‘It wasn’t a Griffon,’ I said quietly. ‘It was Sir Richard Malbête.’ Robin stared at me for a few moments, his luminous eyes probing mine for the truth.
‘Now that is interesting,’ he said at last. ‘Sir Richard is very much our
preux
chevalier these days. Since he captured the Emperor’s standard in Cyprus, he has become the golden knight in the King’s eyes; he can do no wrong. So what really happened?’
I told him, and his mouth opened in surprise. ‘That fox-faced shit needs killing, if anybody ever did,’ he muttered when I had finished my tale. ‘But we have a little problem, Alan - nobody is going to believe you if you claim that Sir Richard, the golden knight, that shining example of chivalry, tried to kill you. You’d better keep that to yourself while we work out how to fix the bastard. Don’t go off trying to take him on your own, we’ll do it together. But it’s not going to be easy; he’s with the King a good deal these days, part of his household now...’
I had come to a similar conclusion myself. It would not be simple but, easy or hard, I was also determined to kill Malbête one way or another - for my own personal safety, if for no other reason. Although there were more than enough other reasons to put the Beast down: for Ruth, for the Jews of York, for Nur, and those butchered slave girls in Messina ...
We sat in silence for a while. I took a grape; they were delicious: cool, firm and sweet as honey.
‘Robin,’ I said, slightly hesitantly, ‘can you tell me what happened; how we got here, how we took Acre. I don’t even know what month this is.’
He stared at me. ‘Yes, of course, has nobody told you? Well, it’s July; we took Acre a week ago, not without some trouble, but the garrison surrendered in the second week of July, the twelth day of the month, I think.’ He paused and looked at me. ‘I’d better start at the beginning.’ He reached over and tore off a cluster of grapes and popped them in his mouth. When he had finished chewing, he said: ‘We found you, and Ghost, in the dawn after the night battle in the olive grove, and we took you down to the beach where a hospital had been set up. The Emperor took to his heels again in the middle of the battle, which was lucky for us, because if he had rallied his troops they would have crushed us like a man stamping on an ant. But he fled, and we won, and your foxy friend Malbête came out of it looking like a hero, the golden standard in his proud right hand. He presented the standard to the King as a wedding present for his marriage to Berengaria in Limassol, a few days after the battle. He’s a wily bastard, Malbête; it was exactly the right move to make, and the King was delighted.
‘Anyway, we chased the Emperor around the island for a while, but the local barons had turned against him and finally he had to surrender - oh, and you’ll like this,’ he took another grape, ‘the Emperor gave himself up on the strict condition that King Richard would not bind him in iron chains. Richard agreed, and when Isaac Comnenus came in, Richard had silver chains forged and had him bound in those. He’s got a nasty sense of humour, our royal master, very nasty.’ And he laughed with, I believed, just a touch of bitterness.
‘So we had Cyprus, and Richard then set off at last for Outremer, and we ended up here at Acre. The siege was in full swing but going nowhere: the Muslim garrison inside the walls still defied us, and the Christian troops outside were themselves surrounded by Saladin’s forces. Of course, King Richard’s arrival changed all that. He started building siege engines immediately, great monsters that can knock holes in stone walls, you should see them, Alan, much more formidable than a mangonel. Anyway, we smashed a few holes in the walls, but every time we tried to make an assault, Saladin would attack us from behind. Eventually, after a lot of bloody fighting on two fronts, and when the holes in the walls were big enough, the garrison surrendered - first having received their master’s permission, of course. And, as part of the deal, Saladin withdrew as well. We’ve been lucky, though; I managed to keep our men out of the worst of the fighting...’ He gave a sour smile. ‘That is to say we were not invited to join in the bloodiest assaults.’
There was a tiny pause. I knew what a great dishonour this simple statement meant. He straightened his shoulders and looked me in the eye. ‘The truth is, Alan, I’m not in favour at court, for one reason or another. I believe the King has taken against me and that some members of his circle are whispering against me ... spreading rumours about my family ... If I knew who it was I’d slaughter the mealy-mouthed sons of whores. But I don’t.’ He looked at his boots for a few moments, and then pulled himself together. ‘No matter,’ he said. ‘On the bright side, we haven’t lost too many men, and you are clearly on the mend. But I’m not sure I shall be staying in Outremer all that long, the way things are going. I have a few matters that I need to arrange, and then I may well go home and look to my affairs there.’
I couldn’t meet his eye. I knew what these rumours were suggesting. That Marie-Anne had made him a cuckold, and that baby Hugh was not his son.
‘We may all have to go home soon. I think the whole expedition may be coming apart at the seams,’ he continued. ‘Our gallant King Richard seems to have managed to quarrel with everybody here. King Philip, well, you know how things are between them, and they’ve got worse. Philip feels that Richard stole his thunder by taking Acre when he couldn’t manage it alone. So that’s an irritant. But did you know that there are now two men claiming to be the rightful King of Jerusalem? Guy de Lusignan and Conrad of Montferrat - neither has a very good claim, as it happens, only through their women, and as Jerusalem is in Saladin’s hands you might think the point moot. But no, it’s the cause of another royal quarrel: Philip has declared his support of Conrad of Monferrat, and Richard has taken the side of Guy de Lusignan. So there’s more bad blood between them. The word is that Philip is thinking of going back to France anyway. He’ll blame his departure on Richard but he just wants to go back so he can snatch some land in Flanders.’
I must have looked puzzled, for Robin went on. ‘I beg your pardon, I was forgetting that you wouldn’t know. The Count of Flanders died during the siege here, and now that he’s dead, Philip has designs on his land, which is directly to the north of his own territory. He’d no doubt like to have a crack at some of Richard’s holdings in Normandy, too.’
Robin paused for breath. ‘I haven’t told you the worst,’ he said. ‘As well as quarrelling with Philip and the French, King Richard has alienated the German contingent, too. Have you heard about the fuss over the flags? No? Well, it’s just another piece of arrogant stupidity. When we took Acre, Richard and Philip naturally hung their banners over the city, but the Germans, who fought under Leopold, Duke of Austria, felt that they deserved to have their banner up there too, and they had every right to, in my opinion - they had been fighting and dying here long before Richard arrived. So they hung up Leopold’s banner next to Richard’s. And Richard was furious - have you ever seen him lose his temper? It’s quite a sight. He went storming up to the battlements and personally kicked the Duke’s banner off the wall and into the ditch below. He said that, as Philip and he were kings, and was Leopold a mere duke, he had no right to fly his flag beside them as if they were equals. Now Leopold is furious with Richard and he, too, is threatening to go home. In a month there will be no Christian army left, at this rate.’
I was shocked: it seemed that the Great Pilgrimage, for which we had all travelled so far and suffered so much, was falling apart because of petty rivalries, jealousies and stupid quarrels. We had only just arrived in the Holy Land, and taken only one castle - I had yet to face a single Saracen warrior - and we might soon all be packing up and going back to England.
‘What other news? Have there been any more attempts on your life?’ I asked him, mainly to change the subject. He looked at me keenly. ‘As a matter of fact, yes, I believe so,’ he said. ‘It’s something I wanted to talk to you about. I was walking the perimeter of the city with Owain and some of the men - it was about noon, and sweltering hot, the day after we had taken the place - when an avalanche of rocks began above me: I was wiping the sweat from my eyes and looking up at the sun, or I wouldn’t have seen it: first a shower of rocks then a great boulder the size of a full-grown cow came crashing down. I just managed to jump aside in time. Gave me a shock, I can tell you. A lot of the masonry is loose from the battering we gave the place before we took it, and workmen are doing their best to patch it up, but I thought I saw somebody up there a few moments before the rocks began to fall. It could have been an accident, I suppose. But I don’t think so. I really don’t think so.’
‘I was hoping we had left all that behind in Messina,’ I said. And he nodded agreement.
‘But I think I know who it might be,’ I went on.
He looked at me, surprised. But remained silent for a few moments. ‘Well then,’ he said, slightly crossly, ‘who is it?’
‘I’m not certain; and I don’t want to give you a name in case I am wrong,’ I said. ‘It could cause no end of trouble and bad feeling.’ Actually, I was worried that Robin might quietly murder the person I had in mind, just as a precaution, and I was not yet fully convinced of his guilt. I did not want any more innocent blood on my conscience.
‘Let me make a few enquiries,’ I said, ‘and when I’m sure of my man, I’ll tell you his name.’
‘Very well,’ said Robin, trying hard to be light-hearted. ‘Play it close if you wish, but if I get murdered because you didn’t tell me, my spirit will haunt you till your dying day!’ Then he smiled at me and I felt a rush of affection for him. He had a lot resting on his head at that time: a murderer with the face of friend, huge debts unpaid at home and here, a wife who was making him look ridiculous in the eyes of his peers, and a royal master who, on the basis of slanderous lies, had banished him from his inner circle. I wanted to say something comforting to him but I could not find the words. He looked down at his interlinked hands for a moment. ‘You know, my friend,’ he said. ‘I sometimes wish I wasn’t an Earl, or the commander of an army, or a holy pilgrim on a sacred mission; I sometimes wish I was just a common outlaw again. If a man maligned me, I killed him; if I wanted something, I took it. Things were somehow simpler ... and better.’ And with those words, he left.
Two days later I was able to get out of bed and take some sun for an hour in the stone-flagged courtyard of the Hospitallers quarter. I had several more visitors to my bed before then, apart from Nur who spent hours of each day with me: my loyal servant William, who actually burst into tears of happiness when he saw me upright and getting stronger; Reuben who made me piss into a jar before smelling and tasting the urine to determine what I could have told him myself: that I was better - and Will Scarlet.
My boyhood companion looked fit and strong - and happy, and the cause of his happiness was standing beside him in a shapeless green dress, with her white hair as fluffy as a lamb’s. It was Elise, the strange Norman woman who claimed to be able to see the future. They were now married.
There was more than fifteen years in age difference between them, and she was half a foot taller, but despite that, I could see that they were well suited to each other and clearly in love. She fussed over him like a mother hen, it is true, but she seemed to have brought out from his soul some latent strength. His eyes were clear and he held my gaze steadily as he told me their good news.
‘Elise predicted that we would be married one day,’ he said. ‘She told me on the day that I was whipped in France. And she was right, of course. But I didn’t know that I loved her until Messina. At first I told myself it was wrong; that the Devil was tempting me with lustful thoughts about her’ - I resisted the urge to smile; there was nothing lust-making about the skinny middle-aged woman before me that I could see - ‘but then Father Simon told me that if I took her hand in holy matrimony, our union would be blessed by God. And so we were wed by him a week ago.’
I congratulated him heartily; and indeed I was pleased for both of them. My love for Nur made me want all mankind to have the same happiness. ‘Of course, we want to have babies as soon as possible,’ he said. I looked at her white hair, and the wrinkles around her eyes, and murmured, ‘Of course,’ but he surprised me by continuing ‘so that God can bless our union in this Holy Land, and show us a sign of His divine approval of our match.’
It was clear that Will had not become any less religious since he set foot in the land that had given nurture to Our Lord Jesus Christ.
I kissed Elise, too, and just as she and Will were leaving she said: ‘I know that you don’t believe in my prophecies, Alan, but I was right about you, wasn’t I? You were not destined to die here in this place; as I told you, you will die in bed, at home, an old man.’ And then she did a strange thing; she bent down and picked up the old-fashioned wolf’s head shield that Little John had left at the bottom of the bed. ‘But carry this with you at all times; it will save your life,’ she said solemnly, then she took Will’s hand and they both left. I was struck by the fact that she should echo Little John’s advice about the shield, and I vowed that I would learn to use it, and carry it with me whenever I next went into battle.
As the days passed, I grew stronger. Robin had disappeared and when I asked after my master with Owain and Sir James de Brus, neither seemed to know where he had gone. Reuben seemed to have vanished, too. When I questioned Little John, he rather curtly told me to stop worrying, and to stop asking questions; my master’s business was his own. But the big man was as good as his word about the shield lessons and came each morning to give me instruction. In truth, it was not difficult, although my tender stomach muscles gave me some trouble to begin with - I now had a short, ugly purple scar to the right of my belly button, where the barber-surgeons had cut out Malbête’s quarrel. Wounded belly or no, Little John soon had me skipping about the sunlit courtyard of the Hospitallers’ quarter, John striking at me with a yard-long wooden baton, and myself using only the shield to block his powerful blows: high, low, and the tricky ones that aim to come around the edge. At first I was quickly exhausted by the exercise, and even though we practiced in the early morning, the heat soon became unbearable. But as I grew stronger, I was able to enjoy the practice sessions with my huge friend, and endure the discomfort for longer. When John saw that I had mastered the basic moves, he progressed to teaching me more sophisticated manoeuvres with the shield: strikes on an opponent with the flat and edge, and how to use the shield to distract your enemy so that he reacted slowly to your sword blow.