Devil by David Churchill

Author:David Churchill
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Headline
Published: 1800-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

2

Alençon, the County of Bellême

When the Count of Bellême was shaken out of his drunken stupor, three powerful sensations struck him in quick succession. The first was that he felt as though someone were smashing a battering ram against the inside of his skull. The second was that his steward was standing over him shouting something incomprehensible about the duke. And the third was that the pounding that was sending such vicious bolts of pain through his head was coming from outside, too.

He pulled himself up into a sitting position, adding nausea to his troubles as he did so, and looked at his steward through bleary, half-opened eyes. ‘Wha . . . whassappening?’ he mumbled.

‘The Duke is here! Duke Robert! His men are smashing down the door to the keep!’

‘What d’you mean, he’s here? How? The walls . . . how’d he . . . ?’

‘His men came over the walls in the darkness. They took the gatehouse. Now they’re here!’

Now the message got through. Bellême staggered from his bed, giving the serving girl who’d been sharing it with him a hefty kick as he did so. He grabbed his sword and ran from the chamber, still barefoot and dressed only in the long undershirt that doubled as a nightgown, shouting, ‘Warin! Fulk! Bertrand! Talvas! To arms, boys! To arms!’

When all four sons had gathered round him, Bellême had to yell his orders over the sound of the ram against the splintering wood and the shouts and screams from the castle’s terrified inhabitants. ‘Warin, you’re in charge. Get every man you can. Arm as many as possible with bows and arrows. Send half of them up to the battlements. Keep the rest to set up a defensive position here. Any man who comes through the door, I want him prickled like a hedgehog. I’m going up top to see what the hell’s happening out there.’

He raced away up the narrow, twisting stone staircase to the castle roof, his hangover forgotten. But when he got there and peered through the open embrasure between two battlements, he was met with a sight that twisted his innards and tightened his throat anew. The open space between the castle walls and the foot of the motte on which the castle keep stood was filled with men, their shields and banners all bearing the golden leopards. More of them were massed on the path that led up the motte to the thick, iron-studded door against which the ram, protected beneath a canopy of ox hides stretched over a wooden frame, was being deployed. Boulders, flaming arrows and burning pitch would all wreak fatal damage on the frame and the men beneath it, just as they had done at Falaise. But the attack had caught Bellême entirely unawares and unprepared, so none of those weapons was available. A handful of Bellême men were sheltering behind the battlements, but if one of them ever dared leave their cover for long enough to aim and shoot an arrow

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