Paul Finch - Stronghold

"What if someone misses him?" came a nervous voice.

It was Gwendolyn. In his haste to catch up with the jailer, he hadn't thought to lock her in again.

"Go back to your cell," he said, scrubbing up the gore.

"But he'll be missed."

"The only time he'll be missed is when we retreat to this final refuge and, trust me, if we get to that stage it won't matter anyway."

"But I…"

"Go back to your cell!" he shouted. "I'll lock you in anon."

She scurried back up the steps.

"You may not believe it," he said under his breath. "But that's by far the safest place in this castle at present."

He heard her door grating shut as he continued to scrub the flagstones hard, conscious that time was running out. The hour was getting late and he was soon due to meet the rest of the raiding party in the courtyard.

They met just before midnight in the main courtyard. Ranulf, Garbofasse and four others: a tenant knight, Roger FitzUrz, a household squire, Tancred Tallebois, an archer, Paston, and a mercenary called Red Guthric — a beanpole of a man, with a hatchet face and straggling carrot-red hair, who Garbofasse said was one of his best.

In torch-lit silence, they removed their mail and their leather and their under-garb, until they wore only loincloths and felt shoes. They then rubbed themselves with black soot — heads and hands as well as bodies and limbs and slathered it with pig-grease to hold it in place. The only weapons they armed themselves with were knives and daggers. Corotocus, du Guesculin and several dozen others watched in silence. Doctor Zacharius had come over from the infirmary. A full day having elapsed since the last attack, he had finally managed to get on top of his casualty list, but he was sallow-faced and covered with other men's blood.

"You fellows look like Moors," he said, rubbing his hands on a towel.

There were nervous chuckles.

"They'll smell like Moors too, when they've finished climbing down the garderobe," someone replied, to more chuckles.

"I knew campaigns in Wales were notoriously hard," FitzUrz said. "But I never thought I'd finish up eating shit."

"Enough!" Corotocus said. "All of you listen to me. No matter what your position, for the duration of this mission you are under the command of Captain Garbofasse and Ranulf FitzOsbern, whose errant status is to be of no consequence. Anyone disobeying their orders will answer to me personally on his return."

There were mumbles of acknowledgement.

They moved to set off, but now Zacharius spoke up. "If you can capture an intact specimen, perhaps I can examine it. Even dissect it. It would be an ungodly act, but are these things godly in any way? It might help us to understand how they are as they are."

Ranulf glanced at him. By his expression, the doctor was perfectly serious. Everyone looked to Earl Corotocus, who seemed briefly intrigued by the proposition, though eventually he shook his head.

"This mission is difficult enough already. If it doesn't succeed, we'll be up to our ears in intact specimens."

The doctor shrugged as if it didn't matter. But Ranulf couldn't help wondering about the wisdom of ruling out such a plan. At present, given his own secret agenda, it would be difficult to the point of impossibility to carry such a thing off, but maybe — if his own scheme failed — it was worth bearing in mind for some time in the future.

"You men need to go," the earl said. "We don't know how long these creatures will hold back for."

They took their ropes and tackle and trooped up into the Keep together, ascending from one level to the next without speaking, their thin-clad feet slapping the dank flagstones. Ranulf was fleetingly unnerved, wondering if Murlock's absence would be noticed. But as it transpired, they were all too focussed on their task. Even Garbofasse, Murlock's immediate commanding officer, paid the missing jailer no heed. They at last entered the garderobe and lowered their ropes down the chute.

Almost as one, they looked frightened. Beads of sweat sat on the dark, oily film coating their brows. In the flickering torchlight, the squire, Tallebois, regarded his comrades with eyes that had almost bugged from their sockets. His lips were wet with repeated licking.

"Looks like the entrance to the underworld," FitzUrz muttered, peering down the black shaft.

"From here on no talking unless you're given leave to," Corotocus said. "We know too little about these Welsh dead. Maybe they can hear you, maybe they can't, but it's a chance you mustn't take. Now… God go with you all."

Ranulf wound a rope with a grapple attached around his body, and clambered over the low brick wall rimming the chute. As he did, he wondered at the irony of the earl's last comment. God go with them? With the dead rising en masse, ravening for the blood of the living, did Earl Corotocus seriously think the Almighty was anywhere near this place? And after the slaughter the earl had himself wreaked, did he genuinely believe there was the remotest chance the Almighty would look to English welfare during this tragedy?

They made the descent in twos, for the chute was not wide enough to accommodate all at the same time. Ranulf and Garbofasse went first. As FitzUrz had feared, the brick sides were slimy with human waste. If the stench had been bad outside of the castle, down here the men found themselves in a cloying, malodorous fog, which almost suffocated them. They could virtually taste it — not just on the tips of their tongues, but in the backs of their throats.

The climb itself was exhausting — made in complete darkness, with hands and feet rendered slippery by grease. Several times the men almost slid from the ropes. Frequently, they thrashed about in the blackness, bumping into each other, swinging against the walls. When they reached the bottom, the ordure was over a foot deep, though, thanks to the recent cold, neither as soft nor repulsive as it might have been. Ranulf groped around and found the arched entrance to the drain. This was another nerve-wracking moment. If it was too small for a man to fit down, the mission would need to be abandoned. Thankfully, it was about two feet across and a foot and a half in depth, which meant that, though difficult to crawl along, it would not be impossible.

Their next problem was turning around in the narrow space at the bottom of the shaft, but this Ranulf finally managed to do with much twisting and grunting. Pushing his head and shoulders into the drain, with his hands fumbling ahead of him, again finding more brickwork clotted both above and below with human excreta, he felt as though he was burrowing into the stuff, burying himself alive. How far did this drain run for? If he became stuck, would anyone be able to get him out again? Would the earl care enough to try? The only way was to keep going forward. He'd assumed it would slope downward beneath the east bailey and discharge into the moat. That was a mere fifty yards or more, though, now that he was here, his body enclosed by tight, rugged architecture, with progress only possible by worming forward like a slug, even fifty yards seemed like a massive distance.

He wasn't sure how long it was before he smelled fresh air again. He was already wearied to the bone and felt he'd rubbed his naked skin raw. But at last his hands encountered hanging vegetation. The next thing, he was hauling himself out of a vent that felt no larger than a rabbit hole, and falling face down onto steeply sloped rubble. It was still dark, but Ranulf could now sense the night sky overhead, and, compared to the subterranean realm he'd just emerged from, that was something to offer prayers of thanks for.

Glancing up, he saw stars glimmering through a wash of turgid cloud. The floor of the moat was stony and jagged. The vent was rimmed with brick and, as he'd expected, set into the side of the moat. Much soil had crumbled down from above it, and it was half hidden behind hanging weeds. He remained crouched as he waited for the others, glancing up again, scanning the parapets overhead, which at present were devoid of sentinel forms. A grunting and scrabbling noise reached his ears. It was Garbofasse squirming along the drain towards him.