by Angus Donald
‘Cut my bonds, Alan,’ said the Master. ‘Allow me to go free to serve the Queen of Heaven and her Son. Cut them now: nobody will know but you and I. And you will assure yourself of a place in Heaven by your actions.’
His bright blue eyes compelled me, and my will dissolved; I could feel it melting away like snow on a boot top propped by a hearth; then with a dreamy jolt, I found I was outside my own body, like a ghost, looking across at a young blond knight stretching his left hand forward to grasp the cruel ropes that bound this innocent man of God, this good and holy monk…
No, no, a thousand times, no. With a wrench, I broke our locked gaze, came to my senses and snatched my left hand away as if from a flame. I reminded myself that this slight monk had commanded savage gangs of lawless bandits to do his bidding; he had controlled scores of knights and sent them out to kill at his behest. I had felt the full force of his mind and had nearly been overcome. I had a glimpse of Robin’s mocking face, and I knew that he would find the feebleness of my will entirely risible. He alone, among a dozen Westbury men, had been impervious to the Master’s powers in the round room above the tower: was it his cynicism, his godlessness that had protected him?
I lifted the lance-dagger in my right hand, taking refuge in its implied threat. I was about to make one more appeal to the man before me when I heard movement behind and turned to see roughly dressed, well-armed men pushing Robin’s sentries out of their way and swaggering into the tent: it was Mercadier and half a dozen of his routiers.
‘We have orders from the King,’ said Mercadier. ‘That monk is to be fetched to the royal tent, immediately. Put that ridiculous blade away and stand aside… Sir Knight.’
I stood and sheathed the lance-dagger. ‘He is my prisoner,’ I said. ‘You cannot merely steal him from under my nose in broad daylight.’
‘The King needs him! We have information from another wretch that this monk has in his possession a magical bowl, a relic of some sort, that can cure a man no matter how severe his hurt. So I say once again, Sir Knight, for the last time: stand aside by order of the King!’
I looked down at the Master. His eyes were closed; I heard him whisper: ‘Thank you, Lady, for your mercy!’
I made a final effort: ‘He does not have the magical bowl you seek. I have been trying to persuade him to reveal its hiding place…’
‘We shall persuade him more effectively than you, I think,’ said Mercadier, with a cold smile.
I put my hand on my sword hilt. But Mercadier spoke again: ‘Think carefully, Sir Knight, before you lose your head! You once took a captive monk from me by force — do you remember? Do you think I would flinch from doing the same to you in order for a chance to save the King’s life?’
On either side of Mercadier, two crossbowmen were aiming their weapons at my chest. I took a breath, shrugged and released my hilt. ‘Guard him closely,’ I said, moving out of the way of Mercadier’s men, who went forward swiftly to seize the Master. ‘I shall certainly want him back from you when you are done with him.’
I expected Robin to be angry with me for allowing the mercenary to steal our prisoner but he merely smiled and said: ‘Persuasion is an ugly business, and that scarred brute is more practised at it than I am; better that he should do it.’
But it galled me to have had to surrender the Master to my enemy, and I said as much. ‘There was nothing you could have done,’ said Robin. ‘Mercadier had a warrant from the King to seize him; he would have killed you had you resisted him. Besides, all is not lost. When Mercadier is finished, we will reclaim him; and perhaps the Grail, too.’
The King died the next day. Quietly, holding his mother’s hand, having made his last confession, the Lionheart took his leave of this earthly life. The first I heard of it was a deep hollow baying, like a pack of hounds at feeding time, the cries of many hundreds of grief-stricken men, and word spread throughout the camp in a ripple of sorrow growing louder and louder. Knights wailed and tore their hair; I saw grizzled men-at-arms who would cheerfully murder a child or loot a church weeping like girls. And quietly, almost imperceptibly, that very same day the royal army began to melt away.
I drank a cup of wine in the Marshal’s tent that evening, with Robin, some of the Marshal’s knights, and Sir Nicholas de Scras. I was stunned, unable quite to compass what had happened — the King was truly dead and yet the world still existed. I would never see his face again, nor joke with him, nor sing for him, nor ride into battle at his side, and feel the exhilaration of his reckless enthusiasm for war. It seemed unreal, and yet I saw everything with an unusual clarity. The Earl of Striguil’s lined face had aged another ten years that day: he looked like an old, old man, his hair now entirely grey, black pouches of tiredness below his eyes. For a long while in that gloom-filled tent, nobody spoke.
Then Robin spoke for us all: ‘Well then, what now?’
‘Now,’ said the Marshal, lifting his heavy head, ‘now, we all have a choice. We do homage to Arthur, Duke of Brittany, Richard’s little nephew…’
‘That brat? He is but twelve years old,’ protested one of the knights. ‘The English barons will never follow him.’
‘I said we had a choice,’ the Marshal rumbled. ‘We may swear allegiance to Arthur of Brittany… or to Prince John. Richard named him as his heir, almost with his last breath — and Queen Eleanor witnessed it and approves. He is her son, too, after all.’
There was a long, long silence.
‘So it is John,’ said Robin with a deep sigh.
‘I fear it must be John,’ replied the Marshal.
At some point during the pale orgy of grief and uncertainty that followed King Richard’s death, the Master talked one of his captors into releasing his bonds, and he slipped away from the camp unseen. Mercadier’s men cared little about their prisoner’s escape — he was but a monk, after all, not a magnate who might provide a rich ransom. And each individual routier was busy considering what he might do, now that the army was disintegrating and the prospects of payment had died with the King. Some rode out of the camp and immediately took up the wild life of bandits, squeezing the last few drops of nourishment from a ravaged landscape; others gathered their weapons, women and loot, formed disciplined bands and marched north to seek employment in Flanders or the German lands. Mercadier himself, black-faced with an icy rage, located the red-headed crossbowman who had loosed the deadly quarrel against the King and had him publicly flayed alive, although the wretched man insisted, screaming, that he had had an audience with the King before he died and had been granted a full pardon for his crime.
In all this confusion, the Master disappeared. And by the time the thought had pierced through the bitter fog of my grief, and it occurred to me that I should attempt to reclaim him, as Robin had put it, he was long gone.
Oddly, I did not rage and curse at Mercadier, or myself, after his disappearance: he was bound for Hell, I knew, and God would punish him in due course, or so I earnestly hoped. With Richard gone, I found it difficult to care for anything, anything at all; all strength seemed to have seeped from my limbs; I could barely stir myself to eat, drink and empty my bowels.
Eventually, after days of sorrowful idleness, I pulled myself together, slowly gathered up the Westbury men, as Robin gathered up his Locksley folk, and we packed our traps and folded our tents, and mustered on horseback in the dawn. Then, dolefully, we took the road north; north towards England, home and family. North to Goody.
I married my beloved — Godifa, daughter of Thangbrand — at the door of the little church in Westbury on the first day of July in the year of Our Lord Eleven Hundred and Ninety-Nine. Robin gave her away to me, while Marie-Anne, Countess of Locksley, and her women looked on and wept for joy. There would be no rich dowry from the King — that generous offer had died with him — but Robin provided Goody with a half-dozen lumpy linen bags, each displaying a bright red Templar cross. And we celebrated the marriage with a solemn Mass inside the village church afterwards, conducted not by Ar
nold the local priest but by Marie-Anne’s chaplain and our old friend Father Tuck, and with a feast the like of which Westbury had never seen.
After the meal, Little John and Thomas stripped to the waist, greased their torsos with goose fat and took on all comers in a roped-off wrestling enclosure. And after having defeated a dozen local men, and encouraged by a great deal of mead, they fought each other in a friendly bout that Little John narrowly won, and only then because he lost his temper and dislocated Thomas’s right shoulder. Bernard de Sezanne, Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine’s famous trouvere and my erstwhile music master, arrived and sang and laughed and sang again, and then became so drunk that he had to be carried to bed; William the Marshal and a dozen of his knights attended also, including my friend Sir Nicholas de Scras, and they consented to give a display of skill at arms that had the villagers of Westbury gasping with awe. And, afterwards, fired with martial ardour, half a dozen of the local lads came to me and asked if they might have the honour of serving me as men-at-arms.
It was a happy, happy day. And when I took Goody’s hand in the porch of the church, and Tuck blessed us and wrapped a band of silk around our joining, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that, not only did I love her with my whole heart, my body and my soul, but that I would love her for the rest of my days. And so I have.
And later, breathless in the warm dark of the great bed in my chamber, after we had made love for the first time, and I was still tingling at the touch of her lips and breasts and warm loins, and wondering at the magic in her being, I knew that God had smiled on me, and I was truly blessed.
And as I drifted into sleep, I heard a tap-tapping of a thin branch against the wooden window shutter, and drowsing, sinking into delightful sleep, I heard that insistent but light rattling form a rhythm, a dry whispering beat that my sleepy mind only dimly recognized: one-two, one-two, one-two-three, one-two.
Epilogue
My hands ache from scribbling these words, and it seems to me that this must be a good place to end this tale of my young self, and Robin, and my beloved sovereign the lionhearted Richard, and finally to lay down my quill. Writing of the King’s death has brought back all the sorrow of that time in a bitter flood. I truly loved him, my King, my hero, and when I think on his death, I feel the prick of hot tears once more in my old, dry eyes. I sometimes wonder what Richard might have achieved if he had deigned to sport his shield that black day outside Chateau Chalus-Chabrol. Would he have finally taken Gisors and driven the French King from Normandy? Would he have begat sons to rule after he was dead and denied the throne to his brother John? We shall never know. But I comfort myself with the thought that, like Hanno, King Richard shall never grow old and tired and frail, as I have — and that, like Hanno, he died a warrior’s death, with brave words on his lips and defiance in his heart. I think that perhaps only a fighting man can understand that satisfaction. Hanno and Richard lived and died as men — and their memory will ever be honoured among those warriors who shared their perils.
I have shown these pages to my grandson Alan and he told me after supper one day that he liked them very much. But he was also a little confused and full of questions: ‘What of your vengeance, Grandpa?’ he asked, wrinkling his young brow. ‘Did you not have your revenge on the Master as you did on Sir Eustace de la Falaise?’
‘I did,’ I replied, ‘but not at this time.’
‘And what of that ill-born dog Mercadier? Surely you did not suffer him to live and prosper in peace?’
‘Oh, he certainly died,’ I said. ‘He did not prosper, and he died quite soon after the King.’
‘But how did he die, Grandpa? What were the circumstances of his death? Did you kill him in battle? Did you fight him in a duel? Did you kill the Master, too? The “man you cannot refuse”? And the Grail — what became of that? Did you ever find it? Was it really the blessed vessel that once held Our Saviour’s blood?’
‘Hush now, my boy,’ I said. ‘Too many questions for this time of night. All that passed after Richard’s death is a story for another day.’ And I dismissed him to his bed. But his questions stayed with me: my dead memories called to me silently from the dark corners of the hall, and in my half-waking dreams at dawn they danced through my mind. So perhaps my aching hand will, with rest, recover its suppleness in a few days, and perhaps I will pick up my quill once more and write one last tale of Robin and myself, of our friends and enemies, of Nur and Prince John, of Mercadier and the Master — and our quest for that most wondrous, tantalizing, blood-tainted object, the Holy Grail.
Historical Note
At my parents’ house the other day, I was sorting through some childhood possessions when I came across a slim, hardback book, written by Lawrence Du Garde Peach, illustrated by John Kenney and published in 1965 by Wills amp; Hepworth Ltd of Loughborough. On the cover is a tall, commanding medieval knight in a full suit of mail with a white crusader’s surcoat over the top. His domed helmet is adorned with a golden crown; a red shield is slung across his broad back; his left hand rests casually on the pommel of the scabbarded sword at his waist; he gazes into the distance at an unfolding but unseen battle. On the cover of the book are the words: Richard the Lion Heart — A Ladybird Book — An Adventure from History. Holding it in my hand, I experienced a great flood of half-forgotten happy memories. This little book, which I must have read some forty years ago is, I believe, responsible for my lifelong interest in Richard the Lionheart. In language suitable for a six-year-old child, it encapsulated his aristocratic arrogance, his love of battle and his generosity of spirit; and while I have done a good deal of grown-up reading about the subject since then, my mental image of Richard remains that of the imperious knight on the cover of that slim volume.
Most people are familiar, from novels, films and plays, with the highlights of Richard’s career — the warrior king who led the Third Crusade, and was then captured, imprisoned and held for ransom on his way home — but storytellers seldom focus on the last five years of his life. I think this is because, to modern eyes, the half-decade before his death in April 1199 was rather a confused period — it was a time of intermittent warfare against Philip of France, with few clear victories or defeats and very little glory. Bands of knights and mercenaries ravaged the lands from Boulogne to Bordeaux, thousands of peasants perished from hunger, towns were burned, castles were captured, retaken, destroyed, rebuilt — and there were frequent truces between the warring sides while everyone wielding a sword and wearing armour took a breath and planned their next move. And that is partly why I wanted to write about this chapter of history — I felt that few other novelists had explored it and I wanted to get across a sense of the destructiveness of medieval war, and the appalling impact it had on the landscape and on people’s livelihoods — as well as on the minds of the combatants. But I also discovered why this period of the Lionheart’s life is seldom written about: it is rather difficult to shape into a recognizably heroic narrative structure — it ends without any significant military triumphs and with King Richard’s almost random death at the hands of a nobody in a minor battle at an obscure castle. Such is real life; even great heroes sometimes die pointlessly.
At the time, or shortly afterwards, many of the chroniclers of the Lionheart’s exploits were also slightly bemused and deflated by his anticlimactic demise and various attempts were made to give the facts of his death more meaning. To the medieval mind, the lives of great men must have a pattern; they must demonstrate God’s purpose in some way, as chaotic chance was surely the work of the Devil. Accordingly, some historians of the day happily used their imagination when describing Richard’s end: they claimed that the Lionheart had been seeking a valuable treasure at Chateau Chalus-Chabrol, which had been discovered by the Viscount of Limoges, and which Richard wished to lay his hands on. This turned the hero’s death into a parable about greed — the mighty lion slain by an insignificant ant as a punishment for avarice.
However, I was quite delighted to discover this fantastic t
ale of a hidden treasure when I was researching King Richard’s death — even though it was unlikely to have any basis in fact: it made my job a little easier. I had been wanting to include the story of the Holy Grail — a hugely influential contemporary legend made popular by the trouvere Chretien de Troyes and others — as an element in my Robin Hood stories for some time, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. And so, in my novel, my fictional heroes Robin and Alan persuade Richard to come south to punish Viscount Aimar with the lure of a wondrous treasure, the Holy Grail. The Grail storyline continues in the next book in this series — indeed, it is the main theme — and I will say more about that fabulous object then. But the point of this note is to help the reader understand which parts of my books are based on historical fact, and which parts are not. So, there was no Holy Grail at Chateau Chalus-Chabrol when Richard died there on 6 April 1199, and probably no hidden treasure either — but there are many other parts of my story that might sound equally incredible but which do happen to be true.
The episode with Alan at Verneuil at the beginning of the book is based on a real battle. The Castle of Verneuil was being besieged by King Philip with a huge army and, on Richard’s arrival in Normandy in May 1194, he sent a small contingent of men to break through the French lines and stiffen the resolve of the defenders. This they did, bravely holding off their attackers until King Philip and more than half his force suddenly departed to take revenge for the massacre of the civilians by Prince John at Evreux. Verneuil was saved, and when Richard arrived with his army a day or so later, he captured the King of France’s siege train from his fleeing enemies. Richard was so delighted by the successful defence of Verneuil that he kissed all the surviving defenders and rewarded them generously. History does not record what the King thought of the mocking chalk drawing on the front of the castle gate of a mace-bearing Philip — although that weapon was probably in his hands, not ‘springing from his loins’, which is an exercise of literary licence by me designed to make the insulting cartoon more comprehensible to modern eyes. Jokes don’t travel well over the centuries.
