Holy Warrior

by Angus Donald

  ‘Why do you think it might be a woman?’ Robin asked after a while.

  ‘Because of the nature of the attacks,’ I said. ‘They are underhand, silent, sneaky: a snake in the bed, poisoned food; that’s not the work of a man, a soldier.’

  ‘I think you may have an exaggerated idea of the honour of our fighting men,’ said Robin with a laugh. ‘And while I hesitate to boast of my prowess, the odds against killing me, man to man, face to face, each of us armed are reasonably long. And even if he could do it, it might take time to dispatch me, and, who knows, the renowned swordsman Alan of Westbury, might come to my aide.’ He was teasing me. ‘No, if you have to kill someone, poison is as good a way as any.’

  I said nothing; I couldn’t explain it, but I felt sure that the assassin was not a warrior. I could not think how to express it properly to Robin, so I held my tongue on the matter. Instead, we discussed the practicalities of Robin’s plan to isolate himself, and how it would work on a daily basis.

  As I was leaving, Robin grasped my arm. He said: ‘I know that we have not always seen things the same way; I know that sometimes, for whatever reasons, you are angry with me; but I want you to know that I appreciate your undertaking this task, and I’m aware that, if you succeed, I will owe you my life.’

  As I stared into his face, I thought of Ruth, and the man whose life was sacrificed to appease a false woodland god in our outlaw days, and a dozen other cruelties that Robin had practiced in pursuit of his personal goals - but in that moment I could not find any of the anger I had felt in the past.

  And then I thought of all he had done for me, of the number of times he had saved me, in battle and by altering the course of my life; of the lordship of Westbury, of the friendship he had shown me, of my position of honour among the ranks of his tough men-at-arms.

  ‘I am doing nothing but my duty as a loyal vassal, and nothing I do not owe you a hundred times over,’ I said with genuine feeling in my voice. And gripped his forearm and left before my emotions undid me.

  The King was in a festive mood as we gathered in the great hall of Mategriffon Castle for his revels. A great fire roared on two giant flagstones in the centre of the hall, the sparks flying upwards to disappear in the dark bank of smoke in the ceiling which only slowly dissipated through the openings, high up at the sides of the hall roof. Tables were set out in a horseshoe shape around the great fire, which gave the meal a cosy family feeling that was seldom seen in at a royal feast. At the centre of the head table sat the King, who was calling out toasts and greetings to his guests - there were no more than two dozen of us - and urging them to taste the choicest cuts of meat on the silver platters scattered about the table. Beside the King, to his right in the place of honour, sat Tancred, King of Sicily, a wizened little monkey of a man with a ribbon of dark hair scraped over the top of his bald head in an attempt to hide his dearth of locks.

  I sat at one of the tables at the side, next to Sir Robert of Thumham, whom I greeted with happiness, and a surly French knight that I did not know. We addressed each other politely, the Frenchman and I, but with a lack of genuine interest; anyway, in the presence of kings, it is more rewarding to pay attention to the greatest man in the room. Richard joked and laughed and devoured great quantities of suckling pig, ripping the meat from the ribs with his strong white teeth, and after an hour or so of gorging, he wiped the grease from his chin with a crisp linen napkin and after toasting me with a goblet of wine, he invited me to perform for his guests.

  I had written something especially for that evening, which was infused with my love for Nur; although of course I could not proclaim that I was in love with a slave girl who had been a rich man’s plaything. So I made up a standard tale of love for a great lady, far above my station, whom I could only adore from afar. If I remember rightly, it began:

  ‘My joy summons me

  To sing in this sweet season

  And my generous heart replies

  That it is right to feel this way...’

  It was accompanied with a straightforward but pretty tune on the vielle, the music never overpowering the lyrics, but adding to their beauty and twisting a melody around the lines of poetry.

  Richard adored the song. He loved it so much that he wanted to be part of it, to own it, even to claim it for himself. A second vielle was fetched - I think it belonged to that old troublemaker Bertran de Bom - and while a servant was tuning it, Richard paced up and down the hall muttering to himself, and scowling. Then he swung round on me and, giving me a beatific smile, said: ‘I have it, Blondel. Verse and verse, yes? Turn and turn about?’

  I believe he had forgotten my given name at this point, caught up as he was in the act of composing, and that was why he gave me a nickname that referred to my blond hair, but I was not going to complain. I was to swap verses with my King. Was there any greater honour for a young trouvère?

  Richard made me begin again, and once more I sang the first verse:

  ‘My joy summons me

  To sing in this sweet season

  And my generous heart replies

  That it is right to feel this way...’

  When I had finished the line and the accompanying musical chords, the King took over. Bowing his vielle a little stiffly, he repeated the refrain and then he subtly altered the phrasing and sang, to the same timing as my verse:

  ‘My heart commands me

  To love my sweet mistress

  And my joy in doing so

  Is a generous reward in itself...’

  It was very witty, the use of my own words - joy, sweet, generous and heart - but in a different order to convey a similar message, and I’ll confess that I was slightly taken aback at my sovereign’s skill as a poet. It had taken me all day to write the song, but Richard’s response had come in less time than it takes to put on a pair of boots. But I rallied quickly and when he had finished I replied to his verse with one on my own, with a little twist in the tail. It was a cheeky thing to do, nearly insolent, and I knew it, but I sang:

  ‘A lord has one obligation

  Greater than love itself

  Which is to reward most generously

  The knight who serves him well...’

  I was not looking for gain myself, truly I was not, but I dearly wished the King would pay Robin the money he had promised him. So while using a common trouvère’s theme - the duty of a good lord to be generous - I also wanted to get a subtle message across that would benefit my master Robin and help him out of his financial difficulties.

  King Richard was not troubled in the slightest by my verse, and after a line or two of vielle music, improvising on my theme, he returned with:

  ‘A knight who sings so sweetly

  Of obligation, to his noble lord

  Should consider the great virtue

  Of courtly manners, not discord.’

  And with a great flourish of his horsehair bow, Richard played the final notes and set down his vielle. The applause was deafening. It was a brilliant rebuttal of my verse, and Richard was rightfully pleased with himself. He grinned at me across the tables laden with half-eaten food. And then, he turned to his left and forced an elderly English knight out of his place so that I might sit beside him. When I was ensconsed in a huge oak chair next to my sovereign, he filled a jewelled cup with his own hand and gave it to me, and as I drank he said: ‘Bravo, young Blondel, one day we will make more music together, you and I, perhaps a duet beautiful enough to tame the Saracens, even Saladin himself, eh?’ And he grinned at me, blue eyes twinkling, white teeth gleaming in the candlelight. I could think of nothing to say but merely nodded, murmured, ‘Yes, sire, as you wish,’ and sat back in the great chair basking in his good favour.

  Then he leaned in close to my ear and said: ‘And you may tell your master, the cunning Earl of Locksley, that I have not forgotten my debt to him - and he shall have his precious silver in the morning.’

  Chapter Eleven

  The King was as good as his word and several
heavily laden chests were brought to Robin’s chamber the next day. It was Christmas morning and the bells of the Cathedral were ringing our across the whole of Messina, summoning us to Matins with their joyful peals. A small pouch of gold was also delivered to my cell by a servant, a nervous boy who was admitted by William too early, while Nur and I were still abed. The youth, who was much plagued by pimples, said in a high squeaky voice: ‘There is a message, sir, that comes from the King with this gift.’ I nodded and said nothing, waiting. The boy cleared his throat and gabbled: ‘To Blondel, who, I trust, will never lack either good manners or generous lords. God be with you this Christmas Day.’ And with that the boy spun on his heel and was gone.

  I gladly risked damnation that Christmas morning, and a severe penance from Father Simon if he found out, by ignoring the summoning of the bells to Matins and remaining entwined with Nur in our snug bed. She was delighted that the King should so honour me with gold, and began talking excitedly about the fine clothes we could buy with the money - my Arabic had improved, and she was picking up some words of Norman French, and I could now understand about one word in three of her happy multilingual chatter. I was more than a little pleased with the King’s gift myself. Robin was a less worried man, too, now that he had silver with which to pay his troops and to repay the loans that Reuben had had to arrange with the local Jewish community in Sicily to tide us over. ‘It’s not nearly everything that he promised me in England,’ admitted Robin to me one morning a handful of days after Christmas, as we rode out into the mountains for a day’s hunting. ‘But it’s a start; and much better than nothing. “The lord has one obligation, greater than love itself, which is to reward most generously...” I like it, and I thank you for that, Alan, I truly do.’

  I was pleased that my cheeky verse had had such a beneficial effect, but the tiny maggot’s voice inside me suggested that, when my master and I were discussing who might be the prospective murderer in our ranks, Robin had artfully planted the idea in my head that I should ask my King for his money. On the trail of the assassin, I had made little further progress, except to make inquiries at the herbalist’s in the old town and discover that he did sell wolfsbane - he said he sold dozens of ounces a week, but he claimed that he had never sold any to Reuben. This knowledge neither cleared nor incriminated Robin’s physician - even if the man were telling the truth, Reuben could easily have asked someone else to purchase the poison for him.

  We were heading up into the mountains of Sicily that day in search of wild boar: Will Scarlet had found a local man who knew of a place where there was a great pig apparently ravaging the land: tearing up the crops and terrorising the local peasants. He had brought this intelligence to Little John and John had passed it on to Robin and now we were all riding in the hope of an exciting day’s sport. Robin and myself rode in front, followed by John and Will Scarlet, with my servant William and the local guide, a thin-faced, dark-haired untrustworthy-looking man called Carlo, who spoke barbarous French, bringing up the rear. William and the guide were leading the packhorses, which were laden with the nets and long boar spears. Around our horses’ hooves trotted three alaunts, great shaggy hunting dogs, owned by Carlo, and Keelie, frisky as a puppy, bright as a golden coin with canine joy.

  I had never hunted boar before and I was excited to be included in the chase. Sicilian boars are fierce great animals, with enormous strength and long tusks capable of gutting a man from crotch to throat if they can get close to you, and to kill them we planned to use special heavy boar spears - sixteen-foot-long lengths of ash, two inches thick at the butt, with steel cross-pieces a foot below the spear head. The cross-piece was to stop the animal, once impaled, from charging up the length of the spear in his fury, with the wooden shaft running through his body, to get at the man on the other end.

  Will Scarlet was a changed man since his whipping, more somber, silent and God-fearing, much less the happy-go-lucky chattering boy-thief I had known in Sherwood. But, in a way, the punishment seemed to have steadied him: and he seemed much more comfortable now that he was just an ordinary trooper, no different that any other in Robin’s force. He performed his duties seriously and stayed out of trouble and never flaunted his long acquaintance with Robin.

  William too seemed very excited about the prospect of the hunt, and quizzed Carlo incessantly about the techniques of killing the boar, its behaviour when harassed and how it would respond to the dogs and the nets. Carlo, for all his ill-favoured looks, was a patient man and he answered William’s endless questions with good grace as best he could in his halting French. The plan was to spread the nets - they were about three foot high when erected and fine enough to be almost invisible, but they were made of a very strong bark twine - and then use the dogs to drive the boar on to them. Once entangled in the nets, and unable to run, the animal could be speared at our leisure.

  Carlo took us to a rocky hilltop, covered with stunted spruce trees and bracken, and indicated a thicket a hundred or so paces away where the boar was believed to have his den. He had the alaunts leashed tightly and Keelie was also tethered by a strong rope, but it was clear the dogs could smell pig. They all strained against their confinement, eager to dash madly into the thicket and confront the beast.

  William, Will Scarlet and Carlo spread the long nets in a semi-circle, downhill from the hilltop, the way we expected the beast to break, propping them up with small sticks and twigs: the net was meant to collapse when the pig charged into it. Robin, John and I took up our positions, boar spears grasped in our hands, my heart hammering as if I was about to go into battle.

  Carlo, William and Will Scarlet disappeared off to the left, circling round the thicket with the dogs. They would release the hounds from the other side of the hill, and follow slowly, cautiously, beating the earth with their spear shafts, blowing horns and shouting to each other to make sure that the hog charged away from them and in the direction of the nets.

  It was a cold, grey day, the sun was already low in the sky, and our breath frosted into plumes in the still air. Robin, standing twenty yards to my right, looked bored. He was still thin from the poisoning but a dab of colour had returned to his cheeks now that he was in the field. He was humming softly under his breath and examining his nails minutely. In the distance we could hear the sound of the dogs, yapping excitedly, but it seemed very far away. Twenty yards beyond Robin, Little John was sitting on a rocky outcrop, sharpening the end of his spear with a spit-smeared stone. Robin wandered over towards John, clearly on the point of saying something to his old friend ... when, with no warning at all, a giant boar burst out of the undergrowth of the thicket, moving at an incredible speed, a blur of low porcine fury and bunched muscle, heading straight down the hill towards us.

  It was huge, far bigger than I had expected and it moved with a silent hurtling savagery that put my heart in my mouth. It was making for the gap between Robin and me, which was now much wider, as Robin had moved closer to John. I gripped my spear tightly; any moment now, I thought, any moment the great pig will hit the nets, become entangled and then we all move in. But it never happened. The great boar charged through the space where the net should have been and didn’t slow for an instant. It fixed its mad piggy glare on me, swerved from its line and came barrelling straight towards me, three hundred pounds of muscle driven by a manic rage at our threatening intrusion into its domain. All this happened in three heartbeats: from the pig erupting from the undergrowth until he was just a handful of yards from me. And, because of the pig’s surprising appearance, I reacted slowly - but just in time: I gripped the shaft hard, leant forward and I leveled my spear at the charging animal. The huge pig launched itself at me, and as if entirely careless of his own life, he leapt directly on to my wavering spear point. The blade plunged a foot deep into its shoulder, like a sharp knife cutting through a soft curd, and stopped fast at the cross-guard with a huge jolt. The shock, transmitted through the spear shaft, felt like I’d stopped the charge of a rampaging bull. The two-inch-
thick spear shaft bent, but did not snap, and my knuckles were white on the shuddering brown wood, my arm and chest muscles creaking under the enormous strain. I was holding him away from me, but incredibly, the beast was moving forward, inch by inch, and pushing me backwards with its main strength, its thick forelegs churning the earth, and my own feet sliding in the rocks and shale beneath them. The beast snarled at me in its death-pain, eyes glinting with malice, ropes of saliva swinging from long yellow tusks, which curved upwards like twin daggers in the perfect shape to gut a man.

  Then it gave a shrugging shake of its brawny shoulders, one immensely powerful writhe and the spear shaft was wrenched out of my hands. The long thick pole was whipped away laterally by the pig’s movement and then came crashing back into my shoulder with the force of a swung pick-axe handle. I was knocked sideways by the shock, off my feet, on hands and knees, and then the huge animal was on me. The spear shaft slid past my face and in two bounds the open snout of the great pig was at my chest. I just managed to grab one of its massive tusks with both hands but the strength of the animal, even mortally wounded, was unbelievable. I could smell its foul breath above me, and its rank saliva, mingled with blood, was dripping on my face as I struggled to keep its grunting, slavering snout and its yellow snapping teeth away from me. The eyes, blue-black and rimmed with red, were inches from my own. It writhed again, the heavy spear shaft smashing against my left forearm, nearly causing me to lose my grip ... and then a shadow appeared to my left and I heard a high-pitched cry of rage and I felt the impact of a spear thrust deep into the animal’s body. It was William, my loyal servant William, with his great spear jammed into the beast’s side, and he was trying with only his boyish strength to heave the blade further into the monstrous straining body. The dogs were with me, too, leaping about the massive animal, barking excitedly; Keelie took a hold of its flapping ear and began growling like a demon next to my cheek. Then Robin was there and Little John, too, and there were two more jolting impacts to the beast’s body, as they plunged their spears in deeply, and the pig coughed a huge gout of hot blood into my forearms and chest and I saw the rage fade and die in the animal’s eyes and, miraculously, all that was left was a colossal weight, and the sound of breathless, hysterical laughter from my so-called friends.