XIV

 

 

Clairmont Castle

16 May, 1193

 

THE DAY HAD been warm. Now, with the light beginning to fail and the temperature plunging, a heavy mist had risen from the moist, black fenland soil. For a while, the roofs of Clairmont Castle – the highest points for miles, save a few huddled trees – had stood proud of the low swirl, like some great stone ship sat low in a pale ocean. But, bit by bit, that sea had risen to completely envelope them.

All was quiet as Hugh de Mortville strode across the courtyard, his shaggy hound Conan skittering about him. No movement but the guard on the gatehouse and the flap of a lone crow on the manor house chimney, their sounds weirdly muffled by the fog. He rubbed his hands. The cold, damp air now nipped at his fingers, but within he felt a warm glow – a glow of contentment. His belly was still full from the great Whitsun feast, his head pleasantly swimming from the wine that had accompanied it.

There was a satisfaction in his soul, too. He never had been the most sociable sort, but for the feast – held at noon that day, as it was every year – he had opened his doors to all his tenant farmers and their families. It was a chaotic, often raucous affair – so different from the noble gatherings he was occasionally forced to attend. Those, he hated. But the Whitsun feast, a gesture of appreciation to all those who contributed to the wealth of his estate, was a truly joyous occasion. For the week of Whitsuntide that followed, villeins were excused all work. Doubtless the prospect of a holiday helped fuel his tenants’ good cheer. Some nobles chose not to observe it – or rather, chose for their villeins not to observe it. De Mortville thought such behaviour reprehensible.

He hoped his own tenants thought him a fair man. In life, he had always striven to be. But he had other, more selfish reasons for sharing the feast, too. Those he welcomed on this day were not jaded nobility, but peasants to whom this was a genuine wonder. Their joy was honest and unrestrained. Lacking any immediate family of his own, their pleasure was also his.

At the main gate, he shared a good-natured joke about the weather with the porter, and the heavy doors beneath the elaborately timbered gatehouse were heaved open. His hound leapt with excitement. As he passed over to the mossy stone bridge that spanned the moat, Conan scampering ahead, he felt the sudden chill from the water and the damp air, and pulled his cloak tighter around him, the stillness of his surroundings a sharp contrast with the day’s clamour.

 

 

DESPITE ITS NAME, Clairmont was not really a castle. It had been a long time since there had been any threat worth worrying about in these parts. No one passed by the estate of Hugh de Mortville. It was on the way to nowhere, which meant only those with the purpose of visiting its lord were likely to come this way at all. The rest took little interest – if they even knew it existed. Most avoided the Fens altogether, believing them a bleak, savage place.

And that was exactly how Hugh de Mortville liked it.

So he had built for himself not a castle, but a moated manor house. What it lacked in defences, it made up for in comforts. True, it had a wall, and a gatehouse, and beyond that a moat – which in these damp regions needed so little encouragement to fill that it frequently flooded – but at its heart, the long three-storey stone house was not a fortress, but a home. A place not to cower and shiver, but to live – unmolested, in a manner elegant and congenial – in peace and contentment. This, de Mortville was convinced, would be the new way.

It had fireplaces and chimneys. It had large windows filled with glass. It even had piped water which could be heated by fire – contrived, with great difficulty, by an ingenious Welshman of de Mortville’s acquaintance. Only at one end, where a stout, square tower topped with battlements made a token stand, did it in any way resemble the castle familiar to his contemporaries. But even this, as with the other supposed defences, was built more for show than protection.

After all, there was nothing to fear way out here. Not any more.

 

 

IMMEDIATELY OUTSIDE THE gate, on the left side, was a small collection of sticks – half a dozen or so. These were Conan’s sticks, and here was where he left them when the game of throw and fetch with his master was done. Some showed signs of splintering about the middle from the attentions of his teeth, but otherwise had been treated like treasured objects, carefully placed for the next day’s play. De Mortville had encouraged the dog in his tidy habit. Hereabouts, trees were few, and good throwing sticks a rare commodity.

He selected one – a good, thick stick, still a little green – and showed it to the hound. Conan leapt, then dropped half flat, front paws splayed before him, tongue lolling, his wide, expectant eyes fixed on his master.

De Mortville smiled and feigned a throw. Conan started, but didn’t fall for it. With a laugh, de Mortville swung again and sent it spinning through the foggy air ahead of him, past the end of the bridge. Just a short throw to begin with. Conan, big though he was, was off like a rabbit, diminishing to a grey phantom as he plunged into the enveloping mist.

De Mortville strode after him, humming a tune to himself.

 

 

CONAN – AN IRISH Wolfhound – was the second such dog that de Mortville had owned. The first had been a fine silvery-grey bitch with an unpronounceable name that had been presented to Prince John by Irish chieftains back in 1185. It was a great honour, apparently – but John had showed little interest in the dog, and somehow de Mortville had ended up adopting her. Three years later she had died with bad bones, but not before she’d had three pups with one of Eustace Fitz Warren’s hounds. One died, one went to Fitz Warren, but the last, and smallest, upon which de Mortville had taken pity, he’d kept. He named the dog ‘Conan,’ a name he remembered from Ireland which meant ‘little wolf’ or ‘hound’ – or so he had been told.

He shuddered to think of that episode in Ireland. John had been no more than eighteen, and many of his closest friends were still young too, egging each other on in their mischief. The Irish chieftains had welcomed them solemnly, warily. In return, John and his entourage had laughed at them, poking fun at their long beards. At the Prince’s instigation, Sir John de Rosseley had tugged one of them to see if it was real.

Though de Mortville would like to think he had been above it all, he had laughed along just as enthusiastically. What idiots they had been. The older members of the party – Bardulf, Fitz Warren and the others – had maintained some decorum, but the rest were simply too young, too foolish. They had treated it like a game. No wonder the expedition had been such a disaster.

 

 

WITHIN SECONDS, CONAN was back, panting, stick in his jaws. De Mortville fussed him about the ears, grabbed hold of the stick, and for a moment they tussled over ownership of it. That was all part of the game. Conan soon gave it up, and leapt back, looking up at his master in eager anticipation, urging him to throw again.

De Mortville tossed it further and higher this time. Conan disappeared entirely into the fog as De Mortville marched off after him.

This time, Conan dropped the stick at his master’s feet with thick, panting breaths. That earned him a reward of a scrap of dried beef. De Mortville glanced back towards Clairmont. Only the gatehouse was visible, rising like a grey ghost in the murk.

He turned back to the path, and his dog. There were places off it that he did not want Conan to go – where he would go, if there was a stick to be fetched. Some of these spots had mires so treacherous they would suck man or beast into them in an instant. But de Mortville had learned their location over the years. Even now, in thick fog, he knew precisely where to throw.

Time to give Conan a good run. De Mortville drew back his arm and hurled the stick with all his might. It was swallowed by fog.

Then came the sound. An impossible sound. It was the sound of the stick hitting something made of metal.

It rang out, oddly dulled by the thick air. De Mortville stopped dead, utterly baffled. He knew every inch of this path. Directly ahead was nothing more solid than peaty earth, nothing taller than a blade of grass for a quarter mile or more. No trees. Certainly no rocks. Just flat earth.

Then he noticed the dog.

Conan had not moved an inch. Instead, he was staring into the blank distance, somehow transfixed, his head held low. As de Mortville looked at him, the dog suddenly hunched, his hackles up, a low growling moan in his throat.

“Is someone there?” called de Mortville.

Nothing.

“Gamel?” he called, for some reason thinking it might be the most senior of his farmers, returned to speak with him – even though their business had been concluded earlier that day.

There was another sound – one he could not identify – and Conan broke into a fit of barking that ended in one long, continuous howl.

“If you have business, then announce yourself,” shouted de Mortville, his tone more aggressive. “Or I’ll set the dog on you!”

Conan snarled and snapped like a wild thing, as if on cue, but did not advance.

Then, from somewhere in the fog, came the distant clank of metal.

It meant nothing to de Mortville – had no connection with anything that made any sense. But somehow, the sound filled him with unutterable dread.

He did not hesitate. With a whistle, he sent Conan back into the gloom, to tackle the intruder. It was a whistle that meant fetch what’s making the noise. He used it when they were hunting, and Conan always knew what he intended. The dog would try to bring down whatever was out there, and would try to bring it back. Once, with a determination one saw only in dogs, he’d dragged a deer back to his master.

There was a moment of silence. Then a yelp. A heavy thud that shook the ground beneath de Mortville’s feet. Then silence again. De Mortville stood, only dimly aware that he was holding his breath, listening for the sounds of the dog – of movement, of dragging. Nothing in the eerie quiet but the lonely, distant cry of a crane.

Then, out of the murk, arcing through the air, something came spinning. For a confused moment, his sense of perspective baffled by the fog, he thought it was the stick. But it was big, and left a scarlet trail in its wake.

It thudded heavily on the wet earth at de Mortville’s feet. The lifeless form had had its head smashed so completely it was no longer even recognisable as a dog.

De Mortville felt icy beads of sweat trickle from under his arms. He staggered backwards, in a state of shock. His hand went to his belt – an old impulse – but no sword was there. He never wore a sword around his own home.

Then came the other sound. A rhythmic pounding, like a heartbeat. He felt it shudder in the ground beneath him, as if throbbing in the earth itself. Heavy footfalls. And with them, something bright and sharp – the tuneless clang of metal.

De Mortville turned and ran for the gate as fast as he knew how, the sound thumping closer behind him. He yelled to the guards in the gatehouse; aware, even as he did, that his words were barely making sense. Heads appeared on the battlement. Two silhouetted figures appeared in the open doorway.

“Close the gate!” called de Mortville as his plunging feet crunched along the stone bridge. Two faces – one the captain of his guard – stared in startled paralysis. “Close it!”

They began to do so even before he reached the gatehouse. He flung himself through the narrowing gap and put his shoulder to the wood until the doors crashed shut and the bar was dropped into place. De Mortville and his captain stood in the dark space beneath the gatehouse and stared at each other in mute incomprehension.

Then a great impact shook the doors.

It was as if they had been hit by a charging bull. In a moment of confusion, de Mortville wondered if it could be exactly that. But it was no bull that had slaughtered his dog – and no bull that clanked like metal.

Again it struck. The entire gatehouse shuddered. Dust and grit rained down from above. The guards began to back away. The captain thrust a sword into de Mortville’s hand. He was grateful for that. Its solid weight focused his mind.

“What is it?” he called up to the rampart. “Can you see it?” He tried to keep the fear out of his voice. But no reply came. He glanced at his captain again – then a third crash almost shook the doors off their black iron hinges.

De Mortville hurried into the courtyard and looked up to the rampart.

“Someone with eyes, tell me,” he shouted, his voice charged with anger this time. “What the hell is it?”

The guard looked back down at him, his face pale. “It... It’s...” he said, shaking his head, as if struggling to make sense of what he had seen.

Before either could speak further, there was a great whoosh. The fog about the gatehouse flickered yellow. Through the cracks in the gate, against the darkening Fen, de Mortville saw the bright glow of flames.

“Fire!” yelled the guard upon the battlement. Men ran across the courtyard, fetching pails, scaling the steps two at a time to hurl water down upon the burning gate.

There were chutes either side of the gatehouse to allow the gates to be doused with water from the inside if attacked. They had never been used. Until today, de Mortville had no expectation that they ever would. He heard the hiss and splatter of the water, saw it seeping in under the gates. But no matter how much his men flung down, the flames would not die. De Mortville felt his chest tighten. The whole gatehouse was a framework of wood and plaster. If the flames were allowed to spread, it would be utterly destroyed.

They would have to open the gates.

A dozen armed men had now mustered, and stood before the gate in tight formation, forming a shield between it and their master. They were prepared to make a stand. But against what?

“Lookout?” called de Mortville. “Tell me what you see.”

The guard on the battlement disappeared, then appeared again. “Nothing,” he said, bemused. “It’s gone.”

De Mortville wasted no time. “Open them. Quickly.”

The porter and gatehouse guards flung the heavy bar upon the ground and heaved the doors inwards. The space beneath the gatehouse filled with thick smoke. Servants of all kinds – every one of them now carrying some vessel – dashed forward in ones and twos and hurled it over the already blackened wood of the castle doors, then beat a hasty retreat, coughing and spluttering as they went. De Mortville and his men stood firm, squinting into the blank fog framed by the gateway, weapons drawn and raised, ready to face whatever might try to follow.

The flames were stubborn. They seemed alive – as if with evil intent. They leapt where one would not expect. Sometimes they burned blue. On several occasions, de Mortville could swear, he saw some portion of the wood completely extinguished, only for the flames to break out upon it yet again. But pail after pail, pot after pot of water was hurled at it until finally, the task was achieved. They stood, surrounded by smoke, the entrance – now a great pool – trodden to black mud. A few smiled as they panted and coughed, hands upon their knees. One man laughed with relief, believing the emergency past.

Then a great, dark shape charged out of the mist.

It was a beast that de Mortville saw thundering across the bridge towards him. Seven feet tall, as wide as two men at the shoulder. Its body glinted with blue-black scales, parts of it splashed with red. Its head bore outlandish, reptilian spikes and fins, its wide mouth grinning with rows of white teeth, its eyes dead black pits.

It was on the knot of servants about the gate before they knew what had happened. They were smashed aside like straw dolls. Bones cracked. Teeth shattered. Air wheezed out of crushed ribs as gore splattered against wood and plaster. A lucky few fled, scrambling and splashing through the mud, their eyes wild.

There had been no time to close the still-smoking gates.

 

 

DE MORTVILLE AND his men had fallen back into the courtyard to form a defensive line. Once past the gatehouse, the men on the ramparts, too, would have clear shots. As it pounded towards him, he heard the thunk of crossbows. Two, three, four. One bolt glanced off its target and flew high over the battlement. Another shattered to splinters against the beast. But the beast kept coming.

The men braced themselves. They would give the bastard a fight, if that was what he wanted.

But there was no fight. Before any could land a blow, a plume of flame leapt from the beast’s left hand. Men were set afire. There were screams. The smell of burning flesh. De Mortville sensed hysteria spreading behind him. He saw his captain’s skull crushed and another man knocked clear off his feet, his bloodied jaw hanging. From the beast’s right hand, de Mortville now realised, swung a hammer the size of a small anvil.

Nothing would stop it. In the split second before it was on him, De Mortville turned and fled, stumbling, the clanking giant crashing towards him, closing on him. A crossbow bolt zipped past his head. In some distant part of his mind he was aware that his right foot was burning. The flames roared rhythmically as he ran. Then the leg crumpled and he landed hard, his sword spinning from his hand, the wind knocked out of his lungs. He lay, half numb, dimly aware that those who should protect him were now fleeing in terror.

The pounding footfalls had stopped. De Mortville turned, and stared up at the thing towering over him. The contorted, reptilian face cocked to one side, and seemed to regard him for a moment. Then, with the matter-of-factness of a farrier about to strike a nail, it slowly raised its huge, iron hammer. De Mortville lifted an arm across his face – a futile gesture.

Then black oblivion fell.