was sure. Or almost sure.
The attack came not long after noon. I had been half-listening to the sounds of the crowd as Ademar whipped them with his words, while Robin snored gently at my feet. The crowd sounded like the roar and crash of the sea breaking on a shingle beach; in a strange, horrible way, it was soothing; just a big ceaseless, sound, seemingly unconnected with any evil. Then suddenly there was movement in the bailey; Brother Ademar had ended a long harangue with a great shout, there was a louder that usual roar from the masses and he plunged into the crowd of listeners, and forced his way through the bodies like a man swimming in a sea of humanity. He was followed by Malbete, surging forward through the populace in the wake of the monk, and surrounded by a knot of half a dozen men-at-arms, wearing surcoats in scarlet and sky blue, the colours of the Evil Beast himself.
Ademar emerged from the press at the gate of the bailey, and entrance of the rammed-earth causeway leading up to the Tower. He turned to the packed masses behind him and shouted a last exhortation; at this distance I could hear him clearly, and I swear he bellowed: ‘These Christ-killing lice must be swept from the earth! The earth must be cleansed! God wills it! God wills it!’ And his words were answered by another great roar from the crowd. He raised his six-foot wooden cross and, alone, he charged up the earth ramp, and on to the wooden steps that led the last few yards up to the Tower. And with a crazed howl that froze my heart, the crowd of screaming Christians, the good citizens of York, rushed after him like a river in spate.
I had long since woken Robin and he was passing along the file of Jews lining the parapet, giving encouragement. Each Jew was clutching a crossbow, but many looked terrified. ‘Do not shoot, do not shoot,’ Robin was shouting, his freshly strung war bow in one hand, and it was hard to hear him over the deep booming hatred of the crowd below. ‘When I give the signal, we will crush these vermin, not before, hold your peace until I give the order. Do. Not. Shoot.’
Miraculously, not a Jew fired his crossbow, not a javelin or stone was hurled. ‘Wait for it, wait for it,’ Robin was shouting, and then I noticed him doing a strange thing. He put down his bow and reached for a boulder, one of hundreds that had been piled in heaps around the battlements. He took it in both hands, holding it to his chest. It was about the same size as a man’s head. Then he looked out over the parapet and down at the surging mob below. The white monk was at the iron-bound gate of the Tower; he was hammering at the oak door with the butt end of his cross, ordering the Jews to open it in the name of Christ, and making no discernable impact at all. Robin leaned out over the battlements, lifted the great boulder out over the edge, paused for a second to take aim and then hurled the great lump of stone almost straight downward on to the head of the white monk.
The monk’s head exploded like a smashed egg, splashing glistening blood and brain over the dull wood of the steps. His body collapsed, the feet jerked once and then he was still.
I swear, I swear on Mary the Mother of God that for just an instant, the whole blood-crazed mob stopped, stock still, frozen in shock at the holy man’s death. And then, Richard Malbete, who was in the middle ranks of the mob, raised his sword and bellowed ‘Kill them, kill them all,’ and the crowd screamed as if in terrible pain and surged forward again.
‘Now shoot,’ yelled Robin. ‘Shoot. Reload, and shoot again.’ And with a leathery ripple of noise, the defenders fired as one man, and a hail of black quarrels sliced down and smacked into the crowd below. Dozens of Christians dropped out of the press before the Tower door, staggering back punctured by deep wounds in the neck, shoulders and head. One man in a red hood snarling up at the Jews on the battlements received a quarrel through the eye. He fell to his knees and was trampled by the mob. Some of our men followed Robin’s example and, after firing their crossbows, picked up stones from the piles by the battlements and hurled them down on the attackers with terrible force. Others methodically reloaded, hauling back the powerful cords with their leg and back muscles, loading a quarrel into the groove, leaning over the parapet and shooting into the mass of folk below again and again.
The slope was now littered with wounded and dying townsmen, and a few women, too, caught up in the fire of zealotry. More Christians surged over the earth and log causeway from the bailey, taking the places of their fallen neighbours, boiling around the little iron door and battering at it with axes, swords, even plain wooden staves. They had no chance. The black quarrels flew thick and fast, a swarm of death, punching into the unarmoured bodies of the people below and doing appalling slaughter. Robin, beside me, had regained his bow. He had an arrow nocked and was searching the crowd for a particular target. And I knew who it was. Richard Malbete, surrounded by men-at-arms, was urging the mob forward from the back of the press around the door with oaths and loud cries of ‘God wills it!’ I saw Robin mark him, pull back his bow cord the final couple of inches to his ear and loose. It flew straight and true but, at the last minute, the man-at-arms next to Malbete threw up his kite-shaped shield and caught the arrow, with a flat thump, an inch or two below the curved top edge. Robin cursed and pulled another arrow from his bag. I saw Malbete staring directly at us, his feral eyes glittering madly, and then he began to move away, squirming backwards through the crowd like an eel, keeping low. He gave us one parting glance of sheer hatred before he turned and disappeared back across the causeway into the bailey courtyard.
The fight below us was not over, but there were signs that the people’s ardour was fading under the terrible onslaught of quarrels and stones. A young man, thin and agile, his face burning with religious fervour, in desperation tried to climb the rough wooden exterior of the Tower using two thick knives, driving them into the wood to give him handholds. I leaned over the parapet and shot him in the throat with a bolt from my crossbow. It was the first shot I had loosed, and I watched with a numb feeling of regret as he tumbled away, rolling down the slope, choking on his own blood, dying and scrabbling at the thick black shaft that protruded from his neck.
And then suddenly it was over. The townspeople were streaming back over the causeway to the bailey, helping their wounded friends to limp along, but leaving more than two score of bodies scattered on the bloody grass of the mound below us. A few of the Jews loosed bolts at their retreating backs, but they missed, and Robin shouted: ‘Cease shooting, stop! Save your quarrels.’ And suddenly we were a gang of grinning, cheering men, panting and sweating, slapping each other on the back, shaking but alive and, for the moment, victorious.
The sound of hammering was relentless, a ceaseless pounding that seemed to attack directly a spot at the base of my skull. It began almost as soon as the last citizen had retreated into the bailey and continued for hours. Worse than the noise was the knowledge of what they were building: ladders. We had not defeated them in the bloody skirmish by the Tower’s gate; they would return, and in a much more business-like fashion.
The Jews were jubilant, however, and as one company was sent down to the ground floor to rest, replaced by a fresh group of warriors, there was much singing and joking, and men exaggerating the numbers they had personally slain. I went down with them, out of the sunlight, and took bread and cheese and a mug of ale from Ruth in the dim ground-floor hall. She was glowing with happiness, eyes sparkling as she passed around food to the hungry men.
I had an uncomfortable feeling that she thought the battle was over. But I could not bring myself to disillusion her: I knew we were in for a much harder fight before we could count ourselves the victors. And every Christian we killed would harden opinion against us when Sir John Marshal and his troops finally returned from wherever they had been.
Robin found me dozing against the wall of the hall; he had brought Reuben with him and three other Jews. They were all armed with swords, and two of the men I didn’t know carried shields. Reuben’s sword was unlike any I had ever seen before: it was slim, delicate even, and slightly curved. I stared at it wondering how a man could wield such a girlish weapon.
‘They will attack again soon,’ Robin said without any preamble. ‘And they will attack from all sides, with ladders.’ He stopped and looked speculatively at the three men with Reuben. ‘We may be able to hold them, but if they do get over the parapet, you Alan, with the help of Reuben and these good men, must repel them. Stay back from the fight, the five of you, and watch for breaches. Your job is to be a stopper, Alan, like a cork in a bottle, to fill any gap that may open in our defences. Clear?’
I nodded. Robin grinned at me. ‘Good. Alan, you are in command, and — remember — we’re all relying on you,’ he said with a grin and then he was gone. We clumped up the stairs again to the roof and took up a position in the centre of the open space. It was mid-afternoon, and even in the weak March sunlight it was pleasantly warm up there. We were fifteen paces from each of the four sides of the battlements; and I could see the logic of Robin’s decision to deploy us as he had. If the enemy got over the wall, we five could charge them in a few
