by Angus Donald
I had a present for Boot, a man who loved music as much as I did. It was the vielle that Robin had procured for me in Corfe Castle. I had been teaching Boot to play over the course of the past year, when I could spare the time, sharing my instrument for the practice sessions. Now he would have his own. He was delighted. He plucked a few notes and praised its tone.
We admired it together for a few moments and spoke about some tunes we might try to play with two vielles and two voices.
Before I took my leave, I took him to task about Matilda Giffard.
‘I am very disappointed with you, Boot,’ I said sternly. ‘How could you let that woman into Westbury – you know as well as I do that she is no good.’
‘I thought so at first, sir,’ said the giant. He had a surprisingly high-pitched voice, the result of a sad operation performed by Moorish slavers, who had removed his testicles as a child. ‘When Baldwin took her into the house, I stopped her and spoke to her privately. I told her that if Robert died – whether it was by her hand or not – that I would tear her living head from her body. I believe it gave her some encouragement to do her utmost to heal him.’
When I first met him, Boot had been the executioner at Nottingham Castle and his method had been to snap the necks of the condemned prisoners with his bare hands, like so many chickens. I had no doubt Tilda had been ‘encouraged’ to do her best for Robert by the threat.
‘But I do not believe she means to harm him,’ Boot continued. ‘I think she is exactly what she seems, a poor woman who has nowhere else to go in the world and who merely seeks a roof over her head and a little company.’
‘You are to keep a very close watch on her, my friend,’ I said. ‘Very close. If she even looks as if she is a threat to Robert or anyone at all – you know what to do.’
Boot sighed. ‘I know, sir,’ he said. ‘I know very well what I must do.’
Remarkably, when I arrived at Kirkton later that afternoon, my lord’s wife, the ever-beautiful Marie-Anne, echoed Boot’s appraisal of Tilda’s situation. I sat by the hearth with her and sipped on a mug of ale, while she sat spindle in hand, turning a vast mound of sheep’s wool into fine thread.
‘She had every reason to hate you, Alan,’ she said. ‘You killed her father; you killed her lover Benedict. And, indirectly, she was expelled from the Priory because of you. But I watched her carefully over several months when she was with us at Kirkton and I think she is a changed woman, contrite, humble, meek and just what she seems: a poor lost soul with no kin who will own her, and no home.’
‘What I don’t understand is why she wants to make my home hers,’ I said. ‘There are plenty of other comfortable homes in England that she could blight – why infest mine?’
‘You really can’t imagine why she would want to be in your household?’ said Marie-Anne with a womanly smile.
‘No, I cannot.’
‘You were once lovers, were you not?’
I stared at the woman, astonished. ‘You cannot be suggesting that she still has, uh, tender feelings for me?’
‘Is that so strange?’
I saw that Marie-Anne was perilously close to laughter. I didn’t like it at all.
‘It is different for women, Alan. We cannot just love where and when we like, we do not just spray our seed like men and skip merrily away along the road. For a few ecstatic moments you and Tilda were physically joined together, you were a part of her body, her being. There are few women who can forget that loving union, however brief and no matter what happens afterwards.’
‘This is utter nonsense,’ I said. ‘She tried to kill me.’
‘What’s nonsense?’ asked Robin, coming into the hall.
‘Your moon-crazed wife suspects that Tilda is in love with me and that is why she has moved into my hall at Westbury.’
‘Absolute nonsense, I entirely agree with Alan. How absurd! Nobody could possibly love someone as pig-ugly as you, or as thoroughly dim-witted, mule-stubborn and utterly lacking in the proper gentlemanly graces. Nonsense indeed!’
I glared at Robin. Between his silly jests and Marie-Anne’s suppressed hilarity – she was making tiny hiccupping noises of mirth even now – I was beginning to regret paying them this visit.
‘Come now, Alan,’ said my lord, ‘she doesn’t have to be madly in love with you to enjoy a dry place to sleep at night, food in her belly, some companionship. She knows that you are her last chance in this life and that if she steps out of line, just once, it will be the end of her. I said something of that nature to her myself. She knows not to try to harm either you or Robert – on pain of death. Forgiveness, isn’t that what the Church preaches? Why don’t you show her a little Christian forgiveness. I really don’t think you have anything to fear.’
I spent the next few days helping Robin to organise his forces for battle. Hugh had recruited two score men-at-arms from the farms and villages around the Locksley Valley that he was training up as cavalry, and he had found a couple of dozen archers from somewhere – Sherwood probably, and men who had lived outside the law – to add to the dozen or so of men who had come back from Rochester with Mastin. In total, Robin commanded nearly a hundred and fifty fighting men, but despite his renewed allegiance to King John he was not about to strip Kirkton and take all of them away to war. When we joined the King at the muster in Tonbridge, he would take with him only thirty mounted archers under Mastin and a dozen cavalrymen, with myself, Sir Thomas and Miles to stiffen their ranks. The rest would be held in reserve at Kirkton, under Hugh’s command, in case the King or his sheriffs decided to try to make life difficult for Robin in Yorkshire.
That was my lord’s plan. Miles, of course, had other ideas. The young man had returned to Kirkton not long after the fall of Rochester, choosing, correctly as it turned out, to take the risk of scaling the wall and swimming the Medway to escape the final and, as he saw it, inevitable catastrophe. He had walked all the way to London, where he gave news of the disaster at Rochester to Lord Fitzwalter and, by his account, was treated as something of a hero by the rebels in the capital. They fêted him and filled him with wine and kept him in debauched splendour for a couple of weeks before sending him back to Kirkton with their praises ringing in his young ears. All this back-stroking had made Miles more devoted to the rebel cause than ever before – and he was not shy about telling the world what he thought of his father’s recent renewal of allegiance to the King.
‘It is a gross betrayal of all that we have fought for these past few years,’ said Miles at the dinner table on the second night I was there. His sapphire eyes glittered with mischief. ‘It is tantamount to treachery,’ he went on loudly.
Robin, sitting across the table from him smiling faintly, looking as serene as a saint – as he often did when under pressure – chose to ignore the taunts and insults. But his eldest son Hugh did not.
‘Oh do shut up, Miles,’ he said. ‘We all know how you feel, you’ve told us often enough. Why don’t you give that flapping tongue of yours a rest.’
‘Let us not quarrel over the dinner table,’ said Marie-Anne.
‘Tell me, Alan, how do things stand at Westbury?’ said Robin.
‘Good idea! Let us ask our guest’s opinion. What do you think, Sir Alan, about the Earl of Locksley’s shameful behaviour? Would you say it was a move that was justified because it preserved our lord’s precious skin, not to mention his lands and titles? Or would you rather call it the action of a cowardly turncoat?’
I saw then that Miles was very drunk. But I also knew that Robin would not stomach his insults for much longer. There would be blood spilled before long.
Hugh got up from his place at the far end of the table. He came and stood behind Miles’s stool, put a hard hand on his brother’s shoulder and spoke quietly into his ear. He spoke too low for most of the diners to catch, but I heard him.
‘If you cannot speak civilly at this table, then leave it,’ whispered Hugh, with unmistakable menace in his voice. ‘You will not speak to Fa
ther like that again in my presence. He will not raise his hand to you; he loves you too much. But I have absolutely no problem in bringing you to heel. This is your only warning.’
‘Oh, things are not too bad at Westbury,’ I said brightly to Robin. ‘Apart from the business of Tilda, everything is in good order. Baldwin, for all his many faults, is an excellent organiser and his sister Alice has everything in hand among the servants. She made the most wonderful milk pudding the other day—’
Miles’s voice cut through my prattle. ‘It seems my opinions and even my presence are not welcome here,’ he said, getting heavily to his feet. ‘So I will bid you all good night and farewell.’ And, swaying a little, he walked from the table towards the far end of the hall, where he made his bed.
The next morning Miles was gone. He had taken arms, armour and a horse from the stables and departed before the sun was up.
He took Sir Thomas Blood with him.
‘It is my fault,’ said Robin when the disappearances were noticed. ‘I have always been far too indulgent of him. You heard him last night, Alan, he as good as called me a coward to my face – and I did nothing. It is weakness, sheer feebleness of will. I have spoiled my own child, ruined him with a surfeit of kindness.’
‘He’s a wilful fellow, there’s no doubt of that,’ I said. ‘But he is also grown now and every youngster has to challenge his father, stand up to him at some point, in order to believe himself a man. Where d’you think he has gone?’
‘Oh London, I suppose, back to his rebel friends and the delights of debauchery without consequence. What I don’t understand is why Sir Thomas went with him. He has always been the very model of loyalty to me. I cannot see why he would absent himself like this. Unless he felt he had to protect Miles on the journey south.’
I felt uncomfortable. I had promised Thomas that I would not speak of it to Robin but I was sure his departure was a result of the threat he perceived from the Templars. Evidently I had not convinced him that Robin would not betray him. I desperately wanted to speak of this to Robin but was bound to painful silence.
We busied ourselves with training the new men over the next few days. But Robin grew increasingly concerned over Thomas’s absence.
‘I do not greatly mind if he has taken a few days’ leave from my service on some errand – though it would have been only right, and courteous for that matter, to ask my permission,’ he said to me at the end of a long, exhausting day trying to teach the new cavalry to wheel in formation and mostly failing. ‘But I need him back with us now. I had thought to knight Miles and present myself to the King next week with three fully armed knights in my retinue: now I shall arrive at the muster with only one. Do you think he is playing the dice again? At York or Nottingham or somewhere? I know he has a penchant for it.’
I could say nothing to aid Robin’s speculation. And in the end, inevitably, his worry turned to anger. He sent a message to Makeney, to Thomas’s wife Mary, saying that he expected Sir Thomas Blood to present himself at Kirkton for duty within three days or he might consider himself dismissed from the Earl of Locksley’s service, in which case, he and all his adherents should vacate the Derbyshire manor forthwith.
It was past the time for us to leave for Tonbridge Castle in Kent to rejoin the King. So I returned to Westbury, to make my own preparations, a few days before Robin and his raw troops were to make their departure. Of course, the first person I saw when I walked into the hall that evening was Tilda. She was sitting on a bench by the far wall, with a candle beside her and a needle and thread in her hands, mending a pair of old hose that must have belonged to Robert.
She did not see me, intent as she was on her work, and as I walked towards her I was struck by how much her looks had improved. Good food, regular bathing and a roof over her head had done wonders for her. She was no longer the starving, battered beggar woman who had come to my hall seeking forgiveness. Her unbound hair was as glossy as a raven’s wing in the candlelight and it fell forward in a graceful sable curtain over her creamy cheek; her pink tongue was poking from the side of her mouth as she made the tiny stitches in the seam of the fabric and it made her look as if she were about twelve years old.
Baldwin came rushing over as I advanced on Tilda, as close as an old man ever comes to running, intercepting me before I could reach the woman – I think he suspected that I would try to harm her – and he said loudly, too loudly, ‘Ah, Sir Alan, welcome home! I have a letter for you, which arrived while you were at Kirkton.’
He thrust a parchment scroll into my hands. As I looked at it, I could see from the corner of my eye my steward making frantic gestures at Tilda, silently trying to shoo her away, out of my sight. Without looking up, I said, ‘Leave her be, Baldwin. I would not disturb a woman at her work.’ I turned my back on the pair of them and went over to the firelight by the hearth to read the letter.
It was from Paris.
My dearest cousin,
Greetings! I write to you with sad news and a warning. My father, your uncle Thibault, the Seigneur d’Alle, has finally been called to God. He had been ill for some months with a pain in his belly that the finest doctors in Paris were powerless to cure. As the sickness spread, his sufferings grew worse, yet he bore his pain like a man until the very end when the battle was lost. Now his mortal body is at rest in the churchyard of St Opportune, next to our house in the Rue St-Denis, and I trust his soul is with Our Lord Jesus Christ and the angels. My father asked after you, towards the end, and made me vow that I would always be friends and allies, my duty and honour permitting, with the distinguished English branch of our family – a promise I was pleased to make. So I send you my friendship along with this sad news.
There is something more that I must impart. As you will doubtless know, Prince Louis, the son of our good King Philip, has set his heart upon the English crown and will be making his way across the Channel with a mighty army in the days and weeks to come. I have stepped into my father’s shoes with regards to his position at court and his proximity to the King, and I believe that it does not hurt my honour to tell you that, on my advice, King Philip has refused publicly to support his son Louis’s English adventure. The King will not be attempting to invade your island himself in support of his son’s claims to the throne. This, I think you will agree, is excellent news for any loyal Englishman, such as yourself. However, there are deep stratagems in play here and Philip would certainly not weep bitter tears if his son were to be successful in his endeavours. To see a single King ruling over both England and France would be the culmination of all his many successes against the English over the past twenty years. That is the situation: the King will not support Louis in public, nor give him any additional troops, but he would be greatly pleased if he were to succeed.
Finally, I must give you a warning. I do not know if you will be engaging Louis’s forces in battle – for I have heard you are among the party that opposes King John and backs the Prince – but there is a man I must counsel you to beware of, whether you find yourself pitted against him on the battlefield or even on the same side. He is deadly to friend and foe alike: his name is Thomas, Comte du Perche, and he is now the right-hand man, the sword and hammer, of Prince Louis.
Although outwardly he resembles a gentleman, this man has the soul of a wild beast. They call him the ‘White Count’ or sometimes ‘The Tanner’ – not because of any lack of nobility in his antecedents, hardly so, but because it is his pleasure to strip the skin from his living enemies, to have it tanned and to use this human leather to furnish himself with garments. There are many other sins and obscenities that he is guilty of, too many and too foul for me to list here, but all I can say is have nothing to do with this ghoul and pray that you do not cross his path, and further that you never, never fall into his power.
But enough of this sadness and evil. My mother Adele sends you a warm kiss and an invitation for you and Robert to visit us in Paris or in our castle in Alle whenever you should wish to come; and I give you
a brotherly embrace and a prayer that God shall keep you safe in all the struggles that lie before you.
I remain, your affectionate cousin,
Roland, Seigneur d’Alle
I blinked back a tear or two at the news that the Seigneur was dead. He had been a fine man. But I knew my cousin Roland would fill his place as the new lord of Alle with strength and grace. His warning about the White Count set me thinking: that oddly dressed Frenchman, the bastard all in white that I had met in the Tower last year, had he not been named Thomas, Comte du Perche? I was fairly sure he had. And I could easily believe that a fellow who snapped a kitten’s leg because it scratched him had the soul of a beast. I could easily believe that he flayed his enemies, too. Very well, I would try to stay out of his way. On the other hand, if I did encounter him, since he was now, as a follower of Prince Louis, my sworn enemy, I might just slaughter him on the spot.
Yet all thoughts of dead uncles and vicious French noblemen were pushed from my mind over the next few days, for I was busy with my own preparations. And on the last golden day of April, I left Westbury in Robert’s care and rode south again to war.
Chapter Seventeen
The King’s muster at Tonbridge was less than impressive. The castle that guards the north bank of the River Medway there – about twenty miles upstream from Rochester – was a decent-sized moated fortress, with a yellow stone gatehouse and tower overlooking the bridge, an old round Norman keep atop a motte, and a high curtain wall. But the royal army gathered in response to the King’s command were too few to strike much fear into the enemy’s heart. Scarcely five hundred knights answered the King’s call, for news of the imminent arrival of the French had forced many barons to reconsider their allegiances and despite the King’s successful chevauchée and the havoc he had wreaked in the north, the rebels were still full of spirit.
