by Angus Donald
Also by Angus Donald
Outlaw
Holy Warrior
King’s Man
Warlord
Grail Knight
The Iron Castle
The King’s Assassin
Ebook short stories
The Hostility of Hanno
The Betrayal of Father Tuck
The Rise of Robin Hood
Copyright
Published by Sphere
ISBN: 978-1-4055-2590-9
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 Angus Donald
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Maps drawn by John Gilkes.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
Sphere
Little, Brown Book Group
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
www.littlebrown.co.uk
www.hachette.co.uk
Contents
Also by Angus Donald
Copyright
Dedication
Maps
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Part Two
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Part Three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Epilogue
Historical Note
Acknowledgements
To all the readers who have joined me on this ride – and who know that it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey – my love and thanks to you all
Part One
I humbly pray that whomsoever wishes to read these parchments in the years to come shall indeed be able to do so, for in parts my falling tears have caused the black ink to run and the words to mingle together on the page. I am not a lachrymose man, I believe, but this tale is filled with so much sorrow that it would make the angels weep – yet also laugh, perhaps, and maybe even rejoice in the courage, strength and resourcefulness of mortal men. The words contained herein are not my own, they have flown to me straight from the mouth of Brother Alan, one of our most venerable monks here at Newstead Priory, and it has been my task to copy them down as faithfully as I am able.
Brother Alan is too frail now to write himself. Indeed, he is very close to death and spends nearly all his days in his cell, wrapped in blankets and furs, despite the first warm breath of spring in the air. And yet his mind is still clear and his memory sharp. Some might argue that this task is beneath my dignity – I am after all the Prior of Newstead, in the county of Nottinghamshire, and lord of a community of a dozen monks and a score of lay workers and servants – but Christ taught humility and Brother Alan was the man who taught me my letters when I first came to this House of God nearly ten years ago. I have never forgotten his kindness and now that I have been elevated above my fellows, I shall endeavour to make some repayment of that debt.
Christ also taught us to hate the lie – and I must not pretend that I undertake this task solely from piety and gratitude. Brother Alan’s past as a knight, as one of the most renowned fighting men of his day, and the stories he tells of battle and bloodshed, of comradeship in combat, give me a thrill of pleasure that is not entirely godly. Yet I believe I am doing God’s work in recording his story, for it sheds light upon the last years of the reign of King John and the accession of our beloved Henry of Winchester, his son and, by the grace of God in this blessed year twelve hundred and forty-six, our sovereign lord and King – long may he reign over us.
This work also aims to reveal the stark truth about the crimes and contributions of another great man, one who was Brother Alan’s friend and comrade for many years, about whom much has been said and sung, and most of that false, up and down the land. To expose these lies and calumnies – that is God’s work, indeed; as it is to reveal the true nature of this strange man, the rebel baron who fought for an evil King, the former outlaw who used the law to bring justice to the land, the unrepentant murderer and thief, the loving father and loyal husband, the friend of the poor and champion of the oppressed. It is the Lord’s will, I do earnestly believe, that the whole truth shall be known at last about the man called Robin Hood.
Chapter One
The square bulk of the keep of Rochester Castle thrust upwards into the twilight, ominous as a vast tombstone, and cast a long black shadow over the outer bailey, the cathedral beyond the walls and the sprawling smoke-wreathed town around it. From my post, at the centre of the old wooden bridge over the River Medway, the keep was almost due south and about three hundred paces distant. Shading my eyes from the glare of the westering sun off the water, I caught the silvery glint of the sentries’ helmets as they patrolled the battlements, and on the dark, eastern side of the massive stone walls, the first slivers of candlelight leaking from arrow slits.
It was a forbidding fortress, one of the mightiest in England, built to guard this crossing of the river on the road from Dover to London, the most direct route an invading enemy would take to attack the largest and richest city in England. Yet the castle’s dominating stone, its implacable solidity, was of great comfort to me. Battle was surely coming – a day or two, a week at most, and it would be upon us in all its blood and agony and fury, and then, when the arrows began to soar, the steel to scrape and men to scream in pain, I knew I would be more than grateful for the castle’s twelve-foot-thick walls that climbed a hundred feet into the air.
The east wind was freshening, wafting a light mizzle from the cold waters of the estuary a couple of miles behind my back, and I pulled the damp green cloak tighter around my shoulders. My stomach gurgled unhappily – it must surely be almost time for supper and my relief – and I rubbed my reddened hands together and stamped my numb feet. By night’s fall I should be snug in the guardhouse on the southern side of the bridge – there would be hot mutton broth and fresh bread and butter, a cup of warm spiced wine and the company of old friends. But where the hell was Sir Thomas Blood? The sun was already squatting on the western horizon.
I looked hopefully to my left towards the stout two-storey wooden box arching over the planks of the bridge on the southern bank. Was I imagining it or could I already smell the broth? A pair of thick-set men in green cloaks, long yew bows in their hands, were propped against the rail staring silently over the water, vacant as cows at a
gate. I looked right, past the piles of boulders, each roughly the size of a human head, collected below the rail in little cairns of three or four rocks every ten feet, and saw a young, slim, fair-haired swordsman, similarly green-cloaked, fifty paces away at the northern end of the bridge. He leaned over the rail and lowered his head, and I saw a gobbet of spittle shoot from his mouth and disappear below. Perhaps inevitably, echoing up from underneath, came the faint roar of a complaint, its maker at first unseen from my vantage point. A slim rowing boat emerged, heading upstream, with a red-faced bald fellow mopping his pate and shaking his fist at the handsome young devil laughing above him.
‘Don’t do that, Miles,’ I bellowed. ‘It’s churlish, it’s unseemly … it’s plain disgusting, for God’s sake.’
The young man turned to look at me. His long, lean face seemed lit from within, like the All Souls’ candle inside a hollowed-out turnip, illuminated by a mischievous almost child-like delight.
‘I’m bored half to death, old man,’ he shouted back. ‘Bored as a boy-loving eunuch in an all-girl brothel. Surely our watch must be over by now. Besides, that baldy fellow sells bad fish. He’s a cheat. Father says so. That basket of carp he sold us yesterday was mostly mud, skin and bones.’
His father, of course, was my lord, the Earl of Locksley, my old friend Robin, who on this chill October day was, no doubt, sitting in the warmth of the guardhouse toasting his boots by a brazier. But, even if Miles’s father had not been my lord, I would have been loath to scold the youngster – despite him daring to call me an old man. Not only because I liked his irreverent high spirits, which cheered the hearts of our whole company, but also because he was a fine fighting man in his own right, a quicksilver fiend with a blade and utterly fearless in the storm of battle.
Apart from the angry fisherman, now pulling away at a pace, leaving a string of ripe insults in his wake, the river upstream was as placid as a pond. A few ancient craft lay hauled up on the slick banks and two old salts sat on boxes, their heads bent together, knitting their nets slowly, rhythmically, from time to time pausing to pass a leather bottle between them. I turned around, full into the cold breeze, the drizzle spitting directly in my face, and looked towards the curve of the river where it disappeared into the low pasturelands. Nothing but slow brown water and low grey fields, and a few scattered sheep casting monstrous shadows, as the sun nestled down behind me. Not an enemy in sight. Not a sniff of danger either. I could have been safe and snug at home in my manor of Westbury in Nottinghamshire rather than doing sentry duty on a mist-sprayed bridge in the flatlands of east Kent.
I heard a discreet cough. ‘Sir Alan,’ said a deep voice behind me and I turned to behold a short, powerfully built, dark-haired knight in full mail, helmet under one arm, smiling up at me.
‘About time, Thomas,’ I said. ‘About bloody time. All quiet. Nothing to report. This godforsaken bridge is all yours.’
As I stepped into the guardhouse, I saw my lord seated at the long table in the centre of the room, spooning the last drops from an earthenware bowl. A battered, soot-blackened steaming cauldron had been placed in the middle of the board, next to a basket of bread, a jug of wine and a stack of crockery.
‘Report?’ said Robin.
‘There is nobody out there,’ I replied, reaching for a bowl. ‘If John really is coming here, he is taking his own sweet time about it.’
‘Oh, the King is coming all right,’ said Robin cheerfully. ‘He has to. His new men, his Flemings, will surely cross the Channel and land at Dover, and we bar the route to London. He must take Rochester, if he wishes to take London from the Army of God. And he must take London if he wishes to win this war.’
The so-called Army of God, under the command of the less-than-saintly Robert, Lord Fitzwalter, did indeed hold London. Robin and I had stormed the walls for him just over three months ago and as a result we had captured the capital and been able to force the King to set his seal on a great charter at Runnymede, a document that was supposed to guarantee the rights of free Englishmen for ever. But, despite solemnly swearing to abide by the charter, calling for peace in the land and renewing the oaths of loyalty with his barons, the King had renounced the agreement a mere handful of weeks afterwards. The Pope in Rome, at the King’s behest, had damned the charter, too, as shameful and illegal and had excommunicated all the rebel barons.
We had struggled and suffered and bled for that square piece of smoothed calf skin, and wrangled day and night over the terse Latin words it contained. Yet despite Robin’s insistence that by forcing the King’s hand we had struck a blow for liberty that would be remembered for generations to come, I sometimes wondered what all the strife and bloodshed had achieved. If it had, in fact, achieved anything at all. King John, that cowardly, murderous snake, had simply ignored the great charter and spent thousands of pounds in tax silver recruiting fresh mercenary troops from Flanders and northern France. War had broken out again almost immediately between the rebel barons and the King’s new continental hirelings.
Nevertheless, our position was not hopeless. Since the sealing of the charter, many English barons who had previously been fearful of resisting the King had rallied to our cause – the Pope’s mass excommunications notwithstanding. Indeed, the constable of this very castle, Reginald de Cornhill, once a staunch King’s man, had opened its gates to Lord Fitzwalter and his men not two days before and declared himself a lover of liberty, before departing with unashamed haste and all his men for his lands in Surrey.
Yet we rebels held London, and Exeter in the south-west, and a scatter of small castles in the north – and now we held Rochester too. And, while Fitzwalter prepared the defences of this mighty fortress with his grizzled captain William d’Aubigny, Robin’s detachment of twenty archers and a dozen men-at-arms had been given the task of holding the bridge. For the King was surely coming up from Dover. And I knew it just as well as Robin.
The door of the guardhouse crashed open, impelled by an impetuous boot. ‘Do I smell yesterday’s mutton broth?’ said Miles, striding inside and unfastening the golden clasp to drop his wet green cloak on the dirty rushes of the floor. ‘Isn’t there anything a bit more substantial to eat? I could make short work of a bloody beefsteak or a dripping roast chicken – God’s bones, that would suit.’
‘It’s broth or nothing,’ said his father, with an edge in his voice. ‘You know as well as I that we are on short commons, all of us, till the supply train comes through from London. We must tighten our belts till then. And do try not to whine quite so much, son.’
‘Not whining. Just making polite dinner conversation.’ Miles plonked himself down on the bench next to me, helped himself to a clay bowl and filled it to the brim. ‘Mmmm. Mutton broth. Nice and watery. And plenty of gristle, too, I see.’
I could actually hear Robin grinding teeth. But my lord held his peace.
‘What news from the castle?’ I said, after a long uncomfortable pause.
‘D’Aubigny has it nicely in hand, I believe,’ said my lord. ‘He says the fortifications are sound, the walls in good repair throughout, and he has enough men and arms to hold it for months against a determined assault – providing of course that sufficient food stores can be brought in.’
William d’Aubigny was a bear of a man, immensely strong and quick, and with a reputation for ferocity in battle. He was lord of Belvoir Castle, a fortress in Leicestershire about fifteen miles east of Nottingham. As a not-too-distant neighbour of ours, he was well known to Robin and to me.
‘Fitzwalter is planning to leave us, though,’ Robin said.
‘What?’ I said, swallowing a mouthful of hot soup too quickly. ‘Why?’
‘He says he’s needed in London. A grand council of the barons has been called. They’re to discuss recruiting aid from overseas and Fitzwalter says he must attend or who knows what foolishness will occur.’
‘So our gallant commander is deserting us on the eve of battle?’ said Miles. ‘Scuttling back to London. Hardly in
spiring behaviour in a leader.’
Robin ignored his son and concentrated on wiping clean his bowl with a crust but I felt called on to defend Lord Fitzwalter’s honour. My relationship with the captain-general of the Army of God had not always been cordial but since the war began I had grown to like the man.
‘He is our leader and it makes sense that he should attend this important council with all the other senior barons,’ I said.
‘Were you not invited to attend this vaunted gathering then, Father?’ said Miles. ‘How strange! Perhaps they feel that playing watchman on this ancient bridge is more your mark.’
I could have punched the lad off the bench for that insult. Indeed, I felt my right fist clench and rise from the board. But Robin beat me to it.
‘The sentry on the roof has been complaining of the cold this past hour,’ said Robin serenely. ‘When you have finished that nourishing bowl of broth, Miles, get yourself up there and take his place. I’ll be sure to send someone up to relieve you at midnight’ – Robin pretended to think – ‘or perhaps at dawn. We’ll have to see. I’d like all the serious fighting men to get a good night’s rest.’
‘But, Father, I had plans to visit the town tonight. There is this girl I want to see and as I’m not on duty—’
‘Well, you are on duty now,’ said Robin. ‘Off you go.’
‘But it’s not fair …’
‘Don’t whine, lad,’ I said, perhaps a touch smugly. ‘Obey your lord’s command.’
Miles opened his mouth to argue but before he could speak the door swung towards us and we all three looked up in surprise at the dark entrance, now wholly filled by Sir Thomas Blood’s short form, broad shoulders and steel-helmeted head.
‘Boats, my lord,’ said Sir Thomas. ‘Boats on the river. Scores of them.’
From the roof of the guardhouse, we had our first glimpse of the enemy, of the feared Flemish legions of King John. At least fifty rowing boats, downstream, three hundred yards away. Each boat was showing a single pinprick of yellow light, a lantern or open fire-pot, enabling us to see them against the blackness of the water in the failing light, and every vessel was pulling hard for the centre of the bridge.
