Authors: Martin Archer
Tags: #Historical Fiction
What is particularly surprising is that Isabel and Henry FitzCount are already on their way to his Launceston Castle and are betrothed to be married in the spring. They left yesterday right after we retook Trematon - before FitzCount sent the French knights with the challenge I accepted. It was all a hoax to get me out in the open so they could kill me.
Good God - she probably thinks I am dead and FitzCount will end up with the lands and revenues of both Trematon and Restormel. Then what? Will she kill FitzCount and use her lands to trade up again with another marriage to another lord. I don’t doubt it - she is obviously as ambitious for herself as we are for George.
“We’ve got to settle this once and for all, William. It won’t wait. We’re all in danger, even George, until that woman and her Frenchmen are gone to hell where they belong.”
Thomas thinks we should march our men on Launceston Castle and keep them there until we starve them out take it.
“Let’s go starve them out kill the lot of them. We need to get it over with before they kill us and little George,” is Thomas’ council.
George? My God what will we tell George about Lady Dorothy’s daughters? It will give him nightmares.
I tell Thomas I agree with him. And I do – both to end the risk to George and because I can’t get the sight of Dorothy and her two little girls out of my mind.
But first we need a plan.
Chapter Seven
Launceston is in Cornwall on the Devon border just before you get to the River Tamar. The Tamar is the great natural barrier, a moat if you will, where Cornwall ends and Devon begins. Cornwall is mostly important for its tin mining and refining. The mines are on the lands belonging to the lords and their manors but the tin and the right to mine it and refine and coin it belong to the crown.
Indeed, Thomas suddenly remembers, some of the tin miners who visited him came from Launceston. When we get there we need to look them up to find out what they know and make sure their slaves and serfs are free and they have increased the number of coins they are sending to London for Richard and John to argue over.
Things move right along. Before we trek back to Restormel we appoint some men to garrison the castle and send a galloper to Sir Percy in Falmouth telling him to come to Trematon and be its castellan.
Where Thomas and I are not in agreement is about Restormel. Thomas wants to come with me to Launceston and I want him to stay in command at Restormel.
I finally win Thomas’ grudging acceptance because my argument is better – George and the boys need him at Restormel for their schoolings; and I need him there to organize the supplies and reinforcements I’ll need if I am to take Launceston and the heads of the vipers in it.
What we both agree is that we should try to take Launceston before it’s time for our galleys to sail for the Holy Land in the spring; what we don’t discuss is what we’ll do if we don’t take Launceston before it’s time for the galleys to sail.
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Two days later our men our men have finished burying the dead and we start for Launceston. Well, almost all of us do. Sir Percy gallops in from Falmouth to take over Trematon and we leave a couple of dozen dependable men with him.
Sir Percy is more than a little pleased with his new appointment.
“I’m honored and the wife will be pleased, won’t she? Finally got herself a proper castle to fuss over, doesn’t she?”
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It takes almost a week to get to Launceston - because we have to stop at Restormel to get the tents and supplies and weapons we’ll need for a winter campaign.
When we finally get to Launceston we find the castle’s drawbridges up and its battlements manned. So they probably already know we’re coming for them. Some of FitzCount’s survivors must have reached them before we arrive and begin our siege.
No way I’m going to throw our men away attempting an attack on Launceston Castle. It’s too strong. We’ll have to encircle it and starve the bastards out with a siege.
Two weeks cold and boring weeks later and a surprise messenger arrives – my brother Thomas and he is accompanied by Bishop Pierre of the diocese of Cornwall and Devon.
And Thomas quickly takes me aside and tells me that the Bishop may not know that he’s been to London to see the Papal Legate about splitting off Cornwall as a separate diocese with Thomas as its bishop.
The Bishop’s story unfolds in front of the fire in Launceston Village’s only alehouse. He’d heard about the Earl’s intention to attack Trematon and was on his way there in an effort to try to stop the attack.
With a great sigh of lament the good man explains that his mule went lame and he has painful bunions and corns so he only gets as far as Restormel before he learns he is too late. It’s at Restormel where he first hears about me bringing my men to Launceston. That, he says, explains why he is come here with Bishop Thomas - to once again offer his services as an honest broker in the cause of peace.
It is a heartwarming story except for the not so minor fact that while the good Bishop is telling his tale to me Thomas is standing behind him shaking his head negatively.
What Bishop Pierre proposes is that he approach Sir Henry and his betrothed in the castle and see if he can work out some kind of compensation of land and money for the blood has been spilled and the wrong I’ve been done by Sir Henry. “And, of course, something for Lady Dorothy’s family as well.”
“It sounds like a wonderful idea and a good man you are for being willing to make the effort,” I respond to him as I see Thomas emphatically nodding his head behind him that I should agree.
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“He’s lying through his teeth” are Thomas’ first words as soon as we are alone. “They must have gotten word to him somehow. How else would he know FitzCount and the viper are here? What I learned from the Papal Nuncio when we talked about Cornwall’s worthies is that he is FitzCount’s cousin. What I don’t think he knows is that we are brothers; he thinks I’m an unemployed bishop teaching children for my food and a place to lay my head.”
That afternoon the good Bishop Pierre of Cornwall and Devon walks up to the drawbridge, and into the castle after it is lowered and then quickly raised behind him.
“Praise God,” the Bishop of Cornwall and Devon shouts to us as he comes back over the drawbridge beaming several hours later. He has good news. FitzCount is willing to make amends with a considerable, a very considerable, amount of money and land so that “bygones will be bygones.”
I didn’t even know he had that much.
Moreover, the good bishop has taken it upon himself to arrange a meeting between FitzCount and me to finalize matters and make our marks on an agreement and arrange the payments. If I agree we’ll meet in the tiny Launceston religious chapel where pilgrims stop to pray on the road to Devon. It’s the tiny wood and stone building near the dirt track that runs along the edge of the village to the castle.
To enhance and guarantee everyone’s safety, and to insure the Church will accept and bless the agreement, each of us will be accompanied by only a bishop – he and Thomas. And, oh yes, I will, of course, have to temporarily pull my men back out of the village so Sir Henry feels safe to walk down the track and enter the pilgrims’ chapel.
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Henry FitzCount’s offer of coins and land in exchange for peace is incredibly generous. As a result, Thomas and I and the good bishop of Devon and Cornwall eagerly await FitzCount’s arrival the next morning.
We are not disappointed. After Thomas and the Bishop walk through the village to make sure it is empty, Fitzcount walks briskly over the drawbridge and waits while the two bishops use the door to the priest’s dressing room to go into the little chapel to make sure it is also empty. It is.
FitzCount and Bishop Pierre enter first as we had previously agreed. Then Thomas and I follow them into a tiny little room where the priest has barely enough space to turn around while he puts on his robes.
By the light of the holes high on the walls that pass as windows we can see FitzCount and the good Bishop standing on the dirt floor of the chapel. It’s a tiny little thing with its little wooden altar against the wall and space for four or five people to pray.
FitzCount and his cousin motion us to shut the door to the priest’s dressing room and come in. We do. What FitzCount is offering in compensation is so great that we have decided to accept it and kill him later – except that we fully expect some kind of trickery and betrayal. We just don’t know what it will be.
We soon find out. I am reading the agreement and nodding my agreement to its generous terms when the door to the little dressing room opens – the door I shut behind me a few minutes ago, and three men crowd into the little chapel carrying the long broad swords favored by French knights. They are not in armor and have mud and dirt on their jerkins.
Where the hell did they come from?
The Earl snickers and says “You’re both under arrest” as his men reach out to take each of us by the arm. They are confident and holding swords at their sides and we are unarmed and outnumbered.
“Are you sure you’re doing the right thing” I ask rather benignly.
“Oh yes. Restormel is mine and Edmund’s castle too.” And then with a bit of arrogance and a big smile he adds “and your heads are mine too.”
“And you Bishop. Do you agree about that?”
“Yes I do. God wills it.”
“We’ve heard those words before, haven’t we Thomas?”
“Yes we have. Indeed we have.” Thomas agrees sadly. Then he looks at me in the faintly lit little room and does what I expect; he blinks a heavy blink with both eyes and we both silently count to three as we’ve practiced so many times in the past.
Then both our hands came out from under our baggy tunics with the knives each of us has strapped to his wrists. Thomas gets his man very cleanly but I’m a split second late and partially miss the man holding on to my right arm – he jerks back instinctively as he raises his sword and tries to bring it around so I only succeed in slicing him across his cheek and across his eye.
My man screams and reaches for his eye instead of swinging his sword around and coming at me with it. Bad mistake. I get him in the throat with a thrust from the knife in my other hand and finish it by shoving my first knife high into his stomach and push downward. He looks at me in stunned surprise as he staggers backwards a half step to the wall and slowly begins to slide down it as I push him down. Thomas is already cutting into the third when I lean over slice into his throat with the knife in my other hand to help finish him off.
It’s over in the blink of an eye and the Earl and the Bishop are as surprised and unprepared as their men who are still choking and kicking on the floor.
The Bishop just stands there with his mouth open and watches in the split second it takes us to cut down their men. Then he squeals like a pig as I step forward and jerk the knife out of my man’s throat - and put it at his stomach and slowly and deliberately push it in all the way to its hilt while I hold his robe so he can’t back away.
“I wish we had more time to talk,” I say with a snarl over the bishop’s high pitched squeals. “I’d like to know more about why you think God wills stealing from widows and murdering innocent children.”
Then Thomas just stands there while I use my other knife to do the wide-eyed would-be Earl despite his pleas and screams. He knocks over the stub of a candle on the little altar and scrambles away backwards and gets almost to the door to the Priest’s little dressing room before I reach him – and cut off his balls and dingus so he’ll bleed to death. It takes him quite a while and he sobs and screams all the way.
“Where the hell did they come from?”
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Thomas and I explore the tiny priest’s dressing room while Henry is finishing his dying. Finally we find it – the wall with the pegs to hold the priest’s vestments swings out. There is narrow tunnel behind it with a candle still burning in a ship’s lantern.
“I’ll go get some men,” Thomas says.
“Best you go out the front door and keep the chapel between you and the castle so they can’t see you from the walls,” I suggest.
Twenty minutes later three brave volunteers,
or ambitious men seeking the recognition they’ll get
, are silently leading us very slowly down the narrow tunnel. I’m the fourth one in the line. Thomas and twenty or more of our men are behind me.
The tunnel is some kind of mine shaft and it is damp and cold and oppressive.
We are walking and stumbling along very slowly and cautiously in the dark. Each man’s hand is holding tightly on to the hooded coat of the man in front of him and his other hand is inevitably holding a sword or bow and touching the ceiling so as to not knock his head.