Chapter 12      The Fall of Rochester

 

 

 

Thomas emerged from his blankets sore and irritable.  His shoulder hurt and he had not slept well.  Without getting up, he reached out with his good arm and pulled back the tent flap.  Dawn was still some time off, but he could see the silhouetted mass of Rochester Castle brooding over them.  The implacable walls reflected no light, only cold and loneliness.  It was an outpost on the edge of the world.

He listened.  It was quiet.  The siege engines rested for the first time since John had erected them.  They waited, as did the great stone heap beyond.

Pulling on his boots and a robe, he went out to attend his body.  On his way to the latrine, he passed several acquaintances, but said nothing to them.  He had not the wit, for the sobering fact of Cyril's death had kept him dreaming all night.  He hated dreams at any time, but the disturbing theme in last night's parade bothered him greatly.  He cursed to himself.  Why Cyril?  Why his friend?  There was no answer.

He returned and dressed, then went to the benches beside the fire.  He only half noticed the looks the other knights gave him.  Some of the them expressed indifference, some tolerance, a few seemed to offer true understanding or at least sympathy.  In any event, at breakfast, no one bothered him, not even Beaumont, who had adopted an introspection, which Thomas, despite his own preoccupations, found most becoming.

After dawn, field services were said for the fallen, and still Thomas, in his mind, did not stir.  Only when the trumpets sounded and the knights and troops roused to ranks, did he begin to awaken.  In the distance, he could see men taking positions at the siege engines.

He noticed the flags which once graced the walls of the castle had been removed during the night.  Only the colorful pennants atop the keep still flew.  And there was something else different about the walls.  The men were gone.  They had abandoned the walls on all four sides, except for the vulnerable gate.  A squad of crossbowmen could be seen in the battlements above it.  Well, they could prevent an armed taking of the gate, but they could not stop the walls from falling.  He wondered what they must be feeling.

Horsemen approached.  One stopped separated from the rest and stopped at their mesnie, while the others continued to other mesnies down the road.  The riders all wore royal colors.  The horseman who stopped at the Norbury flag entered the tent of Lord William.  After a bit, the horseman emerged, and rode on after his fellows.  They, were, Thomas noticed, in full hauberk.

Shortly after the conference, Lord William called a meeting of the entire household.  He announced that this was the final day for the curtain wall.  This morning, it would fall.  Lord William and Stephen told the knights and men-at-arms to assemble, ready to charge through the breach when the trebuchets struck their felling blow.  John wanted run of the inner ward, the drawbridge, gate, and portcullis, and this day he swore he would have it!

No sooner had they reached their saddles than the engines began loading hurl stones.  The movement of horses and knights nearly drowned out the first barrage, yet despite the noise, they all watched as the first stones flew against the battered masonry.  Whether heaving on winches or hoisting stones into slings for another throw, the trebuchet crews worked with exemplary vigor, fully conscious of the attention upon them.

After less than a dozen throws, the trebuchet captains went into conference.  They had their men re-adjust the stops for the weights, and in two instances, pried the frame of an entire engine around with long iron pry bars.  They fired trial stones until the focus of the impacts occupied a narrow line a third of the way up the wall, directly below the previous points of bombardment.

The day before, the man who had described pike and shield defense tactics to Thomas also explained that the trebuchet captains would collapse the wall with sufficient stone dropping on each side to form a natural ramp up to the point of the breach, eliminating the need for scaling ladders, which needlessly offered men to the aim of crossbows.

Bombardment continued all morning.  It seemed to take longer than originally anticipated.  Thomas, along with most of the other knights, dismounted and watched the action as they would a play.  Likewise, townsmen and farmers, creeping from their shops and fields watched the final moments of the siege from a discrete distance.  The cool air resonated with impacts and expectation.

Just before noon, an obvious bulge formed above the hurl stone target, a ripple in the wall, extending outward toward the moat.  It looked like the saggy paunch of a fat man.  The engines paused in their labors while John's siege engineer conferred with the trebuchet captains and the marshals.  Shortly, word went up the lines to make ready.  Archers and crossbowmen, armor on, stood at the front.  And across the way, the knights pointed out King John standing beside his courtiers, watching, waiting, very still, like a cat.  Thomas looked closely, but did not see William the Marshall.

A trumpet blared in the silence, then farther along the line, a signal flag waved.  Everyone looked toward the siege engine emplacement.  The countryside, from town to castle, grew silent.

Preceded by the sharp snaps of springing trip irons, the trebuchets awoke.  Five stones arced low and struck the wall close to one another in rapid succession.  Instantly, Thomas felt a wave of sickness pass over him.  It was the dream feeling.  Somehow the trip irons awoke it.  Disgusted, he shook his head emphatically.  He did not want to think of dreams when knightly work abounded.  He focused on the engines. 

Once again, the trebuchets were cranked down and reloaded.  Their loads were again released.  Five more stones struck the wall, then slowly, but with growing momentum, as if opening a grain bin's chute, the wall buckled, the stones composing it separating, crumbling, and pouring downward, the entire massive wall of hewn rock and mortar, merlons, finials and hoarding, disintegrating in a torrent.  In a surprisingly short, dust free roar, the structure collapsed in a heap, leaving a deep notch in the wall with a ramp of tumbled stone leading up to it.  The air grew quiet again.

Thomas looked to the rebels in the battlements above the gate.  They were gone.

It took a moment for the assembled army and newly royalist townsmen to realize the way was clear.  A loud cheer erupted from everyone, excepting, Thomas duly noted, those dozens who watched proceedings from the roof of Rochester keep.

A horn sounded advance, and a yell swept through the men-at-arms, like the sweeping pattern of a breeze over the surface of water.  Lines of men, each carrying a firmly tied bundle of straw, trotted toward the moat in front of the breach, tossing their bundles into the water while covered by squads of crossbowmen and archers.  But no fire came from the walls, nor for the moment, from the keep.

The straw poured in, followed in alternate layers by spreads of planks robbed from local barns, followed in turn by more sheaves of straw.  From its humble beginnings of grassy jetsam, the bridge grew swiftly across the moat.  A surprisingly short time after its construction commenced, it was complete.

The horn signaled again, and crossbowmen ran across the bridge, which heaved under foot but did not give way.  They scrambled up the rubble pile, with loose stones occasionally shifting free.  A tumbling stone broke one sergeant's leg and two of his comrades carried him down.

The men took positions on either side of the notch, protected by the remains of the curtain wall, and aimed their weapons.  Thus far, not a single bolt had pelted them from the keep.

"Well, Sir Thomas," said a sarcastic voice.  "I was wondering."

Thomas turned.  James Beaumont stood beside him, his insolent expression in place.  So much for the camaraderie of battle.

"What do you want, James?" replied Thomas wearily.

"Oh, I just wanted to stand beside a real knight wounded in battle to see if I felt different."

Thomas nodded blandly, returning his eyes to the breach and the crossbowmen.  A group of men carrying a wide screen of wood planking clambered up the slope of fallen masonry.

"I do not, by the way," said James.

Thomas had not asked.

James studied the activity at the breach a few seconds.  "Does it hurt much?" he asked.

This last question sounded genuine.  Thomas considered ignoring it, then decided to respond.  "No," he said.

Thomas glanced briefly at Beaumont.  Despite himself, James was consumed with curiosity, and though he could not bring himself to ask Thomas directly, he equally could not avoid asking.  Thomas smiled inwardly.  Though not to his credit, perhaps, he enjoyed Beaumont's dilemma.

Thomas saw glimpses of the horse charge in his mind's eye.  The battle had not been exactly what he had expected.  He had killed a man.  Following the fatal axe blow, confusion altered, then rerouted the course of natural feeling.  The night of the battle, he warmed under the praise of his comrades for his poise in battle, felt embarrassed when they chided him for not pulling the dying knight to his squire to stake rightful claim to horse and armor, the rebel destrier having followed the retreating army with his rider still in saddle.  But inexplicably, and most disconcertingly, the rebel knight had merged with images of Cyril's lifeless face, until his sorrow for Cyril and his repugnance for the German became confused.  What a burdensome world the mind must entertain.

Thomas glanced at the ground, the brown grass and leafy stems of turf churned into a punched mass.  Everything reflected their presence and looked the worse for it.  What could he say to James, even if he had felt kinship enough to want to?  How common were they beneath the skin?

It was easy to remember the charge.  He had done little else since it happened.  Advancing on the rebel line, he had felt excitement and dread, anticipation spiced with disconcerting seeds of fear and suspected inadequacy.  In the fight, he remembered feeling detachedly thankful that his body knew what to do.  But he dare not talk to Beaumont, of all people, of weakness or doubt.

He dare not tell from what soil his confidence grew, or how the spidery threads of that confidence slowly knit his experience together.  Next time, he would not be so confused, and fear would be tempered with the knowledge that battle tested him once before and had not found him wanting.  But his core self still swayed.  It would be a long time before the waters calmed to that great depth.

James had sparred with an Englishman and neither had unhorsed or harmed the other.  Just before turning tail and speeding back from whence he came after the battle turned against the rebels, the Englishman had cavalierly saluted James, as if the whole episode had been nothing more than a game.  Others had seen the salute and teased James afterwards.

James was unlucky in that sort of thing.  More times than not, he found himself on the wrong end of an exchange, even in contests where one would have thought he had a good chance at coming out on top.  They say you make your own luck, and largely that is true, but some men always seemed to choose the wrong side in a game, the wrong road.  If not for that curse, what kind of man would James have become?

Action on the rubble pile diverted the next exchange between them.

A train of wooden screens carried by many hauberked men reached the summit of the breach.  The men made a tempting target from the heights of the keep, but no arrows flew.  Slowly, the screen carriers lifted their burden down the opposite ramp of stone, until the top of the screen disappeared through the breach.

Suddenly, like a cloud of locusts, a massive flight of arrows and bolts shot through the breach, catching the men unawares.  Most of the arrows flew through the opening in the wall, making contact with nothing but air, but a few bit into men.  Amazingly, Thomas learned later, no one had been mortally injured.  Armor and screens had protected everyone.  One man behind a screen later said that the impact of arrows sounded like a hail storm in a wooden shed, deafening.

The defender's supply of arrows proved inadequate to sustain a barrage of any duration, for after but four flights, the arrows ceased flowing.  More screens mounted the pile, the men dragging them into position on the ward side of the wall, until a long line of wood protected a path from the breach to the gatehouse, a protective tunnel for the invaders of Rochester castle, much as termites build a tunnel to span an inhospitable piece of terrain in the timbers of a house.

A pennant went up over the gatehouse, and midways through the cheer which accompanied the raising of the king's colors, the drawbridge lowered and the portcullis drew up.  A moment later, the gates pulled back, and the way lay clear.

Immediately, John sent in a covered battering ram and ordered the trebuchets disassembled for transport inside the ward.  The latter task was accomplished in a matter of hours, as the smiths of Canterbury had built each apparatus with an eye toward easy transport to Rochester.

More screens went through the gateway, until the rebel archers and crossbowmen had nothing to aim at save wood planking and an occasional, fleeting shape of a hauberked knight or man-at-arms slipping between John's mobile fortifications.

The knights were dismissed in relays, with always a third of the men on duty, armored and ready to repel any further attempts by fitzWalter's men in London to relieve the garrison.  John pressed the siege with the strength of his rage, which appeared inexhaustible.

Instead of men pouring through the gate with ladders and grappling irons, John bent his men to the task of penetrating the wall.  He wanted the castle razed and reduced.  Nothing less would do.  Nothing less would send the appropriate message to the rebels in London.  Through messengers, he reiterated this intent to his forces daily.  This was not merely a castle to be taken, it was a song to be sung.  The camp minstrels work hard on catchy lyrics and refrains.

But after surveying the keep, and seeing how ineffective the trebuchets and ram were against the thick walls, John's siege engineer let it be known that the only sure way of breaching the keep rested with the sappers, the men who dug under foundations and collapsed whatever lay piled above by dropping the stonework into holes.  John lost no time with indecision.  He cleared the road through the gate, and all stood aside for the sappers.  This was their job now.

Thomas had plenty of time to study the castle and the strategy for extracting its defenders.  Sturdy Rochester, perhaps, the second or third strongest castle in the realm, was really two structures, the curtain and the keep.  The keep, an old fortress, built and reinforced to withstand the hardest of sieges, remained the firmest ground in the castle, the recently breached curtain a more modern, and less formidable construction.  No ordinary storm of men could take the old keep, and to John's credit, he did not waste his men in this way.  The sappers had their tent in readiness, a long, low, barn-like structure on wheels, with a peaked roof built of massive timbers and crossbraced and planked with still more timbers.  It was built to withstand a waterfall of stones.  Over the roof, arrayed in broad shingles, lay sodden hides, protection against fire dumped from above.

The entire construction rolled on four broad wheels made to the same proportions as the tent.  Inside, a score of men pushed it forward while a steersman directed the efforts of two teams armed with pry bars, who levered the structure right and left.  When the sappers were ready to transit the gate, four more arrow screens moved in front of the tent, carried by the ever-present men afoot, men who in less martial times expended their energies farming, building, and tending livestock.  A signal coursed though the assemblage, and the parade of screens, tent, sappers, and bowmen inched their way across the drawbridge, through the tunnel of the gate, and under the impotent murder holes in the roof through which the defenders would have poured stones and arrows, had they not prudently retreated to the keep.

Of all this, Thomas had a clear view.  There had been no breakout, and the remaining contingent of mounted knights stood in saddle, unneeded.

The Rochester defenders must know by now, that no hope remained.  It was only a matter of days, weeks at most, until they prostrated themselves before John's mercy, humbled by axe or hunger.  They watched silently from the top of the keep.  What else could dead men do?

Below, Lords William and Stephen walked through their mesnie, talking, joking, testing the color of the mood.  Women from the town brought baskets of food to the knights, prodded by a burly team of procurers from John's reserve of mercenaries.  Wine arrived in casks and goat bladders, bread in sacks, preserved meats in the intestines of the beasts from whence came the flesh.  Also, there were roots, turnips, and yams, and molasses cakes and biscuits.  John intently sucked the marrow from the town.  Once the army moved on, if any provisions remained for the winter, it would by more by accident than design.

Thomas was still eating when Lord William approached, motioning him remain seated.  The lord stood a talking distance away.

"Thomas," said Lord William, "How is your shoulder?"

"Quite well, uncle," replied Thomas, looking up at his uncle from his seated position on the ground.  "The hauberk you gave me deflected all but the last of the blow."

"That is good."  William paused.  "Did you know William the Marshall rode with you yesterday?"

"He did?" asked Thomas, incredulous.  William the Marshall had a reputation for vigor, but he never expected to hear a man of such age riding in a cavalry charge.

"Indeed, the earl was there, in full hauberk.  He lowered his lance with the rest of you."

"How did he do?"

"As I hear it, he drove into the midst of them like a young knight in peak condition, knocked one man from his horse and went after another."  Lord William shook his head in admiration.  "He is the last of his generation.  I doubt if we will see his like again."

Thomas envisioned the battle.  He had ridden with the famous William Marshall!  That was a considerable honor.

Lord William hitched his hauberk up and knelt beside his nephew.  Thomas noticed out the corner of his eye, James Beaumont, scarcely a dozen feet away, taking frowning interest.

"You did well, nephew," the lord said privately.  "Those who survive their first battle with blood on their hands have much to consider.  There are many unwelcome thoughts and feelings.  So it is for you as it was for me."

Thomas searched his uncle's face with interest.

Thus confirmed that his words were welcome, William continued.  "Mine was in the reign of Henry.  There were about twenty of us, riding toward some little town in Normandy, I forget which.  Mostly new knights, we were, with six or seven experienced men among us all told.  The day was late summer, the air clear and the sun warm.  We emerged from a tree tunneled road onto a crossroad.

"We spied the remains of a burnt out building, a tavern or inn we hoped.  Thirsty after a day's ride and full of ourselves, we dismounted without care or caution and started pushing the ashes and charred wood around looking for bottles which might have escaped the fire.  We were becoming disappointed, when we heard horses approaching fast.  Before their dust could catch up with them, a group of Norman knights flew at us like bees.  They vaulted out of their saddles and sprang over the foundation stones like furies.  We felt naked.  Only half of us wore our hauberks and our helmets were mostly on our saddles, but fortunately, we had taken our swords with us to search the ashes.

"We were all young, and we fought like madmen, each determined to outdo his companions.  The fight progressed evenly at first, each side more playing than fighting, none of us, I believe really in a rage at the other.  Then, a Norman blade fell square on the head of James of Oxted, and split his skull in half down to the nose.  The fighting paused when that happened and we all looked.  James blinked, the sword still wedged in his skull.  The Norman knight who did it looked as surprised as James and as dismayed as any of us.

"James collapsed into the ashes, the blade wrenching loose with a squeaking sound.  He pitched a couple of times, like a pig with a slit throat, blood pouring everywhere, then he lay still.  We looked up at the Norman, shocked at what he had done.  The Norman was quicker than us, though.  He saw what was coming, and his friends took signal from him.  I saw murder in his eyes when he swung his blade at me.  Somehow, I pulled my blade into a guard  and his blow fell against steel.  We began to fight.  The rest of the mesnie was not far behind me.

"We fought for many minutes, then I got a lucky thrust through the Norman's defense and my blade split his mail and entered his chest just beneath the sternum.  Only the tip penetrated, but it was enough.  We froze in that position, a look of bewilderment on his face, surprise on mine.  His eyes followed the length of the blade, from where it emerged from his chest to my hand, and from there to my eyes.  He looked disbelieving, almost sad, like the face of Christ on the cross.  Then he collapsed of a sudden, quite dead.

"Since that time, I have never been able to look at a cross without seeing his face.  I have killed many men in my lifetime, all with honor, but that young Norman's expression has haunted my dreams for nearly four decades."

Thomas stared into his uncle's gray eyes, seeing lines of worry and age he had never before noticed, and imagined the dreams his old head must conjure at night.  He had never felt closer to anyone in his life.

Lord William shifted his position to a more comfortable one and continued.  "His death seemed to end the skirmish.  An eye for an eye, it seemed.  The Normans retreated to their horses and we did not follow.  They remounted and asked for the body of their comrade.  The older knights around me told him the horse and armor were mine by right, for them to get themselves hence.  The leader of the Normans appealed directly to me, and I felt so guilty, I conceded.  Two Normans dismounted and picked up their man and laid his body across his horse, then with hands raised in friendship, they rode back the way they had come.  About a week later, a rider left a horse, hauberk and sword at the gate of the town, with instructions to the gatekeeper to deliver the steed to me.  I could tell from the fresh patched links in the middle of the chest where it had come from."

"What did you do with the hauberk, uncle?"  Thomas looked at his adopted uncle's mail, and since it was obviously very old, wondered if it were the one from the story.

William smiled.  "To tell the truth, I buried it at the crossroad.  I told everyone I sold it and spread the proceeds in a drunken display of largesse, but I could not have sold it any more than I could have worn it.  We have grown old and decrepit together, that hauberk and I.  As far as I know, it still rusts quietly in Norman soil, as it should."  William smiled again, and looked up from the clump of earth in his hand.  "Your armor rode away, I hear," he said quietly.

"Yes, uncle."

"'Tis just as well.  For the first time, at any passing.  Next time, though, keep the horse and sell the armor.  You have crossed a gate, Thomas.  You will never have to cross it again."

Thomas watched the earth fall from his uncle's hand as he stood.

"Thank you, uncle," he said.

William smiled at him.  "Take care of that shoulder.  Change the bandage daily and give it plenty of air."

"Yes, uncle."

William looked toward the next man he intended to visit and strode away, leaving Thomas with many new thoughts, and strangely, a feeling of having been forgiven.  He felt lighter, almost happy.  He looked over at James and smiled a genuine smile of comradeship, though James, by his expression, took the gesture as a flaunt of triumph rather than good humor.  The smile was not returned.  If only Cyril were there to share a cup of ale with him!

Six days after breaching the curtain, the sappers, after all day and all night digging, announced that their timber-reinforced tunnel beneath the south tower of the keep stood ready to fire.  The sapper's tent, abutting the wall, looked charred and ill used, for it had withstood bombardment of stone, arrow, and fire from the keep's battlements above, but it had held, and around it, behind immense screens of wood, rested piles of earth and stone, dredged from under the tower.  The sappers had undermined the foundation while maintaining the integrity of everything built upon it by a clever arrangement of upright timbers and lintels.  Having inspected the tunnel, the siege engineer pronounced the cavity large enough to collapse the stonework above when put to fire, and ordered the digging stopped.  It was early morning.

As everyone expected, John wasted no time in lighting a torch.  Sappers spread the fat of forty pigs over the timbers, filled the cavity with dry brush and tinder, then set fire to it.  Under cover of screen and smoke, the sappers dropped back to the gate tower and watched, standing alongside their king, as fire ate away the underpinnings of Rochester keep.

Nearly two hours later, wide cracks opened the entire length of the keep's stonework where it joined the tower.  As the morning progressed, the crack widened, smoke spilling out all sides of the sapper's tent, even through the fissure itself.  Sometimes, sharp explosions and rumbles belched out of the pit as immense foundation blocks, heated by the flame, blew apart from force of steam in their pores.  Rebels atop the structure kept a worried eye on the progress of the sappers handiwork, and at last, having despaired of the fire's withering, ordered pennants lowered from the south wall.  Mortar crumbled and turned to powder.  The crack widened, until by late morning, the fissure gaped wide enough for a man to walk through.  At the top, the tower and the stonework of the south wall no longer joined at all.   A short time later the tower spilled outward in a roar, for all the world like a toppling chimney.

John grew furious.  There was no surrender.  Banners of Rochester's defenders now snapped in the wind from the North and East towers.

With the southern half of the keep abandoned, the rebels had taken refuge in the north half of the structure, protected by a twenty foot thick wall of masonry which divided the ancient keep into two independently defendable fortresses.  John gnawed at his fist, beside himself with rage.  Thomas could not hear his words from the vantage where he watched, but he heard the king's tone plain enough.

Bombardment commenced again, though few doubted if the defenders could last long enough for John's men to breach the wall.  Bones of a horse were found in the collapsed side of the keep, gnawed hard by teeth.

Four days passed.  Thomas stood in armor, on watch with the rest of the  men and the knights of half a dozen other mesnies, when activity stirred the keep's battlements.  Someone was shouting.  The rebels were sending out a group of the less warlike, requesting mercy and sanctuary.  Then, before a reply could be gotten from the king, a door opened high on one wall and a group of rebels moved tentatively down a stone staircase, unarmed.

The crossbowmen took aim and followed them with their weapons.  They reached the ground and stood in a group behind a cleric of some sort, waiting.  One of the elder knights, a banneret of John's household, bade them cross the ward to the gatehouse.  Thomas feared for them.  With the king's temper as it was, this was a desperate move, sweetened more by hope than reality.

John rode into the gatehouse but a moment later and, despite his bulk, fairly leapt from his horse and charged the rebels on foot.  They blanched when they saw the king's face.  Thomas could not blame them.

"What dung has dropped through the garderobes?" shouted John.

The cleric offered a hasty supplication and explained that these were the old, the sick, those not of the main force which occupied the keep.  John would have none of it.  He strode to the entrance of the gatehouse and screamed at the silhouettes on the battlement above him, oblivious to the target he made.  Fortunately, those on the battlement made no effort to strike the king, for knowing if they missed the mark, they would have forfeited all hope of mercy when the inevitable happened.

"What meat have you dropped me?" screamed John.  "I have seen the remains of your horses, my honorable knights.  Low on food?  Are you eating one another yet?  What say I send up some victuals?  Some rebel repast?"  He turned to his mercenaries, hard men from the north, and said in an insanely even voice, "Strike off their hands and feet and send them back in a bucket!"

One of the mercenaries moved to draw his sword.

"No swords," said John, as if he were correcting banquet table etiquette.  "Swords are for noble executions.  This is butcher's work.  Use an axe."

All during this conversation, the handful of rebels listened in disbelief, some of them appealing to the battlements above.

Thomas was horrorstruck.  This was no work for a knight.  This was not what he had trained for.  Where were the noble words of knighthood?  These men may be rebels, but they were pathetic.  Surely John would not carry through with such a threat.

"Out here," indicated John.  "Where they can see their meat prepared."

One of the mercenaries suddenly grabbed the cleric and began dragging him forward as he clamored for mercy and judgment from the Pope.

"Not the priest," shouted John in annoyance.  "One of the others.  I have enough trouble with the Church as it is."

As ordered, the mercenary threw the priest to the ground and grabbed the next closest man.

"No, no!  My king, I beg you!"

"Your king!" shouted John.  "A moment ago, you would not have me.  Now, sir, I will not have you!"

Four mercenaries lifted the man bodily and laid his legs across a timber dragged from the collapsed side of the keep.  Another soldier, with no more ceremony than would have been given a piece of cord wood, dropped his axe and neatly severed the man's right foot.  A scream such as Thomas had never heard echoed between the walls of the keep and the curtain.  Another impact and the man had twin stumps.  Blood poured freely, though less so than Thomas would have imagined.

"The hands," said John wearily, as if castigating a slow attendant at his bath.

And in similar manner, the man's hands were struck off, and placed with his feet, in a wooden well bucket.

"Next," said John, his voice even but deadly.  The blood had quelled his rage, but his determination remained.

One by one, with screams of shock and protest, some in dead faint, the men were hauled into the ward.  There, the axeman severed each limb in two while another placed the still shod feet and beringed hands into buckets, careful to use his ungloved hand lest he stain his gauntlet with blood not won in battle.  Once muted, the bodies of the men, tense or relaxed, were rolled with a boot kick to the waiting arms of surgeons who attempted to cauterize the wounds, though for what reason, Thomas could not fathom.  The mutilations continued like a millstone gearwork, outside the pale of Cotswold experience, too big, too complex to stop.  Thomas and the men of his mesnie looked at one another, sickened, but at the same time fascinated.  James Beaumont looked shocked.  Once begun, the butchering seemed inevitable.  This was king's business.  Sons of the devil were the bloody kings of Anjou.  So the ballads sang.  So, it was true.

Whatever message this sent to the parapets of the keep, certainly it included the communication that John would take no partials.  He wanted them all and he wanted them now.  The question being, how harshly would he treat the defeated rebels?  This demonstration boded nothing encouraging.

The parapet grew deserted save for two sentries who could be glimpsed from behind the merlons from time to time.  Thomas and his mesnie were relieved by a squad of Franks, and wordlessly, they returned to their tents, too tired to watch events from afar.

A night passed.  The next morning, word swept the camp that a surrender had been negotiated.  Everyone got into full armor, mounted horse, and rode to the Rochester gate.  John stood there already, legs apart, arms folded, watching the keep with absolute attention.  His mercenaries surrounded him.  As a group, they entered the ward and stood before the keep.

The Norbury mesnie was one of the few to actually gain entrance into the ward, the other knights and men-at-arms keeping formation without.  It was an honor meant to keep the Cotswold royalists well disposed toward their king.  Thomas stood with his horse in hand.  To his right stood James Beaumont, and to his left stood the banneret.  A knight among knights.

The door high in the side of the keep opened.  There were shouts in the ward.  A way was cleared, then a stream of men came down the stairs, to line up in ranks behind their leaders.  There were just over one hundred and fifty in all, including ninety-five knights, forty-five men-at-arms, and most importantly, William d'Albini, Lord of Belvoir, and his companion nobles.

John walked briskly to William d'Albini, who was clad in disheveled and dirty clothes, his hair dirty but combed, unshaven, unrepentant.  D'Albini stared at the king with hate filled eyes.

"You will rue the day you took arms against your king, my noble baron," John said simply, and turned away.  He then signaled for his guard and proceeded to walk through the ranks of prisoners, looking intently at their faces, pausing from time to time, frowning but never speaking, walking on.  To John, they must have been merely statues, frozen corpses standing for review.  He spoke to no one, until near the last, when he espied a young crossbowman, who recognized the king with a look of shame.

"I recognize you!" he said vengefully.  "You slept beneath my roof, shared my fire and bread.  You learned your skills with me."

"Yes, sire," the young man answered, shaken, terrified.  "Forgive me."

"Forgive you!  You ask too much!"  And with no further word, John turned from the young man and completed his circuit, his step resolute, his countenance smoldering.

Returning to the front, he walked past d'Albini without a glance.

"Cast them in chains!" he ordered.  "All of them.  The nobles, I keep.  The others, do with as you may."

An almost inaudible groan drifted from the ranks of ragged men.  Whether from relief at not being axed, or from dismay at being shackled, Thomas was never sure, but at least their deaths would be put off, if they came at all.  For the nobles, a hefty ransom could win their freedom, for all knew John needed money for his armies more than blood to settle English dust.

The smiths began unloading a half dozen heavy carts from beneath the ramada of the ward stable.  Anvils, hammers, buckets of rivets, then armloads of chains rattled out.  The smiths of Canterbury had built more than siege engines.  John had planned this day seven weeks before.

The king paused, his back to the prisoners.  His silence signaled another outburst, and all who knew the king stiffened.  "Except that ungrateful whelp who betrayed me!"  shouted John.  His words lashed swiftly.  The young crossbowman winced as if he had been physically struck.

"Hang him," said John.  "There."  He pointed to the elongated summer beam which extended above the cock loft, a wooden projection from the gable of the barn used to hoist up hay and grain, the tallest structure in the ward, a perfect gibbet.  "Hang him from that beam."

"My liege!" shouted d'Albini.  "He surrendered of his own free will!  You cannot hang him."

"Silence!" screamed the king, instantly beside himself.  "This is a household matter.  Silence your treasonous tongue or I will have it out!"

D'Albini took a long breath, never taking his eyes from the king, never moderating the silent hatred he communicated, but he did not answer.  Thomas admired him, despite himself.  Knowing the king as he did, he risked much even in this.

John lost interest in a silent adversary.  He returned his attention to the loft and jerked his chin in its direction.

His men complied.  Amid pitiful entreaties, the soldiers dragged the young man to the ground beneath the beam and held him there, binding his arms behind him, while a rope was located.  Men swarmed to the loft, discovering a rope along the way, and threaded it through a pulley fitted into the end of the beam.  They lowered the free end to the ground.

The only sound Thomas could hear, besides the horses, was the wind diverting around the stonework.

When the young man saw the rope descend, saw his fate concretely, he grew calm.  He locked his gaze upon the face of his king and kept it there until the rope tightened and pulled him from his feet.  He remained still at first, tense, hoping to buttress the rope from his windpipe with the muscles of his neck, but as the rope cinched up under his weight and he began to strangle, he started to kick and thrash.  This activity lasted only a minute, for it hastened the end, as perhaps, the young man knew it would.  His struggles ended.  A stain of urine spread over his dirty, red leggings, and it was done.