The King’s Assassin (37 page)

While Benedict wheezed and I lay huddled on the floor in my chains, riding the waves of pain, the Templar looked on impassively.

Finally, the man spoke: ‘We have not met before, I think, Sir Alan. Although I have had the pleasure of your son’s company.’ The Templar gave a strange leer. ‘I am Brother Geoffrey, I belong to the Order of the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon. I also have the honour of serving William, Earl of Pembroke. I am his almoner but I also have charge of the training of his squires.’

I looked at him. This was the fellow that Robert had so disliked when he had spent that brief time at Pembroke in William the Marshal’s household.

‘I heard that you were hard on my son,’ I said. ‘But I will not hold that against you. I am sorry that he left the Marshal’s household so precipitately.’

‘He has weak blood. He will never make a knight,’ said this man, and it occurred to me that I did hold his harshness to my son against him. But the Templar was still talking: ‘I do not come to discuss your son’s shortcomings with you. Indeed, I have one question to put to you, one question only.’

I stared at up him, waiting.

‘Where is it?’ the Templar said.

I was suddenly transported back to Wallingford Castle the year before, the time when I had been waiting to see the King, battered and bruised and fresh from my cell in Brien’s Close. Sir Aymeric de St Maur, the Master of the English Templars, had asked me exactly the same question. And I was no wiser now than I had been then.

‘Where is what?’ I said.

Benedict stepped forward and kicked me once again, hard in the belly.

‘Answer the man, you wretch,’ the deputy sheriff said.

‘I do not know what you mean,’ I gasped. ‘What is it that you seek?’

The Templar knelt down beside my head. He spoke softly, no more than a low murmur. ‘You claim ignorance, Sir Alan? Perhaps a lapse of memory?’ He grasped a handful of my hair and twisted it, turning my head painfully so that I was forced to look into his eyes.

‘It was a long time ago, after all,’ he said. ‘Let me aid your recall. A fierce battle at the fortress of Montségur, in the county of Foix, far in the south, fifteen years ago. Does that stir your memory, Sir Alan? I’d be surprised if it did not.’

I felt a cold draught blow over my half-naked body; my scalp was on fire.

‘You and your master challenged a company of Templar knights under the command of Guy d’Épernay, the Preceptor of the Templars of Toulouse. In exchange for your lives and freedom, Robert of Locksley gave over an object, a very precious object to that knight. Do you recall now?’

I did. We had been at the mercy of the Templars after days of hard fighting, and Robin had exchanged an extraordinary object for our lives. He had given the knight Guy d’Épernay a beautiful golden chalice, decorated with precious gems, and had told the Templar that it was the Cup of Christ, the fabled vessel that had been present at the Last Supper and had also held the precious blood of Our Lord as it flowed from His body on the Cross. And he had lied. The chalice had, in fact, been fashioned by a Jewish goldsmith of Lincoln and had been part of a rich haul that Robin and I had stolen from Welbeck Abbey.

‘You cheated us, Sir Alan,’ said the Templar, giving my hair a tweak that brought tears into my eyes. ‘You and my lord of Locksley gave us some bauble and retained the true relic. Can you deny it?’ Although he kept his voice as low as before, it had taken on a tone of deep fury.

‘You made fools of us. You made fools of our Order. For many years we guarded that cup – I myself have spent many a night kneeling in prayer before it, the cold stone biting my knees – and all the while it was a sham, a tawdry fake that you had the effrontery, no, I say the foul blasphemy, to pass off as the sacred Grail!’

I looked up at the man. Twin spots of red illuminated his pale cheeks.

‘What makes you think that it is not the true Grail?’ I said.

‘We are not without our sources of information,’ said this fellow. ‘But we were ignorant for many years – many years of falsehood, lies and ignominy, while you laughed up your sleeves at us, and we were informed only recently by a reliable source that you had perpetrated this foul trick on us! Our agents have searched your master’s home very thoroughly – it is not there. And so I believe that you must have it in your possession. So – tell me now. Where is it?’

‘It no longer exists,’ I said.

At that, the Templar banged my skull painfully against the stone floor of the cell. But at least then he released my hair.

He stood up and wiped his hands on his gown.

‘Sir Alan,’ the Templar said, ‘forgive me. I am much given to wrath. But I am not an unreasonable man. I believe God has caused me to be here at the moment that you have fallen into the power of Sir Benedict. I came to Nottingham on another matter entirely, at the behest of my master and the King, but it seems to me that the Lord has placed you in my hands. It may be that I am your salvation, too. The Lord works in mysterious ways, after all. I have spoken to Sir Benedict and on behalf of my Order I have made him an offer for your life. Tell him, if you please, Sir Benedict…’

‘Brother Geoffrey has offered a delicious sum in silver for your miserable life, Dale – far, far more than it is worth, far more than you owe us. And I am minded to accept. All he asks is that you tell him truthfully where this holy relic is that he seeks. I don’t mind either way – either I receive a fortune in silver or I am afforded the pleasure of seeing Boot twist your head off in the morning.’ He giggled.

Brother Geoffrey locked eyes with me, staring intently. ‘So, Sir Alan, if you value your life at all, tell me – where is it?’

I shut my eyes tightly, for I fully expected to be punished for my next utterance, and said: ‘What you seek has been destroyed. I swear it. It was utterly destroyed in the south years ago. The Grail no longer exists.’

‘You gave us the false relic – our young informer was quite clear about that – you gave us an extremely valuable cup of gold encrusted with jewels – it was worth some hundreds of pounds. Your master would not have thrown away something so valuable only to destroy the true object. I do not believe you. You lie and your life-hope fades with your lies, Sir Alan. Are you ready to face your Maker?’

‘No, not then – not at Montségur.’ I felt the weight of exhaustion all over my body, I was tired of this Templar and this whole painful piece of mummery. ‘It was destroyed some years later – in Toulouse. I saw it burn with my own eyes.’

‘You lie!’ Brother Geoffrey’s wrath had returned and I braced myself. But nothing came. The Templar said quietly: ‘I know in my bones that you lie.’

‘Do you require me, Brother, to send for my inquisitors?’ said Benedict.

‘No, thank you. Sir Alan, for all his blasphemous chicanery, is a brave man – I have heard this from all quarters, from the Master of the Temple himself. Sir Alan does not fear death, nor pain, and I believe that torture would not answer here. He will not give up his secrets. And, for my part I do not want that sin of blood upon my conscience. Well, there it is. I will make further enquiries with his lord, who may be more forthcoming. God will judge Alan Dale – and very soon I believe.’

‘Torture is a sin?’ said Benedict – he sounded disappointed. ‘Well, if you have no further questions for him…’

Benedict came over and kicked me again, hard, on the side of the head this time. ‘You have just cost me a great deal of money, Dale,’ he hissed. ‘That irritates me somewhat. But I console myself with the thought that you will not irritate me for much longer. For tomorrow you must answer for your many crimes. The sheriff would rather have your money. But he is in Oxford, and I do not think I will waste my time waiting for that. I will take your life, for my own satisfaction, and the debt will fall on your son’s shoulders.’

I shouted, ‘No!’ and writhed in my chains.

‘But, yes,’ said Benedict. ‘Think on this: Boot awaits you with the sunrise and he shall tear your living head from your body – and your son shall pay every penny of the silver that is due. You will see the face of God, Alan Dale. At dawn.’

As the two men left the cell, and the darkness closed around me, I was vividly picturing Sir Thomas Blood with a naked sword in his hand and Benedict helpless beneath his blade. But it did not help all that much. I was going to die and nothing in the whole world was going to prevent that. I knew that Sir Thomas could not come for me – indeed, we had agreed that he was not to undertake any sort of rescue. Robert would need his strong right arm in the years to come and he must not throw his own life away in a useless attempt to free me.

And Robin, my thoughts and hopes turned to him, naturally. He had rescued me from similar dark places several times, not least from Brien’s Close the year before. But he did not know where I was. And even if he did, I did not think he could organise a rescue attempt before dawn.

I will not burden you with my thoughts that long awful night as I lay on my side in the darkness. Suffice it to say that I wept a little, I prayed a good deal and I thought long and hard about my life, about Robert’s future. I must have slept, too, for at some point in the night I became aware that I was not alone. There was a massive presence in the cell with me, on the far side of that space, and I imagined I could smell the strange spicy scent of a man’s sweat. A huge man. For an instant, I thought it was the ghost of Little John come back to the world to sit with me in my last few hours and bring me safely through my time of death.

Then I heard the sound of singing. It was a high-pitched voice, sweet and pure as a cathedral boy’s, and the song he was singing was ‘My Joy Summons Me’.

My skin crawled and I was partially frozen in terror – for the last time I had heard that voice, singing that tune, the singer had been snapping the necks of his victims on a scaffold in the Middle Bailey. The giant Boot was in my cell and he was softly singing my death song.

I said nothing, I do not believe just then, stiff with terror as I was, that I was capable of speech. Boot sang on and on, quite beautifully, in his weird high voice.

Then he came to the end of the song and stopped. The silence stretched out between us and still I could not speak. I wanted to order him away, to curse him, to call out for help – but I knew that it would be useless. I thought: Does he mean to kill me here? There was not the slightest hint of dawn in the air, no noises from the castle, no chink of light. Just this great presence and myself in the darkness together.

Boot spoke: ‘They want me to end you tomorrow, Sir Alan,’ he said in good clear English, with only a trace of a Moorish accent. I realised that I had never heard the man speak before; indeed, in my mind he had always been a dumb brute, little better than an animal.

‘I know it,’ I said.

‘The song,’ the big man said, ‘they tell me that you made it. Is this true or was it another man who gave this music to the world?’

‘I made the song with my King, Richard of England, a long time ago in a land far away. We created the words together in friendship, but the tune itself is mine.’

‘Then I can no more end you than I could end myself,’ said this extraordinary fellow. ‘But I do not know what now to do. This is my home, and my work is here – filthy, ugly work, it is true, but it must be done. And I like to think I make the passing of my charges as swift and easy as I can. I sing them your song now, every time, as they leave this earth. I believe it gives them one last small pleasure before the end.’

‘I am sure it does,’ I said. I did not know what to make of the man. But all of a sudden hope was flaming bright in my heart.

‘You are a knight,’ he said. ‘You have lands, serving men – followers?’

‘I do. Not many, I am but a poor knight. But I serve a great lord and he has many followers and would welcome more, if they were worthy.’

‘I would not serve another man. But you … I would serve you if you were to teach me how to make this kind of beauty. Could you do that? I am not a wise man, nor a cunning one, but I feel music, I feel its beauty…’

‘You would be most welcome in my service,’ I said. ‘And I would teach you to make and play the most beautiful music, but, alas, I am not in a position to do that – you know what my fate must be, whether it is you who dispatches me or another.’

I rattled my chains a little to make my point.

‘Would you swear it? Would you swear that you would take me into your service? Teach me all you know?’ he said. There was a wondering tone in his voice.

‘If you can free me of these chains and help me to escape from this place, I swear that you will be the most valued of all my men. We will make all the music in the world together. But you must swear me your loyalty, as I will swear mine to you.’

‘I swear it,’ said the giant.

‘As do I,’ I replied. ‘You are henceforth my sworn man.’ It was perhaps the simplest and quite the most bizarre ceremony of the ancient act of homage I had ever witnessed; the sacred bond between man and lord reduced to its dry bones. Yet somehow it retained a power and majesty even in the darkness of that foul cell.

‘Now, can you go and find a key to rid me of these chains?’ I asked.

‘We have no need of a key.’

I felt huge warm fingers brush my ankles and heard a tearing, wrenching noise and the squeal of tortured metal. An instant later my hands, too, were free of the shackles.

I stood tall in the darkness.

Boot led the way out of the cell with myself hard on his heels. The two guards, who were expecting Boot to emerge, leapt to their feet when they saw me at his shoulder. My new friend said nothing, merely seized both astonished men by their surcoats and smashed their heads together with a dull thump. The guards fell noiselessly to the floor. I stripped a surcoat from one of the men and took his sword belt, too. We walked up to the end of the corridor, where there was a little guardhouse at the foot of the stairway. I peeped around the corner and saw four men snoring on their pallets and we crept past, quiet as mice. We walked out of the sleeping inner and middle baileys unchallenged – it was still a good hour before dawn – and scarcely noticed, but at the gatehouse of the outer bailey a drowsy guard had stopped us and asked our business. I had said that I was returning to Westbury under Boot’s supervision to fetch the tax money that I owed the sheriff. The guard had seemed unconvinced by this tale; he said that he had better call the sergeant and check it was right to open up the postern gate to us. Boot hit him once, a gentle tap to the side of the face with his huge fist, and he collapsed in a heap, dead to the world. By the time the sun was peeping over the eastern horizon, Boot and I were jogging along the track that led away from the town of Nottingham and north-west towards Westbury.