our jaunt that day, for in Perkin’s small skiff there had been no room for extra bodies and the only fighting men on board were myself and Tuck, although I suspected that Perkin could handle himself in a tight situation, and I noticed that he wore an evil-looking long dagger at his belt.
I looked sideways at the waterman and it seemed that we both had the same thought simultaneously. Perkin muttered: ‘River pirates; God damn their black souls!’ I was too intent on pulling on my oar as powerfully as I could to reply. But for all our efforts we were losing the race.
The black ship was now almost level with us, positioning itself between our skiff and the north bank of the Thames, about a hundred paces away, where the little village of Chelsea was laid out on the shore, the wind blowing the smoke of dozens of cooking fires towards us. Crouched in the prow of the black ship I could see more than half a dozen armed men, rough-looking fellows armed with swords, clubs and spears, dressed in greasy furs and leather armour, but with no distinguishing badges to say whom they served. To a man, they were eyeing us hungrily. Perkin and I braced our feet against the skiff’s ridged wooden bottom, and put our backs into the task of rowing. The river turned south at that point and we tried to cut straight across to the other side, to a marshy area where there was a village on an island known as Battersea.
The river was less than half a mile wide at this point and with God’s help, and by rowing with all our might, I hoped we could make it to the wild swampy grassland on the southern shore where we could try to lose our pursuers or find a hiding place. We would have done it, too, but for one factor: the wind. It was blowing directly from the north and as we, in our little open rowing boat, headed south, the black ship hoisted a grubby white sail and her oarsmen increased the pace and turned south to follow us.
They overhauled us rapidly, slicing swiftly through the water like a great dark fish. Even with Perkin and myself straining every muscle, there was no way we could escape. The happy chatter in the skiff had ceased, and all eyes were now on our pursuers.
‘Who are those men?’ asked Marie-Anne in a small but calm voice. She was clutching little Hugh to her bosom.
‘I do not know, my lady, but I fear that they mean us harm.’
The black ship was by now no more than thirty yards away and still coming on apace, oars flashing in time, the sail bellying out. The southern shore was a good hundred and fifty yards away; indeed, we were smack in the middle of the river. There was no way that we could outrun the black ship and so I relinquished my oar to Perkin, stood up, made my way to the stern of the rocking boat, and drew my sword. I heard Tuck coming up behind me, and soon I felt his comforting bulk at my side. Perkin was holding his oar upright in both hands, breathing hard, the boat drifting gently with the current of the river. As the black ship approached, I looked at the half-dozen ruffians jostling each other in the prow: big, ugly bastards, all grinning at me. One man was actually licking his lips.
Tuck lifted his heavy wooden cross in his right hand, holding it out towards the black ship, as if to ward off evil. ‘Who are you?’ he boomed across the water. ‘Why do you trouble good Christian folk as they go about their lawful business?’
‘We come with an invitation for the Lady Marie-Anne and her son,’ said a big, grey-bearded brute, armed with a rusty sword; he was the lip-licker. ‘She is invited to spend a little time with some noble friends of ours. Hand her and her son over and we’ll let you go in peace. That’s a promise.’
‘Lay a finger on her and I’ll cut out your liver and feed it to the fish,’ I said, as calmly as I could, though my heart was banging. ‘That is my promise to you.’
I was very conscious of the fact that I wore no hauberk, just a light woollen tunic and hose, with my sword belt over the top. But I had a weapon in each hand, sword in my right, misericorde in my left, and I was determined to send some of these bastards to Hell before they got anywhere near my lady.
Behind me I heard Marie-Anne say, ‘Alan, perhaps if we could just talk…’ but there was no more time for words. The black ship surged forward under the power of her oarsmen, crashing into the side of our little boat and nearly capsizing it. Grappling hooks flew out, bit into the sides of our skiff, were pulled in and held fast. The grey- beard wasted no time; he leapt across from his prow, swinging his sword at my head. He landed with a crash on the stern seat of Perkin’s skiff, and I ducked just in time as the blade hissed over my bare head. I came up and took a step forward; he was overbalanced from his swipe, and I punched the misericorde with a left-hand roundhouse blow into his side, crunching through ribs, the sharp triangular point raking deep into his lungs. He howled with pain and shock and I followed the first strike with a smash to his face with the pommel of my sword, mashing lips and teeth. He dropped his sword and toppled back into his own ship with a scream of rage, spitting blood, but I had no time to watch his progress. A spear was stabbed hard at my face and I leaned back and to the side, allowing the shaft to slide over my shoulder, then I chopped down with my sword into the arm of the spearman, almost severing his limb at the elbow.
Beside me, Tuck was swinging the heavy cross in wide sweeps. The crosspiece caught one of the pirates in the side of the face, crushing his eye and hurling him into the sea with a shrill bird-like cry. Another man bounded across from the black ship wielding a huge double-handed axe. Tuck caught the swing of the weapon in the crosspiece of his staff, but the blade sheared the tough wood in half, leaving the middle-aged monk with nothing more than a heavy stick in his hands. I leapt forward, keeping low to avoid a wild swing from the axeman, and sliced open his neck with my sword. As he died, he sprawled on to me, knocking me to the floor of the skiff. I pushed his gory corpse away, our legs tangled, and I watched with horror as more enemies jumped aboard and surrounded Marie-Anne and Hugh at the far end of the craft.
I saw Perkin bash a leaping man on the shoulder with his long clumsy oar, and then drop it, draw his dagger and plunge it into the belly of another man, but a pirate’s swinging club found the back of his head and he dropped immediately, legs unstrung, into the bottom of the boat. There was a knot of men around Marie-Anne. A heavily bearded man punched her hard in the temple with his mailed fist, knocking her down to her knees, and I saw little Hugh being lifted screaming and kicking high above the fray in enemy hands, then passed above the heads of the knot of men around Ysmay, away and over to the black ship. I shouted a curse, struggled to my feet and lunged forward again, but my sword was checked by a tall boarder with a long moustache, and while I hacked and slashed desperately at him — he showing some unusual skill and checking my passage forwards — I realized that the rest of the pirates were leaving the skiff, many scratched and bleeding, cutting the grappling irons loose and leaping back into their own craft. I feinted low at the moustached man’s groin with my sword, stepped forward, twisted a full circle inside his reach and slammed the misericorde into his left ear, backhand, hard, into his brain. The only pirates on board our little vessel now were corpses.
Already five yards of grey water separated us from the black ship, which was rapidly pulling away, our foes jeering at us and waving their weapons. I ducked as a spear was hurled at my head. When I straightened again, I saw that I was the only person still standing in our boat. Perkin was unconscious, lying in a bloody pool in the scuppers; Ysmay the nurse was gone — hacked apart while trying to protect her charge; her small severed hand lay on the rowing bench in a pool of black blood like a delicate white crab. Marie-Anne was slumped across the prow, but by the movement of her bosom she was clearly still breathing, praise God. Tuck had taken a sword thrust to the arm, which had cut deeply into the big muscles there. Only I was unscathed.
I looked after the fast-disappearing black ship and lifted my blood-clotted sword, pointing it threateningly towards them, silently hoping that one day God might allow me to have my vengeance on them. In return, one of the pirates lifted a small black-haired bundle, squealing with rage, short pudgy legs kicking in his fury. I could clearly see the blue kidskin shoes on his little feet. It was Hugh. I’d been responsible for the loss of my mistress’s only son, the heir to the Earldom of Locksley.
And the thought hit me like a kick from an angry mule: now I’d have to break the news to Robin.
Chapter Seven
‘You say you are sorry? Sorry? You took my wife and my son out on the river for a childish jaunt, away from the safety of Westminster Hall and our men, with no protection whatsoever. Not a single man-at-arms!’ Robin’s voice was an icy whip. ‘And now, my wife has been beaten unconscious, her maidservant murdered, and my son kidnapped. And you stand there and say you are sorry.’
Robin’s eyes glinted like a drawn knife in the darkness. And I wondered if he would kill me on the spot or devise appalling tortures to prolong the agony.
