The Death of Robin Hood (39 page)

A man in a dirty, torn gambeson, the wool stuffing leaking from the seams, and whose face was covered in ugly boils, stopped me and asked for a blessing, and I nervously muttered a few words in Latin while making the sign of the cross before his carbuncle-stricken face. I asked him in return where I might find a Lord Kirkton.

‘English or French?’ he asked and before I could answer he said, ‘The Frenchies are mostly lodged over there beside the cathedral,’ indicating the magnificent bulk of the House of God. ‘English nobles are on this side of the road.’ He pointed west beyond the mangonel team down a partly demolished side street at the end of which I could make out a row of large houses hard up against the western town wall, each with a standard plunged into the earth before the door to identify its inhabitant.

‘We poor common men-at-arms are all down in the lower town with the rats and the filth and the whores. It’s always the same, eh, brother?’

I thanked
him and, pulling my hood even further forward, made my way in the direction he had pointed, slipping past the mangonel team and down the side street. I turned right at the end and walked up the line of houses, stopping before the smallest one, at the very end of the line, about halfway along the town wall. It was not much bigger than a cottage, straw-roofed and misshapen, seeming to sag drunkenly at one end. The walls were desperately in need of a fresh coat of whitewash. Outside the square flap of uncured leather that made up the entrance, next to a mound of household waste, animal bones, broken crockery, bits of decaying vegetables, a spear had been planted butt-first into the earth and a limp blue rag attached just below the spear-tip. I reached out a hand and unfurled the greasy standard. It was the fierce image of a snarling wolf crudely painted in yellow. He might have been granted the grand-sounding title of Baron Kirkton, I thought, but his new French lord had not been over-generous with his silver.

I summoned my courage. ‘God’s blessing upon this house,’ I called out loudly and pulled back the leather flap and went inside. The stench was so strong it made me gag: stale sweat, wood smoke, sour wine, male feet and the musty, spicy tang of wet wool that had mouldered before it dried. It was the smell of poverty.

A figure was lounging on the cot over by the far wall, propped on a mound of old clothes and sipping from a large leather flask. To my left I saw the dark outline of an open doorway to another room.

‘Go away, brother, I am resting. I am in no mood for another sermon about the terrible vice of drunkenness. I am not at all well today.’

I heard the heavy tramp of a man outside the doorway and stiffened. I had the terrible image in my head of me screaming from a gibbet while industrious torturers peeled the skin from my bones. But he passed by and I relaxed a little. I peered at the figure on the bed through the gloom. Lank blond hair slicked back with sweat
over his high brow, he was glaring at me with pale blue, bloodshot eyes.

‘I said, get out, you old fool. Do you want me to take my boot to you. Out!’

‘Hello, Miles,’ I said, pulling my hood down. ‘If you are having a drink, d’you mind if I have one too? I could certainly use one.’

‘God’s blood, Alan Dale! What in the name of Hell are you doing here? And got up as a mystery-play monk, too.’

The young man swung his feet off the bed and stood up, a trifle unsteadily.

‘Yes, have a drink, have a bucketful, there is plenty of good French wine at least in this godforsaken shit-hole.’

He seized a cup from the table by the hearth and after giving it a cursory wipe with the sleeve of his dirty chemise, he poured a dark liquid into it from the flask in his right hand and thrust it at me.

‘Here’s to your health, old man,’ he said, throwing back his head and taking a giant gulping swig from the flask. I took a mouthful from my cup and felt the flow of warmth in my belly. I had never needed drink to bolster my courage before but I must admit I felt my fears beginning to recede as the wine did its work. I took another large swallow and put the cup back on the table.

‘So what brings you to our fair city of Lincoln – have you come to take up arms on behalf of good King Louis?’

‘Not exactly,’ I said, dragging out a stool and sitting down.

Miles plonked himself back on the bed. ‘No, that doesn’t seem your style at all. That monk’s habit suits you, by the way, you should think about hanging up your sword and retiring to a monastery.’ There was an ugly tone to his voice, very close to a sneer.

‘I’ve come on behalf of your father—’

‘The turncoat sent you, did he? You always were his obedient lap-dog. He sent you to cajole and bribe me into abandoning my allegiance, just as he did. Is that it?’

‘He wants
you to stop all this foolishness and come home. He misses you and he says that you will always be his son. Many other men have returned to the King.’

‘The true King is Louis of France, not that mewling child under William the Marshal’s thumb. Louis knows my quality – I am Lord Kirkton now, don’t you know? And when we are victorious I shall be made the Earl of Locksley, too, and the self-serving cut-throat who calls himself my father can beg my forgiveness then.’

‘We can work everything out, Miles – your father loves you – even now. Come back to us. Please.’

‘Come back to what? To a life lived for ever in his shadow? To being the second son, the spare to the heir. Even when the turncoat dies, I shall not inherit – my sainted brother Hugh will be Earl after him. And he is not of true Odo blood. His claim is false. His father is Ralph Murdac, as everybody knows but is too afraid to say aloud. He’s a bastard and yet he – he not me! – will lord it over our lands when Robin is rotting in his grave.’

‘Hugh will treat you fairly, I’m sure of it. He’s a good and honourable man.’

‘He’s a self-righteous prig. But that’s your offer, is it? Come home like a good boy and all will be forgiven. No, thank you, Alan. I am somebody here, I am—’

The flap of the door swept open and a dark figure stepped into the house. I nearly jumped out of my skin, hand scrabbling for the hilt of the misericorde.

It was Sir Thomas Blood.

‘I’ve brought you some soup, Miles, you can’t live on wine alone; you’ve got to eat something—’

I stood up. Thomas stopped dead when he saw me. He gaped wordlessly. He took a step forward, dumped a huge, steaming tureen on the table and threw his arms around me, enfolding me in a bear hug.

‘Alan, Alan,’ he said. ‘How good to see you.’ He released me but kept
his hands on my shoulders. ‘You look well – but, what? – have you taken holy orders?’

‘Perhaps you two turtle doves would like to use the bed,’ said Miles, getting to his feet.

I ignored him. ‘It’s just a disguise, Thomas,’ I said. ‘I’ve come to bring you and Miles home to Robin.’ Thomas frowned but said nothing.

‘I think I’ll leave you two alone,’ said Miles. ‘I need air. This place stinks of hypocrisy.’

We watched as Miles pushed through the flap and disappeared. I saw that it was dusk. Thomas knelt and added a few sticks to the smouldering fire in the hearth, puffing it into flame with his breath.

‘How is Mary, Thomas,’ I asked, ‘and your son? What is his name again?’

‘We named him Alan,’ Thomas said, smiling at me. ‘After you. They are both well, thank you, safe in London. But I will not waste your time. I cannot go back with you to Robin. And you know perfectly well why.’

‘It was a misunderstanding, Thomas. Nothing more. Robin would never have betrayed you. I know for sure he would not.’

‘You were there with me at Corfe, Alan,’ said the knight, suddenly angry. ‘He spoke secretly to that damned Templar and then lied right to our faces. To our faces. Don’t pretend you don’t remember.’

‘The Templar was not seeking you, Thomas, he wanted something else entirely.’

‘What then?’

I shut my mouth. I had promised Robin that I would not speak of the murder of the King to any man and I had given the same vow to Aymeric de St Maur in Gloucester.

‘Nothing to say?’ said Thomas. ‘Then nothing has really changed, has it?’

I looked at him in mute desperation. ‘Come back with me, Thomas, please.
I ask for my sake as well as Robin’s. Help me to bring Miles back, too. I cannot bear for us to be enemies any longer.’

‘That is how the dice have fallen, my friend,’ said Thomas. ‘Lady Chance has spoken. That is just how this game has played out— Wait, did you hear something?’

He strode over to the door and lifted the flap, peering into the growing darkness.

‘That treacherous little shit-weasel. You must go, Alan. At once. Miles is out there with a squad of men-at-arms. The Comte du Perche is with him. Trust me, my friend, you really do not want to be taken prisoner by that blood-drunk monster. Go! Go now.’

I was beside him at the doorway, my belly fluttering. God, it was true! Under the flap I could see Miles and the White Count in deep conversation. A score of men-at-arms in red and black stood behind the French nobleman – more men than I could ever hope to defeat. The White Count was resplendent in a cloak that seemed to shine like silver in the gloaming. Robin’s son was pointing directly at the house, stabbing a finger towards us.

‘Thomas, you must come with me,’ I said, fighting a terrible urge to run, to run like a frightened hare.

‘I cannot,’ he said, ‘but you must go, for God’s sake, go!’

I thought, To Hell with vows, and to Hell with me for breaking them. ‘Thomas, listen, now. He did lie to us. But the boon the Templar asked of Robin had nothing to do with you. St Maur asked Robin to kill the King. John was poisoned at Robin’s command. That was the secret they discussed at Corfe. Please, come with me, now.’

‘Sweet Jesu – is that the truth, do you swear it?’

Miles had evidently persuaded the Comte du Perche and he and his men were marching towards us.

‘There isn’t time. I’m a dead man if we do not go.’

Thomas looked at me hard. ‘This way,’ he said, and we went back into
the house and through the dark room off the side of the main chamber. I heard him fumbling with a wooden latch, I heard the sound of marching feet, the clank of metal. A square of grey opened before me. ‘Out the window, Alan,’ said Thomas, boosting me through the gap, handing me my staff. And then to my great joy, I saw his leg lifting over the sill and he was standing beside me in a narrow, filth-strewn alley behind the house, no more than two feet wide and stretching off into the dark, parallel to the town wall.

Just as Thomas was closing the shutter, I heard the voice of the White Count from the other room, saying in his silky Parisian French, ‘There is no one here, Kirkton. If you’re playing the fool with me, I will not be best pleased.’

‘My lord, he was here just a moment ago …’

Then Thomas and I were sprinting along the alley, my terror giving wings to my feet, he in the lead, our shoulders brushing the wall. We stopped, panting, then scuttled along a gap between two houses, pressing our backs flat against somebody’s wall and listening for sounds of pursuit. I could hear nothing. My heart was thumping like a tambour – just that brief glimpse of the White Count had unmanned me. I had my staff in both hands ready to strike. I would not be taken alive – I could not suffer that awful fate. Thomas, I saw, had a sword at his side. But was he with me – or against me?

‘You swear that what you have told me is true, Alan, about Robin and the King’s death?’ Thomas whispered.

‘I am finished with making oaths on this matter,’ I whispered back. ‘But as a friend I tell you, on my honour, that this is God’s honest truth.’

Thomas said nothing.

A French man-at-arms in red and black walked round the corner of the house from the front side. I lunged at him with the staff, using the heavy oak pole as if it were a spear. The blunt end of it smacked
into the astonished man’s forehead with a crack. He dropped like a sack of turnips to the filth-covered earth between the two houses.

I whirled and looked at Thomas, my staff raised. He hadn’t moved an inch while I’d knocked out the French man-at-arms – his comrade in arms.

‘Thomas?’ I said.

‘I don’t know, Alan. I just don’t know. But I know that we must get you out of here now,’ he said. ‘Follow me.’

He led me further along the wall behind the houses until we were no more than fifty yards from the castle. There was no sound of pursuit. It was full dark by now and Lincoln seemed to be taking the curfew seriously for we heard little but the quick footsteps of men hurrying back to their homes before the watch caught them. Yet the castle was brightly lit, torches standing proud on the battered walls to ward against a night attack. They gave us just enough light to see by.

I saw the White Count then, no more than twenty paces away, marching along the line of houses with the company of men-at-arms at his back. There was no sign of Miles. I was frozen in terror, standing in clear view by the wall of the last house. I stared at the man who I knew would be my doom, unable to move, like a rabbit before a snake. I felt a pair of strong arms grip me round the middle, swiftly lift and hurl me back into the shadows behind the house. I collapsed into a heap among the filth, the staff clattering away, but I was aware of Thomas stepping into the dim light and walking straight over to the White Count. Inside my head, a voice was screaming:
He’s not your friend – he’s going to betray you. Just like Miles. He’ll tell the White Count and then
—

‘You there, Sir Thomas Blood, isn’t it?’ the Count said. Even his soft voice sent ripples of fear down my back. ‘Your friend Kirkton tells me we have a spy in the town.’

‘A spy, my lord?’ said Thomas, the very image of innocence. I eased myself
further backwards, sliding on my belly through the refuse in the alley, out of the line of sight. But I heard the next exchange as clear as a bell.

‘Are you deaf? Yes, a spy. Lord Kirkton says one of the pretender’s lackeys sneaked into Lincoln to see him. He said he was in his house not a few moments ago.’

Thomas laughed. It sounded horribly false to my ear.

‘Ah, my lord. One should not pay too much heed to my friend Miles. He enjoys his wine and sometimes he takes a little too much—’