King's man oc-3

by Angus Donald

  I growled at him under my breath, and gave him my nastiest, most dangerous glare. But I managed to keep my mouth shut.

  ‘A pleasure to have made your acquaintance… sir,’ said this presumptuous little popinjay. ‘I regret that I do not have the honour of your name.’

  ‘This is Alan of Westbury,’ said Goody, her face flushed, her lovely violet eyes kindled with sparks of anger, ‘and he is behaving today like an overbearing, ill-mannered lout.’

  ‘Ah, well, then, ah, I will leave you in peace, ah, and I bid you God speed, ah, until we meet again…’ stammered this over-dressed love-puppy.

  ‘I doubt very much we will meet again,’ I said shortly. ‘God be with you!’ And I turned away from him rudely and began to fiddle with the clasp on my damp riding cloak. I heard rather than saw Goody usher this silly lad over to the hall door, and send him gracefully on his way, and then she came back over to me by the fire.

  ‘What is the matter with you? Why were you so unpleasant to dear Roger?’ asked Goody when she returned. ‘There was no need for that sort of rudeness. You have quite upset him.’

  ‘I don’t care — and I don’t care for him. Who is he, anyway?’

  ‘I have just introduced you: he is Roger, Lord Chichester’s eldest son and heir. What’s more, he is, as I have said, a good friend of mine.’ She was beginning to sound very angry; there was a rasp in her voice that I had heard before. Foolishly I ignored it.

  ‘He was holding your hand: in future, I don’t want him alone with you in this house.’ I realized that I too had raised my voice.

  ‘This is not your house; nor yet is it your hand. And I will spend my time with whomever I wish.’ Goody was nearly snarling now, her blue eyes flaring brightly at me like a wildcat’s.

  ‘I forbid you to see him!’

  ‘What did you say?’ She was very nearly spitting the words, and her voice was quite as loud as mine.

  Rashly, I repeated myself: ‘I forbid you to speak to this “dear Roger” person again.’

  Goody’s face was white as a lily except for two points of vivid red on each cheekbone. She said coldly, and slowly, her voice now chillingly calm: ‘I will speak to whomever I like, whenever I like; and you will find, sir, that I will not speak to those who do not respect my rights and wishes.’

  And with that she spun on her heel and marched off towards the end of the hall and the stairs up to her private quarters.

  I found myself with a raised forefinger, pointing at her departing back, and uttering the words: ‘Well, I shall speak to whomever I wish too, ha-ha, and see how you like…’ But by then she was gone.

  For the next few weeks, Goody refused to talk to me at all. It was as if the fire of her love for me had been totally extinguished, as if a barrel of snow had been poured on to a hearth, suddenly blotting the blaze and replacing it with an icy white mound.

  I was rather taken aback by her sudden change of attitude: the day after the argument I had tried to apologize to her when our paths crossed in the upstairs corridor. It had been a silly argument, I said, faults on both sides, and I was sure we could each forgive the other for our hasty words. She cut me dead. And, after that, she refused to even remain in the same room with me. Whenever I entered the hall, she found an excuse to leave; if I entered a chamber she was in she would stalk out leaving an invisible chill in the air.

  At first I was bewildered by her rejection of me, and then, after a whole week of icy silence, I was secretly rather impressed by her strength of will. She was punishing me, I knew, and she was relentless. But after two weeks, I began to grow annoyed. I spoke to Marie-Anne about the matter, and she urged me to apologize again to Goody.

  ‘You have no rights over her, Alan; not yet. She is not betrothed to you, nor married. And she has always been a very independent girl. Why do you not go to her and beg her forgiveness.’

  ‘But it is not my fault, this stupid rift. She was flirting with this Roger fellow. What was I supposed to do? Encourage them? Show them to a comfortable bedchamber? Bring them some warmed blankets?’

  ‘You have nothing to fear from Roger. He is not… he is not a threat to you and Goody. If you love her, why not apologize again? It cannot possibly hurt anyone.’

  But I could not bear to humble myself before her only to incur her icy scorn. And so we went on as before, ignoring each other day after day, trapped in a frigid howling silence. I lost myself in exercise and self-indulgence: beginning Thomas’s training to be a knight with sword lessons, and long hours on the back of a horse; and occasionally going drinking with Bernard to his favourite places of ‘low entertainment’. His advice, predictably, was to get myself a plump whore and forget about Goody entirely. But I could not — and staying in Wakefield Inn and catching fleeting glimpses of my love, seeing her white indifferent face, was sheer bloody torture. Almost as bad as the hot irons, I thought. Indeed, I would gladly have undergone a night of torment in some stinking dungeon if it meant that my bond with Goody could be healed. I couldn’t sleep; I couldn’t eat. My head was filled with thoughts of sorrow, pain and death from sun-up to bedtime.

  And then things took a turn for the worse. I was in an eating house on Bankside, a place that served food all day and all night for the men from the ships who came to eat there when they had finished unloading cargoes at odd hours, when Bernard joined me.

  He was not in good form. For once he was sober, and his happy, boozy face was grey and tired. But he tried his hardest to make light of the grave news he bore.

  ‘There has been a little setback with the King,’ he told me. ‘Did I not warn you that the greed of princes was limitless? It seems that King Philip of France and Prince John have joined forces and made a counter-offer for King Richard’s person.’

  ‘What?’ I felt as if I had been smacked in the face with an open hand. ‘What kind of counter-offer?’

  ‘You know that Prince John is in Paris now, and looks set to stay there at Philip’s court?’

  I nodded — it was common knowledge: now that King Richard’s release was supposedly imminent, Prince John had fled to the protection of his French allies, skulking away and leaving his loyal followers in England to hold his captured castles for him.

  ‘Well, I overheard Walter de Coutances telling the Queen that Philip and John had sent a letter to Germany offering the Emperor a further eighty thousand marks to keep Richard in prison until Michaelmas. And I understand that the Emperor is extremely tempted to accept it.’

  It was a massive blow for our cause, perhaps a mortal one: but a part of me could see that it was a clever move, too, on John’s part. The Emperor would keep the hundred thousand he had already been paid by Queen Eleanor, but delay releasing Richard until the end of September, eight months hence, which was the close of the campaigning season. In the cold, wet months between September and March, by common custom, very little fighting took place between warring knights. It gave Philip and John, in effect, a whole year’s grace to capture more of Richard’s castles both here and in Normandy and to shore up their support against him. And when it came to Michaelmas… Well, who knew what would happen between now and then? Richard might die in captivity, or be assassinated by Prince John’s agents. Or another year in prison might be bought for yet more perfidious silver.

  I had thought that my soul was at an all-time low already, with the freezing of my love affair with Goody. But at this news I realized that there was yet further for my spirits to fall.

  After my old music teacher’s announcement, we ate a joyless meal at the Bankside food-shop, sunk in gloom and having little to say to each other over our stale pasties and sour wine. Bernard left without even getting drunk.

  The next morning, I was awoken from my slumbers by the sound of high-pitched screaming. It was a servant, one of the kitchen maids whose task it was to set the fires before daybreak. She was standing at the opened gate of Wakefield Inn and pointing to a rickety structure, a makeshift gamekeeper’s gibbet that had been erected before the
portal at some point during the night. It was a simple affair, and at first I thought it was some sort of joke: a crosspiece made from a long crooked hazel bough, about the width and length of a spear shaft, supported at either end by two tripods of hazel wands. And from the crosspiece were hanging a dozen miserable animal shapes.

  As I walked closer to the gibbet I could see that the two shapes in the centre were larger than the rest: they were a puppy, a newborn floppy-eared rascal that belonged to one of Marie-Anne’s dogs — and Goody’s ginger kitten, her Christmastide gift from me. Both had been eviscerated, their entrails dangling around their pathetic little furry legs, and strung up by the neck with twine to the crossbar. On either side of the puppy and the kitten hung half a dozen rats, star-lings, a robin, and even a baby field mouse. It was a gruesome collection of corpses, eerily like the sheriffs’ gibbets strung with the bodies of hanged thieves that could be seen in most towns in England, only much smaller, and in a weird way more poignant. But it was not the collection of dead animals that shocked me most. On the front gate, in blood, had been scrawled a message. It was in Arabic, and although I could not read that language with any proficiency, I could make out these words. It said: True Love Never Dies.

  Nur!

  She must have followed me south from Sherwood and observed me with Goody. And now she was telling me that she knew that I had found love again. I shuddered on that cold January morning at the sight of her crude daubings in — whose? — blood. And I remembered the hideous figures scratched in the wood of the gate, which I had seen on my return from Westbury only a few weeks before. Could Nur truly be a witch? Did she have powers? Was she the Hag of Hallamshire? And was she now using her magic against Goody and me?

  I took a grip of myself. And then gave orders for the servants to take the gibbet away and burn it before Goody or Marie-Anne could see it.

  For days afterwards, as I went about my business in London — visiting Bernard in the taverns at Westminster, at horse and lance training with Thomas on the broad high heath near the little village of Hampstead — I kept seeing a small black figure out of the corner of my eye. But, always, when I turned to look properly, it was gone. Whatever else Nur had learnt in her long travels from the Holy Land to England — witchcraft, sorcery, the casting of foul curses — she had also mastered the art of concealment in rough country almost as well as my friend Hanno.

  But I did not actively seek out Nur, track her down or lay an ambush, for I still suffered from feelings of shame about the way that I had treated her. I did wish to speak to her, if only to urge her not to threaten either Goody or myself with her devilish tricks. It had been clear that the puppy and the kitten had been meant to represent Goody and myself, and the other dead animals our servants and friends. It felt like a curse on my soul, a black witch’s slow-burning malediction — and I wanted her to lift it. And in some way I wanted to make amends for her suffering; but also I had to make her accept that I’d never love her again.

  If I am honest, I must admit that I did not relish another encounter with her. Any threats to her, I knew in my heart, would be empty. I could not lift my sword to her after what she had endured at the hands of Malbete and his men. More than anything else, I just wished her gone.

  There are those who say that God and the Devil are engaged in a constant struggle for the souls of men; and most agree that God is mightier than the Evil One. And so it came to pass that God triumphed and the evil time at Wakefield Inn came to an end.

  It ended, as in my experience so many bad things have, with the arrival of Robin — and he brought with him wonderful news.

  My master clattered through the inn’s gate at the head of forty cavalrymen, straight in the saddle, proud and accoutred for war. And after embracing Marie-Anne and greeting Tuck, Goody, Hanno and me, he made a point, I noticed, of sweeping up little toddling Hugh in his arms and tickling the boy until he screamed with joy. Then he called everybody into the hall and, warming his hands in front of the hearth fire, he said casually: ‘Richard is free.’

  His words were greeted with a stunned silence. We had all grown so used to our King being a prisoner in Germany — he had been there for more than a year by then — that his words took us all by surprise. So Robin repeated himself:

  ‘King Richard, our noble sovereign, is free. He has been released by the Emperor and, even as I speak, he is travelling with his mother towards England.’

  ‘But what about Prince John’s counter-offer — the eighty thousand marks to keep him till Michaelmas?’ I said, a little bewildered.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure the Emperor was tempted. But Richard has made a good number of friends among the German princes, and they would not have stood for that sort of underhand behaviour from their overlord. Holding a nobleman for ransom is quite acceptable, but to accept the ransom money and then renege on the deal would have provoked outrage. Emperor Henry would have faced rebellions left, right and centre from his vassals — he might even have been overthrown and lost his title. He’s already been excommunicated by the Pope, and that makes everyone, even the most ungodly German baron, uneasy. Besides, he would have made a bitter enemy of Queen Eleanor — and she is not a woman whose wrath can be taken lightly. So he did the sensible thing: he took hostages for the rest of the money that the Queen had promised him and released Richard into her care a couple of weeks ago. He has a few matters to attend to in Europe, but our King should reach England in ten days or so, weather permitting — and then we’ll see the royal cat set among the disloyal pigeons.’

  Robin grinned at me, a merry devil-may-care sparkle in his silver eyes. ‘I’ve had messages from Richard’s people and we have orders to meet him at Sandwich — and then we march north, gathering fighting men on the way — we go to retake Nottingham. It appears, Alan, that we may soon be able to settle our accounts with Ralph Murdac.’

  I felt dizzy with joy. All that I had been striving for over the past year, all that I had endured — the long journey to Germany, the deaths of Perkin and Adam, the strain of deception while I was playing the loyal man in Prince John’s camp, the wrestling match with Milo and the terrible night as I waited to be hanged like a felon — now it all seemed worthwhile. Good King Richard was coming home, and all would be set to rights. I found myself grinning like an idiot at everyone in our company and, by accident, my gaze fell on Goody.

  She looked directly back at me, something she had not done in weeks. And quickly, privately, she smiled at me. In a heartbeat, our quarrel was over: in that moment it seemed absurd, ridiculous — a foolish trifle, an evil enchantment that had been conjured up solely to divide two young lovers, a thing of no substance at all, mere thistledown on the wind in the wild joy of King Richard’s return.

  We moved towards each other, almost as if drawn by some invisible force, and then she was in my arms, held tight, squeezed, her white face pressed into my neck, and I could feel the burn of her tears.

  Chapter Nineteen

  King Richard stepped off the gangplank on to the wharf at the port of Sandwich on a bright, sunny March morning, and the cheers that rang out from the hundreds of men-at-arms gathered to meet him were loud enough to deafen the Heavens. He was thinner than when I’d last seen him, very pale, and looked a little older too — but he was still that strong, confident man who had led us to victory in Sicily, Cyprus and Outremer. His chief men — the earls and bishops and great barons — all those few who had remained loyal to him during the dark times — were gathered in the forefront of the crowd at the quayside, with their own loyal men behind them. And hundreds of small boats filled the brown water of the harbour with spectators, local Sandwich men and women, all wanting to catch a glimpse of the King’s triumphant arrival.

  As our sovereign stepped off the narrow wooden walkway that ran down from the high deck of the ship, he staggered a little and then righted himself and smiled, and it felt as if the world was warmed. We cheered him, three times three, until our voices were hoarse. And Richard smiled and nodded at ind
ividuals in the crowd, lifting a thin hand to acknowledge a face here and there. He greeted each of the assembled magnates by name, walking slowly along the front of the shouting, jostling crowd, and giving each of them a word or two of thanks. Our King stopped by Robin, clasped him by the hand and pulled him forward. He muttered something in Robin’s ear and they both laughed, and then his eye lighted on me, standing as I was, directly behind my lord.

  ‘Blondel, well met,’ said the King. ‘How goes it with England’s most talented trouvere?’

  ‘I don’t know about that fellow, sire,’ I said, suddenly shy of conversing with the King, ‘but I can tell you that I am quite fit and well and ready to serve you.’

  Richard laughed. ‘Good man. But we shall need your sharp sword more than your sharp wit in the next few weeks, Alan. And it may be some time, I fear, before we hear your elegant verses again,’ he added, looking grave.

  ‘I am yours to command, sire,’ I said, bowing.

  The King nodded. ‘And I have not forgotten the debt I owe you for Ochsenfurt,’ he said.

  I could find no reply but merely smiled mutely at him, and then he was off, past me and greeting the Earl Ferrers, who was standing nearby. I felt as if, for a moment, I had been standing by the blaze of an open hearth, and the warmth of the King’s greeting was sufficient to linger with me for hours afterwards.

  As I was making my way through the throng back to the manor house where Robin and I were to sleep that night, I felt a hand on my arm and turned to see two bald elderly men, similarly dressed in white robes, much stained by travel. They were smiling at me, like old friends, which in a way they were. The foremost man extended a veined hand with a large jewelled ring on it for me to kiss. I bobbed down and made my obeisance, and grinned up at the abbot: ‘My lord Boxley,’ I said. ‘How very good to see you again. May I congratulate you on bringing our noble King safely home.’