by Alex Scarrow
Cabot sitting beside him on the jockey seat turned. ‘All right, lad?’
‘Jay-zus! The smell,’ he grunted, wiping a string of dangling bile from his chin. ‘What’s happening?’
‘’Tis a rebellion, I think.’
Liam noticed some women and children in rags and on their knees around the fire, presumably grieving for those bodies burning in the flames. He spotted a cart laden with what at first he thought was a pile of bark-stripped firewood, pale knobbly branches of beach or willow. Then he realized he was looking at arms and legs — bodies, stacked on top of each other.
‘Starvation and disease has come to Nottingham,’ said Cabot, shaking his head. ‘Farmers no longer work their farms only to have all they yield taken in taxes. So food rots in fields and ’tis the towns that feel it first.’
‘Where is everyone?’
Cabot tipped his head towards the centre of the town where it seemed most of the night’s amber glow and the roar of voices, the ring of blades, seemed to be coming from.
‘I’ll wager they are turning on the Sheriff of Nottingham’s castle.’
Cabot reached through the canvas into the cart, pulled out his sword and sheath and rested it across his lap as he goaded the horses forward along a muddy avenue between tumbledown shacks. ‘We may have to fight our way in.’
The noise and the amber glow increased with intensity as they rounded a bend in the muddy rutted track and finally the crenellated top of a stone wall came into view. Along its base a sea of humanity swarmed by the light of hundreds of flaming torches. Activity seemed to be focused around two large thick oak gates at the base of a guard tower. From the confusion and movement amid dancing shadows and flickering firelight, Liam guessed the people of Nottingham were doing their very best to attempt to build a bonfire against the gates. The soldiers on the wall were in turn firing crossbow bolts down into the crowd, and ducking back to avoid being pelted with stones and javelins and one or two arrows.
One of the guards John had assigned to escort them jogged forward to the cart. Edward — Eddie, he seemed to be called. The other men deferred to him although they all seemed to share the same rank.
‘Sire,’ he called up to Liam. ‘If those see us here … they will turn on us!’
He was right. It seemed none of the hundreds in front of them had yet noticed the cart and its escort tucked back in the shadows of the alleyway between a long thatched granary and a thresher’s mill.
‘We’ll have to fight our way in,’ said Liam.
‘Sire?’ Eddie stared up at him with astonishment. He looked like he’d seen a fair few battles in his time with, like Cabot, a face that had taken its share of damage. But that command seemed to unsettle him. ‘Sire … that would be suicide!’
Liam nodded uncertainly. It didn’t look too good. But then they did have Bob. He turned in his seat. ‘Uh … Bob?’ He realized his mouth was dry and his voice fluttered with nerves. He hated how every other man around him seemed to manage not to sound like a quaking child, and yet he sounded to his own ears like a boy still.
Bob’s bristly head emerged through the flap of canvas.
‘We need you to do your thing.’
‘Affirmative,’ his voice rumbled, and he disappeared back through the flap. A moment later the cart wobbled as Bob emerged from the back and dropped heavily to the ground. He strode to the front of the cart, his chain mail jangling and clinking. He stood beside the driver’s seat, his head almost on a level with Liam’s and surveyed the scene ahead. ‘You intend for us to enter the defensive structure ahead?’
Liam felt his stomach twitching and writhing with apprehension. He nodded. ‘What do you think, Bob? Can we do it?’
Bob gave it some thought and eventually nodded. ‘I estimate a high probability of success. Eighty — ’
‘I d-don’t want to hear a number! Please!’
Bob nodded obediently. He reached up with a big ape hand and patted Liam’s shoulder heavily. ‘Do not be afraid, Liam. I will clear a way.’
He looked at the soldiers. All of them had unslung their shields from their backs and unsheathed their swords, ready for action.
‘Have the guards form up behind me, either side of the cart.’ Bob glanced at Liam, his eyes lost beneath the firm ridge of his brow and the rim of his chain-mail coif. ‘And stay close to me.’
Liam looked at Cabot. ‘Got that?’
He nodded vigorously. ‘Oh, aye … I’ll stay right close.’
Liam gave Eddie the order to have his men form up in two rows of six either side of the cart and then nodded at Bob that they were ready.
Bob turned towards the crowd and strode forward, a longsword held aloft in one hand. The cart rolled along behind him, both horses skittish and nervous, snorting their unease, and the flanking guards moved with it, hunkered down behind their shields.
The first heads in the crowd turned towards them as they emerged from the shadows, voices raised, alerting others. Liam could almost see the idea spreading from one to another: an easier target than the sheriff’s castle, an easier target on which to vent their rage. A dozen soldiers to make a brutal example of, and a cart no doubt loaded with gold sovereigns or, better still, food destined for the sheriff’s table.
A roar of excitement and anger rolled across the crowd, the goal of setting fire to the castle’s gates forgotten for now.
Oh boy. Liam had no weapon to clasp. Right now he’d give anything to be holding one of those Nazi pulse rifles in his hands. Even unloaded, the weight of it would have felt better than twiddling his thumbs.
Just ahead of them Bob’s purposeful stride switched to a slow loping jog. Cabot barked at his horses and the cart picked up a little more speed, while Eddie and his men broke into a trot beside them.
The castle wall loomed before them. Above the roar of the crowd Liam could hear raised voices from the wall. Perhaps they’d recognized the round helmets and long shields of their guard as king’s men and were preparing to open the gates for them. The crowd, though, looked unwilling as yet to part, despite the imposing form of Bob’s seven-foot frame.
A cluster of a dozen men — by the look of them, not townsfolk carrying little more than pitchforks and stones, but more like the brigands who had jumped them in the woods — squared up to Bob’s approach. Liam caught sight of the rusted glint of a sword’s blade swinging round at Bob’s head. He deftly ducked the blow and shouldered into the man with the force of a charging bull, knocking him back into the crowd and a dozen people off their feet.
One of the men took the opportunity, with Bob adjusting his balance, to lunge a pike at his stomach. The tip of it bit deep into his mail, breaking some chains, piercing his skin and going some way inside. Bob responded with a roundhouse sweep of his longsword that cleaved into the side of the man, cutting him completely in two, the momentum continuing into the shoulder of the man standing beside him. Both men collapsed as Bob jerked the pike’s blade clear of the torn tissue and shattered bone and prepared to swing it again in the other direction, but the rest of the men quickly pulled back.
Meanwhile, halted by the exchange in front, the cart and the guards were fending off the closing press of people either side. Missiles of all kinds clattered down on them: stones, sticks, chunks of broken masonry.
Something punched Liam’s shoulder. He screamed out in pain and grasped where he’d been hit. There was blood. Beside his legs Eddie’s shield clattered and clanged from the missiles raining down on them.
‘Sire!’ Eddie called up, jabbing the tip of his sword to ward off the nearest of the rioters. ‘Sire! We must keep moving!’
CHAPTER 37
1194, Nottingham
Ahead of them Bob had deftly spun the pike round so that the blood-wet tip and halberd blade were aimed towards the people. He began to swing its eight-foot length in a wide loop that clipped and gashed a thickset man who’d shuffled back too slowly.
The swooping pike’s blade did the job and created an arc of space
in front of Bob as he resumed his steady stride towards the oak gates, now only a dozen yards in front of them. Cabot roughly kicked the rear of the left horse and it staggered forward, eyes rolling and snorting. The other followed suit and the cart was moving again. The guards kept pace, their shields produced a cacophony of metallic clangs, like hailstones descending on to a tin roof.
Liam felt the air by his cheek pulse as a stone or rock whistled by, far too close for comfort. He wrapped his arms round his head and ducked down low. ‘Jay-zus-an’-Mary-get-us-out-of-here!’ he screamed through gritted teeth.
Cabot held the reins in one hand and held his other arm up to shield his face.
The lethal sweeping pendulum of Bob’s pike had now cleared space all the way to the large oak gates. At their base, the beginnings of a pyre of bracken and firewood had been laid, but yet to be successfully set on fire. Several bodies littered the ground in front of the gates, the stubs of multiple crossbow bolts protruding from them.
Liam could see the bracken and branches were going to need to be cleared aside in order to allow the cart through the gates — if, that is, someone inside was prepared to open up for them. But Bob was simply too busy sweeping his pike in order to keep the rioters back to deal with that himself. As the cart rolled forward into the clearing created by him, the soldiers spread out from guarding the cart’s flanks and formed a semicircle guarding the space in front of the gates.
The rioters — and Liam had noted a fair number of them looked more like seasoned fighters, even mercenaries, than they did townsfolk — seemed unwilling to press forward and engage the soldiers or fall within the range of Bob’s swooping halberd blade. Instead they held back, jeering and cursing and continuing to rain down an endless barrage of missiles on them.
Liam jumped down off the cart and began pulling the small mound of branches and bracken away from the bottom of the gates.
‘Help me!’ he shouted to the nearest of the soldiers.
The soldier glanced quickly at Eddie, who nodded. ‘Go on, do as he says!’
He dropped his shield and sword and joined Liam dragging armfuls of tangled branches and twisted bracken aside. Between them they soon managed to clear a gap in the thick pyre when Liam suddenly felt a sharp searing pain in the small of his back; the impact of something sharp and hard. His legs buckled at the shock of it and he collapsed forward into the nest of branches and thorns, snagged and tangled like some hapless scarecrow on a loop of barbed wire. He gasped for air for a moment, winded, stunned.
Beside him he heard a loud ring of impact. He twisted, trying to untangle himself, feeling a searing pain between his shoulders, to see the soldier who’d been helping him clear the pyre, drop heavily to his knees then clatter forward on to the dirt and cobbles, wide, surprised eyes rolling uncontrollably. His helmet was caved in on one side and the stubby fletching of a crossbow bolt protruded. A river of dark, almost black blood cascaded from beneath the rim of his helmet down his face.
Oh, God help us, we’re all gonna die out here.
Cabot was suddenly beside Liam, reaching down and pulling him out of the nest of wood. He was shouting something at Liam, but above the roar of chanting voices and the hailstone rattle and clang on the shields of the soldiers, he couldn’t make out what the old man was saying.
Cabot looked back over his shoulder and quickly ducked an arcing lump of flint, that shattered and sparked on masonry nearby. He turned back to Liam and jabbed a finger past his head, shouting something again. Liam turned painfully, grimacing at the sudden twist of his spine, to see the oak gates behind him had been cracked ajar. No more than would allow a single man to squeeze through sideways.
Cabot shouted again, this time directly into his ear. ‘Forget the cart!’
Liam nodded as Cabot pulled him roughly to his feet. ‘Yeah … OK,’ he uttered to himself. Liam could see that Eddie and his remaining ten men could do little more than hunch down behind their battered and misshapen shields, several of which looked little more than twisted corners of foil paper.
Liam cupped his hands. ‘The gate is open!’
His words were lost amid the chanting from the rioters. He tried to make himself heard again. ‘THE GATE IS OPEN!’
This time Eddie heard, turned quickly and saw for himself. He snapped an order to his men and they immediately began to shuffle backwards towards the gates.
Liam looked for Bob. Over the top of the cart’s two horses he could see his round head protected by the swinging skirt of his chain-mail coif as he ducked and weaved, and the metallic blur of the pike’s head whizzing round like the blade of some vast propeller.
‘BOB!’ he bellowed.
The support unit paused, straightened up like a startled rabbit and looked round for Liam.
Liam waved his arms until Bob spotted him, then pointed to the gates. ‘IT’S OPEN!’
Bob nodded and then, with one last warning flourish of his pike and a deep bear-like roar that startled and hushed the rioting crowd for a few fleeting seconds, he bounded around the uneasy horses and the abandoned cart.
The soldiers had begun stepping through the tangle of branches quickly, one after the other, and through the narrow gap between the gates. Until all that remained of them was a rearguard of Eddie and two others.
‘You first!’ Eddie shouted at Cabot and Liam.
Liam pushed Cabot towards the gates. ‘I’ll wait for Bob!’
Cabot nodded and followed through the gap. The rioters resumed pelting them with missiles as Bob arrived beside Liam.
‘GO!’ Bob’s voice boomed. A large rock bounced off his left shoulder and spun off into the night. ‘NOW!’
‘All right, all right!’ Liam nodded and beckoned at the remaining soldiers to go for the gap in the gates.
The air around them was now thick with the hum of incoming rocks and stones. Liam hunched over with his arms round his head as he waited his turn, certain that some large hunk of masonry was going to brain him before he got a chance to squeeze his way through.
Eddie waved at him to go first and Liam wasted no time. He stepped through the nest of remaining branches and forced himself into the narrow gap between the two large oak gates, rattling like drumheads from the impact of stones and rocks.
Then he was through into the darkness of the tower’s entrance arch. He collapsed on to a hard floor of flagstones, gasping and wheezing. By the wan light of the torches outside falling through the opening he could see the pale and frightened faces of half a dozen men, their shoulders braced against the gate, ready in case the rioters decided to rush it and force it wider.
Bob’s head appeared through the gap between the gates. ‘Wider, please!’ his voice boomed above the din. The men against the gate reluctantly gave him a few more inches to push himself through, and then he was inside with the others. Immediately a heavy locking bar was slid into place.
Liam collapsed back on to the ground exhausted as the thick gates rattled and thudded for a while longer under the dwindling barrage of projectiles. Finally, apart from the occasional thud, it seemed the riot going on outside had spent its energy. He could hear the roar of voices grow sporadic, beginning to dwindle and lose some of the intensity they’d experienced earlier. Finally, one of the men in the guard tower called down.
‘They’re leaving!’
A man next to Liam, one of the guards who’d handled the locking bar, sighed. ‘Same as last night.’
Liam grasped his arm. ‘It was like this last night as well?’
He shrugged. ‘’Tis like this most nights.’
CHAPTER 38
1194, Nottingham Castle, Nottingham
It took a word of command from Cabot and a mere glimpse of the king’s royal seal to convince one of the castle guards to take them immediately into the main keep. They found the Sheriff of Nottingham hunched over a round oak table, on which a dozen thick candles cast a flickering glow across cluttered stacks of parchment and a plate of food uneaten and forgotten.
&nbs
p; ‘What is it now?’ He stirred drunkenly. Bleary eyes opened, and at the sight of strangers in rags, spattered with blood, he lurched back in his chair and fumbled clumsily for a longsword on the table. It slid off the table along with a small stack of parchment and clattered uselessly on the floor.
‘Sire!’ said the guard, a young lad with tufts of ginger hair poking down from the rim of his helmet. ‘Sire! ’Tis not villains!’
The sheriff stopped fumbling for the blade on the floor and looked up. ‘N-not villains?’ His rheumy eyes narrowed behind a tangle of dark greasy hair. ‘We are safe? They — they have … gone?’
‘The fool is drunk,’ growled Eddie under his breath.
‘Aye, sire,’ replied the young guard, ‘they have dispersed, as last night.’
The sheriff collapsed back into his chair with a sigh of relief, resigned to leaving his sword where it lay on the floor. He muttered a prayer of thick unintelligible words and then reached across the table for a goblet of wine.
‘Sire,’ said Cabot, stepping forward, ‘we are on royal business. His Lordship, Earl of Cornwall and Gloucester — ’
‘Oh yes? What d-does John want of me now, eh?’ He grinned up at them and then upended the goblet into his open mouth.
‘We have come directly from John’s keep in Oxford,’ said Cabot. ‘On his orders.’
Nottingham laughed again. ‘Orders? I have orders, eh?’ He attempted to pull himself to his feet, stumbled a solitary step towards them before losing his balance and sprawling on to the floor. He lay where he was and began whimpering. Finally, while they waited for him to pick himself up, they realized he was snoring.
‘He is of no use to anyone,’ said Cabot.
‘Bob,’ Liam sighed, ‘lift him on to his bed.’
They watched Bob heft the sheriff carelessly over his shoulder and cross the hall to a large oak-framed mattress.
