Holy Warrior

by Angus Donald

  I managed to control my temper. I was very fond of Marie-Anne, the Countess of Locksley; I had even believed myself to be in love with her for a while, and I did not like to have her name sullied by anyone. ‘What are they saying?’ I asked, trying for a more reasonable tone of voice. Bernard was Bernard, after all, my anger would not change him.

  ‘Well, don’t get upset, and don’t say you heard it from me, but people are saying that...’ he faltered for a few moments. But I said flatly: ‘Just tell me, Bernard.’ And finally, after much wriggling and prevarication, he did.

  ‘They are saying, Alan, and I am sure it is totally untrue, that the Countess was the lover of Ralph Murdac in the summer before last, and that the Countess’s son, Hugh, who is acknowledged as the Earl of Locksley’s heir, is actually Murdac’s flesh and blood.’ He sat back, having delivered this hammer blow, and watched for my reaction.

  I hope I disappointed him: I held my face blank, took a sip of wine and a deep breath. ‘What a stupid notion,’ I said dismissively. ‘Marie-Anne Locksley was Ralph Murdac’s lover? Absurd.’ And I attempted a light chuckle. It came out like a donkey braying in pain.

  I was spared from having to develop this rebuttal by the arrival of Ambroise and a couple of the other trouvères. I just had time to whisper savagely to Bernard that he must hold his tongue about this matter - he would not, of course - before we were swept up in the whirlwind of vinous merrymaking that always surrounded Ambroise and his friends. While Bernard and the jolly Norman butterball were introducing themselves, swapping bawdy jokes and ordering up more wine - it took less than a quarter of an hour for them to become bosom friends, by the way - I was thinking about my beautiful friend, and Robin’s beloved girl, Marie-Anne, the gossip-smirched Countess of Locksley. I had a big problem: despite my play-acting with Bernard, I knew that the kernel of these foul rumours - that Robin’s son was in fact Murdac’s - was true. And this truth could destroy us all.

  Chapter Twelve

  I understand, now that I have had children, why blood is so important. When my son Rob died, I felt that quite literally a part of me had passed on as well. My wife and I had raised him with love and care and we had poured all our hopes and dreams in to him. If he had been the son of another man, would I have loved him so much, or felt his death quite so keenly? Perhaps so. But I doubt I would have felt so powerfully that he was me, in some strange way, and that his death was my death. Then, of course, in the spring of the Year of Our Lord 1191, when I realised that Marie-Anne’s child Hugh was not Robin’s son, my first thought was for the shame that Robin must feel. It was bad enough that his wife had been bedded by Sir Ralph Murdac, that in itself would have given cause for many men to disown their wives - that it must have been rape made no difference - but for her to have been impregnated by another man, and a mortal enemy at that, was almost too shameful to contemplate.

  There were several reasons why I knew that Hugh must truly be Murdac’s son, and why I knew that Robin knew this too. Firstly, I had noticed the signs of a forced coupling on Marie-Anne’s clothing - her dress was torn and bloody - when Robin, Reuben and I had rescued her from Murdac’s grasp in Nottingham Castle nearly two years ago. Ralph Murdac had captured her, after the death of King Henry but before Richard had returned to England and taken a firm grip on the throne. Murdac had been hoping, no doubt, to use her as a bargaining tool and as a way of putting pressure on Robin. Secondly, when Robin had killed her captors, he had taken her into his arms and asked if she were hurt; he was in truth asking whether Murdac had dishonoured her. I remember her answer clearly, she did not say, ‘I am unharmed,’ or ‘I have not been hurt,’ but only, ‘All is well now that you are here.’ I am sure that if she had been untouched by Murdac she would have said so. The third reason why I knew the child was Murdac’s was the colouring of baby Hugh: black hair and pale blue eyes. Despite what Goody had told me about babies changing their looks after birth, it seemed too much of a coincidence that, of all the people in Christendom, the baby should resemble Sir Ralph Murdac so closely. And anyway, the wise women say that immediately after birth, a baby resembles its father, and then later it takes on more of the look of the mother. The fourth point was the previously inexplicable disharmony between Robin and Marie-Anne immediately after the birth. Robin knew the child was not his - and it was my sacred duty to make sure that the rumour was squashed and that my master never found out that I was aware of his ignoble secret.

  But, quite apart from Bernard’s loose tongue - and Robin would quite readily tear it from his head if he found out that my friend had been spreading this news - Murdac’s whisperers would be doing their work in England and there was a real danger that, when Robin returned, he would be a laughing stock. People would assume that he wore the horns of a cuckold, even though the truth was that Marie-Anne had been forced against her will by a monster. Robin would never admit that; he would never admit that he had been unable to protect the woman he loved. And how would this sad business affect the relations between husband and wife? If it became common knowledge, would Robin disinherit Hugh, throw him out of the family? And how would Marie-Anne feel about her baby being a universally known as a bastard, a child of rape, a nobody born out of wedlock. She would never admit the truth of that. But could Robin accept a cuckoo in the nest?

  As I sat pondering these terrible truths, the party in the tavern was becoming raucous: Ambroise and Bernard were swapping couplets of dirty poetry with each other with great relish, and downing full cups of unwatered wine, and one of the other trouvères was already dancing with one of the Sicilian serving women. Leaving them to their revels, I slipped away to find my master.

  I found Robin in his chamber in the monastery, reading the letter from Marie-Anne. His face was a cold, emotionless mask and as I entered the room on the pretext of bringing him his evening meal, he gave be a look of such blank metallic savagery that I almost lost my nerve and retreated.

  ‘Your supper, sir,’ I said quietly. And he merely indicated that I should put it on the table with a wave of his hand. I tore off a piece of the roast chicken with my fingers and took it over to Keelie, who had been watching my movements with great interest from a rush basket in the corner of the room.

  ‘Good news from England, sir?’ I asked disingenuously, crouched with my back to Robin, as the one-eyed dog licked the chicken gravy from my hand.

  ‘No,’ said Robin. And that flat single syllable sounded like a tombstone being dropped on to the grass of a churchyard cemetery. I turned to look at the Earl of Locksley; the letter was lying on the table next to his supper, but he was staring at the stone floor, seemingly in some sort of trance. For ten heartbeats we did not move; I stared at him, he stared at the floor. Then he dragged his gaze up to meet mine and said: ‘It seems your friend Prince John is causing trouble; wants to be King, I hear,’ he attempted a smile, but it never reached his grey eyes. I wanted to say something, to comfort him to tell him that it was all right, that it was not his fault that Murdac had ruined him, that it was not Marie-Anne’s fault either. But the gulf between lord and vassal was too wide. ‘Would you mind leaving me, Alan,’ said Robin. He sounded unbearably weary. ‘And tell the men that we will be departing in a week or so for Outremer and so they should prepare themselves. And tell Little John ... oh, never mind, I’ll tell him in the morning. Good night.’ As I left, I saw him pick up the letter again and stare sightlessly at the thick vellum pages. I noticed that his hand was trembling slightly.

  We left Messina ten days later: seventeen thousand five hundred soldiers and sailors of Richard’s grand army crammed into two hundred ships. Mategriffon had been carefully dismantled, piece by piece, and stored in one of the larger busses; the great destriers of the knights, held safely by two stout belly straps, had been lifted and swung out over the harbour by great cranes and lowered into their places in the larger transport vessels; and Berengaria of Navarre, accompanied by Richard’s sister Joanna, had been packed into a sumptuous but weatherly cog with al
l the comforts a mighty king could provide. With these noble ladies traveled one Arab slave girl, now a lady’s maid to Princess Berengaria, and to my mind a woman of such perfect beauty that she outshone any mortal woman alive. I had arranged Nur’s new position with Robin’s help, and a small gift of silver to Berengaria’s chamberlain, and I had never seen her so happy. ‘Alan,’ she said in her halting French as she kissed me on the dock, ‘you are a wonderful man, my saviour, my preux chevalier, and to reward you for being so kind and good, we shall do that thing again that you like so much, you know, with the leather belts and the honey ...’ I shushed her hurriedly and looked around the harbour, hoping that nobody had heard. Two yards behind me stood Little John who was organising the embarkation of our cavalry. He looked as if he had not heard a thing and I breathed a sigh of relief: too soon, of course. The moment Nur had left me to get into a skiff, he came a little closer: ‘Tell me Alan, what is the thing you like to do with the belts and the honey?’ he asked in a low, confidential tone.

  I flushed a deep red. ‘It’s nothing, really,’ I mumbled, ‘in fact, I have no idea what she was talking about.’ My face was burning and I could not look him in the eye. ‘She’s a foreigner; she doesn’t understand what she is saying half the time.’ I tried a nonchalant shrug.

  ‘Really,’ said Little John. ‘Well, I’ll just ask her then.’ And before I could stop him, he cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed across the open water to the skiff that was carrying my beloved to her ship: ‘Nur, my darling,’ he yelled in a voice they could have heard across the strait in Italy. ‘Tell me: what does young Alan like to do in bed with the honey and the belts...?’ Half a dozen people turned around to stare at his booming voice, and I twisted fast as a greyhound and punched him as hard as I could in the belly.

  In hindsight, I think the reason John folded up after my blow to his midriff had more to do with the fact that he was helpless with laughter than the strength of my punch. But, as I continued to hit him with my fists, getting in some quite decent blows to his face and body, he did manage to stop laughing long enough to grab me by the scruff of my neck and by my sword belts lift me furious and struggling off my feet and toss me into the dirty water of the harbour.

  As the Santa Maria’s sail flapped and slowly filled, and the crew hauled on a cobweb of ropes to sharp whistles from the master of the vessel, I realised that I was very glad to be leaving Sicily. I had found love there, and happiness, it was true, but the air of surly menace from the defeated Griffons made me constantly uncomfortable - I never went anywhere unarmed - and the feeling of wasting time, while other Christians died for our cause in Outremer, was not a pleasant one. Also there was the problem of the assassin - I still had no idea who it might be, but I hoped that by leaving Sicily we were leaving him - or her - behind us. I felt hopeful and confident, now that we were now off again on the great adventure that I had long dreamed of. God would protect Robin, I was sure, now that we were engaged once again on this holy mission. We were heading for the Holy Land, at last, and with His help and guidance, we would soon bring the might of Richard’s immense army to bear on the Saracens. In a few months, perhaps, the holy city of Jerusalem would be free again and under good Christian rule ...

  On the third day out of Messina, near dusk, as the sun dipped low behind us and cast a sail-shaped shadow over the inky waves, a great storm came barrelling in from the south. The swell began to rise, causing the ship to twist and buck like a wild horse in its forward progress, the wind picked up, rattling the ropes and straining the old canvas sail almost to breaking point, and huge purple-black clouds came scudding across the grey sky - and with them came black rain, a torrent, lashing down like icy whips on to the surface of the water. Crouched under a piece of waxed canvas, at the prow of the Santa Maria, the world closed in around me. It was like being under a waterfall. The rain drummed madly on the canvas and the ship bucked and rolled beneath my cowering body; it seemed that God had unleashed his fury on the world, a cataclysm to rival Noah’s flood. Peering out from under the soaking cloth I could hardly see the next ship from me, a mere fifty yards away. The archers in the body of the Santa Maria were taking turns to bail water with their helmets but I could see that it was having little effect; for every capful of water the men threw overboard ten times as a much again and more crashed over the side as the waves pounded alarmingly against our frail craft. Soon we were alone in a roaring maelstrom of water and shrieking wind, with no other ships in sight, carried along by at unbelievable speed, dwarfed by mountainous seas, the soldier and sailors wailing, beseeching God to show us mercy but the sound coming through only in brief snatches between the smashing of the waves against the ship’s hull. I crossed myself and prepared as best I could for death, mumbling Ave Maria over and over through salt-wet lips, and I begged the Almighty in his infinite mercy to save the life of my beloved Nur, wherever she might be in this watery Hell, and if he had any spare mercy to save the lives of all the men, including mine, aboard this decrepit wooden shell that had been named in honour of the holy mother of His beloved son Jesus Christ.

  All night long the storm raged, the ship tossed like a leaf in a hurricane, and I lost any sense of time passing: I crouched in wretchedness, holding tight to a wooden strut, soaking wet and freezing - my canvas shield long snatched away by a howling wrench of wind - and waiting at any moment for the ship to founder and a black wall of water to fall on me and drown my pain. But by God’s grace, she did not. And at dawn a weak watery sun rose in the east and I raised my head from its misery and saw that the tempest had miraculously eased. Our brave vessel was scudding along on a brisk westerly wind, still travelling at an alarming speed, but now was shouldering through big green waves with confidence, and causing no more than a fine spray to whip the ship’s sides with each impact. We had lost one man overboard, a sailor who had bravely tried to secure a flapping rope and who had been swept to his doom by a freakishly large burst of seawater but, apart from that poor soul, we were relatively unharmed. We all joined together in a prayer of heartfelt thanksgiving, and I realised that I had been deeply wrong to doubt in God’s grace, even for a moment. I should have known that he would save us: we were setting out to do his good work, to save the cradle of Christianity itself. We rinsed out our mouths with fresh water, stripped our soaking clothes from our bodies, and began to look about for the other ships of the fleet.

  Astoundingly, as the clouds cleared overhead and the sea became even calmer, I could see that many of the other ships of the fleet were still afloat, though none were near us. They were scattered over the surface of the moving sea as far as the horizon on all sides, but still swimming bravely. It truly felt as if the hand of God had protected us from the full fury of the Devil. And, best of all, most wonderful of all, on our starboard bow no more than two dozen miles away, I could make out the low grey-green mass of the island of Crete.

  We stayed for two days in the old harbour of Heracleon on Crete, recovering our spirits and waiting for the fleet to reassemble. Although we slept on the ships, there was time to visit dry land and bring on board fresh provisions and water - much of our stores had been damaged by water during the storm. I hired a local skiff and visited Robin, Little John and Reuben aboard their ship the Holy Ghost, and learnt that most of our fighting men were well and we had lost no more than a dozen to the storm, none of whom I knew well. One of our fellows, a seemingly steady Yorkshireman, had run mad during the storm and had tried to attack the master of his ship before throwing himself into the sea. But the majority of our force was intact and bobbing snugly in Heracleon harbour. Despite this news, I was heart-sick with worry: twenty-odd ships had disappeared in the storm, among them the richly appointed royal cog carrying Princess Berengaria, Queen Joanna - and my darling Nur.

  On the morning of the third day, when it was quite clear that no more ships would join us in Crete, we headed on for Rhodes, which was a good place to gain news, situated as it was on a major sea route. I was racked with guilt:
I had loved two women who were not of the Christian faith, a Jew and a Muslim, and I wondered if God, as a punishment for consorting with unbelievers, had decided to take both of them from me. I suspected that I was suffering from a touch of sea fever: I had hardly known Ruth, and to say that I truly loved her was a lie. My worry and guilt over Nur, though, was real enough. I remembered every time we had made love, and tortured myself with those exquisite memories. Why had I been so stupid as to send her into service with the Princess? I should have kept her by my side so that I could protect her, as I had promised to do. That was nonsense, of course, and I knew it - how could I protect her from the sea-borne wrath of God? - but that knowledge did not ease my pain.

  We spent ten days in Rhodes, waiting for news of the other ships and because the King fell ill with a mysterious malady that kept him abed for a week vomiting and shuddering with fever. However, looking back I can remember very little about the time there, consumed as I was with worry about Nur. But we did gain some intelligence. Reuben seemed to have made contact with friends of his in the Holy Land, though how, I did not know. It seemed that King Philip was now outside the walls of Acre - along with German and Italian contingents, which had been there some months - and he was preparing to assault the ancient fortified town. In a sort of cruel joke, the besieging Christian army was itself besieged by Saladin’s forces: so there was a Muslim garrison in the stronghold of Acre, surrounded by Christians, who were themselves surrounded by Muslims. The situation did not sound very hopeful for our fellow pilgrims.

  Finally we heard news of the ships, and it was mostly bad. Several had been sunk by the storm, and many, many men had drowned, but a few ships had been driven before the tempest. And the Princess’s cog, the noble ship that contained my precious girl and the royal women, had made it - battered and bruised - to Limassol in Cyprus. My heart skipped in my chest, my head spun: Nur lived!