Warlord (Outlaw 4) (11 page)

It was a good plan, clear and simple: and despite their reservations about splitting the army, the barons recognized it as such. Sancho, the heir to the King of Navarre, a small country on the far side of the Pyrenees, was King Richard’s brother-in-law. He had been a staunch supporter of Richard since his marriage to Sancho’s sister Berengaria in Cyprus three years ago. While the Lionheart was imprisoned, the Spanish warlord had guarded the southern flank of Richard’s huge dukedom of Aquitaine, battling restless local barons who had been encouraged to revolt by King Philip.

Loches was a powerful fortress with a massive keep, the stone walls of which were reputed to be twelve foot thick. It had been held time out of mind by the counts of Anjou, Richard’s forefathers, and was the key to the County of Touraine, guarding the frontier with the King of France’s territory in the centre. Quite apart from the issue of family pride – which had been badly dented by its loss – our King could not ride south to reconquer the rebellious parts of Aquitaine so long as Loches remained garrisoned by scores of enemy knights, like a dagger at his back. He had to take it as the first step in subduing the south – pride and practicality, for once, marching perfectly in step.

So, in the sunny courtyard of Verneuil, the barons reluctantly accepted Richard’s plan to split the army and began to confer with him individually on various points of detail – such as which castles should be reduced first, which could be safely ignored, which territories should be ravaged, known areas of enemy weakness, the numbers of men and horses, quantities of fodder and supplies, spare weapons, siege engines and the like that they might take with them – and all the crucial minutiae of warfare. Meanwhile, Robin dispatched Little John and myself to prepare the Locksley men for travel.

For in the morning we would march south. To Loches.

* * *

There was a final episode to my time at Verneuil, a strange and chilling event that set my mind racing. On the evening before our departure for the south, I called into the makeshift infirmary to bid farewell to Father Jean de Puy and to thank him for being so generous with his memories.

I walked into the stable block and scanned the lines of wounded men on the straw-strewn floor, some asleep, others gently moving and moaning – cursing their injuries, or calling for their wives or mothers. There was no sign of Father Jean. I brought water to a few of the men who requested it, talked quietly to a pair of injured men-at-arms who were awake and in only moderate pain, and waited a full hour for Father Jean to return. It was most unlike him, I thought, to neglect his charges for so long.

After turning over and over in my mind the mystery of the priest’s absence, I determined that I would search the castle to see if I could discover his whereabouts. And it did not take long to find him – or what remained of him.

I found Father Jean lying behind the stable block, huddled in a narrow space between the rear of the infirmary and the dirty-grey stone wall of the castle. His face was bone white, his eyes were half-open, yet he looked strangely peaceful. He was dead, of course, and, as I reckoned it, he had been so for several hours. He had been stabbed in the chest; there was a deep puncture wound a little to the left of the sternum, caused by a single thrust directly into the heart. Jean de Puy had been murdered; killed quickly and quietly by what I judged to be an expert hand.

Chapter Six

It took until mid-morning before King Richard’s column was ready to march. We were about three thousand souls – proud knights and their harassed squires, scarred men-at-arms, broad-backed archers and gaudily dressed crossbowmen; rough-tongued
routiers
and refined priests, long-nosed chaplains and pungent friars, raw-fingered washerwomen and saucy, giggling whores – butchers, bakers and candle-sellers, pardoners, fortune-tellers, beggars, black-smiths and jongleurs … men and women of all ranks and every calling. And at the apex of this heaving, seething mass of jostling humanity stood the King and his senior barons and his household knights. Inevitably the column would be a slow-moving one: King Philip’s captured trebuchets, mangonels and onagers swelled Richard’s already far more impressive siege train of a dozen heavy pieces of stone-throwing artillery. Thirty-foot high and constructed of foot-thick oak beams, these machines were affectionately known as the ‘castle-breakers’ and were attended by a swarm of experts as well as the sappers, miners, carters and the common ox-herdsmen of the siege train. The main column would only move as fast as the slowest trebuchet ox-team, pulling the heaviest piece
of artillery, and even then a wagon might be stuck in a morass of mud or lose one of their massive solid oak wheels and the entire column must wait for it to be repaired or rescued before the march could resume.

I was happy, therefore, that Robin’s men formed their own column in the vanguard of the King’s army. My Lord of Locksley had orders to send men on ahead to scout out the land and report intelligence back to the main column. He knew this land, as did I, having travelled through it four years ago on our way to the Holy Land.

Robin had brought reinforcements with him from Yorkshire: another hundred and fifty men, once again mixed archers and light cavalry, and all well mounted. And when my advance troop, those who had survived the siege of Verneuil or who had been only lightly wounded, was rejoined to Robin’s command we numbered more than two hundred fighting men. Robin had banished the hangers-on from our column, and the baggage and better-quality horses – including my beloved gelding Ghost and Shaitan my destrier – remained with the supply train of the main army. I rode a fast courser belonging to Robin, a horse better suited to rough riding and scouting work than my two more valuable warhorses. We were to be an exploring column, a light, fast-moving unit whose task it was to see what was beyond the next hill, report back to the King and his advisers, relay messages, and warn them of any trouble.

We were heading south-west, along the line of the River Avre, and we would soon cross that natural barrier and enter the realm of Count Geoffrey of the Perche, a vassal who had renounced his allegiance to King Richard and sided with Philip. Geoffrey was now our enemy and the troops had the royal licence, as long as they did not stray far from the slow-moving column, to raid farms, empty barns, and collect domestic beasts – in short, to steal anything that they wanted while we travelled through his territory.
We did not expect to meet the count and his forces; they were holed up down in the south at Chateâudun and Richard did not want to waste time in reducing the minor castles of the county. His thinking, Robin told me that morning, was that Geoffrey was a trimmer who would always go with the prevailing wind. If Richard were in the ascendant, then Geoffrey would come back to our side. There was no need to squander men, resources and valuable time in reducing his fortresses when, if we triumphed in the south, he would come meekly back into the fold anyway. And Richard harboured no personal grudge against the man – Geoffrey was Philip’s cousin, after all, and while Richard was his lawful lord, his lands bordered on those of the French King. A victory in the south was what we needed, Robin said, not petty vindictiveness against a man who, anyway, would have had little chance of resisting the might of King Philip’s armies.

The sun shone brightly as we rode, but a keen wind prevented the day from becoming oppressively hot, clad as we were for battle in heavy mail and helmets. I had spoken to Robin about Father Jean’s death before we left Verneuil, and he had informed the King, but there was no time to make a proper enquiry. So the great column had departed, lumbering its slow way south-west, leaving Sir Aubrey de Chambois to recover from his crossbow wound with a fresh garrison of men-at-arms and two experienced masons whose task it was to repair the castle’s walls. Sir Aubrey had been shocked by Father Jean’s death – and he had vowed that he would make all the necessary enquiries and discover whatever he could about the murder. But I had no high hopes that he would uncover the man who had killed my father’s old friend, and I said as much to Robin as we crossed the River Avre by a mossy wooden bridge and rode into the foothills of the County of the Perche.

‘I think you are right, Alan,’ said my lord. He seemed distracted that bright morning, almost fidgety. ‘I fear we shall never know
who killed the man. And perhaps it would be best to put the matter from our minds.’ And then he fell silent, shading his eyes to scan the forested country ahead.

I was puzzled by his answer. ‘Surely we should seek justice for the poor fellow?’ I said. ‘He was a good man, a fine priest, and he did not deserve such an ignoble end.’

‘He was a priest, yes – so surely you believe that he is in the Kingdom of Heaven now. So he’s happy, isn’t he?’

I was a little taken aback by Robin’s words; I had long known, and indeed it was an open secret among his friends, that Robin was no Christian – indeed, he often mocked the Church – but I did not expect him to be so offhand about murder. I bit my lip, and Robin, sensing my discomfort, glanced over at me.

‘I have no objection to justice as a general principle,’ he said, giving me a half-smile, ‘so long as it does not greatly inconvenience me. But he was not one of our men, nor kin to any of us, and so I see no reason why we should be concerned about punishing his murderer.’

I opened my mouth to protest, and then closed it again. Robin and I had had this conversation many times before and I knew well his position. His philosophy was as brutal as a butcher’s cleaver. He entertained no notions of a fair and just common-wealth of mankind; he considered such a notion a childish fantasy. Robin’s view was that a man had a duty only to protect those around him: his family and the men and women who served him or whom he served. He called this small group of souls his ‘circle’ or his
familia
– anyone inside it was to be protected with all his strength and resources, and I knew that he would readily give his life for anyone in that charmed ring. But anyone outside that circle – strangers, enemies, even fellow countrymen with whom he had no connection – meant nothing to him. It was a point we had differed on in the past: I felt that Christ’s teachings, indeed the whole essence of the idea of Christendom, of
civilization itself, was that all men were members of a whole, beloved by God, and all deserved mercy, justice and the chance of Salvation.

‘Well,
I
should like to see Father Jean’s killer caught and punished,’ I said, somewhat lamely.

‘Perhaps he will be, perhaps he won’t. We do not gain or lose from it, so far as I can tell.’

I found Robin’s disinterest irksome, and for some reason I could not stop myself adding: ‘I wonder whether there might have been anything more he could have told me about my father’s death.’ Although in my heart I was certain that he had had nothing further to divulge.

Robin looked at me sharply – he knew all about the shadowy ‘man you cannot refuse’ and my quest to find him. ‘Alan,’ he said, ‘I understand why this is of interest to you, but I must urgently counsel you not to pursue this matter. Your father is dead, he has been dead for ten years; Sir Ralph Murdac killed him; and Murdac is dead – you
must
let this go. I promise you that no good will come of raking over the past. You will achieve nothing – and you may well disturb something evil that is better left in peace. Now, be a good fellow, take a dozen men and sweep that covey yonder: it’s a likely spot for an ambush.’ He handed me a small polished cow’s horn with a silver lip-piece. ‘Give three blasts on that if you get into any trouble, and we’ll come running to save you.’

He gave me a not-altogether pleasant smile as I looped the thong attached to the horn over the pommel of my saddle, but I had the sense to keep silent. And for the next two hours, accompanied by a band of mounted archers, I thrashed through the dense under-growth of a small wood, scratching my face and hands, and my poor horse’s hide, on brambles and branches, fruitlessly searching for foes that Robin and I both knew were not there.

The next day, Robin, it seemed, was in a better mood. As we rode along through the hilly, green and surprisingly tranquil countryside
of the Perche, he gave me the news from home. Marie-Anne was as delighted as he was to be pregnant again: ‘She’s glowing, Alan – I mean absolutely radiant – and already becoming plump. I think it will be a boy; a fine tall son for me to leave behind when I’m cold in my grave.’

Robin already had one son – a sturdy four-year-old called Hugh, but there was a secret about his birth that was never mentioned in my lord’s presence. Hugh was the true child of Sir Ralph Murdac. This erstwhile sheriff of Nottinghamshire had raped Marie-Anne and got her with child, yet Robin had publicly acknowledged Hugh as his own son – indeed, he made it clear that he would instantly kill anyone who suggested otherwise. And I admired him deeply for this act of compassion. It was a measure of his love for Marie-Anne that he took her to wife despite the fact that she had been despoiled by Murdac’s touch, and that her son Hugh was not truly his. Even so, it was clear that he was elated to have another child that was his own blood beyond a shadow of doubt.

‘And I have had a letter from our old friend Reuben,’ Robin continued. ‘He has left the Holy Land and settled in Montpellier to study medicine. He writes that he has a fine big house with a large herb garden, and hints that he has formed an attachment to a local widow. He’s trading a little too, he says, with the Moors of Spain.’

‘Not frankincense?’ I asked. Reuben, a tough, dried brown stick of a man, was a Jew who until recently had managed Robin’s lucrative frankincense concerns in Gaza.

‘No, not frankincense,’ said Robin. ‘Leather, spice, precious metals … Reuben is now a wealthy man, you know. Somehow, I can’t see him settling down and growing fat just yet; he has a restless spirit that will not take its ease. But I may be wrong.’

‘Tell me about Goody – was she well and in good spirits when you last saw her?’