27
The Castle of Tournemine was little more than a camp walled in stone. More often such places were built on natural or artificial hills surrounded by a deep ditch and were usually built of heavy timber.
The site in this case was of an old Roman station, and some initial stonework had been done. Tournemine had come to the spot with a following of landless adventurers, built the wall into an ovoid shell some thirty feet high, and inside the shell erected a round tower approximately one hundred feet in height.
Only once had I been inside that castle wall, and once inside the keep. I had gone with my father to issue a warning to the baron, accompanied by only a dozen horsemen. No more were necessary. The name of Jean Kerbouchard was a known one, and six of his galleys with upwards of five hundred fighting men lay alongshore.
Tournemine, but lately arrived, had been raiding about the country, and we came to issue a warning. Tournemine was a black-browed man and his features darkened with a fury he dared not express as we strode into the keep. All about were the men of Tournemine, yet he knew if one arrow were loosed, the men of Kerbouchard would see his fortress razed to the ground.
My father was not one for diplomacy. He walked to the table where Tournemine sat and drew a rough outline of Brittany with a piece of charcoal from the fireplace. He marked upon it the position of Tournemine’s camp. It was near the village of Plancoet, not far from the sea at St. Malo.
Taking the charcoal, he drew a line north to south across Brittany and through the camp of Tournemine. “If you dare to raid west of that line I shall come back here and hang you from your own battlements.”
Tournemine’s face was rigid with mingled anger and fear, but my father was a man to make men tremble. My father picked up the table, and with his own hands he broke off the legs and tossed them aside. Picking up the table with its rude sketch, he placed it on the mantle above the fireplace.
“Leave it there,” my father said. “If I ever hear it has been taken down, I shall come back to see you. Do you understand?”
Tournemine, his jaw stiff, struggled for the words. “I understand,” he muttered.
From that day forward, each time he returned from a voyage my father inquired about the table, and each time it was reported to be in position. Tournemine, day after day, had to face that table and stare at that which remained a mute indication of his limits, his smallness. Only when my father was reported lost at sea had he taken it down; only then dared he raid to the westward.
“If we cannot enter through the postern,” I said to the Hansgraf, “there is another way. I have seen Johannes throw a spear. If he could throw one over the wall with a line attached to the middle of the spear, one of the lighter men could go up the wall carrying a heavier line.”
“Exactly,” Peter agreed. “If the falling spear did not alarm them and if it caught across an embrasure.”
“It is worth a try,” von Gilderstern agreed.
Slowly, shadows gathered. Darkness surrounded the trees under which we stood, and pressed in against the walls of the fortress. Fog drifted in from the sea, covering the lower valley.
How many men would be inside? Not many, for Tournemine had little to fear in this corner of Brittany. It was doubtful if he had even been threatened since my father went off to sea.
Ours was an old, old land and had known many changes, its people evading trouble when possible, prepared to fight when it was not. The Celts had come six hundred years before Christ, it was said, to mingle with people already present.
The great stone monuments, the megaliths, and dolmens were already in place and had been so for centuries. There were tombs here that were more than a thousand years old before the first pyramid was built in Egypt. When the Romans invaded they defeated the native peoples one by one, the Namnetti, the Redones, and the Veneti. Finally, in 407 B.C. the Romans left, and raiding by pirates began. In 460, the Celts, who centuries before had gone to England, returned to give the land its name of Brittany. They had returned from Great Britain to Little Britain where many of the King Arthur legends took place. Through all changes the people tilled their fields, fished the wider fields of the sea, and fought when the need arose. It was a harsh land and bred the kind of men to whom the wastes of the sea were an invitation rather than a threat.
When fear chained the mariners of Florence and Genoa to their narrow seas, the Veneti and their kindred had long sailed the dark waters of the Atlantic. The Irish monks whom the Norsemen found waiting for them on Iceland were only a few of those who ventured upon the far waters. Many of the Bretons had become corsairs, as it was a richer living than tilling thin soil or fishing.
Rain began to fall and I donned my helmet. Peter was standing beside his horse, and Johannes came to take the bridle of his.
The Hansgraf said, “Bring the prisoners to me.” When they stood before him, features faintly visible in the darkness, he addressed them. “You have said the postern is easily entered? Your lives may depend on what happens in the next few minutes.”
“I am sure of it!” the fat man protested. “If I could speak to the guard—but there is not always a guard.”
“Lucca, take ten men. Scratch on the postern, and if there is a reply, let this man identify himself. If he does more, kill him.
“Peter, take Johannes and ten men who are agile and go over the wall. Whoever is first inside, swing wide the gates.”
We moved into the darkness, muffling the sound of our going. It was a somber, frightening time as seventy armed men moved down a grassy slope and across the valley, our armor glistening from the rain. The fortress walls loomed dark and ominous. We saw no lights, hidden by the walls. How many awaited us? Ten? Thirty? A hundred?
My face felt the rain upon it. For the last time? I breathed deep of the damp, cool air, felt the firmness of my seat in the saddle, the good feeling of the sword hilt in my hand. There were no stars, only the glint of rain-wet metal.
How still the night! Where now was Aziza? Where Sharasa? And Valaba?
Did my mother lie warm in the earth? Did she know I rode to avenge her? Did she realize how often in the still hours of the night I thought of her? How I wished I might have been there to defend her, saved her perhaps, or died beside her?
Did she know I loved her still? If the dead live only in the memories of those they leave behind, then she would never die while I lived. I had not seen her die and for that I was grateful. To me she yet lived, only apart.
We rode to war. What matter if only a small war? Is the blade less sharp? The arrow less deadly? My blade this night would avenge not only my mother but my Arab teacher and all the others Tournemine had slain.
I am not a noble man. I am not really a brave man. I fight because the blade is my business and I have no other. Perhaps I fight because of the fury that comes over me when I am attacked. My motives are often less than they should be. I fear I am sometimes a trickster and a conniver, but, I told myself, tonight my blade would draw blood in a good cause.
What other choice was mine? I was a landless man, and there was nothing lower, nothing less vulnerable. One was attached to a castle, serving some great lord, or one was nothing. We merchant venturers, we were the first of a new kind of man, creating a new kind of wealth.
We drew up, shivering a little, for the night was damp and chill, and stared up at the walls, which were very high. Guido, who had gone to the main gate, returned. “Tournemine is here. They came back before us.”
“So be it. The attack goes forward.” We moved down, side by side, no whisper between us. I glanced at Johannes with his spear. What had seemed a simple feat suddenly grew large and dangerous, for the wall was high, the outline of the battlements difficult to make out.
Johannes stepped down, and we cleared his line for him. He held the javelin, sighting at the wall, then he took several quick, running steps and threw it hard and high into the night.