Sir Richard Malbête wasted no time: ‘What are you waiting for?’ he shouted to the men-at-arms while still twenty paces away. ‘Seize the Jews!’
A man-at-arms tentatively put out a hand to take hold of Robin’s bridle, but my master pulled his horse’s head away. ‘Someone in the crowd shouted: ‘Kill the Jews!’ and the cry was taken up by many voices. And suddenly we were in the midst of a full-blown battle.
‘Make for the gate!’ yelled Robin, hauling out his sword and cutting savagely at the man-at-arms who was still trying to grab his horse’s reins. A man clutched at my leg and I shook the limb free and booted him in the face. I had my blades out by now as well; poniard in my left hand, sword in my right, tied reins over the pommel of my saddle. I slapped the flat of my blade on the rump of Ruth’s horse, it reared and dislodged a man-at-arms who was grappling around Ruth’s waist and trying to pull her down. The horses started forward, mercifully toward the gate, and I plunged forward after her, cracking my sword into the man’s mail-clad arm as Ghost shouldered past. There were soldiers running at me, left and right, and I hacked and kicked, and slashed at faces and limbs until momentarily I had a circle of space around me; but there were too many men-at-arms rushing in for that to last. A soldier unwisely came at me from behind. I gave Ghost the battle signal I had so patiently taught him and he lashed out behind him with both back hooves; with a terrific crack of bone the man went flying, his chest caved in. I cut down another man with sword and sank my poniard into another’s back, the fine strong Spanish steel easily punching through the links on his hauberk, as it had been designed to do. There was no sign of the Jewish couple and their baby, the only evidence that they had once lived was a knot of men-at-arms stabbing down again and again with their swords into a half-glimpsed mound of wriggling blood-soaked cloth. I looked away. Reuben, still horsed, was laying about him with his deadly scimitar, men staggering back from his blows with terrible gashes to face and head. Robin had already cut his way clear of the mêlée. He was halfway to the gate and I saw him look back. We had agreed that, if these circumstances arose, it was every man for himself, but he reined in, looking at Reuben who was still surrounded by soldiers and a group of townsmen flailing at him with scythes and rakes, screaming for his Jewish blood. Then Robin looked to his left, and I, too, saw what he was seeing. My lovely friend Ruth was being dragged from her horse by many grasping hands. I exchanged sword cuts with a man-at-arms who had run up to me and sent him tumbling away then looked back at Robin. He was nearer to Ruth than to Reuben, both of whom now desperately needed his help but - and I will remember these few moments for the rest of my life - he pulled hard at his reins, and wheeling his horse, he lifted his sword and charged back into the fray ... to Reuben’s rescue. I gave a great shout of rage, batted a townsman out of my way and put spurs to Ghost, forcing a way through the crush towards Ruth, chopping desperately about me as I urged my mount forward. But Ruth had disappeared into the press of the mob. I saw hands raised and the glint of steel in them and imagined I heard the dreadful chopping noise as the blades sliced into her sweet flesh.
Suddenly I was in free space again, the nearest soldier ten paces away. I turned and saw that Reuben and Robin too had broken free of the crowd and were heading towards the open gate, I made to follow, but a man on horseback was coming at me from my right - it was Sir Richard Malbête. He smirked as he swung his sword at my head, and I blocked instinctively and twisting my wrist, turned the block into a blow, crashing the edge of the blade hard into his face. It was not a killing strike, but it contained the manic strength of a rage I had never felt before. There was a great gout of blood, a muffled cry and Sir Richard almost slipped from the saddle. But I had no time to turn Ghost and finish him. A score of men-at-arms in Malbête’s scarlet and sky blue surcoats was rushing towards me. With one last despairing glance at Ruth’s horse, which was standing alone with its head lowered, as if in mourning, I put my heels to Ghost’s ribs and galloped for the gate and freedom.
I swear that if I had caught up with Robin by the gate to the bailey of York Castle, I would have killed him - or, at least, tried to. I was sobbing like a baby as I rode hell-for-leather through the gate, the image of Ruth slipping down into that sea of grasping hands and hate-filled faces. But I cuffed my tears away - this was not the time for weakness - and made it over the bridge on the river Foss, before turning right down the straight road towards Walmgate. Ahead of me, and far out of reach, Robin and Reuben galloped down the road, not bothering to pause at Walmgate but surging straight through, past a startled pair of men-at-arms and into the open countyside beyond.
How could he have done it? I asked myself, again and again, how could Robin have made that decision. How could he have decided, when he came to that crossroads in the bailey, to save the life of a man, a very competent and deadly warrior at that, and choose to sacrifice the life of a young, sweet innocent girl. I knew why, of course, I knew in my heart why Robin had done it. Robin needed Reuben for whatever his money-grubbing scheme was; Reuben was his route to riches; the girl was valueless to him. But even though I knew the reason; I still could not believe it. I had seen Robin do some terrible things in my time with him. He had condoned the ritual death of a human being to celebrate a rite for a foul pagan god, he had cut off a man’s arms and legs to inspire terror in a community, but this ... This was the deliberate sacrifice, murder, you might say, of a young girl, whose only crime had been to be a Jewess.
When I caught up with Robin and Reuben, and we all slowed to a canter, I did not want to speak to either man. It seemed that neither of them was in much mood for conversation either. Reuben wept silently as we rode, and Robin, after checking that we were all unharmed - I had a shallow cut on my hand but no recollection as to who had inflicted it on me, Reuben had been stabbed in the calf muscle but seemed not to notice it - we rode back towards Kirkton in silence, our heads hanging in shame and grief, each sunk in his own melancholic thoughts.
The next morning, after a cold, silent night under the stars, as we trotted along the road to Kirkton, that runs to the north and above the beautiful valley of Locksley, I heard the bells of our little church of St Nicholas ringing out, echoing across the peaceful rolling dale. And I realised it was Easter Sunday: the holiest day in the year.
Part Two: Sicily and Cyprus
Chapter Seven
My daughter-in-law Marie is in love. She sings as she feeds the chickens outside in the courtyard, she gave me an extra spoonful of honey on my porridge this morning, and smoothed the thin grey hair off my forehead in a gesture of rare tenderness when she brought me my mug of warmed ale this evening before bed. Her eyes are bright, merry even, her cheeks slightly flushed, and she laughs for no reason; and occasionally she dances a few steps, swinging her skirts gaily, when she thinks nobody is looking.
The object of her affections? Osric. Her distant cousin, my rotund bailiff, has brought joy to her heart after several fumbling weeks of a courtship, which was often almost too painful for an old man to watch. Finally, she consented to his ponderous advances, and now she has moved into the small guest hall on the far side of the courtyard, where he and his sons reside, and talks of a marriage in the spring. I am glad for her but I cannot say I understand why she loves him: he is an ugly plodder, a painstaking dullard, in whom the last ember of youth has long been extinguished. He is one of the last people on earth I would choose to spend my remaining years with; while she, only five years younger than him, still has the waist and wits of a saucy young maiden. But love him she does. What can it be that has aroused her ardour?
‘He is a good man, Alan, and that is why I have chosen to wed him. He is steady, honest and caring, and he will never leave me,’ Marie told me with a smug smile, ‘and I want you love him, too. He has saved Westbury with his hard work; you must try to think of him as another son.’
That, I think, is unlikely. But, for Marie’s sake, I will try to behave a little more warmly towards him.
Christmas is approaching: the season of feasts and frivolity. We have slaughtered most of the pigs and great round hams, sides of bacon and long strings of plump sausages hang from an iron ring, drying and smoking above the fire in the centre of the hall. We have more than enough firewood for the winter; Osric and his sons spent a week clearing dead timber from the copse by the stream and hauling it with ox teams to the hall. The buttery is stacked with barrels of good wine from Aquitaine, and Marie has been baking huge game pies and fat pastries out on the big oven in the courtyard. We had the first snowfall last week and more is coming: perhaps strangely, I am looking forward to a really good snowstorm, to being snug in my hall with a roaring fire and plenty to eat and drink.
There is one dark cloud on my horizon: Osric has reported to me that Dickon, my elderly swineherd, has been stealing from me. Apparently, a few weeks after the sows have farrowed, he quite often takes one of the piglets away from its mother and either sells it for meat or, if it is old enough, fattens it himself for his pot. He always claims that the mother pig has rolled on her offspring while asleep and that the piglet has died, and as my sows can have anywhere between eight and sixteen piglets in a litter, nobody has noticed the crime until now. Dickon, that one-armed old fool, was drunkenly boasting of it in the ale house, and Osric overheard him. Now Osric wants to raise a jury of twelve men from the village and have Dickon tried for his crimes at the next manor court, just before Christmas. I am troubled about this: is a piglet here or there so much to worry about? I have not missed them in the past and I still have many breeding pigs, and as much pork meat as I require, and more. Marie says there is a principle at stake here, that I am too soft with the villeins, and it is my fault that I let Westbury decline so much in the years before Osric arrived. As lord of the manor, she says, the villeins should fear and respect me, how else will they refrain from robbing me blind and laughing up their sleeves? Osric says that, as Dickon has over the years laid his one good hand on chattels of mine worth more than a shilling, I could have him prosecuted for a felony: if found guilty, the penalty for old Dickon would then be death by hanging. I sometimes wonder to myself what Robin would do in these circumstances. Would he have a man hanged for a piglet? In the old Sherwood days, to even touch Robin’s money chest was a death sentence. The manor court is to be held two weeks from now: I must think on this some more before then.
I do find it touching, if utterly bewildering, to watch Marie and Osric together: she so happy and girlish; he a great blundering mole-faced booby. Under my brows, I observe their tender glances, the way they fondle each other’s hands and arms, discreetly, whenever possible. It reminds me of my own first true love, of the first time I felt that breathtaking, swooping feeling, the hollow-ness in my chest in the presence of my beloved, the soaring joy at her smile, and the physical ache at her absence. I think, foolish old man that I am, that I’m in truth a little jealous of their happiness.
When I talk of my own first love, I do not, of course, mean with Reuben’s daughter Ruth, God rest her soul. I knew her only for a few days, in extraordinary, appalling circumstances, and if I felt any long-lasting emotions over her death, the uppermost one was guilt. I had liked her, admired her beauty and, wanting to play-act the chivalrous knight, promised to guard her life with my own. I broke my promise. In the months that followed I felt a huge pressing sense of guilt at her death, like a lead cope around my shoulders - and a wheeling flock of unanswerable questions circled inside my head: what if I had been quicker with my sword? Should I have fled the bailey of York Castle when I did? Would it have been more honourable to have stayed and died with her? I felt a little spike of hatred, too - for Robin. I fully believed that he could have saved her had he chosen to, though it would probably have meant abandoning Reuben to his doom.
I spoke to my solid friend Tuck on our return to Bradfield, at length and in private. Or as private as one can be in a castle packed with four hundred men all busily preparing for a long campaign.
‘He’s a deeply practical man,’ Tuck said to me after I had told him the story and revealed my feelings of shame, guilt and anger. We were sitting side by side on a great wooden coffer in the gloomy north-east corner of St Nicholas’s church. ‘And there is not much room in his heart for sentimentality. He sees that something needs to be done and he does it, regardless of the cost to himself or anyone else. As we both know well, he can be utterly ruthless.’
There were a handful of archers standing near the font while the priest, an innocuous but slightly silly man named Simon, blessed their bows with holy water before our departure for war, but the men were out of earshot. ‘And you must ask yourself, Alan - honestly - what would have been achieved by saving the girl?’ the monk said. I looked at Tuck, in confusion. Surely saving the girl, or any human life, was a noble end in itself?
‘I mean, if you take the longer view,’ he said. He had the good grace to drop his eyes, but he struggled on despite his evident feelings of shame: ‘By saving Reuben, Robin preserved this army. Without Reuben’s Jewish friends in Lincoln, who have since lent us a dragon’s hoard of silver, we would not be able to leave for France next month to join in the Great Pilgrimage to save the Holy Land. If he had saved the girl, but lost Reuben, well, without wages our soldiers here would slip away back to their homes, or take to the forests as footpads, and the army would have disintegrated; Robin would have disappointed King Richard, disobeyed him in truth. He would be out of favour; he might even have been outlawed again for dereliction of duty. No, as you have described it, with so many enemies about him, and so little time, he was bound to save Reuben ...’