The Siege of Norwich Castle Part 29

Norwich in those days was an open town. The walls and towers, of which portions still remain to gladden the eyes of archaeologists, were not built till some fifty years later, so that it was not possible to defend the town itself. Moreover, although the earl had found supporters amongst the Saxon and Anglo-Danish inhabitants of the older quarters, numbering more than one relative of Harold G.o.dwinsson, the majority of the Norman denizens of the New Burg around the Chapel-in-the-Field remained loyal to William, and were ready to give all help to the besiegers. For this reason was it that the western sky had but flickered with the reflections of flames. It was the Saxon quarter by the river, the wooden tenements in King Street, which provided fuel for the bonfire.

Looking east from the portal of the great tower, a grand and terrible spectacle confronted the beholders.

Crackling flames shot up against the dark midnight sky, dancing like living demons of fiery destruction, and sinking only to lick the doomed houses with their scorching tongues and spring up higher than ever.

Every now and again some beam or stone would burst with a sharp report, throwing blazing fragments into the air; and the volumes of smoke rolled far into the night, lurid with the red glare of the flames.

Moats and marshes and river gleamed and sparkled weirdly with the light of destruction, so that the ground was broken by inverted images of fiery tongues; and it seemed, indeed, as if the nether world--so ardently believed in by those who were watching as a material h.e.l.l of fire and brimstone--had broken bounds, and was let loose to destroy the world.

But most awful was it to see the small black figures that every now and again raised wild arms against the flare of the fire; most awful was it to here the screams that every now and again rose above the dull roar and crackle and hiss of the destroying element.

When such figures were seen, and such sounds heard, curses and execrations burst from the white lips of the soldiers who were crowding the eastern walls of Blauncheflour, and the knights who had a.s.sembled before the portal of the keep.

As the countess came down amongst them, she could not repress an exclamation of horror, for never in her life had she beheld anything so awful.

Sir Hoel de St. Brice came instantly to her side.

'Alas, dear lady! this is no scene for thee. Return to thy bower. There is no danger for the castle.'

'My place is here, Sir Hoel,' said Emma firmly. 'I am Castellan of this castle. The battle is not always to the strong. See, yonder flames hissing through the air are more terrible than a hundred mailed warriors! The flame of wit is given to woman as well as to man!'

'William's men are doing thee homage, n.o.ble countess,' said De Gourin, with a sneer. 'These are finer bonfires than the good people of Norwich lighted on the night of thy arrival in their town!'

Emma turned from him with a shudder of disgust.

'How hath this been accomplished, Sir Hoel?' she asked of the older knight. 'By what means hath the fire been enkindled?'

'The king's men are provided with mighty engines,' answered Sir Hoel.

'Never have I seen mangonel or balista that carried so far. They are throwing red-hot stones and b.a.l.l.s of lead from them, and the old houses yonder have been so well dried by the sun of late, that they burn like tinder. See,' he added, pointing out some glowing stars in the south-east, which Emma had not before distinguished from the burning fragments tossed aloft by the action of the flame, 'their fiery hail continues even now. They have got possession of the Cyning Ford, and are flinging their missiles from across the river.'

'And are we to stand here and gape at them, and do nought to stop them?' demanded the countess eagerly. 'Good St. Nicholas! how the cattle bellow in the castle meadow! Are the poor beasts in danger?'

'The fire frightens them, and no wonder!' answered Sir Hoel. 'But they are in safety, unless, perhaps, some fragment, here and there, may be carried from the fire, and somewhat scorch their hides. As for thy former question, I see not that anything can be done. Having possession of the ford, I know not how we can dislodge them.'

'It would be but throwing away good lives to attempt it,' said De Gourin, who cared little whether a few Saxons more or less were burned on their own hearthstones.

'Eadgyth!' exclaimed the countess impetuously to her bower-maiden, who had followed her, notwithstanding her terror, 'hast thou not told me there was a way through the marshes, that Harold used against the Vikings?'

Eadgyth, with wild eyes and teeth chattering in the extremity of her horror, gazed at the countess as if her fear had taken away her reason.

The countess repeated her question, and Eadgyth, with an effort, forced herself to attend.

'Ay, that is so. My kinsman Leofric would be familiar with it. He has fought every inch of this ground against the Danes under your lord!'

she said.

'Where is this Leofric? Let him be summoned,' commanded the countess.

'He is yonder helping his countrymen to save their skins from the fire,' said Sir Alain contemptuously.

Again the countess commanded, 'Let him be summoned!'

And when, not long after, Leofric Ealdredsson stood before her, still breathing hard after his exertions, his face begrimed with dust and smoke, and the wild firelight gleaming on his torc and mail corselet and bracelets, she asked him if he knew of any way by which he could steal unperceived through the marshes, and take the artillerymen of the foe by surprise.

'By Asgaard! yes!' exclaimed Leofric, turning to De Gourin. 'And so I told this fair sir an hour ago, and offered to show him how he might take them in flank, and stuff their accursed red-hot b.a.l.l.s down their own throats; or I would have taken a band under my own order, twenty of my house-carles, if he would add twenty stout men from the garrison.

But he would hear none of it.'

'We shall be the safer that the buildings yonder are burned,' said De Gourin. 'Why throw away good lives to stop it?'

'Why was I not told of this suggestion?' asked Sir Hoel, frowning.

'Thou takest over much upon thyself, Sir Alain!'

'Grant me the men now, countess!' said Leofric eagerly.

'My lord owed his life to thee, Leofric Ealdredsson!' answered the countess. 'I know I may trust thee! Take thy stout carles, and twenty men beside.'

'Ahoi! By Freya! thou art a pearl among women!' cried the wild Leofric, who was much of a Viking himself.

'Ah, kinsman Leofric, leave those heathen names alone!' said Eadgyth.

'Thou hast a better symbol in the hilt of thy sword!'

But he had not stopped to listen to her. He had gone off to call his carles together, and to choose his twenty men from the garrison.

And some forty of them, for the most part Anglo-Danes or Saxons, left the castle a few minutes later, leaving by the western horn of the barbican, and making their way by the streets north of the castle, by Tombland, to the river; slipping along through the fire-lighted night with a panther-like trot on their silent shoes of untanned leather, their trusty seaxes in their right hands, and their round red s.h.i.+elds on their left arms.

Arrived at the river, they possessed themselves of boats without particularly asking the leave of the owners, and crossed-over to the marshes on the eastern bank, leaving a man in each boat to guard it.

They crept through the rushes, as only men who had grown up amid the fens could have done, and fell upon the unsuspecting Normans like thunderbolts; knocked their balistas to fragments, served a good many of their men likewise, and returned as they came to the west bank of the river.

Then they added their strength to that of the townsfolk to fight the flames, and, by means of clearing large s.p.a.ces to windward of the burning houses, stopped the fire from spreading its ravages indefinitely. But five less returned through the castle gate than had left it.

So went the first day and the first night of the siege.

When day broke, the attack on the barbican began again, and so it was for five days afterward; but at the end of the sixth the barricades were almost battered down, and strong bridges were established across the ditch, so that the defenders thought it wise to abandon it to the enemy, as scarcely worth the lives it would cost to maintain possession of it. But this meant no very great advantage to the besiegers.

They stood before the great gate of the castle, the actual entrance to which looked like a mere mouse-hole between the sheer strong walls of its two flanking towers. They well knew the make of such gateways: their folding-doors of solid oak, strengthened with bars and bolts of iron, and studded with huge nails to prevent the cutting out of a panel or staving in of the same; the strong portcullis behind them, a harrow-shaped iron grating, to be let up and down in a moment by means of pulleys from the inside; above the doors a row of chimney-like apertures, called machicolations, through which the defenders could pour scalding water, molten lead, or any other deadly matter, upon the devoted heads of the a.s.saulting column, who were exposed also to a cross fire of quarrels, stones, and other missiles from the flanking towers.

Truly, to a.s.sault such a portal was no child's play, even with such aid as could be given by the rude artillery of the times: petronels and agerons for throwing stones and leaden pellets, catapultas for shooting arrows, and the trebuchettum, or warrewolf, specially designed for the smas.h.i.+ng in of gates and walls; all these, and more of their kind, the king's men were well provided with.

Stout Earl Warrenne, and the astute Bishop of Coutances, and the accomplished lance, Robert Malet, held many a consultation as they rode round the invested fortress, and scanned it eagerly to see if haply they might discover some weak point which should give them advantage in the attack.

But they decided that they must become masters of the great gate, and so of the ditch, before they could make any a.s.sault on the castle itself.

A month had pa.s.sed away before they were so masters; but being so, they had their opponents in a veritable trap. The besieged knew well that a harder struggle than ever lay before them in their awful isolation, cut off from communion with their fellow-creatures by a wall of human fury as effectually as if they had been wrecked on some desert island in that vast ocean of the west, the opposite sh.o.r.es of which were all unknown to them, though its great eastern rollers dashed in spray upon the Breton and Norman coasts.

Through all this weary time of fear and suspense, with its hara.s.sing duties and oppressive sorrows, the Countess Emma found comfort in two dumb friends: Oliver, the earl's Spanish destrier, who had been left in the fortress when De Guader embarked for Denmark; and the brave ta.s.sel-gentle, that had been Ralph's gift to her upon the day on which she had promised to share his fortunes, good or ill.

Oliver had been restored to his master, after he had been struck down by Odo's mace, by one of those strange accidents which seem to have the finger of fate in them. Some of the old thegn Ealdred's men had visited the battlefield several days after the fight, to see how the land lay and what the king's men were doing. They were attacked by a band of Norman soldiers, headed by a knight who was mounted on a splendid destrier. The animal was full of strength and courage, but the rider being, as they afterwards found, one Stephen Main-de-fer, a parvenu who had made his fortune out of the woes of England, like so many of his countrymen, and who had won his spurs without having learned to ride, instead of profiting by the n.o.ble booty that had fallen to his share, was brought to his ruin thereby; for the fiery barb, unused to such handling as he gave it, and doubtless wondering, like Johnny Gilpin's steed, 'what thing upon his back had got,' became unmanageable in the excitement of the fray, and threw his clumsy new master heavily to the earth. There he lay sprawling, as little versed in carrying his armour as in managing his horse, and Ealdred's men did not lose their opportunity of despatching him. After a short struggle, his followers beat their retreat, and the destrier fell into the hands of the Anglo-Danes, who took him back with them to their refuge in the Fens, where he was immediately recognised with much jubilation by Grillonne, and restored to his master.

So it came to pa.s.s that Ralph de Guader had been able to ride back into Blauncheflour on his trusty Oliver.

Since the earl had quitted the castle, Emma had visited the barb morning and night, and had taken him many a dainty wastel cake or sugary comfit such as horses love; and, stroking his satin neck with many an endearment, longed for the time when she should see his master on his back again. A time which would never come!