Murdac arrived at the machine, consulted with the officers there, and with a chop of his hand to the men standing in groups around the weapon, the mangonel fired. The great spoon swept up and banged against the crossbar; a boulder the size of a small cow came screaming straight towards us and, with a deafening crash, it ripped a hole two yards wide in the palisade just a few feet from where I was standing. Half a dozen wounded men, who had been sheltering inside the wooden wall, were crushed to bloody pulp in an instant. The boulder rolled a few yards and came to rest almost in the centre of the courtyard.
I realised, with a sickening twist in my gut, that we had no protection against Murdac in this manor house. That infernal machine could strip away our feeble wooden defences at a whim, and then Murdac and his black cavalry would leap the moat and ride over our splintered walls and chop us all into offal. By noon, I reckoned with a sinking heart, we would almost certainly all be dead.
Chapter Nineteen
In many years of hard skirmishing, bloody battles and close escapes, I have never felt so close to despair as I did then when that great rock came smashing through the wooden palisade at Linden Lea. Except once. This spring, as my grandson Alan lay sick with a fever and near to death, I felt that the whole world would end with him. He is well now, God be praised, and his recovery was amazingly fast, or perhaps only amazing to an old man like me, whose cuts and bruises heal so slowly these days. I fed Alan the dark potion concocted by Brigid, when Marie, his mother, was sleeping, exhausted with worry, in the next room. It was a foul smelling brew and, no sooner had I got him to swallow it, than Alan’s stomach threw it straight back at me. But I mopped up and tried again and finally I managed to get some of the noisome liquid to stay inside him. Then he slept.
The next day I dosed him again, as Brigid had instructed, with a half-strength mixture with plenty of water which had been boiled by moonlight and then allowed to cool. The day after that he was awake and asking for gruel. Marie is beside herself with happiness and has vowed to light a candle to the Virgin every Sunday for the rest of her life in thanks for his recovery. I sent a side of bacon, three chickens, a dozen loaves of bread and a purse of silver to Brigid.
Every day that followed, young Alan grew stronger. Now, as I write this tale of death and destruction at Linden Lea, my grandson is playing outlaws and sheriffs in the woods outside the manor, with some of the local boys. And with his return to health, my melancholy has lifted. The days seem bright again; I go about my tasks with fresh vigour; I even laugh with Marie of an evening by the hearth fire when the day’s tasks are done. I shall never tell Marie that I sought Brigid’s help in saving Alan, but there is no shred of doubt in my mind: the witch cured him, and she cured me, too. Maybe Robin was right all those years ago: God is all around, in everything, and everyone, even in a witch. For the salvation of my boy could not have been an act of the Devil, whatever Father Gilbert, our parish priest, may say about Brigid’s skill. And I shall pray for her soul, and count her a good friend, all the days that are left to me.
There were two things I had not yet realised about Robin, as that giant boulder smashed our hopes of safety behind the palisade at the manor of Linden Lea: first, he planned battles like a chess player, meticulously thinking ahead, anticipating the moves his enemy might make, and making his own preparations to counter them; and, secondly, he always had the Devil’s own luck when it came to warfare.
That first missile from the mangonel must also have been a devilishly lucky shot, for the next boulder rolled to a halt a good twenty yards short of the palisade. The next after that whistled over the top of the manor and churned through the field of corn behind. But, by then, we were all shaken in the courtyard and the atmosphere was close to panic. Robin was quick to take action - he ordered all the wounded to be taken into the hall of the manor, though there was scarcely room for the men already there, and they would not be offered much more protection from the great machine than in the courtyard; he also had three men move the boulder so that it partially filled the gap in the palisade; then he set us to strengthening the wooden walls, buttressing them with logs and planks. I believe he just wanted to keep the men busy and prevent them brooding on what the mangonel meant to our chances of survival. Certainly our strengthening work had no effect when the next great boulder struck. It smashed straight through the three-inch thick round wooden pallings, despite our reinforcing logs and planks, and continued on, rolling at the pace of a trotting pony, to rip out a bottom corner of the hall itself.
Between falling short and sailing clear over the manor, I calculated that about one missile in five hit our walls. And as the sun crawled up the dome of the heavens, it soon became clear that in less than an hour we would have no defences to speak of, just a litter of kindling and dying men, horribly mutilated and crushed by the massive flying stones. It was not only men who died under that cruel onslaught: one missile crashed into the stables, killing two horses and a mule outright and snapping the legs of two other mounts. The piggery also took a direct hit. Robin was here and there, all over the courtyard like a fiend, exhorting us to patch up the walls as best we could, round up and slaughter the fear-maddened livestock, and carry the wounded into the hall, which itself had taken two full-on hits and had sunlight pouring through the thatched roof on to a scene of unspeakable pain and misery inside. I could see men looking out at the forest wall a mere hundred yards away, measuring the distance for a fast escape on foot. But it was hopeless as a way out of our torment, a full conroi of red and green horsemen was sitting by the treeline watching the gaps grow in the walls of the manor and anyone attempting on foot to run the hundred yards to the safety of the forest would have been cut down in a few bloody moments.
With almost all the front palisade gone, except for a few ragged sections of wooden fence, our defence looked like an old man’s mouth, a few scattered teeth in a bed of bleeding gums. Then, God be praised, the mangonel ceased its vicious pounding. However, before we had time to enjoy the respite, I saw that Sir Ralph and his main force of black cavalry to our front was beginning to move. Beside him I could make out the face, under a plain round helmet, of Guy of Gisbourne, his yellow and green colours flapping from his lance. The cavalry force was perhaps a hundred and fifty men strong in three closely packed ranks, and it was approaching us at a slow walk; behind it marched a full battle of dark infantry.
Robin leapt on to a boulder in the centre of the courtyard and shouted to gain everyone’s attention. ‘Men,’ he bellowed, ‘comrades, brothers, I shall not sit here like a chicken in a roost, waiting for the fox to come to me. I will attack, I will sally out, right now . . . and I will kill that man.’ He flung out an arm and pointed through the gaps of the fence at Sir Ralph Murdac, who was riding, still at a walking pace, in the middle rank of his black-clad horsemen. ‘Who will ride with me?’
There was a growl of assent, hardly enthusiastic, but the men knew they would die if they remained in the manor. ‘Good,’ said Robin. ‘We will attack now, and when we have killed that man, when we have cut the head off the snake, the body will die. These mercenaries won’t fight when they see their paymaster is dead. Two men to every horse, the rest to follow on foot, bowmen who still have arrows to give us covering fire on the flanks.’
We formed up behind the shattered remains of the main gate, a pitiful twenty surviving horses, two men to a horse, myself riding behind Robin. As I prepared to mount up behind my master, he turned in the saddle, looked down at me and said: ‘Loyalty until death, eh? Well, you’ve kept your promise.’
I shrugged. ‘I’m not planning to die just yet,’ I said. ‘Not until he is rotting worm-food.’ And I nodded towards Sir Ralph Murdac and his advancing troops a bare hundred yards away.
Robin smiled. ‘You wouldn’t have said that a year ago.’
I said nothing, but scrambled up behind him and loosened my sword in its scabbard.
We few remaining outlaw cavalry were surrounded by a raggedy crowd of pagans and outlaws, all those who could walk or run, armed any-old-how with spears, swords, axes and farming tools. Tuck was there, flanked by his two great war dogs. Hugh was looking unhappy, mounted with a man-at-arms at his back. John, bareheaded and stripped to the waist in the heat, stood there, axe on one shoulder, his great muscled chest matted with blond hairs. A mere handful of bowmen, with no more than three or four arrows apiece, formed two groups to the left and the right. Robin roared: ‘Come on, lads! Let’s go!’ The gate crashed down, bridging the moat, and with a wild, ragged yell from a hundred throats, we spurred forward, footmen and horse mingled together, to our certain doom.
As we galloped out, myself gripping tight to the wooden back of Robin’s saddle, finding it middling hard to remain seated on the bounding haunches of his black stallion, I looked up from under the brim of my helmet to the hills in the west where something had caught my eye. And I beheld nothing less than our Salvation. A band of angels was coming to battle. For a minute I couldn’t believe my eyes; but up on the ridge, arms glittering in the bright sunlight was a long, still line of horsemen in white, at least a hundred of them, each on a magnificent destrier draped in dazzling linen.
The line was motionless for a moment, then, at an unheard word of command, the white horsemen spilled over the edge of the hill and flowed like a great creamy wave down the side to join the battle. ‘It’s the Templars, the Templars,’ I shouted in Robin’s ear. ‘Sir Richard has come, Sir Richard,’ I bellowed to the men charging beside me and pointed to the hills where a hundred of the finest horse soldiers in Christendom were surging down the slope in a perfect line, charging to our rescue.
Sir Ralph Murdac’s men, seemingly unaware of the threat to their rear, spurred on into the full gallop as we approached them, and the two unequal forces, the small scrappy band of Robin’s men, two to a horse, and Murdac’s rows of charging black horsemen met with a splintering crash of steel spearheads on wooden shields. We were more concentrated in a tight wedge of men and beasts, aimed like a living spear at Murdac himself, and for a few moments our force drove hard into their line, penetrating deeply; Robin was cutting down men left and right in front of me, desperately trying to reach Murdac in the second rank. We drove forward, hacking, lunging, battering at men and animals, Robin spurring the horse brutally onwards, drawing blood on the stallion’s dark sides. The black-clad line of Murdac’s horsemen closed in on our flanks on both sides, and behind us, encircling us in a ring of hot horseflesh, shouting men and swinging steel. But the High Sheriff was just yards away from us, with Guy at his shoulder. Murdac saw Robin and myself heading for him, I am sure of it - and, in an instant he had turned his horse towards us, pushing his way roughly through the ranks of his own men, his long sword drawn. Around his neck, bouncing on his black surcoat on its golden chain, was the great ruby. It seemed to flash angry red fire in the bright sunlight with every movement.
Robin hacked at a mailed horseman between us and Murdac and he disappeared into the dust of the mêlée. And then the sheriff was in front of us and he and Robin were blade to blade. A clash of steel, and their swords locked for an instant. They pulled apart, snarling at each other, circled their horses and both charged in at the same time. Another crack of their steel blades meeting. I swung my sword at his waist but missed. Murdac’s horse reared and we were ducking the great hooves of his destrier as they sliced the air around our heads. Then the horse was down on four feet again and Robin spurred forward, driving hard to close again with Murdac. But a dark-clad horseman, bloody and out of control, blundered between the Lord of the Wood and the Lord of Nottingham, and as Robin smashed him aside with a great blow to his helmet, I saw that Murdac was further away than before, pushed by the inexorable press of sweating, straining men. Another horseman rode at us, his spear couched, aiming for Robin’s side, but I beat the spear out of the line of attack, high and to the right - his horse cannoned into us, and as he passed me I gave him a great backhanded sword cut to his mailed arm and felt the bone crack beneath my steel. The blow overbalanced me and I felt myself sliding from the sweat-slippery haunches of Robin’s horse. Only with a quick twist of my body, and a large helping of luck, did I land on my feet in the middle of that maelstrom of barging destriers and grunting hacking fiends. I was dimly aware that the long white line of Templar knights had crashed into Murdac’s men, as the whole boiling mêlée gave a ripple at their impact. And from occasional glimpses through the crush of men, I could see that the white knights were doing great damage, plunging their lances deep into their enemies’ unguarded backs, but I was much more concerned with my own survival.
A horseman’s mace blow clanged off my helmet, stunning me momentarily, and the hooves of a war stallion slashed just past my face and then, thank God, I was out of the mass of whistling steel and whirling hooves. I drew my poniard with my left hand, sword gripped tight in my right, and prayed that I would live through the next quarter hour. Robin’s footmen had caught up with the cavalry and charged into the milling throng, yelling ‘Sherwood, Sherwood!’ I saw a grimy-faced spearman stabbing up at a black-clad warrior on horseback. To no avail. The rider turned and chopped down with his sword, splitting his helmet through the middle. And then a great white rider, in a brilliant surcoat with its blood-red cross on the shoulder, cantered past me and speared the enemy horseman in the side, the lance punching through the chain-mail and leaving the man spiked on twelve feet of ash and screaming hideously. The white rider, his face completely masked by his flat-topped cylindrical helmet, dropped his lance, leaving it protruding, flopping, out of the dying man’s side, and lifted a hand to me in salute before hauling out his great sword and wheeling away to rejoin the fray. As he galloped away in search of fresh prey, I heard his shouted, slightly muffled but familiar words drifting back to me: ‘Don’t forget to move your feeeeet . . .’