lamenting Rabbi Yomtob’s extraordinary words, some were weeping, others were angrily shouting about fighting to the death, taking Christian dogs with them. Robin took me by the arm and said: ‘Let us go up to the roof.’
I was dazed by Rabbi Yomtob’s speech; it seemed to rob me of breath as I climbed the stairs. It was an extraordinary, and grossly sinful attitude to take, I felt. I had been in hopeless situations before — well, one at least, at Linden Lea — but it would never occur to me to take my own life.
On the roof, I took up my familiar position overlooking the bailey, and my heart sank even further.
‘Do you know what that is?’ asked Robin, pointing out into the bailey, where a huge wooden structure was being erected by many busy craftsmen from the town. It was not a question that required a reply. The hammering once again was giving me the most colossal headache. The workmen had finished the frame, a square of foot- thick beams, nailed and lashed together and set on solid wooden wheels. The upright bars were in place, too, topped by a cross piece looking for all the world like a gibbet. In the centre of the structure, in a spider’s web of thick ropes and pulleys, was a great wooden arm, with what looked like a giant spoon attached to the far end. I knew what it was, all right. And I shuddered. It was a mangonel, a siege weapon capable of hurling huge boulders at the Tower, a sort of catapult that I had seen reduce the stout palisade of a fortified manor house to kindling.
‘Once they start with that,’ said Robin, ‘we have only hours before this place is falling around our ears.’ He sounded completely detached, almost relaxed, as if just idly remarking on an interesting phenomenon.
‘What are we going to do,’ I asked him, trying to keep my voice firm and practical, though a sick feeling had lodged in my stomach.
‘If I had a dozen arrows, I could slow them down a bit,’ mused Robin. Then he shrugged. ‘I tell you one thing, Alan. We are not going to kill ourselves.’ And he gave me a grin, which I managed to return as bravely as I could.
There was no more parlaying with Sir John Marshal, which I admit I had been secretly hoping for. It seems he intended to stay true to his word for, as the sun was at its height, the first missile sailed up from the mangonel, almost slowly, and came smashing into the lower part of the wall of the Tower with a shrieking crash that rocked the whole building. I had watched the townsmen, supervised by a squad of men-at-arms hauling back the great spoon-like arm, loading a massive rock into the cup, and releasing the ropes that held it captive.
There was just one ray of hope; they seemed to be slow at loading the machine, perhaps because, as civilians, they were unused to it, and there seemed to be a shortage of missiles, too. But the boulders that they hurled were having a devastating effect on the Tower. By mid-aftemoon, they had managed to strike it five times. One corner of the building was sagging slightly, huge splinters of wood hanging free; a narrow window on the second floor had been smashed into a much wider space, which we hastily covered with nailed planks. And a high shot had smashed through a section of the battlements, on the left facing the bailey, killing two men instantly and plunging through the floor of the roof and two storeys below to maim a woman preparing food on the ground floor. Then, thank the Lord, the bombardment stopped. The men tending the great killing machine sat about idly, drinking from a great barrel of ale that had appeared in their midst and, after a while, when the ale had cheered them, capering around and baring their arses at the Jews in the Tower. I perceived then that they had run out of missiles. And hope blossomed in my breast — perhaps there would be no more damage done today — only to be dashed when a great cart rumbled through the open gates of the bailey filled with huge stones. The men stirred themselves, the arm was once pulled back with stout ropes, the cup was filled with a block of grey stone, the ropes were loosed and another chunk of hate-sent masonry crashed into our defences. And another. And another. Fat jagged planks of wood were falling free with each strike by now, and another hole had been smashed in the wall to the right and slightly above the iron-bound door. We blocked it as best we could with a large oak table, and a couple of benches, but I knew as I sweated and heaved the heavy furniture into place, that a single strike on our makeshift patching would blow the hole wide open in less than a heartbeat. As Robin had predicted, the place was falling around our ears. As another boulder boomed against the walls, I felt black despair clawing at my heart. When this mighty Tower was reduced to a splintered woodpile, the men-at-arms would come again and, with swinging axe and stabbing spear they would swallow us in a huge red wave of priest-whipped hatred.
On the roof again, averting my eyes from the great hole in the floor, I felt the battlements rock unsteadily under the light touch of my hands. The ground floor I had just left was by now filled with the wounded, most with splinter wounds; as the boulders crashed into the walls with demonic force, spears of wood, sharp as a barber- surgeon’s knife, would burst free from the inside wall, lancing through unarmoured bodies like a hot needle through butter. The stench of blood filled the dank air inside the Tower, and the cries of wounded and bereaved, the frightened women and children, aye, and a few men, echoed around like the moaning of lost souls. We were in Hell. And there was no escape.
And then there was a miracle. I heard the great bells of the Minster ring out, their cheerful peal, a hideous joke in the blood and carnage of the Tower. It was Vespers. The bells rang out endlessly and as I listened, and offered up a prayer to the Virgin to keep me safe, I noticed that the bombardment had stopped. It must have been a quarter of an hour since the last shattering strike. The sun was very low in the sky, and I saw that the mangonel had been all but abandoned by the men who served it. A lonely man-at-arms sat on the front bar of the machine, looking up at the ramshackle remains of the Tower, hunched, battered and bleeding, wooden planks hanging off in crazy shapes. My prayer to the Mother of God had been answered — but as the Vespers’ bells continued to ring out I realised that there might be another explanation for our miraculous respite. It suddenly occurred to me that it was Good Friday, and our Christian tormentors were observing a Truce of God on this holy evening. The bailey was less full than before, though the circle of steel-clad men-at-arms around the Tower was still intact; all who could be excused from the task of keeping us penned in were attending Mass.
Chapter Six
By full dark it was clear that were we indeed being spared any further attack by the mangonel. And I guessed that we would be free from its depredations for the night, but that it would begin again in the morning; followed, when we were battered unrecognisable, by an assault on the ruins by the blood-lusting frustrated citizenry, backed by the trained soldiers of Sir Richard and Sir John. Robin agreed with me.
I suggested to my master that we might go below to help with the interior wall repairs, but he shook his head. ‘They are not going to repair anything,’ he said in a strange chilling voice. ‘They have decided to die. At this moment they are praying, and following the rituals of their faith on this holy day; we must leave them in peace for the moment.’
I stared at him in horror: ‘All of them,’ I asked.
‘All but a very few,’ he replied. ‘Tomorrow you and I, with Reuben and Ruth, will lead a handful out of Jews out of here, and we will surrender to the mercies of Sir John Marshal. Don’t worry, Alan, he will not harm us — you and me. At least, I don’t think he will. There would be… certain repercussions, and I am worth more to him in ransom than as a corpse. As for Reuben and Ruth, I have persuaded them to undergo baptism, and promised to protect them. It’s better than certain death…’
‘Let’s hope Sir John has not heard of Ralph Murdac’s munificent offer of German silver for your head,’ I said grimly.
‘Well, if you have a better plan, let me hear it,’ snapped Robin. I realised that he must have been feeling the strain just as much as I — but still it was an uncharacteristically sharp answer for my master. I had nothing practical to suggest, and so I held my peace.
We passed the hours sitting together in the lee of the rickety battlements, looking up at the stars. I was thinking of Ruth, the touch of her hand against my face, the way her body moved as she walked, and my idiotic promise to her to keep her safe. Below, in the Tower, I could hear the sound of solemn singing as the Jews celebrated their Passover and prepared for the appalling, unthinkable bloodletting to come. Just imagining that kindly faced venerable Rabbi cutting the throats of his family, the knife gripped in his trembling, purple-veined hands, the innocent blood spurting red and soaking his dark sleeve, the loved one slumping in his cradling arms… I couldn’t bear it. Then the singing from below stopped. For a long, long time there was silence; only the distant sounds of the men-at-arms down in the bailey and in the encircling picket lines, joking, cursing, ignorant of the
