Part Three
Chapter Fifteen
All is not well here at Westbury. The peril from Osric has grown and looms much nearer – he now has a confederate! I saw my bailiff meet his accomplice in secret in the back of one of the disused stables at the edge of the courtyard, the night before last. As I peered through a chink in the wooden slats of the wall, I saw Osric by the light of his lantern, greeting and conversing with a soberly dressed man in a neat black skullcap – but one look at his evil face, brown, creased and warty, and I knew that he meant no good. He is dark of eye, dark of dress, dark of heart – bent and stooped and old, almost as old as I am. The two conspirators talked for a long while, but in tones too low for my worn-out ears to hear. The dark man seemed to be angry about something. Osric soothed him and it seemed that their disagreement was soon resolved, for the stranger passed Osric a small clay pot, sealed with wax, and received a couple of silver coins in return – whatever was in the pot must command a high price. By his dress and demeanour, I guessed that this dark man was an apothecary and that the clay pot contained some sort of poison.
Black rage at Osric’s perfidy boiled then in my gut and yet I did not challenge my bailiff openly, as I did the last time. He would no doubt have found some seemingly plausible reason for his secret meeting after nightfall with a purveyor of poisons, although what that might be, I cannot imagine. Instead, I went to Marie and told her what I had seen of her husband’s conspiracies. It was an even graver mistake.
‘You are a stupid old fool!’ Marie said, when I awoke her that same night with my tale of Osric’s sinister business with the apothecary in the stables. She had already taken to her bed, but I wanted her to see with her own eyes their plotting. ‘To even think, to even entertain the notion that Osric means you harm – it is ridiculous, absurd even. He respects you, and wishes you nothing but health and prosperity. Has he not shown it with his work here at Westbury? He has made this little manor a great success. Go to bed, you silly old dotard, be grateful for Osric’s hard work, and put these idiotic thoughts from you.’
She is clearly in league with him: I see that now. I was a fool to reveal my suspicions to her. Osric and her, newly married, greedy, ambitious, impatient: of course, they both wish me dead. With me gone, they can do with the manor as they will. Perhaps Osric will install one of his tall sons as the lord. I fear for little Alan, my heir: who will protect him? Not I. I am an old man now, how can I stand against the combined cunning of Osric and Marie? I feel my doom approaching.
And there is worse to relate. This very night, not an hour ago, as I worked on this parchment with scant thought of the danger that surrounds me, I drained the last drops from a wooden mug of ale and discovered a white powdery residue in the bottom of the mug. The poisoners have struck! The contents of the clay pot have found their way into my belly and there is toiling, moiling through my guts to achieve my destruction. I feel Death’s bony hand upon my shoulder. I made myself vomit, of course, as soon as I saw the white residue. I spewed in my chamber pot until I could bring up no more. But I can feel the poison working in my body: I am growing sleepy, so very careworn and tired. But I must not sleep, I must go on and finish this tale before the cursed white powder drags me down into the grave.
I have barricaded the door against them, and routed out an old sword from my chest, which now leans unsheathed against the lectern that I stand at and write upon. If they try to break into my chamber tonight I will defend myself, and perhaps kill one or both of them. But I do not wish their deaths as they wish mine; I merely pray they will leave me in peace for one last night. If I am to finish this tale before I am called to God, I must endeavour to write on as quickly as I am able …
There is a great comfort to be found in prayer, particularly when you are certain that you will shortly be face to face with your Creator. And I prayed that night in Nottingham Castle as I have never prayed before. I did not fear death, but I did not want to perish. I did not want my earthly life to be ended by Milo, that monstrous half-human being, for the amusement of Prince John, Ralph Murdac and all the other castle knights that I had come to despise. And if the measure of a man is how he faces up to his Fate, I fear I did not measure well. I prayed, I prayed again and then I prayed some more.
The guards had taken me to the lowest part of the great tower, in the cold stone heart of Nottingham Castle, cut my bonds, and thrown me into a storeroom half-filled with sacks of grain. It was completely dark in there, and silent too, but for the occasional scurry of a rat – but to be honest it was not uncomfortable. When I had finished praying, I laid my body down on two large full sacks of barley and thought about how I had ended up here.
I remembered Robin’s face when he told me what he wanted me to do, in Westminster, the day before the inquisition at Temple Church. His silver eyes were blazing with intensity and he said: ‘I know this will be very hard for you, Alan, and dangerous, too, and I would not ask it if it were not of the utmost importance – but we must have a man inside Prince John’s camp.’
I asked him why we could not merely bribe some servant. And he shook his head sadly. ‘We need a fighting man. I need to know how many men will be with each tax-gathering party, and their strength, their weapons and morale. It needs an experienced soldier. And, don’t forget, you will have Hanno with you for company. He will run all the messages to me, and for safety’s sake you and I will have no contact after this ridiculous inquisition until your time with Prince John is over.’
‘But, Robin,’ I protested weakly, ‘the world will think me a man of no loyalty, a cur who turned traitor on his lord …’
‘It is necessary, I’m afraid, Alan. Everyone must think that. If they do not believe that you have genuinely betrayed me at this inquisition, Prince John will never take you into his service. You and I will know the truth – that you serve me still. And be honest with me: you did not like my playing the bloodthirsty part of Cernunnos; as I remember it, you were quite angry with me at the time. All I am asking you to do is to tell the truth to the inquisition when they ask it of you. You can do that, can’t you?’
‘But what about you, Robin? What about your life?’ I said. ‘If the Templars find you guilty at the inquisition tomorrow your life will not be worth a rotten turnip.’
‘I have made arrangements. Do not concern yourself about that. Now, will you do me – and our good King Richard – this great service?’
I sighed: ‘Yes, sir.’ I could summon little enthusiasm for his plan: betrayal, ignominy, the very real chance of a felon’s death on the gallows. Still I said yes. I could never refuse Robin, no matter how unpleasant or difficult or dishonourable the task he proposed to me.
‘You know that I will not forget this? That I will be for ever in your debt?’ He gripped me by both shoulders.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good man!’ he said, and he slapped me on the back and left me to my preparations for an immediate departure to Germany after the Templar trial.
And so for six long months I had been acting my part as Prince John’s man and feeding information to Robin through the good offices of Hanno – where was he? I wondered. I had dispatched my wily German friend the day before yesterday to pass on the news of the great silver wagon train to my master and I had not seen him since. Had Prince John’s men taken him? Was his corpse at this moment twisting in the wind on the town gibbet?
I had not intended to accompany the wagon train of silver. All those months ago Robin and I had agreed that, to try to avoid doubt falling on me, he would not rob tax-gathering parties of which I was a member. I had only joined the force of knights guarding it at the last moment, on the specific orders of Ralph Murdac: clearly their suspicions of me had finally come to a head. I felt my throbbing nose and ran my tongue over the chipped tooth. There had been no need, it occurred to me then, for that brutal knock from Little John. I could have stayed with Robin and saved my own life. Right now I could be riding Ghost through the cool clean spaces of Sherwood, free and clear, beside Robin and Little John and all my friends – rather than lying here, with the Devil beating his drums inside my head, waiting to be ripped apart by that grotesque monster Milo.
I realized that I was pitying myself and stopped abruptly. I was not dead, not yet. I got up from my barley sacks and began to make an examination of the storeroom. It was small, perhaps four paces by five and seven foot high. The door was a solid one made of thick elm boards, bolted securely from the outside. I pressed my ear to the door and heard – nothing. I wasted a few moments banging on the door and shouting for a gaoler but got no response: it must be the early part of the night, I reckoned, about eight of the clock. Either the guards were asleep or eating, or no one had bothered to post them. There was nowhere I could go, deep as I was in the bowels of the great tower, no chance of escape, so perhaps there was no need to detail guards to watch a locked door all night.
The walls of my cell were cool, dry smooth sandstone, with no breaks or cracks or fissures that I could discern, and there were no tools or weapons in the room of any kind. By touch I found an empty bucket, and a jug of cool water. I drank deeply and relieved myself in the bucket. And that was it, apart from some sacks of barley and a couple filled with oats. I did not know the underground ways of the great tower well, having only been down here on two or three occasions – Hanno knew it far better than I, as there were innumerable cellars and kitchens and pantries down here under the big square keep and built into the thick walls surrounding the upper bailey, and he often spent time down here in the warren of corridors and disused rooms, engaging in illicit trysts with some of the castle’s serving girls. But I had a rough plan of the castle in my head and I reckoned that I was not far away from the closely guarded underground treasury where Prince John was keeping the silver from his summer’s tax gathering.
I prayed a little more, this time for strength in my coming ordeal, and then settled back to think about Milo. I pondered the question of how a smaller, lighter man could defeat a much larger, heavier one, but my thoughts on the little I knew about wrestling kept being interrupted by disturbing images of Goody.
In my mind’s eye I could see her sweet face, her soft golden hair and her thistle-blue eyes sparkling with happiness – or sudden, incandescent rage. I realized that more than anything in the world I wanted to see her again, one more time before I died. I would like to hold her tightly in my arms and tell her that everything was going to be all right. I wanted to apologize for deceiving her as to my true role among Prince John’s men. And, so badly, I wanted to touch her soft cheek, and kiss her on the lips …
I had to use a deal of force on myself to stop these thoughts sliding into greater sinfulness. She was as a sister to me; she looked to me for the protection of an older brother. Who was I to start thinking about kissing her? Besides, she despised me: ‘You hateful man,’ she had said. ‘I never want to speak to you again.’ These harsh words were burnt into my heart. Yet, if she only knew …
Stop, Alan, Just stop. Milo: Milo is the problem at hand; you must concentrate on defeating the ogre if you want to live …
And at some point in this strange half-dreaming, half-anxious state, I fell truly asleep.
I awoke just after dawn and drank some more water. And then I sat and waited, munching a handful of loose oats, sitting on the barley sacks, and I waited and waited. After what must have been several hours I started hammering on the elm door, and demanding proper food and more water. I heard footsteps and a harsh voice in English told me to hold my noise. And then the footsteps went away and I sat for hours in the darkness thinking about my fate and singing long, jolly cansos loudly to myself to keep my spirits up. I must have dozed again, for the next time I was awoken it was by the door of the cell crashing open and the dim light of the corridor outside spilling violently into the room. Four men-at-arms burst in and grabbed me by the arms and hustled me out into the passageway. I had no time to resist, and before I knew it I was being marched up the stone steps to the ground floor of the great tower, out of its iron gate, past the eastern side of the great hall and across the middle bailey with the afternoon sun slanting down. I was escorted roughly out of the barbican and north towards the new brewhouse, with the four men-at-arms close around me until we approached the wood-and-earth palisade at the east of the outer bailey that marked the limits of the castle.
The whole outer bailey was buzzing with men-at-arms and servants and clergy; almost every one of Prince John’s dependants, it seemed, wanted to watch the afternoon’s ‘amusement’. And there in the centre of the roped-off area of the list, sixty foot by sixty foot, stood Milo.
He was even bigger and uglier than I remembered. Dressed only in a loincloth and a pair of heavy leather boots, I could see that his entire body was covered in sweat-matted black hair. Thick slabs of muscle stood out on his chest, his belly was huge and round but did not look remotely soft, his arms were as big as my thighs and his short legs were like the crossbeams of a great hall. He smiled at me cruelly from across the list, his little piggy eyes buried deep in a doughy baby’s face. I scowled back at him: but the ice snake slithered in my belly once more and I knew he could break my spine as easily as a man snapping a stick of kindling. I realized, too, that I had been misled about his height, for without lanky Rix to make him seem short – and the tall swordsman was nowhere to be seen on that afternoon – I saw that he was almost as tall as me, and I am six foot high in my hose.
I tore my gaze away from his mountainous muscle-bound shape and studied Prince John, seated in his customary highbacked chair on the north side of the list. Sir Ralph was beside him, standing on his left, looking over at me with a placid, contented stare. A knight in a dark blue surcoat on the other side of Prince John was whispering urgently in his ear: he was a slight man of medium height, with cropped grey and black hair. And I saw, with a little leap of hope in my heart, that it was Sir Nicholas de Scras.
At that moment, Prince John nodded and said something quietly to Sir Nicholas, and the former Hospitaller came striding across the open space of the list towards me. His face bore a warm, slightly sad smile of greeting and he started to speak when he was still more than ten paces from me.
‘Alan, Alan, we can stop all this unpleasantness. We can stop it right now. But I will need your help.’
I spread my hands in a query. ‘What can I do for you, Nicholas?’ I said.
‘You can stop this barbaric display with just a few words, just a few well chosen words.’
I frowned: ‘You want me to beg? You want me to plead for my life – to them?’ I gestured at Prince John and Sir Ralph Murdac, who were eyeing me from beyond the ropes. I put my shoulders back, and jutted my jaw. ‘I will not!’
‘No, no, Alan, nothing like that. I would not insult your honour in such a way. But you must tell them where the heretic outlaw Robert of Locksley is hiding.’
I looked straight at him: his kindly green eyes were beseeching; I could sense him willing me to tell him.
‘I do not know where he is,’ I said.
‘Alan, I understand that you serve him, that you have always served him; that you tricked me when you said you wished to serve Prince John, and came here as a – as a ruse. I forgive you for all that. But this is your life we are talking about. You must tell me where Robin is, or how we might find him. You must! If you don’t, in a few moments that brute yonder will tear you apart.’
Very slowly and clearly I said to him: ‘I do not know where the Earl of Locksley is and, even if I did know, I would not reveal to you or to anyone else in this castle his whereabouts.’
‘Alan, I beg you …’
I remained silent. There was nothing more to say.
Sir Nicholas shook his head sadly and looked at the ground. ‘Then may Holy Mary, the Mother of God, watch over you now at this the hour of your death,’ he said, and made to walk away.
Suddenly he turned back, and stepped in close. He slanted his head towards Milo, who was stretching his giant muscles for the bout, hands clasped above his head, twisting and turning his huge body in the afternoon sun. In little more than a whisper, Sir Nicholas said: ‘His left knee is weak. He twisted it a few days ago while exercising. His left knee, understand? God be with you.’ And with that he went to rejoin his royal master on the far side of the ropes.
Two men-at-arms stepped forward and roughly pushed me towards the centre of the list, towards Milo.
Prince John stood. In a loud, carrying voice he said: ‘Alan Dale, you are guilty of high treason against my person, of disloyalty, of oath-breaking, of serving a demon-worshiping outlaw – and now you will face your just punishment. You will die today for your crimes – and here is your executioner.’
He ended his little speech with a shout on the word ‘executioner’. And at this Milo lifted both his massive arms above his head and the crowd gave a roar of approval. It sounded like the howling of a pack of hungry wolves. And I have heard that sound before.
‘Begin!’ said Prince John, and abruptly sat down.
Milo walked over towards me slowly, his piggy-baby face smiling, his arms opened wide, massive paws open, fingers outstretched as if in a friendly greeting, as if inviting a cosy hug. He spoke then, his voice deep and grating, like the roots of a mountain being pulled out: ‘I’m going to crush you, little man. I’m going to pull your head off as I did your little friend in Germany!’
I made no reply, but moved backwards, slowly, edging around to my left. I thought of honest, blue-eyed Adam and my redheaded friend Perkin, and the heat of rage at their senseless deaths flowed through my veins like hot wine. I was going to kill this man-beast, I told myself. I might die in the attempt, but as I had vowed to St Michael all those months ago on the banks of the River Main, I would have my vengeance this day.
The sun was low in the sky to the west and I wanted, if possible, to have it shining into my grotesque opponent’s eyes, so I continued to circle to my left. I also watched the way that he walked as he followed me round, a bear’s shuffle – and I saw that Sir Nicholas was right. He was favouring his left leg and had just a trace of a limp. The ogre grinned at me. ‘Come here, little man, and I promise it will be very quick. Come to Milo.’
And suddenly, as I neared the southern rope, still circling westwards, he broke into a lumbering run, closed with me and made a grab for my body. I dropped to a crouch, my left hand on the ground, and lashed out with my right boot, catching him a hard blow on the side of his left knee. He gave a howl of rage, and stumbled a half-step forward, arms swinging to envelop me. I dodged under his massive right arm and danced away behind his back. And I felt the first flickering of hope. He was slow, he was very slow – and that kick to the knee had hurt him.
I moved backwards towards the western end of the list. I could hear booing from the crowd at my cowardly retreat, but I knew that if I wanted to live long enough to take my vengeance I had to stay away from his crushing embrace. Milo growled something unintelligible and charged at me. I feinted to the left and as he moved that way to grab me, I dived to the right under his arms once again, landing on the hard-packed earth of the list but immediately flipping my body over, swinging my leg and landing another hard kick on his left knee. He howled and went down on the injured joint, his broad, fur-matted back towards me.
Then I made a mistake.
I jumped to my feet, leapt on his back and locked my left forearm around his neck from behind, squeezing it tight with my right forearm in a choke-hold. By God, his neck was thick – it must have been a good foot wide. But though I squeezed with all my considerable strength, hoping to cut off his wind and prevent the blood getting to his massive head, it was like trying to strangle an oak tree. Milo rose to both feet, with me clinging tightly to his sweat-greased hairy back, lifting me off the ground as if I were a child and he were giving me a piga-back ride.
I could dimly hear the roar of the crowd, sounding like the beating of the angry sea against a cliff. Milo shook his body in a series of enormous heaves, to the left and right, trying to dislodge me. My stranglehold seemed to be having no effect on him whatsoever. As he shook his great squat body, mine flew from side to side with each heave, but I clung on for dear life, trying to keep my purchase on his neck and exert as much pressure as possible. I could feel the rumbling of his ogre’s rage through the bones in my left forearm. Then he changed tactics. His huge right fist swept up and backwards over his own shoulder, smashing into the right side of my head. It was an awkward blow, and only delivered with half-force, but it slammed me to the left and I could feel my grip slipping; then he punched me with his left hand, catching me full on the left ear and sending me crashing to the ground, my head spinning. He turned and stamped at my chest and just in time I rolled, and rolled again on the hard earth as he came raging after me, stamping and roaring. If a blow from one of those huge feet had landed on me it would have crushed my chest like a rock dropped on an egg. But I kept rolling and rolling just ahead of his stamping boot. In desperation I swung my own boot at him laterally, and by God’s grace I caught the left knee again, from behind, kicked it right from under him, and he dropped to the floor with a bull-bellow of rage.
As I scrambled to my feet I saw that he truly was hurt. But I found I was breathless and still dizzy from the punches I had taken to the head, my legs felt like water, and I had a strong urge to vomit. Milo struggled to rise, and could barely put any weight on the injured limb once upright. Yet for all his inhuman looks, he was no coward. He roared: ‘Now you die, you little worm.’ And he came charging at me once more, his feral anger giving him the strength to run on that injured knee.
And I knew what I had to do. It was a move that little Thomas ap Lloyd had shown me many months ago in Kirkton, a wrestling trick that he had devised himself, he claimed, to use a bigger, stronger man’s weight and momentum against him. He had used it on me, and easily thrown me – and it was not only my pride that had been bruised that day. I offered up a very quick prayer to Michael, the warrior saint, and, as Milo charged at me once more, hobbling forward with a surprising turn of speed, I committed myself to little Thomas’s strange wrestling manoeuvre.
As Milo’s enormous hands reached out to grab my body, I fell straight back before him, tucking my knees up into my stomach and rolling backwards on my spine, curled up like a new-born baby. When Milo stumbled over my prostrate body, his meaty hands groping the air, I grabbed his wrists, jerked him forward and shot my feet suddenly upwards into his stomach – and, using all the main strength in both my young legs, I heaved him up and over my body.
He flew.
He flew over my extended legs, sailing into the blue sky, his huge body turning a full circle in the air and smashing down a full three yards away, landing with an earth-jarring crash – on his left leg.
I jumped up and ran at him, my mind barely registering the broken left limb sticking out under his prone body at an unnatural right-angle. His screaming drowned out the roar of the crowd as I raced in and smashed my right boot as hard as I could, squarely into the side of his face as he lay on the ground, roaring with agony. His head jolted with the impact of my foot, but still he seemed hardly to notice it and continued groping madly at his twisted knee, and squealing like a halfbutchered pig. I shouted: ‘For Perkin!’ – and stamped with the full weight of my boot-heel on his broad cheekbone, and was rewarded with a loud and welcome crack. He was trying to move, to sit up, so I gave him another belting kick to the right eye, pulping it and knocking his giant head backwards with its impact, and another hard-swung scything boot to the temple, and yet another that must have dislocated his jaw, and another, smashing into his cheekbone. His head was now bloody and raw, and hanging loose on his bull neck, but I did not let up – thinking of the deaths of my friends, I carried on kicking and stamping, landing blow after blow with my booted feet into that huge bloody baby-giant poll. I was filled with a black and terrible rage that afternoon, fuelled by fear of this monster sprawled before me and a deep well of hatred for all those around me, and for longer than I like to recall I kicked and hacked, stamped and ground at his gory, pulpy head, until my stout leather boots were slick with his blood and skin and tissue, and he moved no more.
I finally stopped, panting, shaking with emotion, and looked around the crowd of men-at-arms at the ropes. They were absolutely silent and none would meet my mad, glaring eye. I looked over at Prince John; his mouth was hanging wide open, showing little yellow teeth and a bright pink tongue. Sir Ralph Murdac beside him looked white and shocked.
Prince John recovered first. He croaked, ‘Seize him!’ and suddenly I was surrounded by a dozen men-at-arms with drawn swords. I readied my soul for death. ‘Take him … away,’ the Prince managed to say.
And as I was being dragged back towards the keep by rough hands, I heard Prince John shout after me, his voice shaking with emotion: ‘You are not free of this matter, you filthy cur. You will not escape your crimes. You will hang for this, you will hang for this, you diabolical, blood-crazed … animal; before God, I swear you will hang at dawn tomorrow.’
* * *
Back in the storeroom, I wept. I do not know why, but often after a fight I feel a terrible sadness, a soul-sickness, come over me. It is one that I can usually control, but in that dark, desperate place, still trembling with rage after beating Milo, I allowed myself the weakness and comfort of a woman’s tears. It did not last for long and I must admit that, afterwards, I felt a good deal better.
Over the next few hours, I took stock of my situation: to the good, I had defeated a monster who had sought to tear me apart; my enemies had arranged a humiliating death for me and by great good fortune – and here I blessed little Thomas ap Lloyd and his oddly effective wrestling tricks – I had avoided my fate and taken a suitable revenge for Perkin and Adam. I still lived. More than a little bruised around the face and neck, I grant you – I had taken savage punches from both Little John and the monster Milo in less than two days – but for the most part hale and well.
To the bad: I was to be hanged like a common criminal in the morning.
I bathed my sore face in what was left of the water, and drank some of it too, tasting the metallic tang of my own blood in the jug. I prayed once more for salvation – either in this life or in the next. And then I lay down once again on the barley sacks and tried to sleep.
I had barely closed my eyes when the door of the storeroom opened and two men entered. One of them fixed a burning torch to a becket in the wall and when my eyes had adjusted to the harsh light, I saw that it was Sir Nicholas de Scras. I had half-expected a visit from my friend, but his companion came as a complete surprise: it was Sir Aymeric de St Maur, the Templar knight.
Sir Nicholas handed me a jug of ale, a loaf of rye bread and a small bowl of cold mutton stew. And I found that I was starving. The two knights watched me as I ate hungrily and slaked my thirst, saying nothing, only staring at me by the flickering light of the torch. When I had wiped the last of the gravy from the bowl with the remaining crust of bread, I broke the silence: ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘And to what do I owe this unexpected courtesy?’
‘You know what we want, Dale,’ said Sir Aymeric. ‘Or rather, who we want. You are Locksley’s man and you must know how we can find him. And we can force you to tell us if we have to.’ He smiled cruelly. ‘I find that a hot iron applied judiciously can loosen the most stubborn tongue.’
I could not suppress a quick shudder. I had once been tortured by Sir Ralph Murdac with hot irons and that foul memory is one I do not care to contemplate. And I remembered the poor wretch dragged to the centre of the Temple Church at the inquisition, and tried not to imagine what Aymeric de St Maur had done to him to secure his testimony against Robin.
I shook my head: ‘I am getting tired of telling you people this. But I will repeat it for you once more and then I will speak on this subject no more. I – Do – Not – Know – Where – Robin – Is. I serve him, yes, and gladly. But we arranged matters so that I would never be able to betray him – even on pain of torture or death.’
Sir Aymeric de St Maur glared at me. For a few moments no one spoke. Then he said: ‘We have sent men to bring in your servant – the foreigner. And when we have him, we will see if a little heat will loosen his tongue. Or perhaps, watching his agony, you may feel more inclined to talk.’
I closed my lips, clenched my teeth and determined that I would say no more.
‘There is no need for this sort of unpleasantness,’ said Nicholas de Scras calmly. ‘Sir Aymeric, would you be so good as to leave us. I’d like to talk to Alan alone. Of your goodness, will you grant me this small mercy?’
Aymeric stared at Sir Nicholas for a few moments; he seemed taken aback. Then, turning to leave, he said grumpily, ‘Very well, but mark you this: if he will not talk to you, he will talk to me before morning.’ And with that parting threat hanging in the air like a foul odour he left the storeroom, banging the elm-wood door shut behind him.
Sir Nicholas and I stared at each other for several moments. And then the knight said, ‘It is still not too late for you, Alan.’ His voice was pleading, kindly – like a father trying to persuade a recalcitrant child. ‘We can end all this, and set you free to go wherever you will, if only you will help us. Please, Alan, for your sake, and mine: help me to help you.’
I said nothing, locking my jaw and looking him in the eye; and my silence seemed to draw speech from him.
‘I do not have many friends,’ said this one-time Hospitaller, ‘and I have even fewer now that I have left the Order. But I thought once that you and I might become close. And when they hang you tomorrow, I will feel a great sadness that another man who offered me the promise of brotherhood has perished. Of course, it is entirely your own fault: if you would only speak to me about your friend Robin, if you would only trust me, I could save you, even now. But you have chosen to die. And I can understand that. I honour your loyalty to your lord, but you have shown your mettle a hundred times; you have proved your courage and your worth as a faithful vassal, and now it is time to think of yourself. To save yourself. Alan, I beg you: save yourself!’
He paused for a while to give me the chance to speak. But I said nothing, merely stared at him, my tongue locked.
‘I had a friend in Outremer, a good friend,’ Sir Nicholas continued. ‘He was your friend, too, I believe. His name was Sir Richard at Lea – and you know how he died. You know … you know who it was who killed him.’
He paused again and looked at me, and this time I could not meet his eye.
‘You know that your master Robert of Locksley callously ordered the death of a good man; he killed my friend and yours, just so that he could enrich himself like some filthy merchant with the trade in frankincense.’
I was surprised. I could not understand how Sir Nicholas knew all this; the knight seemed to be able to see directly into my mind. Then he relieved my puzzlement.
‘In Acre, in the hospital there, I tended you when you were sick,’ Sir Nicholas said. ‘Do you not remember?’ And I nodded and remembered his kindness to me. I felt an overwhelming desire to speak to him, to thank him, and only with some difficulty did I manage to hold my tongue.
‘I tended you, I sponged the night sweat from your body, and soothed you when you raved. I listened to your ranting, night after night: and I remembered it. Do you know what you said in your delirium? Do you know who you accused of the murder of Sir Richard at Lea? I think you do. You named Robert, Earl of Locksley, as his killer. And you called him a monster, a demonworshipping fiend. All that I know of Locksley’s crimes, I know because you told me during those long, fever-racked nights in Acre.’
Sir Nicholas’s face had grown more gaunt and his voice had become a little harsher, a little less kindly and fatherly.
‘You have already betrayed Robin Hood, your friend, your master. Did you not know that? It was I who told the Templars where to look for the evidence of his heretical beliefs; his God-cursed sacrifices to woodland demons. And I received all that information, every scrap of it, from you, from your sickbed ravings.
‘You have already betrayed your master! You are already a traitor – and a real traitor this time. But now you can save your skin, and live a long and happy life. All you have to do is talk to me. You called him a monster. And he is a monster. He killed my friend, my true friend Richard – all for the sake of some filthy incense money! Help me, Alan. Help me to bring that monster to justice and let our noble friend Sir Richard at Lea rest peacefully at last in his grave.’
I stared at the floor: my jaw muscles flexing, my teeth squeaking with the effort of keeping quiet.
The silence stretched out for an eternity. And, finally, Sir Nicholas gave up. He got to his feet and banged on the storeroom door to bring a guard.
‘Why will you not help me, Alan? Why?’
He stood in the open doorway; I never expected to see him again in this world and so, at last, I spoke.
‘I swore an oath to Robin, long ago when I was just a boy. Though I was not yet a man, I swore it: I swore that I would be loyal to him unto death. And I intend to keep that oath. It is something a man like you, a breaker of holy vows, a man who turns his back on his comrades, could not possibly understand!’
Sir Nicholas flinched at my words, as I had intended him to; and two smears of red appeared on his cheeks. He made the sign of the Cross on his breast, in the place where a white cross had once been sewn on his black Hospitallers’ surcoat – the sacred mantle that he had discarded.
‘God will judge all of us in His own good time,’ he said and, pulling the torch from the becket on the wall, he made to leave.
‘Wait, Nicholas,’ I said. ‘I have a question for you. As I am to die tomorrow morning, as a kindness, answer me this: why did you kill the big man Tom outside the Blue Boar tavern in Westminster? He was wounded and he might have talked, but you quickly silenced him. Why?’
Sir Nicholas cocked his head on one side and looked at me, the torchlight flickering across his face and casting his eyes in deep shadow. ‘After what you have just said to me, I am not sure that I wish to oblige you.’ He looked at me a while, then shrugged. ‘Well, I suppose it can do no harm …’ And he smiled sadly at me, more like his old self again. ‘I knew that Prince John had sent men to murder you – but I did not know who they were. I thought that those men outside the tavern might have come from the Prince. And if they had, and the big one had admitted his mission under questioning, I knew that you would never have willingly come to Prince John’s banner. That was my reasoning. I wanted you to come to John so that I could get to Robert of Locksley. I thought that if we were on the same side, you might let slip something that would allow me to reach him. It seems I was wrong.’
Our eyes locked for a couple of heartbeats. I said nothing more. Then he half-saluted me with his right hand, and stepped quickly out of the room and the door closed quietly behind him.
When Sir Nicholas had left me, I tried once more to sleep. I could not: there were too many images rushing around inside my head for peaceful slumber. Visions of Robin, and Little John, and Sir Richard at Lea’s terrible death in the blood-clotted sands of Outremer, and images of Goody and Marie-Anne; of Milo’s bloody head lolling by my boots; of Ralph Murdac’s shocked expression. And then there was the hanging. I was going to die in a few short hours. I had seen my own father hanged when I was a boy, torn from his bed and strung up by Sir Ralph Murdac’s men, and the memory disturbed me still. I could see his hideously distorted face and bulging eyes as the rope choked the life from him, and I pictured once again the piss dripping from his kicking heels. Was my fate to be the same as my father’s? Had I been born to hang?
At a little after midnight, after several sleepless hours, the door of the storeroom opened once again – this time very softly – and Robert Odo, the outlawed Earl of Locksley, stepped in.