Warlord (Outlaw 4) (39 page)

Robin had a rendezvous in Portsmouth in a few days’ time with Little John, a company of his Sherwood archers, and the rest of King Richard’s newly raised troops, and this fresh contingent was planning to take ship and assemble in Barfleur by the end of August. ‘You really should come with me, Alan,’ Robin said in a more affectionate tone, as we sat over our wine in the main hall long after the rest of the household had gone to bed. ‘The King has been asking for you: he misses your music, apparently. And you can’t just mope here for the rest of your life. I take it that you are now fit enough for a campaign?’

I nodded miserably, and it was true: my chest had completely healed, and on the rare occasions that I did my duty by Thomas
and engaged him in a lesson in swordcraft or on horseback with the lance, I found that my old skills, so hard won, had not deserted me. It was not my body that was ailing, but my soul. I struggled to explain to Robin the terrors that my night-time mind threw up, the deep currents of rage and fear that washed through me every day; with the only respite an ever-increasing tide of wine in the evening and a few hours of drowned oblivion. It was hard to tell my friend and master of these things: we were men, and warriors, and I hated to admit my weakness to anyone and particularly to someone whom I admired so much. And when I had finally revealed my sorry state to him, I thought I saw pity in his eyes, and that made me feel even worse. I felt a flare of red rage, and it was only with difficulty that I managed to keep a spew of angry insults behind my teeth.

‘I have known several brave men who have been plagued with this condition,’ said Robin softly, perhaps sensing my rage. ‘It is a soul-sickness of a kind that falls on a warrior who has seen too much of the raw face of battle. In each man, the illness and its cure is different. But you are not alone in this suffering, my friend, although I’m sure you must feel that you are. What does Tuck have to say about this matter?’

I saw then that Robin’s pity was, in truth, compassion.

‘Tuck says that I must have sinned greatly, and that God is punishing me – and perhaps he is right, there is much blood on my conscience. The Lord knows I have harvested many souls and not all of them deserved death at my hands. But I have done penance, as Tuck suggested, and prayed until my knees were numb, yet still I cannot find peace.’

‘Well, give it time,’ Robin said. ‘And rest here until you feel strong enough to take up arms again. I will say to King Richard that your wounds are not completely healed, which is true, in a way, and while he will miss you – as will I – he will not wish to embarrass us by enquiring further.’

And then he changed the subject and told me of the doings of our King in France since my return to England. ‘He’s a restless soul, is Richard,’ said Robin. ‘He cannot bear to be in one place for long: we’ve held court at Alençon, Tours, Poitiers, Chinon and Le Mans all in the past six months. Oh, and he has found time to buy a very pretty country estate for himself and his wife Berengaria at Sarthe, near Le Mans – though God knows when he will have the leisure to enjoy it. There is no end in sight for this war, as far as I can tell. The sides are equally matched and neither King will yield territory willingly. Still, it keeps our beloved sovereign happy – and out of mischief!’ Robin grinned wickedly at me, a sliver of silver in his eyes, and I made an effort to smile back.

‘Is there any news of Brother Michel?’ I asked. I seldom thought of the Master in the daytime, but he was a regular attendant to my half-dreams in the long hours of night, standing over my bound body and shouting curses.

‘None,’ said Robin, with a grimace. ‘I make enquiries, occasionally, but he seems to have completely disappeared. No one has seen hide nor hair of him, anywhere. Even in the far south, apparently.’

He took a frugal sip of his wine, and looked at me out of the side of his eyes. ‘Your old friend Mercadier is in high royal favour, though.’ An image of that scarred and brutal figure flashed into my mind; the phantom mercenary seemed to be sneering at my weakness. ‘He’s flourishing, in fact, quite the hero of the moment. He and his men have just taken the castle of Issoudun in Berry for the King – and by the way Richard talks about him, you’d think that scar-faced brute was the risen Christ.’

I shrugged. I did not care for Mercadier, but while I was fairly certain that he had killed Brother Dominic, I could not raise the proper amount of outrage in my heart that this crime warranted. I shrugged again.

‘And Prince John is back in favour, too,’ Robin continued. ‘Richard has restored to him the counties of Mortain and Gloucester, and there is talk of making him Richard’s heir. So far, he seems to be behaving himself. But then, after last time, Richard was not so foolish as to grant him possession of any actual castles.’ Robin chuckled. ‘But he can now strut about calling himself the Count of Mortain and the Earl of Gloucester. To be fair, he does seem to have learned his lesson, and there has been no hint yet of disloyalty. But my point is, Alan, we need you in France – our enemies are prospering and growing more powerful. So as soon as you feel able, come south and join us, I beg you.’

And with that he went to bed. I did not. I sat up late, burning a precious candle and drinking the rest of the wine.

Chapter Twenty-one

Robin left the next day, and with him went his men-at-arms, Marie-Anne, the two children and Father Tuck, her personal chaplain. I found myself feeling strangely resentful at their departure, and barely managed a civil farewell at the gate. Westbury seemed deserted without them, the courtyard quiet, the hall echoing and empty. Goody wept when her friends left and for some unfathomable reason I felt slightly awkward to be alone with my betrothed.

After Robin’s departure, I descended into a great, dark melancholy, which did not recede for many long months. My spirits had been temporarily lifted by the presence of hard fighting men and true friends, but when they had gone, I felt their absence like a hole in my soul. I also felt the shame of a coward, a warrior who has heard the trumpet call and refuses it, a man who has, in effect, deserted his comrades in the hour of battle.

Autumn came, and the ripe apples and pears from the orchard were gathered in, the hedgerows delivered up their purple bounty, and Goody made fools and puddings and crocks of preserves; and in November we slaughtered the pigs and salted the meat for the winter and made long loops of sausages and huge earthenware pots
filled with brawn. But none of these normally joyous occasions could bring my soul back from the depths of despair. How Goody put up with me, I do not know: but she did – for a while.

She and Thomas and Baldwin worked ceaselessly to keep Westbury running smoothly, and myself diverted from my black moods. But sometimes I had had enough of their healthy company and their cheerfulness, even that of my lovely Goody – and I would retire into my chamber with my vielle and bar the door, saying that I wished to compose something special, only emerging after several days, unshaven, hungover, having come up with barely a line or so of bad poetry, to empty my piss-pot and seek more wine. In those dark months, I occasionally even wished that Sir Eustace had ended my life when he stabbed me with the lance-dagger; and one night in December I found myself sitting naked on the end of my bed, shivering with cold and holding my misericorde in both hands, the sharp point resting on the right-hand side, the heart side of my chest, opposite and level with the pink ridge of scar tissue on the left, summoning the courage for one hard final thrust. In the end, I was just too damned cold to kill myself, and merely buried myself under furs and blankets, weeping and swearing that I would do the fatal deed in the morning.

At dawn, after another sleepless night, I knew that I could not end myself. I was not yet twenty-one years old, and I told myself that I had to hold on, I had to hope that this Devil-sent soul-sickness would lift. I prayed to God, on my knees in that cold, foetid bedchamber, stinking of old wine, ancient sweat and farts, that one day I would regain my joy, and afterwards, after beseeching God to save me from my own despair, I did feel a little better.

Christmastide came and went; I drank my way through the entire season, sitting for hours alone by the fire in the centre of the hall, and sipping at mug after mug of warmed wine. In truth, I remember little of that time, although I do recall that, even fogged by wine, those short grey days and long tortured nights of late winter seemed
to last an eternity. I was dimly aware of the other members of the household continuing with their daily tasks: Baldwin overseeing the demesne as if I were not there, which was true, in one sense, and Thomas exercising Shaitan and taking command of the dozen men-at-arms who now lived with us – once Robin’s men, but now, I dimly assumed, mine. I fed them, anyway, and housed them, and stabled their horses; and Thomas exercised with them and took them hunting on my lands to keep them fit for battle.

One washed-out morning in March, Goody came to me. I was sitting in my favourite X-shaped chair outside the entrance to the hall, watching the chickens scratch about in the dirt of the courtyard and thinking about a young English servant boy I had murdered in the Holy Land – God forgive me, I had cut his soft, white throat while he was tied and helpless. And, although it was long past dawn, I was still dressed in an old sweat-stained chemise, one that I had been wearing for many days and nights, and I was wrapped in a tattered blanket against the chill and sipping my customary morning mug of wine.

‘I’ve had enough,’ Goody said, without preamble, and I blinked up at her like a newly awakened owl. ‘I have been waiting for you to say something about the matter since before Christmas, and now I’ve had quite enough. I’ve had enough of your moping, your silences, your drunkenness, and your bottomless self-pity. And whether you like it or not we are going to end all that right now. I am holding you to your word: we shall be married at Eastertide. There has been no sign of Nur for nearly a year now, and I will not stand for any further delays. Baldwin and I will make all the arrangements: your job is to pull yourself together and turn up, clean, sober and cheerful, at the church. Do you think you can do that, my darling husband-to-be?’

I was astounded by the change in my betrothed: her normally loving violet eyes were sparkling like cold blue gemstones, her mouth was a grim line. I knew that she had a fearsome temper,
but she had never directed it at me before then. I merely gawped up at her, and then recovered myself enough to dumbly nod.

Goody reached out and pulled the mug of wine from my unresisting grip. ‘For a start,’ she said, ‘no wine in the mornings. You may have a drop with dinner, if you must, but otherwise you will drink ale, well-watered, like the rest of us before noon. And get yourself to the bath-house, you smell like a month-dead polecat. You are embarrassing yourself, and me, in front of the servants, not to mention your tenants in the village. Go on now, and if you can’t cheer up at least wash up.’

‘How dare you—’ I began.

Goody brought her head closer to mine; her brilliant eyes bored into mine, and she said quietly but in a voice trembling with passion: ‘Alan, my dear, I do love you, but you
will
do as you are told – do you hear me? I want a real man as a husband, not a sweat-stinking sot and, so help me, I will have one, even if I have to fetch Baldwin and Thomas and some of the men to hold you down while I scrub you sober myself.’

I was so surprised by her new demeanour towards me that I was rendered speechless. Which, I believe, was a very fortunate thing. I do not like to think what would have happened if I had defied her. And so I ordered the servants to prepare a piping-hot wooden tub in the wash house, soaped and scrubbed myself thoroughly, dressed in suitable clean clothes, and made an effort to wear the mask of a happy, carefree fellow.

I should like to tell you that Goody’s irresistible words cleansed my soul of its malaise, and that after that I was a different man: cheerful, sober and filled with purpose. I should dearly like to tell you that. But the world does not turn in that way, at least not for me, and I have vowed to tell the truth on these pages.

I did make much more of an effort, though, to appear happy and normal; I rose early each day, whether I had slept or not, and I realized that my fondness for wine had passed an acceptable point,
and banished the fruit of the vine from our table except at great feasts. But I was not cured; the soul-sickness lingered, filling my bones with lead, my stomach with vinegar and my head with bloody horrors. At the end of each long, dreary day, sober, sad and exhausted, I would retire to my chamber and huddle beneath my blankets, staring at the white plastered wall by the feeble light of a wax-dipped rush, both dreading and yearning for sleep.

Baldwin and Goody made all the arrangements for the wedding. Easter was late that year and we were to be married the week after it on the last day of April. But two arrivals to the neighbourhood in that crisp spring month blew all our plans apart like cobwebs in a gale.

In the first week of April, a dusty messenger arrived from Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury, Papal Legate and the Chief Justiciar of England. Walter was the man who held the country for Richard while the King did battle against Philip’s forces in Normandy. I knew him by sight as a short, wide, muscular bishop, the kind of man who was equally at home slaughtering his foes from the back of a horse or delivering a solemn address in an incense-wreathed cathedral. He had a reputation across Europe as an able administrator, a ruthless ruler and a man utterly loyal to King Richard.

His messenger was a tired knight I had never met before, and whose name, I am ashamed to say, now escapes me. His message was simple: Richard needed more knights for the war in France, and all those landed men in England who owed him service were being summoned by Hubert Walter to a muster at London in May. The new force was expected in Normandy at the beginning of June. I held three English manors of the King in the West Country, the manors of Burford, Stroud and Edington – I held Westbury, of course, from the Earl of Locksley – and also in theory the manor in France now occupied by the black-headed French knight and his son: I had little choice. Like it or not, I was going back to war.