Chapter 12
August, 1173
outside Dol, Brittany
It was mid-morning and already Delamere could feel the sweat trickling down the sides of his face. He squinted up into the sky. No clouds, only that damned blinding orb. He would have thought, being so close to the sea, the air would feel cooler and there might even be a nice breeze or two, but no luck. The day was beginning as relentlessly hot as the one before and here he was standing unprotected in the middle of an open field, outfitted in his battle gear.
He squinted over towards the sound of Longsword’s voice, his vision temporarily obscured by light spots. It was impossible to ignore Longsword; his voice was growing louder with each little victory and right now, having succeeded in astounding the rebels with his quick night march to Dol, it positively boomed.
Longsword was speaking with Sir Walter. Delamere went to join them, dabbing at his face with the back of his hand. Longsword grinned at him. “Hot? Just wait till a few hours from now.”
“Very funny,” Delamere said, unamused. “I’m sweating so much, my coif is beginning to rust. The rebels don’t have to fight us; they can watch us melt.”
“Richard, you said—”
Delamere held up a hand. “Yes, I know what I said. Don’t worry; I’m not going to start complaining about your plan again, not when I have the weather.”
He and Longsword had argued the previous day after their successful ambush. Longsword had immediately proposed their army chase the rebels all the way to Dol and Delamere had thought that spreading their thin number across the plain would be tantamount to issuing de Fougères and Chester an invitation to massacre them.
“How many gates has the fortress got?” Longsword had asked Sir Walter, who hadn’t been certain but ventured only two: the main and the postern. “So, we put half the men on either one, Richard. They can’t come out more than two or three at a time, right? We’ll cut them down!”
“Good. So they don’t come out. They stay in there for months while we sit outside in the heat and the rain and then the snow.”
“At least it prevents them destroying Avranches!” Longsword had snapped. “And that’s what my father wanted. Listen, Richard—either we pin them down at Dol or they pin us down at Pontorson. As long as I have an advantage, I want to press it! And you can come with me or be the one to ride to the king and let him know what we’re doing!”
Delamere wasn’t about to leave his friend’s side no matter how foolish he considered the scheme. In the end, Alan d’Arques had been sent off to the king with the news that Longsword and the men of Pontorson were in the process of besieging the fortress at Dol and awaited further instructions. Delamere had suggested before he left that he be knighted. After all, the young man was a good servant and had fought next to them in two skirmishes. “Besides,” Delamere had added, “it would be an insult to the king to receive a mere squire as a messenger.” So Alan d’Arques became Sir Alan d’Arques and departed with strict instructions not to pause for sleep or food but only to change horses in order to get to Rouen as quickly as possible.
Longsword’s mercenaries and Sir Walter’s knights had taken the well-kept road to Dol, their way made easier by the ghostly light of a half moon. They’d reached the fortress in the early morning and bivouacked about half a mile away from it, in a field alive with the cacophonous melodies of what seemed to be every mating cricket in the whole of Europe. No reason to believe even the sharpest guard on duty in the fortress could hear them or their horses over the racket, and they had removed their hauberks and helmets and slung them, hidden by their cloaks, across their mounts’ rumps, so that the moonlight wouldn’t reflect the metal and give them away. Right before dawn, they’d donned their battle gear and moved into positions about 500 yards from the fortress, just out of crossbow range. Their arrival had been a total surprise.
The rest of Pontorson’s available soldiers—the archers and pikemen—had followed on foot and had joined the knights in time for a rough breakfast. But Longsword’s biggest surprise had not yet arrived and wouldn’t until noon.
Delamere dabbed at his face again and considered the fortress. The rebel defenders lining the walls stared back. “I wonder why they haven’t decided to come against us,” he said.
“Because they know they don’t stand a chance,” Longsword said without hesitation.
“Then perhaps we should seek rapprochement,” suggested Sir Walter.
“We’ll seek nothing! They’re the ones who provoked this war, remember? If they want to negotiate, let them come out. But,” he added less stridently and with a little smile, “I hope to God they don’t. It would ruin my next surprise.”
The mood inside Dol was tense. De Fougères and his men spoke with each other in a rapid dialect which Hugh couldn’t follow. Not that he cared what they were discussing or, for all he knew, planning. As far as he was concerned, it was over.
The rebels couldn’t believe the royalists had turned around and used their own plan against them. Although Longsword couldn’t have known it, the fact that he had shown up outside Dol with such a skimpy force was the cause of great concern inside the fortress. The Bretons thought the Bastard must be a madman to come against them with a quarter of their number—or maybe, they thought, that wasn’t his full army. Maybe he had twice as many more soldiers hiding beyond eyesight on the road, waiting to swoop down on them if they opened the gate, just as they had planned to do. And that he had turned up so quickly caused further consternation, because it was exactly the sort of thing for which his father was famous. They had believed they were dealing with a neophyte but after the well-executed ambush and this surprise confrontation, they realized that the education provided his son by Henry more than made up for his lack of practical experience.
The rebels, therefore, did nothing for the moment. De Fougères decided their best hope lay in waiting out the siege. Longsword was in enemy territory and although it was true he had a direct supply line, via the road, straight back to Pontorson, it was also true supply lines could be cut. De Fougères gave him two weeks; by then there would be a new moon, and if the royalists hadn’t yet given up and departed, he would send men out to circle around them.
He was optimistic Longsword would just get bored by the inactivity and leave to join his father in the east where the fighting was plenty. Hugh wasn’t so sure. He’d heard that this bastard son was a stubborn, unforgiving man with nothing of the diplomacy of his father, and he had the suspicion that Longsword would want to finish—preferably to the death—anything he started. But he didn’t venture this opinion; the Bretons, who had been white-faced upon waking to the sight of the Bastard’s vengeance, had regained much of their former bravado and Hugh thought he’d be laughed out of the castle, earl or no.
After dinner, he stood up and prepared to leave the high table. The noise level in Dol’s somewhat small hall was inevitably deafening with the crush of so many men and he had discovered the peace of walking the walls on his own while everyone else sat around and got progressively drunker. It would be even worse today, because there was nowhere else for the men to go now that they were confined to the fortress.
As he nodded to his host, de Fougères suddenly grabbed his arm. It grated on Hugh that the man felt free to touch him, but he gritted his teeth and said nothing. De Fougères’ face was flushed from wine and the heavy meal. “Are you on your way to the chapel to beg God for deliverance from the Bastard?” he asked. “There’s no need; pray instead to keep the sun high. The Bastard and his men will cook to death and save us the bother of killing them!” He laughed uproariously at his joke and those around him whistled and jeered. Hugh smiled thinly and left.
It was hot outside. He shielded his eyes and glanced upward at the cloudless sky and the blazing sun. The air was still and eerily quiet, as if it were too hot for even birds and crickets to stir themselves. He climbed the steps to the top floor in the gatehouse and exchanged brief pleasantries with the men on duty. The Bas
tard’s army, he was informed, hadn’t changed position. One of the guards moved away so that he could have a look through the arrow slit.
Longsword’s army was stretched out across the field. Most of the men were sitting on the ground in little groups and almost all of them had removed their heavy battle gear, which lay in heaps here and there. The horses had similarly been divested of their saddles and hardware, and had been hobbled and put out to graze to the rear of the men. Hugh squinted hard.
“Which one is the Bastard?” he asked.
A guard stepped close to him and pointed out Longsword. Hugh stared and chuckled. Of course that would be the king’s son—one of the few still dressed neck to foot in gleaming metal, his only concession to the heat the lack of helmet and gloves. He was standing with two other men, distinguished by his height, and was apparently doing all the talking, as it was his head which bobbed and his hands which gestured.
As Hugh and the guards continued to watch the lolling soldiers in the field before them, a hazy blur appeared on the road from the direction of Pontorson. Longsword’s men saw it, or heard it, too, because one by one they rose to their feet. The Bastard himself was seen to clap his hands together as if with great satisfaction and then turn in the direction of the road. Hugh waited curiously. What could it be? More troops?
He was too far away to hear the pounding of the oxen hooves or the rumbling of the heavy wheels, but after a few moments, the cause of the royalists’ excitement became clear. Half a dozen wagons turned slowly off the road and proceeded towards Longsword’s encampment. Not more soldiers, Hugh realized, but supplies: food, wine, water, tents, pots, bedding and the like. He smiled to himself. If de Fougères believed the Bastard was just going to walk away from this siege, he was in for his second shock of the day.
“Send for Sir Ralph,” he said to one of the guards when the men in the field started to unload the wagons. Longsword was striding from one to the other, reaching in an arm and poking around, obviously looking for something. He found it in the last two carts. With a shout that carried all the way to Hugh, he ordered these unloaded immediately.
It was difficult to see across the distance precisely what was being extracted from the last two wagons. To Hugh it looked like planks of wood of different sizes and that was all. But evidently it was something marvelous to the Bastard, for he had planted himself by the working men and was watching their every move.
Hugh heard the clump of steps from behind but didn’t bother to turn around. He wasn’t surprised when the arm landed around his neck with a little squeeze or when he heard de Fougères’ booming voice too close to his ear. He grimaced.
“Those must be your wagons, Chester!” the older knight said cheerfully. His face was almost pressed against Hugh’s cheek as he had a good look through the narrow opening. “And your oxen as well!”
Hugh pulled away and allowed his ally the full view. “I suppose so. But what is it the Bastard is so interested in those last wagons?”
De Fougères squinted. After a moment he swung his head around and, unsmiling now, demanded silence. The guard tower was crowded with knights who had followed the Breton from the hall and had been joking with each other about the possible contents of the wagons, but they sobered immediately at his tone. It was suddenly so quiet in the tower that they could all quite clearly hear the sound of hammering and loudly shouted orders from across the field. De Fougères stepped back, his face troubled.
“They mean business,” he said.
The knights who were closest to the arrow slit pushed forward to fill the place vacated by de Fougères. Hugh heard murmurs of agreement and felt at a loss. Obviously the planks of wood were more than merely that but he hadn’t the practical experience of the others in the tower and, from pride, was hesitant to put his question to the Bretons a second time.
But de Fougères was explaining for those who could not get to the window. “They’ve brought in a siege machine,” he said. “A mangonel. There must have been one at Pontorson and the Bastard’s carted it here in pieces. They’re putting it together now.”
Hugh had seen a mangonel once, at the royal castle at Gloucester. It was a device used to fling stones with great force against the walls of a fortress in an effort to collapse them. Power was derived from the torque of tightly twisted rope, into which a stout pole was inserted so that it stuck straight up into the air. A length of rope was fixed to the pole about three-quarters of the way up and its free end was wound around another pole which lay parallel to the torsion. This horizontal pole was turned by means of a handle until the rope pulled the torqued pole backwards to a fifteen degree, or smaller, angle. When the handle was released, the torqued pole, at the far end of which was a leather sling containing the stones, snapped forward with stunning velocity until it was stopped by a padded crossbar. But the missiles were unimpeded and flew loose of the sling towards their target. It wasn’t a terribly accurate machine, he knew, but destructive nevertheless.
“It isn’t much of a threat,” scoffed one man. “To use it with any effectiveness, they have to bring it much closer to the castle. And then we simply pick them off with our bowmen.”
But de Fougères was shaking his head. “This—boy,” he spat, “knows exactly what he’s doing. Look what he’s got out there! Tents and cooking pots. Our oxen and our wagons for transport. He’s got the earl’s gold and weapons and armor to use to purchase enough mercenaries to swell his ranks to match ours. Yesterday he killed over one hundred of my soldiers. All this and now he’s gone through the trouble of dragging that mangonel twenty miles and you think he hasn’t considered such a simple thing as being within our arrow range when he uses it?” His voice had grown so loud and angry that the unfortunate knight who’d so confidently ventured his opinion, recoiled in shame.
“Well, then,” Hugh said mildly, “what do you suggest we do?”
De Fougères stared hard at him. “We have no choice. We have to wait. We have to see what the Bastard does first, and then we can plan.”
The only thing de Fougères needed to plan, Hugh thought as he watched the Breton stomp out of the tower, was what words to use when he begged the king’s mercy.
“How are you going to get close enough to the castle to use this thing?” Delamere asked, kicking a foot at the mangonel. He wiped the sleeve of his tunic across his forehead. “Without getting us killed, that is.”
“It’ll work out of their arrow range,” Longsword said absently. He carefully examined the re-constructed machine and pressed his thumb down upon the torqued rope with a satisfied expression.
“Yes, but will it hit anything?” Delamere persisted. The heat was making everyone impatient and irritable.
Longsword glanced up, annoyed. “Of course! Do you think I would have brought it all this way if I couldn’t use it to some purpose?”
“I’m not exactly sure what you’re up to, Will,” Delamere said with exasperation. “Since we started this venture, you’ve been like another person.”
“What are you talking about? My father gave me a job to do and I’m doing it! Perhaps I’m only taking it a bit more seriously than you!”
Delamere’s eyes narrowed. “Is that a criticism of my efforts?”
“No!”
“Hmph!” Delamere snorted and began to walk away.
His friend’s approval meant everything to Longsword. He hurried after Delamere. “Listen, Richard,” he said earnestly, “the mangonel will work, not as effectively, but it will still work at a greater distance. It’s a trick I heard of once. We just load the sling with smaller missiles and fewer of them. So it’s lighter. The force of the release is the same but the sling will shoot farther because there isn’t much weight in it.”
Delamere thought about it and slowly nodded. “All right, but what kind of damage can you hope to do with smaller missiles?”
Longsword grinned. “With rocks and stones—very little, unless we get lucky. But we won’t be using rocks and stones, Richard. Not as such
, that is. My plan is to tie strips of cloth smeared with fat around them, light them and shoot them over the walls. Fireballs!” he exclaimed. “We can’t break the walls so we’ll fire the buildings inside. What do you think of that?”
Delamere had to admit it was a good plan. He glanced at the mangonel and then squinted up at the bright sky. “There’s one good point to this infernal weather,” he added. “You don’t have to waste any time lighting your missiles; just leave them out in the sun and they’ll probably burst into flame on their own.”
For the next three days, Longsword employed the mangonel with an increasing measure of success. It took some time to work out the most effective combination of distance and weight and some more time to make up the strips of cloth slathered in animal fat brought in from Pontorson which were tied around rocks and set ablaze. The soldiers in the fortress appeared as curious about the ability of the machine as did Longsword’s men. They lined the walls and crowded into the guard towers to watch the progress of the experiment directed against them. When the missiles fell harmlessly short, they jeered and whistled…but when the missiles began to soar past their heads, the catcalls abruptly broke off as they scrambled to battle the flames.
Inside Dol, Hugh found the ordeal tedious. He was enough of a knight to admire his foe’s ingenuity but not enough to relish the tension of the stand-off. He considered de Fougères’ lack of reaction the rebels’ downfall. The Breton, he now believed, was like a bully. While he was ransacking a defenseless countryside he was bluff, confident and cruel but when face to face with an army he lost his nerve. As far as Hugh could tell, what was spread out before Dol was the extent of Longsword’s force, which could probably easily be overcome. He couldn’t understand why de Fougères continued to do nothing but he didn’t bother to ask.
The lack of response from the castle annoyed Longsword as well. Here and there a crossbowman would take careful aim and shoot at one of the soldiers manning the mangonel, always with no result, but that was all. Delamere asked rhetorically why the garrison should risk life and waste supplies with a sortie when it could hold out for months but Longsword was impatient for a resolution. The heat wave had not broken and his men complained their tents were small protection against the merciless sun. The horses were suffering even more and were periodically removed to the shelter of the forest, although such a solution made Longsword’s force extremely vulnerable. Despite the threat from the mangonel, the siege seemed to be going in the rebels’ favor. Longsword desperately wanted to finish them off before the king recalled him. Alan d’Arques had been gone four days; he had surely reached Rouen by now and given Henry the news of the attack on the convoy and the blockade of the rebels in their castle. He could well be on his way back with fresh instructions and Longsword couldn’t be certain that these wouldn’t summon him to return to the east. His frustration grew to the point where he barely slept at night. Instead, he paced around the little camp, wracking his brains for some way to entice the Bretons into leaving the security of Dol.
The morning of the fourth day of the siege dawned as relentlessly hot as the past few but with one difference: a heavy, leaden sky overhead. Longsword’s mood turned even worse; if it rained, he wouldn’t be able to shoot fireballs from the mangonel and a whole day’s work would be lost. But he was the only one of the men who viewed the coming storm with dismay. The others, including even the genial and accommodating Sir Walter, were happy to have relief from the heat.
“Perhaps nature will do the job for us,” Delamere said, as the wind picked up and the first rumblings of thunder were heard in the distance. “Lightning will strike the wooden roof of the keep and set it ablaze.”
Longsword’s face was grim. “It had better not,” he said. “This is my fight.”
Delamere was about to laugh but a glance at his friend’s set expression forestalled him.
The storm didn’t hit all at once. There was thunder and lightning and a torrential downpour during which the royalists huddled in their leaky tents and prayed they wouldn’t be struck dead and hoped that the spooked, hobbled horses wouldn’t scatter too far. Then there was a brief respite when the sun and patches of blue actually appeared in the sky. Longsword took advantage of it by putting the mangonel to use but was only able to take four or five ineffectual shots before the clouds rapidly piled up again and broke open. The men ran back to the relative shelter of the tents so quickly that the supply of prepared missiles was forgotten and left behind and when the storm finally moved on and Longsword went out to the mangonel, he discovered that the pounding rain had rinsed most of the fat from the cloths, making them impossible to light.
“At least the temperature’s cooled off,” Delamere offered sympathetically as Longsword surveyed the useless missiles with dismay. “The men won’t be so apt to complain now.”
Longsword glared at him. “If I find the idiots who were responsible for taking these back, I’ll make them so miserable they’ll wish they were in hell! And then let them complain to the devil about the goddamned heat!”
When Alan d’Arques rode into the camp a short time later, he was told he could find Longsword and Delamere among the clump of men surrounding the mangonel. The afternoon had turned stunning, bright and sunny but comfortable and had cajoled Longsword into a better humor. While some of his men sat nearby and prepared fresh fireballs for use the next day, the remainder had decided to clean up their ever-increasing midden by projecting everything in it—mostly the inedible leftovers of their previous meals as well as bits of broken metal and one good cooking pot into which someone had contributed his personal waste—over the walls of Dol. They had even dismantled one of the wagons and sent the pieces flying into the guard towers. Longsword cheered as mightily as the others when the soldiers in the towers were seen to duck in fear as they realized the projectiles were headed directly at them.
D’Arques slid off his horse with a grin. “My lords, haven’t you yet taken this castle?”
Longsword whipped around, a sharp retort on his tongue which died when he saw who had spoken. He relaxed. “We’re almost there. They were saved this morning by an opportune thunderstorm.”
Delamere gave the younger man a welcoming embrace. “You must have made quick work in Rouen,” he remarked. “Were you at least invited to spend the night?”
“Not even!” D’Arques made a face. “I feel as though I haven’t slept since the ambush on Chester’s convoy five days ago.”
Delamere laughed. “Listen to him, Will! When he was a mere squire he never dared to complain! Believe it or not, you actually had the easier task,” he told Alan. “We spent the last few days broiling under the sun and vying to come up with the most creative object to hurl over those walls.” There were more cheers from around the mangonel as someone’s soiled undergarment was wrapped around a discarded helmet and shot clear of the guard tower.
“What do you mean you didn’t even stay the night in Rouen?” Longsword asked abruptly.
“The king wouldn’t allow it, my lord. We marched out only a few hours after I’d arrived.”
“‘We’?”
“Yes, my lord. All of us.” D’Arques pointed to the edge of the forest in the distance, where an emerging line of mounted soldiers was only just becoming visible. “The king has brought the main part of his army to end the siege.”
Henry had performed a monumental feat in moving both his knights and his foot soldiers almost two hundred miles in less than two days. He arrived at Dol on August 23rd and promptly relieved Longsword of his command. After a brief conference with his son, the mangonel was ordered pulled back and Sir Walter was dispatched to the fortress to offer terms.
Delamere expected Longsword to emerge angry and bitter from his meeting with the king but to his surprise his friend was subdued. “He said I should have sent Sir Walter to talk to de Fougères and Chester immediately, to let them know my intentions and give them the opportunity to surrender instead of trying to force them into it,” Longsword told him
glumly. “He said I wasted four days and put my men at needless risk.”
Delamere was stunned. “But how were we to know the garrison wouldn’t just kill fitz Hamo and overwhelm us, seeing how outnumbered we were?”
“He said that if the garrison knew how few we were, it would have attacked us four days ago.”
“And that was that?” Delamere demanded. “So neat and simple? What about everything you’ve done? What about the ambush? Did he say anything about that? It was a great slaughter—”
“Sir Walter began to tell him of it,” Longsword interrupted, “but he held up his hand and said Alan had already given him the story. That was all.”
“I don’t believe it—”
Longsword held up his hand in a fair imitation of the king. “He’s right, Richard,” he said wearily. “Everything he said was right. I was so eager to crush the rebels that I didn’t think of the uncomplicated solution.”
Delamere watched his friend walk off dejectedly, back to the tent Henry had apportioned for his own. It would have been useless to argue further with him, to try and buoy his sagging spirit. Longsword lived and breathed on his father’s say-so and Delamere suspected that, to him, his failure to force the capitulation of the rebels was due to more than insufficient time or bad weather; it was divine confirmation of the king’s hard words.
At the same time, Hugh and Ralph de Fougères watched Sir Walter and his escort ride out of Dol. They had not been permitted to plead their case or ask for special privileges. Henry’s terms left no room for negotiation. They were to surrender immediately to a comfortable, honorable imprisonment for the duration of the war. If they refused this offer and chose to continue their futile rebellion, the king would show no mercy. They were given three days to think about it.
Hugh’s mind had been decided long before Henry had appeared and de Fougères’ nerve had been faltering since Longsword had brought up the mangonel. The latter knew also, from past experience, how hard Henry could be when he was angry and it was obviously anger which had propelled the king on his monumental march to the other side of Normandy. No one at Dol could even remember the last time Henry hadn’t won a siege; he was the master at it.
On August 26th, the earl of Chester, Ralph de Fougères, over one hundred knights and three times as many mercenaries filed through the front gate of Dol and put their weapons at the king’s feet.