The sack of a town is never a pretty sight. But this was one of the worst I have ever seen. King Richard had cried ‘Havoc!’ and this meant that his men were set free to plunder and rape and kill to their hearts’ content. No quarter would be given, everything in the town now belonged to the victorious troops. Richard was deliberately punishing the town for its insolence, for the rotten fruit thrown and the jeers when he made his magnificent entry into the harbour. As the cavalry careered through the last defences of the town, the archers and footmen came roaring after them, racing into the streets beyond, kicking down doors and charging inside private houses, killing anyone who opposed then and ransacking the interior and more often than not setting fire to the buildings for sheer spite. They were looking for wine and coin and women — but not necessarily in that order. It was as if they had all run mad, like the Christians of York, crazed with lust and cruelty and the urge to shed human blood.
As the sun dipped behind the hills to the west, much of the town was ablaze, blood and wine flowed in the gutters and bodies littered the streets. Drunken men-at-arms blundered through the burning town, naked steel in hand, tripping over their own feet and snarling at shadows, looking for unmolested houses to pillage, women to rape, another barrel of wine to broach. More often than not, the drunken man-at-arms or archer would collapse unconscious in a doorway, all his lusts slaked — and a good few had their throats cut by morning by locals seeking revenge for daughters deflowered, sons cut down before their own hearths and property destroyed or stolen. Fear and death stalked the fire-splashed darkness, as the citizens cowered in their cellars, or hid behind barred, even nailed-shut doors and prayed for the nightmare to end. But dawn was a long way off, and the desires of Richard’s victorious men were far from satisfied.
King Richard and his household knights, including my master Robin, had ridden to Hugh de Lusignan’s house. He was quite safe, firmly barricaded in a strong two-storey stone building with a score of well-armed men to protect him, and the bodies of a dozen Griffons at his door. After ceremonially embracing Hugh — the King had, after all, ostensibly attacked Messina to come to his defence — Richard withdrew back to the monastery on the hill with his household knights to bandage their scrapes and enjoy a victory feast together. Robin, rather reluctantly I believe, accompanied his liege lord; he was obliged to, in truth. But I had the strong feeling that he would have preferred to do a little lucrative plundering in the burning town. Little John had long disappeared, presumably in search of merriment and valuables, and I was left alone, walking Ghost up a narrow street, stepping around the bodies, heading towards the Jewish quarter. I wanted to be sure that Reuben was unharmed. Although I knew he could take care of himself, I was uneasy with memories of the last blood-crazed mob of fanatics I had encountered in York.
I rode slowly past a dark side street, and glancing into it, I saw a knot of men-at-arms, perhaps a dozen or so, shoving and squabbling excitedly. There was a woman on the floor and some ruffian was covering her, while the others waited to take their turn. I paused, and half of my mind wanted me to go to her, save her, and drive off those drunken beasts. But I was alone, and they were a dozen violent men. I hesitated, like a craven coward. Was it my duty to save that poor woman? She was a legitimate prize of war, an enemy. My own King wanted her punished. I remembered something that Robin had said to me the year before. I had not understood it at the time, although I thought about it often since then. He had said: ‘Right and wrong is rarely simple. The world is full of evil folk. But if I were to rush about the earth punishing all the bad men that I found, I would have no rest. And, if I spent my entire life punishing evil deeds, I would not increase the amount of happiness in this world in the slightest. The world has an endless supply of evil. All I can do is to try to provide protection for those who ask it from me, for those whom I love and who serve me.’
He had told me this only a few hours before he had ordered that a captive brigand, an evil fellow called Sir John Peveril, be strapped to the earth of a woodland glade and have three of his limbs chopped off in cold blood in front of his ten-year-old son. The man Peveril lived, I was told, if you can call him a man after that: he was just a trunk, a head and one arm. My master let the boy live, too; not out of kindness or mercy but to spread the tale of this horror.
I now understood what Robin meant by his little speech about right and wrong: that woman was nothing to me, so why should I risk my neck to save her? But I also knew what the right thing to do would have been. I knew what a truly chivalrous knight would have done. Sadly, the coward in me was too strong and, as I argued right and wrong with myself, Ghost sensibly walked on past the alley, and I surrendered to my weaker side and rode on by, cursing my own cowardice.
When I reached the house where Reuben had taken lodgings, I saw that there was nobody at home. The place was heavily boarded up and not a chink of light escaped from the shutters into the dark street. Reuben, probably sensing trouble, had evidently abandoned the town for some other safer place. While I was worrying about him, I thought bitterly, and braving the streets of a blood-drunk town, he was probably playing dice in some snug shelter north of Messina with Robin’s men — and no doubt winning.
I turned Ghost back towards the main gate of the town. As so often after a battle, I felt a sense of melancholy. I was tired, my foot, where the boot had taken a sword blow, was aching, and I couldn’t stop thinking about the girl being repeatedly raped by a dozen lust-crazed men. Then, just as I was passing a wide wooden two-storey house with the door smashed to kindling and hanging from its hinges, I heard a long, drawn-out scream of fear. It was a woman’s voice, a young woman, I believed, and she was in mortal terror. I stopped Ghost this time, and she screamed again, a long rising howl of utter dread. Then I heard a man laugh, an evil gloating sound, and a jest shouted to someone else.
Without allowing myself to think this time, I got down from Ghost’s back, tied him to a post, drew my sword and entered the house.
It was the dwelling of a rich man, clearly. The large front room with its high ceiling, which had once been a fine chamber, had been completely ransacked. By the moonlight that spilled through the open shutters in front window, I could see that ornate furniture, smashed, was scattered about the place, priceless hangings had been torn down from the walls, and there was a strong smell of wine and excrement — someone had recently relieved themselves in that plush chamber and I guessed that it was not the owner. In the dim light, I could just make out the corpse of a very fat man, richly dressed and lying in a black puddle at one side of the room. I ignored the body and threaded my way through the detritus of his house, towards the rear of the building. I heard the scream again, but this time it ended abruptly in a hideous bubbling gurgle. It sounded exactly like a woman having her throat cut.
I stepped through a doorway into an open-air courtyard that was brightly lit by a pair of torches fixed to beckets on the wall. And I saw that I had walked into a slaughter yard. The stone floor was literally running with blood, trickles of the liquid oozing between the cobbles, and the naked form of two young women were lying curled together on the floor, their plump white lifeless bodies resembling the carcasses of butchered pigs in the flickering torchlight. A third girl was hanging limply from an upright wooden frame in the shape of an X. It was a whipping frame, I realised, and I knew I was in the slave quarters of a merchant’s house. The girl was obviously dead. Though her back was towards me I could see that her throat had been cut to the bone. And the man who killed her was standing by the whipping frame gaping at me in surprise. The girl had been whipped, stabbed through the buttocks and no doubt raped before the man had ended her life. He wore a scarlet and sky blue surcoat, spattered with her blood and the blood of her dead sisters. And he carried a long, smeared knife in his right hand.
I said no words of challenge but simply took two steps towards him and swung my sword at his head in a fast round-house cut. He desperately tried to block my strike with his gore-smirched dagger, and it saved my blade from burying itself in his skull, but then I stepped in towards him and smashed the iron pommel of my weapon into his mouth, shattering teeth, smearing lips and dropping the man to the floor. He stared up at me, as I stood over him, and he just had time to scream through his broken mouth, ‘My lord, help me!’ in English before I plunged the sword point down hard into his throat and silenced his voice for ever.
I stood away from him. In my black fury, I could have hacked his dead body into morsels — but I managed to control myself. I had done murder, although I did not regret it for a moment, and I knew I must leave this place as quickly as possible. King Richard had vowed that he would execute anyone who killed a fellow pilgrim: on the voyage from Marseilles, he had had a murderer tied to his dead victim and thrown into the sea to perish. I cocked my head to one side: could I hear singing coming from somewhere? It must be my imagination. As I looked around the courtyard before making my departure, I noticed a fourth girl, bound and gagged and crouching naked in the corner of the space by a shadow-dappled whitewashed wall. She was so still and white, she almost seemed part of the wall. But when I went to her, I saw that eyes were huge and dark with horror, and her hair was a slick of shining black down her naked back almost to her tiny waist. Even terrified as she was, and in that place of blood and pain and death, I saw that she was beautiful; extraordinarily beautiful. But she had seen me kill the man-at-arms. She was a witness. A thought flashed across my mind: I knew what Robin would do in these circumstances; she was a witness to a capital crime, she would have to die. In our outlaw days in Sherwood, Much the miller’s son had once killed an innocent page boy because he was a witness to a murder Little John had committed. Much even boasted about it until I told him I would shut his mouth for him, if he did not. So I knew what Robin, in his ruthlessness, would advise me to do. But I was not Robin.
I went back into the front room and seized a silk wall hanging that was lying on the floor, but which was mostly clean, and brought it back into the slave quarters. The girl had not moved. I cut through the ropes that bound her and wrapped her snugly in the silk cloth. And all the while she stared at me with her huge, beautiful eyes. I thought I could hear boots moving about on the floor above and I tried to hurry the girl along as gently as I could. But she did not seem to understand my words. With gestures and pointing I finally managed to communicate the urgency to her, and get her to understand that we must leave that house — now! And in a dozen heartbeats I had her outside in the street. I could definitely hear the sound of drunken singing: soldiers, no doubt, who were looking for another victim to rape, another house to plunder, and the sound was coming closer. I wanted to get the girl on the horse and lead her away from that place of death as quickly as possible — I could feel my skin crawling in anticipation of deadly danger — but she seemed very worried about her silk wall hanging coming open and was refusing to mount up on Ghost until she had fixed her dress. So I cut a hole in the hanging for her head, and cut a strip off the end to make a belt, and with her head poking through the priceless silk and the material tied to her waist, she at last consented to climb into the saddle.
I had just settled her in her seat when a voice behind me spoke; a slow, deep voice I had heard before: ‘You killed my man, singing boy; you murdered my sergeant!’ The voice sounded mildly annoyed rather than madly enraged. I spun as fast as I could, my sword in my hand, and there in the doorway of the house loomed the tall form of Sir Richard Malbete, with four men-at-arms holding torches and peering out from behind his bulk. ‘And I have not forgotten that you gave me this,’ the Beast said, running a finger down the red scar on the side of his face. ‘I have not forgiven you, singing boy, and I remember well your Jew-loving master’s tomfoolery at York,’ he rumbled, his feral eyes glittering madly in the torchlight. ‘You, and your so-called Earl, will pay a pretty price for standing in the way of my pleasures.’
I don’t believe I felt fear when I saw Malbete standing there with his four men — more swords than I could expect to fight and survive — and it wasn’t hatred either, although I had long dreamt of killing him. Instead, I felt a strange calmness, a clearheaded detachment. I was very conscious of my body, how I was standing, sword in my right hand, my left foot slightly in front of the other, and I was beginning to think about the exact moves I would make when the fighting began. The first thing would be to get the girl away. She was well seated on Ghost, bare feet in the stirrups, and looked as if she knew how to ride, and so a hard slap on my animal’s rump should set him off at the gallop. I was confident that Ghost could carry her to safety. It is strange that my first thoughts should have been of her. I had not formed any attachment to her, I was not in love with her; I saw that she was beautiful, yes, but she was nothing to me and yet my first instinct was to see her safe, at the risk of my own life. Truly, God moves in mysterious ways.
My next thought was that, in fact, there were too many of them to fight only one man efficiently, they would get in each other’s way, and they were standing crowded in a doorway behind Malbete. Therefore, I realised, I had to go forward, towards them, to take the fight into that doorway. If I stood there in that narrow opening, only one or possibly two men could come at me at a time, until one or two of them took it into his head to climb out the window, and come at me from behind. Then I was probably dead. But for several precious moments, if I could hold the doorway, the girl would have the time to get away.
So. Now. Time to move, Alan: I’d slap the horse with my left hand, make a lunge at Richard Malbete’s head to make him move back, and then get into the door to hold that space as long as I could. The singing was growing louder, the singers were in this very street, and just before I launched myself into my doomed attack, a wonderful thought struck me. God was surely with me: I knew that song! I had heard it sung, many, many times over the long miles between England and the Mediterranean Sea. It was a song in the Welsh language! And the men singing it…
‘Ho there, it’s young Alan; joy to you on this fine night,’ said Owain, his voice thickened with wine. ‘How’s about you give the boys a tune?’ I turned my head slowly, my neck muscles seeming to be stiff and unyielding, and there was Owain standing like a Visitation of Christ, at the head of about thirty red-faced archers — bows unstrung, it was true, and all drunk as lords, but each with a short sword in his belt, which I had personally trained them to use. God be thanked for his mercy.
‘Look, he’s found himself a woman; and, by Jesu, she’s a tasty piece,’ shouted one of the archers. He was quickly shushed into silence by his drunken fellow bowmen. Sober, on the whole, they showed great respect for me.
‘Are you all right, Alan?’ asked Owain, ‘only you look a little pale. Have a drink.’ He held out a flask.
I turned back to look at the doorway. Sir Richard Malbete was gone. And halfway up the street, walking away from us at a brisk pace, was a knot of men-at-arms in surcoats of scarlet and sky blue. I was content for now to let them go.
I sheathed my sword. ‘I am well, thank you Owain,’ I said. ‘But I would be grateful if you could provide me with an escort to take this lady back to headquarters. There are a lot of drunken, disreputable types on the streets tonight.’ I looked down my nose like a school-master at the gang of tough, wine-flushed men who had undoubtedly just saved my life. And the Welshmen all cackled merrily at my feeble jest.
Love is perhaps the strangest of all human experiences; the moments of happiness it offers are truly sublime, but I’m not sure you could describe it as pleasant, and often it is a source of great torment; yet we seem to seek it out all our lives like moths drawn to a deadly flame. In a matter of days, I was deeply in love with Nur, for that was the name of the slave girl that I rescued from the grand house in the old town that night. It started for me with a terrible kind of lust; when I looked at her slim body, her great dark eyes, her perfect skin, and plump, almost bruised looking mouth, I wanted to possess her, to wrap her in my arms and kiss her, to encompass her with my body so that we were joined, made one. I don’t mean in the crude physical way that ordinary men and women couple — I refused to allow myself to touch her, which was foolish of me. I know now that when you find love, you should grab it with both hands and enjoy it while it lasts. But then I was young, on a holy pilgrimage, and I was filled with a deep sense of boyish morality.
There were practical reasons, too. For a start, I could find no language to communicate with her — she spoke no English, French, Latin — I even tried her in the Langue d‘oc, the southern tongue that many of the troubadours spoke and which was King Richard’s native language. But she could not understand a word of any of them. Only by hand gestures and eye contact did we establish that I was Alan and she was Nur, and that I was her protector in the camp and she should stay close to me and my servant William and not wander off on her own. She told me that she was ‘Filistini’, and I took that to mean that she was an Arab from Outremer, one of the Philistines of the Bible, though how she had become a slave in a household in Sicily I had no idea.
On the first night, when we had returned to the monastery, William and I scoured around and found her some clean female clothes, a little food and wine, and some water and a cloth for washing. She seemed terrified of both of us, which was understandable. But William was kind to her and, by mimicry, showed her what was expected, and that we meant her no harm. He was a good boy, deeply kind and loyal to me. Then we both stood guard outside the door of the cell, feeling noble and, for my part, wondering what on earth I was going to do with her and desperately trying not to think of her perfect thrusting young breasts beneath that thin silk wall hanging. After an age of listening to her splashing and singing inside the cell, and trying to suppress my imagination, I had a brilliant idea and sent William off to find Reuben. He had grown up in the Arab lands and would surely know how to speak to her in her own tongue.
William returned shortly with the Jew — he had indeed been playing dice while I was searching for him in Messina, but he was touched by the fact that I had tried to seek him out. He knocked on the door of the cell and entered. A quarter of an hour later he emerged.
‘I have told her that, although young, you are a great Christian warrior from the north and that you are travelling with this army to seek battle in Outremer. I have said to her that, if she serves you faithfully, you will allow her to accompany you as a servant, that you will feed and clothe her and protect her until you reach the Holy Land, and then you will return her to her father’s village unharmed. All of this she has agreed to, and she is waiting inside to show her undying loyalty to such a noble knight.’ He said all this with a perfectly straight face, but I scowled at him anyway.
‘But where will she sleep?’ I asked. What am I going to do about clothes and — you know — women’s things…’
‘As to where she will sleep, I believe she expects to sleep with you. That is her trade, she is a pleasure girl…’
‘Certainly not,’ I snapped, straightening my shoulders and glaring at Reuben. ‘I rescued her from rapists and took her away from a life of degradation, and now that she is safe, I will not use her for my own sinful purposes.’
By God, I was a pompous little tyke in those days. Reuben was already laughing, his brown eyes creased shut with pleasure, tears dripping down his cheeks. He howled with glee, clutching his stomach and doubling himself over in his merriment. I put my hand on my sword, and took a step towards him, and he just managed to smother his mirth and avoid bloodshed. ‘Of course, young Alan, of course,’ he finally managed to say, covering his laughter with a coughing fit. ‘She can stay with the other women, if you wish. I will arrange it with Elise.’ And giggling, shaking his head ruefully and snuffling wetly he walked away, with my furious eyes boring into his back.
By staying with the other women, Reuben meant the collection of tents that had been set up at the back of the monastery, and which housed the two dozen or so women that followed the officers of the headquarters staff. They were cooks and cleaners, washerwomen and seamstresses, mistresses and prostitutes, and Elise the strange Norman fortune-teller was their leader; but they were hardly acknowledged to exist by the knights of King Richard’s household. We were after all supposed to be keeping ourselves pure, as befits holy pilgrims on a sacred journey.
When I entered the cell, Nur was kneeling on the floor, with her eyes lowered submissively. She was clean, her wet hair tied in a thick braid at the back of her head, and dressed in a threadbare old chemise that fell past her knees. Then she looked up at me and I felt a shock like a bolt of lightning. Her deep tar-pit eyes stared into mine and sucked me into her soul. I tried to break our locked gaze and yet I could not look completely away; I took in her gorgeous dark red lips, high cheekbones, tiny upturned nose, the long elegant neck, the swell of her generous bosom beneath the thin chemise. I was stiffening in my undergarments just looking at her kneeling there, and I was sure that behind those doe-like eyes she could tell that my prick was filling up with pure lust. Behind me, William coughed. And I realised I had been staring at her for too long. I looked away guiltily and noticed that the food and wine had disappeared, and that the plate and goblet had been washed and dried. Then I took a step closer and came to stand in front of her — I was painfully aware that my fully erect member was just inches from her face — and I put out an arm to raise her up but she grasped my hand, turned it over and softly kissed my palm. My member gave a visible twitch below the cloth of my tunic. It was an extraordinarily erotic act. I felt her soft lips barely touch the skin of my calloused paw but it was like the touch of a hot iron and I jerked involuntarily.
I lifted her to her feet and William wrapped her in his cloak — she could not wander the halls of the monastery in that flimsy chemise, it would have started a full-scale battle — and I gruffly ordered William to escort her to the women’s quarters and see that she was well received by Elise. Then I went to the lavatorium, stripped my body naked and poured bucket after bucket of cold water over my body to try to expunge the sinful thoughts that were careering crazily around my head.
Within three days, I was completely, utterly, insanely in love with Nur. I found that I missed her face, her proximity and I wanted more than anything else to be in her company. I constantly thought about touching her, stroking her face. In my dreams we made love endlessly, our bodies entwined, making a wonderful array of shapes and patterns. And I would awake, covered in sweat, with my member as hard as a sword hilt…
Nur would come to me every morning and bring me bread and cheese and ale and a pitcher of water and a basin to wash in. Sometimes, if I awoke early from an erotic dream, the long grey early morning hours seemed an eternity, I could hardly wait to hear her timid knock and see her beautiful face at the door. And then she would come in, and smile a greeting, and pick up my clothes to wash and mend. I was lost in love — and yet we never touched. Since that kiss on my palm the first night, I had not touched her again. I didn’t trust myself. I was miserable and elated; I was so happy just to gaze upon her beauty, and cast down when she left me to go about her womanly chores. And then there was the guilt; and the totally unwarranted shame. Father Simon came to see me and preached a homily on young men’s lusts and how God would turn his face away from youthful sinners who took advantage of poor serving women, even if they were infidels. If only he knew, the chinless old fool. He told me that I was the talk of headquarters, that Little John was making crude jests about Nur and myself — and I blushed hotly in rage at the injustice of it all. But I could not really complain — I had Nur in my life and every morning when she greeted me, my soul was full of joy. I went about my duties that autumn and winter like a sleepwalker. When I practiced sword play with Little John, he beat me easily and scolded me for lacking attention. I did not care. I thought of nothing but Nur and her body: her deep black eyes, her creamy breasts; her tiny waist, and how it would feel to put my hands around it; how her lips would feel against mine; how her buttocks would feel nestled in the curve of my pelvis. What it would be like to enter her…
But enough of this nonsense. I am sure that you, my patient reader, have experienced love and know full well its pleasures and pains. Let it suffice to say that I was a young man, and I was truly in love for the first time.
I tried to expunge Nur from my fevered thoughts with healthy outdoor exercise. Robin had suggested that I work on my skills with a lance, which were surely lacking, and he had also asked our captain of cavalry, Sir James de Brus, to teach me.
Sir James started me off on the quintain, which he had set up beyond the army camp on a fairly level piece of ground north of the city. Above us on a high hill that overlooked the whole of Messina, King Richard was constructing a great wooden castle. It was a curious building, formed of already fabricated parts, which Richard had brought with him from France. It was strange to see a pack of foot soldiers toiling up the hill and carrying with them a long section of ready-made rampart complete with tooth-like crenellations, or to watch a group of cavalrymen using their horses to haul a great wooden door up the steep side of the hill. But I could see the logic: timber was scarce and it was much more sensible of Richard to have brought his own materials to construct a defensible position than to rely on God to provide the appropriate materials locally. The castle was to be called ‘Mategriffon’ — literally ‘Kill the Griffons’ — as a grim reminder that Richard, from his new stronghold high above the town, could take Messina and punish its citizens whenever he chose.
The sacking of the town had two interesting consequences: firstly, King Philip had been furious when he saw Richard’s royal standard flying above the walls of the town — I think he had expected Richard’s insane attack with a tiny band of knights to fail — and he had threatened to take his men back to France, if he was not given half the spoils of the captured town. The second consequence was that King Tancred of Sicily was completely intimidated by the swift capture of his most lucrative port, and had paid Richard a mountain of gold and silver to end the trouble between them. The money, chest upon chest of it, was supposed to be the full and final payment of Queen Joanna’s dower, but it was also in actual fact a bribe to gain Richard’s goodwill and support in the future. Tancred had his own enemies in Italy and an alliance with the most powerful prince in Christendom was more valuable than mere money.
Some quiet diplomacy on the part of Robert of Thumham did a great deal towards smoothing things over between the English King and the French. Richard took down his own banners from the ramparts of Messina, and replaced them with the flags of the Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitaller. And these two great orders of fighting monks henceforth assumed charge of the town. Richard then decreed that all the plunder taken from Messina must be returned. Of course, nobody in our army was foolish enough to admit that they had any ill-gotten goods or silver, so this was a meaningless gesture; and certainly Richard did not press this point. But, in an effort to keep relations between the townsmen and our soldiers sweet, Richard did outlaw gambling, under pain of ferocious punishment. And he fixed the price of bread at a penny a loaf and wine at so-and-so-much a pint and decreed that these essentials of life could not be sold by the Griffons any dearer.
As the final gesture of his desire to keep the peace, and most generously in my view, Richard gave one third of the gold he had received from Tancred to King Philip. Thus mollified, the French King went back to his lair at the palace, no doubt to begin searching for a fresh grievance against our generous monarch. My friend Ambroise said to me, over a cup of wine and a haunch of crisp roasted pork one night, that the French King’s great and holy expedition was not so much aimed against the Saracens as against King Richard — and although it was meant only as a sly witticism, there was a great deal of truth in his boozy jest.
The quintain was a horizontal pole with a circular wooden target at one end and a counterweight in the shape of a leather bag of grain, or sometimes water, at the other. The pole was mounted on a vertical post and when the shield was struck from horseback by the lance, the contraption would rotate at high speed and the counterweight bag of grain could sweep an unwary horseman off his seat as he rode past.
I had used one before a couple of times, when I lived deep in Sherwood Forest at the home of an old Saxon warrior called Thangbrand, but I had never mastered it. I did know, however, that the answer was speed. So the first time Sir James told me to ride at it, I put my heels to Ghost and cantered at the target, going at a fair lick, with an unfamiliar kite-shaped shield strapped to my left arm and a long blunted spear couched under my right.
I found that trying to control the heavy lance was much more difficult than I had thought. The padded tip wavered all over the place as I moved with the gait of the horse, and as a result, I missed the target completely. Ghost faltered but carried on charging forward, impelled by his own momentum. At the last minute he shied slightly to the side to avoid the target, which crashed into my shield a heartbeat later with surprising force and nearly unseated me. The swinging sack of grain whistled past my back, missing me by a whisker.
As I trotted back to Sir James de Brus, I was expecting a stream of ridicule to spew from his scowling face. I had heard him upbraiding his troopers and the man’s language, when he was angry, would have disgraced a whoremaster. But he merely said: ‘Nobody gets it right to begin with. Watch me again.’ And he cantered off towards the target, his lance straight out in front of his body, the long heavy wooden pole as unmoving as if it were held in a vice. He charged up to the target, going up to the gallop for the last few yards, hit the circle of wood dead centre and was riding easily past before the swinging bag of corn was a quarter way round its circular path.
I tried again; missed again, and had to fend off the target with my shield once more. Then I made a mistake and slowed right down, to make sure I could hit the target foursquare. But Ghost and I were moving too slowly and the swinging sack caught me hard in the ribs and tumbled me out of the saddle. Bruised and breathless, I remounted Ghost and returned once again to Sir James. ‘I think we’ll start with something a wee bit simpler,’ he said, but not altogether unkindly.
Sir James set up a pole at about head height, with a fork cut into the wood, into which was stuck a ring of plaited straw about the size of an apple. With a real lance, not a padded one this time, I had to put the spear point through the ring as I rode past and lift the straw circle off the pole. It was extremely difficult. I missed time and again, even only going at the trot, and found I was growing frustrated, angry even, with myself and with Sir James de Brus for making me feel so small and incompetent.
‘Now try it at the gallop,’ my teacher suggested after I had missed the ring for the twentieth time. I bit back an angry retort and dug my spurs into Ghost. He responded and we thundered towards the ring on the pole. Strangely, the galloping horse gave me a more stable platform and as we approached the ring I lunged forward with the lance, as if it had been a sword, and to my amazement, I pierced the straw ring and lifted it clean off the pole. I was elated. Triumph at last! Sir James even offered me a twisted grimace, which I took to be his scrumpled version of a congratulatory smile. ‘Now do it again,’ he said gruffly. So I did.
Within the week I had mastered the straw ring. I could lift it off the pole nineteen times out of twenty. And so we went back to the quintain. Two weeks later and I had mastered that, too. And made a friend.
After a long day tilting at the quintain, Sir James invited me to share a flask of wine with him. It was late November and the days were growing short; on that grey afternoon we sat in the monk’s refectory alone apart from a pair of knights sitting at the far end of the room playing tables, or as some call it, backgammon.
We had been discussing the tactics of the Saracen cavalry. Sir James had already made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, before it was lost to Saladin, and he had been told much about the fighting style of Turkish cavalry — apparently they were superb horsemen, whose practice it was ride up close to their enemies, shoot arrows at them from horseback and then ride away swiftly — when Nur appeared at our table bringing bread and cold meat to go with the rather fine wine that Sir James had provided.
Brus scowled at her, but then he scowled at everybody, it was just his habitual expression. But Nur seemed afraid of him and stepped closer to me. Then she noticed a loose thread on my tunic, and with a classically feminine gesture, she tugged it away from the cloth and then smoothed the material down again over my shoulder.
I wasn’t paying attention to Nur, for once. I was watching Sir James and thinking about how one could defeat Saracen cavalry, and I saw his mouth fall open in surprise. When Nur had left, he leaned forward. And said to me in a low voice: ‘I beg your pardon, Alan, if I am being impertinent, but is that lovely lassie your bed-partner?’
I blushed, and said, ‘Of course not. She is not a common whore. She is a good girl, a young servant who I am helping to return to her family in the Holy Land.’
‘But you do ken that she’s in head over heels love with you?’ Sir James continued, ‘I mean, it stands out a mile.’
I was struck speechless. It had genuinely not occurred to me that my feelings for Nur might be reciprocated.
Sir James seemed to realise that he had stepped into marshy ground and he began to talk at random to give me time to recover myself.
‘I knew a beautiful lass like that once, well not as beautiful as her, and she loved me, too, but I had a rival for her affections,’ he said. ‘It was back in Scotland, oh, years ago, but I remember her face well. Dorothea, or Dotty, was her name…’
I wasn’t really listening. I wanted to run after Nur and grab her by the arms and demand to know if she loved me or not. Instead, I managed to control myself and said distractedly: ‘Is that why you left Scotland? For love?’
‘Ach no, nothing so fine. It was just a killing. I killed a Douglas, and if you kill a Douglas you need to watch yourself because they’ll all be coming after you, the whole boiling pot of them looking for revenge. They are as bad as the Murdacs for vengeance, but then, of course, the Murdacs would be on our own side.’
‘What happened?’ I asked, my curiosity aroused in spite of myself.
‘It was just a grubby squabble in an ale-house in Annandale, but tempers flew and swords were drawn, and before I knew it young Archie Douglas was dead at my feet. I went to the castle see the chief of the Brus himself, my uncle Robert, to find out what could be done about the matter, and he was sympathetic, right enough. He was no stranger to an accidental killing himself. And so he gave the Douglases a blood price — wee Archie wasne worth all that much, he was a wastrel and a drunkard, and the Brus was a rich man, but as part of the agreement to save a feud breaking out between our two clans, he had to send me away. The Earl of Huntingdon, who was staying at the castle at the time and who is kin to the Countess of Locksley, suggested that I join Robin’s cavalry and help whip them into shape. And, I’ll tell you this Alan, I’m glad I did. I’ve never been happier since I joined this crew of scruffy layabouts.’ He gave me one of his horrible screwed up smiles again — and I realised that I believed him. He was happy; the scowling and the ferocious demeanor was just his way of disguising his feelings, of protecting himself and his dignity from over-familiarity.
‘What was that you said earlier about the Murdacs,’ I asked.
‘Oh they’re worse than the very Devil himself for vengeance,’ said Sir James. ‘Cross a Murdac and there’ll be murder for sure, as we say at home.’
‘You said something about them being on your side?’
‘Oh aye, my mother was a Murdac; she was the daughter of Sir William Murdac of Dumfries and Mary Scott of Liddesdale. But, of course, her father, Mary’s that is, was a damned Douglas from Lanarkshire…’
I was only listening to him with half an ear, I had other, more urgent things on my mind: I needed to know how Nur felt about me, and for that I needed to be able to speak to her.
I found Reuben in the old town, back at his comfortable lodgings at the Jewish merchant’s home. After a good deal of cajoling, he agreed to teach me the rudiments of Arabic; we would have a lesson every day, and we would start the next day. I could have asked Reuben to act as an interpreter but was determined that I would be able to speak to Nur myself, and divine for myself her true feelings for me. At a moment of tender love, I did not want another man coming between us.
I rode back from the old town and my meeting with Reuben in high spirits: but when I reached the monastery I found the place stricken with terror. The Devil was abroad, one old soldier who guarded the gate whispered to me; and he had laid his red claw on the Earl of Locksley.
It was true that Robin was gravely ill, near death, and had been laid out in his bed, pale and streaked with his own vomit — but I did not believe it was the Devil’s work. Somebody in the monastery had tried to poison my master; the same person, no doubt, who had tried to kill him in Burgundy.