Chapter 42 #2
Absently John paid the messenger and climbed laboriously to the battlements.
By the time he reached the top, his lungs were straining and his legs were on fire.
The castle had been built on a mound that some said was a burial place of the ancients.
Occasionally, objects were dug out of the ground—arrowheads, beads, shards of pottery—that were nothing like the wares in current use.
There was talk of spirits who walked through walls on gusty autumn nights, and footsteps heard on the wall walks on late June evenings, and a woman’s laughter.
He couldn’t remember what a woman’s laughter sounded like.
Once, he thought he had seen his father walking the ramparts, one side of his face in shadow, the other showing a straight, hard profile.
The sword at his hip was the same sword that John now wore at his own and his boots had made no sound on the boards of the wall walk.
John had blinked and in that moment, the apparition, if such it was, had vanished, to leave John gazing in bemusement and fear at moonlit bare wood and stone.
He had touched the sword hilt for reassurance and the pommel had been like a lump of ice in the cup of his palm.
Two riders were approaching from the town and he narrowed his eyes in the dusk.
The black courser was very familiar, as was the roan cob.
His stomach lurched. “Open the gate!” he commanded to the guards on watch and hurried down to the courtyard, arriving there just as William and his squire were dismounting from their horses.
“Have you come ahead of the besiegers?” he demanded. A crushing pain in his chest made it hard to breathe.
“What do you think?” William said, and John saw both pity and steel in his younger brother’s dark gaze. “I have brought your son to see you, and I am here to plead with you to yield Marlborough before it’s too late.”
“Then you’re out of time,” John wheezed, “although perhaps you’ve done enough to salvage your conscience.”
William recoiled and John felt a brief moment of satisfaction that his barb had hit home.
He gestured towards the hall. “Come within. Let me offer you hospitality while I can.” As he turned, he staggered.
His son was the nearer and caught and braced him with a hard young arm.
Close against him, John saw the smooth skin, the thick tawny hair, the features that mirrored his own.
His child, his son. A man in his own right.
Tears pricked his lids and his vision blurred.
He allowed himself to be aided into the hall and eased down on a bench.
The strokes of his heart felt like a creature wallowing in mud.
When William tried to send for a physician, he insisted he was all right, and indeed, after a cup of sweetened wine and a few moments of sitting down, the pain receded and the congestion eased.
“You are wasting your own breath,” he said to William, “unless you have come to offer me aid, or stand between me and what is to come.”
“You know I cannot do that,” William said quietly.
“You can, but you won’t.”
“As you can yield Marlborough to the justiciars but you won’t,” William retorted. “Did you know that Prince John has tried to bribe the Emperor to keep Richard in prison?”
John shrugged. “There are always rumours,” he said wearily.
“It isn’t a rumour,” William said. “It’s as hard a truth as the fact that Hubert Walter is on his way here now with an army. If you do not surrender Marlborough, then he will take it by force.”
“It’s true, sir,” Jack said to his father. “I saw the Archbishop’s letter.”
John heard the deep voice, not a trace of boyhood in its cadence. “If Marlborough was in your charge, would you yield?” he asked the young man.
His son frowned and took his time to think before answering. “I might,” he said after a while, “but not until I was forced. If I surrendered too soon, I would compromise my honour; too late, and I would lose anyway and be of no further use to my lord.”
John looked surprised and then thoughtful. “Did you tell him to say that?” he asked William.
“No, he is his own man,” William answered, looking thoughtful too.
“I cannot yield this place,” John Marshal said, his expression tight and stubborn.
“You can,” William answered, hoping that his voice held the right amount of encouragement and pleading.
John shook his head. “But I won’t,” he replied, and William knew then that he had lost.
***
They left the next morning as dawn cracked the eastern sky with streaks of yolk-gold.
Looking back, William saw John standing in the gateway, arm raised in farewell.
From a distance his grey pallor didn’t show and he had made a visible effort to draw together the dissipating threads of his being.
There had been no embrace, and even if eyes had acknowledged a final parting, expressions had not shown it.
What John and his son had said to each other during their private time together, William had not probed.
What would he say to his own son on the eve of such a final and sombre leave-taking?
A part of William wanted to turn his horse, ride back, and embrace his brother fervently.
They had never been close, but now that external distances yawned between them and the last bridge was about to burned, he felt both pain and guilt.
His nephew, who had been looking round too, now faced the road ahead and set his jaw. “He’s going to die, isn’t he?” he said.
The words flashed through William, making real what he was trying to keep to himself. “I am not a physician,” he said brusquely.
“He is, though. His face was as grey as an unpainted effigy and you heard the way he was breathing.”
William sighed. “Yes,” he admitted wearily, “I fear he is.”
Jack swallowed. “Do you think he listened? Will he yield if they come?”
The dawn widened and the sky became as bright as the lining of a seashell. “I know that he listened,” William said. “But we both know he wasn’t persuaded. He could have yielded Marlborough to me had he so chosen.”
“He would never do that for the sake of his pride,” Jack answered.
“No,” William said wearily, “I suppose not.” He took his eyes off the sunrise and studied the young man.
“I have sent Wigain back to Hubert Walter with a plea on your father’s behalf.
I know he must lay siege to Marlborough if your father refuses to yield, but I have asked him to be lenient—to tread lightly on your father’s pride. I know it is not enough…”
The young man shrugged. “If your positions were reversed, would he do the same for you?”
William sighed. “You ask some hard questions. I would like to say yes, but in the balance I do not know. Nor does it matter now, save that in leaving him I feel I have betrayed him.”
His nephew’s jaw tightened. “The betrayal is Prince John’s,” he said. “Without his treachery, my father would not be in such a bind.”
“Your father is right; he may yet be our future King,” William murmured.
“That does not stop him being dishonourable,” the young man flashed.
“No, but if he became King, we would be honour bound to serve him—as your father feels he is honour bound now.” William grimaced. “Bound” was indeed the right word. Hog-tied and thrown in the fire.