The King’s Assassin (11 page)

Robin got down from his horse walked across the space to the tall man and enfolded him in a warm embrace.

‘Godric, it warms my heart to see you,’ said my lord. ‘You know my friend Alan Dale, of course.’

I dismounted into a sea of smiling, grimy and oddly familiar faces – although I was certain I had never met any of them before in my life. It struck me then that I was looking at faces from my youth, the faces of the outlaws of my first terrifying days with Robin when I was no more than a penniless cutpurse on the run from the law.

Godric and his band welcomed us, and feasted us, after a fashion, on a thin stew made from a brace of wild hares, which in truth was mostly water and wild herbs. Robin had brought a sack of bread with him and a skin of wine, and the men – and now women and children, who appeared shyly from the undergrowth to join the throng – passed the skin around drinking greedily and fell on the loaves, tearing them apart and using the crusts to wipe their bowls clean of the last drops of the stew.

Then we all sat carelessly upon the grass of the clearing, while Robin questioned Godric about his doings, gently interrogating him about the possible identity of the ‘thieves’ who had broken into Kirkton. But it quickly became clear that neither Godric nor any of his people had the slightest idea about who could have been behind the so-called robbery. They had heard nothing and could offer no information at all about the identity of the attackers.

They were a poor, raggedy lot, lousy, very dirty and none too bright, but I could see that Robin felt completely at home with them. Indeed, his whole face seemed to change when he was talking with them, he seemed to become less careworn, less taut, and by some trick of the forest light a good ten years younger. Nevertheless, this band of outlaws did not seem either a very happy or healthy crew. Their skins were tight against their bones, their limbs were meagre and their eyes huge with habitual hunger; the children were for the most part stunted and sick.

Robin asked to see the wound on Godric’s arm, and at first the man refused. But after a good deal of coaxing, Robin got the fellow to unwrap the filthy bandage from around his right arm. Uncovered, it was a fearful sight: the hand had been crudely cut off at the wrist some weeks ago, by the look of it, and although the end of the limb had been cauterised with fire, the wound was an ugly greenish-purple colour, oozing fluid and I could see maggots writhing under the skin. The smell alone revealed the dire state of the infection.

‘How did you lose it?’ asked Robin. He took the last of the wine, added it to a bowl of boiling water and began very gently to wash the wound. Although Godric did his best to hide it, it was clear that even Robin’s light touch was excruciating.

‘I was careless,’ Godric said through gritted teeth. ‘It was in the deep woods near Mansfield and I had just run down a plump young hind with my two dogs. I thought I was alone and was beginning to gralloch the beast when I looked up and saw a Nottinghamshire deputy sheriff and a dozen of his men all around me on their horses. I suppose I must count myself lucky – caught red-handed with a King’s deer, I could have been hanged on the spot under the King’s damned forest laws. As it was, the deputy sheriff, a cruel bastard called Benedict, killed my dogs outright. He had his men slit their throats, Rollo and Blackie, right there and then. I had no chance to say goodbye or nothing. Rollo was wagging his tail right to the end.’

There were tears in the man’s eyes but I did not think they were a result of the pain he was enduring.

‘They took my hand, too. Held me down over a fallen tree and hacked it off with a sword. Said it was a lesson for me not to despoil the King’s lands. Said they were upholding the King’s law. But that Benedict, he was enjoying himself. Bastard.’

Godric had evidently finished his tale and Robin grunted sympathetically. But I was fascinated by the raw, handless limb. There but for the grace of God, I thought – once upon a time, I might have been this wretch with his putrefying stump.

‘The wound is bad, my friend, as you no doubt know,’ said Robin. ‘It must be cared for properly if you wish to live. I want you to go to Kirklees, to the priory a few miles north of Huddersfield – do you know it?’

Godric nodded. ‘But they will have no charity for the likes of me,’ he said.

‘They will. And the nuns there are some of the best healers in the country. Tell them that I sent you. Tell the Prioress Anna that you come in my name and I warrant that she will do her best for you.’

Kirklees. That was a name I had not heard for an age. And I had not been there for nearly ten years. I had thought I loved a woman, a radiant creature named Tilda who had newly joined the priory, and in the madness of my love I had asked her to be my wife. But I came to her with the blood of her father on my hands and she had scorned my offer and had sent me away with her insults ringing in my ears. Matilda Giffard – how I remembered her beauty: skin so pure and white it seemed almost like the palest duck-egg blue, glossy black hair, a heart-shaped face, wide mouth, small nose and blue-grey eyes. And her low, delicious, smoky laugh would arouse a dead man. I wondered if she still lived and if so whether the years had been kind to her. She would be nearly thirty now, and surely the bloom of her looks was long gone and she was now a dried-out nun, stern, severe, godly. A true bride of Christ.

It was time to go, but Robin seemed strangely loath to leave. He spoke with each of the men in the band, listening to their grievances, offering his solemn respect for the harshness of their lives, sometimes making a jest to raise a smile. As we collected our horses and made to leave, Robin slipped Godric a purse of silver pennies and told him that any man in his band, if necessity pressed him, might take a deer or two from his lands without fear of harm. Then he offered to take any able-bodied brave young man who sought adventure into his service as a man-at-arms.

Godric thanked him but demurred. ‘We are people of these woods, my lord,’ he said, embracing Robin once more, ‘we are not warriors. We’d be sorely out of place in a fine castle. This is home; we shall not leave it unless the sheriff forces us out.’

As we rode back to Kirkton, both Robin and I were quiet, cantering easily side by side through the gathering darkness. My lord spoke only once. ‘We have travelled a long, long road, Alan, you and I,’ he said as we reined in to look up at the cheery lights of the castle on the crest of the hill. ‘We can never truly go back down it.’

Three days after that afternoon with Godric’s band, Robin asked me to accompany him again when he went hawking with his son Hugh. We had a good day’s sport – a brace of mallards and a fat roebuck – but I could not help thinking of the hungry folk of the woods and that dampened my pleasure a good deal.

We were walking our tired horses down in the Locksley Valley by the river, heading west back towards Kirkton with the hunt servants, the dogs, the equipment and the silent hooded hunting birds trailing behind us, when Robin opened his mind to me.

‘I cannot understand it, Alan,’ he said, ‘Godric and his friends have made enquiries from Derby to Doncaster and they report that everyone claims utter ignorance of the men who attacked us. I’ve even offered a reward. Nobody knows anything. I am at a complete loss.’

I too had been pondering the mystery.

‘Have I told you about the sheriff of Nottinghamshire’s depredations on Westbury?’ I said. ‘His men stripped the place almost bare while we were away. His armed men forced their way in and took my livestock, grain, my silver…’

‘You did tell me, Alan, and I am sorry for it, but could we discuss that later.’

‘No, no, you misunderstand me, my lord. I can deal with it perfectly well on my own. I meant only to say that Philip Marc has been ordered by the King to raise money by any and all means in Nottinghamshire – by force, if necessary. I was merely going to ask you how things stood with you and the sheriff of Yorkshire.’

Robin stared at me in astonishment.

‘You think … You think these were the sheriff’s men?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But it is a possibility, isn’t it?’

‘I used to get on fine with Roger de Lacy, when he held the office. Remember him from Château Gaillard, Alan?’

‘How could I forget,’ I said. Robin and I had taken part in the bloody siege of Château Gaillard some ten years ago, and Roger de Lacy had been the mule-stubborn but somewhat heroic castellan of the castle, under whose banner we had fought.

‘Well, de Lacy went off to quell the Welsh a few years back. Then we had another fellow in the post, FitzReinfrid, who was harmless enough. But he was removed – corruption I think, or incompetence, or maybe he just fell foul of the King. I don’t know the new man. I’ve been away too much in recent years. He’s a Percy, I’m told; Richard, or Roger, I think, and he was appointed a few months ago.’

‘His name is Robert de Percy, Father,’ said a voice from behind us.

Hugh moved his mud-spattered horse up between Robin’s mount and mine and the boy continued in his quiet confident voice: ‘He is a young fellow, eager to make his mark on the world, and he has a good reason to hate us – or at least hate Mother.’

‘What is this?’ Robin had gone pale. ‘Why would anyone hate your mother?’

‘It might be nothing at all,’ said Hugh. ‘I am merely following up Sir Alan’s thought that these villains who attacked us might be the King’s men. De Percy came to Kirkton some months back – you were away in France – with a royal demand for tallage. Mother let him in the castle, and Miles and I entertained him as best we could. We gave him meat and wine, looked after his horses, housed and fed his men – and then Mother examined the demand for tax in close detail.’

‘Why am I only hearing about this now?’ said Robin.

‘We thought it of little account,’ said Hugh. ‘The demand was for a preposterous amount, ten thousand marks, and Mother spoke to the sheriff quite sternly. She said that we had already paid our taxes for that year. And we had paid an additional amount in scutage for your absence from the King’s host. And she said she had even made a voluntary loan to the King of several hundred pounds in silver. Then she showed him the receipts she had obtained from the clerks of the King’s exchequer for all these payments and told him that his demands were outrageous, even criminal, and that he ought to be ashamed of himself coming to her home in this way and badgering a poor defenceless old lady while her husband is away at war.’

Robin smiled. ‘Your mother is a fine woman, Hugh,’ he said, ‘never forget it.’

‘I was very proud of her, Father. She sent him off with his face glowing with shame. And, just to be certain, Sarlic and his bowmen lined up on the castle walls as the sheriff was leaving, with a few of our local village boys kitted out with spare bow staves to swell the numbers a bit. Miles and I put on full armour and exercised with a dozen lads in borrowed hauberks in the courtyard. It wasn’t a subtle message to the sheriff – but it was a perfectly clear one. We will meet any force with force.’

‘He has not returned since?’ Robin said.

‘No, but word of his humiliation has spread,’ Hugh said. ‘I heard a jongleur in an alehouse in Sheffield singing a rude ditty about the affair. It describes Robert de Percy as a naughty schoolboy being scolded by a great lady for his greed. He will have heard it, too, no doubt, and I doubt he loves Mother much as a result.’

I was impressed by Hugh’s tale. I could easily imagine Marie-Anne standing up to the young Robert de Percy, her blue eyes flashing as she scolded him like an errant child, finally dismissing him and sending him forth from the castle empty-handed, with his tail between his legs. For a brief moment, I wished that Baldwin had shown a similar strength of character at Westbury when the sheriff’s men came to call.

‘What do you think, Alan?’ said Robin.

‘I think she’s a magnificent woman.’

‘Yes,’ said Robin drily, ‘but if you could tear your thoughts away from my wife’s magnificence, do you think this Percy creature could be behind the attack?’

‘I think it’s quite possible, even probable,’ I said. ‘He might hope to intimidate Marie-Anne into paying up, and at the same time have seized a few valuables as a compensation for his hurt pride. But there is no way of knowing for sure.’

‘There is,’ said Robin quietly. ‘I shall pay him a visit with Little John. And I will discover whether this is the man who thinks he can bully my wife.’

There was something about Robin’s tone that sent a shiver down my spine.

‘Would you like to come with us, Alan?’ he asked.

I looked at my lord and saw that his eyes were the colour of wet slate.

‘I cannot come with you, my lord,’ I said. Although what I truly meant was that I did not wish to. I did not wish to see Little John tear the skin from this ambitious lordling or rip out his fingernails in an attempt to get at the truth.

I said: ‘I’m sorry, but I must return to Westbury to prepare myself for Alnwick.’

The moment I said these words I regretted them. I had said nothing of my invitation to Eustace de Vesci’s castle, and nothing of my vow to commit regicide.

‘Alnwick?’ he said. ‘Alnwick – oh, Alan, what have you done?’ My lord was nothing if not quick off the mark. ‘You have become entangled with de Vesci and those other fools, haven’t you? What does he want of you?’

‘Ah, ah … I am to play music at a feast there. That is all. A little poetry for his guests.’ I’m not a natural deceiver and Robin, who was, shook his head in disgust.

‘You are lying to me,’ he said, not angry but rather sad. ‘I think I know why. You have accepted the commission they offered me, concerning the King.’

He glanced behind him to see that the servants were out of earshot. ‘Alan, do not be a fool. Do not do this thing. These people would use you. They will make you their tool and then allow you to shoulder the full blame for the crime. Do not do this deed, I beg you. You will bring disaster on us all.’

‘I am simply going to Alnwick to make music,’ I said stiffly. But even to my own ears the falseness of my words was horribly obvious.

Robin and I did not speak again for the rest of the ride home and, as my lies had made things uncomfortable between me and my lord, that evening I made up my mind to return to Westbury.