And it could be taken away from me like that’ — he snapped his fingers under my nose — ‘at the whim of the King. I cannot spare the money for Richard’s grand designs. For the security of my family, for my sons, I need to keep every penny. But I cannot afford to refuse him either.’
We walked our horses on for a while in silence. I had never really concerned myself with money — having been truly penniless as a young boy, my small fiefs seemed to me to generate an abundance of wealth. But then I was not an earl with a certain style to be kept up at the royal court, and the lord of several hundred men who needed to be fed and clothed, armed and encouraged, housed and horsed.
‘I am sorry for my shortness with you, Alan, and for my ill humour,’ said Robin unexpectedly. ‘I am bone weary — we all are — and this campaign against Philip seems as if it will never be decided.’
I looked at him in surprise: it was very unlike him to apologize to me, or to admit any weakness.
‘It is I who must beg your pardon, my lord,’ I said. ‘I have been absent from the fight for too long, but I shall try from here on to take up my share of your burdens.’
‘You are welcome to them, my friend,’ said Robin. He gave me a brilliant smile that almost belied his exhaustion.
We approached Chateau-Gaillard from the south-west, with the River Seine rolling slowly along on our left flank. After five days of talk with Robin’s troops about Richard’s extraordinary building endeavour as we trundled uneventfully across Normandy, I was eager as a schoolboy to see this ‘saucy’ castle. In truth, I was not disappointed.
The castle rose before us on the far side of a bend in the river with all the gravitas of a mountain — grey, massive and brooding over the landscape. Even unfinished it was a formidable presence, and as we drew nearer I could see hundreds, in fact, thousands of men swarming around the castle’s roots and scaling the half-built walls. An army of workmen, summoned from the four corners of Richard’s empire to unite with one purpose: to build this mighty fortress in the shortest possible time. We stopped at the far side of the bridge across the Seine that led to the castle, and gazed up in wonder at our King’s pride and joy. I heard the muttering and gasps of the workmen behind me, and unbidden, an image of the cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris flashed into my head: both that great church and this monumental stronghold were extraordinary structures, awe-inspiring, colossal and conjured up by the will of one man.
We crossed the bridge, our necks cricked back as we gazed upwards at the castle, and passing through a gatehouse on the other side of the Seine, where we were briefly challenged and then allowed to pass, we rode past a village for the workmen and their families that cowered under the huge bulk of stone above it, and took the narrow road in front of Chateau-Gaillard, between the castle and the Seine, that wound up to the main entrance.
Above us, atop sheer limestone cliffs, the inner bailey at the north end of the castle with its gigantic towering keep was already constructed and I could see bright banners flying from the battlements and the stick-like figures of men-at-arms standing guard a hundred yards above my head. The walls of the middle bailey were almost complete, but hundreds of men still laboured to construct the circular towers that punctuated its stout fortifications. As we rode up a steep track towards the main gate I saw that an extra layer of defence, an outer bailey, roughly triangular in shape with the beginnings of massive towers at each corner, was in the early stages of construction at the south end of the castle, joined by an arched passage above our heads but separate from the middle bailey. We rode through the narrow road between the middle and outer baileys and turned left to enter the castle through the main gate. The noise in that enclosed passageway was deafening, the shrill ringing of steel chisel on masonry, the shouts of overseers, the crack of raw stone splitting, and the dry stench of dust filling my nostrils — memories of Paris flooded my mind and I felt once again the ache of Hanno’s loss.
King Richard greeted us in his big, round audience room on the first floor of the mighty keep. He was in very high spirits, as usual, but I could see too that while he was animated, he was tired, and more than a few silver flecks were now plainly visible in his red-gold hair. He greeted Robin jovially, slapping him hard on the arm, and laughing hilariously, almost maniacally at some comment from my lord of Locksley, and then turned his feverish brightness on me and said: ‘Well, my good Blondel, you are here at long last — and what do you think of my one- year-old daughter?’
The world shimmied and seemed to rock beneath my feet. Had the King run mad? Surely he had no children. We would have heard about a royal daughter, for certain, long before she had survived a twelve-month.
A quiet voice murmured at my shoulder. ‘I believe His Royal Highness is referring to this castle, sir,’ said Thomas. ‘He only began its construction last summer — and so it is very nearly one year old.’
The world righted itself. I stammered out something along the lines that it looked to be in a good strategic position, easy to defend…’
‘Easy to defend?’ roared the King, half-laughing, half-shouting. He seemed rather put out by my tepid answer. ‘Is that all you can say, Blondel? When this place is finished, I could defend it with one old man on a lame donkey. Why, I could defend this place if these walls were made of butter!’
Robin stepped in smoothly: ‘People speak of the Chateau-Gaillard as the greatest fortress in Christendom, Sir Alan,’ he said. And the King beamed at him, and slapped him hard on the back again. ‘And so it will be, Locksley, so it will be, if I’m only allowed to finish it.’
‘It is most impressive, sire,’ I said, the courtier in me finally coming awake. ‘A noble achievement.’
The King was mollified. ‘I am glad that you approve of it, Blondel,’ he said. ‘It is the key to our fortunes in Normandy, I believe. From here we can sally out and attack Philip’s castles with impunity. And if those French rogues challenge us in vast numbers, we can withdraw here, and defy them for months. It is from here, from this fair rock, that I shall retake Gisors! And when I have Gisors again, I shall have the whole of Normandy and the French Vexin in the palm of my hand. Do not get too comfortable here, Sir Alan. Tomorrow we shall leave for Gournay to show the enemy a thing or two about warfare, and I want you beside me. Reminds me, Locksley, I need to ask something…’
The King gave me a curt nod, and I was dismissed. I bowed, and withdrew a few paces. But as I was turning to go, the King spoke again, in a softer, less abrasive tone: ‘My good Blondel, did you remember to bring your vielle with you from England?’
‘I did, sire.’
‘Will you give us some music after supper tonight?’
‘Gladly, sire.’
The King nodded, and I bowed again and walked out of the keep into the weak May sunshine of the inner bailey.
In a castle bustling with hundreds of knights, squires and men-at-arms — not to mention the innumerable swarms of low-born workmen: carpenters, quarrymen, masons, smiths, diggers and carters, who were hurrying to complete the fortifications — I was very glad to run into an old friend. While Thomas was organizing accommodation for me and my men, and stabling for Shaitan and the other horses — I had brought a palfrey and a pack animal with me from England — I wandered into the courtyard of the middle bailey and watched a knight in a dark-blue surcoat with three golden scallop shells and a dolphin on the chest putting two dozen men-at-arms through their manoeuvres with sword and shield. The knight — my old friend Sir Nicholas de Scras — was demonstrating various cuts to the men-at-arms on a paling, a stout pillar of wood set into the ground in the centre of the middle bailey. I was struck, once again, by Sir Nicholas’s mastery of the art of the blade; his flowing cuts and parries, as he demonstrated a variety of blows on the paling, and the dancer’s grace of his footwork.
As I paused in the shadow of a wine-seller’s awning to admire Sir Nicholas’s skill, I sensed a presence beside me. Turning my head, I saw a tall man with mop of jet black hair atop a lean dark face bisected with a long white scar: Mercadier was watching with me.
For a few moments neither of us spoke, as the line of men-at-arms advanced, slashing the air with their swords, killing an army of invisible Frenchmen. Then the mercenary leader looked directly at me with his blank brown eyes and said, ‘Hoping to pick up a few new tricks, Sir Knight?’
His tone, with its slight Gascon twang, was just on the polite side of sneering, and though it irked me a good deal, I was determined not to allow him to provoke me into a fight. ‘A gentleman can never learn too much about the skill of arms, I believe. One never knows what scrap of knowledge may one day save one’s life in battle.’
‘A gentleman,’ said Mercadier. ‘Is that what you call yourself now?’ He stared at me, and despite myself I could feel the first spikes of rage blooming behind my brow.
‘I am Sir Alan Dale of Westbury, a knight of Nottinghamshire…’ I began, hating my own foolish pomposity
