by Angus Donald
In the cool space of the dormitory, a long low room with a double line of wooden cots on either wall, Robin and I chose two beds by the door and hunkered down for a brief conference. ‘Well, so far, so good,’ murmured Robin, too low for any of the other inhabitants to hear. Apart from us, it housed half a dozen mangy wretches – men and women of varying ages, who all looked as if they badly needed a hot meal and a dry night’s sleep – and three lean, sun-darkened men in a huddle on the far side, each bearing scallop-shell-adorned staffs and the kind of cloth shoulder bag known as a scrip, that marked them out as pilgrims. A very fat man-at-arms in a torn mail coat was snoring drunkenly on a cot midway down the left-hand row, about a dozen yards from us.
‘I don’t like it,’ I said to Robin in a similarly low tone. ‘There are too many soldiers here for my liking.’
‘The Abbot needs to protect himself, just like anyone else,’ countered Robin. ‘Sherwood is a dangerous place.’ His silver-grey eyes twinkled. ‘I should know.’
I said no more. I did not want Robin to think that my courage had failed, but I was truly uneasy in myself. I had never seen quite so many armed men doing quite so little in a peaceful House of God before. I told myself that it was merely nerves at the prospect of action and I surreptitiously brushed a hand behind my neck along the crossbar of the lance-dagger. But when one of the pilgrims dropped his staff with a clatter, I nearly jumped out of my skin.
Robin and I rested for an hour or so on the narrow straw-filled cots in the dormitory, my lord appearing to sleep like a newborn. I was too tightly wound to rest, and in whatever position I tried I found the handles of either the lance-dagger or the misericorde sticking into my spine and the eye-patch seemed overly tight and itchy. We were roused by the ringing of the church bell, summoning us and the other guests of the Abbey to Vespers, and trooped across the courtyard with almost the entire population of the place, more than a hundred souls. We all moved solemnly through the western doors into the large nave. I smelled the familiar holy stench of stale incense and candle smoke, hot wax and human sweat, and Robin and I pushed our way to the front, stationing ourselves beside a large pillar: as we waited for the senior canons and the Abbot to arrive, I looked at the faces around me: ordinary men and women of all ages, from stick-thin crones to boisterous children, chatting and coughing, and a few men standing with their heads bowed in prayer. But something was awry, something did not sit right. I saw glimpses of iron mail, and here and there the gleam of a sword hilt – yet it was more than the large number of men-at-arms in the congregation, there was an air of something else: expectation, a collective holding of breath. Was I imagining it? Was my skittish mind causing me to see enemies where there were truly none? I could not tell.
Abbot Richard, a short, fattish, stern-featured man, strode into the church, using his tall elaborately carved crosier as a walking staff. His mouth was tight with disapproval – but of what I could not tell. Behind him hurried a dozen of the senior canons and they all took up their places in the choir of the church. As the canons began to chant the opening words of the service – Deus, in adiutorium meum intende. Domine, ad adiuvandum me festina … O God, come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste to help me – I bowed my head and added a similar request to the Almighty that He might protect Robin and myself in this coming task.
‘O Lord,’ I said silently in my heart, ‘I do not seek to profit from this enterprise; I do not look for personal gain: I beg you to shield my master and myself in our hour of danger and make us worthy instruments of your justice. I ask this in the name of your son Our Lord Jesus Christ.’
As I finished my private prayer, I opened my uncovered eye and my gaze reached out to the altar. A young canon holding a rush taper was in the act of lighting the wicks of a dozen candles, fixed in a glorious golden candelabrum on the right-hand side of that holy table. A similar candelabrum on the left was already ablaze.
I caught my breath in wonder.
Between the two sources of light, glowing warmly, reflecting the glory of God magnificently in the drab interior of the church, lay Malloch’s hoard of gold. The centrepiece was a tall crucifix nearly two feet high, the surface of the buttery metal worked with intricate geometrical shapes and patterns. A silver figure of Our Lord was fixed to the golden Tree of Calvary, beautifully wrought, each muscle of Our Saviour’s body clear and distinct, the thorns of his Crown needle sharp, the cheeks of his beloved face as hollow as those of any beggar, and yet that grave, suffering, silver face seemed to be filled with compassion for the world. Before the crucifix and a little to the right blazed a large golden cup – the chalice. Its thick rim, long stem and broad stand were embedded with cut jewels of blue and green, amber and red – each as large as hazelnuts. To the right of the chalice, a broad smooth golden plate, the paten, reflected the candlelight like the sun. And placed around on the snowy altar cloth were half a dozen other pieces of wondrous work: a fine monstrance in the shape of a bright star; a lustrous round pyx like a nugget of pure bullion; a tiny bell with a wooden handle, like a drop of molten sunshine; an elegant long-handled wine jug radiating warmth like a hearth fire…
I was not the only one to be gazing in awe at this display of wealth. Almost every eye there was fixed on the magnificence of the altar. Even if we set aside Malloch Baruch’s exquisite craftwork – and I had truly never seen its equal before – I was staring at a rich man’s ransom in precious metal alone.
I turned to look at Robin and noticed that he had a curious expression on his face. One eye was tightly closed and he had his head cocked to one side. He looked exactly like a goodwife at the market, eyeing up a cut of pork or mutton and, ignoring the patter of the eager-to-sell butcher, trying to guess its true value.
For an obviously wealthy Abbey, the meal served out in the refectory to the bedraggled travellers housed in the dormitory was woefully bad: a watery soup of turnips and bitter herbs; stale bread and powdery, tasteless cheese. As I choked down the last spoonful of soup, I reflected that I had eaten worse meals than this on campaign, but not for a good long while: had I grown soft in the past few months at Westbury? After the meagre meal, Robin and I took to our cots, and while my lord appeared to be enjoying a restful sleep, I struggled once again with the discomfort caused by my disguise and my assorted weaponry as our fellow travellers snuffled and snored and farted all around us.
The eye-patch was itching my brow badly, and I seriously considered taking it off – in that dark dormitory, who would see that I had two good eyes? But I resisted the temptation. I did not want to spoil my disguise just because of a little discomfort. We waited for two interminable hours after the last of the Abbey’s guests had retired, and at, perhaps, an hour before midnight, I felt a hand on my shoulder and saw Robin’s pale face looming beside mine. I rose swiftly and we crept out of the sleeping room as quiet as velvet-shod mice. The door creaked alarmingly, but nobody stirred, and once outside, we paused with our backs to the dormitory wall and silently observed the courtyard: deserted, still and utterly silent. A fat, waxing moon, yellow as a buttercup, hung above the stables on the southern side of the yard, but there was precious little other light, except for a faint glow coming from the stained-glass windows of the church. Robin touched my arm and we walked across to the door of the church on the western side. This one opened with only the tiniest squeak, and we were inside that cool, sacred space. I saw that a single thick candle had been left burning in the centre of the nave, a symbol of the eternal light of Our Lord Jesus Christ – and by that light Robin and I approached the altar where we had so recently admired the shining hoard that rightly belonged to Malloch the goldsmith.
The altar was bare, and for a wild moment, I wondered if some thief had beaten us to the reward. But Robin ignored the altar without comment and made his way to the north transept, and to a small door in a wooden panel that marked off the sacristy. I cursed my own stupidity: of course, the canons would not leave a fortune in plain view of the altar, with the church door unlock
ed, and the Abbey full of vagrants.
Robin fumbled in his robe and knelt before the door handle; I saw that he had in his hands two pieces of wrought iron bent into right-angles, like square hooks, and he was inserting them gingerly into the big lock on the door. He seemed to be having some difficulty, rattling the hooks in the lock and cursing quietly under his breath. I had not known that my lord possessed this skill; the power to unseal locks without the proper key – and it seemed that, in truth, he did not. Thirty heartbeats passed and still, Robin struggled with the door. Then my lord caught my eye; he looked irritated. ‘Do something useful, Alan, and bring me that candle,’ he said crossly, indicating the eternal flame with a sideways jerk of his head.
There was something deeply wrong, I felt, in the act of removing that thick candle from its spiked stand. It occurred to me, in a sudden burst of clarity, that we were robbing a church. A church! Was there any act more contemptible, any sin more vile? But more than that – something in the very air, in the stink of wax and sweat, of people and old prayers, that spoke to me of grave danger. All my senses were telling me that I should grab Robin and run from this place. I am not, I think, a coward, but I felt the cold breath of fear on my neck and I was within a whisker in that moment of turning on my heel and heading for the church door. I took several deep breaths, and with my heart beating like a drum, I managed to master my terror. I forced myself to lay hands on the cool wax of the candle and pull it free from its stand with a jerk. And, just as I approached my lord with the wavering light held in both hands, Robin gave a grunt of satisfaction, the lock clicked, and the sacristy door swung open.
Robin grinned at me, his good humour restored, his silver eyes reflecting the candlelight. ‘Young Gavin taught me that trick: he used to be an apprentice locksmith before his light fingers led him beyond the law.’
I nodded but said nothing – the eye-patch was making the whole of my head itch, it seemed. To take my mind off it, I held the candle high and looked keenly about me as we advanced into that dark room. The candlelight showed me a small square space, with a table and stool immediately to the left, a pole slung at head height from the roof for robes, and an X-shaped chair on the right – but it was clear where the golden hoard must be hidden: in the large chest that squatted near the back wall, secured with a solid iron padlock.
Robin walked forward, bent down and examined the chest, humming very faintly under his breath. He looked at the front of the wooden box, fingered the heavy padlock, and then peered at the lid’s hinges. I expected him to produce his hooks and begin fiddling with the padlock, but he merely whispered, ‘Alan, lend me a hand, will you?’ And I found myself, crouched down by the side of the chest, with the candle on the floor beside me, helping Robin to heave the strongbox away from the wall. It was extremely heavy, and only with some difficulty did my lord and I manage to move it six inches. Then he said, ‘Give me your misericorde, please, just for a moment.’
I handed it over, hilt first, and he inserted the sharp tip of the strong blade between the hinge-plate and the wood at the back of the chest and gave a small shove. The hinge squealed like a scorched cat, and Robin stopped. ‘Shut the door, Alan.’ And when I turned and pulled the sacristy door to, I heard another loud cry of pain from the ancient wood of the chest, then, swiftly afterwards, another. The hinges prised loose, Robin lifted the lid up and over from the back and left it sagging open against the front of the box.
Its contents were now ours.
I picked up the candle and set it on the table and bent down to retrieve my misericorde, which had been casually discarded by my lord, and slid it back into its sheath at my back. I tried to see into the chest, but Robin’s shoulders, head and hands were already deep inside blocking my view. I saw him dip down an arm and emerge with the golden plate, the paten, which he quickly stuffed into a rough woollen sack at his feet; a golden jug followed it in there a few moments later, and the little round pyx, and the star-shaped monstrance. And then Robin had the chalice in his hands – and he looked up and paused, smiling happily at me over the bejewelled golden rim, as if making a toast to my good health. ‘Does this put you in mind of anything, Alan?’ he said, chuckling with satisfaction.
I frowned. The eye-patch was itching like the plague.
‘No?’ said Robin. ‘I had always imagined that this is what the Grail would look like,’ he continued. I knew that ever since he had first heard of the Holy Grail several years before, Robin had wanted to possess it, but this was no time to indulge his madcap fantasies. ‘Hurry up,’ I whispered, ‘we need to be getting out of here.’
And just then, I heard a noise, an unmistakable noise, out there in the dark, beyond the sacristy door. It was a tinny clattering sound, only heard once and unrepeated. But it was the sound of something metallic, a knife or sword perhaps, being dropped on a stone floor.
Chapter Four
Almost faster than thought, Robin was beside the candle at the table, and had pinched it dark. In the sudden blackness, my uncovered eye retained an image of my lord: the lumpy woollen sack bunched in one fist, the fingers of his other on the candlewick, his head questing forwards, his mouth a grim line.
We both stood silent and waited.
There were more gentle noises coming from outside: the sounds of men, several of them, trying to be stealthy. Cloth whispering on cloth, the shuffle of leather boots, tiny clicks as metal touched other metal, muffled coughs and even a damned idiot attempting to quieten his fellows with a sibilant: ‘Shhh!’
I felt the heat of Robin’s face close to mine; he breathed in my ear: ‘We must not be trapped in here. Out, to the main gate, then into the woods, fast as you can.’
Then the door opened and the pitch-dark sacristy was filled with a glare of yellow light. A figure entered, a lantern in one hand, a sword in his other: a man-at-arms in hauberk and helm, and not alone. Behind him there were other figures bearing candles, swords and spears. There were men-at-arms crowded in the doorway and behind in the church, a dozen of them or more, their faces glowing with excited triumph.
The lantern man, a scarred sergeant of thirty years or so, advanced into the sacristy, taking cautious half-steps forward, his sword held out before him, the tip stopping a foot from my face. Two more men with drawn swords, and two men with candles, came in behind him. In the doorway lingered a knot of men-at-arms gazing at us from beneath half a dozen raised spear-points, and behind them I saw the face of the dark square-faced knight with the mole on his cheek, looking on and smiling. I lifted my hands in the air, my palms level with my ears, in a gesture of surrender. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed that Robin hadn’t stirred so much as an eyebrow.
‘I’ve got them; I got them, sir,’ said the sergeant, the foremost lantern man, the man holding a sword up to my chin. And he looked quickly over his shoulder for approval from the square-faced knight behind him. ‘Shall I kill them now?’
I moved.
With my left forearm I swept the sword-point away from my face and my right hand dipped behind my neck to grasp the T-bar of my lance-dagger. The blade slipped from its greased holster, came up and over my head and I stepped in and punched forward, hard, with the weight of my shoulder behind the blade, plunging it deep into the throat of the foremost man-at-arms. He dropped both lantern and sword, uttering a gurgling scream, both hands fluttering at his neck as I ripped the blade free in a spray of crimson gore. The band of newcomers to the sacristy seemed to be frozen in horrified shock, as I took a long step past the dying sergeant and surged forward, bloody lance-dagger leaping out to plunge into the chest of the next man holding a candle, my left hand groping awkwardly for the handle of my misericorde behind my back. The second man went down, his dropped candle went out, and Robin was there beside me, a long dagger in his hand. He shoulder-charged a mail-clad swordsman, knocking him out of the way, dodged a jabbing spear-point, and twisting his whole body slammed the point of his weapon in a scything overhand into the eye of the second candle-holder. The man s
creamed, dropped his light and we were all of us plunged into utter darkness.