questions in the church…’
‘Don’t you dare to speak to me! Don’t you ever speak to me again. I hate you, I hate you!’
And, to my astonishment, she burst into tears, wheeled her horse and, spurring savagely, galloped back to join the Countess’s cavalcade, which was by now more than a hundred yards away.
Hanno had found something fascinating on the nail of his index finger and he was giving it his full attention. For myself, I was in no mood to discuss being snubbed and scolded by a pair of highly strung women, so we mutely turned our horses’ heads north towards the great Roman road and put as much distance as we could between us and the scene of my humiliation.
Chapter Twelve
Two days later, on a golden spring afternoon, with the sunlight glancing through the narrow windows, illuminating the swirls of smoke in the air and making mad and merry patterns on the rush-strewn floor, I stood before Prince John himself in the great hall that occupied the middle bailey of Nottingham Castle. The Prince was in a fine humour, feasting at one end of a long table laden with roast chickens and other dishes, laughing and jesting with a short companion seated to his right. Although the huge space of the great hall contained several dozen folk — knights, men-at-arms, priests, servants of all kinds — they were the only diners. I had been admitted to the hall by the Prince’s chamberlain, and loudly announced, but I was left to stand there, with Hanno at my side, waiting at the end of the long wooden board to be noticed by the most powerful man in the country; the man who Sir Nicholas avowed would surely be the next King of England. Yet it was not Prince John who drew my eye as I waited patiently; it was his small, dark companion who commanded my attention. He seemed to be enjoying the Prince’s particular favour that afternoon, talking intimately with his royal master, making half-heard jests and sharing the big silver platter of succulent roast fowl. It was the erstwhile Sheriff of Nottinghamshire himself: Sir Ralph Murdac.
I was glad to note that his crippled left shoulder was still wedged high, but otherwise Murdac seemed in good health, a little heavier than when I had last seen him and clearly prospering in the Prince’s service. His familiar expensive black silk tunic was topped by a rich fur-lined mantle, though the weather was warm enough for this to be mere ostentation. His stubby fingers, smeared with chicken grease, now sported half a dozen chunky golden rings topped with fat, square-cut glinting jewels.
Riding through the town of Nottingham on our way to the castle had brought back evil memories of my younger days there as a starving cutpurse, and that bad feeling remained with me now that I was in the very heart of England’s strongest fortress. I felt unnerved, unmanned: this castle had fearful memories for me. When I was a boy it had loomed over the town of Nottingham, a source of raw Norman power. From its gates mail-clad men on horseback had emerged to terrorize the population, collecting taxes, violating young maidens and summarily hanging anyone who opposed their will. In this very hall just three years ago, these two men had humiliated me, forcing me to sing for them when I was cold and wet and tired, and then tossing me pennies as if I was some starveling mountebank.
Feeling the stirrings of rage in my belly, I suppressed them almost immediately. For the weeks and months ahead I needed to be what Tuck would have called a ‘cold-hot’ man; that is, a man who keeps his rage hidden deep inside and only shows an icy indifference to the world. Robin was such a man, I remember Tuck telling me shortly after I joined the band of Sherwood outlaws in what seemed like another age. But like the shivering thief I had once been, I was hungry now, and even as I eyed Murdac’s golden rings with a larcenous envy that I had not felt in years, my stomach growled, a long, low sound like a war hound giving warning that it was about to attack. The noise was loud enough to startle Ralph Murdac and his royal master from their crisp, golden chickens. And they simultaneously looked up at me.
‘I beg your pardon, sire,’ I said, spreading a servile grin across my lips.
The Prince must have known that Hanno and I were standing there, for we had been but ten paces from him for some while, but it had amused His Royal Highness to ignore us. My wayward stomach, it seemed, had forced him to acknowledge our presence.
‘Ah, there you are,’ said the Prince, suddenly all smiles and affability. ‘It is young Alan of Westbury, if I am not mistaken; the famous trouvere and noted swordsman. And my servants tell me that you are the man we have to thank for locating my noble brother King Richard in his stinking German prison — you know, I had feared that he might be dead…’
As he said this, something flashed across his face, just for an instant, a look of — was it fear? Anger? Then it was gone and he was all bland smiles again.
‘Well, don’t stand on ceremony, my boy, come and join us. Could you manage a little chicken?’ The Prince clapped his hands and a servant appeared suddenly, as if by some mountebank’s conjuring trick. ‘A cup of wine and a stool for my young friend, and be quick about it,’ he ordered in his harsh cracked voice.
So I sat down at the board with Prince John and Sir Ralph Murdac. It was a situation that I could never have conceived of five years ago. I could scarcely believe it now. I saw that Hanno was being led away by one of the servants — presumably he was to be fed in the kitchens or somewhere more suited to his lower rank. I helped myself to a small piece of chicken breast, and a hunk of fine-milled white bread.
‘You know Sir Ralph Murdac, of course,’ said Prince John, nodding at my mortal enemy, the man I most wanted to kill in the world, who sat on the other side of the table from me chewing a drumstick and regarding me down his nose with those icy blue eyes.
‘Sir Ralph,’ I said, managing a condescending smile, and nodding my head in a casual manner as if I regularly sat down to break bread with murdering little shit-weasels.
And then I spoilt it all. I caught a waft of Murdac’s perfume, some foul lavender-based concoction and, as I always did when its odour raped my nostrils, I gave a mighty sneeze, a huge nasal trumpet blast, and then another. A chunk of half-chewed chicken shot out of my mouth and spattered the crisp white linen tablecloth.
‘I see your base-born manners have not improved,’ sneered Murdac. ‘But then, blood will out, as they say…’
‘Good God,’ croaked the Prince, interrupting his friend. ‘Are you sick, young Alan? You haven’t caught some Oriental plague, I trust, from your long sojourn in the Holy Land? Or some German ague? He-he-he!’ He seemed to find this very funny and chortled to himself for several moments, the red ringlets of his shoulder-length hair dancing with his merriment. Do not punch him in the face, Alan; do not do it, I thought. Be the cold-hot man. Be calm, or all is lost.
‘I am quite well, sire. It is perhaps a slight chill, that is all. I thank you for your royal concern.’
‘Well, I won’t keep you long, not if you’ve got a chill — or the dreaded plague. He-he-he! I understand that you wish to serve me — is this the truth?’
I merely nodded; I did not trust myself to speak.
‘Well, you are in luck. Sir Nicholas de Scras, one of my finest knights, has personally recommended you. And that is good enough for me. We know whom you served before, and indeed why you are seeking a new lord, but I think the least said about that affair on St Polycarpus’s Day the better. Don’t you?’
‘I don’t trust him,’ Murdac said bluntly. ‘I think he is a spy sent by Locksley and he means to betray you.’
I stared hard at Sir Ralph, boring into his chilly blue eyes with my own angry brown ones. But I kept my mouth shut. The cold-hot man, that was me.
‘Nonsense, Ralphie,’ said Prince John. ‘We were both there in the Temple Church when he betrayed his heretical master. We saw it with our own eyes; heard it with our own ears. And now that Locksley is loose, he will surely be coming for this fellow; very fond of vengeance is our Robert Odo. The boy’s clearly desperate; masterless, damn near penniless — he’s got nowhere else to turn.’
The Prince had dropped his shallow pretence of being a friendly, jolly companion; he was talking about me as if I were not even in the great hall, let alone seated two feet away from him.
‘We’ll watch him, of course. He has a well-earned reputation as a slippery fellow. Low-born fellow, too, I hear. But if he plays us false — well… we will deal with that if and when. I need fighting men, Ralphie. Besides, Nick de Scras vouches for him, and that’s good enough for me.’
Prince John looked at me directly now, and his voice changed and became harsh once more. ‘Let me speak plainly, Dale. I will give you the manors of Burford, Stroud and Edington. They lie in the West Country, not far apart
