King Richard, who wished to interview his sheriff about a vast quantity of missing tax silver, and the little shit- weasel had then taken refuge in Scotland, staying with powerful relatives. But when Richard departed his realm to undertake the Great Pilgrimage across the seas, Murdac had emerged from his Scottish bolthole and taken service with Prince John, King Richard’s treacherous younger brother. Now protected by John, Sir Ralph Murdac had offered a huge bounty in silver for Robin’s head, and at least one man to my knowledge had died trying to claim it.
Apart from his bitter enmity with my master, I, too, had cause to hate Ralph Murdac: when I was nine years of age, his men-at-arms had burst into our peasant cottage before dawn, ripped my father from his bed and, after falsely accusing him of theft, had hanged him from an oak tree in the centre of the village. Four years later, the same Ralph Murdac had threatened to cut off my right hand when I was caught stealing a pie in Nottingham market; and later still he had had me cruelly tortured in a dungeon at Winchester in an attempt to get information about Robin. If I ever had the chance, I would kill him in a heartbeat, with a great deal of pleasure: he was less than a clump of rotting duckweed in my eyes, and the world would be a better place with his filthy presence expunged from it.
By the grace of God, and the kindness of Robin, I had risen in rank since the days when I was a poor fatherless village boy, forced to thieve to fill my belly. I was now Alan of Westbury, lord of a small manor in Nottinghamshire that had been granted to me by the Earl of Locksley. This gift was something for which I would be forever grateful. I had been a nobody, a starving cutpurse, but now I had a place among men of honour, among noble warriors, not only as a holy pilgrim newly returned from Outremer, but as the holder of half a knight’s fee of land. I had made the impossible, almost unthinkable leap from humble peasant to horse-borne lord of the manor; and I had Robin to thank for it.
I tried my best to repay my debt to Robin by loyal service in war and in peace, and by giving him the gift of my music. For now, as well as being one of his captains, a leader of his ragtag troops, I was Robin’s trouvere, his personal musician. I hummed a snatch of music softly under my breath as I walked through the camp of my mortal enemy, striding as confidently as I could manage and trying not to trip over the guy ropes in the darkness.
My eye was drawn to a large tent in the centre of the field; in the rare splashes of firelight I could just make out that it was a gaudy, striped affair, black and blood-red. My footsteps seemed to take me towards it of their own volition, and as I drew closer I saw a short figure dressed in dark clothes standing outside the entrance to the pavilion by the remains of a large campfire. By the dying flickers of the campfire’s flames I could see that it was Murdac himself, apparently standing alone, and examining a jewel-encrusted box; turning the object over and over in his hands so that the precious stones shot out gorgeous bright gleams of reflected firelight.
My feet took me closer and closer to his hateful shape. Surely this was an opportunity sent by God: Murdac alone, in the darkness, facing away from me. I paused, just a dozen yards from the little man, and the spear seemed to leap off my shoulder and level itself. I can do this, I told myself; if I can kill an innocent sentry-boy, I can scrub this shit-stain from the world. I would have no qualms at all about sending his stinking soul to the Devil.
I clutched the spear more tightly and was just about to sprint forward and slam the sharp point deep into Murdac’s kidneys, when the little bastard bent down and gathered a handful of dry twigs from a wood pile at his feet and threw them on the fire. And, as the kindling caught, the flames licked higher and revealed the presence of two other figures on the far side of the fire. I stopped dead and stood as still as a rock, spear extended in front of me, silently uttering a prayer of thanks to St Michael that I was still cloaked by the night, invisible to those who stood in the widening pool of firelight.
I could not see them clearly in the dancing flames, but I could make out their distinctive shapes in the gloom: a tall man on the left, taller than me by half a head, and I am six foot high in my bare feet; but, while I am broad in the shoulder, deep in the chest and well muscled in the arms from long hours practising with a heavy sword, he was thin, painfully thin, like a man who has survived a long famine or a terrible disease.
His height and thinness were accentuated by his shadowy companion’s extraordinary shape: he was a huge bald man, and I swear on Our Lord Jesus Christ that he was as broad as he was high; a round mass, neckless, squat and lumped with muscle, like an ogre from a children’s tale. They looked like a stick and a ball standing side by side.
Then Ralph Murdac spoke, and his familiar high-pitched French whine set my teeth on edge: ‘Thank my lord prince for his noble gift,’ he said, and he slightly raised the jewelled box, ‘and tell him that I will attend his royal court in less than a month; the moment that I have concluded matters here.’
‘My lord,’ the squat ogre rumbled in French, and his voice sounded like the grinding together of two enormous rocks, ‘His Highness has requested your presence on the morrow; he has had bad news from abroad and desires your counsel. He was most insistent that you should attend him.’
‘I will attend him as soon as I am able,’ snapped Murdac crossly. ‘But I must have my son. I must reclaim my son from this nest of bandits. Surely His Royal Highness will understand…’
The two men said nothing, but the ogre gave a mountainous shrug, and they both turned away at the same time and disappeared into the great tent.
I wanted to be gone; the knowledge that I had very nearly thrown my life away in an ill-considered, suicidal attack raised goose bumps on my whole body. I had missed certain death by a heartbeat. Those two grotesque men would have shouted a warning to Murdac before I could even get within spear-range, and I would then have likely missed my mark and been hunted through the camp like a lone rat in a pit full of blood-crazed terriers. I was Daniel in the lion’s den, I told myself, and only by remembering this and putting aside any thoughts of revenge against Murdac would I live to see another dawn.
I walked quickly away from the great tent without being seen — regretfully leaving the silhouette of my enemy unharmed by the fire — and once again bent my steps towards the dark mass of castle on the southern skyline. There was a sentry on the far side of the camp, alert and patrolling his section of the perimeter with an unnatural keenness for the late hour. Leaving the encampment behind and walking the bare twenty yards of open turf towards him, I notched up my courage for a final pantomime. I marched straight up to the man, my right hand casually behind my back, and called to him abruptly, in my most officer-like tones: ‘Hey you! What’s the password? Come on, come on; don’t tell me you’ve forgotten it.’
He looked at me strangely, noting the mud- and blood-smeared black surcoat, and the odd combination of my youth and my arrogance. Then, perhaps reassured by the direction I had come from, he said: ‘I haven’t forgotten it, sir: it’s Magdalene. But I might well ask, sir, who are you?’
‘I’ve been told to relieve you. That’s all you need to know,’ I said rudely. ‘Sir Ralph’s orders.’
He nodded, but still seemed a little uncertain. The hand behind my back gripped the handle of the misericorde tightly; in a couple of moments he was going to feel its point in his heart if he didn’t accept my explanation. I stared at him challengingly, straight in the eye. But finally he seemed to be convinced by my high-handedness and he shrugged and pushed past me, heading back towards the encampment. I watched him until he disappeared into the crowd of dark tents and finally relaxed, breathed out a huge lungful of air, and slid the slim blade back into my boot.
I had used up a lot of my nerves in this one night, and I noticed that my hands were trembling slightly, but I still had one obstacle to overcome: the walls of Kirkton Castle itself.
In the event, getting into the castle was simpler than I had expected. I merely walked away from the mass of tents, through a wide empty expanse of silent sheep pasture and towards the looming black bulk of Kirkton. When I was fifty yards away, a torch sprang to light on the battlements and, in response to it, I shouted: ‘Hello, Kirkton! I’m a friend. Hello! Don’t shoot. I come from Robin. I come from Lord Locksley.’
An arrow slashed past my ear and buried itself in the ground a dozen yards behind me, and I lifted both arms in the air and shouted again: ‘Hello, Kirkton. I come from the Earl of Locksley; let me in for the love of God.’
Another arrow hissed past and I heard a deep, Welsh-accented voice, a voice I knew well but had not heard for more than two years, shouting, ‘Stop shooting, you ynfytyn, stop wasting arrows.’ And then, much louder: ‘Who is out there? Come forward and name yourself.’
‘Tuck, it’s me — Alan. Get that idiot to stop trying to spit me like a bloody capon. Don’t you recognize me, you great tub of pork dripping? It’s Alan Dale. It’s me.’
‘God bless my soul!’ said the Welsh voice. ‘Alan Dale, back from the Holy Land, back from the dead. Miracles and wonders will never cease.’ And a rich, golden-brown belly laugh rolled out towards me through the darkness.
