The Iron Castle (Outlaw Chronicles) (16 page)

Hugh was then thirteen years old, a solemn lad who adored his father and strove in all things to be like him. He took his training to be a knight extremely seriously, practising with sword and shield, and with lance on horseback, in any spare moments that he had outside the hours prescribed by the master-at-arms who had been hired to instruct him. But, for all his hard work, he was not a natural swordsman; he was clumsy and slow, and when he fought his attacking moves were dangerously predictable. While he strove to be as much like his father as he could, copying Robin’s dress and habits of speech, he bore absolutely no resemblance to the Earl of Locksley at all. He was short and dark, while Robin was tall and fair. He had no time for mischief and whimsy, while Robin sometimes seemed to live for both. He loved books and studied as hard at his schooling as he did on his training for war. But he was no milksop – he could take a hard blow from a wooden sword without weeping – and he had a determination that many older men might have envied. I liked him, and I spent some time with him each week working on his sword play. While he might not be a gifted warrior, he was dogged, and I was able by patient repetition to teach him some of my own tricks that I hoped might save his life when he went into battle.

Miles was, in looks, character and temperament, the very opposite of his brother. Although not yet nine years old, Miles was almost as accomplished a fighter as Hugh. He did not have the strength yet, but he was nearly as tall as his sibling, and much faster and more inventive with a blade. He was lively and quick-witted, fair and willowy in build – one of the laziest boys I have ever met, yet also one of the most energetic. Hugh would often rise before dawn and practise his sword work in the courtyard before the household was awake. Miles had to be dragged from his cot with curses and blows, and if not supervised minutely, he would find a quiet corner to curl up in and take a nap. On the other hand, of an evening, while Hugh was sitting in his chamber with a candle and his nose in a book of Latin grammar, Miles would have escaped the house, ignoring the curfew imposed on Rouen by King John, and by his father on him, and be running about the darkened streets and scrambling over rooftops with a gang of wild friends. With a sword, even at his tender age, Miles could surprise his master-at-arms with a cunning new trick that he had invented, some unheard of combination that slipped like quicksilver past his teacher’s guard. Then he would lose interest and be easily overcome by his adult opponent. Miles was frequently beaten for his misdemeanours; Hugh almost never. Yet the two boys, for all their differences, were devoted to each other.

Robin doted on them both, and when his duties permitted would take them out hunting in the woods and come back bone tired, happy and with a couple of bloody deer carcasses across their saddles. Robin played chess with them; he worked on their sword skills when he had time; he sang with them and Marie-Anne after supper, occasionally with me providing the musical accompaniment on my vielle. He had been away from them far too much, he confided in me, while they were growing and he was outlawed or on campaign, and he had refused to send them off to some other knight’s household for training as was customary for most lads of their age and rank. It would have been a little dangerous, to be honest, in his outlaw years, for his enemies might have taken it into their heads to capture them and hold them for ransom. But the truth was that, unlike so many powerful men in the King’s court, he loved his sons and wanted to spend as much time with them as he could.

‘If I die in battle, I want them to remember my face,’ he told me. ‘I don’t just want them to inherit my lands and title.’

This, of course, was the reason why Robin served King John; this was why he had sworn an oath to be his loyal man. Why he put up with John’s behaviour. For them. He wanted to make a home and a future for his boys, and for Marie-Anne.

‘Only one more year to go, Alan,’ he told me a few weeks after Arthur’s murder. ‘One more year of nurse-maiding the King and I shall take Marie-Anne and the boys to Locksley and never stir from there again.’

‘If John keeps his word,’ I said nastily. Robin scowled at me.

‘He’d better. For, if he doesn’t, I’ll set you on him.’

There were no repercussions from the deaths of Humphrey and Hugo, which I found a little strange. The King seemed to accept the premise fed to him by Robin that they had gone over to the enemy, as had so many other men already, and the next time the King was drunk, Robin told me, he fell on his neck, crying that Robin was his only true follower and wailing on about treachery in those closest to him.

The murder of Arthur was another matter. Word spread fast that the Duke of Brittany, John’s nephew, had been slain – some said by John’s own hand – but, of course, there was no proof of his murder. The only living witnesses to the crime were Robin, myself and the King. Robin had impressed on me the importance of keeping silent on this matter, and I had agreed reluctantly. So the disappearance of Duke Arthur remained a mystery. The Bretons were certain that John had killed him, or ordered his death, and were incensed. Their depredations on the western border of Normandy, and in the south, where they had joined forces once again with the Lusignans, increased in violence and frequency. Worse than that, any chance John might have had to make peace with them, even a temporary truce, so that he could concentrate his force against King Philip in the east, was long gone. In Rouen, and in English court circles, the name Arthur was never mentioned. Not once. But King Philip, the sly dog, from thenceforth insisted that before there could be any negotiations over Normandy, John must produce his prisoner and demonstrate to the world that Arthur was alive and well.

This was plain mischief-making on Philip’s part – the French King knew well enough that Arthur was dead; he had scores of spies in Normandy, according to Robin, and even if he had not, the steady stream of knights going over to his side must surely have told him much about the rumours of the young Duke’s fate.

With Norman support for John seeping away, and the opinion of Christendom against him for the murder of his nephew, and with the Bretons and the Lusignans resurgent in the west and south, King Philip felt strong enough to make his move. In the middle of August, a travel-grimed horseman on a lathered horse clattered into the courtyard of Rouen Castle. Robin and I were giving his sons a lesson in swordsmanship, when the messenger arrived. And Robin hurriedly sheathed his blade, strode over and seized the horseman’s bridle.

‘What news?’ my lord said.

‘I must speak to the King,’ the man said.

‘He is still abed. Tell me, and I will wake him.’

The man looked surprised for it was long past dawn, almost midday.

He stammered, ‘The King must know…’ and stopped.

‘What is it, man?’

The messenger mastered himself, swallowed and said, ‘King Philip is marching, with all his knights, all his strength.’ He stopped again. ‘Philip is in the Seine Valley, not twenty-five miles from here, outside Château Gaillard with thousands of men. This time he is in earnest. This time he truly means to take the Iron Castle.’

I returned from Kirkton yesterday, a sadder and wiser man. I have discovered the nature of young Alan’s disgrace and the reason why he was expelled from the Earl of Locksley’s household. It is over a woman – not a villein or a common trull, not some drunken tavern slut, but a yeoman’s daughter from Stannington. Her father, Godwin, is a freeman of some property; he holds several decent-sized sheep pastures, and according to the Earl is a most respectable fellow, strong, healthy, sober and hard-working and much liked by his neighbours; his wife is a large woman, cheerful and kindly. His only daughter Agnes is, like her name, as mild as a lamb, but as beautiful as the dawn, with golden hair of surpassing brightness and a loving disposition. Apparently, young Alan met her while out hunting with the hearth knights of Kirkton – some of the drunken louts who now infest my guest hall – and he was charmed by her grace and beauty. He visited her several days running with his fellows and she gave the young noblemen some refreshment after the heat of the chase – ewes’ milk and bread and cheese – but behaved entirely modestly, her family insist. The Earl told me my grandson formed some sort of attachment for this girl, who cannot be more than seventeen, and took to visiting her in the evenings, over several weeks, riding miles across the Locksley valley to spend a few moments speaking with her, feigning to have a great fondness for her ewes’ milk.

Well, it seems that they did a little more than talk and drink milk. For the girl is now six months gone – and her father is a very angry man.

Godwin came to see the Earl a few weeks ago with the complaint that one of his knights had besmirched his daughter’s honour and got her with child. He threatened to take the matter to law, to the King himself, if necessary. It was clear from the guilt written on his face that the culprit was young Alan – and he swiftly admitted it. Godwin suggested sensibly that the young couple be married, and the Earl gave his blessing to the match, but Alan flatly refused to take the girl as his wife. When the Earl insisted that Alan reconsider taking this Agnes as his bride, Alan was apparently extremely discourteous to his lord, grossly rude, in fact, and gathered his belongings and left the Earl’s service the same day.

I pondered this problem over a late supper, saying nothing to young Alan, and retired to bed. Not long afterwards I heard the drinking songs begin in the guest hall, the calling and shouting of young men sounding strangely like the cries of fear-maddened farmyard animals. I tried to stop my ears to their youthful din. In vain.

A little before midnight, when sleep had eluded me for several hours, I finally released my temper. I pulled on my boots and an old cloak and went out into the darkness. I ripped open the door of the guest hall and found my grandson and his playmates in a disgusting state of drunken disarray. The young men were evidently playing some game that involved repeating a long and complicated series of phrases, and the punishment for any mistake was to down a brimming beaker of wine. Naturally, the more wine consumed, the harder it is to remember the phrases – a deeply stupid pastime, in my opinion. Alan himself was declaiming something about a cardinal as I burst through the door roaring for them, in the name of God, to be silent. I am not proud of myself, but after a good deal of shouting, all of it from me, and mostly concerning the state of affairs in the guest hall night after night, the embarrassed giggles turned to sheepish looks in the circle of young men. I told the boys that, while it had been a pleasure to be their host – a damned lie – it was time for them to leave Westbury, and I would be most grateful if they would pack up their traps and leave by noon the next day.

At which point Alan stood up and complained that I was being most unfair. These were his bosom friends, he told me, and if I did not treat them with the honour due to noble guests, then I was also slighting him.

To my shame, I told him to shut his stupid mouth – what did he know about honour? I asked. Nothing. I told him that when he inherited the manor of Westbury – if ever he did – he could do as he liked, he could carouse himself to death, and play silly drinking games for as long his liver could stand it, but while he remained under my roof …

To cut an embarrassing tale short, I made a spectacle of myself – a foolish and ranting old man, his skinny, scarred and wrinkled body clad only in boots and braies and a billowing cloak. The only excuse I can offer is that I was truly angry, and with the last of my midnight ire, I ordered Alan to come and see me the next day the moment he had bid farewell to his unwelcome friends. We had grave matters to discuss, I said. Then I retired to my hall and my bed.

Silence reigned.

I was rich, I was young, I was a warrior at war – and so, after sending a goodly amount to Baldwin at Westbury, I took some of the hoard of silver that I had accumulated in the past year and commissioned a full suit of mail from the armourers of Rouen. I took possession of it at the beginning of August: chausses that covered me from toe to thigh in a mesh of round iron links and attached to a belt around my waist. The belt and the leather straps that held up my chausses were covered by a knee-length mail hauberk, which protected my thighs, belly, chest and the full length of my arms; the hauberk even included leather-palmed mittens to protect my hands. A separate coif, a metal-link hood that laced up at the back and attached to the neck of my hauberk, protected my skull, and a new flat-topped steel helmet went over the top of that, secured by laces under my chin. The helm covered my entire head with just a pair of slits for the eyes and a breathing grille over my nose and mouth. It was formed in the shape of a boar’s mask, and had engravings of boar’s tusks on either side of the short tubular snout. I loved that helmet – although it was rather heavy – it looked bold and fierce and offered almost complete protection for my head in battle.

I also had three new triangular shields made up, oak-framed and faced with slats of flexible elm, light and strong, and covered in tough ox-hide and painted with my device of the walking boar in black on a red field. I ordered a dozen twelve-foot wickedly tipped lances and purchased a new long sword and dagger for Kit. I had a new delicate edge ground on Fidelity and the blade oiled and polished, and a new handle fitted to my misericorde, as the old one had begun to rattle loosely on the tang.

When I strapped Fidelity around my hips and admired myself in a mirror of polished steel that belonged to Marie-Anne, I hardly recognised the pig-faced monster who glared back through the eye slits of my helm. Here is the true warrior, I said to myself proudly, let his enemies tremble.

Kit was even more enamoured of my new warlike finery than I was, which was just as well, as he would have charge of it and the responsibility of keeping it clean, oiled, rust-free and ready for battle, and I am certain that when I was engaged elsewhere he would try it on and strut and pose as I had in front of the mirror.