King's Man

by Angus Donald

  I finally stopped, panting, shaking with emotion, and looked around the crowd of men-at-arms at the ropes. They were absolutely silent and none would meet my mad, glaring eye. I looked over at Prince John; his mouth was hanging wide open, showing little yellow teeth and a bright pink tongue. Sir Ralph Murdac beside him looked white and shocked.

  Prince John recovered first. He croaked, ‘Seize him!’ and suddenly I was surrounded by a dozen men-at-arms with drawn swords. I readied my soul for death. ‘Take him … away,’ the Prince managed to say.

  And as I was being dragged back towards the keep by rough hands, I heard Prince John shout after me, his voice shaking with emotion: ‘You are not free of this matter, you filthy cur. You will not escape your crimes. You will hang for this, you will hang for this, you diabolical, blood-crazed … animal; before God, I swear you will hang at dawn tomorrow.’

  * * *

  Back in the storeroom, I wept. I do not know why, but often after a fight I feel a terrible sadness, a soul-sickness, come over me. It is one that I can usually control, but in that dark, desperate place, still trembling with rage after beating Milo, I allowed myself the weakness and comfort of a woman’s tears. It did not last for long and I must admit that, afterwards, I felt a good deal better.

  Over the next few hours, I took stock of my situation: to the good, I had defeated a monster who had sought to tear me apart; my enemies had arranged a humiliating death for me and by great good fortune – and here I blessed little Thomas ap Lloyd and his oddly effective wrestling tricks – I had avoided my fate and taken a suitable revenge for Perkin and Adam. I still lived. More than a little bruised around the face and neck, I grant you – I had taken savage punches from both Little John and the monster Milo in less than two days – but for the most part hale and well.

  To the bad: I was to be hanged like a common criminal in the morning.

  I bathed my sore face in what was left of the water, and drank some of it too, tasting the metallic tang of my own blood in the jug. I prayed once more for salvation – either in this life or in the next. And then I lay down once again on the barley sacks and tried to sleep.

  I had barely closed my eyes when the door of the storeroom opened and two men entered. One of them fixed a burning torch to a becket in the wall and when my eyes had adjusted to the harsh light, I saw that it was Sir Nicholas de Scras. I had half-expected a visit from my friend, but his companion came as a complete surprise: it was Sir Aymeric de St Maur, the Templar knight.

  Sir Nicholas handed me a jug of ale, a loaf of rye bread and a small bowl of cold mutton stew. And I found that I was starving. The two knights watched me as I ate hungrily and slaked my thirst, saying nothing, only staring at me by the flickering light of the torch. When I had wiped the last of the gravy from the bowl with the remaining crust of bread, I broke the silence: ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘And to what do I owe this unexpected courtesy?’

  ‘You know what we want, Dale,’ said Sir Aymeric. ‘Or rather, who we want. You are Locksley’s man and you must know how we can find him. And we can force you to tell us if we have to.’ He smiled cruelly. ‘I find that a hot iron applied judiciously can loosen the most stubborn tongue.’

  I could not suppress a quick shudder. I had once been tortured by Sir Ralph Murdac with hot irons and that foul memory is one I do not care to contemplate. And I remembered the poor wretch dragged to the centre of the Temple Church at the inquisition, and tried not to imagine what Aymeric de St Maur had done to him to secure his testimony against Robin.

  I shook my head: ‘I am getting tired of telling you people this. But I will repeat it for you once more and then I will speak on this subject no more. I – Do – Not – Know – Where – Robin – Is. I serve him, yes, and gladly. But we arranged matters so that I would never be able to betray him – even on pain of torture or death.’

  Sir Aymeric de St Maur glared at me. For a few moments no one spoke. Then he said: ‘We have sent men to bring in your servant – the foreigner. And when we have him, we will see if a little heat will loosen his tongue. Or perhaps, watching his agony, you may feel more inclined to talk.’

  I closed my lips, clenched my teeth and determined that I would say no more.

  ‘There is no need for this sort of unpleasantness,’ said Nicholas de Scras calmly. ‘Sir Aymeric, would you be so good as to leave us. I’d like to talk to Alan alone. Of your goodness, will you grant me this small mercy?’

  Aymeric stared at Sir Nicholas for a few moments; he seemed taken aback. Then, turning to leave, he said grumpily, ‘Very well, but mark you this: if he will not talk to you, he will talk to me before morning.’ And with that parting threat hanging in the air like a foul odour he left the storeroom, banging the elm-wood door shut behind him.

  Sir Nicholas and I stared at each other for several moments. And then the knight said, ‘It is still not too late for you, Alan.’ His voice was pleading, kindly – like a father trying to persuade a recalcitrant child. ‘We can end all this, and set you free to go wherever you will, if only you will help us. Please, Alan, for your sake, and mine: help me to help you.’

  I said nothing, locking my jaw and looking him in the eye; and my silence seemed to draw speech from him.

  ‘I do not have many friends,’ said this one-time Hospitaller, ‘and I have even fewer now that I have left the Order. But I thought once that you and I might become close. And when they hang you tomorrow, I will feel a great sadness that another man who offered me the promise of brotherhood has perished. Of course, it is entirely your own fault: if you would only speak to me about your friend Robin, if you would only trust me, I could save you, even now. But you have chosen to die. And I can understand that. I honour your loyalty to your lord, but you have shown your mettle a hundred times; you have proved your courage and your worth as a faithful vassal, and now it is time to think of yourself. To save yourself. Alan, I beg you: save yourself!’

  He paused for a while to give me the chance to speak. But I said nothing, merely stared at him, my tongue locked.

  ‘I had a friend in Outremer, a good friend,’ Sir Nicholas continued. ‘He was your friend, too, I believe. His name was Sir Richard at Lea – and you know how he died. You know … you know who it was who killed him.’

  He paused again and looked at me, and this time I could not meet his eye.

  ‘You know that your master Robert of Locksley callously ordered the death of a good man; he killed my friend and yours, just so that he could enrich himself like some filthy merchant with the trade in frankincense.’

  I was surprised. I could not understand how Sir Nicholas knew all this; the knight seemed to be able to see directly into my mind. Then he relieved my puzzlement.

  ‘In Acre, in the hospital there, I tended you when you were sick,’ Sir Nicholas said. ‘Do you not remember?’ And I nodded and remembered his kindness to me. I felt an overwhelming desire to speak to him, to thank him, and only with some difficulty did I manage to hold my tongue.

  ‘I tended you, I sponged the night sweat from your body, and soothed you when you raved. I listened to your ranting, night after night: and I remembered it. Do you know what you said in your delirium? Do you know who you accused of the murder of Sir Richard at Lea? I think you do. You named Robert, Earl of Locksley, as his killer. And you called him a monster, a demonworshipping fiend. All that I know of Locksley’s crimes, I know because you told me during those long, fever-racked nights in Acre.’

  Sir Nicholas’s face had grown more gaunt and his voice had become a little harsher, a little less kindly and fatherly.

  ‘You have already betrayed Robin Hood, your friend, your master. Did you not know that? It was I who told the Templars where to look for the evidence of his heretical beliefs; his God-cursed sacrifices to woodland demons. And I received all that information, every scrap of it, from you, from your sickbed ravings.

  ‘You have already betrayed your master! You are already a traitor – and a real traitor this time. But now y
ou can save your skin, and live a long and happy life. All you have to do is talk to me. You called him a monster. And he is a monster. He killed my friend, my true friend Richard – all for the sake of some filthy incense money! Help me, Alan. Help me to bring that monster to justice and let our noble friend Sir Richard at Lea rest peacefully at last in his grave.’

  I stared at the floor: my jaw muscles flexing, my teeth squeaking with the effort of keeping quiet.

  The silence stretched out for an eternity. And, finally, Sir Nicholas gave up. He got to his feet and banged on the storeroom door to bring a guard.

  ‘Why will you not help me, Alan? Why?’

  He stood in the open doorway; I never expected to see him again in this world and so, at last, I spoke.

  ‘I swore an oath to Robin, long ago when I was just a boy. Though I was not yet a man, I swore it: I swore that I would be loyal to him unto death. And I intend to keep that oath. It is something a man like you, a breaker of holy vows, a man who turns his back on his comrades, could not possibly understand!’

  Sir Nicholas flinched at my words, as I had intended him to; and two smears of red appeared on his cheeks. He made the sign of the Cross on his breast, in the place where a white cross had once been sewn on his black Hospitallers’ surcoat – the sacred mantle that he had discarded.

  ‘God will judge all of us in His own good time,’ he said and, pulling the torch from the becket on the wall, he made to leave.

  ‘Wait, Nicholas,’ I said. ‘I have a question for you. As I am to die tomorrow morning, as a kindness, answer me this: why did you kill the big man Tom outside the Blue Boar tavern in Westminster? He was wounded and he might have talked, but you quickly silenced him. Why?’

  Sir Nicholas cocked his head on one side and looked at me, the torchlight flickering across his face and casting his eyes in deep shadow. ‘After what you have just said to me, I am not sure that I wish to oblige you.’ He looked at me a while, then shrugged. ‘Well, I suppose it can do no harm …’ And he smiled sadly at me, more like his old self again. ‘I knew that Prince John had sent men to murder you – but I did not know who they were. I thought that those men outside the tavern might have come from the Prince. And if they had, and the big one had admitted his mission under questioning, I knew that you would never have willingly come to Prince John’s banner. That was my reasoning. I wanted you to come to John so that I could get to Robert of Locksley. I thought that if we were on the same side, you might let slip something that would allow me to reach him. It seems I was wrong.’

  Our eyes locked for a couple of heartbeats. I said nothing more. Then he half-saluted me with his right hand, and stepped quickly out of the room and the door closed quietly behind him.

  When Sir Nicholas had left me, I tried once more to sleep. I could not: there were too many images rushing around inside my head for peaceful slumber. Visions of Robin, and Little John, and Sir Richard at Lea’s terrible death in the blood-clotted sands of Outremer, and images of Goody and Marie-Anne; of Milo’s bloody head lolling by my boots; of Ralph Murdac’s shocked expression. And then there was the hanging. I was going to die in a few short hours. I had seen my own father hanged when I was a boy, torn from his bed and strung up by Sir Ralph Murdac’s men, and the memory disturbed me still. I could see his hideously distorted face and bulging eyes as the rope choked the life from him, and I pictured once again the piss dripping from his kicking heels. Was my fate to be the same as my father’s? Had I been born to hang?

  At a little after midnight, after several sleepless hours, the door of the storeroom opened once again – this time very softly – and Robert Odo, the outlawed Earl of Locksley, stepped in.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I did not know immediately, of course, that it was Robin. The door just swung open – in the intense blackness of the roots of a castle at midnight I heard it more than saw it. And then he spoke: ‘That you, Alan?’ And even in his hoarse whisper, I knew my lord had come and all would now be well. I can remember vividly the emotion I felt at the time; like a great warm wave that flooded my soul with joy. I knew Robin would lead me out of that dark place and into the light, to safety.

  I had the urge to throw my arms around him – but I controlled myself, as a man should. I did not want Robin to think that I had been frightened for my life. So I merely whispered: ‘What took you so long? I’ve been bored almost witless waiting for you to turn up.’

  Feeble stuff, I know, but I sensed Robin smile in the darkness. ‘I’m a very busy man,’ he whispered back, with the hint of laughter in his tone. ‘So much silver to steal, so many ruffians to rescue.’ Then he continued, still in a low, barely audible voice: ‘Are you fit, Alan? Are you injured? Do you think you can climb a rope?’

  I admitted that I was largely intact.

  ‘Then come on – unless you’d rather stay here and wallow a while longer in your comfortable little cell.’

  We slipped out of the door and, in the dark corridor outside, I sensed a shape and heard another familiar voice: Hanno. There was a rustle of cloth and Hanno handed something heavy to Robin and my lord quickly returned to the storeroom. He was gone a few moments, and I grabbed Hanno’s arm and asked him in a whisper what Robin was doing.

  ‘A wolf’s head,’ said my friend. And I imagined his awful grin in the darkness.

  ‘What?’ I whispered back.

  ‘He leaves a big wolf’s head in there, Alan. It is freshly cut this morning from an animal trapped in Sherwood.’

  ‘For God’s sake, why?’ My voice was rising in volume. This seemed to be behaviour that verged on madness. Why were we standing there in that dark corridor talking about decapitated vermin? I was suddenly alarmed: had the strains of outlawry turned Robin insane?

  It was Robin himself who replied, coming silently out of the storeroom door, but bolting it shut with a loud click. ‘Terror, Alan – just giving them the fear,’ he whispered. ‘You know how I like to do it – minimum effort to create maximum terror.’

  Then we were off: with Hanno leading, we crept down the dark corridor, Robin bringing up the rear. We turned right, and swiftly left – Hanno seemed to know exactly where we were going, but I did not. The punches I had taken to the head must have made me slow-witted, for it only dawned on me then, as we padded silently through the passages under the great tower and the upper bailey in the dead hour after midnight, what Robin had been doing back in the storeroom. He was trying to convince the castle’s men-at-arms that I had been spirited away from my condemned cell by wild magic. And by leaving a severed wolf’s head, he was saying that it was he – Robin Hood, the outlaw earl with the wolf’s head device on his banner – who had accomplished this demonic trick.

  If people generally believed Robin to be guilty of heresy, consorting with devils and spirits, and so on, he had only himself to blame. Hard on the heels of that thought came another: he welcomed people believing that he had extraordinary, demonic powers. I recalled a spectacularly ugly, oneeyed friend called Thomas from my early days as an outlaw who had told me that Robin dabbled in all this devilish stuff to add to his mystique with the country folk. But it was obvious that he enjoyed it too. It was forbidden, wrong, ungodly – and Robin revelled in that type of thing.

  Something else occurred to me belatedly. I touched Robin’s sleeve and whispered: ‘How did you get in here? And where are we going now?’

  He chuckled almost silently and said: ‘You’ll soon see!’ And I had to be content with that.

  At the end of the next corridor we all paused, and flattened our bodies against the cool sandstone wall. Around the corner came the sound of footsteps: a lone soldier’s boots. One man and a glow of light.

  I felt the warmth of Hanno’s face next to my ear, and he breathed three words: ‘Watch and learn!’

  The unfortunate man-at-arms came round the corner and Hanno leapt on him as quick as a hunting weasel, his left hand clamping over the man’s nose and mouth, his right arm punching a long dagger into his ungua
rded belly just below the rib-cage, and then twisting it upwards into his chest. The man was smashed back against the far wall, dropping the horn lantern he was carrying with a clatter; he had been taken completely by surprise, and was only able to utter a few muffled grunts of pain and shock before Hanno’s long, questing blade found his heart, ripped it open and, with a gout of hot blood, the man-at-arms slumped to the ground, a twitching, unstrung marionette, who was very soon still.

  ‘Do you see?’ Hanno was at my ear again. ‘That is perfect. The dagger goes in, here, and then up, here’ – he was poking at my abdomen with a rough finger, but I was in no mood for more lessons in silent murder; I was looking at the dead man by the light of his dropped lantern, studying the comical look of surprise on his face – and his belt. For tucked into it, on the left-hand side, was a triangular-bladed stabbing weapon with a plain wooden handle and a stout crosspiece in steel. It was my misericorde. By happy chance, this was one of the men-at-arms who had seized me in the great hall two days ago. He must have thought the misericorde a legitimate prize of war. Well, it was mine again now. I took it from the dead man’s belt and slid it into my left boot. I took his sword and sword belt, too. And suddenly all my fears melted away. Whatever happened tonight, I would not allow myself to be recaptured. I had a weapon in my boot and one at my waist, and I was prepared to kill the whole world if necessary.