Outlaw

by Angus Donald

  Chapter Twenty

  The great hall of Nottingham Castle was filled with the scent of fresh flowers and fine beeswax candles. Sweet herbs strewn on the floor added their notes to the heady odours of a happy celebration. The brightly coloured robes of royalty and their noble entourages dazzled the eye, outshone only by the gorgeous tapestries woven with gold and silver thread that hung from the walls. I was as gaudily attired as anyone in this cacophony of colour in a pair of new green and yellow hose and a gorgeous scarlet robe, embroidered with silver thread, which reached almost to my ankles. My feet were encased in the lightest kidskin shoes, my head adorned with a soft, bright scarlet woollen hat that draped down one side of my face in what I believed was a magnificently aristocratic manner.

  I was almost as pleased with my attire as I was to be witnessing the marriage of the Earl and Countess of Locksley. Robin and Marie-Anne, dressed respectively in sumptuous gowns of green and blue silk, were standing at the head of the hall being blessed by a solemn priest in black; a short, powerful man who bore a striking resemblance to one Brother Tuck, a notorious Welsh monk who was rumoured to have once consorted with outlaws.

  None of us were outlaws now. Robin, as he had promised, had secured pardons for all those who survived the terrible battle of Linden Lea six weeks before. King Richard - we all called him that even though his coronation at Westminster Abbey would not take place for another week - had come to an arrangement with Robin, brokered by Sir Richard. Several large barrels of silver pennies had changed hands, some said as much as five thousand pounds’ worth. Robin had done homage to the King, and in exchange for certain promises and assurances, Robin had been given a free pardon for himself and all his men. He had also been granted the hand of his lovely Marie-Anne and the Earldom of Locksley, to boot. As an Earl, he was now eminently respectable, a powerful magnate, and the King himself now sat beside his mother Eleanor, and his brother John, at the head of the hall in three great oaken chairs, witnessing the marriage of his newest vassal with a stern regal eye.

  I was nearly overwhelmed to be in the presence of a King. He was magnificent: a tall, handsome man, haughty of face and about thirty years old with reddish-gold hair and blue eyes and an air of muscular directness. Clearly a man of action, he was known as a great soldier, a distingushed tactician and a man who adored poetry and music. Beside the King, fidgeting in his big chair, sat his far less impressive younger brother John, the youngest of King Henry’s sons, who styled himself Lord of Ireland. In his early twenties, he was far shorter than his warlike older brother, and with a darker shade of reddish hair. As I watched Prince John, he picked irritably at the pommel of a great bejewelled dagger at his waist, his face screwed up in a childishly petulant expression. Queen Eleanor was the only member of that royal trio who looked genuinely pleased at the union of Robin and Marie-Anne. Her fine, well-aged face beamed at the happy couple as Tuck tied their hands together with a sacred strip of white silk and pronounced in a loud voice to the whole assembly that they were man and wife. I was happy too, my feelings for Marie-Anne having changed subtly since Robin, Reuben and I had rescued her from the wall tower. I would love her always, but my moon-calf adoration had transformed into the feeling of warmth that I used to have towards my own sisters. I was happy because she was happy.

  Goody, who seemed to have grown about six inches in the few weeks since I had last seen her in Winchester, was looking angelic in a blue gown and white headdress to match Marie-Anne’s, and she stood at her mistress’s side bearing a huge bouquet of white roses. I had greeted her earlier that day with a big hug, but she had pushed me away and told me sternly that, as she was a real gentlewoman now, I might salute her with a respectful bow but no more. I had half a mind to put her over my knee and spank her but, in the end, perhaps wisely considering what I knew she could do to a man with a poniard, I decided to humour her. So I bowed low, grinning disrespectfully, and called her my lady.

  Fulcold, resplendent in sky blue wool, attended the ceremony as part of Eleanor’s retinue. He had been delighted to see me again in good health, and we embraced as friends. Sir Richard was there too, with a dozen fellow knights, each in a pristine white surcoat. And Robert of Thurnham, my saviour in the cell at Winchester, now a trusted King’s man, gave me a friendly wave from the large group of royal retainers at the side of the hall.

  Reuben had sent a fat pouch of gold as a wedding gift and a message that he was truly devastated that business in York prevented him from attending the celebrations. He was being tactful. As a Jew, he would not have been welcomed by many of the noble guests at this Christian ceremony. Robin’s brother Lord William had sent his regrets too, but no reasons for his absence. He was being churlish, we all decided. Perhaps because, as a mere baron, his younger brother Earl Robert now outranked him.

  Bernard of Sezanne was on fine form, cracking bad jokes, singing snatches of song and hardly drinking at all. With his royal mistress’s permission, he and I would be performing later that evening at the wedding feast. All morning he had been wittering on to me about the great honour of performing before the King. He had made me physically sick with nerves, which were not helped by my memories of my last public performance in Winchester, in front of Murdac and Guy.

  Sir Ralph Murdac had fled Nottingham. After the battle of Linden Lea, he had been chased to its very gates by Sir Richard’s men, whereupon he had barricaded himself in the keep and defied the Templars for more than a month. But, at the news that King Richard had landed in England and was coming north to Nottingham, with all his men-at-arms, to take possession of his royal castle, Murdac had gathered his chests of silver and a few loyal men and fled to the protection of relatives in Scotland. He had been informed, by the Templars naturally, that the King wished to interrogate him about the whereabouts of much of the tax silver that had been raised in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire the previous year to pay for the forthcoming great expedition to the Holy Land. Murdac, we subsequently discovered, had spent a good deal of the King’s cash on the Flemish mercenaries, who, after Murdac’s departure, had made their own deal with King Richard and had entered his service without batting an eye. The King’s ministers, the sheriff was told, felt that Sir Ralph had been skimming too much off the top of these tax revenues and the King was planning to make an example of him. Murdac was right to run, I discovered later; Richard was indeed planning to remove him, but not because he was especially angry about the sheriff’s shenanigans with his revenues. In fact, the King was planning to remove more than half the senior officials in England, purely as a money-raising exercise. Richard badly needed more money for his holy war, and a new sheriff, constable or bishop would gladly pay the King a fat fee for the appointment. A rich knight called Roger de Lacy had begun negotiating for the shrieval appointment in Nottinghamshire almost before Murdac’s bags were packed.

  Tuck’s announcement that Robin and Marie-Anne were man and wife was greeted with a massed roar of shouted congratulations, and a few bawdy suggestions for the wedding night. Hugh, the saintly Bishop of Lincoln, seated near the royal party, frowned at this unseemly levity and Robin had to quieten his men with a hand gesture before order was restored. Then the venerable Bishop rose from his seat. Hugh was a tall, thin man, passionate and fearless, and after a curt blessing on the union of Robin and Marie-Anne, he launched into a harangue about the Holy Land, exhorting the audience to take the Cross and join King Richard on the great expedition to recover Jerusalem from the infidel.

  Most people yawned through this religious rant - priests had been preaching it regularly for two years now - but one man seemed to be paying an inordinate amount of attention. Robert, Earl of Locksley, was apparently agog. When the old Bishop came to the end of his speech with the ringing words, ‘Who then will take this symbol of faith from me and vow that, with God’s blessing, they will not rest until Jerusalem is recovered?’ Robin leapt to his feet. ‘By God, I will,’ he said in a loud sincere voice. And kneeling before Bishop Hugh he received a blessin
g and a scrap of red cloth which had been cut into the shape of a cross.

  ‘Wear this symbol of Christ’s love on your cloak, my son,’ said the Bishop, ‘and remember that you are guaranteed a remission of your many sins and a place in Heaven if you die on this perilous journey in God’s name.’ I caught Robin’s eye as the prelate made him this promise, and I could have sworn that, the solemnity of the occasion notwithstanding, my master winked at me.

  Other knights shuffled forward to receive the Cross, but the solemnity was spoilt somewhat by King Richard, who leapt out of his chair, strode across the hall and enfolded Robin in a great embrace, grinning like a regal mountebank. Somehow, in the few days they had both been at the castle, King Richard and Robin had become fast friends. Prince John, still seated, watched the pair of them as they slapped each other on the back, his face a study in contempt. Queen Eleanor was hugging Marie-Anne, who looked happier than I had ever seen her. I had expected her to be surprised, even shocked by Robin’s sudden decision to go off to fight a war on the other side of the world, perhaps never to return, but she showed not a trace of anxiety. And I realised, of course, that the whole thing had been a piece of theatre.

  Robin had struck a bargain with Sir Richard that terrible night after the first day of battle, as we bound up our wounds in Linden Lea and waited for death at the hands of Murdac’s soldiers the following dawn. And Bernard, of course, had been Sir Richard’s emissary. I too had played my part, albeit unwittingly. The single dove that I released at dawn, trailing its slim red banner, had been the signal to Sir Richard that Robin accepted his proposal. Bernard had explained it all to me in the days after the battle, when we who were fit enough laboured to clear the reeking field of the hundreds of dead and give them a decent burial.

  ‘It’s all about leverage, really,’ Bernard had told me, as I hoisted the dead body of a skinny old man over my shoulder. ‘The application of the right amount of pressure at the right time. Of course, the Templars are past masters at this sort of thing. And they nearly always get what they want, one way or another.’ Bernard was being insufferably smug that day, the result I suspected of another conquest among Queen Eleanor’s ladies. He played no part in the gruesome task of carrying the bodies to a common pit, but hovered around me and my team of bowmen, talking happily and getting in the way as we lugged the corpses to their final resting place. As we paused for a slug of wine, he continued: ‘In this case, Sir Richard had long wanted Robin to join him on his great holy adventure. He wanted his bowmen, you see. He wanted the men who could do this,’ he gestured at a body, a mailed knight in Murdac’s colours, whose corpse was stuck with more than a dozen arrows. ‘That cunning fox had probably been plotting to get Robin to take the Cross ever since he was captured.’ Bernard chuckled, and then casually poured about a pint of Bordeaux wine down his throat.

  After leaving us at Linden Lea before the battle, Bernard informed me, Sir Richard had ridden to join his brother Templars, and Queen Eleanor and her train, at Belvoir Castle, twenty or so miles south-east of Nottingham. There he had learnt that Murdac’s forces had been reinforced with four hundred Flemish mercenaries, cavalry and crossbowmen. He had realised that, with Murdac now so unexpectedly powerful, Robin was almost certain to be destroyed in the coming fight and, quite apart from his friendship with Robin, that would not have suited Sir Richard’s plans at all. So he sent Bernard on a fast horse with a message to Robin. Sir Richard would bring a powerful force of Templar knights to Robin’s aid, if Robin would promise to lead a mercenary band of archers and cavalry on the holy pilgrimage to Outremer the next year. Robin had no choice but to accept Sir Richard’s offer, and by the charade of taking the Cross from the Bishop of Lincoln today, the Earl of Locksley was signalling his intent to fulfil his part of the bargain.

  The ceremony over, Robin convened all his senior men in a small buttery off the great hall where we would soon be dining in some splendour with our royal hosts. Hugh, Tuck, Little John, Will Scarlet and I crowded into the small space and made ourselves free of one of the opened butts of ale in there. Hugh raised a wooden mug brimming with liquid and said jovially: ‘I think we would all like to congratulate my brother on his wedding and wish him and his lovely wife Marie-Anne many years of happiness. Robin and Marie-Anne!’ We all drank, except Robin, who put down his mug untasted.

  ‘We have some business to conclude before we celebrate my nuptials,’ said Robin in a voice as cold as hoar frost. He looked straight at Hugh. I noticed that John and Tuck were standing right next to Robin’s older brother, as close as gaolers. ‘What business is that?’ asked Hugh lightly.

  ‘I know it was you, Hugh,’ said Robin, his voice grating. ‘At first it was just a suspicion, and I dismissed it. I said to myself: my own brother would not betray me, never. My own flesh and blood? A man whom I have helped, saved, loved . . . The traitor cannot be him.’ He paused, fixing his gaze on his brother, waiting for him to speak. Hugh said nothing, but the blood was slowly leaving his face. ‘But then, at Linden Lea, I was deceived, by you, about the strength of their numbers. The Flemings, you told me, could not possibly be there for at least a week.’

  ‘I made a mistake,’ Hugh said. ‘Intelligence is never exact. My sources said—’

  Robin cut him off: ‘The size of Murdac’s force was nearly double what we had supposed. The mangonel . . .’ Robin appeared perfectly calm, but he had to stop and take a breath. ‘We were not luring Murdac into a deadly trap, he was luring us. Sir Ralph knew what we had planned from the very beginning . . . because you had told him.’

  Hugh was frantically shaking his head. ‘It wasn’t me, Robin, I swear. It must have been another—’

  ‘I know it was you. Don’t insult me further by pretending it was not. Just admit the truth. For once, Hugh, just admit the truth.’

  ‘I swear . . . I swear in the name of Our Saviour Jesus Christ—’

  ‘Enough!’ Robin’s voice cracked across the small room. He pulled a bench out from the wall and, putting his arm around Hugh, he led him to the seat and sat him down, taking the place next to him. ‘Hugh,’ he said, his voice weary and kindly, like a parent talking to a recalcitrant child. ‘You are my brother, I love you, but I know it was you. Just tell me why you did it and I swear I will not harm you. I swear it on all that I hold dear.’

  ‘But Robin—’ Hugh began, and his voice had a whining edge. Robin shushed him with a finger to his lips.

  ‘Just tell me why you did it, that’s all, and I will not harm you. Just tell me why. Please. Please, Hugh. Was I not kind to you, did I not help you when you were down, raise you up—’

  Suddenly Hugh sat up straight; he threw off Robin’s embracing arm. ‘I am the elder brother,’ he cried. ‘I am. First William, then me, then you. That’s how the order goes. That is how God had ordained it. And look at you now, my little brother, an Earl, with the friendship of the King.’ His voice had a sneering tone. ‘I remember you when you were still shitting in your napkin and suckling at the wet nurse’s teat. And now . . . and now . . .’ Words seemed to fail Hugh. ‘You have everything and I have nothing. No home, no money, no woman, no children. I am a lackey, a servant . . . to you!’

  ‘When did Murdac first approach you?’ asked Robin in a quiet voice. The whole room was spellbound by Hugh’s words. The man dropped his balding head into his hands. Robin said nothing. The silence stretched longer and longer, became thin, unbearable . . .

  ‘You don’t understand,’ said Hugh forcefully, lifting his head with a jerk. ‘I did it for you, to save your soul. Your immortal soul is in terrible danger with this foul witchcraft that you practise, this pagan devil worship. You think it is mere pageantry - but you are wrong, you are so wrong. It is an abomination. You are damning your soul to Hell for eternity with these filthy practices. And you are encouraging others, simple country folk, to throw away their chance of Salvation. They said, Murdac said, that the Church would receive you with joy, that Christ would receive you. They would cleanse you of all
sin before your death and guarantee you immortal life. In Heaven, in the company of saints. I wanted that for you! I wanted you to be saved.’

  ‘How did Murdac approach you? When?’ asked Robin quietly.

  ‘You don’t understand.’ Hugh was nearly shouting by now. ‘You don’t understand: I approached him. Somebody had to stop you. After you humiliated His Grace the Bishop of Hereford, a great man of God, and slaughtered his holy men, I knew you were in danger of damnation. I had to act. I had to. And they promised me that you would be saved; that after your capture you would receive the blessing of Holy Mother Church and your soul would be for ever in Christ’s keeping.’ Hugh was suddenly sobbing. ‘In Christ’s keeping,’ he repeated.

  ‘And Thangbrand? And Freya? And all those men and women cut down in the snow? You wanted to save their souls, too?’ said Robin, icily calm.

  ‘They were already damned; they were Godless outlaws, pagans, priest-murders—’

  ‘They were your friends,’ snapped Robin. He rose from the bench. His kindly demeanour was gone. ‘I’ve heard enough,’ he said in a voice empty as a tomb. He pulled Hugh to his feet. ‘Get out of my sight,’ he said, pushing him to the pantry door. ‘If I ever see you again, I swear I will kill you on sight. Now, get gone.’

  Hugh stared at him through tear-blotched, empty eyes. Robin turned away, and I caught, just for a moment, a look of immense sadness on his face, before it hardened again into a cold mask. Then with his back to his brother, he snapped: ‘Get out!’ and Hugh turned, his body limp, defeated, as he made his way slowly towards the door.

  We all pulled back to give him room; as if nobody wished to touch him. But then, to my left, there was a blur of motion, and John was past me in a whirlwind of muscle and anger. He took two steps, reached out with his great hands and wrapped them around Hugh’s long neck, just as Robin’s brother reached the door. Then he squeezed. Every ounce of strength in his huge body was concentrated on the double grip that entirely filled the space between Hugh’s chin and his shoulders. Nobody moved; we were all frozen in surprise. Hugh’s face began to swell and colour, cherry red and then purple, then grey blue. His own hands scrabbled at John’s great fists, scratching and trying to pull them away as they squeezed the breath of life out of him. Suddenly there was a hideous popping click, and Hugh’s head flopped to one side and, at the same time, we heard a great farting rush of fluid, and the buttery was filled with a rich meaty stench as his bowels emptied. Urine drizzled around his ankles, forming a yellow pool at his feet. John shook the body once, jiggling the unstrung head, and then dropped the carcass to the piss-soaked floor.