The King’s Assassin (28 page)

My beating is set for dawn tomorrow morning. And I earnestly pray that I shall have the strength to endure it. May God be with me, too, now and for ever. Amen.

We marched south in the morning, heading for Dover and the grand fleet under the command of William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, which was assembled there. I was loath to leave Robert in the hands of the sheriff, but I knew I had no choice. The only way I could acquire the money to free him was through battle. But it felt terribly wrong to be leaving the country at his time of need.

‘Whether you are in Flanders or at Westbury,’ said Robin, somewhat brutally, ‘you still will not have Robert by your side. He will be safe enough until we return with the money to claim him. Come now, Alan, I need you to train your mind solely on the campaign.
I
need you now, Alan, and I need all of you.’

That was all very well for Robin to say. He was accompanied by both his sons. Miles and Hugh were to act as Robin’s aides, relaying orders to the different components of his army. He also had with him a dozen light cavalry – to be used mainly for scouting – and not quite two hundred infantry, sixty archers, and the rest men-at-arms equipped with swords, shields and long pikes or Little John’s new poleaxes. There were also a dozen squires and pages, the sons of Robin’s noble friends, and a handful of unarmed servants to ensure our comforts on the march.

We embarked at Dover and made the short journey to Calais in less than a day. The sea was mild as milk and the grand fleet – many of them former French ships that had been captured at Damme – took William of Salisbury and a thousand men, a goodly number of them Flemish mercenaries under their captain Hugh de Boves, across with not a ship nor a man lost. We also took with us a deal of money, tens of thousands of marks in stout wooden barrels, under heavy guard, for silver was the glue that would bind this alliance of English, Flemish and German armies and give us the collective strength to smash the French.

We had more news at Calais: King John was again triumphant in the south. He had taken Nantes in a brisk fight and had captured Peter of Dreux, the Count of Brittany, whose wife was the sister of the murdered Duke Arthur. Better yet, the knights of Angers had opened their gates to him without a fight and the King was once more in the capital of Anjou, the home of his forebears. Philip and his son Prince Louis were marching south from Paris with a large army – and, praise God, the north was now unguarded.

Robin was quietly pleased with the way that things seemed to be going. ‘The way to Paris is open, Alan,’ he told me in his tent a week after our arrival in France. ‘For once, John has not made a total mess of things. All we need now is for the Germans to join us and we can plunge into the heartlands of France at will.’

We were bivouacked about twenty miles south-east of Calais, in thickly wooded countryside near the hamlet of Saint-Omer. William Longsword, the Earl of Salisbury, had distributed his forces across the countryside with orders to ravage the lands to the south. These rich farms and manors on the flat, wheat-growing plains had once been the lands of the Count of Boulogne but Philip had annexed the territory two years before and declared them part of the loyal county of Artois. Renauld of Boulogne – a tall, powerful, black-haired man, with a reputation for reckless courage – was now our staunchest ally, having been granted lands in England and awarded an annual pension from King John. He and Longsword were very close, hunting together by day and drinking themselves into a stupor at night. Renauld, who had a personal grudge against the Dreux family over some disputed lands, was particularly pleased that Peter of Brittany had been taken.

‘That’ll serve the bugger right,’ I overheard him say to Salisbury on the march from Calais. ‘Nothing like some time in gaol to teach a fellow to mend his wicked ways.’

I could not but agree. I now looked back on the actions that had led me to my time in Brien’s Close with a shudder. I had given my trust to two men – de Vesci and Fitzwalter – who had not lifted a finger to save me when our plot had gone awry. They and many other English nobles were conspicuous by their absence on this campaign, despite the assurances that had been given to the King at Wallingford. Indeed, among the more powerful barons of the land, only Robin had honoured his commitment to come to Flanders and fight for the King.

The news was not all good, however. I had just returned from leading a patrol south, foraging for food – which in truth meant descending on a farm with a score of armed men and carrying away chickens, pigs, sacks of corn, anything edible, to the dismay of the owners – when I heard loud voices coming from Robin’s tent. When I pushed open the flaps, I found Robin and Hugh in the midst of a quarrel.

‘We cannot go off piecemeal,’ Hugh was saying. ‘Our strength is in our unity. It is madness not to wait for the Emperor. We must all go to Paris together.’

‘It is madness not to attack now, while Philip is busy in the south,’ said Robin. His voice was louder than usual, for he was not used to being contradicted. ‘We will miss our opportunity while Otto enjoys the charms of his new bride.’

‘What is amiss?’ I asked.

It was Miles who answered me. He was lolling in the corner of the tent on a camp-stool sipping a cup of wine. ‘It seems the mighty Emperor is more of a lover than a fighter,’ said Robin’s younger son. ‘He married his beautiful bride at Maastricht a few weeks ago and now he is refusing to march until he has spent a few weeks in her delightful company. He’s childless, of course, and they say he hopes to secure an heir before committing himself to the perils of battle.’

‘He is going to lose us this war unless he pulls his finger out,’ said Robin.

‘It’s not his finger he needs to pull out,’ said Miles with a dirty chuckle.

Robin ignored the remark. ‘I say we should march now, with the forces we have at our disposal – with the counts of Boulogne and Flanders and our own men we must have nearly three thousand; if we go hard and fast we could be in Paris in a week.’

‘Emperor Otto, together with the Duke of Brabant and the German barons, represents two-thirds of our full strength,’ said Hugh slowly, with irritating calmness; he might have been speaking to a particularly stupid child, not his famous father. ‘We dare not risk proceeding without them. We must wait.’

‘War is risk,’ snapped Robin. ‘And war is about taking your opportunity when it presents itself. Now is the time to strike, our weakness will be irrelevant if we’re swift. What say you, Alan?’

I needed a little time to think so I walked over to the wine jug and filled a cup. The prospect of invading France with fewer than three thousand men appalled me. But Robin was one of the finest strategists I had ever known, his instinct for a bold, successful move was almost as sure as the Lionheart’s had been.

‘I will follow you, my lord, whatever you decide,’ I said. ‘But surely it is up to Longsword. What does the Earl of Salisbury say?’

Robin sighed. ‘Longsword says we must wait for Otto,’ said my lord grumpily. It was clear he did not relish losing a debate with his elder son.

And there the discussion was closed.

In the following weeks, we ravaged the former lands of the Count of Boulogne, with his enthusiastic encouragement. There was no sign of a French army, we avoided the small castles garrisoned by Philip’s men and his allies, and took out our wrath on the countryside. We burnt farms, we ransacked mills and barns for grain; we herded sheep and cattle back to the army, which was spread across southern Flanders from Calais to Lille. And we waited for Emperor Otto to sire an heir on his new bride.

I rode out mostly with a force of a dozen mounted Westbury men and Robin’s few cavalry, and Little John, who was in unusually high spirits in those days.

‘There is nothing finer than having a juicy county to pillage,’ said John to me on a bright and beautiful evening in early July. We were sitting in an abandoned barn about ten miles north of the city of Amiens, and as it was too far for us to ride back to the camp that day, we were roasting a stolen sheep and preparing to bed down for the night where we were. The men were tired: they had been riding and raiding all day. Many were already asleep, curled in the old straw like dogs. At noon that day we had come across a strong French militia patrol – levies probably recruited from Amiens itself – and we had fought a bloody battle with them and lost two men before they retreated. Although we had been outnumbered and surprised by the enemy, Little John had charged his horse straight into their packed ranks without hesitation and had begun laying about them with his poleaxe with such ferocity that the enemy had shrunk back, disordered, dismayed. And when Sir Thomas and myself had spurred forward and joined John in the heart of the fray the French had broken and run.

‘Unless it is a nice bloody battle,’ said John, grinning like a village simpleton.

I could not agree with him. These days I seemed to be more terrified than I had ever been before by the prospect of violence and every time I was called to fight I had to force myself to ride into battle. I feared that one day my nerve would break altogether, like those unfortunate French militia today, and I would shy away from a mêlée or even run like a coward. I hoped that on the outside I still appeared to be a valiant knight, but on the inside, in truth, I was quaking.

‘Do you ever feel the fear, John?’ I asked. ‘I mean, on the eve of battle or in the cold hours before the fight, not when the blood runs hot in action.’

Little John frowned at me. ‘Of course I do, only a madman has no fear,’ he said, surprising me. ‘But the fear is the fun part. The fear is how you know you are still alive, Alan. Your heart beats strongly, you feel every fibre, bone and muscle of your body. You think: maybe this time, just maybe this time will be the last day of my life. I see more clearly, I feel the fresh wind on my face, I can smell the odours around me as if for the first time: crushed grass, the sweat of my horse, old leather polished to a shine. The wood of my axe handle feels smooth and fine, like some costly fabric. I am alive. I am in fear – but I am more alive than at any other time.’

‘But do you not fear the coming pain, or death itself?’

‘No one likes pain, sure enough. But pain is part of life too. If I were a peasant labouring in the fields would I not too feel pain, in my back, in my limbs at the end of a hard day? I would feel the pain of hunger in times of famine and, worse, the pain of humiliation after a long, slow trudge of an uneventful life. Or, were I the kind of man to marry and have children, I would most likely feel the pain of witnessing the death of a child, or a wife in childbirth. There is no escape from pain on this earth, whatever path you choose. I choose the joy of battle; the comradeship of men of courage. That is an ample compensation for a little pain now and then. I fear pain and death, of course, and I want to live, Alan, but I want to live like a man – until I die!’

‘The afterlife does not trouble you, then? The risk of Hell for the terrible things we have done in this life?’ The last gleams of sunlight were lancing through holes in the barn roof and I could see the dancing motes of hay caught in the golden beams.

‘The priests tell us we must suffer Hell for our sins. I have done evil things, sure, plenty of them. But I have remained true to my lord, and I have followed his orders without fail. I have lived the life of a warrior, never shirking my duty, never abandoning my comrades. And I think God must understand the way that a soldier lives, the things that he must do. If He made us as we are, He must see a purpose in our brutality, in the killing and the pain that we inflict. I remember old Tuck telling me that God always had a plan. I believe it. I believe I am God’s instrument, though I do not know His purpose. And I have been a true man, all my long life. I have remained true to my purpose, to my lord. If God is just, He will understand that.’

I had never heard Little John speak so, and I was more than a little moved by his simple code, his faith in a just God. I had hoped to speak to him of my fears and to take some comfort from him for my own unmanly feelings, but I could not.

‘I do not want to die,’ was all I could say on the matter. ‘I love life too much to see death as anything but a terrible sorrow: I want to feel the sun on my face, a horse between my legs, to take a lamb, warm and slippery from its mother’s womb, to eat and drink and laugh with friends, to feel a woman bucking in joy beneath me again, to see my son grow tall. I feel that I must live, I must survive, not just for myself but for Robert, for Westbury … and perhaps for Tilda.’

‘The rumours are true then,’ said John, grinning at me. ‘I heard you had been mooning after her again! Do you love her?’

I blushed a little. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I think I do. I think about her more than I should. She is a bride of Christ and has forsaken the love of men.’

‘If you don’t know, then you do not truly love her,’ he said. ‘And I do not think she is the right woman for you. Not because she is a nun – you could take her away from that if you chose, but because … I don’t know. She is just wrong, somehow.’

I frowned at the man. Tilda was as close to an angel as any woman I knew, she had clearly forgiven me for the death of her father and now even seemed more than a little fond of me. I did not care to have her disparaged, even by him. I opened my mouth to say something, but before I could speak …

‘I have loved but once,’ my friend said – and stopped. I knew what he was about to say. Little John had loved a man, a beautiful youth, in fact, called Gavin, who had died in battle in the south. It was a sinful coupling, the Church would have insisted, the priests claimed that congress between two men was a foul abomination, and yet neither Robin nor I had felt any need to condemn John for his choice of lover. I had been surprised, to be sure, to discover that this huge brute had tender feelings for a handsome young lad half his age, but once I had got over the shock and seen the real deep affection between them I could not see anything truly evil in the matter.

Little John was staring at the ground between his spread knees. I knew that he was avoiding my eye.