King's man oc-3

by Angus Donald

  ‘As ever, Your Highness, your slightest wish is my command. Come, Alan, I know just the place for us: the food is almost edible, the drink is very good — and the girls are simply unbelievable!’

  I bowed low to the Queen, trying not to grin too widely, and left the royal presence with my old friend — to seek out wine, women and low entertainments.

  I awoke the next morning with an aching head, and a gritty feeling in my mouth, but with my spirits unaccountably high. I felt a sense of freedom that I had not enjoyed for many a month. Bernard had been on excellent form the night before, taking me down the river in a barge and over to the other side to a disreputable house owned by the Bishop of Southwark where we had guzzled wine and Bernard had besported himself with three young girls who began the evening dressed as novice nuns — I did not believe that they were really novices, destined one day to become Brides of Christ, but you could never be too sure with the bawdy Bishop of Southwark’s girls.

  I have never quite felt comfortable in my bones paying for the love of women — although I will not condemn those who do — and so I confined myself to watching Bernard as he cavorted with his three lovelies, passing the odd cup of wine to him when he felt in need of refreshment, and passing ribald comments when I felt they were called for.

  Once Bernard had quenched his lust — and I must say that, for a man in his late thirties who loved to complain so much about being aged and infirm, he had a prodigious amount of stamina — we paid off the girls and fell to talking of recent affairs of the kingdom.

  ‘You know, they nearly have it,’ Bernard said to me, wiping his sweaty face with a towel. ‘A hundred thousand marks — I never thought they’d do it. But by hook or by crook — by crook mostly — the Queen, may she live another thousand years, has gathered the first tranche of the money together for Richard’s ransom. The Emperor’s ambassadors are coming next week to collect it.’

  ‘The first tranche?’ I said, surprised. ‘I thought a hundred thousand was the full price for his release.’

  ‘No, no, my boy,’ chuckled Bernard. ‘Never underestimate the greed of princes. Emperor Henry has decided to squeeze Richard until he squeaks — he’s upped the price. Now he wants a hundred and fifty thousand marks in cash, or the equivalent in well-born hostages.’

  ‘But that is impossible — the country has been bled dry. There is no more money in England — anywhere. I know, I did a good deal of the bleeding!’

  ‘They’ll do a deal, Alan. They always do. But the important thing is that the German ambassadors are coming and, once they’ve got their money, they’ll have to set a date for Richard’s release. And once that has happened, the tide will turn in our favour.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘For the past year, all the knights and barons of England and Normandy have been trying to divine who will win this great struggle between Richard and John. Obviously, they all want to be on the winning side. When Richard was in prison, and John triumphantly capturing castles left and right all over England, everyone looked at John as the eventual winner. The longer Richard was locked up, the more our King’s support melted away — apart from a few staunch fellows such as me, you and your outlaw friend Robert of Locksley, of course.’

  Bernard paused, took a swig of wine, and went on: ‘Once a date has been set for Richard’s release, all the fighting men in England will have to reconsider their positions. When Richard comes home he’s unlikely to look kindly on those who supported his brother’s bid for the throne. He’s more likely to waste their lands, slaughter their soldiers and dispossess their children. So everything is in flux right now. People are already beginning to switch back to Richard’s side. Things are looking up for us.’

  I pondered Bernard’s words the next morning as I sluiced my aching head at the pump in the courtyard outside Westminster Hall, while Thomas stood behind me with a towel and a clean shirt. Bernard was right, I concluded. Things were indeed looking up. But I had another reason to be cheerful that day. I was going to be paying a visit to my master’s wife Marie-Anne and her baby son Hugh — and I’d also get a chance to see my lovely Goody. And there was something in particular, something very special indeed, that I was planning to ask her.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Countess of Locksley had taken a large two-storey, timber-framed house on the south side of the Strondway, the main road leading into London from Westminster. It was the inn or town house of Lord Wakefield, who was presently in Normandy, and Marie-Anne had filled it with her women and her dogs, and a dozen or so of Queen Eleanor’s jolly Gascon men-at-arms.

  I rode up there on Ghost on that crisp morning, with the frost still on the grass either side of the wide road even though it was near nine of the clock, and I reflected that my life was far from unsatisfactory that cold autumn day. As Bernard had said last night, all being well, King Richard would soon be released from his German prison. Better yet, my musical friend had told me that Goody was stricken with remorse over the way she had spoken to me at our last meeting. According to Bernard, she now looked upon me as some sort of hero who had hoodwinked Prince John and allowed Robin to collect a fortune in silver on King Richard’s behalf. A hero, no less. I liked the sound of that.

  Although I was prepared for a change of heart from Goody, I did not expect the enthusiasm I received when I arrived in the big courtyard of Wakefield Inn, dismounted and handed Ghost’s reins to a waiting groom. I was dimly aware of a human-shaped streak of white and gold coming towards me at speed and then Goody was in my arms, her body wrapped tightly around me, her lips kissing my face over and over while she wept and apologized and kissed me again.

  Finally she drew breath and pulled back from her embrace: ‘Oh, Alan, can you ever forgive me — the things I said to you… I didn’t understand… I thought that you had… but of course, you never would. Not you…’

  Her face was quite delicious: cold and beautiful, like a bowl of wild strawberries and fresh cream — blotched pink around her sparkling violet-blue eyes where she had been crying, the deep flushed red of her soft lips, a glimpse of pearly teeth, and all set off by her silky white skin. I could have eaten her alive. Instead, I kissed her full on the lips.

  And she kissed me back.

  My mouth melted into hers; our tongues probed, duelled, entwined; her taste was slippery sweet; warm and soft and utterly wonderful. My arms were locked around her thin back, and hers around my neck; and I could feel every curve of her lithe young body pressed hard against mine, and soon that familiar hot rush of blood to my loins…

  ‘Godifa, what on earth do you think you are doing?’ said a sharp voice from twenty yards away. And Goody broke our long kiss, and turned her golden head to look behind her.

  Advancing across the courtyard, through a sea of dogs, with an irritated frown wrinkling her normally perfect brow was Marie-Anne, Countess of Locksley, Robin’s wife, Goody’s guardian, and my hostess. I was aware that half a dozen servants were standing in the courtyard gawping at Goody and myself and the expression of our love like a passel of slack-jawed half-wits. I gave them all my fiercest battle scowl.

  ‘Marie-Anne — look, it is Alan!’ said my lovely girl.

  ‘I can see that. And that is no reason to eat him alive out here in the courtyard. Stop making a spectacle of yourself and bring him inside.’

  ‘But it’s Alan!’ Goody said again, and I could hear the incredulous joy in her voice.

  ‘I know, my dear, I know. Now, let’s take him inside,’ said Marie-Anne, and she took me by the elbow. So, with two of the most beautiful women in England on my arm, I was escorted into the big warm hall of Wakefield Inn.

  That deep kiss was the last one I received from Goody until we were formally betrothed. Marie-Anne insisted on this, and Goody and I meekly agreed to remain chaste until we were duly affianced. Then it was agreed that Hanno, Thomas and I would move into Lord Wakefield’s big house along with Robin’s twenty men-at-arms — for there was plenty of space and stabling
for everyone. Goody and I spent that autumn in a happy blur of mutual, unfulfilled but passionate love.

  To be near Goody was to be in Heaven: I could not take my eyes off her, she seemed to me to be the embodiment of perfection: the way she moved, the shape of her hands and arms, the curl of bright hair that escaped from under her plain white cap — everything about her was utterly entrancing, intoxicating to me. We took long rides together in the countryside around Westminster — always accompanied by Marie-Anne and a couple of maidservants and Thomas, and protected by Hanno and a handful of Robin’s men-at-arms, for I had learnt my lesson after the incident with the river pirates, and I never ventured far in those days without half a dozen good men at my back. There was also the matter of the price on my head; it might be a paltry pound of silver, but many desperate men might wish to claim it. Word had reached us that bands of Prince John’s soldiers were roaming the countryside, robbing and murdering at will. And though these men were operating near John’s strongholds in the north and west of England, I did not wish to take any unnecessary chances with my beloved’s life — or, now that I had found true happiness, with my own.

  But despite the fact that we were not entirely alone on our horse-borne pleasure jaunts, I felt as if we were. Goody was the only person I was aware of in that throng, the others mere shadows against her brightness, and I watched her swiftly changing, almost flickering moods as a mother watches her newborn baby. When Goody was happy, my heart soared with hers; when she frowned, I was gripped with anxiety; when she exploded into one of her sudden sun-bright fiery rages, I trembled just a little.

  I have never felt a love like it before or since. It was not a lustful love, of the kind that I had felt with Nur and a handful of other women; I did not want to possess her body, to be naked and sweaty, to be rutting like some farmyard animal with her. I just wanted to be with her all the time, for all time. I wanted to be next to her, looking at her, gazing into her eyes. I wanted to bask in her beauty, receiving it like summer sunshine on my upturned face. I loved her wholly, without reservation, and I believe she loved me equally. We told each other that we did, often, and made excited plans for a formal betrothal and marriage when King Richard was safely home from Germany.

  The news from that quarter had been good. The ambassadors of the Holy Roman Emperor had accepted the hundred thousand marks in silver — I had been part of the armed guard that delivered it to their ship, which had been moored at Wapping, a grubby little village downstream from the Tower of London. And word had reached us a few weeks later that Emperor Henry had finally determined a date for Richard’s release: the seventeenth day of January, St Anthony’s Day.

  In December, just before Christmas — with suitable regal pomp, a whole gaggle of senior nobles and churchmen and a powerful force of Gascon guards — Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine took ship and departed for Germany with a small part of the extra fifty thousand marks that the Emperor had demanded and a number of well-born youths, the sons of English and Norman nobles, as hostages for the rest of the money. It looked very much as if Richard would soon be safely home and Goody and I would be betrothed.

  We kept Christmas Day quietly with a service in the chapel at Wakefield Inn, the solemn celebration of Christ’s birth conducted by Father Tuck. My friend had grown a little leaner over the past year and his tonsured hair was now entirely grey. In fact, I had been slightly surprised by his appearance when I came south from Nottingham: he looked like an old man. But then, he was well advanced in years. He had been a middle-aged monk when Robin was a boy — and Robin by now was nearing thirty. However, Tuck was still an active man, and he still knew a thing or two about the world. When he heard my confession on that cold Christmas morning, he asked me, after I had finished recounting my humdrum sins, a mildly blasphemous word here, a lustful thought there, whether there was anything else that was on my conscience, and I told him about the meeting at the stone cross with Nur, and my feelings of shame at how I had treated her. I wanted her to be happy, I truly did, but I had no idea how I could make this a reality without sacrificing my own happiness — and Goody’s.

  ‘Those in love wish all the world well,’ said Tuck, smiling at me with his kind nut-brown eyes set deep in his apple-wrinkled face. ‘But in this case I do not think you can help her. Nur’s suffering has plunged her into madness, and nothing — at least, no human enterprise — can bring her out the other side. You must pray for her, and hope that God will show her the light of his mercy.’

  We feasted all that Christmas Day on the Yule boar — a huge animal that Robin had sent down from Sherwood, with his love, and that we had been roasting over a slow fire since dawn — and a largely restrained and mostly sober merriment continued for the Twelve Holy Days. On the eighth day of Christmas, January the first, we exchanged our gifts. Goody gave me a fine sword-belt buckle, chased in gold; I gave her a simple silver bracelet — and, as a sort of jesting love token, a ginger kitten. When Goody and I had first met in the house of her father, an irascible old rogue who lived deep in Sherwood, I had rescued a kitten for her from a tree, and Goody told me that it was then that she had first begun to love me. I was stunned when she told me that — I had seen her then as an unhappy little girl, feisty and fearless, not as the love of my life. But God moves in mysterious ways, as Tuck was forever telling me, and I had no doubts now that Goody and I were destined to be together for the rest of our days.

  As my Christmastide gift, Marie-Anne, my wonderful and wealthy hostess, gave me a new vielle to replace the one that I had broken in the fight with Rix. It was a beautiful instrument, with five strings pegged at the end of a long neck, elegant curves and a deep sound box. It was fashioned from polished rosewood, a deep, warm reddish-brown colour, and came with a matching horsehair bow. And after a lavish supper that day I was easily persuaded to perform with my gorgeous new instrument for the party at Wakefield Inn.

  Being in love gave every canso, tenso or sirvates that I performed a special resonance: the words of love between a knight and his lady, honestly written when I was alone, but somehow callow and empty, suddenly came alive and acquired a new meaning under Goody’s influence on me. And at the end of one song of tragic love, one that I had written blithely three years ago, I found that my eyes were wet with tears.

  ‘For Christ’s mercy, play something a little more cheerful,’ said Tuck, dabbing his eyes with a linen kerchief. ‘You’ll send us all to bed in floods of tears at this rate.’

  Goody was openly sobbing. ‘It was so beautiful, Alan,’ said my love. ‘You are so beautiful…’ Her words were thankfully muffled by a napkin with which she was mopping her streaming face, but I realized that I had to change the mood and so we ended the evening with a rollicking, bawdy composition about a one-legged old woman with seven young lovers — one lover for each day of the week — each of them also missing one vital limb. And we did all go to our beds in tears after all, tears of laughter.

  In the second week of January, a cold, snow-bound season, I visited Westbury. Ghost was unhappy to be abroad in that frigid time, but Baldwin, my steward, seemed pleased to see me in his dry, unemotional way when we finally arrived after three days of plodding through snow on iron-hard roads. I spent several days with him in the warm, smoky old hall going over the accounts of the manor; we had made a small profit the previous year, and a good harvest meant that the granaries were full and there would be more than enough for everyone at Westbury to eat over the cold months. I returned to London a week later feeling well pleased with Baldwin’s running of the estate, and content that he should continue to act for me there in all things.

  Sometimes I believe the Devil has a special watch put upon human souls who are happy — and when he finds sinless joy he focuses all his malice upon it and directs his minions to work night and day to turn it sour. For the moment I returned to Wakefield Inn from my trip up to Westbury, things began to go horribly wrong.

  As I approached the Inn, walking my tired Ghost along Strondway in the half-lig
ht of dusk, I thought I saw a small, huddled figure in a voluminous dark gown scuttling away from the gatehouse. I dismissed the wretch as a beggar, but I had cause to think again when I found myself outside the big wooden iron-studded gate. Somebody had defaced the entrance to the courtyard with a strange and evil symbol: an image no more than one foot square that seemed to resemble two figures, possibly a man and a woman, grotesquely deformed and grappling with each other in mortal combat. It had been scratched deeply into the wood at about head height, and coloured with a substance that I suspected was blood. I told the porter, who was asleep in his cosy lodge by the door, and who had heard nothing, to erase the evil symbol immediately with a pumice stone and stiff scrubbing brush. Then I tried to put it from my mind.

  As I walked across the courtyard and into the hall, stamping the snow off my boots as I went, I came across a sight that chilled my already frozen body to the marrow. Goody was sitting on a bench by the hearth fire snuggled up to a handsome young man.

  And they were holding hands.

  He was a slim lad, about my height; exquisitely dressed in samite and furs, and with fine, pale blond hair. His face, I suppose, was one that women would call handsome: at least he had soft, regular features and no moles or growths or missing parts to disfigure it. I would have called it insipid, even weak, for my part. But there he sat, this golden youth, clutching at Goody’s hands with his long fingers.

  Both Goody and her damned swain rose as I strode over to them, my hand on my sword hilt. I saw that the boy was unarmed, and a part of me cursed his soul, for the chance to pick a fight and cut him down where he stood would have been a fine thing, I thought angrily, a fine thing indeed.

  ‘Who are you? And what the Devil do you think you are doing here?’ I snarled at this baby-faced, samite-clad, hand-holding mountebank.

  ‘Alan,’ said Goody sharply. ‘Behave yourself! This is Roger of Chichester, a very good friend of mine. He is merely paying me the courtesy of a friendly visit to wish me joy of the season.’