by Angus Donald
But while the King was fizzing and crackling with energy, after the first cup of wine my eyelids began to droop — it had been a long and exhausting night’s work. And I wanted some peace to ponder Murdac’s cryptic words again. I had tried, briefly, to interrogate him as we made our way across the park to the King’s tent, but groggy and bouncing uncomfortably on Hanno’s broad shoulder, he had remained sullenly silent. Tomorrow, I thought, tomorrow I would ask him again about the man who he claimed had ordered my father’s death — and if he still remained stubborn… well, there were less gentlemanly methods that I would not be too shy to employ. I might well ask Sir Aymeric de St Maur for a few suggestions about the persuasive use of hot irons.
I took my leave of the King — he was elated and chatting nineteen to the dozen with his tired-looking household knights, and with the sergeants who had been charged with keeping Sir Ralph Murdac secured — and went to find Thomas, who was curled up in a mound of straw, sleeping peacefully among the King’s horses. I woke him and gave him my weapons and armour, including Rix’s beautiful sword, to care for: they were still encrusted with gore from the fight in Murdac’s chamber and worse from our escape down the cliff. Then I rolled myself in an old cloak, and lay down next to Hanno in the warm straw. As I drifted off into a deep, satisfied sleep, my last thoughts were: had Murdac been lying? Had he spun me a tale about my father solely to save his neck? It was entirely possible, I thought. But I would surely find out the next day. Tomorrow.
And then Dame Sleep pulled me down into her vast comforting bosom.
I awoke in broad daylight, to the distant sound of snarling saws and ringing hammers. Hanno was snoring gently beside me, and I lay for a few moments in my cosy straw bed and looked up at the blue sky above. It seemed so empty and clean: untroubled by the bloody affairs of men. It was a perfect spring day: I knew I had performed great deeds the night before, and my King had acknowledged them, and now my enemies were dead, or captured, while I was whole. Life was very good, I mused. And then my thoughts turned to Goody, as they often did first thing in the morning. We would be betrothed soon and she would be wholly mine, and that notion gave me a wonderful feeling of warmth and joy.
I noticed that the hammering and sawing had stopped and idly thought about getting to my feet, but there seemed to be no hurry. I was unlikely to be called upon to fight today after my efforts of the night before — there would be negotiations between the heralds and whomever was now in command of the castle — and if they broke down, Richard would begin the long, slow process of bombarding the castle into submission. I might not be called upon for weeks and I felt I deserved a long, lazy rest. In a little while, I thought, I will rise, wash, seize a bite of bread and a mouthful of ale and pay Ralph Murdac a visit to see if I can get any sense from him about my father’s death.
I remained there, watching the white fluffy clouds chasing each other over the vast blue heavens until, finally, a full bladder forced me to rise, brush the straw from my clothes, and seek out a latrine. As I made my way over to the big ditch that had been dug as a midden on the edge of the King’s encampment, I noticed that there were very few people about the place. And those that were in the park seemed to be making their way over to the east. Something was going on in the northern part of the outer bailey, I guessed, and for the first time that morning my curiosity stirred.
When I got back to the horse lines, Thomas was there and he had brought with him a bowl of hot water for me to wash in, and a clean linen chemise. I shook Hanno awake and, as soon as he had completed his morning ritual of yawning, farting, spitting and cursing foully in German, the three of us set off eastwards to see what we could see.
It was a hanging — or, to be more accurate, several hangings. An enormous gibbet had been erected to the north of the castle, well out of crossbow range from the battlements. And two black figures were already dangling from the crossbar as Hanno, Thomas and I hurried towards them, slowed by the crowd that had gathered to watch this gruesome spectacle. To my right, I could see that the battlements of the middle bailey were thick with heads as the defenders of the castle came out in their hundreds to watch the executions of their comrades — for I could see by their dress that the two men swinging from the gibbet were both Murdac’s men; most likely ones we had captured in the fight for the outer bailey the previous day.
As we approached the gibbet, a cold hand gripped my heart. I saw a third prisoner being set on a horse cart under the half-filled gallows, with his hands tied behind his back and a noose around his neck. A priest was gabbling inaudible words of prayer for the condemned man’s soul and the victim had his eyes tightly shut. A signal from a knight, standing by, and a whip lashed down on the cart horse’s rump and, as the beast started forward, the cart was pulled away from under the man’s legs and he dropped a foot or so, the noose tightening around his neck, strangling him slowly to death.
The hanged man’s feet were still kicking wildly, as if he were indulging in a particularly joyful dance, when the cart was wheeled back into position for the next victim. This one was a small man, dressed entirely in expensive black, though rather bedraggled and with, I noticed, his left shoulder wedged high against his neck. It was Sir Ralph Murdac.
My stomach lurched; I was still fifty yards from the gibbet, with a throng of men-at-arms and townspeople from Nottingham between me and the gallows; nonetheless, I shouted out to the knight in command of the hangings as loud as I could.
‘Stop, stop. Hold there, sir. He is my prisoner!’ I yelled desperately, trying to force my way through the crush of bodies.
Murdac was on the tail of the cart by now, the priest was already halfway through his prayers. And I was stopped by a burly man-at-arms, part of a ring of Richard’s men who were keeping the crowds back from the gallows.
‘Wait, wait,’ I shouted. ‘That is Sir Ralph Murdac!’
‘We know who he is, lad,’ said the man-at-arms, barring my way with shield and spear; by his accent I could tell that he was a local man. ‘And no one deserves death more richly than he,’ the big man continued. ‘He dies on the King’s personal orders.’
Murdac, eyes red with weeping, the noose already around his neck, noticed my face in the crowd. He opened his mouth to say something, and just as he was about to speak, the whip cracked down on the horse’s rump, the cart lurched forward, and Murdac was left dangling from his neck in space, his face reddening and bulging, slowly choking to death. His bright blue eyes were on mine, pleading, and I honestly tried to go forward, but the big man-at-arms shoved me roughly back, cursing my eagerness. As I watched helplessly, my eyes fixed on his purpling face, Murdac was slowly strangled by the rough hempen rope. His feet kicked and wriggled, his tongue protruded, impossibly huge in that small face, his bladder and bowels released themselves, and I was transported back ten years or more to an old oak tree in a small village, now destroyed, but which had been only a few short miles away from where I stood now. There, ten years before, as a small and frightened boy, I had watched my father hanged — on the orders of this very man now thrashing away his life before me.
I stood still for a long while and watched Murdac slowly die: it was fitting, I told myself.
And as I watched, I offered up a prayer for the soul of my father.
I took no further part in the siege that day. Hanno, Thomas and I found ourselves a cosy tavern in the English part of Nottingham town and drank ale until it was almost coming out of our ears. Meanwhile, King Richard’s stone-throwing machines smashed at the defenders’ walls from a small hill to the north of the castle, and our drinking was punctuated by the sound of smashing masonry. The ale seemed to have little effect on me, I felt merely numb. I spoke little to Hanno, and he had the sense to be quiet and order a continual stream of pots of ale from the alewife, with whom he had already struck up a great friendship. After a pot or two, Thomas disappeared on his own business. I did not even ask him where he was bound. I was thinking of my father, of his kindness to me, of the music th
at as a family we had made together, and of his death… mostly about his awful death.
Robin joined us for a while, informed by Thomas of our whereabouts, I supposed, and he congratulated me on the success of my mission the night before. We raised a mug of ale to Murdac’s slow, painful death, but in truth I could take no joy from it. Strangely, Robin seemed to understand my flat, empty feeling at my enemy’s demise.
‘Revenge,’ he said, fixing me with his silver eyes, which seemed to be glowing more brightly than ever in the haze of ale, ‘is a duty. It is not a pleasure. We take vengeance because we owe it to those who have been wronged. But, in itself, it is not something that can make us whole. We take revenge because we must pay our debts to the dead — and so that people will fear to do us, and those we love, a wrong. But we should not look to it as a balm to the soul.’
But I was in no mood to discuss his peculiar philosophies and Robin, sensing my mood, soon made his excuses and, after quietly ordering Hanno to see that I came to no harm, left me to my ale jug.
The next day, under a flag of truce, two knights emerged from the battered castle, and on their knees before a stern King Richard began the negotiations for the surrender of Nottingham Castle.
I was in the King’s pavilion, still feeling out of sorts with the world, when they arrived. Richard was just explaining to me — I will not say apologizing; kings do not admit it when they are wrong — why it was necessary for Murdac to be publicly hanged.
‘They must know that I am serious,’ Richard said. ‘They must understand that if they do not surrender the castle to me now, when I eventually take it I will slaughter every last mother’s son inside its walls.’
Evidently, as usual, King Richard’s brutal tactics had worked. A delegation from the castle was here, and surrender was in the air. The two knights who came to parley with him were William de Wenneval, the deputy constable of the castle who had assumed command after Murdac’s sudden disappearance — and Sir Nicholas de Scras.
There was a good deal of mummery and show about the parley. The King pretended to be in a towering rage that his royal authority had been defied. The knights, on their knees, begged for his forgiveness, Sir William de Wenneval sticking to Murdac’s feeble story that they had not realized who was besieging them. The business did not take long to conclude: the King demanded that twelve noble hostages, including the two knights before him, should surrender themselves to him, throwing themselves on the King’s mercy, but he grudgingly conceded that the rest of the garrison — mostly common English men-at-arms and a few undistinguished knights, and the surviving Flemish crossbowmen, of course — would be at liberty to depart Nottingham for their homes without molestation.
As the two humiliated knights were leaving the pavilion to take the King’s offer back to the beleaguered castle, Sir Nicholas caught my eye and I went over to greet him.
‘It would seem, Alan, that you were right. You evidently backed the right man,’ said my friend sadly. He scrubbed at his short-cropped grey hair in frustration. ‘And it must be faced manfully that I rolled the dice — and lost!’
‘I am sure the King will be merciful,’ I said, although I was not sure at all: the five hanged prisoners of yesterday, especially Ralph Murdac, loomed large in my thoughts.
At noon, the twelve knights emerged from the castle. According to the agreement, they were all unarmed, wearing only the linen shift of a penitent and each with a hempen noose around his neck to demonstrate that the King had the right to hang him if he chose. While the rest of the garrison streamed away into Nottingham town, grateful for their lives, the twelve knights were herded by Richard’s jeering soldiers to the gallows in the outer bailey.
There were five corpses still hanging there like ripe fruit on a tree of death, including the body of Sir Ralph Murdac. The King, splendid in his finest armour and towering above them on horseback, looked sternly at the twelve men, his face a cold mask of royal justice.
‘You have defied your lawful King, and so committed treason — and for that the punishment must be death,’ Richard began. Then he continued: ‘But one of my most valiant knights, Sir Alan of Westbury, has pleaded for the life of one of your number.’
I was startled by my King’s words. I had pleaded with him, of course, but what did he mean by Sir Alan of Westbury? I was no knight. Did he think I was? Was he confused in the head by the battle?
‘After listening to the counsel of Sir Alan, my trusty and well-beloved knight,’ the King went on, his words having a strange emphasis on the work knight, ‘I have decided that one man, Sir Nicholas de Scras, shall receive a full pardon for his crimes against my person, and shall not, on this occasion, receive the penalty he so justly deserves.
I caught Sir Nicholas’s eye and he smiled ruefully at me, nodding his thanks, but with more than a little relief in his careworn face. I was thinking of the friendship he had shown me in Outremer, his tender nursing of me in Acre when I was sick, of the time he saved my life outside the Blue Boar tavern in Westminster, and the advice about Milo’s weak left leg that he had whispered to me before the wrestling match. He owed me nothing, by my reckoning.
The King was still speaking: ‘The rest of you’ — he paused for a long moment and then pointed at the eleven other linen-clad knights, penitent and pathetic — ‘shall also escape death today and shall be set free upon agreement of a suitable ransom from each of you.’
And the King smiled. There were cheers, and shouts of joy, and not only from the eleven knights who had cheated death. Hoods and helmets were thrown into the air and all of a sudden that grim place, in the shadow of five dangling bodies, took on the atmosphere of a holy day. Some people shouted: ‘God save the King!’ Others cheered the reprieved knights. A group of travelling musicians — not real trouveres but lowly market jongleurs — struck up a jaunty tune, and I saw people beginning to tap their feet. Before long there would be dancing. England had been racked by violence and uncertainty for too long. But now the King was back and, with the capture of Nottingham Castle, he was fully the master of his kingdom once more.
I walked over to King Richard’s horse. ‘Sire,’ I said, my heart beating fast, ‘I thank you for your clemency to my friend Sir Nicholas de Scras. But I must say one thing… I am no knight. I fear you are mistaken in that. I am merely a lowly captain under the Earl of Locksley.’
King Richard smiled down at me: ‘Not a knight, you say?’ His blue eyes were twinkling at me. ‘You think that I do not know that, Blondel? You are no knight, that is true, but you have shown more courage and resource and skill in battle than many a man of more illustrious parentage. You are not a knight at this hour — but by God’s legs you shall be before the hour is up. Get down on your knees!’
I goggled at my sovereign, my knees folded under me, and while the King dismounted, I stared at him, and watched while he beckoned over a household knight who handed him a package wrapped in black silk.
‘Give me your sword,’ said the King. He stood looming over me, tall and proud, the spring sunlight glinting off his red and gold hair. I fumbled with my plain sword hilt, but just then young Thomas ran forward out of the crowd and held out Rix’s beautiful blade. I noticed that my hard-working squire had somehow found the time to clean the blood and filth from it.
The King took the weapon from Thomas and admired it for a moment. ‘A fine blade, and worthy of you, Blondel,’ he said quietly. He looked at the word engraved in gold on the shining blade. It read ‘Fidelity’. The King nodded and said: ‘And a most fitting inscription!’ Then quickly, smoothly, he tapped me three times on the shoulders with the sword, and said: ‘In the name of Almighty God and St George, I make thee a knight. Arise, Sir Alan of Westbury.’
My heart was so full that I felt it must burst with joy. I climbed to my feet, and the King handed me Rix’s blade — my blade — and then he passed me the black silk package. A breath of wind caught the flimsy covering, blowing it back, and I saw that it contained a fine pair of ornate silver spur
s — their value being, I guessed, about one pound. It did not now seem such a paltry sum.
‘Sir Alan of Westbury,’ the King said, and then stopped. ‘That is not right — Westbury is too small a fief for a man of your quality… but we shall attend to that presently. Sir Alan of Westbury, may you always serve God, protect the weak, and fulfil your knightly duties as well as you have served me.’
And he smiled at me again, and I had to blink away the hot tears that were filling my eyes, as my King remounted his horse and, quietly humming a snatch of ‘My Joy Summons Me’ under his breath, he rode away.
On a crisp, clear day in the first week of April, in a green field outside what remained of the burnt-out castle of Kirkton, I became betrothed to Godifa, daughter of Thangbrand of Sherwood. It was one of the happiest moments of my long life — even now, forty years later, the memory of that glorious day warms my old bones. Goody wore a simple gown in blue — the colour of purity — and a white veil. Her plain dress was adorned with a great ruby hanging from a golden chain around her neck. I had been persuaded by Marie-Anne to spend some silver on a new suit of clothes — hose, tunic, hat and mantle — all dyed a deep rich purple-red, and embroidered with wonderful spidery black needlework: I felt like a prince of the royal blood.
I gave Goody a golden ring, engraved with both of our names, and she gave me one of the detachable sleeves from her blue dress as a token, and we both made a solemn oath, similar to the marriage vow but talking of the future: ‘I will take you to be my wife,’ I said to Goody, and smiled into her lovely violet eyes, and she too vowed that she would soon be mine.
Father Tuck bound our right hands together with a silken rope as a sign of our intention to marry, and then he held a solemn Mass to celebrate the event and to ask Almighty God to bless our lives together. Marie-Anne, as Goody’s guardian, was insistent that we do the correct thing, even though Goody had almost no property to speak of, and the Countess had me sign a document of betrothal that gave a formal status to the engagement.
