by Angus Donald
We camped out that night, in a hollow in the rocks, and feasted on roast wild boar. I was not badly hurt, just bruised on shoulder, arm and chest, and a little embarrassed to have so nearly lost a wrestling match with a pig. Little John put a slightly cruder interpretation on it. ‘God’s bulging loins,’ he said after he had hauled the limp, blood-smeared animal off me, an effort even for someone of his great strength. ‘I knew you were a horny young devil but I never thought you would get so desperate that you’d fuck a giant pig to death. Bless my sullied soul, what will you young people think of next...’
It hurt to laugh - the pig’s thick churning forefeet had badly scraped and bruised my ribs, and every muscle above my waist was shrieking in protest - but I did so; I was alive and relatively unhurt, and I thought I detected a brief light of genuine concern in Robin’s eye as he helped me to my feet and patted me down briskly to check for broken bones. I thanked William profusely: but for his timely intervention, I said, the beast would have got its tusks into me and I’d be dead. ‘He lo-lolooked as if he was going to ea-eat you whole,’ said William; he seemed, if anything, more shaken by the incident than me.
‘What happened to the nets,’ Robin asked Carlo. ‘The pig came straight through them as if they were cobwebs.’ The huntsman looked slightly abashed, but shrugged, ‘Maybe they fall down,’ he said. ‘Maybe they not strong enough for him.’ He shrugged again, and spread his hands, palms up. ‘Maybe God He decided to make a hunter’s test for this young one,’ he said and nodded at me. There seemed to be nothing more to say on the subject.
We made a jolly supper-party that night on the hillside; a thousand glittering stars made a bright canopy above us and, filled with sweet fatty pork seasoned with wild thyme and washed down with a skin of wine that Little John had had the foresight to bring, it felt as if I was back in Sherwood in the happy days at Robin’s Caves.
When we had all eaten and drunk our fill, and were dozing happily by the fire wrapped in warm cloaks, Little John stood up slowly, spread his massive arms wide and intoned in a slow, doleful voice: ‘On earth there’s a warrior of curious origin. He was created, gleaming, for the benefit of men. Foe bears him against foe to inflict harm. But women often fetter him, strong as he is. And if men care for him and feed him frequently, he’ll faithfully obey them and serve them well. But this warrior will savage anyone who permits him to become too proud. What is his name?’
Little John was famous for his riddles; he had told them in the Caves in Sherwood and in the hall at Kirkton Castle, and we had much enjoyed his skill in describing a common everyday object, but using a clever, often misleading play on words to describe it. This riddle, however, was too easy; I knew the answer immediately but decided to stay silent while the rest pondered John’s words.
‘Is - is it a dog?’ asked William. He had one-eyed Keelie at his feet and he was idly stroking her golden head.
‘A good guess,’ said John. ‘But not what I had in mind.’
‘I have it,’ shouted Will Scarlet excitedly, ‘the warrior’s name is fire.’ And he was rightly applauded for his perception.
‘Your turn to tell one, then, Will,’ said Little John. And Scarlet furrowed his brow for a few moments. Finally he said: ‘A chest with only one side, is a seat for a mother; it hides her treasure of gold, but it’s just a bite for another.’
This too was a simple one, old as the hills, as well - it is an egg. The chest with only one side is the shell; the mother hen sits on the egg, which contains a golden yolk, a fine bite to someone else to eat.
I suspected that we all knew the answer - the egg was one of a handful of favourite subjects for riddles - but everyone pretended not to, so that Will Scarlet could enjoy our puzzlement, until finally young William gravely provided the answer. And so it was then his turn. He took a deep breath and gripped his own fist to control his stammer and said: ‘I am alive but do not speak. An-anyone who wants to can take me captive and cut off my head. They bite my bare white body. I do not ha-harm anyone unless they cut me first. But then I soon make them cry.’
This was one I had not heard before. And the riddle was strangely chilling, with its talk of cutting off heads and biting bare white bodies. For a while we all mulled his words but I’ll freely admit I had no idea what William could mean. Robin, however, was not so easily defeated: ‘What make you cry? In my experience it is usually a woman, but in this case ... Ah, yes. White body, you can bite into it, but it makes you cry ... it’s an onion!’ We all roared out approval and toasted him with the wine. And so it went, riddle after riddle, until lulled by the wine, the meat, and the gentle moaning of the wind in the rocks, sleep claimed each one of us, one by one.
The winter months passed slowly but peacefully in Messina. Each night I slept with Nur in my arms and my command of her language grew - as did hers of the French, which was the common language of the army - until we could understand each other in tolerable fashion. One night she told me of her life before we had met - and it was a terrible tale. She came from a small village not far from the coast near the Christian city of Tyre; one day two years ago the village had been raided by Cilician pirates and she had been captured along with many of the young boys and girls of the village. They had been beaten and raped, bound and taken north to the pirates’ stronghold near Seleuca. When they arrived there, the boys were cut to make them eunuchs but, to her surprise, she had been treated with a rough kindness. However, when she had tried to run away, an Arabic symbol, a small sort of squiggly backwards L, had been branded on her ankle with a hot iron, and she had been kept thereafter in a locked harem of twenty or so the girls. It was there, at the tender age of thirteen, that she was taught to please men in the many delightful ways that she now used to pleasure me. I felt a stab of guilt that my present joy should have come from such a brutal source - but she reassured me: ‘Alan,’ she said, ‘I have never willingly given myself to a man before now. And if my past pain can make you happy today, then I am glad to have suffered it.’
After six months or so in the harem, she was sold to a band of Frankish knights who wore white surcoats with the red Christian cross. I knew that the Templars were involved in the slave trade all around the Mediterranean, although they claimed that they never enslaved Christians, but I was a little shocked and saddened that they had been involved in my beautiful girl’s sordid tale. However, as Tuck was often fond of pointing out, God moves in mysterious ways, and it was through the offices of these Knights of the Temple of Solomon that she had come to me. The Templars had sold her on to a merchant in Messina, who traded in incense and silk and spices, and though she had expected to be passed on again, he kept her and a handful of other girls for his personal pleasure. That is where I had found her, in the big ransacked house in the old town. Malbête and his men had broken into the house on that night of havoc, had killed the merchant and his servants outright, but had howled with glee when they saw the quality of his harem. She had watched, speechless, nearly driven mad with terror, as the men-at-arms tied the girls to the whipping posts and raped and tortured them in turn ...
I stopped Nur’s mouth with my hand at this point; I did not want to hear any more.
‘Why are men like that?’ asked Nur, after a while, in a sad, puzzled tone. ‘We give them pleasure with our bodies, we serve them food and clean their homes and bear their babies; why should men wish to treat us this way?’
I had no answer, except to say that not all men were the same. ‘You have suffered so much, my darling, and endured so much cruelty, but now you are safe with me, under my protection and under that of my master Robin, and I will never let anything bad ever happen to you again.’
Throughout the winter, Little John and I continued to take turns to spend the days with Robin, restricting the number of people who could get to him, and I began to understand what a complicated business running a small army of four hundred men really was. Each day there were dozens of decisions to be made, punishments and rewards to hand out and rations to
be provided for the troops - we had long since eaten all the stores we had brought with us from Yorkshire.
Robin bought vast quantities of corn and barley from merchants in Messina with King Richard’s silver and each day our own millers and bakers ground meal and baked hundreds of loaves of bread for distribution. We had brewers too who made the ale that was another vital part of the daily fare and that as well had to be served out to the men in exact amounts. Then there were the rations of cheese and meat - fish on Wednesdays and Fridays; fruit and vegetables and dried peas and beans, but all of this was handled very efficiently by Little John and his team of burly quartermasters and I had not much more to do than relay messages from the men to Robin. He would make a decision - over a dispute between two men, or about a request to increase the ale or bread ration, or about which conroi or squad of archers would to do sentry duty that night, or go foraging for game or firewood - and I would relay his verdict to the captain or vintenar concerned.
I was still no nearer to finding out who the would-be assassin was, but there were no more attacks on my master, and it seemed as if the policy of isolating Robin from the men was paying off. He and I went and made music with the King on several occasions, sometimes with the other troubadours present, including Ambroise and the odious Bertran de Bom, and sometimes just the three of us. I could tell that the King had a real liking for Robin’s company and I believe that he was fond of me, too. I had helped him to shine with his verses, to look good in front of an audience at the Christmas feast and, in my experience, this is one of the easiest ways of making any man - prince or pauper - feel warmly towards you.
However, things were not going well for the King with regard to his royal cousin Philip Augustus. The French King had been trying to turn Tancred away from Richard and there had been much whispering, and many secret meetings in which Philip had urged Tancred not to trust Richard. Our King was understandably annoyed with his boyhood friend for this treacherous behaviour but he arranged a private meeting with Tancred, gave him lavish gifts and solemn promises, and managed to convince the shaky Sicilian monarch that he meant him no harm. However, there was a much more serious event on the horizon - a genuine cause for resentment on King Philip’s side - that threatened to capsize the Great Pilgrimage before it even set sail from Sicily for the Holy Land: the King’s impending marriage to Princess Berengaria of Navarre.
In early March, we heard rumours in the camp that the King was bringing a beautiful princess from northern Spain to Sicily with an eye to marrying her. It was a move that many in the army approved: Richard was going into battle for the cause of Christ, so it made sense to secure a bride, and perhaps beget an heir, before he risked his life in combat with the Saracens. But the fly in the ointment was that, for more than twenty years, Richard had been betrothed to Alice, the sister of the King of France. Alice was a sad woman: she had been a guest at the English court for so long - since Richard was a little boy, in fact - that she had a certain shop-soiled quality. When she was a nubile teenager, King Henry, Richard’s father, had seduced her to his bed. After a few years he had grown bored with her and abandoned her. And Richard, who was formally betrothed to her, had tactlessly declared that he would rather be damned for all eternity than marry a woman who had been his father’s whore.
I could understand Richard’s point of view. I should not care to plough the same furrow as my father, but marriage for kings is an act of statecraft and his fastidiousness made things even more difficult with King Philip, who had been urging Richard to proceed with the marriage to Alice. Richard politely demurred and as time went by this became the biggest cause of the ill-feeling between the two monarchs. Now the news was out that Richard was bringing another bride to Sicily, a Navarrese princess. And King Philip now declared that he was furious at his family’s humiliation at the hands of not one but two kings of England.
As usual, there was an easy way to mollify the proud French king. Richard sent him a gift of ten thousand marks in gold when his betrothal to Berengaria was publically announced, and our King had the good sense not to publically flaunt the fact that his bride-to-be, accompanied by his mother, Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, was en route to Sicily.
However, Philip had still grumpily declared his intention to leave with all his troops for the Holy Land at the end of March so that he would not be present when this affront to his sister’s honour arrived in Messina.
King Philip of France and four great ships sailed slowly out of Messina harbour on the last day of the month, to the cheers of Richard’s entire army, which had been assembled by direct order of the King to wish their brother warriors of Christ a fair voyage to Outremer. The next day a small but richly appointed ship arrived, discreetly bearing Princess Berengaria of Navarre, Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine - and my old friend and erstwhile musical mentor Bernard de Sezanne.
I had not seen Bernard for a year and a half, and while I had grown taller and filled out my frame, he had not changed in the slightest except that, as Queen Eleanor’s much admired trouvere, he was far more richly dressed than when he had been my musical teacher in our outlaw days. In fact, he was something of a popinjay in crimson and green hose and a crimson and gold embroidered tunic. He wore a magnificent velvet hat that looked like a large loaf of Sicilian bread with a long sweeping feather that arced out of the side. Beside him in my drab brownish-green tunic and hose, and travel-worn grey hood, I felt dowdy and pedestrian.
I took him to The Lamb, the tavern in Messina where I regularly met with the other trouvères. Having delivered Berengaria safely, Bernard and his mistress Queen Eleanor were leaving Sicily in a day or two to return to England, and I wanted a chance to talk to him before they left. The tavern provided the two things I knew that Bernard would require for a successful evening: large quantities of wine and a musically appreciative company. Little John was on duty with Robin and so I was at liberty. Bernard and I got to the tavern early; the sun had not yet sunk below the mountains of the west, so I could be sure of some time alone with my friend before the rest of the pack of musicians arrived.
‘Well, young Alan,’ said Bernard, smiling kindly, ‘you look more like a rough soldier every time I see you. I hope you have not given up the musical life.’ He was looking at the sword and long poniard that hung habitually from two thick leather belts at my waist. I assured him that I had not, and I could not help but boast a little about my popularity with King Richard, and his respect for me as a singer. ‘So does life in this great swarm of would-be martyrs suit you?’ he asked. I allowed that it did, and told him of my new-found prowess with the lance; I was in the middle of a tale of heroic success at charging the quintain when I noticed that his eyes had become dull and glazed, and swiftly ended the story, ordered more wine and changed the subject. ‘And how are things in England?’ I asked.
‘They are not good, Alan, to be honest, not good at all,’ he said, and sighed. His demeanor was sad but I sensed something; perhaps a small amount of joy at being able to deliver bad news. ‘The country is deeply uneasy with Richard away; each baron is fortifying his castle, the towns are building strong walls. The Welsh are making trouble, too. But the main problem is that little Willie Longchamp, the King’s Justiciar, is loathed by absolutely everybody and he can’t seem to control his own household, let alone the country. He is an awful little man - no music in him at all - but Richard did make him Justiciar and you would think he would therefore be able to command some respect; but it is seems not and his authority is now being seriously challenged by - guess who? - Richard’s royal, if not loyal, brother John.
‘Our stay-at-home princeling now swanks about the land in a quite preposterous regal style, with his own justicar, his own royal court, a chancellor, royal seals, everything - and his servants talk openly about John being the next king, if Richard were to die while on this pilgrimage. It’s quite ridiculous when everybody knows that little Prince Arthur is Richard’s acknowledged heir. It’s not good, Alan, with the King out of the country, there’s
no one to keep these ambitious little toads in line ...’ and he broke into a line of poetry:
‘As the earth grows dark when the sun departs,
So a kingdom is diminished by the absence of its king.’
He took a long swig of wine and wiped his mouth on his gorgeous crimson sleeve. ‘And I have worse news,’ he said, lowering his voice. ‘I went to see the Countess of Locksley to pick up a letter she wanted me to give to Robin, and I found her in a terrible way. Oh, she’s fine in her health and looks, and she keeps up a noble front, but she’s very unhappy.’
He paused and I realised that he had been waiting to deliver this piece of bad news since he met me at the harbour side.
‘Go on,’ I said neutrally.
‘Well, there are these dreadful rumours about her, which are being spread by that snake Ralph Murdac, appalling rumours, the worst kind, and totally untrue, of course, but they worry her and she fears they will reach Robin’s ears.’ He was only just managing to conceal his glee at having such a delicious piece of gossip to impart.
I leaned into him, frowning: ‘What rumours,’ I said. I could feel myself growing angry. ‘What rumours, Bernard?’ I said louder in a hard tone of voice. Bernard looked at me. ‘Don’t get upset with me, Alan, I’m just the messenger, I’m not the one spreading them; I haven’t told a soul. But people are talking.’