Outlaw oc-1

by Angus Donald

  And, at that moment, I hated him. Before then, he had been an annoyance, and someone to avoid, but at that moment all my emotion distilled into poisonous concentrated hatred: I hated Guy with true ferocity. I wanted, not so much his death, as his total annihilation; a wiping of his being off the face of the Earth.

  The French musician’s name was Bernard, as I discovered the next day in an interview with Hugh after the noon meal. To my joy, Hugh told me that Robin had arranged that I should become Bernard’s pupil. The Frenchman would also take over as my language teacher from Hugh, as I was far more advanced than the other students, and Bernard had also been charged with giving me lessons in arithmetic, geometry, astronomy. . and music. I was ecstatic, bubbling with happiness: I would spend all afternoon listening to wonderful music, and learning how to make it myself, and, best of all, I would be away from Guy and Will for hours at a time.

  I found Bernard in the small cottage he had been given about half a mile from Thangbrand’s farmstead in a small clearing in the greenwood. I walked there on air, dizzy with joy at my prospects, mingled with some trepidation: would I prove worthy of this great man? Hugh had let slip that separate living quarters had been a condition of Bernard’s acceptance of the job as my tutor. He was a fastidious man, Hugh said, and he would not sleep in the hall with all the other flea-bitten outlaws.

  He did not look particularly fastidious when I encountered him that fine early autumn afternoon, to present myself as his pupil. He was slumped on an up-ended sawn-off log outside the semi-derelict cottage; his tunic, the fine silk one from yesterday’s performance, was only half buttoned, and had what looked like dried vomit down the front. He had lost one of his shoes and, as he strummed his vielle with his fingers, he giggled softly to himself, swaying on his seat. The day before I had seen him a God-like figure, courtly lover, master of music, creator of beauty: today he was ridiculous.

  ‘Master Bernard,’ I said in French, standing in front of him as he sat there head drooped over his vielle, fingering the strings. ‘I am Alan Dale, and I have come to present myself to you as a pupil at the orders of my master, Robert Odo. .’

  ‘Shhhhhh. .’ he slurred at me, wagging a finger rapidly in my general direction. ‘I am creating a masterpiece.’

  He amused himself on the vielle, playing little ripples of music and occasionally appearing to nod off for a few moments, before jerking awake. I stood there for perhaps a quarter of an hour and then he looked up and said clearly: ‘Who are you?’

  I repeated: ‘I am Alan, your pupil, and I have come to serve you at the orders-’

  He interrupted me: ‘Serve me, eh, serve me? Well, you can bring me some more wine, then.’

  I hesitated, but he waved me away shouting: ‘Wine, wine, decent wine, go on, boy, go on, go on, go on. .’ So I went back to Thangbrand’s, stole a small cask of wine from the buttery when nobody was looking, brought it back on a barrow. Then I helped him to drink it.

  As my tutor in arithmetic, geometry and astronomy, Bernard was a disaster. In fact, as I remember, he never even mentioned the subjects. But he did improve my French, as it was all we spoke together, and he did teach me music, God be praised: he taught me how to construct cansos and sirventes, love songs and satirical poems, how to tune and play the vielle, how to extend my voice, to control my breathing and many more technical tricks of his trade. He was a troubadour, or more properly, since he came from northern France, a trouvere, and his joy, he told me, was to play and sing for the great princes of Europe; to sing of love; the love of a humble knight for a high-born lady, to sing of l’amour courtois, courtly love, the love of a servus for his domina. .

  That afternoon, as we drank the wine, and I scrubbed the dried vomit off his tunic with a brush, he told me his life’s story. He was born in the county of Champagne, the second son of a minor baron, who served Henry, the count. He had loved music from an early age, but his father, who did not care much for music or for Bernard, had disapproved. However, bullied by Bernard’s mother, he had arranged for his training with one of the greatest trouveres in France, and had found him a place at the court of King Louis. From the first, Bernard confided in me, he was an enormous success — great ladies wept openly at his love songs, everyone guffawed at his witty sirvantes, which mocked court life but never went too far. Louis had showered him with gold and jewels. Everybody loved him; life was good; and for a gentil young man of fine looks but no fortune there was the hope of a good marriage to one of the plainer ladies of the court. It was a glittering life: hunting parties, royal feasts, poetry games and singing competitions. But, like many a young buck before him, Bernard over-reached himself. For, as well as a deep adoration of music, he also loved, and almost to the same extent, wine and women — and it was this last pleasure that had led to his downfall.

  Bernard — young, handsome, funny and talented — was very popular with the ladies of the court. Several ladies, married and unmarried, had admitted him to their bedchambers, but he had kept his lovemaking light and retained his freedom from commitment to any one lover. But then he fell in love. He was utterly bewitched by the young and lovely Heloise de Chaumont, wife of the ageing Enguerrand, Sire de Chaumont, a noted warrior much esteemed for his preux or prowess on the battlefield by King Louis.

  ‘Ah, Alan, my boy, she was perfect, she was beauty made flesh,’ Bernard told me, and his face gave a little twist of pain. ‘Hair like corn, huge violet eyes, a slender waist swelling to generous curves. .’ Here Bernard made the usual gesture with his hands. ‘How I loved her. I would have died for her — well not died, but certainly I would happily have suffered a great deal of pain for her. Well, not a great deal of pain, some pain. Let’s just say a small amount of discomfort. . Ah, Heloise; she was the very air in my lungs, the breath of my life.’ He took a huge gulp of wine and wiped away an oily tear. ‘And she loved me, Alan, she truly loved me, too.’

  For several weeks the lovers enjoyed a passionate affair and then, inevitably, Enguerrand discovered them.

  The Sire de Chaumont had been out hunting with a royal party in the woods around Paris. His horse had become lame early in the morning and so he had returned, unexpectedly, to his apartments in the palace, thinking that he might return to bed and enjoy a little sport with his young wife instead. He entered his wife’s bedchamber to discover Bernard naked and with an enormous erection striding up and down in front of Heloise’s bed, playing his vielle and reciting a scurrilous ditty about the King. The lady, also naked, was in fits of hysterical laughter when Enguerrand burst through the door. Unfortunately, the Sire de Chaumont had also removed his clothing and he too was in a state of obvious arousal. Then Heloise did the wrong thing, she carried on laughing. She looked at the two naked men, one young, one old, both now with fast-shrinking erections, and she howled with laughter.

  ‘Of course, there was no comparison,’ Bernard informed me with pride. ‘He might have been a lion on the battlefield but, for the bedchamber, he was equipped like a baby shrew.’ Both men left the chamber at speed. Bernard grabbed his clothes and was out of the window in a couple of heartbeats. Enguerrand retreated to the antechamber to collect his dignity and summon his men-at-arms.

  ‘It was not funny, Alan,’ said Bernard sternly, as the tears rolled down my cheeks. ‘It all ended very sadly. The Sire de Chaumont had Heloise beheaded — really, in this day and age, beheaded for adultery — and he challenged me to single combat; and when I refused — I only like to wield my sword in bed — he sent his assassins to murder me. My father said he could not help me; I only escaped with my life by fleeing France and coming to this miserable rain-drenched island. And — can you believe it? — he pursued me even here! He has set a bounty on my head of fifty marks and had his noble friends in England declare me outlaw, me Bernard de Sezanne, the greatest musician in France, un hors-la-loi.’ He fell silent, pitying himself, and so I poured him another cup of wine.

  Every afternoon, after the midday meal, I would walk out to Bernard’s cottage a
nd we would explore music. It was a wonderful time and I learnt more about life and love and music and passion in those few months than I had learnt in my whole life. It was an escape from the grind of Thangbrand’s, but only a temporary one. I had to return each evening to the hall and the petty bullying of Guy and Will. Wilfred had gone: packed off to an abbey in Yorkshire. Robin had arranged it. But Wilfred’s departure meant little to me; he had never been a real part of my world, more like a ghost drifting through the human world awaiting his call to a more spiritual life. Apart from my few hours each day with Bernard, life at Thangbrand’s seemed flat, unchanging: chores, dull meals, battle practice, more chores. . and long hours trying to sleep in the hall while the men-at-arms snored about me.

  But, despite appearances, things were changing. For one, my body was changing: I was growing taller, and the battle practice was filling my thin frame with muscle; hairs appeared in private places on my body and my voice cracked and wavered, sometimes in a girlish pipe, sometimes a masculine growl. Bernard thought this was very funny, and would imitate my squeaking and booming. But in our singing lessons he began to teach me the male parts of songs. I was becoming a man, physically, at least. And when we practised swordplay on the exercise yard I remembered the blond man I had killed, and squared my shoulders, and scowled at Guy across the rim of my shield. I still ended up in the dust, of course.

  There were other small changes too. Our settlement was growing. Young men, sent by Robin, had drifted into Thangbrand’s in ones and twos over the summer. For the most part, they were unprepossessing: often malnourished, exhausted and with an air of desperation. But Thangbrand welcomed them, fed them and, when they had rested, they joined us on the well-swept yard for battle practice every day. Soon there were ten of us, fifteen, twenty in a line; swinging swords or using spear and shield in combination, learning battle manoeuvres, drilling endlessly, while an exasperated Thangbrand roared at some unfortunate newly arrived vagabond: ‘No, you fool, it’s a war spear, not a ox goad. Don’t poke with it, you are supposed to be stabbing a man, not tickling him. God save us all from plough-bred peasants!’

  Not all the newcomers joined us in this farcical display. The men with greater than average physical strength were trained to the bow: lifting great weights all day, rocks and sacks of grain to condition their muscles, and shooting yard-long ash arrows at round straw-filled targets a hundred paces away, not always with the greatest of success. Those men who could ride, and had brought their own or stolen horses, were trained separately, too. I was taught to ride properly by Hugh, who soon had me galloping around a paddock, jumping over small hurdles with my arms folded across my chest, gripping the horse only with my knees. He trained the cavalry contingent, too. They would gallop, with a blunt lance couched under one arm, at a quintain: a horizontal pole with a target shield at one end and a counterweight (usually a bag of grain) at the other. The pole was mounted on a vertical post and when the shield was struck from horseback by the lance the contraption would rotate at high speed and the bag of grain could sweep an unwary horseman off his seat as he rode past. Guy was fascinated by the quintain. He would watch the men practising for hours and, strangely, when they were knocked out of the saddle, though the other onlookers guffawed and wiped away tears of hilarity, Guy never did. At the end of one training session, he begged a horse for an hour and tried it himself. Of course, like all the other novices, he was tumbled into the dirt by the heavy swinging bag of grain every time he charged the machine. But he didn’t give up. He worked out that speed was the essence; he had to be moving fast enough to avoid the sweep of the counterweight, but at high speed it was difficult to hit the target shield with your lance and you risked horse and rider crashing into the stout wooden block if your lance didn’t jab it out of your path.

  I thoroughly enjoyed watching Guy being hurled from the saddle again and again to thump into the turf of the cavalry training field. But I also felt a grudging respect. He never gave up. After each tumble, he got up, brushed the dirt from his tunic and hose, recaptured the horse and climbed stiffly back into the saddle. By the end of that first session he had managed, once, successfully to hit the target and, admittedly with a dangerous sway of his body, had ridden clear, raising his lance in triumph and shouting his victory to the greenwood. Within the week he was able to gallop past, striking the shield cleanly and with considerable force, without the swinging counterweight coming anywhere near him.

  He was improving with the sword, too. Almost in spite of Thangbrand’s plodding teaching methods, Guy was becoming skilled on the exercise yard. When we paired off to practise sword combat, instead of the furious storm of blows that used to batter at my defences, Guy was showing craft, cunning even. He feinted, made mock-lunges, kept me off balance and then struck; knocking me sprawling with the flat of the blade and then holding the sharp tip at my throat and demanding surrender. He no longer cursed me or tried to hurt me in petty ways on the exercise field: he was taking it seriously; not me, but the practice of war. And he was good at it.

  Thangbrand noticed it and began getting Guy to demonstrate particular sword and shield manoeuvres, with me as his partner. A pattern emerged: a cut or two, a clash of shields and I’d be sprawling on the ground. One day, knocked on the flat of my back for the twentieth time, I felt a great weariness in my bones and I couldn’t bring myself to get to my feet as the session ended. I just lay there listening to the sounds of the other men and boys leaving the yard: the ribald laughter, the clatter of arms, a curse or two and then blessed silence. I continued to lie there, staring up at the blue summer sky above, when a voice spoke.

  ‘You are not all that bad, you know,’ it said. ‘You are not strong yet, it’s true. But you are quick — very quick, I believe. The problem is that you don’t move your feet. You stand like a woodsman trying to chop down a tree. Your enemy isn’t a tree. He’s a living, breathing, fast-moving, fighting man. And, if he knows how to move his feet, he’ll kill you.’

  It was a good voice, mellow and mild but with comforting depth. I turned my head and looked up at Sir Richard at Lea standing there blocking out the sunlight. He held out his hand and I scrambled to my feet.

  Sir Richard had recovered well from his injuries. I had noticed him exercising with some of the other men-at-arms; I’d even seen him take a tilt at the quintain, and, of course, he struck the target beautifully dead in the centre and cantered on unscathed. He was just marking time, really, waiting for Sir Ralph Murdac to raise the money for his ransom. But there seemed to be some delay, I didn’t know what. He could have escaped any time he wished; he wore a sword, had been allocated a horse, and he was almost entirely healed. But he was a gentleman, a knight, and he had given his parole to Robin.

  ‘Watch my feet,’ he said. And, drawing his sword, he executed a few elegant passes, moving lightly on the balls of his feet, back and forward on the exercise yard. It looked simple; half steps back and forward, side to side, a large quick pace before the lunge. Then he drew a circle in the dirt about a yard wide and gave me his sword. ‘I’ll stay in this circle,’ he said. ‘Try and hit me.’

  ‘But I might hurt you,’ I said. He just laughed.

  So he stood unarmed in the dirt circle and I lunged halfheartedly at him with his sword. He moved easily, casually, out of the way of the blade. ‘Come on, try harder,’ he said. I lunged again, faster this time. He moved nimbly once more, dancing out of the way. I struck as fast as I could: a snake-quick stab at his heart. He merely twisted his body to avoid the blade. I could see how he thought this would play out, and it irritated me: I’d poke at him, the clumsy boy, he’d give a manly guffaw, and skip lightly out of my path. I was well fed with such humiliation, so I hacked hard and suddenly at his head; he ducked only just in time. Then I held the sword with two hands and, with a swirl of real anger in my gut, I swung it as hard and fast as I could at his middle. If the blow had struck his waist, it would have sliced into his body and half severed him. He stepped forward, lightning fast, t
o the edge of the circle, caught my double handed grip on the hilt with his left hand, half-blocking my swing, his right foot was outside my right foot, his right hand was under my left shoulder, shoving hard — and I was tumbled into the dirt once again. ‘You are quick,’ said Sir Richard, ‘angry, too. That’s good. A man needs his anger in a fight.’ He helped me up again. ‘Now it’s your turn,’ and he nodded towards the circle in the dirt.

  And so Sir Richard at Lea, the renowned and noble knight, taught me to move my feet. For the rest of the morning, and then every morning after Thangbrand’s battle practice for the next few weeks, I stood in the dirt circle as Richard lunged, swiped and hacked at my dodging body. He attacked slowly at first, building the basic foot movements into my mind, so that they became second nature. Then he would speed up, even try to take me by surprise. After a month, he let me use my sword to defend myself and he started by teaching me the basic blocks, and after a while some more complicated patterns; but, he emphasised again and again until I was sick of hearing it, it was my feet that mattered.

  As Sir Richard and I practised in our dirt circle, we were often watched. Bernard, come to collect his daily rations from the hall, would lounge against the side of the building, grinning as I swiped at Richard and missed or was tumbled into the dust. And most days little yellow Godifa would stand solemn-faced by the edge of the practice ground and gaze at us as I sweated, and skipped, grunted and lunged on the exercise yard. She never said a word and always by the end of the session, at noon, when Richard and I would go and drink a pint of ale together in the buttery, she was gone.

  I enjoyed the after-exercise drink as much as the sword-work itself. Sir Richard was taciturn at first, though perfectly amiable. But gradually I began to learn a little about him. He was more than just an ordinary knight, I discovered. He was a Poor Fellow-Soldier of Christ and the Temple of Solomon: one of the famous Knights Templar. They were the elite forces of Christendom, trained for many years in all forms of arms to become perfect killing machines for the glory of God. I was being taught to use a sword, it slowly dawned on me, by one of the best soldiers in the world. The previous year, Sir Richard told me, he had been one of the few Templar Knights to escape the massacre at Hattin, when the infidel Saladin had smashed a Christian army and murdered hundreds of Christian knights who had been taken prisoner. Later that year, Saladin had captured Jerusalem itself and the Pope had ordered a new expedition to free the Holy City from the hordes of Islam. Sir Richard had been sent back to his homeland to preach Holy War to the English and help King Henry raise forces for the great battles to come in Outremer.