COMPARED TO THE HUGE fortresses of Kenilworth and Corfe, Berkeley was a relatively small castle. Its stones had a rosy glow and its dimensions made it habitable. It lay immediately next to the cemetery that surrounded the church where the gravestones, in a very few years, became covered with a small green moss, fine as a silk cloth.44
Thomas de Berkeley was a decent enough young man, who bore his neighbour no ill-will. Nevertheless, he had no reason to show any particular kindness to ex-King Edward II, who had kept him in prison at Wallingford for four years, together with his father Maurice de Berkeley, who had died during their imprisonment. Moreover, he could not but be devoted to his powerful father-in-law, Roger Mortimer, whose eldest daughter he had married in 1320. He had followed him through the rebellion and had been freed by him the year before. Thomas received the considerable sum of a hundred shillings a day for lodging and guarding the fallen King. Nor were his wife, Marguerite Mortimer, and his sister Eva, the wife of Maltravers, wicked people.
Edward would not have found his stay there altogether intolerable had he had to do with no one but the Berkeley family. Unfortunately his three tormentors were there too, Maltravers, Gournay and the barber Ogle. These gave Edward no respite; their minds were fertile in cruelty, and there was a sort of competition between them as to who could add the greatest refinements to his tortures.
Maltravers had had the idea of imprisoning Edward in the keep, in a small circular chamber only a few feet in diameter in whose centre was an old dry well, an oubliette. One false step and the prisoner would fall into this deep hole. Edward had to be constantly on his guard. He was now forty-four, though he looked over sixty. And here he had to live, lying on an armful of straw, his body edged close up against the wall. Whenever he fell asleep, he would wake again at once in a sweat, afraid he had moved nearer to the well.
To this torture of fear, Gournay had added another, that of smell. He had the stinking carrion of dead animals gathered from all over the countryside, badgers taken in their earths, foxes, polecats, and rotten dead birds. These were all thrown into the oubliette so that their stench tainted such little air as the prisoner had.
‘Here’s good venison for the fool!’ the three torturers cried each morning when the load of dead animals was brought.
Their own noses were not over-delicate, for they sat, or took turns to sit, in a little room at the top of the keep staircase which commanded the wretched chamber in which the king was growing ever weaker. Nauseating gusts would sometimes reach them; but they were merely a subject for ribald jokes.
‘How the old fool stinks!’ they cried as they shook the dice-box and drank their pots of beer.
The day Adam Orleton’s letter arrived, they had a long discussion. Brother William translated the message, leaving them in no doubt as to its real meaning, but pointing out the clever ambiguity with which it was phrased. The three rascals slapped their thighs for a good quarter of an hour, repeating: ‘Bonum est … bonum est!’ and roared with laughter.
The rather dim-witted courier who had brought the letter had faithfully delivered the oral message: ‘without trace’.
And this was the subject of their discussion.
‘These Court people, these bishops and lords, really do ask you to do some odd things,’ Maltravers said. ‘How do they expect you to kill someone without its being apparent that you’ve done it?’
How were they to set about it? Poison left the body black; besides, you had to get the poison from someone and he might talk. Strangling? The mark of the cord would show on the neck and the face turned blue.
It was Ogle, once barber in the Tower of London, who produced the stroke of genius. Thomas Gournay suggested a few improvements to the plan, and tall Maltravers laughed aloud, showing his huge teeth and all his gums.
‘He’ll be punished where he has sinned!’ he cried.
The idea seemed to him positively brilliant.
‘But it will need four of us,’ Gournay said. ‘Your brother-in-law Thomas will have to give us a hand.’
‘Oh, you know what Thomas is like,’ Maltravers replied. ‘He takes his five pounds a day all right, but he’s a sensitive fellow, he might well fail us halfway through the job by going off in a dead faint.’
‘I think that big Towurlee would help us willingly enough, if we promised him a good reward,’ said Ogle. ‘Besides, he’s so stupid that even if he does talk no one will believe him.’
They waited till evening. Gournay had a good meal prepared for the prisoner in the Castle kitchens: a rich pasty, small birds roasted on a spit, and an oxtail in gravy. Edward had not had such a supper since the evenings at Kenilworth with his cousin Crouchback. He was astonished, and to begin with a little anxious, but was soon comforted by the unaccustomed food. Instead of merely bringing him a bowl to his straw bed, they set him a stool in the little room next door, which seemed to him a marvel of comfort; and he enjoyed the food, whose taste he had almost forgotten. Nor was he deprived of wine; they gave him a good claret which Thomas de Berkeley got from Aquitaine. The three gaolers winked at each other as they watched him eat.
‘He won’t even have time to digest it,’ Maltravers whispered to Gournay.
The huge Towurlee stood in the doorway which he filled completely.
‘You feel better now, don’t you, my lord?’ said Gournay, when Edward had finished his meal. ‘Now we’re going to take you to a good room where you’ll find a feather-bed.’
The prisoner with his shaven head and long trembling chin looked at his gaolers in surprise.
‘Have you received new orders?’ he asked.
His voice was humble and afraid.
‘Oh, certainly, we’ve received orders. And we’re going to treat you properly, my lord,’ replied Maltravers. ‘We’ve even ordered a fire for you where you’re going to sleep, because the evenings are turning cooler, aren’t they, Gournay? Oh, well, it’s seasonable; we’re already at the end of September.’
They led the King down the narrow staircase, then across the grassy courtyard of the keep, then up on the other side within the thickness of the wall. His gaolers had told the truth; there was a bedroom, not a palace bedroom of course, but a good room, clean and white-washed, a bed with a thick feather mattress, and a sort of brazier, full of burning embers. It was almost too hot in the room.
The King’s mind was in a state of some confusion, and the wine was making him feel a little giddy. Was merely a good meal enough to make him start enjoying life again? But what were these new orders? What had happened that he should suddenly be treated so well? A rebellion in the kingdom perhaps; Mortimer fallen and disgraced. Oh, if that could only happen! Or was it simply that the young King had become concerned at last about his father’s fate and given orders that he should be treated more humanely? But even if there was a rebellion and the people had risen in his favour, Edward would never agree to return to the throne; never, he vowed it to God. Because if he became King again, he’d begin committing errors again; he was not fashioned to reign. A quiet monastery was all he wanted, and to be able to walk in a pleasant garden, and be served with the sort of food he liked. And pray, too. And then to let his beard grow again, and his hair, unless he kept the tonsure; though perhaps the razor going over his skull each week would evoke memories that were too appalling. What spiritual neglect and what ingratitude not to thank the Creator for the simple things that are enough to make life agreeable: savoury food, a warm room … There was a poker in the brazier …
‘Lie down, my lord! The bed’s a good one, you’ll find,’ said Gournay.
And indeed the mattress was soft. To have a real bed again, what a joy! But why did the other three remain in the room? Maltravers was sitting on a stool, his hair hanging over his ears, his hands between his knees, and he was staring at the King. Gournay was poking the fire. The barber Ogle had an ox-horn in his hand and a little saw.
‘Sleep, Sire Edward, and don’t worry about us; we have work to do,’ Gournay went on.
‘What are you doing, Ogle?’ the King asked. ‘Are you making a drinking-horn?’
‘No, my lord, it’s not for drinking. I’m just cutting a horn, that’s all.’
Then, turning to Gournay, and marking a place on the horn with his thumbnail, the barber said: ‘I think that’s the right length, don’t you?’
The red-headed man, whose face was like a sow’s, looked over his shoulder and replied: ‘Yes, I think that’ll do. Bonum est.’
Then he went on fanning the fire.
The saw grated on the ox-horn. When he had sawn through it, the barber handed the piece he had cut off to Gournay, who took it, looked at it, and inserted the red-hot poker. An acrid stench suddenly filled the room. The poker emerged from the burnt point of the horn. Gournay put it back in the fire. How did they expect the King to sleep with all this going on round him? Had they removed him from the carrion in the oubliette merely to smoke him out with burnt horn? Suddenly Maltravers, who was still sitting there staring at Edward, said: ‘Was that Despenser you loved so well endowed?’
The other two burst out laughing. On hearing that name mentioned, Edward felt as if his mind were being torn asunder and he suddenly knew these men were going to kill him within the hour. Were they going to inflict on him the same atrocious death as had been suffered by Hugh the Younger?
‘You’re not going to do it? You’re not going to kill me?’ he cried, suddenly sitting up in bed.
‘Kill you, Sire Edward?’ said Gournay without even turning round. ‘What makes you think that? We have our orders. Bonum est, bonum est …’
‘Go on, lie down again,’ said Maltravers.
But Edward did not lie down again. His eyes, starting out of his bald, emaciated head, turned like those of a trapped beast from Thomas Gournay’s red neck to the long yellow face of Maltravers and to the barber’s chubby cheeks. Gournay had taken the poker from the fire and was looking at the red-hot end.
‘Towurlee!’ he called. ‘The table!’
The giant, who was waiting in the next room, came in carrying a heavy table. Maltravers went to the door, closed it and locked it. What was this table for, this heavy plank of oak that was normally placed on trestles? For there were no trestles in the room. And of all the strange things that were going on round the King, this table carried in a giant’s arms seemed to him the strangest and most terrifying. How could you kill a man with a table? It was the King’s last clear thought.
‘Come on!’ said Gournay, signing to Ogle.
They came up, one each side of the bed, threw themselves on Edward and turned him over on his stomach.
‘Oh, you brutes, you brutes!’ he cried. ‘You shan’t kill me!’
He struggled and fought, and Maltravers came over to lend them a hand, but even the three of them were none too many. The giant Towurlee came forward to help them.
‘No, Towurlee, the table!’ cried Gournay.
Towurlee remembered what he had been told to do. He picked up the heavy plank and let it fall flat across the King’s shoulders. Gournay pulled up the prisoner’s robe, and lowered his breeches with a rending of worn cloth. A fundament so exposed was contemptibly grotesque; but the assassins had no heart for laughter now.
The King, who had been half knocked-out by the blow and was suffocating under the table which was forcing him down into the mattress, fought and kicked. He was still surprisingly strong.
‘Towurlee, hold his ankles! No, not like that, apart!’ Gournay ordered.
The King managed to free his neck from the table and turned his face to one side to get a little air. Maltravers leaned on his head with both hands. Gournay seized the poker and said: ‘Ogle, insert the horn!’
King Edward started up with desperate strength as the red-hot iron entered his vitals. The scream he uttered passed through walls and keep, over the gravestones in the cemetery, and awakened the people sleeping in the houses in the town. And those who heard that long, grim and appalling cry knew on the instant that the King had been assassinated.
The next morning the inhabitants of Berkeley came up to the castle to find out what had happened. They were told that the King had died suddenly during the night with a loud cry.
‘Come and see him. Yes, you can come in,’ said Maltravers and Gournay to the notables and clergy. ‘He’s being laid out now. Come in. Everyone can come in.’
And the townspeople saw that there was no mark of a blow, no hurt or wound on the body. For it was being washed and care was taken to turn it over and over before their eyes. Only a terrible grimace twisted the corpse’s face.
Thomas Gournay and John Maltravers looked at each other; it had been a brilliant idea to introduce the poker through an ox-horn. In a period particularly inventive in methods of assassination, they had discovered a really perfect means of committing murder without trace.
They were a little worried, however, by the fact that Thomas de Berkeley had left the castle before dawn, having business, so he had said, at a neighbouring castle. And then Towurlee, the brainless giant, had taken to his bed and been weeping for some hours.
During the course of the day Gournay left on horseback for Nottingham, where the Queen then was, to announce to her the death of her husband.
Thomas de Berkeley stayed away for a full week and declared that he had not been at home when the death occurred. On his return, he had the unpleasant surprise of discovering that the body was still in the house. No monastery in the neighbourhood would take charge of it. Berkeley had to keep his prisoner a whole month in a coffin, during which period he continued to receive his hundred shillings a day.
The whole kingdom was now aware of the ex-King’s death; strange stories, which were not very far from the truth, were going the rounds concerning it, and it was whispered that his assassination would bring no luck either to those who had committed it, or to those, however highly placed they might be, who had given the order for it.
At last, a priest came to take delivery of the body in the name of the Bishop of Gloucester, who had agreed to receive it into his cathedral. The remains of King Edward II were placed on a wagon covered with black cloth. Thomas de Berkeley and his family accompanied it, and the people of the neighbourhood followed in procession. At every mile halt the peasants planted an oak.
After the lapse of six hundred years, some of those oaks are still standing and they cast dark shadows across the road that runs from Berkeley to Gloucester.