by Angus Donald
I knew there was no point getting into a lather about this matter. I would go back and see Robin to clear the air. I would confront my lord. Ask him to his face.
But when I returned to the castle I could not find him in any of his usual haunts and, in the end, after half an hour of fruitless searching and with my head still aching from last night’s wine, I took myself to my pallet and slept away the rest of the day.
Robin’s eldest son Hugh awakened me at dusk.
‘Why are you abed, Sir Alan?’ said Hugh, frowning. ‘Are you sick too?’
I told him I was not; indeed my cold was much better.
‘All the senior knights are summoned to council in the great hall,’ he said. ‘The Earl asked me to find you and tell you to hurry.’
Chapter Twenty-seven
I was in the great hall of Lynn Castle, with two dozen other knights, English lords and half a dozen mercenary captains, as the bells of the cathedral church were ringing out for Vespers. I found Robin conferring with Savary de Mauléon. He broke off his conversation with the Poitevin lord when he saw me, came over and put his arm around my shoulders.
‘After this council session, I want to speak with you. I need you to do something very important for me.’
‘That is good for I urgently need to speak to you, too,’ I said. ‘I must ask you on your honour—’
‘Later, Alan,’ he said. ‘After this.’ Before I could reply I heard Savary de Mauléon calling for order in the crowded room and silence, if you please.
‘My lords,’ Mauléon said over the rumble of chatter. ‘I have grave tidings that require your full attention.’
His words achieved almost complete silence.
‘The King is not well today and he cannot attend this council of his lords, and so, at his request, I am to deliver the news myself.’
‘What’s the matter with him?’ came a hearty voice from the far side of the hall.
‘He is indisposed. A matter of a delicate stomach. I am sure it is merely a case of overindulgence at the feast yesterday. No doubt he will be well again very soon.’
‘It’s the squits,’ a man muttered to his neighbour. ‘I’m not surprised after watching him wade into that lamprey pie yesterday. Seen pigs with more restraint.’
‘Gentlemen, please,’ said Mauléon. ‘The fact is that the King requires rest, that is all. I have worse news from the south. Hubert de Burgh has taken the decision to arrange a truce with the French at Dover. As many of you will know, his men have been holding out for three months now, suffering all the onslaughts of the enemy and, together with our courageous irregular forces in the area’ – Mauléon gave Robin a nod of recognition – ‘waging war against his lines of communication and shipping with France. However, de Burgh’s men are at the point of exhaustion. He will continue to hold the castle but he will not attempt to molest the French in any other way – and in return the French will cease their mining operations against his walls and desist from their bombardment of his defences.’
Mauléon paused to let this sink in. I wondered how long the truce would last and whether Cass would be able to persuade his Wealden ‘conrois’ to keep from gleefully robbing the rich French supply wagons even for a week.
‘Prince Louis, we have been informed, has received reinforcements from France and, with a contingent of rebel knights from London under Lord Fitzwalter, he is coming north with the intention of bringing us to battle.’
The hall broke out in a storm of voices. I heard men shouting that Hubert de Burgh was a traitor for failing to keep the enemy occupied in the south. Others were even saying we must seek a truce of our own with the French. I did not condemn de Burgh. I knew what three months of siege was like – the starvation, the battle fatigue, the daily sapping of manpower – and I applauded him for this neat solution. We still held Dover and that, as far as I could see, was the important point.
‘Gentlemen, pray give me silence,’ Mauléon was shouting over the tumult.
When a relative quiet was restored, the Poitevin lord said, ‘They outnumber us two to one. Accordingly, we shall be quitting Lynn the day after tomorrow – or at least the bulk of the army will leave. I shall remain here to fortify the city and deny it to the enemy. The majority of you will join the King on a march north to Newark Castle, where we shall defy the enemy from the safety of that fortress and summon our forces from the rest of England to join us. I will give you your individual orders immediately after this. But for most, I urge you to look to your men and prepare to march.’
There was a surge towards the Poitevin, men loudly demanding to be told their orders, to see the King privately, to have the situation more thoroughly explained … and I saw Robin shouldering his way through the press to me.
‘How ill is the King?’ I said to him when he had reached my side.
My lord gave me a sharp look. ‘He’s ailing nicely, thank you, and making a great fuss about it – can’t get off the privy, if you must know. Tilda’s tending him.’
‘About Tilda,’ I said. ‘I know it is probably none of my concern—’
‘I don’t have time to argue about Tilda again,’ said Robin. ‘I need you to do something for me that is far more important. And I need you to give me your word that you will do it and ask no questions. Also, that you will be discreet and tell not a single soul what you are doing. Can you do that?’
I was stung – but he was my lord. I nodded sulkily.
‘I want you to swear on your honour that you will do this and remain as silent as the grave about it afterwards.’
‘I know how to keep a secret,’ I said crossly, thinking of my vow to Thomas. Then, at his insistence, I swore.
And he told me exactly what he wanted me to do.
The mood in the army as we left Lynn two days later was wholly different to that on our arrival there. Now we were retreating in the face of a looming threat, and even with our swelled ranks of newly rejoined knights, we felt like a beaten force. It was the second week of October by then and God gave us a foretaste of what winter had in store. The heavens opened and grey rain lanced down on us from the moment we rode out of the gates until the middle of the afternoon, when we made camp in the hamlet of Walpole, eight miles to the west. The King had made a bold show of riding his horse on the march, rather than taking a horse-drawn covered litter – Tilda had apparently fortified him that morning with a mighty draught of juice of the poppy that she had purchased in Lynn, which apart from its pain-killing properties also seized up a man’s bowels and turned them to hard clay. The rain made the condition of the fenland roads even worse and it was clear the baggage train would not able to travel at the same speed as the rest of the army. We arrived at Walpole a good three hours after the rest of King John’s force, by which time every single house, barn, hut and hovel had been commandeered by the more powerful lords. Most of the rest of the army were sleeping in their cloaks on the damp and boggy ground.
‘It won’t do Locksley,’ croaked the King. ‘It you can’t manage to keep pace, what earthly use are you as Master of the Royal Baggage?’
Robin and I were in a modest hall, inside the compound of the tiny manor of Walpole, trying to warm ourselves beside a small fire in the hearth and at the same time pretend we were listening attentively to the King’s tirade.
‘I will tell you where we are heading in the morning and it will be your duty to keep up and ensure my possessions are with me whenever I require them.’
An old black-clad priest, who until now had been piously mumbling a long Latin prayer behind the King’s chair, leaned forward and whispered in the King’s ear, casting a spiteful look at Robin.
‘Yes, exactly,’ said the King. ‘Father Dominic points out that we required the portable chapel this afternoon so that a mass could be said and prayers offered up for my health. But where was my chapel? It was with you, Locksley, stuck in the mud miles away! You are holding us back, man. You’re a disgrace to your new office.’
The King looked very p
ale and he seemed to have lost a good deal of weight even in the short time that he had been ill. While Robin and I dripped and gently steamed, he ranted about total obedience and gross negligence of duty. He threatened dire punishments for my lord if such tardiness occurred again.
I watched Tilda, who was at the far end of the hall mixing a potion from a pot of boiling water and several leather pouches of dried herbs. She too looked pale and intimidated by the royal presence, and yet to my eye she appeared quite lovely, even in her plain grey robe with her hair gathered under a simple coif. Robin was a fortunate man, I thought with a fresh stab of anger – or was it jealousy? As I watched, I noticed her hands seemed to tremble slightly as she stirred the mixture into a beaker.
‘I have a solution to this problem, Sire. If you will hear me,’ said Robin. ‘I have found a local man who says he can lead the wagons by a safe passage through the marshes tomorrow – low tide is at noon, he says – and though there is a slight risk of becoming mired he swears he can show us the dry paths if we go at that hour. It would take less time for us to cross the Wash directly and in the meantime you could proceed via the well-trodden, more southerly route, which would be much easier on your royal person. The baggage train could meet the rest of the army at, say, Sleaford in two days’ time before we proceed to Newark. That is if you can possibly do without your portable chapel for a day or so.’ Robin gave the priest a brilliant smile.
Tilda was handing the King the steaming cup. He took a small sip and spat out a mouthful of dark-brown liquid. ‘Too hot, you stupid bitch; much too hot, and too bitter. More honey, more water and be quick about it.’
I saw Tilda wince and hastily take the cup back from the royal hand. I was flooded with a wave of black hatred for this man. A pair of hulking Flemish crossbowmen flanked the royal seat and a dozen guards stood around the room watching our audience, but I was still mightily tempted to unsheathe Fidelity and hack the bastard’s head from his shoulders, consequences be damned.
‘Yes, yes, Sleaford it is, then, in two days’ time,’ the King was saying. ‘But I will have your head if you are late. Mark me, Locksley. Your head is mine if you are late.’
We were not late in meeting the King and the rest of the army at Sleaford two days later – it was much worse than that. We arrived at the rendezvous on the fourteenth day of October, bedraggled, exhausted and slathered in mud, accompanied by only nine of the twelve wagons in the royal train.
Sleaford was a market town with a small castle and a square enclosure surrounded by deep moats on all sides. It belonged to the Bishop of Lincoln and the function of the castle seemed to be mainly to protect the huge tithe barn that housed the vast quantities of grain collected from the peasants in the bishop’s See. After our arrival with the depleted wagon train, Robin first went to see the senior captain of the King’s guard, a hairy Flemish thug named Wulfram, and after a quiet conversation with this man, Robin, Hugh, Wulfram and I paid a call on the King.
John was abed in the bishop’s chamber in the stone keep, his face blotched and slack, his eyes large and feverish. The flesh seemed to have melted from his body, leaving him skeletally thin. The air reeked of faeces and old sweat. His illness had clearly grown worse in the two days since our meeting at Walpole; I had heard that he had been unable to ride during the journey and instead had been carried the distance in a covered wagon, halting every half-mile to allow him to ease his gushing bowels.
‘I fear I must give you grave news, Sire,’ said Robin, his face a mask of sorrow. ‘But we have lost the royal treasury to the quicksands of the Wash. It is gone. Swallowed up by the mud. I know this will grieve you even more severely, but I must tell you we have also lost the portable chapel. Fortunately, we managed to salvage the bedding, tapestries and most of the food.’
The King moaned. He tried to raise his head but failed; his eyes flickered and fixed themselves on Robin’s face.
‘The treasury …’ he quavered, his voice like that of a petulant child. ‘What do you mean, Locksley? You cannot have lost it. We must have that money to pay the men.’
‘We were deceived, Sire,’ said my lord. ‘The scoundrel who was our guide led us falsely and before we knew what had occurred, three of the wagons were plunged into the bog and, in the time it would take to say an Our Father, they were gone. Disappeared from view beneath the watery surface of the mire. We were too occupied with saving the rest of the train to salvage them. Alas!’
The King was stirred into action, straining, struggling until his head was raised a few inches from the bed. Tilda came silently forward and slipped a pillow beneath his faded locks, supporting his head, which now appeared inhumanly large on his long, skinny white neck.
‘There was a hundred thousand marks in those wagons, Locksley – at least that much in jewels, plate and coin. You cannot possibly have lost it all.’
‘I know, Sire, that you are a man who believes in swift punishment, so it may ease your distress to know that I hanged the rascally guide from the first tree we could find.’
The King let out an inchoate bellow of pain, a harsh rattling sound that seemed to tear at the cords in his throat. ‘It is you who will hang for this – guards, guards! I want the Earl of Locksley in chains. Now! He is a thief and a liar. Guards!’
Two of the Flemish men-at-arms stepped forward. I took a grip on Fidelity’s hilt. But Wulfram stopped the men dead with an upheld palm. The two men looked perplexed but stepped back against the walls of the bedchamber at their captain’s command.
The King slumped back on the sheets. He whispered: ‘You have killed me, Locksley, I am a dead man this day and it is all your doing – all of it. And after everything I’ve done for you, all my kindness, you ungrateful, cold-hearted bastard.’
‘Indeed, Sire,’ said Robin.
Chapter Twenty-eight
We left the King’s army that very hour. Robin, Hugh, Tilda and myself rode out of Sleaford with our remaining men – Robert and Boot had already departed from the column. They had, in fact, not come with us across the treacherous mudflats of the Wash with the rascally local guide. In truth, there had never been a rascally guide outside of my lord’s imagination. My son and his bodyguard, accompanied by a score of our men-at-arms, had simply taken the three wagons, heavily loaded with silver, jewels, regalia (and, at Robin’s whim, the portable chapel), and headed at their greatest speed west towards Nottingham. We had paid Wulfram his agreed price, which was a single chest of silver that he said he would share with his men. I never discovered if he did so, for I never saw the man again. He and many of the mercenaries – knowing that King John was on his deathbed and now, thanks to Robin, almost as penniless as a church-porch beggar, and that Prince Louis, Lord Fitzwalter and the rebel army were fast approaching – quietly slipped away in the next few days, many taking John’s possessions, weapons, tapestries, wine, furniture – anything of value – as payment for their military services.
King John, we later heard, managed to make it as far as Newark Castle in the next two days where, surrounded by monks and tended by the Abbot of Croxton, he made his last confession, dictated a will and departed this life. After his death, his body was left deserted, even by his closest servants; it was stripped of the clothes he had worn, his rings, and everything of value in the chamber was removed by the fleeing remnants of his court. The corpse of the King of England lay in a cold chamber of Newark Castle for two days, untended, unclothed, unmourned.
And may he burn for eternity in Hell.
It took us three days to reach Westbury, for the wagons we stole from King John had been the heaviest in the train and even clear of the marshy flatlands of East Anglia, it was hard-going on the roads. But all our muddy labours were made light by the joy in our hearts: Robin had sworn that every one of us would share in the treasure and when each man-at-arms had been given his share, and Robin had appropriated his own largest slice of the haul, I knew I would still be rich beyond my most excessive dreams for the rest of my life. Robert’s fu
ture and the future of his children was secure. Best of all, the King – the bloody tyrant who had oppressed England for the past seventeen years, who had squeezed her lords, imprisoned her knights and despoiled her lands with fire, rape and murder – was dead at last.
On the march to Westbury, I marvelled at Robin’s sense of timing. He had positioned himself as Master of the Royal Baggage just at the time when the King had accumulated all his wealth from the treasuries of his castles for the war effort and, in doing so, he had robbed the King of all his vast riches days before his death, thus ensuring there would be no royal revenge for his crime. There would be no army at the gates of Kirkton to crush him and his family. It was, I believed, a perfect coup, one that dwarfed his other exploits many times over.
We celebrated his achievement at Westbury. The wine flowed like water. Baldwin and Alice ransacked the larders for the finest foods that my manor could provide, and we all ate like gluttons and drank until our veins ran red only with the juice of the grape.
After one such repast, when I was bursting with stewed venison, roasted hare, pork sausages and good Bordeaux wine, I staggered off to my solar at the end of the hall meaning to take a short afternoon nap while the rest of my guests continued with their jollity. I found Tilda in my chamber folding a stack of clean white chemises in the clothes chest at the foot of my bed. I was slightly embarrassed to see her in my private room and considered withdrawing to allow her to continue her duties in peace, when I saw that she was weeping.
I was astonished. I had not paid much attention to her over the past few days, being busy first with the theft of the three wagons, then with bringing them safely to Westbury and finally with housing and feeding the swollen numbers of men lodged in my home.
