King's Man

by Angus Donald

  I guided my horse round the side of a broad, low tent and came face to face with a terrifying apparition: a giant man on a huge horse, a black monstrous shape lit only by splashes of firelight but seeming to loom over me. He had a great doubleheaded axe in one enormous fist, and I could see that it was dripping with fresh blood, and the head on those giant shoulders was that of a massive stallion, its nostrils seemingly breathing fire. I could not help myself but I reined back in alarm, and then the apparition used his free left hand to lift the sheepskin horse mask from his face and reveal the grinning, sweaty visage and yellow matted locks of John Nailor, Robin’s right-hand man and my good friend.

  ‘Boo!’ he said, as if playing a hiding game with a child.

  I managed a shaky smile at my old comrade. And Little John said: ‘God’s dangling gonads, Alan, don’t tell me your bowels were loosened by all this mummery!’

  I shook my head and lied through my teeth: ‘Of course not, but the trick seems to have worked on Murdac’s men. The bastards are all running away.’

  ‘Not all of them, Alan,’ said Little John. And he nodded to the east where a group of a dozen men-at-arms on foot were being pushed into line by a grizzled sergeant to form a forlorn-looking and very thin shield wall. ‘This little fight’s not over yet, Alan. Come on! There’s more sport to be had.’

  He pulled the terrifying horse mask back down over his face and we turned our mounts together, put back our spurs and charged, knee to knee, axe and sword swinging, myself screaming ‘Westbury! Westbury!’ and Little John making a hideous keening noise deep in his throat. We charged like madmen, or creatures from some terrible nightmare, straight at the thin wall of a dozen frightened soldiers who were cowering behind their kite-shaped shields. And the formation shattered like a clay cup dropped on a stone floor as they ran for their lives, scattering into the darkness. I managed to land only a glancing blow on to the helmet of one fleeing man before he scurried under an upturned cart, safely away from my searching blade. I let him live; reining in, panting, to survey the night and catch my breath.

  Little John had been wrong. The battle was, to all intents and purposes, over, and as I turned to speak to him I saw that he too had disappeared into the night. I was alone, and just ahead of me was Sir Ralph Murdac’s black-and-red striped tent, now with a circle of pine-pitch torches burning around it. I walked my horse over towards the circle of light; praying fervently to St Michael that I should be lucky enough to find the little Norman rat still in his foul nest.

  Murdac was not there, but Robin was. My master was unhorsed, the sheepskin mask hanging by a cord around his neck, a great war bow in his hands, an arrow nocked, the hempen string drawn back to his ear. He was aiming across my path, away from the light and into the darkness; my head turned and my eye naturally followed his aim. A small dark figure was racing a midnight-black horse away from the camp as fast as possible, its pounding legs snapping guy ropes and tumbling tents in his wake. And I knew in my bones that it was Murdac. A heartbeat later my master released the bowstring and sent a yard of ash, tipped with a needle-like bodkin point, flashing away into the darkness. The arrow struck Murdac. I saw the strike, high in his back on the left-hand side; it was a superb shot, one that only Robin and a handful of other men in the world could have made. The bobbing target was more than a hundred yards away by then, the range increasing with every moment as horse and rider surged towards safety. Murdac’s black-and-red surcoat could only be seen intermittently that dark night, when the horse and rider passed through a patch of firelight; it was a nigh-on impossible feat to hit the target, and yet Robin had made it. But it was not a lethal strike; I saw Murdac lurch forward in the saddle with the heavy impact of the shaft in his back. But he did not fall and moments later he was still in the saddle, swaying wildly, but remaining defiantly a-horse, and passing swiftly beyond view down the dale towards the River Locksley as the dark curtains of night closed behind him.

  I heard Robin curse softly under his breath as I leapt off my mount to greet him and congratulate him on his stunning victory.

  ‘I meant to kill him, Alan,’ said my master after we had clasped right arms in greeting. ‘I meant to kill him for sure this time, and I honestly thought I had him, but once again it seems that I have failed.’

  ‘He may yet die from his wound,’ I said, smiling at him with affection. ‘Perhaps God intends for him to suffer a slow and hideously painful death, when the wound goes black and the pus runs thick and begins to smell of month-old rancid mutton …’

  ‘You’re just trying to cheer me up,’ said Robin with a wry laugh. ‘Or possibly make me feel peckish. Either way, thank you, Alan. No, I missed my mark with Murdac, and we shall have to deal with him again on some other occasion. Now, we have other matters to attend to; come, we’d better make sure these bastards are all dead, captured or gone from here.’

  Robin turned away and was calling for his horse when William, Lord Edwinstowe, with a score of mounted men-at-arms behind him, trotted into the circle of torchlight around Murdac’s pavilion. I knew that Edwinstowe’s men had not charged with us when we rushed out of the castle gate to support Robin’s attack, and none of them carried the marks of battle – not a scratch nor a splash of blood on a single one of them. But the cautious baron must have seen the way the battle was going, that Murdac’s men were running, and come to the conclusion that he must join in if only for the sake of his knightly reputation. I realized then that, though he might be Robin’s brother, I thoroughly despised him.

  ‘Robert,’ Edwinstowe said curtly, nodding at my master. ‘William,’ came the equally terse reply. Then Robin, by now mounted, walked his horse over to his brother. He smiled at him without much warmth, and said: ‘I thank you for the great service you have rendered me over the past few weeks. I am in your debt.’

  ‘Well, Brother, when I got wind of Ralph Murdac’s plans to attack Kirkton, what else could I do but come here? I merely fulfilled my family duty,’ said Edwinstowe. ‘No more, no less. Duty to one’s family is a sacred trust, and it must supersede all other … considerations.’

  ‘And I am most grateful,’ said Robin. ‘I shall not forget what you have done for me here.’

  Baron Edwinstowe half-smiled; he seemed pleased by Robin’s thanks. ‘It seems that I underestimated your battle plans. I must congratulate you on this scheme, this … ruse, and on your notable victory.’ His gauntleted hand described an arc that took in the shattered, smouldering enemy camp, now empty of Murdac’s men. Robin gave him a bright, gleaming smile. And for a moment the baron seemed to be about to say something more, but he merely nodded and then turned his horse and, leading his conroi of unmarked men-at-arms, he trotted back towards Kirkton Castle.

  The prisoners looked tired and very frightened. Pale-faced and bound at the wrists and neck with stout ropes, a forlorn two dozen men, some lightly wounded – the very badly hurt had been mercifully dispatched to their Maker in the immediate aftermath of the battle – sat disconsolately with their backs to the wooden palisade, stripped nearly naked, and guarded by a handful of joyfully victorious archers, who were sharing flasks of mead and time-honoured army jokes. It was not long past dawn in the bailey courtyard of Kirkton Castle and Hanno was congratulating me on my kill the night before last. ‘I am very pleased with you, Alan,’ said my Bavarian friend, his round shaven head split with a grin to reveal his ragged assortment of broken grey teeth. ‘It is a beautiful killing, ah yes. Very nice, very quiet, and very nearly perfect.’

  My bitten finger throbbed from misuse, even though I had strapped it tightly before the battle last night. I looked at my friend a little sourly and I marvelled at his use of the word ‘beautiful’ for such a sordid piece of butchery.

  ‘What do you mean, nearly perfect?’ I said. ‘I took him down without a sound.’ I was feeling the melancholy humour I always felt after a bout of bloodletting, when the world seemed flat and grey, and my soul was heavy with regret at the men I had killed. My finger was paini
ng me more than a little, too.

  ‘Ah, Alan, do not mistake me,’ said Hanno, all seriousness now. ‘I am most proud of you – but next time you must take him while he stands, left hand and dagger together’ – he mimed clamping a hand over an invisible victim’s mouth and shoving the blade into the back of his skull at the same time – ‘not use your weight to knock him to the ground, and then kill him while you both roll around like happy pigs fucking in the mud.’

  ‘Well, next time, I’ll try to do much better,’ I said with a grimace. I was feeling slightly sick at the memory of that bloody murder in the black field. Hanno was a passionate advocate of perfection, endlessly harping on about it: the perfect ale, the perfect woman, the perfect sword blow. He also had no ear at all for when I was being sarcastic.

  ‘This is the correct spirit, Alan,’ said Hanno, nodding earnestly. ‘Each time you perform a task, you must try to do it better than the last time – until it is perfect. I recall my first silent kill … oh, it is many years ago, in Bavaria. I am in the service of Leopold, Duke of Austria, a great and powerful man, and the orders come down to me from the renowned and most noble knight Fulk von Rittenburg …’

  At that moment, I was spared having to hear a story I had heard a dozen times before by the arrival of Robin, still wearing the long dark cloak that had been part of his horse-demon costume the night before, accompanied by Little John and Marie-Anne and a nursemaid who was carrying a small, solemn-looking, slightly pudgy boy – he must have been about two and a half years of age, if my calculations were correct.

  Robin stopped in front of the prisoners and quietly drew his sword. His face was as bleak as a full gibbet in mid-winter. Behind him I could see Marie-Anne looking strangely frightened and confused. John, on the other hand, looked unconcerned and he shot me a cheery wink.

  ‘Get them on their feet,’ Robin said curtly to the archer guards. And while the prisoners were roughly pulled into a standing position, Robin studied them, his eyes as coldly metallic as the naked blade in his hand.

  ‘You came to this place and laid siege to my castle with your master, the coward who calls himself Sir Ralph Murdac, seeking to murder my servants and despoil my lands, while I was away fighting for Christendom in the Holy Land. Is this not true?’

  The bound men said nothing, shuffling their feet and staring at the packed-earth floor of the bailey. One fellow began to weep silently. Robin continued: ‘And yet did not His Holiness Pope Celestine declare that a man’s lands and estates are under the protection of Mother Church while he takes part in a holy pilgrimage? To attack such a man’s property is to break the Truce of God, which is a grave sin, as despicable as attacking Church property itself, is it not?’

  The men remained silent. Robin paused for a beat, and then went on: ‘And so, by God’s holy law, by the law of His Holiness the Pope, you all richly deserve death for your crimes outside these walls. Do you not?’

  I was privately amused that my master, a man who I knew did not have the slightest allegiance to the Pope in Rome, or any high Christian churchman for that matter, should use this law as a justification, I assumed, for executing these men. Get on with it, I thought to myself. If you have decided to kill them, get it done. Don’t give them a long sermon to take with them to their graves.

  ‘But what angers me more than a cowardly attack on my lands while I was fighting the good fight in Outremer,’ Robin continued, ‘is that your master has cast suspicion on the honour of my lady wife, the Countess of Locksley.’ Robin’s gaze lashed the cowed men, many of whom were now mumbling prayers under their breath, convinced their time on Earth was nearly ended.

  ‘The coward Murdac claims that Hugh here, my little son,’ Robin emphasized the last word, ‘is not truly my son, but his.’

  For more than a year, I knew, Sir Ralph Murdac had been spreading the rumour that he had lain with Marie-Anne and got her with child. The rumours had reached us as far away as the Island of Sicily, and they had made Robin heartsick, and a figure of ridicule, the cuckolded husband – something Robin could not abide. Worse still, the rumours were true. Murdac had lain with Marie-Anne when she was his captive, during Robin’s outlaw days, and although it was surely a forced coupling, the boy was undeniably his. I was shocked that Robin should speak publicly about these intensely private and shameful matters. Even I, one of his closest men, had never dared to speak of it to him. But it seemed he was now determined to make the subject an open one.

  ‘Before the Virgin, does any man here support the liar Murdac’s claim, and say that my boy Hugh is his whelp?’

  The prisoners stared at the little boy sitting quietly in his nursemaid’s arms. The boy stared back with his huge pale blue eyes from under a mop of jet hair. God forgive me for saying this, but he was the very image of Murdac, a miniature Sir Ralph – and every man here could see it. Still nobody said a word.

  Fast as a cut snake, Robin lunged forward with his sword, sinking the blade a foot deep into the naked belly of the nearest prisoner, who screamed in pain and collapsed bleeding and whimpering to the floor, clutching his punctured midriff. Even though I believed that Robin meant to kill them all, I was as surprised as any man in that courtyard by the suddenness and callousness of his strike.

  Robin held the sword up towards the morning sky, the unfortunate prisoner’s bright blood trickling down the central channel of the blade towards the hilt. ‘I will be answered,’ my master said quietly, his voice ice-hard. ‘And so I ask you again: Does any man here maintain Sir Ralph’s claim that this is not my son?’

  There was an immediate chorus of ‘No, my lord!’ and ‘By my faith, he is your son, sir!’ and similar answers from the prisoners. The man who had been stabbed gave a groaning cry, a little writhe and, mercifully, appeared to pass out from the pain.

  But one of the standing prisoners took a half step forward. He was a handsome man, tall and proud. ‘I will not lie,’ he said, looking directly at Robin, matching his stare. ‘I will not go before the face of God with a lie on my lips. He is not your son – you only need to look at him to see that. Clearly his true father—’ Robin’s sword flashed out and ripped through his throat, and he dropped to his knees, gouting blood between clutching fingers as his precious life-fluid cascaded down his white chest.

  ‘Anyone else?’ said Robin, as still and cold as a gravestone.

  Another loud chorus of ‘No, my lord! He is surely your son!’

  ‘You all deserve death for your actions over the past few weeks … but I am a merciful man,’ said Robin. And behind him, I saw Little John explode in a loud coughing or choking fit, covering his mouth with one huge hand, his face glowing a bright rosy red as he struggled to regain his composure. My master gave John a stern flick of a glance, and twisted his mouth very slightly in rebuke, then he continued: ‘I am a merciful man, unless I am crossed, and I may, I may now be moved to show mercy. If any man here will swear before God and the Virgin, and all that he holds dear, that he will serve me, and my son Hugh, faithfully, all his days, with all his might and main, I shall grant him his miserable life. Is any man here prepared to take this solemn oath?’

  A forest of hands shot up into the air, many tied to other men’s – one particularly short man was jerked off his feet by the raised hands of two tall men on either side of him. And there was a clamour of voices declaring: ‘I will, my lord, gladly, I will.’ In fact, perhaps not very surprisingly, it seemed that the entire mass of prisoners was prepared to accept the offer of a life in faithful service to Robin.

  As the prisoners were cut loose by the archers, each kneeling in turn to make the pledge of loyalty to Robin, placing their hands between his, I was struck by how clever my master had been. He had, at a stroke, recruited a score of trained menat-arms, which he badly needed, who would now find it difficult, if not impossible, to return to Murdac’s banner because they had publicly acknowledged that Hugh was Robin’s son. He had weeded out, and swiftly dispatched, the one man who would never serve him, and had d
isplayed a ruthless strength, and a generous clemency which, it was to be hoped, would bind these soldiers to him more strongly. But would these men, Sir Ralph Murdac’s men, really remain loyal when the threat of imminent death had passed? I marked their faces and vowed that in future I would keep a wary eye on each and every one of them.

  Chapter Four

  During the next few weeks, Kirkton Castle enjoyed a period of peace and tranquillity that was a balm to the soul after our long wanderings. The early autumn weather was sunny and warm, and it seemed that my master Robin was pleased to be home once again with his wife Marie-Anne. Little Hugh toddled around the bailey, a cheerful, chubby little boy, who looked more and more like Sir Ralph Murdac with every passing day, although nobody was foolish enough to comment on it, and yet Robin seemed to have settled, at least in his mind, that the child was his, and he showed the infant a reserved fatherly kindness whenever their paths crossed.

  In truth my master was a fully occupied man in these weeks following his return. After two and a half years of absence there was a great deal of administration of his estates to reconcile. Taxes and rents to collect, fences, sheep hurdles and bridges to mend, disputes to settle, and far-flung manors to visit, sometimes for the first time. I too had duties at my home and took leave of my master to return, briefly, to Westbury.