beasts, Murdac’s men had set fire to the wreckage of straw-thatched roofs and broken timber beams, tumbled beds and furniture. It was only by God’s grace and the hard work of Little John and his archers, who fought the fire all night, that the whole of Nottingham town had not burnt down. As it was, John’s blond eyebrows had been singed off, which gave him a slightly surprised look. And three of his archers had been badly roasted and would be unable to fight.
And the point of all this cruel and wanton destruction? To create an open space which would allow the crossbowmen on the eastern wall and in the big gatehouse of the outer bailey to see what they were shooting at, and to deny cover to an attacking enemy.
Cruel, it might have been, but it was also the wise, the clever thing to have done. As Robin had said, Sir Ralph Murdac was no fool.
Nottingham Castle’s fortifications followed the contours of the massive sandstone outcrop on which it was built. The castle proper — that is, the upper bailey, the great tower and the middle bailey — sat on the highest part of the outcrop, protected on its western and southern flanks by unscalable hundred-foot-high cliffs topped with thick twenty-foot-high stone walls. There was no way in from that direction.
Below this, and to the east and north of it, was the outer bailey: the largest, most open part of the castle, housing stables and workshops, as well as the new brewhouse, a cookhouse and a bakery. This outer area did not have the luxury of stone walls but, in truth, it did not need them, for it was ringed by a ditch and an earthen rampart, six foot high, on which was entrenched a heavy wooden palisade another twelve foot in height. And now it looked down on the town across a huge smouldering scar of empty space.
Standing in the ditch on the outside of the outer bailey walls, a man would have to jump — or fly — more than twenty foot up in the air to clear the defences. And while he was attempting that impossibility, he would be continually assailed by the crossbow bolts, spears, rocks and arrows of the defending men-at-arms. Even if the attacker managed to get over the twenty-foot-high defences, he could only be supported on the other side by any of his fellows who had managed the same incredible feat — and there would be few enough of them alive after charging through a blizzard of crossbow bolts across the hundred and fifty yards of scorched and emptied land on the castle’s eastern side.
King Richard had ridden once around the whole circuit of Nottingham Castle when he arrived that afternoon, the twenty-fourth day of March, by Tuck’s reckoning, eleven hundred and ninety-four years after the birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The King was accompanied by a dozen knights and the royal standard, with its two golden lions on a red background, was proudly displayed for the benefit of the hundreds of enemy heads that peered at him over the battlements. Afterwards, at a meeting of his senior commanders in his pavilion in the deer park, Richard declared succinctly: ‘It’s the gatehouse. That is truly the only way in. We take that and we can flood the outer bailey with our men. With God’s help, and given a bit of battle chaos, we can follow them, get right in amongst them when they retreat, and take the barbican of the middle bailey next. If we take that, the castle is as good as ours. So, first we take the gatehouse.’
I admired his confidence: but I could not share it. His breezy talk of taking gatehouses and barbicans and baileys, as if they were a child’s castles in the sand of a beach, made me nervous. From my time as a member of the castle garrison, I knew that the stoutly built wooden gatehouse that pierced the wall of the outer bailey on its eastern side housed about a hundred heavily armed men under the command of a couple of captains and a senior knight. Worse still, the King had promptly assigned the difficult and bloody task of capturing it to the Earl of Locksley, and Robin, naturally, had given the task to Little John — and to me.
So, over watery turnip soup and weak ale, Little John and I discussed our plans for the next morning, when, at dawn, with only a hundred men each, we were going to storm the gatehouse of the outer bailey and attempt to deliver the royal castle of Nottingham up to its rightful owner.
Chapter Twenty
It was cold; a thick frost had turned the black scar of land between the gatehouse and the first houses of the town into a dull smear of grey. I peered out of the side door of a large wool warehouse on the edge of the grey strip of frosty-burnt ground in front of the eastern wall of the outer bailey. It was perhaps half an hour before dawn, and the first inkling of paleness was visible in the sky behind me. I could see my breath steaming in white plumes in the cold air. At my back were Hanno and Thomas — who was unhappy because I would not allow him to join in the assault on the left flank, the southern side of the massive wooden gatehouse. I knew that it would be a hard, gory slog of an assault — we all did — and, perhaps sentimentally, I wanted to spare Thomas, who was still no more than twelve years old, the bloodbath that was about to take place.
Though his disappointment had rendered him silent, Thomas did not sulk. He assisted me with a smooth efficiency as I dressed for battle, helping me to wriggle into an old patched mail coat, which I wore over a padded aketon; fitting my helmet on neatly — a plain steel cap with a nasal guard — and strapping it under my chin. My long leather gauntlets, with sewn-in steel finger and forearm guards, had been waxed and oiled until they were supple, and so had my sword belt, with Goody’s silver Christmastide buckle at the front securing it around my waist, cinched tight to take some of the weight of the mail coat. Thomas had cleaned and sharpened my old sword and oiled the misericorde that now sat in its sheath in my boot. I had never been so pampered before going into battle, and I found the sensation a pleasant one. When Thomas handed me my shield, which he had freshly whitened with a thick layer of lime wash and repainted with Robin’s device of the black-and-grey snarling wolf, I was ready to fight — ready save for the cold, empty feeling in my belly when I dwelt too much on the task we were about to attempt.
I looked behind me into the gloomy interior of the warehouse. The side walls and the far end of the building, twenty paces away, were stacked high with bales of wool, but it was the men I was looking at. Ninety-four of Robin’s hand-picked men-at-arms, each wearing a long dark surcoat of green cloth over whatever oddments of armour that he had, stood watching me, waiting for the signal to proceed. A few of them were checking their blades, or the leather straps of their shields, and some were on their knees, uttering a last prayer before we went in to battle. I looked at my company — former outlaws, thieves, runaways and ne’er-do-wells, even some, I noticed, who had once served in Murdac’s ranks — and I tried to appear unconcerned about the coming slaughter. They were all good men, brave men, I thought to myself, whatever they had done in the past. All was now forgiven. I did not feel worthy to command them. There wasn’t a man in that warehouse who was not afraid; but I knew that every man there would rather die than show it.
We had managed to commandeer five wooden thatching ladders, each more than twenty-five feet long, from the towns-folk. And the two men assigned to carry each one were closest behind me. The ladders were unwieldy things to transport, and the men carrying them were the best in the company, men I knew personally from Sherwood or Outremer. They were men I trusted with my life. In truth, all our lives were in their hands.
Hanno leaned towards me, and said in a low voice: ‘Do not worry, Alan. It is good. We can do this.’ And I nodded at him, managed a smile, and said, ‘I know, Hanno, I know. I’m sure it will be a wonderful success.’
I was lying: I was nervous and very far from sure that we could achieve what we had been asked to do that morning. I looked out of the door once again at the gatehouse, its boxy shape looming black in the half-light before dawn, half as high again as the gate that it guarded. We were going to attempt to run towards it, enduring the spears and arrows and crossbow bolts of hundreds of enemy soldiers, prop the thatching ladders up against the palisade, climb up into the teeth of a determined opposition, get over the wall, and fight our way down to the ground — and somehow survive long enough to open the gate and allow our mounted troops to gallop into the outer bailey and capture it.
It seemed ludicrous; a method of self-immolation, not a serious battle plan. But, if that proved to be the case, at least we would not be dying alone. Little John and another hundred or so of Robin’s men would be attacking the north side of the gatehouse at the same time as us.
I looked north, up the slope of the hill along the grey frosted line of the burnt area, at the singed line of houses and shops that now marked the new edge of Nottingham town, and heard a horn sound a single long blast in the chilly air. As I watched, I saw a huge warrior, bareheaded and with bright yellow hair in two long, thick braids on either side of his head, stepping out from a big house sixty paces away. He carried a huge double-bladed axe and an old-fashioned round shield. He lifted the axe and shouted something loud and rough and joyful, and more men
