skewering bodies and hurling the enemy several yards backwards. Those who had not been pierced by their spears or crushed by the giant hooves of the knights’ destriers had scattered. And when the lances were gone, snapped off, impaled in heads or buried deep in infantrymen’s bellies, Richard’s knights pulled out long swords or a mace or an axe and the butchery continued. I saw Robin lopping the sword arm from a man-at-arms who had been foolish enough to turn and face him. But even those who ran rarely escaped. I watched a fleeing crossbowman easily overhauled by a horse-borne knight, who hacked down in passing, slicing open the poor man’s unprotected face. Three knights surrounded a knot of struggling men-at-arms, battering at their heads and upheld arms with mace and sword until all the footmen had fallen in a sodden, twitching heap. Everywhere running men-at-arms were being sliced and hacked and battered by the victorious knights; no quarter was given, and none of the enemy were thought to be worth ransoming, so scores died, and their bloody rag-doll bodies were trampled and torn time and again under the hooves of the knights’ big horses as they criss-crossed the outer bailey looking for fresh prey. The lucky ones, or those enemy crossbowmen and men-at-arms who could run the fastest, made it back to the barbican in the middle bailey, and were quickly pulled inside for safety as the thick iron-studded oak door slammed shut behind them. But they were few, very few.
Richard’s knights, however, did not have it all their own way. After the initial onslaught was over, from the walls and towers of the upper and middle baileys, Murdac’s surviving Flemish crossbowmen took their revenge. Foot-long oak bolts, tipped with sharp iron, hissed from the battlements, sinking deep into horse and rider without discrimination. Javelins were hurled downward, and huge boulders, too. One unfortunate knight, unhorsed outside the barbican of the middle bailey and battering futilely with his sword hilt at the barred door, was fried alive when a cauldron of red-hot sand was poured on him from a murder-hole above. I saw another knight, cursing and crying with pain, pinned through the meat of his thigh by a black quarrel to the wood of his saddle.
But the outer bailey was ours. When the defenders who had remained there were all dead, mortally wounded or captured, and there were no more easy targets for the roaming knights’ swords, most of the mounted men, panting and praising God, retreated back beyond the open gate of the captured gatehouse and out of range of the defenders’ deadly missiles. There was nothing else for them to do: the main castle was shut tight, secure from their blood-spattered blades, and their horses could not gallop through the grey stone of its massive walls.
We men in Lincoln green had picked ourselves up from the ground by this point, though we had taken no further part in the fight for the outer bailey. A few of the brighter enemy men-at-arms had thrown their weapons away and run towards us, shouting as they came that they wished to surrender. They escaped the wrath of the knights, and took refuge with us, under guard, on the far side, the town side of the gatehouse and the wooden palisade we had so valiantly captured. The outer bailey of Nottingham Castle belonged to King Richard’s men — but we could not easily move about in it, except by running and dodging and hiding behind the few scattered buildings there, for fear of the crossbowmen who now lined the castle walls, seemingly determined, even though the fight for that ground was over, to pick us off one by one.
King Richard came walking unhurriedly across the open space, horse-less and hobbling slightly. For some reason — most probably ignorance of who he was — the crossbowmen seemed to be sparing him. He stopped in front of the right-hand part of the wooden double door that Little John had managed to open in the nick of time and greeted me cordially:
‘Blondel, how goes it?’ he called. ‘You survived, I see.’
‘I’m well, sire. Quite miraculously unharmed.’
The King nodded distractedly and just then a crossbow bolt slammed into the ground between us. It seemed that the bowmen on the castle’s stone walls had finally woken up to the fact that the King was in their sights. Richard ignored the bolt sticking out of the earth in front of him, and a second one that landed on his other side but closer to the royal foot. He was staring up at the wooden bulk of the gatehouse. We were at the extreme range of the crossbow’s power, more than a hundred and fifty yards from the battlements of the middle bailey, but Richard must have known that, with his light desert armour, any quarrel that struck him could still do considerable damage. The King’s self-possession, I thought admiringly, was remarkable.
Two household knights came hurrying up to their sovereign as he stood in the doorway of the gatehouse gazing silently up at its structure. They were carrying two large shields and, standing behind the King, they lifted the kite-shaped objects to protect his back from any further insult from the castle crossbowmen.
‘You did very well, Blondel,’ said the King ruminatively, ‘to capture this gate. I thank you for it. But, you know, we cannot hold this place…’
A crossbow bolt skittered off the shield being held by one of the knights standing protectively behind him, and my concentration was diverted momentarily so that I did not hear what the King said next.
‘… it’s a shame really, but it can’t be helped,’ he said.
‘I beg your pardon, sire,’ I asked, embarrassed by my inattention. ‘What did you just say?’
‘I said, my good Blondel, that you are to take your men and burn this gatehouse to the ground. Destroy the whole outer palisade too, while you are at it. If we cannot hold the outer bailey, then they shall not have it either. Burn this and all the defences that you can get at. And when we have done that, I shall send heralds to talk to this Murdac fellow, to see what he has to say for himself.’
It was easier said than done to burn the palisade. I gathered up the survivors of that morning’s attack, borrowed a score of Robin’s archers, and we set about placing dry straw and brushwood faggots doused with oil along the inside and outside edges of the palisade, ready to put it to the torch. We were harassed constantly by the crossbowmen in the middle bailey and I had to use a screen of men carrying shields on both left and right arms to keep those men laying the fire safe from the darting quarrels of the defenders.
I lost one man killed and two injured in the process, and it was grim work. We were not taking part in a mad rush for glory, with the rage of battle pounding in our ears, but doing heavy, difficult, dirty work. What is more, destroying the outer bailey’s defences made the sacrifice of precious lives that morning seem a terrible waste. But when a King commands, you obey.
It was gone noon by the time we finished, and I released the men to find food and rest as the first flames began to crackle and burn along the line of palisade. I put the torch to that damned gatehouse myself, piling straw and brushwood on either side of the wooden doors, then throwing a burning length of pine into each pile and retreating beyond the burnt strip as the column of smoke rose into the blue March sky. My task accomplished, I walked back into the town to seek out Robin and receive fresh orders.
I found the Earl of Locksley in a big townhouse in the centre of Nottingham, drinking red wine and joking with Little John. Robin was sitting on a stool in the corner of the room with his left leg extended. He had a bloody bandage on his thigh, but he assured me jovially that it was a clean javelin wound and would surely heal, given time — if he was only allowed a little peace and quiet. Little John was lying flat on a big table in the centre of the hall, naked from the waist down. His right buttock was swollen and bloody and the black shaft of the quarrel was sticking up vertically, protruding about six inches from the mound of pink-white flesh. Nonetheless, John seemed to be in very good spirits. A nervous barber-surgeon was fussing around the big man’s nether regions, mopping at the blood that was trickling down his hip and muttering. The man, who was clearly rather frightened, kept picking up an instrument that resembled two spoons fixed together — the bowls facing each other, and the whole contraption attached to the end of a short, thin iron shaft — then putting it down again.
Robin saw me peering at the instrument and said: ‘It’s a tool for removing arrow heads from deep wounds. The spoony part is inserted into the wound, closed around the arrow head, which allows the head to be withdrawn without causing any more damage. Totally unnecessary, in my view — Flemish crossbowmen don’t use barbed arrows for warfare. But Nathan here insists it is a marvellous invention and the decision must be his: after all, Nathan is the man who is to operate on John, when he can summon up sufficient courage.’
I looked at Robin quizzically. And my master said: ‘John has threatened to break both of Nathan’s arms if he causes him any unnecessary pain.’ And he gave me a lop-sided smile.
Little John was grinning owlishly at me from his position on the table. I could see that, unlike Robin, who was merely relaxed, John was thoroughly drunk. He had also been tightly strapped to the table, with several thick leather bands securing his huge chest and both meaty legs. I walked over to him. ‘Now then, John,’ I said, selecting my most patronizing tone. ‘There is no need to throw your weight about here and make such a childish fuss about a little thing like this.’
And with my index finger I flicked the shaft of the quarrel that was sticking out of his arse cheek — hard.
It wobbled satisfyingly, and John bellowed with rage and pain and tried to struggle free of the leather bonds
