Chapter 40
“Tell me again,” said Ranulf, “and make
haste.”
A clamor of voices answered and he
raised a fist. “Dismount, all of you, and gather in a circle round
me. Then we shall talk. One at a time.”
Fury bit him like fleas but he clamped
it down, stamping as he tumbled from his horse and swung Gawain
down onto the woodland floor. He could see the London road from
here, the dust of it at least, but he could not see the battlements
of Giles’s place, not yet.
Have we stopped too
soon? Should I have ridden farther?
But he knew the danger of haste. From
raiding in France he knew it and he sensed it now, as the rest of
his straggling, motley crew sprawled and fell from their pillion
mounts, bandy-legged and cursing.
“I did warn you not to come,” he said
to a man who clutched at his groin and wailed something between a
howl and a sob.
“Giles owes us,” said a branded woman,
a cry taken up by several as they shuffled and argued themselves
into a rough circle, with the sun slanting down through the trees
onto their bowed backs. Amidst them, taller and broader and
bristling with spears and knives, were his own men. Like him, they
were in battle armor, hastily donned before their mad-long rush
from the tourney camp. Edmund his squire was in chain mail and
carried a shield: he looked weary but determined, his thin face
tight with anticipation.
Ranulf nodded to him, although he knew
already that armor would not win the day. He had no sappers to take
the castle, so it would have to be won by stealth. For stealth he
needed information, and quickly.
“There is a moat and drawbridge,” he
called out, interrupting the grumbles. “Is there a postern gate?
Any small, narrow entrance? That will be our way in, once we are
past the guards.”
“What guards?” asked Teodwin as he
chafed Lucy’s legs, looking altogether too intent on the task,
especially as he rubbed the blood back into her thighs—which would
be what he would claim to be doing if challenged, Ranulf
wagered.
He sighed and knelt on the forest
floor, feeling for his dagger and then remembering he had given it
to the free-woman Agnes in the meadow. He used a pebble instead to
draw and explain. His men did not need this, but the others did, or
they might give their approach away.
“Chastel d’Or—”
“The yellow castle,” interrupted one of
the ragtag group.
“Chastel d’Or, yellow castle, Giles’s
fortress: it is all one. It is, as you say, small. One keep and
some stone walls.” He drew the plan as he spoke. “Are there
stables? Workshops? Cookhouses?”
No one answered, but when he raised his
head he saw people nodding. He added those in, using his memory of
older households as a guide. “There is a moat and drawbridge. The
drawbridge will be guarded. Can any say by how many?”
After a moment of whispers, he held up
a hand. “Enough. We shall say it is guarded and leave it at that.
There will be another, smaller gate, there always is. Do any of you
know it?”
More whispers and then a man stepped
forward into the circle. “There was one close to my house. ’Twas
where the moat stopped and where a great tree grew up from the
water, an alder.”
Ranulf felt excitement prick him, as if
he was being rasped by a salamander. Giles had been fool enough to
allow a tree to grow there! “What else?”
The fellow shrugged. “It was a little,
narrow, mean path. The guards used it, but liked it not for the
shadows and damp. I heard them grumbling as they marched by my
house. Then, last year, they came and pulled down my house, pushed
it into the moat.”
One way to creep closer and enter the
postern was now blocked, thought Ranulf, before he recalled the
man’s home had been destroyed.
“Our lord will give you one,” said
Teodwin, as if he could spirit them out of the air. Ranulf hid a
smile and said nothing: such plans were for later.
“Is the tree still there?”
“Yes,” said the man. “Or the stump, at
least.”
More cover
removed, thought Ranulf. Giles has not been
as foolish as I hoped he would be.
“How many soldiers did you see about
the castle?” he asked.
That provoked a lively, bickering
discussion. Some thought a score. Some said two. Others swore no
more than seven.
“I could go and ask,” piped up Gawain.
“I am a page and I could say I was joining Sir Giles’s
service.”
“Brave thought, my lad, but no,” said
Ranulf, feeling proud of the boy all the same, and exchanging a
wink with Edmund. His little page had come a long way from the
cowering creature Sir Henry had made. Not wanting to recall how
Henry had met his end, he thought back to
campaigns in France again and recalled instead how Giles ordered
his men and watches, how he would still order them. There would be
watchers in these woods, too, guards they must spot and bring down
before they could raise any alarm. Darkness was best for such work,
but he dared not wait, not when Giles had Edith.
He said as much to the group and then
was surprised.
“We can do that,” several volunteered.
They were all branded and small and thin, dressed in patched tunics
and poor hats.
“These are soldiers,” he reminded them.
“Armed and trained. They may not expect an attack, especially in
daylight, but surprise can take you only so far.”
“It will take us far enough, especially
as they will not be expecting any trouble from serfs,” said
Teodwin, his freckled, red-cheeked face brighter than ever with
suppressed excitement. “It will work, my lord!”
That hope is the hope
Edith gave him, and now he takes it for
himself.
“If they do it, we can watch the
guards, see when they change,” said one of his soldiers. “We may
take one hostage, or capture one and take his uniform and badges,
make a play ourselves as one of Giles’s men.”
“As Edith would,” Ranulf said, before
he realized what he was admitting and clamped his jaws closed.
Teodwin might guess what he knew, but there was no time now for
anything save battle plans.
“I know another tactic,” he said, when
a burst of chatter had died down and expectant, keen faces looked
at him. “I need those who can swim, and swim like fishes and know
how to breathe through hollow reeds or pipes. They must be able to
climb, too, very nimble and fast.”
A ragged scarecrow stepped forward. “I
can do that. I am a thatcher. I know how to climb.”
“Up under a drawbridge with archers
shooting down?” Ranulf wanted the man to know the
risks.
The scarecrow nodded. “Last summer, I
was forced to work for Giles on a far-off hunting lodge. While I
was away, my wife starved, and Giles tossed her not so much as a
crust. I will do all you ask.”
“And me!” cried another, also stepping
forward. “He lamed my son and laughed at my Thorvill’s
pain!”
The words “laughed” and “pain”
resonated afresh in Ranulf’s mind. In a flash of insight, he
recalled again what the spy had told Edith: that he should look to
his homeland, that Giles had wronged him. Here, too, was proof that
Giles loved to savor suffering, that he enjoyed his victories of
spite. What wrong had he suffered in his homeland? The death of his
wife. Olwen, whom he had found with one of her new gloves, given by
Giles, tucked beneath her broken body.
For certain it is that
Giles had a hand in the accident that killed her! That is what his
own spy meant. That, and that the signs of his treachery are still
there for me to find, in my northern homeland.
“So it begins,” he said, feeling a grim
anticipation seethe like boiling poison in his body. “From here on,
we are at war with Chastel d’Or.”