Hubert Walter continued, with a nod at his sovereign: ‘Lancaster Castle has fallen to de Puiset’s brother Theobald — and as for Mont St Michel in Cornwall…’ Here the Archbishop consulted a scrap of parchment. ‘… It seems the constable, Henry de Pumerai, died of fright when he heard Your Highness had returned to England.’
The room erupted in a roar of laughter, a mass of burly men doubled over in hilarity, slapping each other on the back and knuckling their own eyes, and even the King joined in, tears of mirth streaming down his pale cheeks.
At last, the Archbishop called the chapter house to order: ‘There is one last nut to crack, Highness, and then all England is yours: Nottingham Castle.’
‘Tell me about Nottingham,’ the King growled.
‘Well…’ the muscular prelate began. The King silenced him with a wave of his hand. ‘Not you, Hubert. You’ve done your bit. Locksley, that’s your neck of the woods. What news of my royal castle of Nottingham?’
All eyes in the chapter house were now on my master. He sucked in a big breath and began to speak. ‘Sire, as my lord Archbishop has already said, Nottingham is a tough nut. It is the last hold-out of Prince John’s men, and knights and menat-arms loyal to your brother have been mustering there for the past few weeks since your release. There must be as many as a thousand fighting men there now — including a contingent of two hundred first-class Flemish mercenaries: crossbow men, and very good, I’m told.’
Robin paused for a moment to collect his thoughts: ‘Nottingham has ample provisions for at least a year. It has several layers of defences, so that even if we take the outer walls, they can retreat into inner fortifications, and even if we take those, they could defy us from the great tower for many months. Some men say that Nottingham is absolutely impregnable; that it cannot be taken by force. Ever.’
‘But can we take it?’ The King was frowning at Robin.
My master looked straight back at him, but for three heartbeats he did not reply. Finally he said: ‘Yes, sire, yes, it can be taken. It will cost many lives, but, yes. Assuming that Prince John does not return to England with a great army and march to its relief. We can take it. But the price in blood, the price in the lives of your men, will be very high.’
The King looked thoughtful. ‘Who is there at Nottingham now?’ he asked.
Robin replied, with no emotion at all in his voice: ‘The castle is presently being held by Sir Ralph Murdac, your royal brother John’s constable, who was sheriff of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and the Royal Forests under your father.’
‘Murdac, that slimy little shit-bag? Is he still on the chessboard?’ said the King, with more than a little surprise in his voice. ‘I thought he had been banished, or exiled, or outlawed or something. The man’s no better than a thief. A damned coward, too.’
‘He is no fool and he should not be underestimated,’ said Robin. ‘And he has a strong garrison at his command. It will be no easy matter to winkle him out.’
‘Why do you defend him? He is no friend of yours,’ said the King. ‘If I remember rightly, you have crossed swords with him on several occasions. And wasn’t there some saucy rumour…’ the King stopped, embarrassed.
‘He is no friend of mine — that is certain,’ Robin said coolly. ‘I would happily see him hanged as a traitor from the nearest gallows. But it would be a grave mistake to underestimate him. As we speak, my men are now outside the castle walls, with the Earl of Chester’s forces, keeping him under surveillance. There are not enough loyal men to hand — a few hundred at most — to keep Murdac penned in if he really wanted to sally forth. But my guess is that he believes he is safe behind those walls, and he is sitting tight and holding out until Prince John sends a relief force from France.’
‘We need not fear my royal brother overmuch,’ said Richard. ‘He is not a man to take a country, or relieve a castle even, if there is anyone with even the slightest will to oppose him.’ Dutiful laughter echoed round the chapter house — it was a jest Richard had used before. Even Robin smiled tightly.
‘Well, gentlemen,’ said the King. ‘It is quite clear what we must do: we must go north, to Nottingham, and dispossess this Murdac creature of my castle — and perhaps I shall hang him from the nearest gallows, too, just to please you, Locksley!’
Robin smiled again, and made the King a deep, graceful bow.
King Richard was clearly a happy man — after a year of humiliating and frustrating inactivity, he was back in the saddle with loyal companions at his side, and a bloody campaign to fight to restore his kingdom. More than anything in this world, our King loved a good fight, and his enthusiasm and confidence lifted our hearts. We rode out from Canterbury the next day, some four hundred souls: barons, knights, menat-arms, bishops, priests, royal servants, huntsmen, whores and hangers-on. The men were boasting of the great deeds they would do in battle and jesting crudely with each other. The whole column was in tearing high spirits, eager for a fight, and from time to time snatches of song would break out and spread down the lines of men, growing, blossoming like a forest fire until we were all bawling our hearts out in time with the stamp of marching boots. We were still badly outnumbered by Prince John’s forces, but we knew, you see, we knew in our very bones that we would be victorious when we reached Nottingham. After all, we had King Richard to lead us, and with the finest warrior in Christendom as our lord, who could possibly prevail against us?
The whole country seemed to realize this, too. As we made our way north from Canterbury, to Rochester, then London for a brief stop of one day, and on again to Bury St Edmunds, we were joined by a constant stream of men-at-arms: country knights rallying to the royal standard, tough young lads looking for a bit of adventure, and canny barons, smelling Richard’s victory on the wind and wanting to renew their allegiance to him before his ultimate success.
At Huntingdon, we were met by William the Marshal and a hundred well-equipped men-at-arms from Pembroke. The Marshal’s brother had only recently died but William had chosen to forgo attending his funeral to meet us, just to demonstrate his loyalty to the King. It was a touching scene: this thick-set, grizzled veteran of scores of bloody contests embracing our thin, pale King. Both men were in chain-mail under their surcoats, but while William was clad from big toe to fingertip in heavy links, I saw that Richard was wearing only a much lighter, shorter, sleeveless mail coat, of the kind some men had worn in Outremer. It was easier to bear if you were weak, wounded or suffering from the sun’s oriental heat — but it was not as strong as the heavy chain-mail in deflecting a blow. And I wondered privately whether Richard, after his inactive year in captivity, was truly fit for a bruising battlefield.
By the time we made our camp outside Nottingham, pitching our tents in the deer park to the west of the castle, we were a thousand men strong — and our numbers were boosted by another four hundred when we linked up with Ranulph, Earl of Chester, who had been watching the castle from the high ground to its north, and David, Earl of Huntingdon. The latter had been sent by his father — the Scottish King, William the Lion — who was a great friend of Richard’s and determined to support him in the struggle against Prince John. David, who also happened to hold the English honour of Huntingdon, brought with him a powerful force of knights. And we were glad to have them.
At a meeting in his royal pavilion in the deer park, in a space packed with loud, eager, armoured men, Richard gave a rapid series of orders to his barons. The whole of Nottingham Castle was to be encircled by our troops immediately, this night. Now.
‘He wants it sewn up as tight as a mouse’s arse,’ said Little John to me after we had met in an alehouse in the eastern part of Nottingham town. Little John had been in command of Robin’s contingent of a hundred or so archers who had been left in the north, with the Earl of Chester’s men, to keep an eye on Ralph Murdac. ‘Nothing is to go in or out,’ said my giant blond friend, as we sat at a rough bench sharing a gallon of weak ale, a big bowl of watery turnip soup and half a loaf of stale rye bread.
I had been shocked when I rode into Nottingham that afternoon. A swathe of the town some hundred and fifty paces across, just to the east of the castle, had been completely destroyed. Streets that I had known well, indeed, that I had walked down just a few months ago, were gone, along with the shops and taverns, peasant hovels and workshops that had once lined them. All that remained now were smouldering ruins and piles of grey ash.
John told me how a force of two hundred knights and menat-arms had ridden out of Nottingham Castle under cover of darkness two nights before and, using ropes and the muscle power of their big destriers, they had pulled down all the buildings, tearing them quite literally apart. Then, without a thought for the ordinary men, women and children who might be trapped inside their dwellings or trying to salvage their meagre possessions or save their
