Warlord(132)

I sat in my saddle looking down at the half-burned carcass of an elderly nag that lay half in and half out of the charred remains of the stable block. What could Mercadier mean by this excess of destruction? Was he saying that I should never possess this land? Certainly, even if Philip’s borders were pushed back and I were to take on this manor, as the King intended, I would have to spend a good deal of silver to restore its fortunes; rebuilding the church alone could cost half what I received in a year from Westbury. And if the labouring people did not return, I would have to find villeins from somewhere to work the land; perhaps even parcel some of it out to freeholders. It did not seem worth the trouble. Yes, Mercadier’s actions seemed perplexing to me. What was he trying to achieve? Was he merely saying, by this destruction of a manor that might one day have been mine, that he hated me? It seemed so.





Chapter Twenty-five



I returned to Château-Gaillard to find Mercadier a hero, crowned with fresh laurels and riding even higher in our King’s favour. While I had been assaulting the insignificant castle of Milly, the mercenary had boldly attacked the mighty stronghold of Beauvais – the lair of Bishop Philip, a loyal Frenchman and sworn enemy of our King. And the grim-faced captain had even managed to capture the feisty Bishop of Beauvais, outside the walls in full armour, and bring him bound and furious to Château-Gaillard, where he had been promptly imprisoned in the deepest cellar. Capturing Richard’s enemy had been a stroke of good fortune; capturing him fully armed and helmeted for war meant that Richard could keep this high churchman imprisoned. And there was a satisfying symmetry to this coup, from Richard’s point of view. The Bishop had been responsible for the rumour half a dozen years before that Richard had ordered the assassination of the King of Jerusalem, a lie that had given the Holy Roman Emperor an excuse to keep the Lionheart in chains in Germany. Now it was the rumour-mongering Bishop of Beauvais who languished in chains.

King Richard gave a lavish feast in Mercadier’s honour, which I was obliged to attend, although mercifully I was not asked to perform my music. I caught my enemy’s eye as he sat at the right hand of the monarch, basking in his favour, and he grinned smugly at me. I smiled back, and politely inclined my head. And thought: I shall kill you one day – perhaps not today, perhaps not this year – but one day I shall surely give myself the pleasure of watching the spark of life being extinguished in your eyes.

In the weeks that followed, I spent a good deal of time working with my ten remaining Westbury men, training with them and taking them on mounted patrols around the neighbourhood of Château-Gaillard. King Philip’s men held the powerful castle of Gaillon only five miles to the south-west of Château-Gaillard and so the patrols had some purpose, not only in providing intelligence about enemy troop movements, but also in providing regular skirmishing practice for my men when we encountered enemy patrols. We had no orders to stay and fight and die, so we did not do battle à l’outrance, as the saying goes, when we encountered the enemy; we would try to ambush them occasionally, and they us, but if we were overmatched we exchanged a few cuts and cheerfully fled for our lives.

Two of my Westbury men particularly distinguished themselves that summer in Normandy: a tall, quick-witted lad called Christopher, whom we all called ‘Kit’ – who single-handedly killed a French knight with his lance in a mêlée, and Edwin, known as ‘Ox-head’ – a thick-bodied youth, immensely strong, with a large poll, as his name suggested, and a wide easy smile. Ox-head was a natural peace-maker in the troop but was a fearsome man in a fight, using his strength to batter down his opponents. But the natural leader, after me, was Thomas: it was he who forged these men over the course of the summer into a small but deadly fighting force.

We were, of course, differentiated from Robin’s men by our red surcoats, but we also kept ourselves apart from the bigger force of men in green, while maintaining cordial relations with them as best we could. Their hesitation at Milly had not been forgotten by my men, and it was much resented, although I had forbidden them to speak of it. And while Robin’s men outnumbered us ten to one, we began to feel that we were a superior force: tight-knit, hard-fighting, disciplined and well trained – for I made sure that we exercised in arms together every day, rain or shine, in the courtyard of Château-Gaillard. I was proud of them.

That summer the war went Richard’s way almost entirely: he captured Dangu, a small castle only four miles from Gisors – during which, it must be said, Robin’s men fought heroically under their silver-eyed lord – and we all had a sense that the frontier between Normandy and the French King’s possessions was being pushed back towards its rightful location. At one point, Richard’s furthest scouts were able to make a quick raid on the outskirts of Paris – although, in truth, like rabbits they merely robbed a few vegetable gardens and scampered away when King Philip sent a sizeable force of knights to confront them. But we were winning the war in the north, and we all knew it.