“You have news?” William sobered.
“From Archbishop Hubert Walter.” Wigain produced a sealed packet from beneath his mantle.
“You know what it says?” William took it from him and started walking towards the hall stairs. A servant was sent running to fetch Isabelle.
“Yes, my lord. I wrote it myself from his dictation. You are not going to like it, but you will not be surprised.”
William raised an eyebrow. There was grim relish in Wigain’s expression. “You are not going to tell me that the ransom has been seized by thieves or that Richard is dead?”
Wigain shook his head. “Nothing as bad as that.”
“It concerns Prince John then.” William nudged the door open and strode to the hearth. Taking his belt knife, he slit the seal, opened out the vellum, and handed it to Wigain. “You might as well read it.”
Wigain coughed meaningfully and William saw him furnished with a cup of wine. As he drank, Isabelle arrived from the private quarters and joined them, her expression questioning. Wigain bowed to her, wiped his mouth, and, clearing his throat, began to read.
The words made depressing listening. Prince John and King Philip had tried to prevent King Richard’s release by offering a higher sum of their own for the German Emperor to keep Richard in prison or to turn him over to them. Letters had gone out to all of John’s castellans in England, ordering them to stand firm and reiterating that Richard was not coming back.
“The Archbishop of Canterbury apprehended one of John’s spies with a packet of letters,” Wigain said. “There’s no doubt of John’s implication in treason. The Bishop fears that messages have still reached the castellans though.”
William swore. “Has there been a response from the Emperor?”
Wigain shook his head. “It’s too early for that.”
“He won’t agree to their offer,” Isabelle said. “He’s almost certain of receiving the ransom sum from England. His agents have been here and a part of it has already been paid. But where are John and Philip going to find such a vast amount of money? The French won’t empty their coffers to keep Richard imprisoned no matter what Philip desires and John has few resources to milk.”
William nodded; he had been thinking along similar lines. Philip and John didn’t have the money, and matters were probably too far advanced to be changed anyway. But as to John’s castellans…
“Archbishop Hubert’s preparing to invest the Prince’s castles,” announced Wigain as if reading his mind. “I’ve seen the orders for chains and ropes and the ingredients for Greek fire. If they don’t yield, they’ll be stormed and suffer the consequences.”
There was an awkward silence. Wigain helped himself to more wine. “I am sorry,” he said with a shrug. “I am only the bearer of the message. If the Prince’s castellans have any sense or care for their skins, they’ll yield.”
William shook his head. “My brother has neither,” he said heavily.
At Marlborough, John Marshal listened to his clerk read out the instructions from his lord. Richard was not going to be released, the Prince was going to make a new agreement with the Emperor. The justiciars were likely to attack the Prince’s strongholds in England and his castellans were to resist whatever the price.
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.”
