The Iron Castle (Outlaw Chronicles) (7 page)

I realised I had not been listening to a word she said. Something about Duke Arthur’s movements along the border. But before I could apologise or ask her to repeat herself, a trumpet sounded and we were summoned to the feast.

‘I do hope you will be sitting near me at the high table,’ said Tilda, squeezing my forearm with her hand. Her touch was like a hot coal against the material of my tunic.

‘I fear not, my lady,’ I said. ‘I shall be with the lesser knights.’

‘Well, we must have a proper talk afterwards. You still have not played me any of your wonderful music,’ she said, with a smile that punched through my ribs. Then she was swept away with the other high lords and dignitaries to the places at the table on either side of Lord de Burgh.

I watched her all the way through that meal, eating and drinking mechanically, and wondering what it would be like to put my hand on her warm naked white skin, to kiss her lips. I could feel my member thickening in my braies and tried to concentrate on Goody, holding an image of my dead wife and our love together in my mind as I crumbled a piece of bread between palsied fingers. But in my mind Goody’s face became Tilda’s – the image of my wife and I entwined in our bed changed subtly. It was Tilda whispering in my ear; it was Tilda’s white hand between my legs gently stroking, teasing; it was Tilda’s buttocks curved into the cup of my pelvis …

‘Mother of God,’ I muttered, ‘get a hold of yourself. Goody is barely cold in her grave. Would you desecrate her memory?’

This was absurd. I barely knew this girl. I had met her twice and I was already ravishing her repeatedly inside my head.

‘Are you quite well?’ asked my neighbour at the table, an elderly monk from Caen.

‘No, brother, I fear I am very far from well,’ I said. There was a sprinkling of sweat on my upper lip, and my chest felt tight and heavy. I excused myself and slipped out of the hall.

I recovered my poise outside the keep and, after dunking my head in a bucket of water and standing in the brisk wind on the battlements for several moments cursing my weakness of mind and my sinful lust, I slunk back to my place on the bench.

‘Feeling better?’ said the old monk.

‘Yes, brother. A passing malaise, I am sure.’

But it was no passing malaise. I was possessed, heart and soul, by one notion. I must have Tilda Giffard as my lover, my mistress, my wife – I did not care which as long as she was mine. I wanted her with a passion, a physical pain that I had not felt since my early days with Goody. I felt that I would go mad if I could not have her. She called to me inside my head, in my heart, and in those lower, baser places, too.

Indeed, perhaps I was already mad.

After the dinner, I was invited by my Lord de Burgh to play my vielle for the company. I had offered to display my musical skills to the castellan long before, during my first few weeks at Falaise, but he had declined my offer brusquely. That afternoon, it seemed, he was disposed to be more friendly.

‘The Lady Matilda has told me you are a
trouvère
of great renown at Queen Eleanor’s court and elsewhere, Sir Alan. Perhaps you would honour us with a song today, if your duties permit.’

They permitted. Little John had taken the men out on a long-range patrol south to the Maine border some twenty-odd miles away, and would not be back before nightfall, and Kit was engaged in a thorough overhaul of my equipment and weapons – cleaning, oiling and mending them – in the East Tower. He had also told me he intended to repaint my shield with its image of a wild boar in black on a blood-red background. So I was a man of leisure that lovely afternoon and the thought of playing my finest music before Tilda made me a little light-headed.

And though Almighty God will no doubt judge me for the sin of pride, I have seldom played better than that afternoon in the hall in the keep of the Castle of Falaise. I started with a
canso
– a classic tale of doomed love between Lancelot and Guinevere, the wife of King Arthur. It was roundly applauded by my audience. Then I made them laugh with a bawdy tale about a hungry fox and a timid rabbit, a cheeky cockerel and a wise old owl. After that I took a chance and gave them a crude soldiers’ song that mocked King Philip and compared his royal mace to his intimate bodily parts: they roared with laughter, and I gave a sigh of relief. Finally, I brought them all home with the well-known lay of Roland and Oliver – a tragic piece about brave warriors slain in the pursuit of their duty, dying nobly with a ring of dead Saracens at their feet. The cheering and stamping from the audience of mainly fighting men seemed almost to shake the massive stone keep itself. Then, wisely, I bowed out, refusing to play any more and claiming that my voice was sore and weak.

‘Oh, Alan, that was so moving, so infinitely sad,’ said Tilda afterwards, as I was receiving plaudits from the crowd of knights.

‘Did you really like it?’ I asked her.

‘It was … truly lovely,’ she said, and once again she put her burning hand on my arm and squeezed lightly.

I felt as if I were walking two feet above the ground after hearing her words – and I believe that my status in the de Burgh household shifted significantly that day. Knights who had barely spoken to me before came and shook my hand or pounded me on the back and congratulated me on my skill. Even Hubert de Burgh offered his polite thanks and a few words of lukewarm praise. I felt accepted into the Falaise company, at last. And it was all Tilda’s doing.

Sir Joscelyn Giffard approached after my performance. He praised me knowledgeably, even going so far as to compliment the Spanish-style fingering on the vielle that I had attempted during the Arthurian
canso
, and then, out of a cloudless blue sky, he said, ‘Sir Alan, do you have children?’

I was slightly thrown by his question, but I admitted that I had a son, Robert, a lusty two-year-old.

‘You are fond of him,’ he asked.

‘I love him more than life itself,’ I said.

‘And if someone were to harm him, or to dishonour him in some way, what would you do?’

‘I would slaughter them.’

‘I, too, would kill anyone, absolutely anyone who harmed my daughter – or who dishonoured her in any way,’ he said. ‘She is a lovely girl, and very friendly, sometimes foolish and, dare I say it, a little forward at times. Doubtless I should have beaten her more thoroughly when she was a child. But her mother is dead, she is my only daughter, and I love her, I have no doubt, as much as you love your son.’

He smiled at me, a little sadly. ‘I truly did enjoy your music,’ he said. ‘Thank you for that.’ Then he walked away.

Well, I had been warned. Tilda’s father was not blind, neither was he a fool. He had just threatened me with death if I made any advances on his darling girl. But, strangely, given that I do not care to swallow threats of any kind, I could not think harshly of him. Indeed, the manner of his message – honest, firm but not hostile – caused me to respect him. I did not fear him, but he made me reconsider. What was I thinking? Tilda inflamed me, mind and body, I was mad for her, but she, too, was another man’s daughter. I vowed to myself, then and there, that I would never dishonour her. I would not let my lust master me. I would not seek her out, I would not pester her for favours. I would banish her from my mind. Indeed, for a good many days and nights, I did just that.

For the next morning, I rode out to war.

Lord de Burgh mustered his knights and captains in the courtyard a little after dawn, all of us armed and armoured and ready to ride.

‘Arthur, Duke of Brittany, and several thousand of his men have crossed the border far to the south and are now ravaging the Loire Valley with fire and sword,’ de Burgh said briskly. ‘Our war has truly begun.

‘We have this intelligence courtesy of Sir Joscelyn Giffard.’ De Burgh nodded benevolently at the lord of Avranches, who was standing a couple of paces from me. ‘He is to ride to Rouen to reinforce the garrison there against the threat from the east. I must remain here to hold Falaise – but Sir Benedict Malet will lead a force of fifty of our men south to join up with the King on the road to Le Mans. You, Sir Alan, will take all your men with him and offer what support you are able. When you join with the army, you are to place yourself once again under the Earl of Locksley’s banner. But on the road, Sir Benedict is in command, is that clear?’

I nodded, with a sinking heart, vowing silently that I would never let Benedict have dominion over my men. The wretch who had so foolishly mocked his superior had been mutilated earlier that morning in the dungeons and, while I had not witnessed it, I had heard his screams and seen the poor fellow, his head a mass of black blood, stumbling out the main gates not an hour since. I would not allow any of my Wolves to be treated so, even if it meant murdering the lardy knight myself.

Around mid-morning, we clattered out of the gates of Falaise Castle and took the road heading south-east, aiming to cut John’s line of march at Alençon. Benedict gave me no orders before we set off, save for an insolent instruction to try and keep up with his men and not to get in their way.

So, we ate his dust all that day and rested the night in Argentan. My men and I camped apart from the Falaise force, in the pretty orchards outside the town. But I made certain the Wolves were ready well before dawn and we formed up behind Benedict’s force the next day without a single word being exchanged between us. We rode all morning and joined the main road from Rouen at midday. I noted with deep satisfaction the obvious signs of a passing army – a big one. By nightfall we could see the campfires of the host in the fields outside the Castle of Alençon. We broke from Benedict’s column, without bothering to take our leave of its commander, and walked our horses through a small town of green tents and rough brushwood shelters, before arriving at a black pavilion, which I saw, by the light of two flaring torches planted by the entrance, was topped with a large white flag with the snarling mask of a wolf depicted in bold lines of black and grey.

‘Ah, Alan, here at last. Well met, my friend,’ said Robin, as I pushed through the woollen flaps of the tent – and then I was being embraced by my lord.

It felt like coming home.

‘You remember Vim, of course,’ said Robin, waving vaguely at a big blond-grey man seated by a large table in the middle of the tent. ‘Some wine?’ I gratefully took a cup from my lord’s hands.

‘All well with Little John and the men?’ he said.

‘Yes, my lord,’ I replied. ‘He’s seeing they get themselves sorted out. He’ll be along in a moment or two. What news from the south?’

‘Oh, Arthur’s burning his way up the south bank of the Loire – he’s already taken Saumur. His Bretons are having a high old time: looting, raping and slaughtering those who don’t flee. We have to teach them some better manners.’

Despite the levity of Robin’s words, there was a grim timbre to his voice.

‘What’s wrong?’ I said. I knew the answer before the words were out of my mouth. ‘Where are Marie-Anne and the boys?’

‘They were at Fontevraud with Queen Eleanor. But, with Arthur and his men twenty miles away and advancing rapidly, they fled. Now – anybody’s guess.’

‘But they will be safe with Eleanor, surely?’

‘You think?’ said Robin. ‘Eleanor has, what, forty or fifty Gascon men-at-arms? There are a dozen of my bowmen under Sarlic’s command with Marie-Anne, a guard of honour, no more than that. Arthur has a thousand heavy cavalry alone in his main force. How long do you think they would last in a pitched battle?’

‘But Eleanor is Arthur’s grandmother—’

‘And the Queen backed John’s claims against him. That makes her his enemy, grandmother or no. Although that might spare her some humiliation. Marie-Anne’s fate is another matter entirely.’

I could see his point.

‘Where is King John?’

‘He’s up at the castle, dithering as usual; doing a bit of moaning and whining too, I would imagine. He’s come all this way but doesn’t want to go any further. He says we must defend the Norman border, the half-wit. I was just going up there to see him. You’d better come, too.’

The King was pacing up and down the length of the hall on the second floor of Alençon Castle. I had not seen him for more than a year and he had aged alarmingly. His shoulder-length reddish hair had fine streaks of silver in it, and cruel lines were cut into his face on either side of his nose. His brow was well lined, too, and his mouth wrinkled in the corners. He was no older than thirty-seven. When Robin entered the chamber with myself at his shoulder, the King whirled suddenly, as if afraid.

‘You, Locksley,’ he called out in his harsh, frog-like voice. ‘Are your men alert? Are they watching the roads?’

‘Yes, Sire,’ said my lord. ‘I have sent out night patrols. There is no enemy within twenty miles of this castle.’

‘Hmm. So you say. Sometimes there are enemies where you least expect them, sometimes those who cry friendship the most loudly are the ones to fear most!’

Robin said nothing; he merely inclined his head slightly in a gesture that could have meant agreement, or nothing at all. The King resumed his pacing, his footsteps short and jerky. He reached the high window at the far side of the hall, spun on his toes and began back towards the door. The walls either side of this path were thick with barons and knights. He looked like a beast in a menagerie, caged by invisible bars, with most of the barons of England and Normandy gathered to watch the spectacle of this strange creature stalking up and down inside his cage.

‘Count Robert.’ The King had stopped. He poked a finger at one gloomy face near the wall that I knew well from my previous time in Normandy: the Lord of Alençon, the castellan of this very castle. He was a good man, loyal, honest and fearless in battle, though prone to savage bouts of melancholy. ‘You will post double guards on the walls,’ said our noble sovereign. ‘I shall sleep safely in my bed this night, if it is all the same to you. Double the guard!’

‘Sire, I have already doubled the guard, as you ordered me to not an hour since.’

‘Do you dare to answer me back? Do as I command. I am your King!’