Stronghold

CHAPTER TWENTY

When an army is prepared to lose thousands upon thousands of its men, or indeed, as in this case, is incapable of losing a single man, the word 'impregnable' no longer applies to any redoubt.

The English bore this in mind as they readied the Constable's Tower to receive the next onslaught. In normal times, the Constable's Tower would have felt far more secure than the Gatehouse. Its parapets were thirty feet higher, and in terms of structure it was altogether more massive, its walls infinitely thicker. It had more vents for oil and pitch and more loops from which missiles could be discharged. In addition, it could only really be attacked from one side. To the east and south it faced into the Inner Fort, the courtyard of which was a good eighty feet below. To the west, it faced into the bailey, which was a hundred feet below. Neither of these immense distances could be covered by ladder or climbing rope — at least, Earl Corotocus's men had never heard of such a thing. But from the north, it was a different matter.

The Constable's Tower's main door was on the north side, facing onto the causeway connecting from the Gatehouse. What was more, the door faced onto this directly, so that a ram could be brought to bear if it got close enough. It would not breach the tower easily: the gate was fashioned from English oak, some ten inches thick, and was ribbed with steel. Behind it there lay a passage beneath a murder hole, another portcullis, and beyond that the fire-raiser, which the English had refuelled. But given the nature of the enemy, nobody felt that these measures provided sufficient protection. What was more, the north wall of the Constable's Tower was only sixty feet high and was a far less daunting prospect than the walls to the south, east and west.

The English did what they could. They gathered new stocks of stones, spears, darts and arrows. They brought up new barrels of naptha. They crowded against the missile-portals and along the battlements, particularly on the north side, overlooking the causeway. Several companies had already been positioned in the Constable's Tower when the earl and what remained of the Gatehouse garrison arrived, but from that moment on there'd been no sleep for any of them. Blunted blades were re-sharpened, shields were patched, new fragments of armour donned. Every man — even if he wouldn't admit it — now looked to his own survival as much as to victory for his overlord.

By first light they were waiting, so tense that they no longer saw the weird Breton scarecrows, which littered the rooftops even of these inner ramparts.

The men had already passed the stage where sweat-inducing fear was an issue. Fear comes before battle rather than during it; it tends to dissipate after the first clash of steel, to be replaced by a duller but more practical state-of-mind in which warriors think purely about necessary actions. One such necessity was that everyone in the castle should now be present. The Constable's Tower was the key to the Inner Fort, and they could not afford to let it fall. Hence, the earl had redeployed every man into this one bastion, no longer concerned about a mingling of his companies or any confusion among his junior command.

Those wounded from the assaults on the Barbican and the south wall lay on its ground-level, wrapped in their bedrolls, gasping and shivering, with nothing to anaesthetise their pain as they awaited transportation to the infirmary, assuming such a luxury would ever come. Father Benan, one who would normally tend to them, was among their number, naked and slumped against a pillar. The only item he wore was a large iron crucifix, suspended by a cord at his neck. He was scarcely able to breathe, so weak was he from loss of blood. His entire body — his back, his buttocks, his shoulders, his arms, his legs — were crisscrossed with crimson stripes.

He was only vaguely aware, when a person came and crouched alongside him, that it was Doctor Zacharius, now with a gore-stained canvas apron over his fine clothes and his sleeves pinned back on forearms equally sullied.

As Zacharius looked the priest over, he mopped sweat from his haggard brow, smearing more blood there. With the few orderlies he'd been given now redeployed to defend the Constable's Tower roof, he'd had to cease working on his patients in order to help his assistant bring as many wounded as he could to the infirmary. Between them, they had improvised a bier by tying a cloak between two poll-arms, but it was still a laborious process, especially since neither of them had enjoyed much sleep since arriving here. But Zacharius, for all his faults, was not a doctor purely for the esteem it gave him. He believed in his vocation and would not shy from the dirt and drudgery of it.

"Benan!" he said into the priest's ear. "Benan, can you stand?"

Benan grunted in the negative, still too dazed by pain and exhaustion to form words.

"Benan, can you can stand and make your own way to the infirmary? I have salves that will help with these welts."

"There are… others," Benan muttered. "Others… worse than me…"

"Benan, some of these wounds of yours need sutures. You may bleed to death."

Bizarrely, Benan smiled, though it was still a picture of pain, his face gray and speckled with sweat.

"Our Lord," he stammered. "Our Lord was… scourged for our sins…"

"Benan, listen to me…"

"I am honoured… by this…"

"Yes, very good. Look, our Lord died, or had you forgotten? Do you want to die as well?"

The priest gave a crazy, fluting laugh.

"Henri!" Zacharius called over his shoulder.

The boy threaded his way across the room. He too was weary and sweating and wore a canvas apron blotched with blood.

"Henri, help me!"

Zacharius took Benan by one of his arms and indicated that Henri should take the other, but Benan grimaced and struggled weakly, until at last they let him go.

"No, there are others. See…"

Benan nodded towards a man seated against the near wall. He was one of Garbofasse's mercenaries and he was dull-eyed with pain. His leather hauberk had been removed to reveal the splintered nub of his collar bone tent-poling the flesh to the left of his neck; its white needle tip pierced through the skin. Beyond him, another fellow, who was unidentifiable he was so covered in gore, slumped with his head hung down. His blood-matted scalp was so deeply lacerated that his bare skull was exposed.

"Look to those… those who need you most," Benan said.

Zacharius hesitated, before nodding at Henri, who moved along and began to examine the casualty with the shattered collar bone. Zacharius meanwhile stood and gazed around the ghastly chamber. The sight of a makeshift field hospital was familiar to him. But this had come unexpectedly. Out in the courtyard, the infirmary was already a shambles of blood, filth and stained bandages. The infirmary beds they'd managed to construct were already filled to capacity. Rent and riven figures lay groaning in the passages between them. But in here it was even worse. The men were huddled wall to wall, wallowing in their own blood. Bowels had voided; there was vomit on the walls. The stench was intolerable.

As Henri attempted to move his patient, whose gasps quickly became shrill bleats of agony, onto the bier, the doctor turned back to the priest.

"I thought God's role was to love us?"

"No," Benan said solemnly. "It's our role to love Him. By action as well as word. That's why we all will die in this place."

"I can see why the earl had you flogged."

But Benan was lapsing back into unconsciousness. "I'm glad he did," he murmured. Zacharius moved away, to help Henri with their next patient. "I'm glad he did, good doctor. It's… my only hope."

The morning wore on and no immediate attack came.

The English watched in silence from the roof of the Constable's Tower. Ninety yards away, at the far end of the causeway, the dead stared back from the roof of the Gatehouse. They also stared from the curtain-wall which, now that it had been abandoned, had been inundated by them. They crowded along the top of it, all around the castle perimeter, and yet were eerily still. If the English had felt they were encircled before, they knew it for a fact now. The dead on the curtain-wall were actually within bowshot from the west side of the Constable's Tower, but as the archers had seen how futile their efforts had been before, none sought to waste an arrow now.

"What are they waiting for?" Navarre snapped. "A bloody invitation?"

"I'd guess munitions for the scoop-thrower," Garbofasse replied. "They threw so much rubble at us before, they probably emptied their stocks. They'll have to scour for miles in every direction to find a similar quantity again."

"At which point our problems really begin," Gurt said.

There were mumbles of agreement. Men glanced nervously towards the western bluff. It was clear to all that the Constable's Tower could also be struck by the scoop-thrower. If this happened, the men on its roof would be distracted trying to shield themselves, while the dead would advance along the causeway unimpeded.

This was Ranulf's suspicion, and it appeared to be confirmed shortly before noon, when about fifty of the dead emerged from the Gatehouse in lumbering work-gangs, and commenced laying out planks, beams and bundles of rope. The English watched, their sweat-filled hair prickling. Soon there was a prolonged banging of hammers and a droning of handsaws. Under the guidance of a twisted, diminutive figure, streaked with blood and dirt, yet with a distinctive gleaming pate, the corpses had commenced the construction of a tall framework.

"Is that William d'Abbetot?" someone asked, incredulous.

Earl Corotocus remained tight-lipped, but was clearly seething. Others were less angry and more bewildered, more horrified.

"I don't know which is worse," du Guesculin said. "That they know how to do that, or that one of our own is showing them the way."

They'd all come to dread this moment, when their own dead might be raised to face them, though so much horror had befallen them since Ranulf had first voiced concern about this that to many it was just another routine body-blow. More important to Ranulf was the object the dead were constructing. It was almost certainly a siege-tower.

"After the Gatehouse, they appear to have reasoned that forcing entry through the gate itself is too costly. This time they intend to come over the top," he said.

"You credit them with too much intellect," Navarre jeered. "Most of their brains are running out of their ears. How can they reason anything?"

But as the day wore on, Ranulf's thesis appeared to be correct. Whatever power controlled the Welsh dead, it also thought for them, motivating them like great swarms of ants, as though they were all of a single, collective mind. The work-gangs, who were tirelessly strong, and who operated with the smooth efficiency of skilled carpenters, continued to build the siege-tower, which was soon sturdy and massive, and rose section upon section until it was seventy feet tall. At the same time, other work-gangs descended the western bluff, carrying wheels, which they'd clearly removed from carts and wagons, to make it mobile. Others drove a team of oxen, to add brute muscle to the assault. Still more corpses appeared through the Gatehouse carrying heavy iron plates between them. These had clearly been detached from the Gatehouse entrance and would now be hung as fire-proof shielding along the tower's front and sides.

"My lord," Ranulf said, pushing his way through to Earl Corotocus. "It only remains for them to restock the scoop-thrower, and we are in very serious trouble."

"I agree," the earl replied, deep in thought. "Do you imagine they'll opt for another night assault?"

"I doubt they'll be ready in time for that. So if we're lucky, no."

"Lucky?" someone exclaimed. "Is it lucky to have to wait another night before we die and are embraced by that legion of hell-spawn?"

It was a serjeant of mercenaries who'd spoken. He'd already suffered badly through the iron hail. Crude, self-applied sutures were all that held his face together, though his left eyeball was pulped and distended from its broken socket; stinking black humor dripped freely down his left cheek.

Ranulf ignored him. "My lord, I have a plan — but it can only be executed in darkness."

Corotocus regarded him with interest. "A raid perhaps?"

Ranulf nodded. "If a small party of us can get out there and disable the scoop-thrower, it will buy us time… at least for a few days, until they bring the mangonels onto the western bluff and assault us with those."

The rest of the men listened in stupefied silence. Someone finally said: "Are you mad? Out there, where only the dead rule? It's certain oblivion!"

"It's our only hope," Ranulf argued.

"And who would comprise this suicide party?" Navarre scoffed. "We'd draw lots, I suppose?"

Ranulf shrugged. "The rest of you may draw lots if you wish. However, I volunteer to go. In fact, I will lead it."

"Do you have a death wish, Ranulf?" the earl wondered. "First onto the Gatehouse drawbridge. Leader of the forlorn hope. Has your father's demise unhinged you?"

"What I have, my lord, is experience. Remember Bayonne?"

Corotocus recalled it well; his mouth crooked into a half-smile. Others recalled the incident at Bayonne too, though not so fondly. Several of the earl's knights preferred not to dwell on it at all, for it had flown in the face of everything chivalrous they had ever been taught. On that occasion they had been the besiegers rather than the besieged.

It was in the early days of the Gascon war and Bayonne Castle on the River Nive had been captured by French forces. Earl Corotocus led the English army that subsequently surrounded it. The following siege was a prolonged, tiresome affair, both sides suffering from hunger and foul weather. On regular occasions Abbot Julius, of the Sainte Martine monastery high in the foothills of the Pyrenees, had come graciously down and been allowed entry to the castle by the English, to sing psalms for the embattled French. However, the earl's spies soon informed him that Abbott Julius was a cousin of Count Girald, who was commanding the French force, and was passing intelligence about the English strength and disposition. Not only that, he was organising a local resistance movement on behalf of the besieged and offering gold to pirates if they would intercept English galleys, bringing much-needed supplies to the nearby port.

In response, Earl Corotocus despatched a small group of handpicked men, Ranulf and his father among them, who disguised themselves as pilgrims en route to Compostela, and trod the dusty mountain road to Sainte Martine on foot. Only after begging water and a bed for the night, and finally being admitted to the monastery, did they throw off their rags and cowls, to reveal mail, swords and daggers. The monastery was sacked and burned, its lay-brothers slain, its monks — including Abbott Julius — taken as captives of war. A short while later, Earl Corotocus brought these prisoners before the walls of Castle Bayonne, and stood them on ox-carts with nooses around their necks. One word from him, he shouted, and the carts would be hauled away and the brethren left dangling. Inside the castle, Abbot Julius's cousin, Count Girald, had had no option but to signal his surrender.

Though it was well known that Earl Corotocus waged war in the most cunning ways, he was widely reviled for this ignoble act. Complaints were made against him to King Edward even from some on the English side — especially from those paragons of courtly virtue, William Latimer and John of Brittany. King Edward replied that conflict was always a hellish affair, but on this occasion particularly so as it was a straight contest between he and Philip IV of France, one anointed monarch versus another. With the stakes so high, he would not be held accountable for the "improvisational skills of his commanders". A short time later, when Pope Celestine excommunicated Earl Corotocus, King Edward sent an embassy to the papal court at Naples to have it lifted.

"What do you propose?" the earl said.

"Can we talk in private?"

The earl nodded. They crossed the roof and descended into a stairwell.

"I don't know how alert these walking dead are," Ranulf said. "But I don't think we can afford to take chances. Only a handful of men must go — five at the most. I don't even think it wise to take our best. It'll be perilous, and how many will return I don't know."

"All the more courageous of you to offer to lead it, Ranulf." The earl regarded him carefully, almost suspiciously.

"You're wondering if I really have lost my mind?"

"You wouldn't be the only man in this garrison who had."

"My lord, we face an enemy the like of which has never been seen. An enemy that can't be killed. An enemy that threatens our very souls, or so we assume. I'd be lying if I said that I think any of us will survive this siege. Could any man think rationally in these circumstances? I don't know. But we can only do — as my father used to say — what we can do."

"Tell me your plan," the earl said.

"There are plenty of storages sheds in the courtyard. At the very least, we have rope, we have paint, we have barrels of pig grease."

"And?"

"I suggest that whoever goes out there wears minimum clothing. I once heard a tale of how a Roman army was overwhelmed by a Germanic tribe. The Germans came through the benighted forest naked and painted black from head to toe. They were invisible until they struck the Roman camp."

The earl looked sceptical. "And this will fool our dead friends?"

"As I say, I don't know how alert they are. Do they think the way we think, can they even see as we do? But we must prepare as if they can. We must also grease ourselves, so that if they grab us we can still get free. It's all about speed, my lord. So much so that I recommend we don't load ourselves with weapons. We must break the scoop-thrower and get back inside the castle as fast as possible."

"And how would you even get out of the castle, let alone get back inside?

"When I was in the Keep before, I noticed the garderobe chute. It must lead down to an underground sewer. I suspect it passes beneath the east bailey and feeds into the moat. We can exit that way."

"An underground sewer?" The earl raised an eyebrow. "It may be a tight squeeze."

"In which case, the pig-grease will come in useful."

Corotocus pursed his lips as he pondered. "Supposing you succeed, how do you expect to get back inside? Climbing the garderobe chute? How high is it?"

"If we hang ropes down, with knots and loops tied in them, all it will need is for you to have a number of men standing by. The moment we're in position, you can pull us up. We won't need to climb."

The earl now smiled. Irregular warfare was always to his liking. "I think I'm in favour of this plan, Ranulf. But who will you take?"

"Volunteers initially. If there aren't enough forthcoming, as Navarre said… we'll draw lots."

"I want Garbofasse to go with you."

Ranulf tried not to show how much this disconcerted him. "You don't trust me, my lord?"

"I trust the men less. If you get beyond this ring of dead flesh, what's to stop those worthless dogs fleeing for their lives? You'll be there, but you'll be alone. With Garbofasse, you can control things better."

Ranulf had no particular dislike for Garbofasse, aside from him being the leader of a gang of murderers. And the mercenary captain could not really be described as the earl's man the way Navarre or du Guesculin could. But he was hardly someone Ranulf could trust. All of a sudden, the extremely difficult task Ranulf had set himself looked nigh on impossible.