Chapter Two
Long before noon it was all over, the gates fired with rushwood and battered down, the baileys cleared one by one, the last defiant bowman hunted down from the walls and towers, smoke heavy and thick like a pall over fortress and town. In the streets not a human creature or even a dog stirred. At the first assault every man had gone to earth with wife and family and beasts behind locked and barred doors, and crouched listening with stretched ears to the thunder and clash and yelling of battle. It lasted only a short while. The garrison had reached exhaustion, ill-supplied, thinned by desertions as long as there was any possibility of escape. Everyone had been certain the next determined attack must carry the town. The merchants of Shrewsbury waited with held breath for the inevitable looting, and heaved sighs of relief when it was called to heel peremptorily by the king himself — not because he grudged his Flemings their booty, but because he wanted them close about his person. Even a king is vulnerable, and this had been an enemy town, and was still unpacified. Moreover, his urgent business was with the garrison of the castle, and in particular with FitzAlan, and Adeney, and Arnulf of Hesdin.
Stephen stalked through the smoky, bloody, steel-littered bailey into the hall, and despatched Courcelle and Ten Heyt and their men with express orders to isolate the ring leaders and bring them before him. Prestcote he kept at his side; the keys were in the new lieutenant’s hands, and provisions for the royal garrison were already in consideration.
“In the end,” said Prestcote critically, “it has cost your Grace fairly low. In losses, certainly. In money — the delay was costly, but the castle is intact. Some repairs to the walls — new gates … This is a stronghold you need never lose again, I count it worth the time it took to win it.”
“We shall see,” said Stephen grimly, thinking of Arnulf of Hesdin bellowing his lordly insults from the towers. As though he courted death!
Courcelle came in, his helmet off and his chestnut hair blazing. A promising officer, alert, immensely strong in personal combat, commanding with his men: Stephen approved him. “Well, Adam. Are they run to earth? Surely FitzAlan is not hiding somewhere among the barns, like a craven servant?”
“No, your Grace, by no means!” said Courcelle ruefully. “We have combed this fortress from roof to dungeons, I promise you we have missed nothing. But FitzAlan is clean gone! Give us time, and we’ll find for you the day, the hour, the route they took, their plans ...
“They?” blazed Stephen, catching at the plural.
“Adeney is away with him. Not a doubt of it, they’re loose. Sorry I am to bring your Grace such news, but truth is truth.” And give him his due, he had the guts to utter such truths. “Hesdin,” he said, “we have. He is here without. Wounded, but not gravely, nothing but scratched. I put him in irons for safety, but I think he is hardly in such heart as when he lorded it within here, and your Grace was well outside.”
“Bring him in,” ordered the king, enraged afresh to find he had let two of his chief enemies slip through his fingers.
Arnulf of Hesdin came in limping heavily, and dragging chains at wrist and ankle; a big, florid man nearing sixty, soiled with dust, smoke and blood. Two of the Flemings thrust him to his knees before the king. His face was fixed and fearful, but defiant still.
“What, are you tamed?” exulted the king. “Where’s your insolence now? You had plenty to say for yourself only a day or two ago, are you silenced? Or have you the wit to talk another language now?”
“Your Grace,” said Hesdin, grating out words evidently hateful to him, “you are the victor, and I am at your mercy, and at your feet, and I have fought you fair, and I look to be treated honourably now. I am a nobleman of England and of France. You have need of money, and I am worth an earl’s ransom, and I can pay it.”
“Too late to speak me fair, you who were loud-mouthed and foul-mouthed when there were walls between us. I swore to have your life then, and have it I will. An earl’s ransom cannot buy it back. Shall I quote you my price? Where is FitzAlan? Where is Adeney? Tell me in short order where I may lay hands on those two, and better pray that I succeed, and I may — may! — consider letting you keep your miserable life.”
Hesdin reared his head and stared the king in the eyes. “I find your price too high,” he said. “Only one thing I’ll tell you concerning my comrades, they did not run from you until all was already lost. And live or die, that’s all you’ll get from me. Go hunt your own noble game!”
“We shall see!” flared the king, infuriated. “We shall see whether we get no more from you! Have him away, Adam, give him to Ten Heyt, and see what can be done with him. Hesdin, you have until two of the clock to tell us everything you know concerning their flight, or else I hang you from the battlements. Take him away!”
They dragged him out still on his knees. Stephen sat fuming and gnawing at his knuckles. “Is it true, you think, Prestcote, the one thing he did say? That they fled only when the fight was already lost? Then they may well be still in the town. How could they break through? Not by the Foregate, clean through our ranks. And the first companies within were sped straight for the two bridges. Somewhere in this island of a town they must be hiding. Find them!”
“They could not have reached the bridges,” said Prestcote positively. “There’s only one other way out, and that’s by the water-gate to the river. I doubt if they could have swum Severn there without being seen, I am sure they had no boat. Most likely they are in hiding somewhere in the town.”
“Scour it! Find them! No looting until I have them safe in hold. Search everywhere, but find them.”
While Ten Heyt and his Flemings rounded up the prisoners taken in arms, and disposed the new garrison under Prestcote’s orders, Courcelle and others with their companies pressed on through the town, confirmed the security of the two bridges, and set about searching every house and shop within the walls. The king, his conquest assured, returned to his camp with his own bodyguard, and waited grimly for news of his two fugitives. It was past two o’clock when Courcelle reported back to him.
“Your Grace,” he said bluntly, “there is no better word than failure to bring you. We have searched every street, every officer and merchant of the town has been questioned, all premises ransacked. It is not such a great town, and unless by some miracle I do not see how they can well have got outside the walls unseen. But we have not found them, neither FitzAlan nor Adeney, nor trace nor word of them. In case they’ve swum the river and got clear beyond the Abbey Foregate, I’ve sent out a fast patrol that way, but I doubt if we shall hear of them now. And Hesdin is obdurate still. Not a word to be got from him, and Ten Heyt has done his best, short of killing too soon. We shall get nothing from him. He knows the penalty. Threats will do nothing.”
“He shall have what he was promised,” said Stephen grimly. “And the rest? How many were taken of the garrison?”
“Apart from Hesdin, ninety-three in arms.” Courcelle watched the handsome, frowning face; bitterly angry and frustrated as the king was, he was unlikely to keep his grudges hot too long. They had been telling him for weeks that it was a fault in him to forgive too readily. “Your Grace, clemency now would be taken for weakness,” said Courcelle emphatically.
“Hang them!” said Stephen, jerking out sentence harshly before he wavered.
“All?”
“All! And at once. Have them all out of the world before tomorrow.”