Despite the compliment, I bridled. ‘I serve the Earl, and proudly, too. But he is no heretic. Perhaps he is not as attentive to his soul as he might be, and he perhaps should be more respectful of the Church, but he is certainly no Devil-worshipper.’
‘Is that so?’ asked this Templar, cocking an eyebrow. ‘I heard a curious tale recently about the Earl of Locksley, who you admit is so inattentive of his immortal soul and disrespectful of Holy Mother Church; though perhaps the story is false…’ He looked at me warily for a moment.
‘Yes?’ I snapped.
‘I heard…’ said the knight, and then he paused for a heartbeat. ‘I heard that Robert of Locksley, when badly outnumbered by his enemies, summoned horse-demons from the very bowels of Hell to help him win a battle in Yorkshire against Prince John’s liegeman Sir Ralph Murdac.’
He made the sign of the Cross again.
‘It was just a trick,’ I said hotly. ‘A ruse de guerre. It was merely a few men in masks, and horse-drawn fire- carts and a little heathen music to put terror in the minds of his enemies. There were no black arts involved. I swear it. I swear by Almighty God, by the Virgin and all the saints, there was no devilry. He was just trying to frighten his enemies. And it worked very well, I may say.’
‘Heathen music? Hmm, interesting. Ah well,’ said this pigheaded Templar. ‘If you say there was no devilment involved, I must believe you.’ He clearly did not, and his voice had taken on a distant, chilly tone as if he had already made up his mind about me. ‘Doubtless the truth will be fully revealed at the inquisition.’
‘The inquisition?’ I said, now utterly bewildered.
‘Did you not know?’ said this monkish knight, feigning surprise. ‘Lord Locksley has been summoned to appear before an episcopal inquisition to be held by the Master of our Order to answer charges of heresy. Pope Celestine sanctioned it personally — and it will be rather a special occasion, I believe. As you must know, all the bishops in Christendom have been charged by His Holiness with suppressing heresy wherever they find it. Mostly it’s a way of extirpating the southern heretics, those damned Cathars, but the Master has been granted a special dispensation by the Holy Father himself to investigate Robert, Earl of Locksley. And so your lord, if he has any respect for the Vicar of Christ, God’s anointed representative on Earth, must attend a tribunal in London on St Polycarpus’s Day on pain of excommunication and an interdict on all his lands.’
The Templar knight smiled at me grimly. ‘If what you say is true, he should think of it as a welcome chance to clear his good name.’
I stumbled away from the conversation with Sir Aymeric de St Maur in a state of shock. St Polycarpus’s Day was the twenty-third of February, about ten weeks hence. Did Robin know about this? He must do, which is why he was summoning Hanno and me to his side. Would he then present himself at the inquisition? It would be risky not to. Excommunication was one of the most serious sanctions that the Church could impose on mortal man: it meant that the sinner would no longer be considered part of the Christian communion; once excommunicated he was publicly excluded from the Church and became a sort of spiritual outlaw, unable to receive the Eucharist and therefore damned to eternal torment in Hell. But I also knew that Robin could not give two rotten apples for the Church’s opinion of his soul. I’m not even sure that he believed that he had one. And he never willingly received the Eucharist anyway.
The interdict on his lands was more serious. It meant that no church services could be performed anywhere on his lands: no one could be married, no child baptized, and no dead man could be buried in a large part of South Yorkshire, and significant areas of Nottinghamshire, too. And this was worrying news. To make an enemy of the Church was no small thing. Children who died in infancy would go to Hell without baptism; corpses would pile up on the sides of the roads. All his tenants and villeins would be incensed with their lord over this, perhaps even to the point of rebellion, unless Robin could succeed in getting the interdict swiftly lifted.
But to attend this inquisition and be found guilty would be worse: the penalty for a man found guilty of a grave heresy was confiscation of all his lands and goods — and, in the most serious cases, death by burning at the stake.
Two days later, Hanno and I were in the buttery attached to the great hall at Kirkton Castle, refreshing ourselves with two large mugs of freshly brewed ale from the butts stored there. The alewife, a big-boned woman, was fond of Hanno for some reason, and was fussing around us pressing us to have a morsel of cheese and to make ourselves free with the ale cask. I had often noted Hanno’s predilection for alewives — fat, thin, tall, short, he loved all women who brewed ale. This was no mystery, for I don’t think I have ever met a man who was more fond of drinking ale. He cared nothing for wine or mead — ale was his drink, his liquid love, and he would touch no other.
As we drank deeply of the alewife’s powerful brew, I reflected that I had been foolish to have been so concerned about my lord. When we arrived at Kirkton that morning, after many miles of hard riding, Robin had laughed — laughed out loud when I told him about the Templars and their specially sanctioned heresy inquisition on St Polycarpus’s Day.
‘I know all about that, Alan. I received a letter from the Master of the Temple himself inviting me to come and meekly put my head into his noose. I wrote back respectfully declining his invitation and suggesting — very politely — that he ask the huskier novices to refrain from buggering him for a few moments to allow him time to shove this inquisition up his fundament.’
I was shocked. I knew that Robin was fearless but to insult the Master of the Temple in such a crude way, a senior member of the most respected knightly order in the world…
‘But have you not made it worse?’ I asked. ‘Will they not now come and attack you here, at Kirkton?’
‘How could I make it worse? They have declared war against me personally, they are seeking to have me burnt alive at the stake — and it is not because they are concerned about some silly conjuring tricks in a petty Yorkshire skirmish or about the state of my immortal soul. Think, Alan. You know what this is really about…’
I knew exactly to what he referred: frankincense — the extremely lucrative trade in this incense, burnt in every major church in Christendom every day. This most precious commodity originated in southern Arabia and its trade had been a significant source of revenue for the Knights Templar and their associates in Outremer — until Robin had persuaded the Arabian frankincense merchants — none too gently, it has to be said — to trade with him instead. Robin’s friend Reuben, a tough and clever Jew, had remained in Outremer when most of the rest of us had returned to England and he was responsible for continuing the commerce in frankincense, acting on Robin’s behalf. And what lucrative trade! The little whitish-yellow crystals of frankincense, bought for pennies in the land of Al- Yaman at the foot of the Arabian peninsula, were worth more than their weight in gold in Europe. Reuben bought large quantities from the traders in Gaza for a modest amount of silver, and shipped the precious crumbs to Sicily where another of Robin’s confederates sold them on to Italy and the rest of Europe.
I did not know the full details of the trade, but I had seen its results. When we had arrived at Dover several months ago, we had been raggedy, seasick and exhausted, but also very, very rich. We had carried with us on our long journey home — in conditions of strictest secrecy, of course — several large chests of silver, thousands of pounds’ worth, which were now lodged in Robin’s strongly built counting house in the bailey of Kirkton Castle. And that was not the full extent of Robin’s fortune. Since we had returned from the East, two more shipments of silver had arrived at Kirkton with the compliments of Reuben and a letter assuring his friend that all was well in Gaza and that commerce was booming. The frankincense trade had made Robin a wealthy man and would continue to enrich him — unless the Master of the Knights Templar and His Holiness the Pope had their way.
This is what Robin was alluding to when he said that the Templars were not truly concerned with the state of his soul. They wanted to unseat him from his golden frankincense throne and recover the trade for themselves; doubtless His Holiness had been promised a fat slice of the pie as well.
‘It is just an opening move in a long, complicated game,’ Robin said. ‘They think I am vulnerable to their threats of excommunication. I am not; I care not a clipped farthing for the pronouncements of faraway priests and popes. And interdiction? I can buy that off. Geoffrey, the Archbishop of York, would sell his sister for a chest of silver, let alone mumble a few words to lift some priestly malediction on my lands.’
What he said was true: Archbishop Geoffrey, King Richard’s illegitimate older brother, was notoriously venal; he had been forced to take holy orders to make him ineligible for the throne and thereafter he seemed determined to make himself the richest prelate in England.
But, though I did feel a little reassured by Robin’s words, as ever, I found his complete lack of respect for the institutions of the Church deeply unsettling.
‘What about might? Will they not ride north and besiege us again?’ I suggested. To my mind, Robin was too
