by Angus Donald
I frowned. I did not like it when Robin was disrespectful about the True Religion or our great mission to save the Holy Land. Robin ignored my sour look and went on: ‘Our story is that you and I were never in York, never in the Tower, and we never cut our way through a crowd of men-at-arms to get free and clear. That, if it ever happened - and it does sound far-fetched, doesn’t it? - was done by some other men. Not us. Understand?’
‘You declared your rank to the men-at-arms,’ I pointed out.
‘An impostor,’ said Robin briskly. ‘A wily Jew who wanted to save his skin by pretending to be the famous Earl of Locksley. Tell me that you understand?’
I understood. Robin did not want himself to be associated this catastrophe; he did not want to explain why he was there, or to admit that he had killed Christian townsmen in defence of Jews. Mostly, I felt he was embarrassed; it was not a glorious episode for anyone. But that was fine with me. I would be perfectly content never to think or speak of those bloody few days again. ‘What about Reuben?’ I asked. ‘When Reuben finds out Malbête is here, he will cut his living heart out.’
‘Yes, I thought of that. So I told Reuben myself that Malbête was now with the King and I promised him that, if he let the evil bastard live until we got to the Holy Land, I’d help him quietly kill him myself. I said you’d probably want to pitch in, too.’
I nodded; I’d gladly help send Malbête’s soul to join his master the Devil. ‘But why wait?’ I asked. ‘Why not just kill him now?’
He looked for a moment as if he wasn’t going to answer me, and then he seemed to come to a decision. ‘Two reasons, Alan. And this is not to be repeated. I am in deadly earnest, you are not to breathe a word of this, all right? Firstly, I don’t want to disturb calm waters just now. If the King’s knights start killing each other, even if we managed a discreet, tidy little murder, it could tear this expedition apart - it’s bad enough that Richard’s hardly speaking to Philip - and while I couldn’t care less which bunch of religious fanatics flies their flag above Jerusalem, I do want this campaign to succeed for reasons of my own. Which leads me to the second point. If it went wrong, I wouldn’t want Reuben hanged for murder in Sicily - King Richard has vowed that he will speedily execute any man who takes the life of another pilgrim; and Malbête, curse him, is a pilgrim. I need ... I need Reuben to help me do something in Outremer, and only he can help me do it. No, Alan, I’m not going to tell you what it is yet, and please don’t ask me. I’ll tell you more about it nearer the time.’
I was not the only trouvère to accompany the army to the Holy Land. In fact, there were quite a few of us and we had begun to gather in the evenings for wine and conviviality in a tavern in the old town of Messina where we would tell stories and play each other bits of our new compositions. I was especially fond of Ambroise, a jolly little soul, almost as wide as he was tall, with great beaming cheeks, sparkling black eyes like a bird’s and, when he chose to exercise it, a ferocious wit. He was a Norman from Evrecy, near Caen, a minor vassal of King Richard’s and, as well as composing music for his lord’s entertainment, he told me he was writing a history of the holy war. I first came across him at the edge of the crowded harbour, bent over a slate that he was scratching at with a piece of chalk. ‘What rhymes with “full dock”?’ he asked me suddenly, twisting his fat neck round to look at me. I had not realised he knew I was there. I replied without thinking: ‘Bull’s cock.’ He laughed, his whole little round body shaking with mirth, and he wheezed: ‘I admire the way your dirty mind works, but I don’t think that’s an appropriate phrase for a poem in praise of our King’s glorious arrival in Messina. You’re Alan, the Earl of Locksley’s trouvère, aren’t you? I’ve heard people say you are pretty good, for a youngster. I am Ambroise, the King’s man. Part-poet, part-singer, part-historian - but all gourmand,’ and he slapped his ample belly and laughed again.
We were firm friends from that day onwards.
In fact, our arrival in Messina had not been as uniformly glorious as Ambroise or the King might have hoped. The local population was a mixed crew: mainly Greeks, with a sprinkling of Italians, a few Jews and even some Arabs - and they all hated us. When we had arrived at the harbour there had been some booing and jeering from the crowd, audible even over the blare of the trumpets, even a few pieces of rotten fruit thrown. Fists were shaken, and King Richard had been extremely angry, white-faced, his blue eyes seeming to spark with fury. He had wanted to put on a show of his power and majesty and had assumed that his Sicilian audience - quickly dubbed the Messy Nessies by Little John - would be suitably awed. They were not. They seemed to regard us as something between an army of occupation, and a crowd of foreign bumpkins who could be robbed and insulted at will. The feelings of dislike, I have to say, were entirely mutual: we referred to the Greeks dismissively as ‘Griffons’, and the Italians as ‘Lombards’; the Arabs, many of them slaves, we ignored as beneath our Christian contempt.
Ambroise had the honour of beginning the musical festivities on a bright October morning in the herb garden of the monastery of San Salvatore. The weather had cleared and it was a half-warm sunny day, the sky a pale blue but streaked with woolly clouds. He opened with a simple and supposedly melancholic song of a knight who is bemoaning the departure of his mistress. It was hardly an original theme. Actually, as my friend is long dead now, I can admit to myself that Ambroise was not an enormously gifted trouvère. God rest his jolly soul. He had a fine voice, it is true, but his musical compositions were rarely inspiring. And, occasionally, I even suspected him of appropriating other men’s ideas. He admitted to me once that he found all the conventions of troubadour-style music-making, with its focus on unrequited love, a tremendous bore. What interested him most was poetry, specifically epic poetry that recorded dramatic events. He was talking once again about his history of the Great Pilgrimage, something he would bang on and on about when he was in his cups in The Lamb, our favourite watering hole in the old town.
If I remember correctly, Ambroise’s song began:
Farewell my joy,
And welcome pain,
Till I see my lady again ...
Grim, I think you’ll agree. And it was quite difficult to imagine rotund little Ambroise as a heart-sick swain, as he described himself later in the piece, unable to eat or drink for love of his departed lady. But perhaps I am wrong: I’m ashamed to say that I paid scant attention to my friend’s turgid verses and spent the time studying his audience instead. King Richard sat in the place of most honour, next to his royal French guest. Richard was a tall man, well-muscled and strong, although with a slight quiver to his hands when he was nervous or excited. At the age of thirty-three he was in his prime. His red-gold hair was truly regal, it glinted and sparkled in the brisk morning light; his complexion was fair and slightly sunburned, and his honest blue gaze was unflinching. His reputation as a warrior was second to none, and it was said that he loved nothing more than a good, bloody fight. Richard was what Tuck would have called a ‘hot’ man, whose anger was always near the surface, and who, when riled, was a fearsome sight. Beside him, the French King, Philip Augustus, was as different as chalk from cheese. He was a sallow, dark fellow; thin, even frail looking with large luminous eyes and, at twenty-five, the bowed back of a much older man. Tuck would have called him a ‘cold’ man, hiding his true feelings behind a wall of ice. Richard and Philip had been great friends in their youth, some even said that the young Richard had been infatuated with Philip, but it was clear in the way that they held their bodies, seated on cushioned chairs in the sweet-smelling herb garden, that there was very little love now between the two Kings. Also present were Robin and several of King Richard’s other senior commanders, including Robert of Thurnham, a knight I had met last year at Winchester and who had helped me then to escape the clutches of Ralph Murdac. He was now a very important man, Richard’s high admiral no less, and I had not had time to renew our acquaintance beyond a brief smile and nod.
Seated next to Sir Rob
ert was Sir Richard Malbête. The Evil Beast had a fresh pink scar all down the right side of his face, I noticed with great satisfaction, but other than that he seemed regrettably unchanged. His white forelock and splintered feral eyes were exactly as I remembered them, but it seemed that he did not remember me at all as, when our eyes met briefly, his blank animal gaze showed no flicker of recognition. I felt it would be unwise to stare so I looked away quickly.
There were also a handful of French knights present at the gathering, a gaggle of local prelates, and the governors of Messina, appointed by King Tancred, two creatures who called themselves Margarit and Jordan del Pin, a pair of nervous, shifty looking knights, richly dressed but who said little and watched the two kings unceasingly with dark, worried little eyes.
The governors had good reason to be nervous; Richard and Tancred were involved in a vicious dispute over money. I never completely understood the complexities of it, but it seemed that Tancred’s predecessor had promised Richard’s predecessor a large sum of money to support the great expedition to the Holy Land. Both were now dead, but Richard was insisting that Tancred make good old King William’s promise. Then there was the matter of Richard’s sister Joanna: she had been married to William and when he died, and Tancred became king, she should have been given a large sum of money, a dower, and allowed to live as she chose. Instead, Tancred had withheld the money and kept her in close confinement, virtually a prisoner. When Richard and his huge army arrived in Sicily, Tancred took fright, released Joanna, and sent her with a smaller sum of money to Richard. She was now lodged securely in great comfort across the Messina straits at the monastery of Bagnara on the mainland. Richard was still demanding the rest of the cash from Tancred and, with fifteen thousand men at his back, and yet more on the way, he made a very compelling argument. Some people have suggested - Robin for one, but that was how his mind always worked - that Richard’s bloody actions in the next few hours were merely a move in the chess game between himself and Tancred, with an eye to forcing the King of Sicily to pay up.
As the notes of Ambroise’s song faded away, and the courtiers smattered their applause, a small cloud covered the sun, and I could feel the true chill of October in the air. I got to my feet, picked up my instrument, and bowed low to the two kings - it had been arranged that I should perform next. As Robin had suggested, I stuck to the traditional: rendering the classic tragic poem of Tristan and Isolde quite exquisitely, I think, accompanying myself on the vielle with a simple but elegant tune I had devised that morning. You will think it merely the boasting of an old man, but I swear to you that I saw genuine tears in King Richard’s eyes as I bowed the last haunting chord.
The next performer was an old friend of King Richard’s: a grizzled warrior of fifty years, much hated by the other courtiers, and known as Bertran de Born, viscount of Hautefort, who had a reputation for raping his female servants and stirring up trouble between the great princes of Europe whenever he got the chance. He got up and launched into a long unaccompanied song in praise of warfare, all axes clashing and shields splintering, broken heads and pierced bodies, which ended ... ‘Go speedily to Yea-and-nay, and tell him there is too much peace about.’ In fact, the poem was rather good, a bit old fashioned but darkly funny and very stirring; and much as I disapproved of the old man’s trouble-making reputation, I could not fault his music.
‘Yea-and-nay’ was Bertran’s nickname for King Richard, something to do with his supposed indecisive-ness as a youth, which our sovereign lord seemed not to mind at all - but then they had known each other for a very long time. Afterwards, I did wondered if Richard and Bertran had secretly been in collusion because the moment his poem was done, a knight burst into the garden and, without the slightest ceremony, blurted: ‘The Griffons are rioting; and they are attacking Hugh de Lusignan!’
Hugh was one of the barons of Aquitaine, a vassal of King Richard’s and a member of a powerful family that included one of the claimants to the throne of Jerusalem. Hugh had, perhaps unwisely, taken up a comfortable residence in the old town of Messina despite the fact that tension between the pilgrims and the locals was running so high.
‘What!’ roared the King, leaping to his feet. To give him due credit, he did sound quite genuine in his anger.
‘Sire,’ said the messenger, ‘there has been trouble all morning, great insolence from the Sicilians, our men-at-arms pelted with stones. Then fighting broke out and now a large force of armed Griffons has surrounded Lusignan’s house and seems determined to break in and do murder.’
‘By God’s legs, that is enough,’ said the King. ‘To arms, gentlemen, to arms! We will teach these riotous dogs some respect for Christ’s holy pilgrims.’
He beckoned Robin, Robert of Thumham, Richard Malbête and the other knights. ‘There is no time to waste,’ he said. ‘Arm yourselves and gather what men you can. We will take this town in the time it takes for a priest to say Matins. Do not tarry: to arms! And may God preserve us all.’
The King then strode over to where Philip was still sitting, surrounded by his French knights. ‘Cousin, will you join me in subduing these insolent curs?’ Philip’s expression was blank. I could tell he was furious from his clenched jaw muscles - perhaps he too suspected that Richard was stage-managing the events - but he merely shook his head and said nothing. Richard stared at him for a moment, then nodded, turned on his heel and strode from the garden.
The speed and fury of Richard’s attack was truly astonishing. It might have appeared reckless, to attack a town of more than fifty thousand souls with no more than a handful of knights, but it proved an extraordinarily effective strategy. I was later to discover that King Richard was quite capable of subtlety in warfare, and subterfuge, finesse, and fine generalship, when it was appropriate, but what he loved most was a mad, all-out rage-fuelled charge, with himself in the lead, wading into the enemy with his great sword swinging, and slaughtering his foes by the dozen.
We gathered outside the monastery, some thirty armoured horsemen, ready to fight and die beside our King. I had struggled into a mail hauberk, crammed a plain steel cap on my head and strapped on sword and poniard, grabbing my mace as an afterthought, before mounting Ghost in the monastery forecourt — but I noticed that the King had dressed himself for war even more quickly. He was outside the big gates of the monastery, literally bouncing up and down in the saddle, urging his knights to ‘hurry, hurry, for God’s sake!’
We had sent off Owain with messages for the rest of the army to come and join us but King Richard was like a man possessed: he could not wait another moment for battle to begin. And, bizarrely, his haste made the task of capturing Messina far easier than it would have been if we had waited for the army to get organised and come up.
The King ran an eye over the handful of assembled knights, nodded, and said: ‘Right, let’s go and teach these scum some manners.’ And with that we were off galloping down the hill in a mad scramble towards the old town, the King in the vanguard, Robin just behind him and myself somewhere in the middle of the pack, with Little John beside me on a giant white horse, grinning with pleasure at the thought of imminent slaughter. I too was filled with a euphoric sense of excitement. For some reason, I felt that I could not die if I followed King Richard into battle, that somehow the sacred aura of kingly power that radiated from him would protect me. Absolute nonsense, of course: being in the King’s company was no safer than being anywhere else in a battle - quite the opposite given his reckless streak, if the truth be told.
Outside the main gate of the old town a mob of about four hundred Sicilians had formed up in what I can only assume they thought was a military manner on a small knoll. The Griffons were armed with a random assortment of weapons and armour, some with swords and spears, some with crossbows and round shields, some helmeted with leather caps, a few with large wood axes, some even carrying fishing tridents. They pushed and shoved at each other, and a dozen men, their leaders, I suppose, seemed to be shouting at the tops of their v
oices at each other and at their men and trying to squeeze the loose, unruly crowd into some semblance of order. I learnt later that they had planned to march on the monastery and hold the King to ransom. They would never have succeeded; they couldn’t even form up properly without jostling and shoving each other.
When Richard saw them he did not slacken his mount’s pace for an instant. He just shouted: ‘For God and Holy Mary!’ and charged straight up the hill and into the mass of Sicilians, whirling his sword in a near-berserk fury, hacking and stabbing, cutting down men and forcing his way yard by yard into that huge sea of confused humanity. And we all piled in right after him; thirty steel-clad knights at full gallop in a tight wedge, with Richard as the point. It was like an axe blade chopping into a rotten cabbage.
God forgive me, but I enjoyed that fight. Ghost leapt into the ranks of the enemy, knocking two men down with sheer momentum, and I skewered a third through the gullet on the point of my sword as we followed our battle-mad King into the fray. Little John was wielding his giant axe with terrifying skill to my left, cutting down foes with short controlled sweeps of the double-edged blade. I had my reins looped over the pommel and with sword in one hand and mace in the other, I lashed out left and right slicing into unprotected bodies and crushing skulls, controlling Ghost with my legs alone. The mace was a vicious weapon: a two-foot steelshafted club with a ring of eight sharp, flat triangles of metal welded to the heavy head; it had the power to punch through iron helmets and breach the skulls beneath. Swung at full strength against chainmail, it could easily break an arm or leg. I crushed the jaw of one man with an upward blow, then scythed the mace laterally at another man-at-arms, cracking into his temple. A great jet of blood sprayed in my eyes and I was momentarily blinded. I half-sensed, half-saw someone lunging at me with a spear from my right hand side and knocked away the point on pure instinct with my sword, then reversed the direction of the blow and chopped the blade down into his skull.