Warlord(29)

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.

I was happy, therefore, that Robin’s men formed their own column in the vanguard of the King’s army. My Lord of Locksley had orders to send men on ahead to scout out the land and report intelligence back to the main column. He knew this land, as did I, having travelled through it four years ago on our way to the Holy Land.

Robin had brought reinforcements with him from Yorkshire: another hundred and fifty men, once again mixed archers and light cavalry, and all well mounted. And when my advance troop, those who had survived the siege of Verneuil or who had been only lightly wounded, was rejoined to Robin’s command we numbered more than two hundred fighting men. Robin had banished the hangers-on from our column, and the baggage and better-quality horses – including my beloved gelding Ghost and Shaitan my destrier – remained with the supply train of the main army. I rode a fast courser belonging to Robin, a horse better suited to rough riding and scouting work than my two more valuable warhorses. We were to be an exploring column, a light, fast-moving unit whose task it was to see what was beyond the next hill, report back to the King and his advisers, relay messages, and warn them of any trouble.