THE CHAMBER
By Lionel Mendoza
PART 1
As torture chambers of that era went, it was undoubtedly exceptionally effective. It provided several, state-of-the-art methods of loosening tongues with the utmost speed and efficiency. One such very special chamber was located deep in the subterranean recesses of a former Norman Keep twixt London and Dover. Nobody, other than a few of the King’s special advisors, even knew of its existence.
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It was in June 1156, under a cloak of great secrecy the French master of torture, Raymond de Beauvoir of Anjou, was commissioned by Henry II to construct a secure place of detention and pain, such as would greatly please his most Royal Majesty. After many months of hard endeavour, his mission duly accomplished, Raymond de Beauvoir was about to board his ship, back to his native France when, on direct orders of the King, he was apprehended and incarcerated, thus becoming the chamber’s first guest. Such were the dangerous vagaries of the insecure Plantagenet era.
Raymond de Beauvoir of Anjou was, by all accounts, a short man, a mere five-foot one inch. This was small even by the times in which he lived. He had few distinguishing facial features, which helped preserve his anonymity. This was to his advantage in that few were aware of his special talent as he went about his business as a master builder of incarceration. Even fewer knew of his gift to withhold his breath for several minutes, something he learned as a child whilst learning to swim in the fast-flowing river Sarthe not far from his birth city, Angers.
The unfortunate Frenchman, stripped of his sartorial refinery, gave the appearance of a mere pauper. He was led, rope around his neck and stumbling with fear, by his jailer, who held aloft a pitch-burning beacon. It was almost the only means whereby anyone might navigate their way through myriad of darkened passageways and gated arches until finally, deep, deep underground, Raymond de Beauvoir was unceremoniously flung into one of the small airless holding cells that led off the principal torture chamber.
His dank abode was furnished sparsely. On the floor in one corner a bundle of ancient straw upon which he might attempt to sleep. This seemed unlikely, however, given it was already soaked in urine and worse; he was however, provided daily with a single candle for light and warmth. The cell walls had begun to acquire a patina of dark green and brown mould with a slimy, moss-like vegetation clinging to small fissures in the drab stone and through which there was a constant drip of rancid water. He knew that the penetration was the result of the entire dungeon being beneath the castle’s moat fed by a nearby stream. He glumly recalled it was the very waterway that had transported all the building materials he had needed in order to comply with the king’s wishes.
With a resounding crash, his jailer slammed shut the heavy wooden door with its huge iron hinges and small aperture through which he could be seen by his captors. The iron key was turned with an ominous clanking noise as it engaged the lock mechanism. He was now alone and fearful of what might lay ahead. As he lay on the cold wet floor, his mind wandered back…could it be truly a year since he had first been summoned by one Thomas Becket who, prior to his appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1162, was the King’s chancellor? During the meeting he had been asked searching questions concerning his skills both as a tortionnaire et constructeur. When asked how long it would take to produce a truly effective hidden place of misfortune, he responded that he would need twelve to fifteen months, including the many accoutrements.
Two months after his initial meeting he was summoned again, this time to appear at Henry’s court and await the pleasure of the king. Whilst he awaited the anticipated audience, he saw Becket again and was taken aside to a small, curtained area adjacent to the main audience room. There, Becket stated that if he could give assurances to complete the task in eight months, he would be awarded the royal warrant to proceed.
The Frenchman’s experience in his native country, where he had constructed several torture chambers, gave him a distinct advantage. He knew from his practical knowledge, including assembling all the necessary materials and using his own workforce, that he could complete the task in the given time. However, he made out that it would be difficult to complete the project to perfection in such a short time scale unless his reward was all the greater. Raymond de Beauvoir knew only too well how duplicitous the Plantagenets were. After all, their family owned all of Anjou and, through Henry’s marriage to Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine and Countess of Poitou, The English king now controlled a large part of France. Such unbridled power and wealth were not attained without much stealth and sleight of hand. De Beauvoir thought, two can play at that game. The trouble was, however, the king was always likely to be a step ahead, as his current predicament surely proved.
Allington Castle, lay on the London side of, and a short distance from, Maidstone. This location had been selected by Becket to be the secret venue for de Beauvoir to construct a very special, private royal torture chamber. When he arrived at Allington via boat on the nearby river Medway in 1159 the castle was still in the process of being converted from an original Norman Keep. It consisted of six strategically placed, differing sized towers. Each tower was of rounded construction enabling defenders a wide-angle of fire which made attacking them problematic and sure to lead to a substantial loss of lives. He surveyed the scene from a high gallery supporting a viewing platform some fifty feet from the ground and accessed by a series of lashed ladders. As he looked down over the ongoing work, he noticed that a large body of men were also busy forming a deep ditch around the soon to be completed castle. In the near distance, he saw a feeder stream to the river upon which he had recently arrived and realised that once the ditch had been fully dug and then lined with stone it would be flooded with water from the stream to form a defensive moat.
The original Norman Keep, which dated back the best part of a century had, within the battlements, a manor house together with several outhouses used for livestock and storage. Raymond de Beauvoir immediately requisitioned the old manor house for his own comfort for the duration of his work and the French labourers took occupation of the other buildings thus dispossessing the indigenous navvies working on the moat. The English workers complained bitterly to their master, but it was all to no avail once it was learned that the stranger and his foreign-speaking men were there on the King’s business.
De Beauvoir decided to use the most voluminous of the curved structures, the four-storey Solomon Tower under which he would fashion the king’s new torture chamber. He’d selected the Solomon Tower because its large diameter inclined him to think that it had the most stable foundations under which his men could safely work. The fact that his workforce did not speak a word of English, and, to the best of his knowledge, the same linguistic ignorance was fully reciprocated on the part of the English workforce, meant that his secret work, even if it did not go entirely unnoticed, would at least not be fully understood. And so, he set to work. Every six weeks or so one of Becket’s trusted servants would visit Allington Castle to enquire after progress and this would then be reported back to the king via Becket. The sovereign’s main concern, however, was that de Beauvoir might be too free with his tongue once he had departed the country, he thus sought Becket’s solution. That solution was the present dire situation in which the Frenchman found himself.
Once the shell of the entire dungeon had been dug out, including the four holding cells in which poor unfortunates would await their misfortune, de Beauvoir set to work by completing the interior. The initial excavations were by far the most time-consuming, especially as his men were constantly battling against a steady ingress of water from the moat being dug out above them and this was exacerbated by seepage from the nearby stream. Eventually however, the crude clay and stone walls, damp as they were, were successfully lined with large blocks of quarried granite held in place by temporary wooden shoring to ensure the water pressure above and behind did not displace the stonework. Once de Beauvoir was satisfied that the walls were safe and stable, and the timber shoring removed, it enabled him to concentrate all efforts on the chamber of horrors.
His particular pride and joy was a large iron cauldron. This purpose-built vessel from his local ironworks in France was fixed by heavy chain links to a huge thick hoist over a deep fire pit. When put to use, the cauldron would require six or more muscular men at the other end of the pivoted hoist to manoeuvre it over the fire pit. Once the fire was lit, the torturer had the choice of lowering his captive, head or feet first into the boiling liquid, whether it be water, oil, or pitch; alternatively, the liquid of choice could be heated from cold with the prisoner already shacked within the cauldron. Either way, a very painful end was inevitable. Only the thick, implacable walls of the dungeon would prevent the sufferer’s horrible shrieks of pain from penetrating into the outside world.
De Beauvoir recalled, some years back, that he had been asked which of the two means of torture were the most effective? He concluded that if the intention was to extract as much information as possible before death, then placing a prisoner in a cold liquid and heating it up was the more appropriate. However, it was a slower process. On the other hand, he had personally used the other method to excellent effect by lowering one prisoner into the bubbling hot liquid whilst another witnessed the excruciatingly painful end of a life. The first terrified man had perished in the seething cauldron; however, it was the second prisoner who was, in fact, main target and the sight of his erstwhile companion’s awful demise would usually be sufficient to loosen the most reticent of tongues. Not that this would save the second prisoner from eventually suffering the same fate, but it gave him a reprieve, even if it were only for a brief period.
One morn, some six months after his incarceration, as de Beauvoir languished in his tiny cell, the door creaked open on its hinges and two men entered each holding a dirty piece of cloth over their mouth and nose to stop them retching from the foulness of the air. “Raymond de Beauvoir,” stated one of the men through the cloth, “I have a warrant here signed by his most gracious majesty King Henry. It requires me to tell you that you are to be the first in this prison to experience the cauldron. And that your punishment shall take place four days from now. Is there anything you wish to me to convey?” De Beauvoir thought for a moment or two but realised that his position was helpless and that to try and plead for mercy would be a waste of his time and energy. Nor was there any point in trying to ascertain the nature of his perceived crime. A trumped-up charge could easily be bought to bear and so he merely shrugged his shoulders and uttered, “God save the King,” following which, the two messengers, having discharged their duty, were mightily relieved to be able to leave and to rid themselves of the fetid smell that was all pervading in the confined space of the cell.
Becket sent a message from London to the jailer enquiring on the state of de Beauvoir; was he now pleading for his life? No, came the response, it is as if he knows that he is not destined to die from the Cauldron.
For reasons beyond the knowledge of the jailer, his prisoner no longer seemed unduly concerned at the intended painful fate that apparently lay before him. Indeed, he ate the slop that passed as sustenance with some relish. The wooden bowl containing a brown coloured slurry was gulped down with a flourish and the empty container thrown defiantly to the floor by the cell door ready for the next time it was to be filled.
The evening prior to the day designated to be the jailed man’s last, Becket and a coterie of the king’s favourites travelled down from London to be the first to witness death by cauldron. It had been agreed to adopt the pre-heated method in order not to prolong the man’s agonies. After all, what would have been the point? De Beauvoir had served his purpose. He had no secrets to divulge and therefore, out of mercy, a speedy conclusion with minimum suffering would be a most Christian-like act.
It was around ten minutes to ten in the morning that the jailer opened up Raymond de Beauvoir’s cell only to find it empty. The jailer blinked hard out of sheer disbelief and then fell to his knees on the filthy floor to fervently pray, such was his astonishment and immediate belief that a true miracle had occurred. Recovering from the initial shock, he picked himself up and rushed along the passageways and up several flights of stairs as fast as his fat little body would permit in order to find Thomas Becket.
The news of the disappearance was met with utter incredulity. Suspicion immediately fell on the unfortunate jailer who, naturally enough, was accused of having taken a bribe to release his prisoner, an offence punishable by death. Becket and the others in his party decided to investigate and, with the aid of the sobbing jailer, entered the unpleasant, odorous cell. The manner in which they examined the gloomy little space was almost comic. Apart from one corner where the floor had manifestly been used as a latrine and the stench was beyond belief, they tapped the soaking walls and stamped on the floor to try and check for any sound of hollowness, but all to no avail. Eventually they left, taking the jailer with them for further questioning.
PART 2
Raymond de Beauvoir sat in his chateau’s large dining hall with its minstrel’s gallery, a central feature. A roaring fire was behind him, and he was, once again, comfortably and expensively attired in furs and fine silks. His family and many friends were toasting his safe return to Anjou whilst servants served up a splendid banquet of quale, partridge, swan, oxtongue and sweet meat pies. His guests listened spellbound, as he recounted how he had escaped a certain death at the hands of the English crown.
“I can tell you,” he said with firm resolution in his voice, “I was not going to let them get away with it.”
“How did you pull it off?” asked another, whilst sipping from his thick glass goblet half-filled with claret.
“I decided that I would disguise myself as a wall.” His audience started to smirk and laugh but they soon stopped such joviality once they realised their host was being totally serious.
“What do you mean and how did you make yourself into a wall?” a chorus of men and women wanted to know.
“By blending into the background, that’s how,” he replied. “Let me explain further,” to which there were nods of approval from around the vast banqueting table. “I knew they were going to fetch me just before ten in the morning and take me to the chamber with the cauldron and so, the night before, I asked the jailer to send his boy to let me know when it was eight hours so that I could prepare myself for my maker and give up my confession to God. Once the boy left me, I stripped bare and smeared my body with the slimy green moss which grew all over the walls. By the time I had finished it was impossible to see any difference between the colour of the cell walls and my person. Then I stood statuesquely still, adjacent to the dung heap. As you all know, from the time I was a little boy I have been practicing the art of slowing my breathing to the point where I can all but stop inhaling and exhaling. I never thought how useful such a skill would turn out to be until that fateful day. Once I was transformed from a man into masonry it was a relatively easy job to appear to have escaped. Of course, had they come closer to where I was standing, as they tapped the walls and stamped on the floor seeking a secret hiding place, I would have been undone. But I was pretty sure that those popinjays in all their finery would not wish to tread too close to the area where I had strategically placed myself, the latrine. I relied on the fact that in their hurry to depart they would not see the need to re-lock the cell door, indeed that was precisely what occurred. By the time I managed to find my way back up to the castle’s courtyard, Becket and his men together with the jailer had taken to horse and were doubtless making their way back to London whilst I travelled in the opposite direction down to Dover. There I was fortunate enough to be recognised by the keeper of the Lugger Inn who was willing to lend me the cost of the fare, at an immoral rate of interest, thus enabling me to cross the channel back home. So, my friends, there you have it. A fine adventure that turned out well for me in the end”
Meanwhile, back in England, the cauldron claimed its first victim in the form of the hapless jailer who was unfortunate enough to have been charged with keeping Raymond de Beauvoir in safe custody. His agonising death screams haunted those that witnessed his grisly end for months to come.
Born in London towards the end of the second world war, Lionel was educated at a public school (Trent College in Nottinghamshire). He later enjoyed 58 years as a commercial real estate surveyor (roughly equating to a real estate assessor) reaching a certain status which opened doors to appear as an expert witness on a number of interesting judicial and non-judicial cases.
An experienced writer of business reports, Lionel has made numerous contributions to his profession’s journals and allied magazines. His main sporting interest has been his twenty-five years plus, playing squash including playing doubles on a singles court which had its moments! He enjoys European river and ocean-going cruises.
