by Angus Donald
I tried not to smile at Robin’s words. Miles sounded exactly how I imagined Robin to have been when he was his son’s age. There was a secret about Robin’s sons that was never mentioned for fear of angering the Earl of Locksley: while Miles was truly his son, in looks as well as character, Hugh was not. He was the fruit of a forced coupling between Robin’s enemy, the former sheriff of Nottinghamshire Ralph Murdac, and Marie-Anne, who had briefly been his prisoner. Murdac was long dead but Hugh resembled him in many ways – the same colouring and shortness of stature, although, praise God, he did not seem to have Murdac’s evil ways and had proved himself to be as true a man as any in Robin’s ranks.
‘You can wipe that foolish grin off your face, Alan Dale,’ said Robin. ‘Miles is joining us here tomorrow. And you will see how much you like his company then. At least, I left orders to that effect at Kirkton. I couldn’t find the damn boy when I left. I’m taking him with us on campaign. I dare not leave him at home: he’d probably burn the castle around his mother’s ears.’
‘So where are we going?’ I asked.
‘South,’ said Robin. ‘To London first; we will receive further orders from Fitzwalter there.’
Dinner was served by Robert and his massive servant Boot, a dark-skinned giant from the forests of Africa who had once been the sheriff’s executioner at Nottingham Castle, and we ate heartily – venison, roast goose and pigeon pie, fresh bread, cheese and preserves, for who could tell what privations the future might hold. At the table Robin introduced me to his new squire, a broad-shouldered, deep-chested, red-haired young fellow of good family in Kent named William of Cassingham, and known by all as Cass. He seemed an amiable sort, who clearly worshipped Robin. He was, for a squire, unusually armed. At his waist, on the left side, in a two-foot long, five-inch broad leather sheath, he wore a falchion, a crude, wide, single-bladed weapon that was more like a butcher’s cleaver than a proper sword. At the other side of his belt was an arrow bag filled with two dozen shafts topped with goose feathers; and it was very difficult to part him from the long yew bow that he carried as if it were an extra limb.
‘He’s a talented lad,’ said Robin quietly, as the squire took his place at the board, ‘if a little savage in his habits. But strong as a bull – and brave with it.’ My lord obviously had regard for the fellow and that was enough reason for me to like him. But beyond a few mumbled pleasantries, Cass said little at the feast and ate as if this were to be his last meal on earth, tearing at great chunks of meat with his teeth and barely chewing them before swallowing the lump down with vast draughts of red wine. He reminded me of the strange tales I had heard of the pagan cannibals of Africa – ferocious creatures who filed their teeth into points and craved human flesh. But, in truth, he was no wild man. He merely ate with a great determination, almost as if he were challenged, as if he were determined to vanquish all the meat and drink before him.
When they had served the dishes and poured the wine, Boot and Robert joined us at the table and listened in silence while Robin regaled us with tales of Kirkton, the misadventures of Miles and all the doings in his Yorkshire lands. After the meal, while Robin was seeing to the comforts of his men-at-arms in the barns out in the courtyard, Sir Thomas took me aside.
He seemed embarrassed but he clearly wished to speak to me alone.
‘Alan,’ he said, ‘have you received any visitors in the past few weeks, any visitors connected with the Church?’
I told him about the appearance of Tilda and her tearful entreaties.
‘Yes, I heard that she was expelled from Kirklees,’ he said. ‘She upset the prioress somehow and Matilda was thrown out without a penny, just in the clothes she stood up in. We all laughed about it, to be honest. A bad woman come to a bad end. But that was not what I was aiming at. Have you received any visitors from, ah, the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon?’
I looked at him more keenly then. Thomas, unasked, had done me a great service in the summer. A Templar knight, one Brother Geoffrey, a foul deviant who had had charge of the training of young squires in the Earl of Pembroke’s household, had pestered my son while he was there. I did not know the full details, Robert had never revealed them to me, and I did not like to press my enquiries, but I knew it was bad enough to warrant the knight’s death at my hands. However, Thomas had dispatched the wretch on my behalf, in secret, without my knowledge, and had even gone so far as to slice off his manhood and leave it in the corpse’s open mouth as a message to other men of his hideous kind.
Thomas had been very discreet; indeed, he had never directly admitted his guilt to me, merely alluding to it. He still did not seem willing to own to the crime. But I knew what he had done and I was grateful. I also knew that the Templars had vowed to seek out the killer and have their revenge. The English Master of the Templars, Sir Aymeric de St Maur, had told me he would do so himself.
‘I haven’t seen a Templar since Runnymede,’ I said. ‘Why? Are you worried?’
‘Not … worried. I do not think there is any immediate danger. But they sent someone to Kirkton, an elderly priest, St Maur’s chaplain, and he spent some time with Robin asking him about the movements of his men in June. Of course, Robin told him nothing and sent him packing soon enough, but it seems they are making enquiries. And, well, they are dogged men and I do not think they will cease their investigations until they have found the guilty man … whoever he is.’
‘If they ask, I will tell them nothing that could lead them to the killer. But I will tell them exactly what kind of filth Brother Geoffrey was and I shall also say that I would have butchered him myself had I had the chance and that I’d wager half a dozen other good men, fathers like me, might have had equal cause to end him.’
‘I don’t think we should go out of our way to antagonise the Templars, Alan,’ said Thomas. ‘I do not like the odds against us in a war with them. They have more power than any baron in the land. Far more than Robin. More even than the King, I’d venture. Certainly more silver. If it came to a battle between us – I wouldn’t wager on victory for our side.’
I smiled at Thomas – I knew he had a weakness for games of chance, although he had sworn off the knucklebones to please his new bride. But he also seemed to have almost no sense of the absurdity of his words sometimes. For if it came to war with the Templars and he wagered on them winning, he would never be able to collect his winnings. A corpse claims no silver. ‘We will have no need to quarrel with them, Thomas.’ I said. ‘And Robin would never give you up to them. For that matter, I’d wade through blood before I’d allow them to touch you. Do not fear, my friend.’
Thomas gripped my shoulder. ‘Perhaps I am starting at shadows,’ he said. ‘Perhaps, if God is merciful, we will hear no more about this matter.’
Chapter Four
If you will allow me, my dear Anthony, I shall now continue with my tale of what befell us at Rochester that terrible autumn when King John’s Flemish mercenaries attacked from the river. On the bridge, Robin divided his small force of archers, setting ten men under his master bowman Mastin, a bald, furry-bodied, foul-mouthed rogue from Cheshire, at the northern end, and taking command of ten archers himself at the southern. I took up position in the centre of the structure, with Sir Thomas Blood at my shoulder and a dozen men-at-arms around me. My lord’s plan was simple. His bowmen would shoot into the oncoming boats – now less than a hundred and fifty yards away downstream – to kill as many of the enemy at a distance as possible and Thomas and I would deal with any who managed to make it through the arrow storm and on to the bridge.
‘They’re coming on damnably slowly,’ said Thomas, fidgeting with impatience beside me. He was right: we could make out the rowers struggling at their oars, these flashing weakly in the darkness as light from the lanterns reflected off the wet blades, but they were making pitiful progress, coming on slower than a tired man might walk.
‘They must fight the flow of the water before they reach us,’ I said. ‘The river is
trying to drag them out towards the sea. I thank God for it, for it gives Robin a little more time to—’
At that moment, the Earl of Locksley’s men loosed. There was a sound like a rushing wind and a cloud of shafts sped away into the darkness towards the boats. An instant later, Mastin’s men on the far end of the bridge sent their volley to chase Robin’s. I saw two black shapes splash from the leading boat and heard the first sharp cries of pain, and then Robin and Mastin’s men found their rhythm: the creak of yew bows drawn to their fullest, a swoosh as the arrows left the string, and the cracks as steel tips struck the wood of the boats or the mail or weapons of armed men. With both groups of archers shooting every two or three heartbeats, the arrow onslaught became almost continuous, a withering rain that pelted the unfortunate attackers as they struggled against the current. But still they came on – now a hundred paces away. The awful screams and cries of the wounded echoed across the water, the smack of shafts driving home and the zip and twang of our archers filled the air as the boats splashed and surged, with deeper, angrier shouts from the sergeants encouraging their men to hold fast and row like devils if they valued their lives.
The leading boat was now directionless, filled as it was with dead and dying men, feathered many times over. It listed sideways, borne back by the current, untended oars tangling other boats behind it. Two craft rowed around, one left, one to the right, the men, backs towards us, hauling like souls possessed. They were fifty yards away now. The arrows still slashed into them, punching through mail into soft flesh beneath. I saw one man, in the right-hand boat, struck by three arrows one after the other along the line of his spine. He turned his face towards us screaming hatred, a pale flash in the darkness, before slumping forward over his oars.
The archers were no longer shooting volleys; each bowman was drawing and loosing in his own time, killing and maiming with every shaft.
Still they came on.
Boats of fresh men fought their way through the tangle of wreckage in the river, shouting defiance. Other craft crept up the banks on both sides, like dark arms reaching out for us. I could make out hundreds of the bastards, see their faces, white blobs in the gloom. Some men were standing upright in their boats now, some arrow-stuck and bloodied, but with weapons brandished. A crossbowman loosed at us, the knot of a dozen English men-at-arms standing on the bridge, awaiting their assault, our shields raised, but swords still scabbarded. I heard the hiss as the deadly quarrel whipped past my ear, inches away.
‘Right, lads,’ I said. ‘Disperse. To the stones now.’
The boats were twenty yards away. Two dozen craft, each carrying six men, four rowing but two crouched in the prow, facing us, shields up, steel bared, ready to leap.
My men, who had been bunched in the middle of the bridge, now split and ran to the small cairns that Robin had ordered piled every ten paces along its whole length. I took the cairn in the very centre of the bridge, with Sir Thomas to my right, between me and Robin. The enemy were ten yards away and I could make out fierce faces, glittering eyes, and hear the alien shouts of battle. I slipped my shield from its loops on my left arm, dropped it to the planks of the bridge and seized a boulder about the size and shape of a haunch of venison from the pile at my feet. It was almost more than I could lift, but I heaved it up to the rail and rested it on the edge.
A quick peek over. There was a boat directly under me, bumping against one of the thick wooden support pillars, a boat filled with steel and malice and red shouting mouths. A crossbow twanged. I jerked my head back and the quarrel tinged off the dome of my helmet. I hefted the stone and hurled it downwards. It struck the shoulder of a mailed man, knocking him to his knees, and then plunged straight through the bottom of the boat, tearing a hole that filled with black water.
One man was already climbing the pillar, a knife clenched sideways in his teeth. I bent and seized a smaller boulder and smashed it into his face as he appeared over the rail, crunching the knife blade into his back teeth. He fell away groaning and splashed into the darkness. And I pitched the stone down after him, breaking the out-reaching arm of another who was just beginning his climb. The boat was now almost completely full of water, sinking fast, the desperate men-at-arms scrambling against each other to avoid being dragged down to the depths in their heavy armour.
I plucked up another boulder, almost as big as the first, and hurled it on to the wreckage of the boat and its few struggling survivors.
I snatched a look along the bridge and saw a big Westbury man-at-arms called Hal, a devil with an axe in any fight, tossing a head-sized rock over the edge, shouting an insult and bending for another. But beyond him – disaster. Mastin’s men were no longer loosing, as far as I could see in the torchlight flickering above the north entrance to the bridge. Three empty boats bobbed at the pillar below. A mob of half a dozen men-at-arms were on the bridge itself, surging all around Mastin and his men, bloodied swords in the air, hacking and cutting. And more black shapes, glinting with wet steel, were swarming up the side of the bridge and over the rail to join them. Robin’s archers, supreme killers with a bow, were mostly no hands at all with a blade; up close the enemy would slaughter them.
And that slaughter had already begun.
I looked behind me. Robin’s detachment was still shooting, some men leaning far out over the rail to aim straight down into the huddle of packed boats that were now massed below us, scores of craft, hundreds of men. Robin himself leaped up and stood tall on top of the rail, balancing with the grace of a tumbler, no mean feat for a man who had seen fifty winters. He drew his bow and loosed a shaft that smacked into the eye of an older man urging his soldiers upwards just ten feet below Robin. The arrow tore through the man’s skull, showering brains behind, and knocking the fellow out of the boat with a splash. Robin plucked another shaft from the bag at his waist …
Mastin! I scooped up my shield, pulled Fidelity from its scabbard and charged away from Robin, towards the northern end of the bridge, screaming ‘Westbury! On me, on me!’
I ran along the bridge at full pelt, dimly aware that most of the rest of our men were running at my shoulder. A helm-less black-headed man hopped over the rail right into my path waving a mace and I separated him from the top of his head with one swinging hack of the blade. I saw another fellow, dripping wet, behind him, cowering at the rail looking at me with vast eyes but ignored him.
I had to get to Mastin.
With half a dozen good men at my back, I slammed into the struggling knot at the north end of the bridge, my sword crunching into a mailed back. The man I struck turned, snarling, and I punched him full in the face with my shield, knocking him aside. I stepped into the space he had vacated, Fidelity chopping down. A huge blond fellow lunged at me with a two-handed axe, trying to hook my shield and pull it down. I slipped the shield sideways, out of the grip of his axe, and lunged down at his left leg, steel point biting into his calf, half severing the lower leg, crippling him. He screamed as he fell. And I got my first glimpse of Mastin, pinned against the rail and laying about him with his bow, using it like a quarterstaff, the broken string lashing impotently through the air. There were dead and dying archers all round him, and two still living at either shoulder, fending off the attackers clumsily with their swords. I parried a sword blow from a knight and my counterstroke hacked into his mailed neck. He wobbled and I smashed my pommel into the side of his helmet. My men were all around me, cutting, hacking, slicing into the foe. We made short work of the enemy around Mastin, Hal splitting one man’s face along the line of his mouth with a colossal blow from his axe, while I disembowelled a fat man-at-arms in a raggedy gambeson with a lunge to the belly and a swift twist of my blade. Then there were no more enemy on their feet before me and my men were swiftly dispatching the fallen, punching their swords down into dead and wounded alike.
Mastin looked at me with relief in his eyes, the only part of his face that was not covered in hair. But all he said was: ‘Too many fucking bastards, Sir Alan. Too
many.’ Then, immediately: ‘Look yonder,’ and he nodded back down the length of the bridge. I turned and saw a mass of men swarming over the rail in the centre where I had begun the fight, a score, two score, a tide of humanity armed and angry, wild with fear and a lust for revenge on the bowmen who had galled them so from a distance, and yet more coming up from the crush of boats below. Despite the slaughter our arrows had wrought, we had hardly even slowed their attack. I could see no sign of Robin or his archers and my heart missed a beat. Surely they could not have been overrun already?
I did not have time to digest this terror: there were forty or fifty men-at-arms coming towards me, surging up the length of the bridge, swords and axes lofted. We closed up in a compact group, shields high, seven men about me, with Mastin behind, cursing steadily, filthily, and trying to restring his bow with trembling hands.
The enemy fell on us, a jostling mob hammering at us with a desperate hatred and cold hard steel. They screamed and shoved, blades licking out to clatter against helmet and mail. I took a solid blow on my shield and thrust Fidelity out in response to rip through the cheek of my attacker below his helmet rim. Out of the corner of my eye I saw one of my Westbury men, a fellow named Deakin, cut down by a pair of snarling, hacking foes. The sheer weight of enemies was pushing us back against the rail. We were surrounded; outnumbered five to one. My shield was trapped against my body. I bullocked forward, lunging repeatedly with Fidelity, short, straight strokes, and made myself a little space. But this could not last. An archer dropped to my left, choking, a crossbow quarrel through his cheek. Only five of us were standing now. Something smashed against my shoulder and I was pushed backwards; I thrust the cross-guard of my sword into a bawling mouth and felt the clean snap of teeth. I felt a knife blade probing against my ribs, grinding against me, driven by an unseen hand – and thanked God for decent mail. But we were going under. Time seemed to slow. Only three men and Mastin were still fighting. I could barely move my arms. A Fleming’s roaring face was inches from my own. I tried to bite his nose. Missed. Teeth snapping on air. A blow to my helm and I almost lost my footing. I could feel the hard wooden rail digging into the small of my back. I surged up and outwards, using my armoured weight and all the strength of both of my legs, knocking a man down and lashing out with Fidelity, finding contact. The jar of bone. A scream. My mail sleeve was drenched in red. Then an enormous buffet against my shield, a hammer blow that thrust me sideways against Mastin’s solid form. The shouting of the enemy was deafening. The smell of gore and sweat and opened bowels was a solid thing. My sword arm was trapped against my body. I could not move my shield. Hal, on my left, screamed and dropped to his knees, his neck pierced through with a thrown spear, the bright frothy blood bubbling from the wound. We were all dying. We were all dead men.