King's Man (35 page)

For a moment my master seemed almost embarrassed. Then he looked straight at me: ‘I’m told it is up to a thousand pounds by now.’

I felt instantly deflated. ‘A thousand pounds! A
thousand
pounds!’ I said the words too loudly, almost shouting – in that company, nobody raised his voice to Robin – and a tense silence descended over the supper table. But for some reason I couldn’t stop myself: ‘And what about John Nailor?’ I demanded of Robin, once again too loudly, and nodded over to the giant form of my blond friend who was watching us, grinning evilly from the far end of the table.

Robin coughed: ‘Ah, um, I think it is five hundred pounds of silver at present!’ He smiled mockingly at me. ‘And I believe even Much the miller’s son is worth ten pounds – and that’s dead or alive, of course.’

‘This is outrageous!’ I was suddenly very angry. ‘Why am I only worth one paltry pound of silver? That is nothing – nothing but a damned insult! I’ve a good mind to complain …’

‘To Prince John?’ said Robin, with a straight face, and the whole table – thirty big, tough, dirty outlaws – erupted in a
deafening wave of laughter. I flushed a deep red, turned on my heel and stalked out of the cave with as much dignity as I could gather around me, while a cascade of boozy laughter and crude half-heard jests swept me out into the chilly night.

I rode south on a blustery October day with twenty heavily armed, mounted men at my back; half Welsh archers and half men-at-arms, guarding five packhorses each with two stout wooden chests strapped to its back. Beside me rode Hanno – and Thomas ap Lloyd. The dark Welsh boy had told me that he wished to become my squire, and train to be a fully fledged warrior one day, and while at twelve summers he was a little old to begin training, I felt he had promise, and that I owed him something for showing me the wrestling trick that I had used to defeat Milo. So he came, too, trotting along on a pony that was as brown, quiet and well mannered as he.

When he asked if he might serve me, I had asked him one crucial question in return.

‘What do you know of your father’s death,’ I said, looking directly into his calm oak-brown eyes.

He looked right back at me, his gaze perfectly level, and said quietly and soberly: ‘I know that he was offered money by Sir Ralph Murdac to kill the Earl of Locksley. I know that my life and the life of my mother were threatened by Murdac to encourage my father to comply. And I know that, instead of attacking our lord, he attacked you in the dark in the Earl’s bed-chamber, by mistake, and that you fought and killed him.’

‘Do you blame me for his death?’

‘No, sir, I do not,’ he said, and I was certain, as certain as I am of Damnation or Salvation, that he was telling me the
truth. ‘My father was forced to do what he did by Murdac, and you killed him in self-defence,’ he continued. ‘He died by your hand, but his death is not to be laid at your door. You were protecting yourself, and your lord, which is right and proper. I blame Sir Ralph Murdac for my father’s death – and if I ever have the opportunity, I shall have my vengeance upon him.’ He said these words quietly, calmly and with an incredible conviction for one so young. I believed him utterly.

‘Then we shall get along very well,’ I said, and took him into my service.

We had ridden no more than ten miles south of Robin’s Caves, and our horses were only just getting into their stride for the long journey, when one of the scouts who had been ranging ahead of the column rode back to me and reported that there was a strange woman, apparently alone, chanting nonsense by an old stone preaching cross a mile or so down the road. I had told the scouts that they were to report anything out of the ordinary to me directly they saw it – for I went in mortal terror of a well-laid ambush or some ruse by Prince John’s men that would rob me of the silver hoard the packhorses carried.

As we approached, I saw a small figure, hooded and swathed in heavy black wool, with her arms stretched out sideways in imitation of Our Lord’s Passion, standing beside the cross which stood on a mound of earth next to the highway. It seemed that she was speaking to that holy symbol. And with a shock that was like a plunge in an icy mountain tarn, I realized that she was speaking in the Arabic tongue.

Suddenly the woman turned her body towards us and swept off her hood. I held up my hand to halt the column but I believe the whole cavalcade would have been stopped by her
appearance alone. She had a truly hideous face, mutilated so much that it was almost beyond recognition as belonging to a human being: the nose was missing, leaving two large holes in the centre of her face, surrounded by ridged scars, like a truncated pig’s snout; I saw that her ears, too, had been hacked off crudely, and her lips were gone as well, so that her narrow yellow teeth showed in a dreadful skull’s grimace. Her hair – grey and long and matted into rats’ tails – was whipped about her gaunt white face by the wind, and two dark eyes glowed in their sockets like the black-burning fires of Hell. She looked like a witch from a child’s nightmare. From behind me I could hear the frightened muttering of the mounted men. And yet, for all her cruel looks, I knew she was no hag; in truth, I knew that she was not yet twenty summers old.

You see, I recognized her. This wreck of a young woman, this demonic personification of ugliness, with a face that would curdle fresh milk, had once been my lover. I had once smothered that terrible visage with my kisses and received them, too, from her now absent lips. For this was Nur, the once-exquisite Arab slave girl that I had met on the long journey to Outremer. There was a time when I had been entranced by her beauty – by her midnight hair that spilled like dark oil down her back; by her huge brown eyes and snow-white skin; by the soft, generous curves of her body and the way she gave it up so joyfully for my pleasure. But then my enemy, Malbête, had taken her and his men had abused her brutally before hacking away her luminous, radiant looks with their blades; desecrating her perfection to punish me. She had shown her mutilated face to me, one dark night when I lay in a sickbed in Acre, and I had screamed in horror at her disfigurement – and she had fled.
That had been two years ago, and I’d not seen her since. Yet here she was before me, in Nottinghamshire, as real as the rough stone cross on the grassy mound behind her.

‘Nur,’ I said. And then was lost for words; pity and shame welling up inside me in equal parts.

‘Alan, my love, we meet again,’ she said, holding out her arms as if to embrace me.

I flinched at her use of the words ‘my love’. And I tried to ignore the invitation in her open arms. With her beauty gone, I had been forced to face the truth: that I was a shallow man, interested only in the outward form of a woman. I discovered that I was a man who could not love, truly, deeply, with the heart and not just the eyes, as women claim to do. I had behaved most ignobly – for, although she had run from me, I had not searched for her. It was my fault that she had come to look this way, yet I could not even make amends by giving her the love that she surely deserved for all her suffering.

‘Nur – what are
you
doing here?’ I said, trying to sound as if I had just encountered an old acquaintance in a tavern – and hating myself even as I spoke. ‘Why did you leave your homeland? We all thought you must have gone back to your village, to your family. But here you are!’

‘I followed you, my love’ – I flinched once again at those words – ‘I followed you halfway across the world, through storm and drought, through pestilence, fire and battle; I followed you hungry and shoeless …’

As she spoke, my mind traced her journey. I could only dimly imagine the hardship and dangers she must have faced, a woman alone, travelling so many thousands of miles of wild and lawless road.

‘But why?’ I said. ‘Why follow me? What do you want from me?’

‘Did you not promise, when you held me in your arms aboard that Frankish ship, to love me for ever? Did you not vow it? I have come to you. I followed you to prove that, despite my misfortune, despite my ugliness, I am worthy of your love. My darling, my true love – I have come back to you. We can be united once again.’

My stomach felt as if it were filled with clay. I
had
promised to love her for ever; I had said so many things in the heat of passion, then – but now I could not even bear to look at her, let alone touch her; the idea of kissing her made my belly squeeze tight up into my chest.

How could I tell her that I would never love her again, that I could never love her again?

‘But why were you waiting here, on this spot?’ I asked, still in the same jolly tavern-acquaintance tones.

‘I have been waiting for you. And while I waited, I have been talking to your Christ God,’ she said, indicating the stone cross behind her with a dirty, bony finger. ‘I have been telling Him about my troubles and asking Him to heal my wounds.’ Here Nur waved a dirty hand across her poor tortured face. ‘And he spoke to me!’

I could feel all the men behind me crossing themselves. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw young Thomas straining forward in his saddle to get a closer look at her deformed face. But Nur had not finished.

‘He spoke to me – your Christ God! And He promised to heal me, and He has promised me that we shall be together. You and I, Alan, my love, together at last.’

I could not help noticing that her command of English was much improved since I began teaching her our tongue on the voyage to Outremer two years ago. But I also felt an almost uncontrollable urge to run from her, to gallop far, far away so that I would never have to see her poor mutilated face again or feel the shame that it aroused in my breast.

‘I think we must be married soon, my love; your Christ God has decreed it,’ Nur continued. And behind me I heard a manat-arms snigger and I stiffened in my saddle. I had to tell her once and for always that I did not love her.

‘I am afraid that cannot be, Nur, my dear,’ I said, trying now to sound like a kindly uncle. ‘We may have shared our lives in Outremer, but here I am a different man. I can never be with you. I am not the marrying kind, alas. And I cannot linger here chatting either, for I must ride south this day on important business. Here, take this,’ I said, and, feeling like Judas’s paymaster, I plucked a small leather purse containing a dozen silver pennies from my belt and held it out to her. ‘Take this purse and follow the road north from here, and you will be stopped by two armed men. Say that you come from me and that you are to be given food and shelter. Robin of Locksley is there; you remember him. Go to Robin and he will shelter you until I return.’ I threw the purse to her and her bony hand, snaked out and snatched it out of the air.

‘I must come with you, my love, wherever you go. We are one, you and I – we must never be parted again,’ said Nur in a weird sing-song voice. It was as if she had heard nothing of what I had just said. The purse had disappeared somewhere inside the folds of her black robe.

‘It was very pleasant to see you again, Nur, after so long. But
much as I would like to hear the tale of your travels, I cannot take you with me. You must go north to Robin; he will care for you until I return. Try to understand …’

‘No, it is you who must understand, my love.’ Nur’s voice had changed; it was higher in pitch, louder and dangerously approaching a shriek. ‘You belong to me! Your Christ God has told me this, today! He spoke to me here, in this place. You belong to me now. You have always belonged to me; and you are mine now and for ever!’

‘Stand aside, Nur!’ I said, trying to sound soldier-like and forceful, not like a man pleading for sense from a madwoman. ‘Stand aside, for I must ride on and I cannot take you with me. We will speak some more when I return. Go north to Robin. And may God be with you!’ And at that I spurred my horse onward, and the convoy of twenty mail-clad men-at-arms clattered after me.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nur step backwards to avoid being trampled by the moving column of horses. She retreated up the mound on which the cross was set and began to curse and scream in Arabic at the men riding past her. I understood only a little of her speech; I had been taught a smattering of it by my friend Reuben, who came from those parts, but I believe she was wishing that their bladders be afflicted with red-hot maggots, their eyes filled with tears of fiery acid, and damning their souls to be dismembered and roasted for eternity in the seven hells of Jahannam – or some such vicious gibberish.

I turned around in the saddle to remonstrate with her for these curses and saw, just as the last horse was riding past her position on the cross mound, a small black figure launching
itself at the rearmost archer in an attempt to climb on to the back of the man’s saddle. The archer, a big, brawny fellow, stiff-armed her away in mid-air and she landed sprawled in the mud behind the horse’s tail. I gave the order to trot and, with a deep feeling of shame burning in my heart, I led the column swiftly away from the stone cross and from the shrieking, bawling, raggedy, mud-smeared figure in black – huge nostril-holes gaping, teeth permanently bared, grey rat-tail hair snapping in the breeze – as it howled blood-chilling threats of eternal damnation in our wake.

The rest of the journey south was mercifully uneventful. In the late afternoon of the third day after my disturbing encounter with Nur, the cavalcade trotted along Watling Street, through the city wall at Newgate and into the noisy crowded streets of London. Ahead of us the tall spire of St Paul’s Cathedral seemed to beckon us to journey’s end, and in no time at all we were dismounting in the cobbled courtyard in Paternoster Square outside the huge old church and calling for stabling, grooms and porters to help us carry the heavy chests of silver down into the crypt, where the rest of the ransom hoard was being stored under the seals of Walter de Coutances and Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. A clerk noted the amount of silver we had brought him, a little over five hundred pounds, on a vellum scroll with an air of total ennui – and I realized how little he or any London folk cared about our contribution.

I understood the clerk’s indifference when I caught a glimpse of the inside of the crypt over his left shoulder as he stooped to make a note of our delivery: the vast space beneath St Paul’s was filled to the roof with chests and barrels and heavy sacks
of silver coin. We had been amazed by the wealth of Prince John’s treasury in Nottingham – but this was of another order entirely. It seemed as if all the wealth of the kingdom had been gathered here, every peasant’s half-penny, every merchant’s shilling had been collected; every miser’s purse shaken out, every baron’s money chest emptied, every church altar stripped. And not just money from England – King Richard’s overseas possessions had played their part too: Normandy, Anjou and Maine had sent silver by the cartload; his wife Queen Berengaria had organized the collection of taxes in Aquitaine far to the south. I realized later that I had been staring, over the back of that bored clerk’s rough woollen robe, at piled-up treasure with a value of about 100,000 marks – more than sixteen million silver pennies – a staggering thirty-three tons of bright metal. It was truly a king’s ransom!