The Death of Robin Hood (13 page)

By the time I had wiped my eyes free of the sticky mess, the spearmen were already in full retreat and there was a tidemark of dead men at the feet of the sword-bristling English line, indeed the whole slope was carpeted with dead and wounded. Beside me Sir Thomas was wiping his bloodied blade on the hem of his cloak and looking thoughtfully out at the enemy hordes. Miles, dagger in hand, was grimly sawing through the throat of a writhing Fleming with a shaft through his belly and his left leg flayed open.

The arrows still fell on the enemy like an evil rain but only sporadically, for the Flemish spearmen were beaten and now streaming back
into the town or east towards the cathedral, leaving three score of their fellows in the dirt behind them.

‘Down, back down again,’ I shouted. ‘Quickly now.’ And with a good deal of happy grumbling, the knights went back to their prone positions on the reverse slope.

‘Is it nap time already, Nanny?’ called out Miles from behind me. ‘Aw, what a shame. I’d only just begun to play.’ Laughter rolled about us. But the men were back down into the cover of the rocks – just in time, for some of the enemy crossbowmen had crept closer and were now no more than forty paces away. With the breach clear of their own men they began to span their bows and loose their quarrels at our line in a fair imitation of Robin’s murderous arrow barrage.

The iron-tipped bolts cracked and sparked against the stones or whistled overhead. I dared a peek over the top and did not like what I saw at all. Through the open town gate I could see another formation of men being herded into position. Red-and-blue surcoats adorned these spearmen and they were in twice the numbers of the first assault; worse, I could see a swollen
conroi
of knights, fifty men at least, gathering to our right behind the trebuchet lines, dismounting from their destriers and handing the reins to their squires. They would assault us on foot and, by the looks of them, they were easily a match for our English line. I glanced at the sky – the short day was nearly done, but could we hold till nightfall? I was less sure now. We were about to be menaced by some four hundred spearmen and fifty dismounted knights. Even with Robin’s protective arrows it was poor odds.

Just then I heard a deep voice calling my name: it was d’Aubigny himself, with a pair of squires, below the breach on the ground of the outer bailey. Then he was making his way very carefully up the reverse slope, placing his feet between the limbs of the lying men, and giving each fellow he passed a quiet word of praise. He came to my side and knelt behind the line of rubble, just his
big, grey, curly head poking over the top, and Thomas and I made room for him, squirming uncomfortably aside on the hard stones.

‘They are coming again, sir,’ I said, pointing at the enemy, now in a tight formation behind the town gate, a dense column of red and blue, spear points gleaming atop the forest of shafts above their heads.

D’Aubigny opened his mouth to speak and at that moment a crossbow quarrel flashed between us, inches from the constable’s ruddy face, and clattered noisily against the stone of the keep twenty yards behind us. We both ignored it.

‘We have most of the men and stores inside the keep, now, Sir Alan,’ he said.

I nodded, not quite sure what to say.

‘Hold them here, if you can, as long as you can. But when the breach falls, and it will do, mark my words, don’t leave it too late to get yourself and your men inside with the rest of us. I need you alive – I need all of you alive.’ He said the last slightly louder so that all the knights around us might hear.

‘My lord of Locksley will give you ample cover when it’s time to go.’ And he jerked his head up towards my lord atop the south tower. ‘God be with you!’

‘Yes, sir,’ I said.

D’Aubigny began to make his way carefully back down the slope. I watched him reach the level courtyard safely and begin to stride back towards the bastion. But after two strides, he turned and shouted up: ‘You hear me, Alan Dale, don’t leave it too late. We can fight them off from the keep much better than from here.’

They came on again in the same way, a massed charge by the spearmen, protected by crossbowmen at their flanks. And in just the same way, Robin decimated their ranks. But this time, hard on the heels of the spearmen, came the dismounted knights – well-born but
impoverished men from Hainault and Holland, Bruges and Brabant. Yet I still believe we could have held them, were it not for one appalling, unheard-of tactic that King John employed, a tactic I had never in my life imagined might be used by any commander who called himself a Christian.

We slaughtered the spearmen who survived the arrow storm and scrambled to the top of the breach. We chopped them down without mercy, the well-armoured English knights hacking apart peasants in their old leather armour and padded cloth coats with only a few weeks’ marching drill under their belts. They died by the score. Miles on my left was a demon with a dancing blade, slicing, hacking, chopping and pounding the enemy down, insulting them as they fell to his sword; Sir Thomas killed with a quiet and deadly efficiency, a minimum of motion, a quick cut and a short lunge and another man fell, ripped and howling, at his feet. I did my share of killing too but all I can recall of that battle is the sheer hard labour, the effort to kill and kill again, hacking down man after man, only for another to spring up in his place. They all blurred into one, one immortal red-and-blue-clad foe, who no matter how often I hacked him apart always returned as a screaming, red-dripping spectre to challenge me again.

The enemy knights below the breach were urging the spearmen onward and upward to their deaths with the points of their swords, and in a short lull in the fighting in front of me, I saw a knight strike down a fellow in a red-and-blue surcoat who had thrown away his spear and tried to run. However, it was not this disregard for the lives of John’s men that defeated us, but another brutality far worse.

The trebuchet ball smashed into the centre of the line of struggling men, red-and-blue spearmen and grey-clad English knights. It left half a dozen Flemings smeared across the rubble and cut Sir George Farnham into two pieces. There was a tiny pause – a miraculous break
in the fray as every knight and spearman stopped his blow mid-strike – and each recognised what had just happened. King John had loosed his artillery on the breach despite it being filled with his own men. It was evidently worth the cost to the King to slaughter his own folk if it meant the chance of killing some of ours.

The second trebuchet ball landed short, splashing into the packed ranks of Flemings attempting to scale the breach and spattering red soup across the whole battle area. A dozen of their men were crushed by that strike alone.

A third trebuchet missile squelched through a file of their spearmen and ripped off the head and arm of an English man-at-arms on the far left of our line.

It was time to go. I prayed it was not too late.

‘Back, back,’ I shouted. ‘To the keep!’

With Miles and Sir Thomas warding my back, I started hauling men out of the line, shouting in their ears that they must retreat. But it is no easy feat to persuade an English knight whirling high with the frenzy of battle to disengage and flee. Some men stared at me in amazement, unable to understand the order; others cursed me, shoved me off and waded back into the fight, bloody swords singing.

Another devastating trebuchet strike turned the tables. The Flemish spearmen were melting back, ignoring the cries of their knights to fight on, appalled that their own side should seek to cut them down so cruelly. And so I was able to get a few of the more blood-crazed Englishmen to begin to stumble back down the slope. The slow retreat became a rout, with men pouring down the rocky incline and running full tilt towards the forebuilding, a massive stone box that guarded the main entrance to the keep. We had not far to go, a matter of fifty paces or so, and I was running with the best of them. But I did manage to snatch one last glimpse at the top of the breach, now lined with red-and-blue battle-stunned
spearmen staring at our sudden flight with equal joy and utter surprise. Arrows from high on the keep were thwocking into them, slaying by the dozen, but they scarcely seemed to notice.

Then the trebuchet struck a final blow and the line of spearmen exploded into spinning limbs and bloody scraps.

After I had counted my men into the keep and slammed the iron-bound door shut behind the last, I was astounded to know that I had lost only nine men in that desperate fight, and of the seventy-two I had led to safety only two dozen were wounded and but one of those seriously. Good mail pays for itself, the better armourers are wont to tell you, and they are right.

Yet Miles was not among the men I brought back. I asked if anyone had seen him fall, but not a man could remember seeing Robin’s son after I gave the order to withdraw. I wondered if he had been slain as we all rushed headlong back to the keep but, in truth, we had not been hotly pursued. The spearmen and the Flemish knights had taken possession of the breach, when the trebuchet had finally ceased the bloody execution of their comrades, and had for the most part stopped there, awaiting more of their men to scramble up the rubble and join them. We had hardly been molested at all in the pell mell sprint to the keep.

So where was Miles?

I made the climb to the top of the south tower with a heavy heart: what could I say to Robin? That I had mislaid his younger son in the scramble to save my own life? As I came through the arch and into the fresh breeze on the darkling roof of the tower, Robin turned to me from the battlements and the first thing he said was:

‘He’s not dead, Alan.’

I hesitated, wondering if this was a question or a statement, and my lord said, ‘The bloody young fool. I saw him run the wrong way. When
the rest of you came down, he went the other way, along the walls to the west. I couldn’t track him; we were busy hammering their assault with all we had. When I looked again he was gone. I don’t know what can have got into his thick head. That stupid, ill-disciplined child!’

Despite Robin’s angry words, I could see he was racked with worry.

‘I think I do,’ I said. ‘He knows a discreet way in and out of the castle – somewhere over there’ – I waved vaguely to the west towards the river. ‘It’s the same way he got out to forage for food two days ago. He has evidently decided he prefers to take his chance dodging Flemings in the darkness and maybe swimming the Medway than locked up tight in the keep with us.’

Robin looked slightly relieved. ‘Yes, he’s a resourceful boy. That’s true. Maybe he hasn’t foolishly thrown his life away. Thank you, Alan. You managed to creep into the castle; so maybe, with a bit of luck, he can creep out.’

Robin beckoned me over to the battlement. Below us the outer bailey was swarming with enemy troops, surging in and out of the buildings around the edge of that great space, looking for plunder. They carried flaming pine torches to ward off the gathering dusk and already the stables – emptied of horses, of course – were beginning to smoulder and smoke. As the greyness settled heavily across the land, the first sparks of light sprang up in the encampments all around and inside the town. We were surrounded by our enemies, shut up tight in a vast stone box, with no hope of victory, rescue or surrender.

Maybe Miles had taken the sensible course, after all.

I looked at Robin and saw to my surprise that he had his head laid flat on the top of the crenellation, his ear pressed to the stone.

‘Listen to that,’ he said, tapping the masonry at his cheek with a finger.

I laid
my head on the next crenellation along, wondering what he wished me to hear. And then it came, very faint, a short metallic sound –
tink-tink-tink
– like someone rapping a knife blade on a boulder a great distance away.

‘Miners,’ said Robin. ‘By the sound of it, very nearly under our walls.’

I
slept for two days straight after the fall of the outer bailey and dreamed of giant rats with fire-glowing eyes gnawing at my feet until I had nothing left to stand on and tumbled into a dark spinning abyss. Hunger will do that to you, give you strange and terrifying dreams. And it was the hollowness of my belly and the corresponding lightness of my head that obsessed me over the next few days and nights.

We had plenty of fighting men to stand guard duty inside the keep – still more than a hundred and fifty under arms, and a smaller number of serving men and women, grooms, cooks and so on – and we all took turns to watch from the four towers and numerous arrow slits of the keep as the King’s Flemings looted and burned the outer bailey and made merry in the town to celebrate their victory over us at the breach. Indeed, so many folk were inside the keep that it was uncomfortably crowded – and, although all the horses had been slaughtered, we were down to starvation rations: one bowl of vaguely meat-flavoured slop a day per man, no bread, no wine or ale. Robin’s archers hunted mice in the dungeons of the keep with pine torches and bows, loosing at skittering
shadows in the corners, and those elusive creatures too were soon gone. D’Aubigny ordered the richer knights to surrender any stores of food they still had, which rendered a few chunks of dried pork sausage, a jar or two of preserves and a couple of cheeses. But with more than two hundred people to feed, these lasted less than a day.

We tightened our belts and looked forward to the next noonday bowl of slop with a terrible, aching yearning.

King John made no infantry assaults on the keep itself. He seemed to be concentrating all his efforts on the mine. And the trebuchets, of course. These had been swiftly repositioned the day after the breach fell, and these terrible engines now began to rain missiles on the lower part of the south tower and the western wall of the keep. The intensity of the barrage had lessened, however, for only three loosed their stone balls at us. I believe the other two may have become damaged or been judged unequal to the increased range. But three trebuchets bombarding us was bad enough and a dozen times an hour a missile would smash itself to pieces against our walls. Between strikes, the sound of the digging could be clearly heard, even without pressing an ear to the stonework, and we estimated that at least a hundred yards of tunnel had been dug from under the breach and that scores of foes were burrowing away beneath our feet. A horrible, eldritch sensation.