Chapter Thirteen
Our first stop that afternoon was at a church serving a tiny hamlet about three miles south of Mansfield. The old priest protested when I sent in the men-at-arms to strip the altar of a pair of golden candlesticks and a wide silver plate, but he desisted when Father Stephen informed him that we were collecting for the ransom of the King. Whether he believed us or not, he was not foolish enough to question eight armed men.
One of the soldiers suggested that we might take a burning torch to the soles of the old priest’s feet to see if he had any more silver hidden away but, with a sigh, I said no and explained again the rules of our mission that day. No robbery, no abuse, no rape, no murder. The message finally seemed to sink in then, and we were in and out of the church in less than half an hour, having taken everything of value that we could see.
Our next stop was the manor of Mansfield. It was a royal manor, set in a bowl of countryside on the western edge of Sherwood Forest, much irrigated by rivers, and held by a mutton-headed steward called Geoffrey who had lost a foot fighting for Richard in France during the interminable wars between the Duke of Aquitaine and the late King Henry.
Geoffrey was happy to pay up the three shillings and eight pence that Father Stephen demanded of him and, as the day was drawing on, he offered us accommodation for the night to spare us the fifteen-mile ride back to Nottingham. We spent the rest of the afternoon collecting money from the village, which went without incident – except that one old woman claimed she had no coin and we were forced to accept a scrawny and ancient cockerel instead. Then we returned to the manor house and presented the bird to Geoffrey’s cook, as recompense for our bed and board.
Geoffrey provided the men with a small barrel of ale, several loaves of bread and a big pot of frumenty, a cracked-wheat porridge flavoured with cabbage, leeks and chervil, and allowed them to take their ease in the stables. And while the men relaxed with a pair of dice and the remains of the ale, Father Stephen and I repaired to the hall to eat a tough chicken stew and drink wine with the steward.
The meal was served by a pretty girl of about fourteen years, I would have guessed, blonde and blue-eyed, like an angel. She reminded me a little of my lovely Goody in her looks, though she did not have Goody’s alarming fire and passion. But she brought the food swiftly and served it neatly, and busied herself unobtrusively tidying up the table when we had eaten. I saw Father Stephen watching her movements with his dark little eyes and wondered how seriously he took his vows of chastity.
After the meal, I asked the steward for news of the area and he told me two things that were of much interest to me. Firstly, the notorious outlaw Robin Hood had been very active in the area in recent weeks, robbing churches and churchmen as they passed through Sherwood Forest. Robin had even attacked a large manor over towards Chesterfield that belonged to Sir Ralph Murdac, robbed it, driven off the livestock and burnt it to the ground. I reflected that my lord had not been idle while I was in Germany, and he had clearly not forgotten his code of vengeance: Murdac had burnt his castle at Kirkton, so Robin was paying him back in kind.
But, according to Geoffrey, the locals had worse to fear than the depredations of ruthless outlaws. Stories abounded of a black witch, a hideous crone with strange demonic powers, who had been seen by a number of people as far afield as Derby and Sheffield. It was said that she could turn a man to stone with one look from her terrible eyes; that she could curse a pregnant woman’s unborn child; and that the Devil visited her every night and they fornicated in a foul and unnatural manner beneath the stars, the witch crying aloud in her ecstasy in a Satanic tongue. Father Stephen crossed himself hurriedly, and the steward followed his example as he ended his tale. Clearly the Hag of Hallamshire had not been idle either while I was away. I recalled Elise’s words to me in the winter, when she passed on the warning from the wise woman Brigid, and felt an unfamiliar prickle of unease at the base of my spine. I crossed myself, too.
Just then, a long, loud wailing cry shattered the night, and I jumped to my feet. It was the cry of a woman in torment and it was coming from the courtyard just outside the hall. I clutched at my sword hilt, and while Father Stephen fell to his knees, hands clasped in prayer and gibbering in terror, the steward grabbed a lantern and he and I made our way out of the hall, across the courtyard and over to the stable.
Inside the stable, my eyes were met by a most disgusting sight. By the dim light of the lantern, I could see a pair of round hairy buttocks pumping away like a pair of blacksmith’s bellows on top of the little blonde girl who had served our dinner. The culprit was one of the men-at-arms under my command, and he was clearly raping the poor girl on a large mound of hay. Once again she gave that long wailing cry, clutching at his back and bucking her hips – no doubt trying to heave him off her frail young body.
I took a step forward and grabbed the man by the scruff of his tunic, and hauled him off the girl – kicking him sharply in the face to subdue him while I drew my sword and put the point to his neck.
‘You will hang for this,’ I grated. ‘I warned you twice and now you will see that I was not jesting. No man under my command will be excused rape or any other crime.’
The man was huge-eyed with shock and surprise; I could see in the thatch of hair at his crotch his manhood shrivelling fast. He mouthed something at me but no words came out. Behind me I could hear the rest of the men-at-arms stirring. I turned my head and saw the fat sergeant coming forward from the depths of the stable, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
‘Fetch a rope,’ I told him. ‘We are going to hang this son of a bitch right now.’
Behind me I heard the blonde girl cry out: ‘No, please, sir …’
‘But sir,’ said the sergeant, coming round to stand by his comrade, who had still not uttered a word in his own defence. ‘He didn’t rape her. She was willing, right willing, only she’s a noisy lass, sir, as all will agree. I’m sorry if you have been disturbed.’
My sword point was still at the half-naked man’s neck, but I turned my head to look at the serving girl. The steward Geoffrey had found a blanket to cover her nakedness, and her eyes were wide and stained with tears. ‘Did this man rape you?’ I asked her, trying to sound as kindly as I could in the circumstances.
She shook her head. ‘No, sir, it wasn’t like that. Alfie and I was just … just fooling around, you might say.’
I put up my sword, and stepped away from the half-naked man-at-arms on the stable floor, feeling like the biggest fool in Christendom. ‘Ah, well, I see …’ My cheeks were growing hot, and I could think of no dignified way of ending this encounter. ‘Well,’ I said again, ‘in that case, ah, carry on …’
And blushing like a fourteen-year-old milkmaid, I left the stable and its chortling inhabitants and fled back to the safety of the hall.
Riding back to Nottingham the next day the mood among my men had changed from hatred to ridicule: it was not a pleasant journey for me, hearing fake amorous cries coming from the men-at-arms and stifled giggles for fifteen long, slow miles. Maybe I should have hanged the man after all. It would have saved me a deal of embarrassment. But we returned to the castle with saddlebags filled with silver and gold, after stopping at two more churches on the way back home. And when I delivered the loot to the clerk in charge of storing Prince John’s hoard in the bowels of the great tower, I received a compliment from the man for the amount of silver we had turned in. Prince John himself even gave me a friendly nod that evening in the hall when I was eating my supper. Clearly he was happy that I had brought home the bacon – for one of his other tax-gathering parties had not: apparently while passing through Sherwood Forest they had been robbed of every penny of their tax silver by a gang of hooded bowmen, led by a giant blond man wielding a double-headed axe.
It was my old comrade Sir Nicholas de Scras who told me the tale the next day. He was visiting Nottingham with messages for Prince John, and I confess I was very pleased to see a friendly face in that castle full of thugs and bullies.
‘The timing was impeccable,’ said Sir Nicholas as we shared a jug of ale and a bowl of earthy-tasting fish stew before a brazier in one of the guest halls in the middle bailey.
‘Locksley’s band of robbers waited until Prince John’s men had finished completing their collection – and the tax men had done well, their saddlebags must have contained nearly five pounds in silver – before they struck. John’s men were passing through a narrow defile near Hucknall when up jumped a score of archers who loosed a storm of arrows into the column of men. It was sheer bloody slaughter, by all accounts. Men and horses stuck like pin-cushions. Only two men escaped alive,’ Sir Nicholas told me, ‘and one of those is very near death. Prince John is furious. He actually began frothing a little at the mouth when he heard the news – just like his father used to do – and his chaplain and his household knights had to lead him away. This is no exaggeration, I swear; I saw it with my own eyes.’
He was still smiling quietly at his royal master’s intemperate rage when Sir Ralph Murdac came striding over to our table. ‘So this is where you’ve been skulking,’ the little man said to me, with a curl of his red lip.
‘Sir Ralph, how pleasant to see you again,’ said Sir Nicholas, rising gracefully to his feet to greet him. ‘Won’t you join us? How is the good lady Eve, your delightful new wife? In the pink of health, I trust.’
Ralph Murdac ignored him, he was staring at me with fury in his eyes. ‘You know where he is, don’t you?’
‘I beg your pardon: where who is?’
‘Don’t play with me, you dirty f*cking peasant. You know where he is, don’t you? The God-damned Earl of Locksley – you were part of his foul gang of thieves not so long ago, as I recall, and even if you have been cast out as a traitor from their maggoty band of cut-throats I am certain you must know where to find them.’
‘I have no idea where the Earl is at this moment. I have neither seen nor spoken to him since the inquisition at Temple Church. He is a desperate man on the run, an outlaw, and I cannot tell you where he might be. I can, however, tell you this: if you ever call me a “dirty f*cking peasant” again, I will cut off that shrivelled lump of cheesy gristle that hangs between your legs and feed it to you. Do you hear me, Murdac?’
I had leapt to my feet and half-drawn my sword, and Murdac’s hand was reaching for the dagger at his waist, when Sir Nicholas took up position directly between us. ‘Hold hard there, my friends,’ he said soothingly. ‘Be at peace. There is no need for hasty words. Of course, Alan doesn’t know where Locksley is, Sir Ralph. Nobody does but his fellow outlaws. And there is no need for language of that sort – either of you. Let us sit down and have a quiet drink and all can be resolved.’
Sir Ralph said nothing; he merely turned on his heel and walked away: left shoulder high, his stride long and infused with frustrated fury.
‘He really is an ill-mannered lout,’ said Sir Nicholas when the former Sheriff of Nottinghamshire was out of earshot. ‘Very loyal to the Prince, I’ve been told. But not one of nature’s charmers.’
I shrugged and said nothing. I was thinking about the day when I would be free to kill Sir Ralph Murdac. As far as I was concerned, it could not come soon enough.
‘So you don’t know where he is, by the by?’ asked Sir Nicholas in a kindly voice. ‘It would make things so much easier all round.’
‘I’m afraid not,’ I replied. And it was true. ‘When I was with him, Robin had more than a dozen hide-outs, scattered all over the countryside in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Yorkshire. Doubtless he’s acquired a few more since then. He has many friends in Sherwood. He could be almost anywhere; even in Nottingham town itself. I have no idea.’
‘And if you did know where Robin was,’ Sir Nicholas said slowly, but still in his kindest, most reasonable tone, ‘you would tell us, wouldn’t you? I mean, sometimes – well, we all feel the pull of old loyalties. But the past is the past, and it’s best to be honest in these matters. Some people feel that you might have mixed emotions about serving our Prince John …’
‘I don’t know where Robin is.’ I looked directly into Sir Nicholas de Scras’s muddy green eyes. And I said slowly and clearly: ‘I swear by Our Lady Mary, the Mother of Jesus Christ, that I do not know where Robert of Locksley is hiding. Do you not believe me?’
‘Of course, I believe you. But it’s best to be sure. Now, have I told you about Ralphie Murdac’s new wife? Eve, her name is – daughter of Sir John de Grey – and she is absolutely enormous. Huge! As big as a house. She must weigh at least twice what he does. But then she does come with some hefty property: the manor of Standlake in Oxfordshire is hers, she had it from her father. And now, I suppose, Murdac holds it in her name. But you should see her, Alan. Enormous, I tell you!’
‘My God,’ I said, smiling at my friend, ‘can you imagine little Ralphie Murdac climbing aboard this Mistress Eve! It must be like a field mouse coupling with a milk cow!’
And we laughed heartily, not quite meeting each other’s eyes.
For the rest of that spring and into the summer of that tiresome year, I gathered taxes from the good people of Nottinghamshire, from the rich and the poor, from church and alehouse, from blacksmith and merchant, ostensibly to amass funds for King Richard’s ransom – although few in Nottingham Castle mentioned our captive King during those warm months. Prince John did a great deal of travelling during this time, visiting his other castles in England at Tickhill, Lancaster and Marlborough and, some whispered, making secret trips to France, Normandy and the Low Countries to recruit knights to his banner and hire mercenaries. Sir Ralph Murdac was appointed Constable of Nottingham Castle by his royal master, and a knight named William de Wenneval was made his deputy. I stayed out of Ralph Murdac’s path as much as possible – I was afraid that I would lose my temper and attack him on the spot. When not out scouring the countryside for silver, I spent any free time I had with Hanno.
We practised our sword-work together every morning, explored the castle during the daytime, and kept ourselves to ourselves in the evening, occasionally visiting The Trip to Jerusalem, a warren-like tavern carved out of the soft sandstone rock beneath the castle, near the upper bailey on the southern side. It was a cosy place with a cheery clientele, and Hanno had made friends there. At one time, before Nottingham Castle had been rebuilt and expanded by King Henry, The Trip had supplied ale to the whole garrison. But its position outside the walls meant that in the event of a siege the castle would be denied its crucial ale-making services. Consequently, a new brewhouse had been set up inside the outer bailey, where it could be better protected, and The Trip now relied upon trade from off-duty men-at-arms and knights who wished to escape the castle for a few hours and enjoy a period of peace and quiet outside the walls. The ale was excellent, but on the evenings that we went there we mostly remained aloof, politely refusing to join in the revelry of Prince John’s men. On one occasion I was asked by a knight if I would perform some of my music for him and his friends, but I refused, saying that until I could replace my vielle with an instrument of similar quality, I could not do justice to my compositions. He was offended by this refusal, as were his friends, and coupled with my stand-offish behaviour and my refusal to line my own pockets at the peasants’ expense, it must be said that I was not a popular member of the Nottingham garrison.
From time to time, word filtered in about King Richard. After I had seen him at Ochsenfurt, he had been brought to Speyer, accompanied by the abbots Boxley and Robertsbridge, where the Emperor had staged a trial in front of the most senior churchmen and nobles of the German realms. Apparently, our King had acquitted himself well, refuting with ease the charges of betraying the Great Pilgrimage and of murdering Conrad of Montferrat, the King of Jerusalem. His eloquence and charm, his status as a pious knight captured while returning from the Holy Land and the fact that the charges were quite obviously false, meant that he elicited much sympathy from the German nobles – in fact, he made a number of good friends.
After the trial, it appeared he had come to some sort of arrangement with Emperor Henry. He was now being held in the Castle of Trifels, high in the mountains to the west of Speyer, and it was reported that negotiations for his ransom and return to England were proceeding smoothly. The trial having failed, Henry had come up with a new pretext for holding Richard: apparently the Emperor was demanding a fee for his services in ‘reconciling’ the Kings of England and France – and a figure of 100,000 marks had been mentioned. Richard, of course, would remain his ‘honoured guest’ until the money had been paid. But all could see that this fee was truly nothing more than ransom by another name.
Meanwhile, Philip Augustus, the as-yet-unreconciled King of France, had invaded Richard’s duchy of Normandy and was busily capturing castles and lands at an alarming rate.
But that was happening far away, and we had enough to do in Nottinghamshire without worrying about distant battlefields. We had our share of the extortionate 100,000 marks – about 67,000 pounds, perhaps twice the sum the whole country yielded for King Richard in one year – to collect from the long-suffering folk of northern England.
The attacks by Robin’s men on the tax collectors had continued all summer long, and many believed he was using some kind of witchcraft to see the future, for his outlaws always seemed to know where and when the richest convoys of silver would pass. His bowmen would swoop out of hiding, sometimes masked, sometimes merely disguised in deep hoods, and shoot down the mounted men-at-arms guarding the packhorse train, or drive them off. Then the outlaws would make off with the silver, still contained in the chests on Prince John’s pack animals, escaping back into the wilderness of Sherwood before any pursuit could be organized.
Sir Ralph Murdac, infuriated by the Earl of Locksley’s success, had taken to sending more and more armed men out with the bigger convoys of tax collectors, sometimes as many as thirty or forty or even fifty men-at-arms to protect each train. Robin, however, declined to take on the heavily armed convoys, selecting the weaker ones and continuing to wreak havoc and deny much silver to the Constable of Nottingham’s treasure vaults.
Convinced that the local people must be helping Robin in some way, perhaps informing him when tax convoys would be passing or acting as spies for his outlaw band, Murdac ordered that villages that had already been taxed should be taxed again, and again, as a punishment. The villagers responded by melting away from their holdings and taking to the forest. Deep in the safety of Sherwood, Robin fed them and sheltered them; some he armed and trained for battle. Thus he swelled the numbers of loyal men-at-arms under his command.
Though it pained me to be forced to carry out Sir Ralph’s orders to tax a countryside that had already paid up more than its fair share, I had no choice but to obey. I would try to ensure that we made as much noise as possible, shouting battle cries and blowing trumpets as we approached a village or manor, allowing its occupants to slip away before we arrived. And I forbade my men to chase after peasants fleeing into the forest, saying that it was unsafe to do so: who knew what or who might be waiting in ambush beyond the lush green curtain of trees? It gave me a reputation as an unadventurous commander, timid and very careful of his own safety – which irked me a good deal. But it could not be helped.
Other leaders of tax-gathering bands were not so gentle or fastidious. I heard terrible reports of villagers summarily hanged, men and women tortured with fire and boiling water until they gave up their meagre pennies, stock animals killed or confiscated, churches sacked and burnt, girls – or even young boys – raped for the amusement of the Prince’s men-at-arms. It was as if John’s troops were an occupying force; an enemy ravaging the land rather than Englishmen lawfully raising revenue in the King’s name. But the worse the depredations carried out by Prince John, the more men flocked to Robin’s outlaw banner and the more powerful the Earl of Locksley became.
And Nottingham was not the only stronghold from which Prince John’s men were sallying forth to wring silver from an unwilling countryside. The powerful stone castle of Tickhill, on the Yorkshire border, which was held by the famous knight Sir Robert de la Mare, had been amassing coin for Prince John over the past six months, and one chilly September morning fifteen knights and men-at-arms, including myself, rode out from Nottingham to Tickhill, thirty miles to the north, with instructions from Sir Ralph to escort a wagon train filled with silver coin back to Nottingham.
The previous day, Murdac had summoned me to his large private chamber on the western side of the great tower and informed me: ‘You are too idle and too cowardly, Dale, that is what the men say about you.’ I bit the side of my tongue until I could taste blood but said nothing.
The lavish room had been empty when I entered it, but Ralph Murdac had emerged a few moments later from behind a curtain that shielded the privy. The seat of ease was at the end of a short passage, and was built into the outside western wall of the chamber. It was a rare luxury to have a garderobe, as these conveniences were sometimes called, in a private chamber, but it meant that a man could relieve himself in comfort – his waste dropping down through a wide chute and ending up in a midden pile outside the walls of the castle – without having to wander the dark stone corridors to use the common privies frequented by the ordinary men-at-arms.
‘It’s about time you started earning your keep here,’ he snapped, seating himself at a table piled with parchments. ‘You won’t be in command. Frankly, from what I hear, I don’t believe you’re up to it – it’s your base blood, of course. I don’t know what His Highness Prince John was thinking. You’ll take orders from Sir Roger Fotheringhay on the mission and you leave at dawn. That is all. Shut the door behind you on the way out.’
And with that he gave me a brief contemptuous look, picked up a goose-feather quill, pulled a piece of parchment towards him and began scratching at it. I said nothing; I merely shrugged, turned and walked out of the room.
I left the door open – but it was a poor revenge for having to swallow being called a lazy coward.
The journey to Tickhill Castle, a full day’s ride, was uneventful: it was a strongly built fortress with a high stone wall surrounding the bailey, and a tall keep built in the centre on top of a twenty-foot mound. The fifteen of us under Sir Roger’s command were allocated a section of the hall to sleep in, but we had not much space per man, for the castle seemed to be crammed with fighting men: including our party, I counted nearly a hundred men-at-arms of various ranks at the evening meal, and in the bailey the stables were filled to bursting with horses of all shapes and sizes. Something is up, I thought to myself. Where did all these men come from – and where are they going?
It has to be said that the organization of Tickhill under Sir Robert de la Mare was impressive. His servants worked all night to prepare the three wagons for the journey and to load them with the silver-filled strong-chests. Locked, chained tight, personally sealed by de la Mare, then covered with mounds of rough sacking to disguise their presence, six immensely heavy chests were loaded into each wagon and, just before dawn, three teams of eight oxen were yoked into position to pull the weight of Prince John’s ill-gotten silver all the way to Nottingham. Our fifteen men-at-arms, yawning and scratching after a short night’s sleep, formed up on either side of the ox-wagons. The castle gates swung slowly open, the drivers cracked whips, called to their animals and prodded the oxen’s rumps with sharp goads, the men-at-arms clicked their tongues to their horses and the whole convoy began its ponderous passage on the road south.
We travelled at the speed of the slowest ox and so, when we stopped at midday for a bite of bread and a drink of ale, we had come no further south than the village of Carlton in the district of Lindrick. At an alehouse near the old Saxon church of St John the Evangelist, Sir Roger arranged food and drink from the local hostelry. He seemed nervous and agitated, and he kept giving me strange, flickering glances, as if he were somehow frightened of me. Perhaps he was uncomfortable that I had been demoted for this expedition, that I had to take his orders when I had previously been a captain of my own team of tax gatherers. But I paid it little mind. It was a cold, sharp day, grey skies and a whiff of rain on the breeze, and we ate a joyless meal in Carlton in near-silence. I just wanted to get back on the road to Nottingham with the least possible delay, and I was in no mood to swap pleasantries with my fellow men-at-arms. Half an hour later, my wish was granted and we set off again.
We were no more than half a mile out of Carlton, passing through a place where we were hemmed in by dense woodland to the west with open farmland to the east, when the arrows began to fly. The first I knew of the attack was a sudden hiss and thump, followed by a scream of pain from the man-at-arms in front of me, who folded over in his saddle clutching an arrow shaft which protruded like a thin, straight branch from his belly.
Sir Roger shouted something and I turned Ghost right, facing towards the woodland in the west: I could see indistinct shapes moving in the forest gloom and arrows flickering out from the trees like horizontal hail. Scores of shafts flashed by me, on either side, and in an instant the mounted men and their horses were screaming and dying left and right. Hooded men, dark and menacing, wielding long war bows, advanced towards me through the trees like murderous wraiths, shooting as they came on. Ghost whickered and shied between my thighs and I tried to calm him as the deadly shafts sped past his flanks and sank into the flesh of his fellow beasts. One horse, spitted through the neck, screamed and reared. I saw a man-at-arms cursing an arrow in his left arm, trying to remove it, just as two more shafts smashed into his chest. I watched, immobile but for my jittering horse, while Sir Roger to my left took an arrow to the face, his helmeted head snapped backwards by the shaft before he slid dead as a boulder out of the side of the saddle. Death passed by me, surrounding me, close enough to touch, close enough to smell and close enough to feel the wind of its passing and hear its awful hiss and thump, hiss and thump. One knight, his horse stuck deep with three arrows, and he sporting a fourth jutting from his waist, managed to draw his sword and tried to charge the shadowy bowmen advancing through the woodland. He put back his spurs, shouted a feeble war cry; then his horse surged forward and he was met with a dozen more shafts that slashed out of the trees simultaneously, some taking his horse in the throat, while four or five thudded into his mailed chest. He and his mount were dead before they had travelled five yards.
And yet in all this carnage, amidst all this death and blood, Ghost and I remained untouched. I dropped the reins on the saddle horn and raised both hands, palms forward, fingers spread in the universal sign for surrender, crooning softly to Ghost to give him courage, and trying to hold him still between my knees.
Looking round quickly, I saw that all of our men-at-arms were down, and most of their poor horses were wounded or dead. The hooded wraiths with their long killing bows were no more than twenty paces from me, walking steadily forward with the soft, purposeful tread of executioners. Then I heard a familiar voice, one I had not heard for six months or more, shouting: ‘Cease shooting, men; hold those arrows. Cease shooting, you rascals!’ And out from behind a tree not twenty yards from me stepped a tall handsome figure in dark green, wrapped in a raggedy grey cloak, an arrow bag at his waist, a bow in his right hand.
‘Hello there, Alan,’ said Robin. ‘And how have you been keeping?’