Warlord(24)

My thoughts had been tending in another direction, towards Paris. I was wondering what the much-loved Bishop de Sully might have to say about the matter of my father’s departure some twenty years ago and whether he might be able to throw any light on the identity of this most powerful person, this ‘man you cannot refuse’, who, like a coward, had ordered my father’s death from the shadows. But I could not for the life of me see how in time of war I might safely get across fifty miles of territory infested with hundreds of enemy knights and into the French capital.

Thomas was right, I concluded. While Vendôme, too, was presently in enemy hands, it had traditionally been one of Richard’s towns and its loyalty was like a leaf in the wind. If the Lionheart’s campaign went well, we were more than likely to re-take it. And even if it could not be re-captured, Vendôme might be easier to enter than the seat of the King of France himself. If I survived this siege, I decided, then I would beg leave of Richard to go to Vendôme and seek out the music-loving Cardinal.

I spent the rest of the day in relative peace. I further reduced the number of sentries and allowed more of the men to rest. I talked a little longer with Father Jean, but it was clear that he had told me everything he knew, and he had no idea who the man might be who had ordered my father’s death. At dusk, after watching the French make their preparations for the night, I felt confident enough to strip off my blood-crusted suit of mail and give it over to Thomas for cleaning.

That night, sitting in the ground floor of the tower, dressed only in linen braies, thin woollen hose and a rather grubby chemise that I had been wearing for a week by then, I composed a rude little satirical ditty, what the jongleurs call a fabliau, which I named ‘King Philip’s Folly’. It told of the haughty monarch’s attempt to take Verneuil, his great mace swinging between his legs as he assailed the gates, but how the valiant men of the castle cut the mace from his body and sent him packing with a sore and gaping wound.

It was greeted with much merriment and many a cheer when I sang it that night, accompanied only by my vielle, a cherished five-stringed instrument that I played with a horsehair bow, which I was very glad to see had survived among the baggage during the giddy charge into the castle. The men liked my fabliau, and indeed, we all seemed to sense that our hour of peril had passed. And so it had, for, after a good night’s sleep and a morning practising basic sword manoeuvres, cuts and blocks, in the castle courtyard with Thomas, Hanno came to me shortly after the noon meal, as I was taking stock of the castle’s few remaining provisions, and said flatly: ‘The French are going.’



Once on the battlements I saw that Hanno had spoken truly. The remainder of the enemy forces were packing up their encampment; tents, weapons, food, fodder, horses, siege engines – the lot. By mid-afternoon, the first of their units were disappearing down a track that ran parallel to the river and led through a wooded region to the east towards the French-held castle of Tillières.

There was much rejoicing on our walls at this sight, and I allowed a small cask of wine to be broached and served out to the men. The reason for the Frenchmen’s departure soon became apparent, for by the time half the enemy forces had entered the wood and been lost from view, we saw the first outriders of King Richard’s huge army arriving on the ridge where Hanno and I had murdered the knights two days before. At first it was just a single horseman, silhouetted boldly, almost heroically, on the skyline, then the low ridge bloomed into a forest of flagstaffs and spears. The colours of a hundred bright standards caught the slanting golden light of the afternoon sun, and the ridge seemed to swell and darken with the moving bodies of thousands of men and horses.

Although they must have known of its imminent arrival, the swift appearance of Richard’s army sowed panic among the departing French troops. At the tail end of the enemy column was the slow lumbering siege train: three trebuchets, a mangonel and some smaller fry, all being pulled on their own wheeled bases or hauled laboriously on heavy carts by teams of lumbering oxen.

The siege train was protected by a meagre handful of mounted spearmen; and when a single conroi – a cavalry unit of perhaps a score of knights – from Richard’s army began to trot down the gentle slope towards the creeping siege train, the mounted guards did not wait to make a fight of it but spurred their horses’ flanks and galloped away and into the little wood to the east. The ox-drivers did not wait to be captured either: from my lookout on the roof of the castle’s crumbling tower, I could see the little figures of men, clutching long ox-goads, vaulting down from their positions behind the big beasts and running as fast as their legs would carry them into the safety of the trees. As the English conroi trotted up to it, the entire French siege train came to a complete stop, deserted both by guards and drivers, the oxen dropping their block-like heads and beginning to crop placidly at the grass between their feet.