Gisburne loaded up his horse in silence. Throughout all his earlier adventures as a mercenary, no matter where he had found himself or who he had fought for, Gisburne had never presented himself as something other than he was. People took him as they found him. Sneaking around, going in disguise, stealing... Those things went against the grain. To Hood, it was second nature. But not to him. No, not to him. Yet he understood that he would need to adapt his ways. To become something new. He could even see, he grudgingly admitted, that there might be some good sense in Galfrid’s words – not that he was ready to yield to a superannuated squire just yet. “One must adapt to stay alive, but one must stay true for that life to have purpose.” That was one of de Gaillon’s many maxims. As with all of the old knight’s pearls of wisdom – most of which were now permanently set in Gisburne’s brain – it was easy to recite, but excruciatingly difficult to live by. De Gaillon had a maxim for that, too. “Only the unremarkable man lives easily.”
At the moment he thought this, his leather-sheathed eating knife jumped out of the leather satchel that his impatient hands were wrestling in place behind his saddle. It fell, bounced and turned a somersault on the hard round. The knife evoked an unwelcome memory. The real reason thievery set his teeth on edge; the reason part of him still feared it. He did not want to think about that. Only de Gaillon had known that truth, and he was long gone. Gisburne scooped up the knife, flung open the satchel and shoved both it and the memory deep down where they belonged.
And yet, his change – his transformation – had already begun, with his assault on the Tower, with his preparations for this quest, with the contrivances that Llewellyn had prepared for him. But somehow, when he was dealing with inert matter – wood and metal, and solutions to practical problems – the ethics seemed of little account. Perhaps the trick was to focus on these – or think in a similar way about people.
“What wood is this?” said Galfrid, his earlier irritation quite gone. “It’s heavy.” Gisburne turned to see the little man hefting his pilgrim’s staff – a sturdy length of wood that stood just below shoulder height. The top eight inches were wrapped round with cord to serve as a hand grip, and had a bulb of polished iron at either end of that portion – each about the size of a hen’s egg, but spherical – the topmost forming a solid head to the staff.
Gisburne snatched it from him and tucked it beneath his bags. “Since I’ll be carrying it, you don’t need to worry.” He saw Galfrid’s eye wander next to the wooden box, and whipped it away before the squire could settle on it. He hung it over Nyght’s left flank. It was not ideal – he would need to secure it more tightly, to stop it bouncing against Nyght’s hip – but there would be time for that.
Galfrid had meanwhile produced a wrinkled apple from somewhere, and took a slice off it with a knife as he looked Gisburne up and down. “You’re wearing that, then, are you?” Gisburne looked down at his black horsehide coat, then back at the squire.
“Yes,” he said acidly. “Does that meet with your approval?” One of the stable lads stifled a laugh.
“It is... not so bad. Strange, yes. But practical. And one can’t imagine a knight would wear such a thing. Which is good.”
Gisburne sighed and turned back to his horse, beginning to wonder if there was anything upon which his unwelcome squire did not have an opinion, or the need to have the last word. Beyond his right shoulder, he heard the stable hand’s snigger finally break loose. He really would be glad to be rid of this place.
There remained only the earthenware bottles. Gisburne had looked all over his tightly packed saddle and bags, at first refusing to admit that they could not be accommodated. He now eyed Galfrid’s more leanly packed horse. “Since we are of an accord – and you of such a practical bent – I’m sure you won’t mind carrying these.”
To Gisburne’s surprise there was no word of protest, no grimace, no sigh of contempt. Galfrid took them without hesitation and strapped them firmly to his saddlebags.
“Your own personal supply?” he said.
“Don’t drink it,” warned Gisburne.
“So, what’s in the box?”
Gisburne wondered how long it would take him to ask. The squire had tried to sound casual, but without success.
“I’ll be keeping that by me,” Gisburne said. For the first time, fundamental questions formed in his mind. Just how much did Galfrid know of this mission? Everything? Nothing? Was there perhaps information this man possessed that he himself did not? Such questions were the reason he worked alone. Working alone, the matter of trust was simple: you trusted no one. There was no need. That would be another painful adjustment on his part. Weighing these thoughts, he looked Galfrid straight in the eye, and from a great effort of will, spoke without guard or affectation. “Do not touch it. Do not try to open it. And after we are successful in Marseille, it is to be guarded no matter what. Understand?”
Galfrid nodded, for once accepting his new master’s word without question. As they moved off in silence, Gisburne resolved to discuss the details of the mission with Galfrid at the first opportunity – to share what he knew. He hoped Galfrid would do the same. The trust had to begin somewhere. But it would not be quite yet – he would wait until they were in France and safely on their way.
“So,” piped up the squire as they wound their way down towards the harbour. “You’re a knight... And you called your horse ‘Nyght’?”
“Yes,” returned Gisburne, irritably. “What of it?” But Galfrid simply nodded slowly to himself, and crunched on another slice of apple, and gazed out over the gently heaving expanse of grey ocean.
Gisburne had the feeling this was going to be a long trip.
II
FRANCE
X
Limousin – April, 1177
IN HIS SIXTEENTH year, Guy of Gisburne knew for the first time that he was about to die.
He was no stranger to death. He had certainly seen enough of it for his intellect to grasp that it was often a real and immediate threat – a hovering, everpresent possibility. But what he encountered on this day was something new, something more. It was the absolute certainty that, in that moment, his end was upon him and his existence on earth was about to be snuffed out.
When they rode into the sheltered courtyard of the farm, he was feeling the sad euphoria following his first taste of defeat. The farmhouse where they had retreated to lick their wounds seemed to him an oasis – a sprawl of a building sheltered by large and ancient trees, miraculously untouched by the events of recent months. Dismounting, he and the other squires set about feeding and watering the horses and seeing to the needs of their knights. All were exhausted. But many had the same, strangely desperate feeling of joy at having survived. In some, it manifested as a slightly manic good humour. There was banter between the older squires – usually at the expense of the younger. The usual social division that existed amongst the squires – between the French-speaking sons of the wealthy nobles, and the small band of poorer, English-speaking boys who were habitually put upon by their loftier peers – was today forgotten.
Among them, however, one stood apart. His name was Eadwyn, squire to a knight named William of Tempsford. Gisburne watched out of the corner of his eye as the boy – not much younger than he – tended to his master’s horse. Sir William had not been on it – not since the routing of the army at Malemort. It was, Gisburne knew, almost a certainty that his master was dead, and that the squire now was without a knight. Gisburne was sure someone would take him under their wing, though. That was the way of things. For now, however, no one seemed keen to look him in the eye.
While de Gaillon and the knights took up residence in the farmhouse, the squires camped down wherever they could. Gisburne had been lucky. He had been with a large, rowdy group that taken over the small barn across from the main building. The others – mostly English, mostly poor – would have to make do with whatever shelter they could find outside.
The barn had the sharp tang of dead mouse
about it, but he was too dog-tired to care. It was shelter, and peace, and safety. It had a bed of straw and it reminded him of home. For now, nothing else mattered.
It was not Gisburne’s first battle in support of his knight. De Gaillon was in the service of a petty baron who had pledged support to Duke Richard, and for almost a year now had been engaged in bringing other, more rebellious factions within the Angevin realms into line. Very soon, it had become clear to the young squire that his childhood notions of war were entirely wrong. When he had imagined battle as a child – stomach down on the mud of the yard, using acorns and twigs for soldiers – he had pictured two armies drawn up against each other in impressive formation; each of a single mind and purpose, charging in response to the heroic cries of their generals, and one side being swept before the other in the epic clash, before finally fleeing the field as the cheers of the victorious rang in their ears. It was an image of discipline and order – in which, through titanic struggle, a wider sense of order was restored.
There was indeed discipline amongst the knights and soldiers with whom he had served. A more powerful, palpable discipline than he could ever have imagined – made all the more immediate by the threat of chaos that constantly snapped at its heels. He now knew – because he had seen them up close, had looked into their death-haunted eyes – that those impressive ranks maintained their shape only by the continual exertion of an iron will. He had also seen that will fail. He had seen armies lose structure, command, sense of direction. He had participated in victories that seemed more like defeats, had been in skirmishes where he no longer knew which side was which or what bearing its outcome had on the wider battle – if it had any. He had been in situations so hectic that it had not even been possible for him to tell whether they ended in victory or defeat, or indeed what the difference was between the two. Afterwards, when the smoke cleared, Gilbert de Gaillon would explain to him how and why they had won. Then, it would seem to make sense once more.
But today, he had observed something quite different. It was not just the defeat of an army. It was the collapse of all order.
Every mile Gisburne was able put between himself and that morning’s disaster was a relief – one so deep, so all-pervading, that it seemed to throb within him like a longing. He was in no doubt that, somewhere back there, the dreadful conflagration still raged. Thinking of those grim, life-sapped figures – their tarnished, blood-drenched weapons, the dark look in their eyes like lamps gone out – his heart ached with gratitude at being alive. At feeling alive, at being vital amongst those walking corpses. On the road back, he had even caught himself muttering the words “Thank you, thank you, thank you...” over and over in time with the pounding of his horse’s hooves upon the dry mud road. To whom or what this gratitude was directed, he had no clear idea. He had never spoken aloud to God in his life, nor had any sense that anything out there would listen to his pleas. But today, the need to express it – even to a blank, indifferent universe – was urgent and overwhelming. And sometimes, perhaps, expressing it was enough.
Not a word was uttered between them as they rode. And yet, as mile piled upon mile with no slackening of pace, that relief was magnified by a further realisation. If this small band of battle-hardened knights – men who he had known eat and even sleep whilst conflict raged nearby – had felt the need to retreat this far, then the horrors they’d left behind must be terrible indeed. Gisburne felt vindicated by it. Less alone in his fears, and more connected to the men he so respected. It was one of those moments when he began to believe he could be one of them.
But it brought, too, a kind of creeping dread.
It was a dread founded on no one simple, graspable object – nothing that could be contained or defined. It was a dread of madness. Of a world infected by chaos. Of a dark creature that had been loosed upon it – murky, shifting, insubstantial, but a monster all the same – one that could not be tamed or destroyed, and which would stalk him to the ends of the earth.
That was what he had seen when their army had been routed at Malemort. It was not so much the battle that had horrified Gisburne – though that was bloody and bitter enough. It was the chaos that came after.
In his training, Gisburne had been schooled in much more than the practical techniques of fighting. He had also learned of the many types of men who engaged in it – the components of an army. There was the knight, of course – the model of courage and honourable conduct. The archer – low in social status, but of such strategic importance that he could sway a battle. The serjeant – a respected fighting man said to be worth half a knight, but often, in the thick of close combat, worth much more. There were endless divisions and subdivisions, encompassing all classes, from the loftiest prince to the most lowly footsoldier.
In his rather more intense education on the battlefield, he had learned about another kind of fighting man. The mercenary. Although anyone from a knight to an infantryman might be a mercenary, and the practicalities of combat were exactly the same for them as for anyone else, they were a separate species – one that made young Gisburne, a knight aspirant, uneasy. He was uneasy with the concept of fighting for pay. He was uneasy with the mockery this made of the concept of loyalty. And, when he finally encountered them, he was uneasy with the natures of the men themselves. Some were men who had lost all notion of honour, if they ever had it. Others were victims of ill fortune – outcast by their community, or forced to make a living by the only means they knew how. A few, he was sure, were probably criminals. Yet, even amongst their own kind, there were classes who were regarded with suspicion, or contempt, or fear.
Most terrifying of all he had enountered were the “rotten”. Gisburne didn’t know what the nickname meant, nor how it had been acquired. But it seemed fitting enough.
His first sight of the army of Brabançon mercenaries fighting for Richard under the command of William of Cambrai stayed with him forever. The “rotten” were protected from head to foot in leather jerkins, armed with staves and weapons of steel and iron. When not hired by kings or dukes, they went about in bands of thousands and reduced monasteries, villages and cities to ashes. None could stop them. None dared. They had no fear. Believing it no sin, they committed violence and adultery, openly proclaiming there was no God. Fugitive rebels, false clerks, renegade monks and all who had forsaken God joined them. These were the men who, on this day, had formed the greater part of Richard’s army.
Malemort should have been a simple action: the suppression of a rebellious population. But such was the wrath of the citizens that they smashed Richard’s assault. When William of Cambrai – leader of the “rotten” for the past ten years – had been killed, the cohesion of his army evaporated. And there was Hell on earth.
When he was ten years old, Gisburne had shot an arrow at a wasps’ nest that hung high in a tree at the edge of the pasture. His father had repeatedly warned him away from the spot. But he was lost in a game, shouting out commands to his imaginary army and issuing threats to their enemies. He cursed haughtily at the wasps and fired an impulsive shot. The last thing had he expected was for it to hit. But not only had it done so, it had knocked the whole nest to the ground. He remembered being incapacitated by a kind of cold dread, standing rooted to the spot as a furious, buzzing cloud rose from the vibrating, papery ball. The sound made him feel sick. But as he looked on in horror, he began to realise that the wasps swarming about the nest were paying him as little attention as they would a tree or gatepost. He was a little distance from it – and, in his state of shock, he had remained completely still. Perhaps it was this that had saved him. The thought paralysed him further. Every muscle tense, he watched for what seemed a lifetime, unable to move, the hectic army wheeling about the air above the besieged nest until its armoured soldiers finally began to settle, regrouping, repairing, crawling all over its surface, obscuring it in a seething, shining mass of buzzing black and yellow.
It was then that the idea came into his head. When a knight was down, he was v
ulnerable. That was when you dealt the death blow. You should not flinch from it. The thought terrified him. But as he stood, the compulsion to act on it grew. He fought to overcome that fear – to conquer it, and to conquer his enemy. Thinking these things, he drew the wooden sword from his belt, raised it high over his right shoulder, and crept towards the nest.
For another agonising moment he stood over the heaving, poisonous globe, uncertain whether he could do the deed, yet unable to go back, wasps whining about his head.
Before he knew it had happened, his will had reconnected with his muscles. The sword crashed down. The nest split in two. Black beads of venomous rage exploded in every direction. He fled, the throb of mad fury behind him – ran and ran until his legs could take no more, until the angry whir of vibrating air had faded into distance – and, with his heart thumping against his chest, flung himself into a cornfield and collapsed in a heap. He lay there, panting hoarsely, gradually becoming aware of the dozen or so stings on his arms. He laughed at that – at the boldness of his victory, the genius of his escape – and began to wonder how long wasps might hold a grudge. If they could recognise him. If they would come after him.
A long time after, he crept back to the battlefield. He was not prepared for what he found. It seemed the colony had gone insane, attacking anything they could find. He found dozens half-dead with their stingers stuck in pine cones, in the gnarled bark of trees, in the nearby bulrushes. Hundreds floated on the surface of the pond about a trio of dead frogs. Not far from the nest, he found a grass snake writhing, a few clinging, deranged berserkers still stabbing at it. Further out, on the grass, stiff and contorted, a crow lay dead, more of the striped creatures stuck to its blue-black feathers like jewels. And everywhere on the ground, others crawled, exhausted, their purpose lost, their lives spent. Only the nest itself was completely free of them. It lay, burst open like a conquered castle, utterly abandoned, as if now cursed – a shattered relic. No birds sang. But there was a stranger sound. In the next field, his chestnut pony, maddened by the crazed insects stinging its head and eyes, had careered into the fence and impaled iself. It lay groaning and close to death.
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