take a look at it.’
With his entire team in our wake, he pulled me outside like a child excited by a new toy.
‘Isn’t it magnificent? It reminds me of Earl Harold’s home at St Cirq Lapopie. On it, I’m going to build the Castle of the Rock, the mightiest fortification in Christendom.’
Becoming even more animated, he then pulled me back inside the tent.
‘I am the master mason. Look at the drawing, it’s stupendous, even if I do say so myself! The main bailey’s outer walls have fifteen round towers, protected by a ditch forty feet deep. After that, there is a massive inner wall, surrounded by another ditch, plus a drawbridge and a portcullis. Then, in the middle of the inner bailey, there is a third and final redoubt, the keep. All the walls will be eighteen feet thick.’
I was amazed.
‘Eighteen feet, my Lord? No castle has ever had walls that size.’
‘This one will! But that is only the half of it. There will be two wells, which will be dug down to river level, three hundred feet deep. But the most important part is the high middle wall.’
He leaned over the drawing and began to outline his design.
‘Not only will it have walls of great depth, but they will be constructed to a new design. Having watched for years as straight walls crumble under the impact of huge stone missiles, I’ve realized that defensive walls shouldn’t be straight. The walls of my middle bastion are nineteen concentric arcs. Look: missiles will slide off, rather than punch holes in the outside. Also, the circular shape means that the arrow slits have a much wider arc for shooting – so, no blind spots!’
I had never seen anything like it. His arced walls were a series of curves, like half towers, and as soon as I saw them I realized how effective they could be.
‘My Lord, this talent is in your blood. Hereward’s wife, Torfida – you will have read about her – understood the formulae and skills of the master masons, and worked on the great cathedrals. Her daughter, Estrith, Earl Harold’s mother, was one of the churchwrights of Norwich.’
‘I know; they have been my inspiration.’
I peered at the plans and drawings and soon saw another feature that was not familiar.
‘Sire, all the towers have overhanging structures at their top. What are they?’
‘Another of my rather clever ideas. I call them “machicolations”; it comes from an old form of my Occitan language, from “macher”. In English it means something like “neck crusher”. Each of the towers will have stone corbels at the top, so that I can build an overhang of about a foot. There will be holes in the overhang, so that —’
He had devised another idea that was so simple, yet so clever, that as soon as he described it, I was able to finish his sentence.
‘—so that the defenders can drop missiles on their attackers and “machicolate” them!’
‘Exactly, using incendiaries, or hot oil.’
‘It’s very clever, sire.’
‘To tell the truth, they are not entirely my original idea, I saw them on the barbican at Darum – a very clever Muslim engineer must have dreamed them up – but I’m happy to take the credit.’
I looked at the dimensions on the plan and worked out its scale.
‘Sire, it’s a colossus; it will take years to build.’
‘No, fifteen months; these men are going to build it for me, and you’re going to make sure they do it on time.’
‘Fifteen months is surely not possible, sire.’
‘We have done the calculations. I have recruited every mason in the Empire, and many more from elsewhere. They will have hundreds of carpenters and labourers to support them. By the end of September, you will have an army of six thousand men here. Your budget is twenty thousand pounds, and your completion date is January 1198 – eighteen months from now. Any questions?’
Further questions were futile. Although not a stone had been laid, and most of the workforce had not yet arrived, six thousand men was a mighty host – and twenty thousand pounds was an enormous budget. I remembered back to the King’s Council at Nottingham, when the Chancellor had announced that the King’s annual income from the entire English realm was just over twenty-five thousand pounds.
I was required to meet a near impossible challenge, but I had been given the resources to make the Lionheart’s dream come true. I set to work with two incentives: first, to pick up the King’s gauntlet; and second, to return home to Negu as soon as possible.
33. Castle of the Rock
The King left Les Andelys in the autumn of 1196 to resume his war against the French. Subtle diplomacy was as vital to his new campaign as his ability on the battlefield. Indeed, his skills in the political arena were becoming as formidable as his military prowess.
His strategy was impressive. His new Castle of the Rock on the Seine would be his fulcrum for an attack on the Vexin. But at the same time, he would use diplomacy to persuade some of King Philip’s vital allies to change their allegiance. He had two main targets – the old nemeses of his dynasty – the Counts of Toulouse, and the immensely rich and powerful Counts of Flanders. They were his most important neighbours and, for France, their allegiance was critical.
The year had brought a stroke of luck for the Lionheart, one which opened a door of opportunity to strike a deal with the Toulousains. The old count, Raymond V, an irascible old war horse who had no time for his old rivals from Aquitaine, had died, to be succeeded by his son, Raymond VI, who was a much more pliable man.
In October, the King met with the Count in nearby Rouen, a meeting that I was asked to attend, where he forged an agreement that significantly changed the course of his war with Philip.
The Lionheart renounced the Plantagenet claim to Toulouse, granted Raymond the lordships of Cahors and Agen and gave him the hand in marriage of his sister, Joan. It was not the first time he had been prepared to use his sister’s charms as the mortar to solidify an alliance. This time, the bond worked.
Then, another death opened the other doorway to a kingdom that was central to the King’s plans. Baldwin IX succeeded his father as Count of Flanders; the Lionheart seized the moment.
He invited Baldwin, a dashing young prince that the Lionheart grew to like immensely, to Rouen. He wined and dined him, making available as many of the city’s most attractive young girls as the prince could ravish. The young man was in awe of the Lionheart. When he was offered generous trading terms in his most important markets, in England, and a goodwill payment of four thousand pounds, a new pact was formed.
With his allies secured diplomatically, the King went on a military offensive. He split his forces, giving the Grand Quintet freedom to mount their own assaults. William Marshal captured the fortress of Milly in the Loire, in May 1197, and Mercadier pulled off an even bigger coup by capturing King Philip’s cousin, Philip of Dreux, the Bishop of Beauvais. This was perhaps the man the Lionheart despised more than any other; he had spread the poisonous rumour that the King had been behind the assassination of Conrad of Montferrat on the streets of Acre. He had the Bishop imprisoned and told his jailor to throw away the key.
The King himself took Dangu, a castle in the Vexin only four miles from Gisors. The tide of the war began to turn in his favour and many more strongholds fell to him in Berry and the Auvergne. By September 1197, satisfied that he had won the first phase of the war, the King sent for Count Baldwin and together they sent an envoy to King Philip, calling for a truce.
The three men met in a meadow close to the Castle of the Rock on the Seine, a spot chosen deliberately by the Lionheart, so that Philip could see the huge bulwark rising above him. The meeting was not amicable. There was too much bitterness from years of conflict between them – especially from their animosities in the Holy Land – and Philip’s plotting and scheming afterwards. Neither Richard nor Philip spoke; all the negotiations were conducted by intermediaries, while the two just stared at each other, their mutual contempt plain for all to see.
The Lionheart showed admirable restraint; as a younger man, he would not have been able to contain himself, and would have provoked a flaming row or worse.
