Chapter Twenty
Just as Addax had predicted, the Welsh were in their laps before the sun rose. Just like that, Wrexham was a castle under siege.
Andromeda had never seen a battle on this scale before.
Throughout her life in Ireland, Rockbrook Castle had seen perhaps a couple of skirmishes, but nothing serious.
In spite of the reputation of the fighting Irish, her home had remained peaceful.
Even those small skirmishes were certainly not on the scale of what she was witnessing at this moment.
The Welsh had come to fight.
The action had commenced before dawn. The castle had been sealed up at that point and it had been for several hours, ever since the villagers caught wind of the approaching Welsh.
Those who hadn’t fled sought refuge from the castle, which was normal in times of trouble.
However, because of the Irish faction, Tristan refused to let any of the men into the castle.
He admitted women and children, but none of the men were allowed to enter, so those from the village were forced to hide in the countryside as the Welsh contingent arrived from the west. Perhaps it had been cruel of Tristan not to admit men, but he simply couldn’t take the chance that the Irish rebels were among them.
Andromeda had taken all of the women and children into the keep.
Because it was so large, there was plenty of room for those who seeking shelter.
There were dozens of women and children and babies, and they fit easily within the lower levels of the keep.
The only problem with the additional people would be the strain on the food stores, and that was something that Andromeda would have to watch carefully.
She had soldiers and wounded to feed, and they would be her priority.
Unlike at the siege commanded by William Marshal a year ago, the Welsh didn’t bring siege engines or trebuchets to batter down the walls.
They brought manpower and hundreds of archers, who almost immediately started firing flaming projectiles over the walls with the hopes of lighting fire to things like the stables and the great hall.
Their initial strategy seemed to be to try to burn out the occupants of Wrexham Castle, but that strategy would fail.
What they didn’t know was that Tristan had reinforced the roof of the great hall with slate that had been left behind by the Welsh when they occupied the castle.
Unknowingly, they had stymied their own assault.
There had been stacks of the smooth, sometimes brittle slate rock in the yard near the troop house, and the Marshal had speculated that the Welsh were preparing to build something with it, or to use it to line the roof of the keep, but never got around to it.
That meant Tristan had all of that beautiful slate from the Nantlle Valley near Caernarvon to do with as he pleased, and one of the first things he did was line the roof of the great hall with it when the thing was rebuilt. No more thatching, but slate instead.
The Welsh couldn’t burn it.
Tristan had lined other things with the slate as well, including several of the outbuildings and part of the stable, until he ran out of it.
That meant a portion of the stable was vulnerable to the flaming arrows, but they had managed to saturate the thatching with so much water that the arrows couldn’t get a foothold and burn.
That had been the first day.
Infuriated that they somehow hadn’t been able to burn Wrexham Castle immediately, the Welsh turned to the town and began to torch it.
Since the villagers had all been evacuated, they were simply burning the shells of homes and businesses.
When they became bored of that, they returned to the castle and resumed their bombardment of arrows.
Welsh archers were legendary, and they used them to their advantage. Daily, bolts rained down from the sky.
While this was going on, the Welsh put another strategy into place.
Hundreds of them had returned to the forests to the west and began cutting down the young trees in order to make ladders with which to mount the walls.
It was going to be a difficult task because, given how fortified Wrexham was, they couldn’t make ladders tall enough to get to the top of the walls.
That meant they were going to have to have some sort of anchor to pull themselves up to the wall walk, and they began devising grappling hooks for this very purpose.
If they couldn’t burn the English out, then they were going to have to evict them by force.
With occupants oblivious to what was going on outside, life inside of Wrexham’s keep wasn’t entirely bad.
The villagers stayed to the lower floors, in the larger rooms, but the logistics of so many people in one place needed to be managed.
Andromeda had the kitchens working day and night, baking bread and making food for both the villagers and the soldiers.
While feeding the villagers didn’t pose many challenges, bringing sustenance to the soldiers was a little more complex.
There was no such thing as the ability to sit down to a meal, so the kitchen sliced bread into chunks and melted cheese on it to distribute to the soldiers as something simple to eat with one hand.
Sometimes the bread and cheese had chunks of meat on it, too, which was always welcome.
Even if the food wasn’t elaborate, the soldiers were well fed.
For the villagers, it was a little easier because they could make great pots of boiled beans and turnips to feed the frightened throng.
A week after the battle began, the villagers had settled down and the families had their own little living areas.
Children played and the mothers tried to keep them entertained as the hours and days dragged on.
Andromeda would go down to visit frequently, and it was a good chance for her to get to know the people of the village.
They seemed most appreciative and curious about her, and even though she spoke with a heavy Irish accent, no one seemed to be put off by it.
They all came to know and respect the Lady of Wrexham.
For Andromeda, the days had been a time of baptism by fire.
Some things were simple; some things weren’t.
Keeping the keep locked up was simple; dealing with the mass human habitation wasn’t.
There was feeding to think about, and keeping everything clean.
There was one garderobe for everyone to use on the first level, and that quickly became overwhelmed by so much usage, so Andromeda put a few of the older women in charge of keeping it clean so the smell wouldn’t drive them out of the keep and into the arms of the Welsh.
But it didn’t take her long to become accustomed to everything that was going on and take control of it.
So far, everything had been managed quite well.
But there was one thing she wasn’t managing well.
She missed her husband.
Andromeda could only see Tristan from the windows, which was torture when all she wanted to do was hold him.
He began to make a habit of appearing in front of her window every morning, and she would wave to him.
He would smile and wave in return, yelling his love for her, and she would call down to him in the same fashion.
He would also appear every night at sunset if he could, right about the time the kitchens would send out whatever they had prepared for the evening meal.
They were only issuing one meal a day, but it was a plentiful meal.
The cook, who had been through sieges before, knew how to divide the food up to make it last.
So far, everything had gone smoothly.
In fact, as the days went on, it seemed as if the battle was beginning to diminish.
Every day, the Welsh would shoot arrows over the walls but not much more than that.
It was true that a few men had been hit by the projectiles, but there had been no life-threatening wounds.
Still, Andromeda could see it all from her window, and she grew more and more concerned with the wounded that they were being kept in the great hall.
The lady of the castle was expected to nurse the sick and wounded, as was customary, so she had no idea who was actually helping the soldiers.
Tristan did not keep a surgeon with his army, so it was anyone’s guess as to who was doing the tending.
Increasingly, that was not sitting well with her, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it.
She’d promised Tristan that she would remain in the keep, but that promise was becoming more difficult to keep.
Andromeda knew the basics of caring for the wounded because that had been part of her education as a noblewoman.
She’d never been one to remain idle when there was work to be done, and that was part of the problem.
She was a producer, fond of hard work, and that was never more evident than it was now.
She didn’t like to remain idle.
The days dragged on, with no real end in sight, but the second week of the siege was when things began to get interesting.
The Welsh stopped the constant barrage of arrows, but they had not left the area.
They still encircled the castle to the point where they’d set their encampment up very close to the moat.
They’d dug in to stay.
It was an uncertain time because no one was sure what the Welsh were doing.
Andromeda could see the soldiers and knights on the wall, always watching what was going on below.
She could see Tristan and Addax, and William and Paris and Kieran.
She could also see Alexander, and he tended to mostly stay at the gatehouse, but there was also someone else she could see:
Her father.