Knight of Shadows Page 2

  They flooded into the Tower precinct, crowding out the masons and labourers, crushing against the guards and each other, their hot bodies and rank, sweaty smell filling every corner of the keep until all were standing shoulder to shoulder with barely room to move.

  And there was Longchamp himself. Defiant, enraged, he strode agitatedly back and forth, gaudily clad in what appeared to be some approximation of papal robes, with the ludicrous addition of a pair of baggy pantaloons in red and gold silk – a failed attempt to make him look like he had spent time in the Holy Land, although everyone knew he had been no further east than Paris. Flinging his arms about in fury, the gold adorning every finger flashing as he did so, he renounced John as a traitor in a language incomprehensible to most present, spit flying from his thin, pinched face as he did so. Evidently, he believed he could make a stand here. But it was a ridiculous gesture – one that everyone, right down to the humblest kitchen boy, could see was already doomed to failure.

  And so it proved.

  When John’s army surrounded the Tower, the prince did not squander his energies by battering walls that he already knew were unassailable, and which, in any case, might one day be his. He simply waited, knowing what all those inside – except, apparently, their master – had known from the start: that in a matter of very few days, life within would become unbearable.

  Longchamp sent out appeals to the people of London. He ranted incoherently from the battlements, demanding that they rise up in his defence. Few can have understood his words – but they understood the man and his predicament well enough. As one, they folded their arms and stood back to let John do his worst. John, meanwhile, had a dinner table set up within sight of the battlements, and made sure Longchamp could see how well he ate and drank while conditions within the overstuffed castle grew steadily worse. By the fourth day, all resistance had collapsed, and Longchamp emerged, purple-faced, humiliated – forced to surrender the keys by his own men, subtly spurred on by Puintellus.

  What became of Longchamp and his guard after that, Brekespere never knew. Nor did he discover what happened to those of his fellows who had been foolish enough to express loyalty for Longchamp. He was simply glad to have been one of the survivors. Within days, they were forgotten. A stain that had been scrubbed out. A kind of normality was restored – the surest sign of which was the return of the suspicion and resentment with which the Tower’s unexpected new master, Prince John, was regarded.

  So, it was over. For now. Brekespere sighed a thick, cloudy breath, then turned and stared southwards, in the direction of the Thames. Between him and the opposite battlement overlooking the river, the twin pitched roofs of the White Tower stretched, several feet below the level of the parapet walkway. Beneath one of these – the left one, he thought – the prince now slept. He supposed he was grateful to their royal guest for ridding them of the weasel Longchamp. He just wished the prince himself would now bugger off so things could properly return to normal.

  It suddenly struck him how much the roofs resembled coffins – huge, stone sarcophagi, built to contain giants, sunk side by side within the keep’s walls. They brought to mind a half-remembered story from his childhood – one his mother used to tell, of a pair of titans called Corineus and Gogmagog who slept beneath London and would rise up to protect the poor people of the city when their need was greatest. Looking back, she often told him tales of noble giants – a tactic, he now realised, to make him feel more comfortable with his own large stature, but also, perhaps, to inspire him to worthy deeds. He wondered whether she now looked down upon those deeds, and whether they seemed worthy enough.

  As he gazed, lost in thought, a fine, powdery snow – too cold to stick – blew across the angled, grey stone, forming an uneven, constantly shifting layer. As fine as flour. Brekespere snorted at that. In the first half of his life he’d seen enough flour to last an eternity. He turned and let his eyes wander past the barely perceptible speckle of lights across North London to the deeper dark beyond.

  Here, he knew – though all was now invisible – the mud and stench of the city gave way to a pleasant landscape of tilled fields, level meadows and pasture criss-crossed by streams. Beyond that, just visible during daylight, spread a vast forest, its copses teeming with stags, does, boars, and wild bulls. And somewhere out there, an arrow shot from the hamlet known as Isledon, was his father’s mill.

  A pang of guilt pierced him, mixed with a stubborn defiance. Apart from the brief time when his mother had fallen into her final illness, he had not clapped eyes on the place since he had been a boy. In those childhood days, he had been known as John the Miller’s Son, or, occasionally, John Attemille. Life had seemed simple then. His older brother would one day take over stewardship of the mill, and Young John himself had no responsiblities other than to perform such daily tasks as his father required. To what lay beyond – to adulthood – he gave no thought, although roaring around the countryside, he entertained vague, happy dreams of adventure, inspired by the knights and men-at-arms he occasionally saw passing along the great north road – the main thoroughfare carrying his father’s flour into London. Armed with sticks, he and his brother would practise their fighting skills in the woods – until his size began to make the outcome a foregone conclusion, and his brother, increasingly resentful, gave up the good-natured sparring and took to belittling him in whatever ways he could.

  One day, when he was fifteen, he had woken up to find his brother gone, and his father weeping. At no other time in his life was Brekespere to witness that, not even when his mother died. Young John never knew what had happened between his father and brother. His father never spoke of it. He simply became sullen and withdrawn, and immersed himself in the backbreaking toil as if it had become a form of self-punishment – now with Young John at his side. Gradually, daily routines changed. John’s responsibilities grew. Then, one day, months later, John looked about him and suddenly understood that his entire world had shifted. His brother was probably dead; he was the son now. The mill – which he had never expected, and never really wanted – would fall to him.

  Work continued. His father’s mood brightened. Over time, Young John – gradually, grudgingly – came to accept his fate. A year after the disappearance, he had finally begun to embrace it, even regarding it as good fortune. A little older, and a little wiser, he now understood that this had brought him closer to his father than he had ever been – that, for the first time, his father had shown him the love and respect that he had not even realised was missing. The future, now, was set. It had a shape. He would take on his father’s occupation, and with it the name “Miller”.

  Then the impossible happened. His brother came back. The boy who had run away to war returned a man – but he had not returned undamaged. He was nervous, with darting eyes, and prone to forced laughter, and although far humbler than John remembered, it was plain to see that it was not the humility of maturity, but the weak flickering of a ruined spirit, broken by suffering and terror. He had chased the adventure of which John had so long dreamed, and its realities had destroyed him.

  His father did not hesitate. He forgave the errant son and reinstated him as heir to the mill, apparently without a second thought for the boy who had kept it going these past twenty months. It was, he said ecstatically, just like the gospel story. Young John, suddenly bereft of purpose – of everything he thought he had gained – could only nod stupidly. His mother looked upon the scene with a resigned but strangely melancholy look, which John could not fully interpret.

  A week later, Young John met some soldiers upon the great north road, who told him King Henry was recruiting mercenaries. There was rebellion brewing amongst his barons, they said. John took the long-handled guisarme that his father used for lopping apples, and joined them.

  When he went to London, they had called him John of Isledon. Then, as his travels took him further afield – far beyond where any had heard of that place – he became John O’London. He had fought against the king of S
cotland under that name, until circumstances brought him up against several other Johns hailing from that city. Isledon and the mill all but forgotten, he fought in Normandy, Aquitaine and France and on into the Holy Land under an endless succession of nicknames, few of which pleased him.

  “Brekespere” had been recent. It was acquired during a skirmish with some rabble on Old Fish Street in which – thanks to his prodigious strength and uncompromisingly robust tactics (he had fought with a quarterstave as a boy, and so liked to use every part of the pole) – he had managed to snap his favoured guisarme clean in two. But, at last, he had a name he actually liked, and whose use he would encourage. It made him sound like a soldier, at least. Certainly it was preferable to nickname he had suffered under during so much of his time in the Holy Land: “John Lyttel”.

  He peered over the precipitous walls and shuddered again, shivering to his bones. He’d slope off to the dark corner by the northeast tower in a while and relieve his bladder. Nothing, he told himself, could possibly happen in those few moments.

  III

  THE OAR DIPPED silently in the icy black water as the punt slid unseen beneath the new walls of the outer ward. Directly ahead, a ship sat moored to the Tower’s jetty – so close, he could already hear the muffled voices of the shadowy figures moving between it and the jetty’s gatehouse. With a twist of the oar, he guided his small vessel to port, towards the yawning gap of the second inlet that cut into the bank between him and the mooring. Like its cousin further upriver, this had been an attempted moat, marking the original extent of the castle’s outer walls. Longchamp’s new fortifications had now stretched far beyond it, encircling and containing the ineffectual intrusion of this huge ditch – yet they were not complete. Here, at the point where the water pierced the land, there was also a break in the new curtain wall where the old moat passed through – a broad, unguarded opening which would surely one day be closed by stone when that particular engineering challenge was overcome, but which for now was open to the air.

  The gap almost made it possible to sail a boat from the river straight into the midst of the outer ward, entirely bypassing the gatehouse at either the main entrance or the jetty. But temporary measures had been taken – a cluster of huge, sharpened wooden stakes driven into the mud and grit of the river bed all about the inlet. So closely packed and tangled was the forest of spikes that not even the narrowest boat or punt could hope to negotiate it, and the banks on either side were so narrow and so steep that it was assumed – quite rightly – that nothing could cling to them. But, tonight, at the inlet’s edges, the still water about the stakes was frozen. It creaked in the swell of the water, extending a few feet from the bank, its edges glassy and frail. But, here and there, immediately beneath the mossy guard tower and the wall lining the inlet, it was just thick enough to support the weight of a man.

  Crouched like a crab, he reached up from the punt as it drifted in close, grasping the green, slimy trunk of the nearest stake and using it to haul the craft forward. Slowly, he moved from one stake to the next. The rows of tiny spikes on the palms of his gauntlets gave extra grip, but his clumsy, leather-clad fingers dislodged icicles as he went. He winced as some clattered noisily into the body of the boat, others dangling on threads of green weed. He forged ahead nonetheless. Even if they heard him now, he doubted they would be able to see him. Guiding the punt steadily towards the corner of the bank, he finally felt the bow crunch against ice and shudder to a halt. Hastily, he lashed the craft to the nearest stake, slung the coiled rope and grapple over his right shoulder, uncovered the crossbow and heaved it upright. It was more than half his height, and suddenly, now weight was a more immediate issue, seemed far heavier than he remembered. But there was no time to question it now. He slung it across his back and stood up at the punt’s blunt bow, feeling the tiny spikes that also lined the soles of his boots bite into the wooden hull. With his left arm wrapped around the slippery, stinking post, he placed his right foot tentatively upon the ice.

  The ice creaked and gave. He stretched as far as he could, knowing that the ice closest to shore, immediately beneath the guard tower, would be thickest, if he could only make it that far. If he did not, he would not survive the river. He would sink like a stone, the cold water forcing the air out of him as he was sucked by his own weight into the freezing black. Before he could think further, he launched himself forward, grabbing for the next post. The ice dipped and bounced sickeningly, great cracks crazing its surface. He threw his arms about the awkwardly angled timber, feeling his spiked feet skid and almost slip from under him – then righted himself. He clung for a moment, his nostrils filled with the stench of river mud and dead fish, then slowly slackened his grip, allowing the frozen surface once again to take his full weight. There was a creak – but the ice held.

  He could use the ice shelf to make his way undetected along the edge of the inlet, following the line of the old walls all the way into the outer ward. But there was something else to be done first. Turning back towards the river, he divested himself of crossbow and rope, and laid them carefully down on the frozen surface. Then, staying close to the bank, steadying himself on the frozen stonework of the guard tower, he inched gingerly around the delicate fringe of ice at its foot. It thinned dramatically closer to the flow of the river; he could already feel it splinter and groan beneath him. But he was within sight of the ship now. If it only held for seconds longer, it would be enough. Peering around the curve of the tower, he reached into the leather bag at his side and pulled out an almost spherical earthenware bottle, wrapped in sacking and sealed with wax. He threw off the sacking and weighed the bottle carefully in his hand, eyeing up the distance between him and the ship. He drew his arm back, and hurled it as hard as he could.

  He did not see its flight through the air. But he heard its crash upon the the ship’s port side, saw a great eruption of yellow flame that near blinded him, lighting up the mast and throwing the spidery rigging into sharp silhouette. There were cries of alarm, but he saw that his aim had been poor. Another earthenware globe was already in his hand, and this time the target was plain to see. The dark ball sailed through the air and burst against the mast, showering the deck with flame and instantly igniting the furled sail. He hurried back toward the dark of the inlet, one foot momentarily dipping into freezing water as he misjudged his footing and a slab of ice gave way. He didn’t stop to think, but snatched up the rope and crossbow and ran across the bouncing surface of the ice, as if the fire on the ship had also ignited something in his blood. He vaulted a dark gap in the ice – a privy outlet in the wall, he supposed – almost losing his footing on the other side (if he fell now, would he crash through?), but already the ice was thicker, its surface here thickly layered with crunchy, frozen snow. He threw himself forward. Within moments, he was off the ice, clambering up the snow-covered, mud bank, and – black hood pulled about his ears – stepping unchallenged into the castle’s outer ward.

  Already, figures were dashing about: numerous guards, singly and in groups, armed with crossbows or spears; a fat, red-faced old woman hauling up her skirts to avoid the horse dung; a single knight, in a full coat of mail with sword drawn, striding purposefully towards the gatehouse; a bemused mason, covered head-to-toe in white dust and literally not knowing which way to turn; a gaggle of squires, some half-dressed or in the process of dressing, all engaged in what seemed a violent argument. None took the slightest notice of him.

  On one side, immediately ahead and to his right, the west wall of the keep towered over him like a great white cliff, the toothed battlements flickering weirdly as they reflected the fire-ship’s flames. Cutting across the hectic courtyard, he did not pause to look back at the entrance to the inner ward giving access to the keep’s main door – about which, he had no doubt, a formidable band of armed men were now clustered.

  Heading away from it, his head low and his back turned to the distant blaze, he pressed on against the prevailing flow of scurrying humanity towards the W
hite Tower’s northwest corner, a dark space from which no figure issued – a place he knew no one else would be going, and no one would be looking: the ward immediately beneath the Tower’s north wall.

  With his strange, black-cowled cloak, coiled rope and huge crossbow slung across his back, he cut an outlandish figure, even among the diverse residents of the citadel. But they looked through him and past him – all eyes straining towards the river, its leaping flames, and the deadly and immediate threat that must be close behind it. Control the battlefield. That’s what his old mentor had taught him. That was the principle that had dictated his daring plan. All was now unfolding exactly as anticipated – but the greatest challenge was that which lay immediately ahead. Even with his hooded face so resolutely averted from this heaped mountain of stone, he could feel its daunting presence, the blank windows staring from that cold, monstrous face like the dead eyes of its maker. This was the closest he had ever been to the White Tower. Its walls now seemed more forbidding than ever.

  He passed unnoticed between a long, low stone building and the corner of the keep, and was swallowed up by the blackness beyond. The darkness here was total. No lights burned. The cold light of the moon did not penetrate, nor the glow of the distant flames. He was in the Tower’s cold shadow.