Great Britain -- History -- Henry III, 1216-1272 -- Fiction; Historical fiction; Outlaws -- Fiction
Two more gateways let into the great fortress, one piercing the north
wall and one the east. All three gates were strongly fortified with
towered and buttressed barbicans which must be taken before the main
gates could be reached. Each barbican was portcullised, while the inner
gates were similarly safeguarded in addition to the drawbridges which,
spanning the moat when lowered, could be drawn up at the approach of an
enemy, effectually stopping his advance.
The new towers and buildings added to the ancient keep under the
direction of Norman of Torn and the grim, old man whom he called
father, were of the Norman type of architecture, the windows were
larger, the carving more elaborate, the rooms lighter and more
spacious.
Within the great enclosure thrived a fair sized town, for, with his ten
hundred fighting-men, the Outlaw of Torn required many squires,
lackeys, cooks, scullions, armorers, smithies, farriers, hostlers and
the like to care for the wants of his little army.
Fifteen hundred war horses, beside five hundred sumpter beasts, were
quartered in the great stables, while the east court was alive with
cows, oxen, goats, sheep, pigs, rabbits and chickens.
Great wooden carts drawn by slow, plodding oxen were daily visitors to
the grim pile, fetching provender for man and beast from the
neighboring farm lands of the poor Saxon peasants, to whom Norman of
Torn paid good gold for their crops.
These poor serfs, who were worse than slaves to the proud barons who
owned the land they tilled, were forbidden by royal edict to sell or
give a pennysworth of provisions to the Outlaw of Torn, upon pain of
death, but nevertheless his great carts made their trips regularly and
always returned full laden, and though the husbandmen told sad tales to
their overlords of the awful raids of the Devil of Torn in which he
seized upon their stuff by force, their tongues were in their cheeks as
they spoke and the Devil’s gold in their pockets.
And so, while the barons learned to hate him the more, the peasants’
love for him increased. Them he never injured; their fences, their
stock, their crops, their wives and daughters were safe from
molestation even though the neighboring castle of their lord might be
sacked from the wine cellar to the ramparts of the loftiest tower. Nor
did anyone dare ride rough shod over the territory which Norman of Torn
patrolled. A dozen bands of cut-throats he had driven from the Derby
hills, and though the barons would much rather have had all the rest
than he, the peasants worshipped him as a deliverer from the lowborn
murderers who had been wont to despoil the weak and lowly and on whose
account the women of the huts and cottages had never been safe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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