, without taking time to think. ‘What would be the point of such savagery?’
For the tiniest part of a moment, Richard looked uncertain; he opened his mouth to speak but he was superseded before he could utter a word.
A cold, lapidary voice spoke instead. ‘It is true. He killed them all. Slaughtered every one of them. And I helped him do it,’ said Mercadier, who was standing at the King’s elbow. ‘They were traitors, they were scum who served Philip and they all deserved to die.’
The scarred man seemed to be speaking directly at me. I was drawing a deep breath, ready to condemn his brutality, when King Richard spoke: ‘Yes, my brother and Mercadier killed many in Evreux — and God may well judge them for it in the next world. But you should consider this, Sir Alan: in doing so, Mercadier and John saved your life.’
I was completely wrong-footed, baffled, and it must have shown. How could a massacre of townspeople thirty miles away have saved my life?
Richard smiled sadly at me: ‘Why do you think King Philip disappeared so quickly with most of his army? Did you think your handful of men had frightened him away?’
‘No,’ I said, a little nettled, ‘I thought that you had.’
‘It was neither of us, I am afraid,’ Richard replied. ‘It was John. When King Philip heard what my brother had done in Evreux, he hurried there with all possible speed to avenge his people. And while we still hold the castle there, Philip is now furiously besieging our loyal men inside it.
‘But not for long. I will come back to that in a few moments, if I may. For now, let us continue.’ Richard cleared his throat. ‘There are three main areas of operation in this war against Philip. The first theatre is here in Normandy; the second is south around Touraine and the Loire Valley; and the third is in the far south in Aquitaine, my mother’s homeland. In all three areas, Philip will seek to cause mischief, either in person or through his allies; he will bribe and buy support from my vassals where he can, and intimidate others. He will be up to his knavish tricks from Rouen to Toulouse, and I must show my vassals, wherever they are, that I will not forgive treachery and I will put down any rebellion with speed and determination, and I will smash Philip’s armies wherever and whenever they can be brought to battle. And so, we must be prepared to tackle him on all three fronts — simultaneously, if necessary.’ The King took a deep breath. ‘Accordingly, I’ve decided to split the army into three parts.’
There was another outbreak of muttering among the assembled knights. Dividing an army weakened it and if the entire enemy force was able to concentrate against any one part, it could prove disastrous.
‘I have no choice,’ Richard said, answering a rumble of half-asked questions. ‘I must act immediately in several regions hundreds of miles apart, and I cannot be in all places at the same time. Anyway, I have made my decision. This is how it will go: firstly, Prince John and the earls of Leicester and Arundel will hold Normandy for me. They will protect Rouen from Philip’s depredations, and attempt to take back as much territory as they can without endangering their own ability to operate effectively in the northern theatre. Secondly, in the centre, Alencon, I want you to go down to Maine and link up there with my knights from Anjou, who are presently at Le Mans. Your task is to take Montmirail and destroy it and, if he ventures out of his bolt-hole at Chateaudun, I want you to give Geoffrey of the Perche a bloody nose. Thirdly, the earls of Striguil and Locksley, Mercadier and myself, and the bulk of the army will push on further south. We will join my ally and friend Sancho of Navarre and retake the castle of Loches.’
It was a good plan, clear and simple: and despite their reservations about splitting the army, the barons recognized it as such. Sancho, the heir to the King of Navarre, a small country on the far side of the Pyrenees, was King Richard’s brother-in-law. He had been a staunch supporter of Richard since his marriage to Sancho’s sister Berengaria in Cyprus three years ago. While the Lionheart was imprisoned, the Spanish warlord had guarded the southern flank of Richard’s huge dukedom of Aquitaine, battling restless local barons who had been encouraged to revolt by King Philip.
Loches was a powerful fortress with a massive keep, the stone walls of which were reputed to be twelve foot thick. It had been held time out of mind by the counts of Anjou, Richard’s forefathers, and was the key to the County of Touraine, guarding the frontier with the King of France’s territory in the centre. Quite apart from the issue of family pride — which had been badly dented by its loss — our King could not ride south to reconquer the rebellious parts of Aquitaine so long as Loches remained garrisoned by scores of enemy knights, like a dagger at his back. He had to take it as the first step in subduing the south — pride and practicality, for once, marching perfectly in step.
So, in the sunny courtyard of Verneuil, the barons reluctantly accepted Richard’s plan to split the army and began to confer with him individually on various points of detail — such as which castles should be reduced first, which could be safely ignored, which territories should be ravaged, known areas of enemy weakness, the numbers of men and horses, quantities of fodder and supplies, spare weapons, siege engines and the like that they might take with them — and all the crucial minutiae of warfare. Meanwhile, Robin dispatched Little John and myself to prepare the Locksley men for travel.
For in the morning we would march south. To Loches.
There was a final episode to my time at Verneuil, a strange and chilling event that set my mind racing. On the evening before our departure for the south, I called into the makeshift infirmary to bid farewell to Father Jean de Puy and to thank him for being so generous with his memories.
I walked into the stable block and scanned the lines of wounded men on the straw-strewn floor, some asleep, others gently moving and moaning — cursing their injuries, or calling for their wives or mothers. There was no sign of Father Jean. I brought water to a few of the men who requested it, talked quietly to a pair of injured men-at-arms who were awake and in only moderate pain, and waited a full hour for Father Jean to return. It was most unlike him, I thought, to neglect his charges for so long.
After turning over and over in my mind the mystery of the priest’s absence, I determined that I would search the castle to see if I could discover his whereabouts. And it did not take long to find him — or what remained of him.
I found Father Jean lying behind the stable block, huddled in a narrow space between the rear of the infirmary and the dirty-grey stone wall of the castle. His face was bone white, his eyes were half-open, yet he looked strangely peaceful. He was dead, of course, and, as I reckoned it, he had been so for several hours. He had been stabbed in the chest; there was a deep puncture wound a little to the left of the sternum, caused by a single thrust directly into the heart. Jean de Puy had been murdered; killed quickly and quietly by what I judged to be an expert hand.
Chapter Six
It took until mid-morning before King Richard’s column was ready to march. We were about three thousand souls — proud knights and their harassed squires, scarred men-at-arms, broad-backed archers and gaudily dressed crossbowmen; rough-tongued routiers and refined priests, long-nosed chaplains and pungent friars, raw-fingered washerwomen and saucy, giggling whores — butchers, bakers and candle-sellers, pardoners, fortune-tellers, beggars, black-smiths and jongleurs… men and women of all ranks and every calling. And at the apex of this heaving, seething mass of jostling humanity stood the King and his senior barons and his household knights. Inevitably the column would be a slow-moving one: King Philip’s captured trebuchets, mangonels and onagers swelled Richard’s already far more impressive siege train of a dozen heavy pieces of stone-throwing artillery. Thirty-foot high and constructed of foot-thick oak beams, these machines were affectionately known as the ‘castle-breakers’ and were attended by a swarm of experts as well as the sappers, miners, carters and the common ox-herdsmen of the siege train. The main column would only move as fast as the slowest trebuchet ox-team, pulling the heaviest piece of artillery, and even then a wagon might be stuck in a morass of mud or lose one of their massive solid oak wheels and the entire column must wait for it to be repaired or rescued before the march could resume.