The Death of Robin Hood (48 page)

However, a strong force of men-at-arms and crossbowmen under Falkes de Breauté, a mercenary captain, charged directly into the castle through a gate on the western side and, suddenly popping up on
the walls and delivering a lethal barrage of crossbow bolts, they successfully managed to fight off a determined French attack. Meanwhile, the Earl of Chester’s men were vigorously assaulting the north gate of the town. Having beaten off the French attack on the castle walls, Falkes de Breauté and his men then made a sortie into the town and caught the enemy between their surprise attack and the Earl of Chester’s men, who had by now stormed through the north gate. That is how one version of the battle goes. Another version is that Falkes and his men (or possibly Peter des Roches) unblocked a disused western gate in the town walls, clearing away the broken masonry to allow William the Marshal to charge in to the town from that direction.

I have shamelessly stolen Falkes’s valiant deeds and given them to Robin and his men, and I have also deliberately chosen to use the story about the unblocking of the western gate in the town, even though I think it unlikely to be a true version of events. When I visited Lincoln in the late summer of 2015, I spoke to several experts at the castle and no one could tell me where this blocked-up western town gate might have been. In fact, I suspect it may never have existed and has been confused by the chroniclers of the age with the western gate of the
castle
, which admitted Falkes de Breauté and his crossbowmen – but I believe my job is to make these stories as exciting as I possibly can and I wanted to add a little extra drama to the battle for Lincoln, so I hope I may be excused this blatant embroidering of the truth.

I did a little more embroidery when it came to Thomas, Comte du Perche. I don’t really know much about his character and even less about his fashion sense: he was young (only twenty-two when he died) and apparently rather arrogant, but he has also been described as ‘chivalrous’. I have absolutely no evidence to suggest that he dressed entirely in silver and white, nor that he did horrible things to kittens, nor even that he was the skin-stripping sadist I have described.
I’m pretty sure he was a fairly normal young French nobleman of his time but for my own novelistic purposes I needed a really despicable villain, and I chose him. I offer my humble apologies to any of his living relatives who feel I have besmirched his good name.

The real Comte du Perche was, however, killed in the final stages of the battle of Lincoln by a dagger or sword thrust through the eye hole of his helmet just outside the entrance to the cathedral. He was surrounded and called upon to surrender by William the Marshal, his cousin, but bravely (or arrogantly) refused. He was then killed in combat by Sir Reginald Crocus, one of Falkes de Breauté’s knights, who was himself killed later in the battle. It made sense to me, since Robin was stealing the glory that rightly belongs to Falkes, to have Alan Dale do the same to Sir Reginald. Again, apologies to any living relatives of either of these brave fighting men.

Many of the French knights and rebel English surrendered at Lincoln – Lord Fitzwalter among them – but large numbers tried to escape through the lower town across the bridge over the River Witham. In fact, so many tried to cross the bridge at once that it became jammed with men and wagons and the slaughter there when the royalist troops caught up with the fugitives was truly appalling. Worse still was the unrestrained sacking of the town by William the Marshal’s victorious troops, a long drunken bloodbath that became known with mordant irony as Lincoln Fair.

King John’s lost treasure

I remember my heart quickening when I first heard the story of King John’s lost treasure as a child. The thought of all that gold, silver and jewels buried in the damp East Anglian earth made me want to
rush out and start digging. And when I heard about a Lincolnshire legend that King John was poisoned by a monk named Brother Simon, who also stole his treasury and escaped to the continent with his loot, I knew that I had to have my Robin Hood do something very similar.

It is quite possible that the whole story about the lost treasure is a myth, which may stem either from some sort of ruse by King John to disguise his true wealth, or just be a fanciful tale tacked on to the story of John’s demise to make it more romantic. And even if it is true that a good deal of royal treasure was lost in the Wash – a low, flat area of marshland between Norfolk and Lincolnshire where several rivers drain into the North Sea – no authority seems entirely certain of the sequence of events. However, it probably happened something like this:

The King was retreating from Lynn (now King’s Lynn) under a threat from the rebels in the south and heading back to Newark Castle. When he left Lynn on 11 October 2017, he was already seriously ill with dysentery, which was probably caused by contaminated drinking water and exhaustion after a long campaign. (Some have maliciously suggested his illness was caused by gluttony.) He got as far as Walpole that day (or possible Wisbech) but the wagons that contained his baggage were slowing his progress for they could only travel at two and a half miles per hour. Ill as he was, he was keen to get to his destination as swiftly as possible and he ordered his baggage to cross the five-mile-wide estuary of the River Nene, while he took the longer, drier, more southerly road himself. This estuary crossing was a recognised route – between Walpole Cross Keys and Long Sutton – but a local guide was necessary and the timing of the crossing had to be just right. October is a bad month for the fens with the mists hanging low for some time after sunrise and it is likely that the wagons started out late on the sands and, with little time to get across before the tide came in, they fanned out to get over more quickly. Some of the wagons got bogged down and
the incoming sea made it impossible to return and rescue them. Roger of Wendover, a chronicler of the time, wrote: ‘The ground opened up in the midst of the waves and bottomless whirlpools sucked in everything’. John lost ‘his carts, wagons and sumpter horses, his treasure, his precious plate and all that he valued most’. His portable chapel was also apparently lost to the quicksands.

It was a mortal blow for the King. By the time he reached Sleaford on 14 or 15 October, he was desperately sick. He had to be carried in a litter to Newark, where after making his confession, dictating a will and receiving Holy Communion, he died.

King John’s death completely changed the war. It meant that nine-year-old Henry of Winchester was now King and English lords who had rebelled because of their hatred for his father had no cause to continue in their insurrection. A further blow to the rebel cause was the reissuing of the Charter of Liberties (minus a few of the more contentious clauses) on 11 November 1217. Rebels who had gone to war in the name of the great charter now had little reason to fight on. The victory at Lincoln was the turning point for Prince Louis’s fortunes, too. And when his forces were defeated in a sea battle off the port of Sandwich on 24 August 2017, the game was up. He signed the Treaty of Lambeth on 11 September and accepted a nominal payment of ten thousand marks to renounce for ever his claim to the English throne.

So, with King John dead, young Henry III on the throne and the French sent packing, this seemed to me to be the perfect time to conclude the Outlaw Chronicles. It’s been great fun for me and I hope you have enjoyed reading the books as much as I have enjoyed writing them, but like all good things the series has now come to an end. Robin Hood is in his grave, so too is elderly Brother Alan. But, like Alan’s ghostly company of riders on the road from
Kirklees to Westbury, I hope that a memory of them, of their comrades, their battles and their adventures, will remain with you.

Angus Donald

Tonbridge, February 2016

I would
like to say a huge thank-you to my agent Ian Drury of Sheil Land Associates, who has been so supportive during the writing of the Outlaw Chronicles. I would also like to thank Ed Wood and Iain Hunt at Little, Brown for their gentle but expert editing and their enduring enthusiasm for the series. Finally, I owe a debt of gratitude to the authors of the history books that I have used as the basis for this particular novel: Sean McGlynn for the superb
Blood Cries Afar: The Forgotten Invasion of England 1216
; W. L. Warren for his magisterial
King John
; and David Crouch for his fascinating
William Marshal: Knighthood, War and Chivalry, 1147–1219
.