Gisburne thought of this as he watched the gruff old woman remove the remains of the ham joint, and shuffle back to the table with a wooden bowl of dried fruits. Doubtless there would be those who found her ways coarse. But there was love in the food she set before them.
Galfrid gave a great yawn and stretched his toes towards the glowing fire. They would sleep well tonight.
XIX
SOMETHING JARRED GISBURNE from his slumber. He could not be sure what it was – whether a sound or a movement. He was not even conscious of hearing it. But there had been something. Like any seasoned soldier, he could sleep through all manner of uproar and noise. But there were subtler sounds to which he was sensitised, as a mother is to the cries of her babe.
He lay on his bed, not moving, barely breathing, listening to the night. A drift of cold air struck the back of his head. He turned it slowly. As he did so, he realised that the shutter at the window was open, its opening a pale glow of moonlight. Had Galfrid done that? He could hear his squire’s soft breaths in the darkness. If he had done it, it had not been recent. But it could not have been long, or the room would be frozen.
As these thoughts formed in his mind, he seemed to become aware of something at the periphery of his vision. Something in the blackness of the room. A shape. Not moving, but not belonging. Realisation slowly dawned.
A dark figure was standing over the bed.
He leapt to his feet, grasping his shortsword. The shape moved swiftly, silently – evading him, and momentarily passing before the open window.
He saw a figure – small and slight, clad entirely in black, even its head wrapped about with swathes of dark material. He swung at it. It seemed to slide away from him like a shadow.
Galfrid was awake now, and on his feet. They had it cornered, one on each side. But as Gisburne advanced, sword in hand, it seemed to bend, then spin around, and what he believed to be a foot struck him in the side of the head, sending him sprawling. He righted himself just in time to see Galfrid’s knife kicked out of his hand, then Galfrid himself grabbed, spun and flung to the floorboards with a thud that shook the whole house. Then, as Gisburne watched, helpless, the thing seem to somersault up and out of the open window, its shadow shooting across the floor as the window frame emptied and it was gone.
Gisburne stood, stunned and speechless as Galfrid, winded but apparently otherwise unharmed, hauled himself to his feet.
“What in God’s name was that?” said the squire, panting.
“I don’t know...” Gisburne crouched and saw in the gloom that their gear had been disarrayed. Searched. But why?
“The way he moved... The way he fought...”
“I’ve never seen anything like it. Except...”
“Except...?”
Gisburne hesitated, not wanting to use the word. “Hashashin. I saw them on three occasions. But I’ve never heard of them operating further west than Palestine.”
“But they’re killers. If they’d wanted us dead...”
Gisburne nodded. “We’d be dead already.”
“They had every chance. As we slept...”
“Whoever this was, they had some other object in mind.” He turned over the strewn gear in search of a clue. Something that was missing. Taken. But nothing seemed to be. Galfrid’s stash of silver pennies – a small fortune – had been rifled, but ignored. The only thing that was missing, as far as Gisburne could see, was any apparent motive.
Galfrid read Gisburne’s thoughts.
“They were disturbed before they could take anything, perhaps,” he said. But this was blind optimism. Gisburne was, by now, realising the truth, and it made his blood run cold.
“They were after information,” he said. “About us.”
“But why us?” said Galfrid. As soon as he uttered the words, his face fell. “They know.”
Gisburne mulled it over, his expression grim. “The fact that they are interested in us at all... It suggests so.”
“That shape. In the forest...”
Gisburne nodded. “We are being watched. Followed. And we must assume they know of our mission.”
“But how could they?” Galfrid’s bemusement was entirely understandable. Only a handful of people had ever known of it, and their loyalty was beyond question.
“I don’t know,” said Gisburne. “But whoever or whatever they are, they know of us. They know of the skull. And they want it for themselves.”
III
TEMPLARS
XX
Angoulême – 17 April, 1182
GISBURNE WOULD NEVER forget the screams of the women. The sound seared into his brain, like a brand on cattle hide. He knew, too, that he would never banish that image from his mind – the terrible look in their eyes as they had been dragged from their home. One – the younger, darker-haired of the two – had looked right at him just before she was flung to the ground in the dung-strewn yard. It was a look of pleading – of hopeless, tragic desperation – but also of accusation, and of hatred. A look that shamed him to the core. She was raped there and then by three of the Duke’s most respected knights as he and a dozen others stood by.
Some watched in silence as it happened. Others, their blood still afire from the day’s fighting, cheered. The Duke himself – who never actively participated – laughed and clapped along with his knights’ exertions. Turning from the spectacle with a feeling of nausea, Gisburne found himself staring numbly at the towering, broad-shouldered figure of the Duke. He stood a full head above his fellows, his ruddy, heroic features as incongruously handsome as ever, despite his generous, bronze-coloured locks – several shades darker than his coppery beard – being lank and sweaty from the heat of his helm. Richard the Lionhearted. Count of Maine. Duke of Aquitaine. Prince of England. And his master’s lord.
As Gisburne gazed, five more knights dragged the other woman to the barn – her flushed face streaked with tears, her wimple, dislodged but still tangled in her chestnut hair, flapping in the wind. What became of her, Gisburne never found out.
It mattered little, in the scheme of things. By nightfall they and their menfolk would be dead, their land scoured of its crops, their livestock slaughtered to be consumed by noble knights who would laugh as they tore at the steaming bones around a fire. By morning, what remained of the farm would be burned to the ground. Then the knights would be gone, on to the next conquest. Gisburne had seen the pattern repeated many times whilst on campaign. He had watched as whole villages had been razed, the knights, serjeants, squires and infantrymen falling upon them like the swarming plague of Egypt, consuming all of worth, and destroying all else they could not eat, drink or carry. Many times, no one had been left alive to tell or remember what the place had even been called.
He should have left that farm courtyard when de Gaillon did. It would have been natural, even expected, for him to do so. But somehow his feet had not moved, and for Gisburne to make a separate show of leaving once Gilbert had gone seemed too bold a statement. He was only a squire. True, he would soon be dubbed a knight – he would embark on his twenty-first year within a month – but even then he would be a knight of little standing, and poor means. Knighthood, founded upon honour and prowess, was fast becoming the preserve of the rich.
Gisburne had forced himself to face such things – even immersed himself in them – in the belief that he must somehow become hardened to the reality of war. Over the years, several wiser than he had told him it would get easier to bear, but in fact, it had got worse. Especially of late. He feared he was a failure – too weak to become a knight. But it was not, he had begun to realise, the stress of battle, nor the gore of combat that repelled him. It was something else entirely. In the farmhouse that day there had been at least three children, whisked inside by the womenfolk as the knights’ horses had thundered into the yard – two crying boys and a little girl mercifully too young to grasp what was happening. Gisburne had not seen them since. He hoped, for their sake, they were dead. But all at once, as he stood there
, that thought – and the pragmatic ease with which it had come – sickened him. It seemed to open a floodgate for all his pent-up revulsion. He physically retched – felt a sudden, wild impulse to flee, in the vain hope of leaving behind the anger and loathing that boiled up in him – then an urgent, crazed desire to turn all of its mad violence on his fellows. But he did neither.
His master, Gilbert de Gaillon, had turned and left as soon as the coming events had become clear. That it would unfold so was, in part, predictable – actions in keeping with custom. Knights on campaign lived off the land, billeted themselves where they saw fit and left nothing that their enemies might use as a resource. The spoils were also their payment. But Gilbert’s tolerance for the deeds of this particular army had worn thin in recent weeks. If the excesses of Richard’s army were extreme even to such a seasoned old soldier as de Gaillon, thought Gisburne, then they must be cruel indeed.
Richard was a ruthless leader, as well as a fearless one. He had led his first army into battle whilst still only sixteen, and by the age of eighteen had already earned his lifelong epithet ‘Lionheart’. That was just seven years ago, during the campaign to crush the barons in Aquitaine who had rebelled against his father, Henry II. Henry had sent him on the mission as a punishment, but taking enemy castles soon proved Richard’s greatest talent – and became his chief amusement. While others contented themselves with the tiltyard and an occasional game of chess, Richard regarded the whole world as a board upon which to play his games. Blind to self-doubt, but afflicted by the restlessness so typical of the Angevins, he was continually questing for greater challenges: larger armies to subdue, cannier opponents to outwit, thicker walls to crack with ever-bigger siege engines. The fact that the doomed castles in Aquitaine belonged to knights loyal to him – that the recent failed rebellion had been his, and against his own father – troubled his conscience not at all. It would put things right with the old king. Then he could seek out new and greater battles.
This he had done. He did not need to look far. Where Richard was, battle naturally followed. After he’d suppressed his former allies in Aquitaine – and literally made his name – new uprisings erupted in Gascony. This time, they had the support of Richard’s own brothers, Geoffrey and Henry the Young King. They were also a personal attack on Richard – directly inspired, it was said, by the growing cruelties of his reign as Duke.
Richard was to face his greatest test at Taillebourg. There, the rebels held a seemingly unassailable position – a famed fortress that commanded the entire valley, perched on a dizzying crag, inaccessible on three sides and so formidable in construction that it was considered impregnable. Richard simply ignored it. Rather than break his army against its walls, he set about destroying everything else he could find, first cutting off all supply lines and avenues of escape, then razing the surrounding lands with such savagery that the appalled rebels felt compelled to ride out and attack. Once in the field, their advantage was lost. Richard crushed their army in one hammer-blow, and, following the retreating rabble through the gates, slaughtered the remaining defenders and tore down the castle.
Few in the region dared challenge him after that.
When Richard’s wrath was next turned upon troublesome barons in Angoulême, they appealed to Philip II, King of France, for help. Richard was unfazed. There was nothing he liked better than fighting those who had the audacity to call themselves “king”. He acknowledged no one his superior – not kings, not emperors, not his own father, and especially not his elder brother, whose birthright he refused to recognise. Richard was second only to God – and even God, it seemed, was formed in Richard’s image.
For young Gisburne, it had been a baptism of fire. In his few years, he had seen more action, and greater horrors, than many would see in a lifetime. Gisburne had been eight years in the service of de Gaillon, all told, first as a page, then as squire. It had been a ceaseless round of bloody battles. In theory, de Gaillon was King Henry’s servant on the battlefield. In practice, he had spent most of the years that Gisburne had known him at the beck and call of Richard.
De Gaillon’s loyalty to Henry was unshakable. After the years of anarchy under King Stephen, it had been Henry who had restored the dukedom of Normandy to England, and England to order. Time and again, de Gaillon had impressed upon the young Gisburne that nothing could be achieved without order or discipline. But there was something more. Though it was only ever hinted at in de Gaillon’s conversations, Gisburne sensed that he owed Henry a personal debt of gratitude – that, somewhere in the distant past, Henry may even have been directly responsible for saving his life. If de Gaillon served Richard – and he did so with full vigour, when required to do so – it was only because it pleased Henry; and, increasingly, he served under sufferance. Were his allegiances to be tested, there was no question which way they would fall – a fact that doubtless had not escaped Richard. Richard was crude and ruthless, with a simple view of the world. But he was not stupid.
At first, Gisburne had regarded Richard as a great hero – the perfect knight. He was courageous, physically powerful, strong of will, swift of thought and unhesitating when action was required. He was pious but also down-to-earth, and capable of good cheer in the most dire situations. He knew how to speak to his soldiers, and, mostly, they loved him.
He could also be capricious. In the bitter weather at the beginning of the new year, when his soldiers’ spirits were flagging, he had hired a party of Flemish bagpipers and drummers who instantly transformed the mood to one of jollity. Richard had them play before battle, too, the harsh, stirring sound seeming to pull his men together as one, and to steel them for the task ahead. Then, after three weeks, Richard suddenly dispensed with their services, saying their hearts were no longer in their playing, and that if they weren’t with him they were against him. The dozen or so men were suddenly adrift, in hostile lands, a hundred leagues from their homes and unprotected by the Duke who had hired them. But, to Gisburne’s great surprise, this too buoyed up the army.
Richard had an uncanny knack of catching the mood of his men, but only gradually did Gisburne realise that Richard’s supposed affinity with his troops wasn’t empathy, or love, or paternal care. It was only that his intolerance matched their own. Many regarded him as a great man, and an inspired leader, nevertheless.
This was an opinion de Gaillon had neither challenged nor supported, although he once commented to Gisburne that he had learned “the best and the worst” from Richard. In retrospect, Gisburne saw that de Gaillon had been allowing him to make up his own mind – that only this way would he come to a complete understanding. And come to it he had. Now, when Gisburne looked at Richard the Lionhearted, he saw only a spoilt boy, at war with his own boredom.
No one around him seemed to see it. Or if they did, none showed it. Not even de Gaillon. Not until two days ago.
IT SO HAPPENED there was a particular rebel knight who had particularly irked Richard. None knew quite why – Gisburne did not even know the knight’s name, since Richard refused to utter it, and others did not dare. But so riled was the Duke by the knight’s behaviour – his defiance, his lack of respect, his refusal to die – that his downfall had become a personal quest. Then news came that he was hiding out in a local fortress. This fortress – an ancient rampart of mouldering wood – turned out to be so dilapidated as to be almost indefensible. At first sight of Richard’s army, its ragtag inhabitants immediately surrendered. The nameless rebel knight was not among them, and Richard had been denied even a token fight. He slaughtered every one of them in frustration.
Afterwards, once his wrath had dissipated, it had occurred to him that some of the prisoners might have taken valuable information to their graves. By way of compensation – and so as not to look like a complete idiot – Richard took a company of men to a nearby farm to interrogate those there instead.
It was clear from the start that the action was pointless. The farmhouse had already been ransacked by enemy forces. The far
mer – who had nothing left to give, and everything to gain from cooperation – clearly knew nothing of value. But it was no longer about that. De Gaillon and Gisburne had watched in silence as the man was tortured with hot irons and had his fingers broken on a stone with his own hammer. When that yielded nothing of value, Richard nodded to his captain to try a different approach. “Fetch the boy,” he had said.
And out was dragged a young blond lad of no more than eight years.
At this, de Gaillon boiled over, a wordless exclamation of outrage and disgust bursting from him.
Everything stopped. Richard turned slowly, his eyes narrowed.
“What’s that you say, de Gaillon?”
“I said nothing, my lord.” De Gaillon did not lie. But as Gisburne looked at him, he saw his mentor’s legs and clenched fists were shaking.
“Then what is it that you think?” Richard’s tone and his look were like ice.
It was not fear that shook de Gaillon. It was an anger that swept all fear before it. Gisburne had witnessed it before, when mindless stupidity or needless cruelty on the field had driven his master to an almost ungovernable rage. Then, it had been those of lower rank who had been the object of his wrath. This time, it was his lord.
What happened next was one of the bravest things Gisburne ever saw. De Gaillon breathed deeply, as if suddenly resigned to something. The shaking ceased. Then he looked Richard squarely in the eye and said in a voice that was clear and strong: “I think that if the Saracens treated their own people in such a fashion, we would condemn them as savages – and we would be right to do so.”
There was a stunned silence. A dangerous silence. Richard glared at de Gaillon, his face like stone. Then, his face reddening, he turned, drew his sword and advanced on the still-kneeling, bloodstained farmer. The blade, with all of Richard’s strength and fury behind it, swung in a huge, sweeping arc and struck off the farmer’s head with a single blow. It bounced with a wet thud and bowled across the muddy yard. The boy’s cracked voice rose in a terrible, screeching wail as the man’s headless body collapsed forward, spilling blood like an overturned keg.
Guy of Gisburne- The Omnibus Page 15
