The Grail Quest Books 1-3: Harlequin, Vagabond, Heretic (141 page)

‘You will let me fire the fuse?’ Joscelyn asked, as eager as a small child with a new toy.

‘So you should, my lord,’ Gioberti said, ‘but not yet. The loam must set hard.’

That took almost three hours, but then, as the sun sank behind the town and lit the eastern face of the castle, Gioberti declared everything was ready. The barrels of powder were safely stored in a nearby house where no trace of fire could reach them, the gunners had taken shelter in case the breech burst, and the thatch in front of the gun on either side of the street had been wetted down by men with buckets. The cannon had been wedged upwards so that it was pointing at the top of the castle’s entrance arch, but the bolt, the Italian said, should fall slightly as it flew and thus strike the very centre of the gate. He ordered one of his men to bring a lighted brand from the hearth of the Bear and Butcher tavern and when he had been given the fire and he was sure all had been done that should be done, he bowed to Joscelyn and held out the burning wood. A priest said a prayer of blessing,
then
scuttled into the alley beside the tavern. ‘Just touch the fire to the fuse, my lord,’ Gioberti said, ‘then you and I can go to the gate rampart and watch.’

Joscelyn looked at the thick black arrow head protruding from the barrel to fill the gun’s flared mouth, then at the fuse beneath, and he touched the fire to the linen sleeve and the powder inside began to fizz. ‘Back, lord, if you please,’ Gioberti said. A little trail of smoke was coming from the linen sleeve, which shrivelled and turned black as it shrank towards the throat. Joscelyn wanted to watch the fire vanish into the gun’s neck, but Signor Gioberti dared to pull his lordship’s sleeve in his urgency and Joscelyn meekly followed the Italian up to the gate rampart from where he stared at the castle. Up on the keep the Earl of Northampton’s flag stirred in the small wind, but not for much longer, Joscelyn thought.

Then the world shook. The noise was such that Joscelyn thought he stood in the heart of thunder, a thunder that gave a palpable blow to his eardrums so sudden and strong he involuntarily jumped, and then the whole street ahead of him, all the space between the walls and the dampened thatch, filled with smoke in which bright shards of charcoal and shattered scraps of loam, all trailing fire like comets, arched and fell. The town’s gateway shuddered, and the noise of the explosion echoed back from the castle to drown the screech of Hell Spitter’s ponderous frame recoiling on its greased runners. Dogs began howling in the shuttered houses and a thousand startled birds took to the sky.
‘Sweet God!’
Joscelyn said, amazed, his ears ringing from the thunder that still rolled about the valley. ‘Dear Christ!’ The grey-white smoke drifted away from the street and with it came a stench so hideous, so rotten, that Joscelyn almost gagged. Then, through the foul-smelling smoke’s remnants, he could see that one leaf of the castle’s gates was hanging askew. ‘Do it again,’ he ordered, his voice sounding muffled to
himself
because his ears were full of echoes.

‘Tomorrow, lord,’ Gioberti said. ‘It takes time to set the loam. We’ll load tonight and shoot at daybreak.’

Next morning the gun fired three shots, all of them solid bars of rusted iron that succeeded in tearing the castle’s gates off their hinges. It began to rain and the drops hissed and steamed when they hit Hell Spitter’s metal. The townsfolk cowered in their houses, flinching every time the massive noise of the gun shook their window shutters and made their kitchen pots rattle.

The castle’s defenders had vanished from the battlements and that emboldened the crossbowmen who moved even closer.

The gate was gone, though Joscelyn could still not see into the castle’s courtyard for that lay higher than the gun, but he assumed the garrison would know that an assault must come through the gate and doubtless they were preparing defences. ‘The trick of it,’ he declared at midday, ‘is not to give them time.’

‘They’ve had time,’ Sir Henri Courtois pointed out. ‘They’ve had all morning.’

Joscelyn ignored Sir Henri who he thought was nothing but a timid old man who had lost his appetite for battle. ‘We attack this evening,’ Joscelyn decreed. ‘Signor Gioberti will fire an iron into the courtyard and we shall follow while the noise still cows them.’

He picked forty men-at-arms, the best he had, and he ordered them to be ready at sunset and, to ensure that the defenders had no warning of his
attack,
he had men hack holes in the house walls so that the attackers could approach the castle through the town’s buildings. By going through the walls, sneaking from house to house, the attackers could get within thirty paces of the gate without being seen and, as soon as the gun fired, they were to erupt from their hiding place and charge the castle’s archway. Sir Henri Courtois offered to lead the attack, but Joscelyn refused. ‘It needs young men,’ he said, ‘men without fear.’ He glanced at Robbie. ‘Will you come?’

‘Of course, my lord.’

‘We’ll send a dozen crossbowmen first,’ Joscelyn decreed. ‘They can shoot a volley into the courtyard and then get out of our way.’ They would also, he hoped, draw the arrows of any English archers who might be waiting.

Sir Henri drew a diagram on a kitchen table with a scrap of charcoal to show Joscelyn what lay inside the courtyard. The stables, he said,
were
to the right and should be avoided for they led nowhere. ‘Facing you, lord,’ he said, ‘are two doorways. The one on the left leads down to the dungeons and, once down there, there is no other way out. The one on the right is at the top of a dozen steps and that leads to the halls and battlements.’

‘So that’s the one we want?’

‘Indeed, lord.’ Sir Henri hesitated. He wanted to warn Joscelyn that Sir Guillaume was an experienced soldier, that he would be ready. The siege proper had only just begun, the gun had been working for less than a day, and that was when a garrison was at its most
alert
. Sir Guillaume would be waiting, but Sir Henri knew that any caution would only incur Joscelyn’s dismissive scorn and so he said nothing.

Joscelyn ordered his squire to prepare his armour,
then
gave Sir Henri a careless glance. ‘When the castle is taken,’ he said, ‘you will be castellan again.’

‘Whatever your lordship orders,’ Sir Henri said, taking the insult of his demotion calmly.

The attackers gathered in St Callic’s church where a Mass was said and a blessing given to the men in their mail coats, and afterwards they filed through the crude doorways hacked in the house walls, climbing the hill, going secretly to a wheelwright’s shop that opened onto the square in front of the castle. They crouched there, weapons ready. Men pulled on helmets, said their silent prayers and waited. Most had shields, but some preferred to go without, claiming they could move faster. Two had huge axes, weapons to strike terror in a small space. They touched their talismans, said more prayers and waited impatiently for the roar of the huge gun. None peered around the doorway for Joscelyn was watching them and he had given strict orders that they were to stay hidden until the gun fired. ‘There is still a reward for every archer taken alive,’ he reminded them, ‘but I’ll give it for dead archers too.’

‘Keep your shields up,’ Robbie put in, thinking of the long English arrows.

‘They’ll be dazed,’ Joscelyn said, ‘and cowering from the noise.
We just go in and kill them.’

Pray God that was true, Robbie thought, and he felt a twinge of guilt that he was fighting against Sir Guillaume, whom he liked, but he had sworn his new allegiance and he was convinced he was fighting for God, for Scotland and for the true faith.

‘Five gold coins apiece,’ Joscelyn said, ‘for the first five men up the steps and into the keep.’ Why the hell did the gun not fire? He was sweating. It was a cool day, but he was hot because the greased leather coat under his plate armour was thick. That armour was the best that any of the attackers owned, but it was also the heaviest and Joscelyn knew it would be a struggle to keep up with the men in the lighter mail. No matter. He would join the fight where it was thickest and he relished the thought of cutting down screaming, desperate archers. ‘And no prisoners,’ he said, wanting his day to be crowned by death.

‘Sir Guillaume?’ Robbie suggested. ‘Can we take him captive?’

‘Does he have estates?’ Joscelyn asked.

‘No,’ Robbie admitted.

‘Then what ransom can he promise?’

‘None.’

‘So no prisoners!’
Joscelyn called to his attackers. ‘Kill them all!’

‘But not their women,’ a man suggested.

‘Not their women,’ Joscelyn agreed, and regretted that the golden-haired beghard was not in the castle*
..
Well, there would be other women. There were always other women.

The shadows lengthened. It had rained all morning, but the sky had cleared since and the sun was low, very low, and Joscelyn knew that Signor Gioberti was waiting until the last bright rays shone clean through the gate to dazzle the defenders. Then would come the noise, the evil-smelling smoke, the terrible crash of the iron striking the courtyard wall and, while the defenders were still stunned by the tumult, the armoured men would erupt in pitiless fury through the gate. ‘God is with us,’ Joscelyn said, not because he believed it, but because he knew such a sentiment was expected of him. ‘Tonight we feast on their food and women.’ He was talking too much because he was nervous, but he did not realize it. This was not like a tournament where the loser could walk away, however bruised and cut. This was death’s playground and, though he was supremely confident, he was also apprehensive. Let the defenders be sleeping, or eating, he thought, but let them not be ready.

And just then the world was filled with thunder, flame-seared iron screamed through the gate, smoke boiled up the street and the waiting, thank Christ,
was
over.

They charged.

Sir Guillaume, the moment the gun first appeared in Castillon d’Arbizon, had readied the garrison for an attack. He gave orders that ten archers were to be in the courtyard at all times, five on each side of the yard so their arrows would slant in at the open space where the cannon’s bolts had demolished the main gate. The castle’s curtain wall, which was undamaged, sheltered them from any crossbowmen in the town. Then, during the morning that the gun demolished the gate, Sir Guillaume tore down most of the stable walls, but left the posts supporting the roof in place so that the archers had a place to shelter their bow-strings when it rained. The horses were taken up the steps into the lower hall, which became their new stables.

The timber from the stable wall, the byres and the shattered main gates were used to make a barricade across the courtyard. It was not as high as Sir Guillaume would have liked, and there was not enough timber to make it heavy enough to withstand a determined assault, but any kind of obstacle would slow down a man in armour and give the archers time to place another arrow on their cords. The first iron bolts shot from the gun were added to the barricade, and then a barrel of rancid olive oil was fetched up from the undercroft. With that, Sir Guillaume was ready.

He suspected Joscelyn would attack sooner rather than later. Sir Guillaume had spent enough time in the new Count of Berat’s company to understand that Joscelyn was an impatient man, too eager for victory, and Sir Guillaume also reckoned the attack would either come at dusk or dawn and so, as the first full day of the gun’s firing tore down the gates and cracked the bastion at one side of the archway, he made sure the whole garrison was armoured and ready well before dusk.

In mid-afternoon he had been certain the attack would come very soon for, in the long space between the gun’s shots, he had crouched on the undamaged part of the gate rampart and heard the strange sounds of hammers and splintering, and he guessed the enemy was breaking a path through the house walls so they could approach the open space in front of the castle unseen. And when evening came and the gun did not fire, Sir Guillaume knew it must be waiting until the attackers were ready. He crouched by the gate and heard the chink of armour from the houses across the square, and when he peered round the arch he saw that more men than usual had gathered on the ramparts above the west gate to watch the castle. They might as well have sounded a trumpet, he thought scornfully, to announce their intentions. He ducked out of sight just a heartbeat before a crossbow quarrel slammed into the arch where he had been lurking.

He went back to his men-at-arms. They’re coming,’ he told them and he pushed his left forearm into the leather loops of his shield that showed the faded badge of the three hawks.

There was a relief in that knowledge. Sir Guillaume hated being besieged, and he had hated the calm menace of the first days when Sir Henri had kept to their agreement for, even though that was a safe period, there was still the frustration of being mewed up in a castle. Now he could kill some of the besiegers,
‘ and
to a soldier like Sir Guillaume that was far more satisfying. When the gun had first come to the town Sir Guillaume had wondered whether Joscelyn would offer him terms, but then, when the gun first fired to wrench the heavy gates askew, he understood that Joscelyn, hot-blooded, incautious and ungenerous, wanted nothing but death.

So now he would give it to him.

‘When the gun fires,’ Sir Guillaume instructed his men, ‘that’s when they’ll come,’ and he squatted beside the gate, on the enemy’s side of the barricade, and hoped he was right. He waited, watching the sunlight creep across the flagstones of the courtyard. He had eighteen fit archers and all of them were behind the barricade, while sixteen men-at-arms waited with Sir Guillaume. The rest had deserted, all but half a dozen men who were ill. The town was quiet except for a barking dog that suddenly yelped as it was struck to silence. Beat them off here, Sir Guillaume thought, and then what? He had no doubt he would beat them off, but he was still hugely outnumbered and his garrison was far from any help. Perhaps, if the besiegers were well beaten here, then Joscelyn would talk terms. Sir Henri Courtois would certainly take an honourable surrender, Sir Guillaume thought, but did Sir Henri have influence over the hot-headed Joscelyn?

Then the gun fired, the noise of it seeming to shake the castle, and an iron bar hammered through the gateway to drive a great chunk of stone and white dust from the tower wall next to the steps leading into the keep. Sir Guillaume tensed, his ears ringing with the echo of the terrible sound, and then he heard the cheers and the sound of heavy boots on the cobbles of the square outside and he prised the loosened lid from the barrel of oil and then kicked the tub over so that the greenish liquid spilt across the flagstones by the gateway. Just then he heard a voice bellowing outside. ‘No prisoners!’ the man’s voice was distorted by a helmet with a closed visor. ‘No prisoners!’

‘Archers!’ Sir Guillaume called, though he doubted they needed to be alerted. In Thomas’s absence the bowmen were led by Jake who did not much like the responsibility, but he liked Sir Guillaume and wanted to fight well for him. Jake said nothing to his archers; they did not need any orders. Instead they waited with bows half drawn, bodkin arrows on their strings, and then the gateway was filled with a group of crossbowmen, and behind them were the men-at-arms, already shouting their battle cries, and Jake, as ordered, waited a heartbeat until the first men slipped on the olive oil and only then did he shout, ‘Loose!’

Eighteen arrows tore into the chaos. The first attackers through the gate were sprawling on the stones, the men behind tripped over them and then the arrows ripped into the confusion. The assault was still ten paces from the barricade, yet already it was checked
because the castle’s narrow gateway was
blocked by the dying and the dead. Sir Guillaume stood to one side, sword drawn, doing nothing as yet, just letting the archers finish their work. He was astonished at how fast they had another arrow on the string, then watched as the second and third flights pierced mail and skewered flesh. A crossbowman crawled out from the tangle and bravely tried to raise his weapon, but Sir Guillaume took two steps and brought his sword hard down on the nape of the man’s unprotected neck. The other crossbowmen, evidently sent in the front rank to deliver a volley at his archers, were dead or dying. Joscelyn’s men-at-arms were mingled with them, arrows jutting from mail and shields, and in the gateway the crush of men could make no headway. Jake now directed his arrows at them, volley after volley, and then Sir Guillaume waved his men-at-arms forward. ‘They want no prisoners,’ he shouted to them, ‘you hear me? No prisoners!’

Sir Guillaume and his men were attacking from the left side of the courtyard, so Jake took his archers to the right and shot only through the gateway at the few figures left under the arch. And after a few seconds all the arrows stopped, for so many of the attackers were dead, and those that lived were trapped by Sir Guillaume’s sudden assault from the corner of the yard.

It was a massacre. The attackers, already half beaten by the arrows, had assumed any defenders would be behind the barricade, and instead the men-at-arms came from their flank, and Sir Guillaume’s men, informed that the enemy had wanted all their deaths, were in no mood to offer mercy.
‘Bastard.’
John Faircloth stabbed at a fallen man-at-arms, working his sword through a rent in the man’s mail. ‘Bastard,’ he said again, cutting the throat of a crossbowman. A Burgundian was using an axe, crushing helmets and skulls with one efficient blow after another, spattering the oil-slicked stone with brains and blood. One enemy rose snarling from the pile, a big man, strong and useful, who stepped on bodies to carry the fight to the garrison, but Sir Guillaume took the man’s sword blow on his shield and plunged his own sword into the man’s throat. The man stared at Sir Guillaume, his eyes wide, his lips trying to frame an obscenity, but there was nothing in his mouth except a lump of blood, thick as lard; then he wavered and fell, and Sir Guillaume was already past him to kill another man-at-arms. And now the archers, discarding their bows, had come to join the slaughter, using axes, swords or knives to despatch the wounded. Shouts for mercy echoed in the courtyard, screams sounded, and the few unwounded attackers at the rear of the assault heard them, heard the triumphant English shouts. ‘St George! St George!’ They fled. One man, dazed by a sword blow to his helmet, fled the wrong way and John Faircloth met him with a sword thrust that ripped through the iron rings of his mail to rip his belly open. ‘Bastard,’ Faircloth said, dragging his blade free.

‘Clear the gate!’ Sir Guillaume said. ‘Pull them clear!’ He did not want his men to be shot by the crossbow-men outside the castle while they plundered the corpses of their armour and weapons, and so they dragged the bodies to the side of the yard. There were no wounded enemy that Sir Guillaume could see. It was the enemy that had shouted the call for no prisoners and the garrison had obeyed them. And now the attack was over.

Yet the danger was not past. There were still two bodies in the archway. Sir Guillaume knew the cross-bowmen lower in the town could see into the gateway, so, using his shield to protect his body, he stooped and sidled into the arch and dragged the first body back towards the yard. There was no sign of Joscelyn and that was a pity. Sir Guillaume had dreamed of taking the Count prisoner for a second time, and then he would have doubled Joscelyn’s ransom, doubled it again and then doubled it a third time. Bastard, Sir Guillaume thought, and a crossbow bolt slammed high into his shield, banging the top edge against Sir Guillaume’s helmet. He crouched lower, grabbed the last man’s ankle and pulled, and the man stirred and tried to fight back so Sir Guillaume hammered the shield’s pointed lower edge into the man’s groin and the man gasped, then stopped struggling.

It was Robbie. Once Sir Guillaume had him in the courtyard and was safe from the crossbowmen in the town, he could see that Robbie had not been wounded. Instead he had been stunned, probably by an arrow that had struck the lower edge of his helmet and left a fierce dent in the thick rim, which had thumped onto Robbie’s skull and hurled him back. One inch lower and there would have been a dead Scotsman. As it was there was a very confused Scotsman who twitched in search of his sword as he realized where he was.

‘Where’s my money,’ Sir Guillaume growled, threatening Robbie with the Scotsman’s own sword.

‘Oh, Jesus,’ Robbie groaned.

‘He’s no damned use to you. If you want mercy, son, ask me. Ask them!’ Sir Guillaume pointed at the archers and men-at-arms who were stripping the dead and injured of their weapons, armour and clothes. Cross-eyed Jake was grinning because one of the enemy dead had been wearing a ruby ring. Jake had sawn off the finger and now held the jewel aloft in triumph. Sam, the proud new owner of a fine coat of German -made mail, came to look at Robbie. He spat to show his opinion of the Scotsman.

Robbie, tears in his eyes because of his humiliation, looked at the dead men, their undershirts laced with blood. Forty attackers had crossed the square outside the castle and over half of them were dead. He looked up at Sir Guillaume. ‘I’m your prisoner,’ he said, and he wondered how he was supposed to pay one ransom to Lord Outhwaite in England and another to Sir Guillaume.

‘You’re bloody not my prisoner,’ Sir Guillaume said in crude English,
then
he changed back to French. ‘I heard the shout outside. No prisoners. And you might remember that when we do take prisoners, we don’t get ransoms. We just get pieces of parchment. Is that what honour means in Scotland?’

Robbie looked up into the savage, one-eyed face and shrugged. ‘Just kill me,’ he said wearily. ‘Kill me and go to hell.’

‘Your friend wouldn’t like that,’ Sir Guillaume said and saw the puzzlement on Robbie’s face. ‘Your friend Thomas,’ he explained. ‘He likes you. He wouldn’t want you dead. Got a soft spot for you, he has, because he’s a goddamned fool. So I’ll let you live. Get on your feet.’ Sir Guillaume prodded Robbie up. ‘Now go to Joscelyn and tell that spavined bastard that he can pay us what you owe us and then we’ll leave. Got that? He pays the money,
then
you watch us ride away.’

Robbie wanted to ask for the sword that belonged to his uncle and concealed a precious relic of St Andrew in its hilt, but he knew he would be refused and so, still
dazed,
he went back to the arch, followed by the jeers of the archers. Sir Guillaume bellowed at the crossbowmen in the town that the man coming out was one of their own. ‘Perhaps they’ll shoot you anyway,’ he said to Robbie, then shoved him out into the dusk.

None of the crossbowmen shot at Robbie who, with an aching head and a throbbing groin, stumbled down the street. The survivors of the attack were gathered by the still smoking gun; some of them had arrows in their arms or legs. Joscelyn was there, bare-headed; his hair had been flattened by the helmet’s liner and his round face was slick with sweat and red with anger. He had been among the last to crowd into the gateway, had seen the chaos in front and had then been knocked over by an arrow strike on his breastplate. He had been astonished by the force of the blow, like being kicked by a
horse,
and the plate had a bright gouge in it. He had struggled up only to be hit by a second arrow which, like the first, had failed to pierce the thick plate, but he was knocked back again, and then the panic of the survivors had enveloped him and he had stumbled away with them. ‘They let you go?’ he greeted Robbie who he saw had a dark bruise on his forehead.

‘They sent me with a message, lord,’ Robbie said. ‘If they receive their money,’ he went on, ‘they will leave without more fighting.’