King's Man (36 page)

Queen Eleanor herself received me that same evening in her chamber off the great hall of Westminster. As always, she was gracious and ordered wine and sweetmeats to be served and thanked me in her warm husky voice for bringing Robin’s silver safely down from Sherwood.

She made a point of being kind to me, asked after my health, and mentioned once again my exploits in Germany with flattery, charm and gratitude. For all that she was the most powerful woman in Europe, the wife of kings, the mother of kings, I found myself talking to her almost as if she were my own mother.

‘And how is my disreputable Lord of Locksley? Still causing trouble in Sherwood, I’ll be bound.’ The Queen laughed to show that she meant him no ill, and her smoky purr, as always, sent a delicious tingle down my spine.

‘I’ll wager he’s having the time of his life,’ said a figure lounging in a dim corner of the chamber that I had not noticed before. His face was in shadow, but I could see that he cradled a lute in his arms, and gracefully he struck a chord and sang a few lines of poetry – my poetry, to be precise.

Oh, the merry old life of an outlaw bold
,

Offers more reward than silver or gold
.

There’s women and feasting, and wine to be poured

And battles aplenty – you’ll never grow bored …

Perhaps poetry is not the right word. Doggerel, you might call it. It was one of many simple songs, set to simple tunes, that I had composed for the outlaws of Sherwood in my younger days. These ditties celebrated the life and deeds of Robin Hood, although not always with a firm allegiance to the truth, and they had spread across the country in the past few years being sung in alehouses and taverns, in hovels and manor houses from the Pennines to Penzance. Robin pretended to be indifferent to them, but I knew that he secretly loved being so celebrated by the common people of England.

‘That will do, Bernard,’ rasped Queen Eleanor, with just a suggestion of a chuckle in her voice. ‘If you wish to indulge your taste for low entertainments, I suggest you take the young Lord of Westbury off to one of your vile dens of iniquity – some cheap tavern where both of your … ahem …’ the Queen cleared her throat delicately, ‘
musical
talents will be properly appreciated.’

Bernard de Sezanne set down his lute and came out of the shadows, a smile wreathing his ruddy, handsome face.

‘As ever, Your Highness, your slightest wish is my command. Come, Alan, I know just the place for us: the food is almost edible, the drink is very good – and the girls are simply unbelievable!’

I bowed low to the Queen, trying not to grin too widely, and left the royal presence with my old friend – to seek out wine, women and low entertainments.

I awoke the next morning with an aching head, and a gritty feeling in my mouth, but with my spirits unaccountably high. I felt a sense of freedom that I had not enjoyed for many a month. Bernard had been on excellent form the night before, taking me down the river in a barge and over to the other side to a disreputable house owned by the Bishop of Southwark where we had guzzled wine and Bernard had besported himself with three young girls who began the evening dressed as novice nuns – I did not believe that they were really novices, destined one day to become Brides of Christ, but you could never be too sure with the bawdy Bishop of Southwark’s girls.

I have never quite felt comfortable in my bones paying for the love of women – although I will not condemn those who do – and so I confined myself to watching Bernard as he cavorted with his three lovelies, passing the odd cup of wine to him when he felt in need of refreshment, and passing ribald comments when I felt they were called for.

Once Bernard had quenched his lust – and I must say that, for a man in his late thirties who loved to complain so much about being aged and infirm, he had a prodigious amount of stamina – we paid off the girls and fell to talking of recent affairs of the kingdom.

‘You know, they nearly have it,’ Bernard said to me, wiping his sweaty face with a towel. ‘A hundred thousand marks – I never thought they’d do it. But by hook or by crook – by crook mostly – the Queen, may she live another thousand years, has gathered the first tranche of the money together for Richard’s ransom. The Emperor’s ambassadors are coming next week to collect it.’

‘The first tranche?’ I said, surprised. ‘I thought a hundred thousand was the full price for his release.’

‘No, no, my boy,’ chuckled Bernard. ‘Never underestimate the greed of princes. Emperor Henry has decided to squeeze Richard until he squeaks – he’s upped the price. Now he wants a hundred and
fifty
thousand marks in cash, or the equivalent in well-born hostages.’

‘But that is impossible – the country has been bled dry. There is no more money in England – anywhere. I know, I did a good deal of the bleeding!’

‘They’ll do a deal, Alan. They always do. But the important thing is that the German ambassadors are coming and, once they’ve got their money, they’ll have to set a date for Richard’s release. And once that has happened, the tide will turn in our favour.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘For the past year, all the knights and barons of England and Normandy have been trying to divine who will win this great struggle between Richard and John. Obviously, they all want to be on the winning side. When Richard was in prison, and John triumphantly capturing castles left and right all over England, everyone looked at John as the eventual winner. The longer Richard was locked up, the more our King’s support
melted away – apart from a few staunch fellows such as me, you and your outlaw friend Robert of Locksley, of course.’

Bernard paused, took a swig of wine, and went on: ‘Once a date has been set for Richard’s release, all the fighting men in England will have to reconsider their positions. When Richard comes home he’s unlikely to look kindly on those who supported his brother’s bid for the throne. He’s more likely to waste their lands, slaughter their soldiers and dispossess their children. So everything is in flux right now. People are already beginning to switch back to Richard’s side. Things are looking up for us.’

I pondered Bernard’s words the next morning as I sluiced my aching head at the pump in the courtyard outside Westminster Hall, while Thomas stood behind me with a towel and a clean shirt. Bernard was right, I concluded. Things were indeed looking up. But I had another reason to be cheerful that day. I was going to be paying a visit to my master’s wife Marie-Anne and her baby son Hugh – and I’d also get a chance to see my lovely Goody. And there was something in particular, something very special indeed, that I was planning to ask her.

Chapter Eighteen

The Countess of Locksley had taken a large two-storey, timber-framed house on the south side of the Strondway, the main road leading into London from Westminster. It was the inn or town house of Lord Wakefield, who was presently in Normandy, and Marie-Anne had filled it with her women and her dogs, and a dozen or so of Queen Eleanor’s jolly Gascon men-at-arms.

I rode up there on Ghost on that crisp morning, with the frost still on the grass either side of the wide road even though it was near nine of the clock, and I reflected that my life was far from unsatisfactory that cold autumn day. As Bernard had said last night, all being well, King Richard would soon be released from his German prison. Better yet, my musical friend had told me that Goody was stricken with remorse over the way she had spoken to me at our last meeting. According to Bernard, she now looked upon me as some sort of hero who had hoodwinked Prince John and allowed Robin to collect a
fortune in silver on King Richard’s behalf. A hero, no less. I liked the sound of that.

Although I was prepared for a change of heart from Goody, I did not expect the enthusiasm I received when I arrived in the big courtyard of Wakefield Inn, dismounted and handed Ghost’s reins to a waiting groom. I was dimly aware of a human-shaped streak of white and gold coming towards me at speed and then Goody was in my arms, her body wrapped tightly around me, her lips kissing my face over and over while she wept and apologized and kissed me again.

Finally she drew breath and pulled back from her embrace: ‘Oh, Alan, can you ever forgive me – the things I said to you … I didn’t understand … I thought that you had … but of course, you never would. Not you …’

Her face was quite delicious: cold and beautiful, like a bowl of wild strawberries and fresh cream – blotched pink around her sparkling violet-blue eyes where she had been crying, the deep flushed red of her soft lips, a glimpse of pearly teeth, and all set off by her silky white skin. I could have eaten her alive. Instead, I kissed her full on the lips.

And she kissed me back.

My mouth melted into hers; our tongues probed, duelled, entwined; her taste was slippery sweet; warm and soft and utterly wonderful. My arms were locked around her thin back, and hers around my neck; and I could feel every curve of her lithe young body pressed hard against mine, and soon that familiar hot rush of blood to my loins …

‘Godifa, what on earth do you think you are doing?’ said a sharp voice from twenty yards away. And Goody broke our long kiss, and turned her golden head to look behind her.

Advancing across the courtyard, through a sea of dogs, with an irritated frown wrinkling her normally perfect brow was Marie-Anne, Countess of Locksley, Robin’s wife, Goody’s guardian, and my hostess. I was aware that half a dozen servants were standing in the courtyard gawping at Goody and myself and the expression of our love like a passel of slack-jawed half-wits. I gave them all my fiercest battle scowl.

‘Marie-Anne – look, it is Alan!’ said my lovely girl.

‘I can see that. And that is no reason to eat him alive out here in the courtyard. Stop making a spectacle of yourself and bring him inside.’

‘But it’s Alan!’ Goody said again, and I could hear the incredulous joy in her voice.

‘I know, my dear, I know. Now, let’s take him inside,’ said Marie-Anne, and she took me by the elbow. So, with two of the most beautiful women in England on my arm, I was escorted into the big warm hall of Wakefield Inn.

That deep kiss was the last one I received from Goody until we were formally betrothed. Marie-Anne insisted on this, and Goody and I meekly agreed to remain chaste until we were duly affianced. Then it was agreed that Hanno, Thomas and I would move into Lord Wakefield’s big house along with Robin’s twenty men-at-arms – for there was plenty of space and stabling for everyone. Goody and I spent that autumn in a happy blur of mutual, unfulfilled but passionate love.

To be near Goody was to be in Heaven: I could not take my eyes off her, she seemed to me to be the embodiment of perfection: the way she moved, the shape of her hands and arms, the curl of bright hair that escaped from under her plain
white cap – everything about her was utterly entrancing, intoxicating to me. We took long rides together in the countryside around Westminster – always accompanied by Marie-Anne and a couple of maidservants and Thomas, and protected by Hanno and a handful of Robin’s men-at-arms, for I had learnt my lesson after the incident with the river pirates, and I never ventured far in those days without half a dozen good men at my back. There was also the matter of the price on my head; it might be a paltry pound of silver, but many desperate men might wish to claim it. Word had reached us that bands of Prince John’s soldiers were roaming the countryside, robbing and murdering at will. And though these men were operating near John’s strongholds in the north and west of England, I did not wish to take any unnecessary chances with my beloved’s life – or, now that I had found true happiness, with my own.

But despite the fact that we were not entirely alone on our horse-borne pleasure jaunts, I felt as if we were. Goody was the only person I was aware of in that throng, the others mere shadows against her brightness, and I watched her swiftly changing, almost flickering moods as a mother watches her newborn baby. When Goody was happy, my heart soared with hers; when she frowned, I was gripped with anxiety; when she exploded into one of her sudden sun-bright fiery rages, I trembled just a little.

I have never felt a love like it before or since. It was not a lustful love, of the kind that I had felt with Nur and a handful of other women; I did not want to possess her body, to be naked and sweaty, to be rutting like some farmyard animal with her. I just wanted to be with her all the time, for all time. I wanted to be next to her, looking at her, gazing into her eyes.
I wanted to bask in her beauty, receiving it like summer sunshine on my upturned face. I loved her wholly, without reservation, and I believe she loved me equally. We told each other that we did, often, and made excited plans for a formal betrothal and marriage when King Richard was safely home from Germany.

The news from that quarter had been good. The ambassadors of the Holy Roman Emperor had accepted the hundred thousand marks in silver – I had been part of the armed guard that delivered it to their ship, which had been moored at Wapping, a grubby little village downstream from the Tower of London. And word had reached us a few weeks later that Emperor Henry had finally determined a date for Richard’s release: the seventeenth day of January, St Anthony’s Day.

In December, just before Christmas – with suitable regal pomp, a whole gaggle of senior nobles and churchmen and a powerful force of Gascon guards – Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine took ship and departed for Germany with a small part of the extra fifty thousand marks that the Emperor had demanded and a number of well-born youths, the sons of English and Norman nobles, as hostages for the rest of the money. It looked very much as if Richard would soon be safely home and Goody and I would be betrothed.

We kept Christmas Day quietly with a service in the chapel at Wakefield Inn, the solemn celebration of Christ’s birth conducted by Father Tuck. My friend had grown a little leaner over the past year and his tonsured hair was now entirely grey. In fact, I had been slightly surprised by his appearance when I came south from Nottingham: he looked like an old man. But then, he was well advanced in years. He had been a
middle-aged monk when Robin was a boy – and Robin by now was nearing thirty. However, Tuck was still an active man, and he still knew a thing or two about the world. When he heard my confession on that cold Christmas morning, he asked me, after I had finished recounting my humdrum sins, a mildly blasphemous word here, a lustful thought there, whether there was anything else that was on my conscience, and I told him about the meeting at the stone cross with Nur, and my feelings of shame at how I had treated her. I wanted her to be happy, I truly did, but I had no idea how I could make this a reality without sacrificing my own happiness – and Goody’s.