An evil thought struck me: what if the defenders refused to open for us? Had they received our message: a note tied to an arrow and shot into the castle the night before by Owain? Did they know that we were friends and this was not some lunatic cavalry assault on their unbroken walls?
We were clear of the French horsemen now, with only a hundred yards to go, the rattling drumbeat of hundreds of hooves filling my ears, and looking behind I could see at least a good sixty or perhaps seventy so of our men, mostly archers but some lancers, too — including little Thomas, galloping on his brown mount, half-crouched in the saddle and still leading the packhorses, his mouth a grim line of determination. Hanno was on my left shoulder, urging his horse to greater speed with smacks from the flat of his sword. We thundered forward — and the gates remained firmly shut before us. The French were re-grouping; I could hear shrill trumpets sounding above the thunder of our pounding steeds. I called upon St Michael, the warrior archangel — ‘Oh holy one, let them open the gates! I beg you, let them open the gates!’ But I knew in my heart that the defenders had not received our message: we’d be pinned between the stout portal of the castle and the might of King Philip’s whole army and be crushed like a beetle under a workman’s boot.
Fifty paces to go: I opened my mouth to give the order for us to veer right to attempt to make some kind of escape to the west. And stopped just before I gave tongue. Was it true? Could it be? Oh praise be to God Almighty: for the great gate of Verneuil was opening, men were clustered around the two huge wooden doors that were slowly swinging inwards under their combined efforts.
My heart rocketed like a lark in summer; I lifted Robin’s wolf’s head banner high in the air and shouted: ‘Westbury!’ at the top of my aching lungs, and what seemed like only a dozen heartbeats later Shaitan and I were pounding through the open gates, and reining in puffing and panting before the bulk of the old stone keep, my wonderful black stallion rearing up and dancing momentarily on his hindquarters with the excitement of the day. My men poured in behind me and, in moments, the central courtyard of Verneuil was filled with red-faced, shouting, laughing, sweating folk on horseback. And as the tail end of my little company — those who had survived the desperate charge and the short but murderous melee — cantered into the open space, the defenders swung the great doors closed, just in time, and barred them tight against the enemy with a welcome crash of heavy timber.
We were safe.
We had lost twenty-three men in that mad gallop through the enemy ranks — nearly a quarter of my force. And while the survivors, many with light wounds, grinned at each other, swapped jests and slapped backs, I could not help feeling that I should have handled things better. So much for Alan the great warlord: I had lost one fourth of my men and my second in command in the first clash of arms, and we still had to hold this castle for several days until King Richard arrived with the relieving army. So, while I was surely happy to be alive and unwounded, I was not in the least proud of myself. And I was already missing Owain — his kindly face and reliable strength. I offered up a prayer for his soul and begged God’s forgiveness for not reaching him in time to save him.
This was not the moment for self-recrimination, however. The angry French horsemen had followed us down towards the gates and I speedily sent as many archers as I could to the battlements to take some revenge for their fallen comrades. After a dozen French knights and men-at-arms had been pierced with the bowmen’s pin-accurate shafts, the enemy withdrew out of bow-shot and contented themselves with shaking their fists at us and bawling inaudible threats.
The castellan, a tall spare leathery Norman knight, came over to greet me as I was checking Shaitan’s glossy black hide for injuries. He named himself as Sir Aubrey de Chambois and welcomed me to his command. I thanked him for his timely opening of the gates and he merely shrugged: ‘It is I who should thank you, Sir Alan. You have saved us; in another day we would have had to render ourselves to Philip. Our walls could not have borne much more battering and the next full-scale assault would have swamped us.’
And he gestured with his hand around the courtyard and walls of his stronghold. I saw then, clearly for the first time, what a desperate situation the defenders were in.
The castle of Verneuil, which had been built in King Richard’s grandfather’s day to protect the southern flank of his duchy of Normandy, was square in shape, covered roughly an acre and sat on the north bank of the River Avre. It was rather small by the standards of some of the castles I had known; in truth it was not much bigger than a fortified manor. On three sides, north, east and west, it was protected by a three-foot thick wall, made of the grey local stone, about fifteen foot high, with a walkway all the way round it on the inside that allowed a man to stand and fight with only his helmeted head exposed between the crenellations. At each of the four corners of the castle was a strong square tower. In the centre of the northern wall was the gatehouse and the gate we had just tumbled through in such scrambling haste — a stout wooden construction, I was pleased to see, reinforced with heavy oak cross-beams on the inside. To the south, the wide slow brown Avre and its boggy, reed-covered banks formed a formidable barrier against metal-clad attackers — and the stone exterior of a mill, a brewhouse and several store houses built of brick created the castle’s defensive wall on that side. I did not believe the enemy could come at us successfully from that quarter; the south, at least, was safe.
The northern wall on the eastern side of the gatehouse, however, had been severely pounded by the French siege engines — a gap the height of a man and wide enough for three men abreast had been smashed clear through the stonework at the top of the wall. It had been patched by Sir Aubrey’s men using the rubble from the breach itself and an assortment of old sheep hurdles, wine barrels and a dozen lengths of freshly cut wooden planking. The repairs looked a little rough and untidy, but I reckoned the patched section still presented a difficult obstacle for an attacking infantry force to overcome. However, it was a sign of what terrible destruction the boulders hurled by the trebuchets could wreak on the old masonry of the castle. Several of the wooden buildings in the courtyard had been reduced to loose piles of timber and kindling, smashed by barrel-sized stone missiles that had overshot the walls. While the small hall at the rear of the courtyard was still intact, in other buildings fires had plainly broken out, probably caused in the chaos of the trebuchet bombardment.