impossibly huge in that small face, his bladder and bowels released themselves, and I was transported back ten years or more to an old oak tree in a small village, now destroyed, but which had been only a few short miles away from where I stood now. There, ten years before, as a small and frightened boy, I had watched my father hanged — on the orders of this very man now thrashing away his life before me.
I stood still for a long while and watched Murdac slowly die: it was fitting, I told myself.
And as I watched, I offered up a prayer for the soul of my father.
I took no further part in the siege that day. Hanno, Thomas and I found ourselves a cosy tavern in the English part of Nottingham town and drank ale until it was almost coming out of our ears. Meanwhile, King Richard’s stone-throwing machines smashed at the defenders’ walls from a small hill to the north of the castle, and our drinking was punctuated by the sound of smashing masonry. The ale seemed to have little effect on me, I felt merely numb. I spoke little to Hanno, and he had the sense to be quiet and order a continual stream of pots of ale from the alewife, with whom he had already struck up a great friendship. After a pot or two, Thomas disappeared on his own business. I did not even ask him where he was bound. I was thinking of my father, of his kindness to me, of the music that as a family we had made together, and of his death… mostly about his awful death.
Robin joined us for a while, informed by Thomas of our whereabouts, I supposed, and he congratulated me on the success of my mission the night before. We raised a mug of ale to Murdac’s slow, painful death, but in truth I could take no joy from it. Strangely, Robin seemed to understand my flat, empty feeling at my enemy’s demise.
‘Revenge,’ he said, fixing me with his silver eyes, which seemed to be glowing more brightly than ever in the haze of ale, ‘is a duty. It is not a pleasure. We take vengeance because we owe it to those who have been wronged. But, in itself, it is not something that can make us whole. We take revenge because we must pay our debts to the dead — and so that people will fear to do us, and those we love, a wrong. But we should not look to it as a balm to the soul.’
But I was in no mood to discuss his peculiar philosophies and Robin, sensing my mood, soon made his excuses and, after quietly ordering Hanno to see that I came to no harm, left me to my ale jug.
The next day, under a flag of truce, two knights emerged from the battered castle, and on their knees before a stern King Richard began the negotiations for the surrender of Nottingham Castle.
I was in the King’s pavilion, still feeling out of sorts with the world, when they arrived. Richard was just explaining to me — I will not say apologizing; kings do not admit it when they are wrong — why it was necessary for Murdac to be publicly hanged.
‘They must know that I am serious,’ Richard said. ‘They must understand that if they do not surrender the castle to me now, when I eventually take it I will slaughter every last mother’s son inside its walls.’
Evidently, as usual, King Richard’s brutal tactics had worked. A delegation from the castle was here, and surrender was in the air. The two knights who came to parley with him were William de Wenneval, the deputy constable of the castle who had assumed command after Murdac’s sudden disappearance — and Sir Nicholas de Scras.
There was a good deal of mummery and show about the parley. The King pretended to be in a towering rage that his royal authority had been defied. The knights, on their knees, begged for his forgiveness, Sir William de Wenneval sticking to Murdac’s feeble story that they had not realized who was besieging them. The business did not take long to conclude: the King demanded that twelve noble hostages, including the two knights before him, should surrender themselves to him, throwing themselves on the King’s mercy, but he grudgingly conceded that the rest of the garrison — mostly common English men-at-arms and a few undistinguished knights, and the surviving Flemish crossbowmen, of course — would be at liberty to depart Nottingham for their homes without molestation.
As the two humiliated knights were leaving the pavilion to take the King’s offer back to the beleaguered castle, Sir Nicholas caught my eye and I went over to greet him.
‘It would seem, Alan, that you were right. You evidently backed the right man,’ said my friend sadly. He scrubbed at his short-cropped grey hair in frustration. ‘And it must be faced manfully that I rolled the dice — and lost!’
‘I am sure the King will be merciful,’ I said, although I was not sure at all: the five hanged prisoners of yesterday, especially Ralph Murdac, loomed large in my thoughts.
At noon, the twelve knights emerged from the castle. According to the agreement, they were all unarmed, wearing only the linen shift of a penitent and each with a hempen noose around his neck to demonstrate that the King had the right to hang him if he chose. While the rest of the garrison streamed away into Nottingham town, grateful for their lives, the twelve knights were herded by Richard’s jeering soldiers to the gallows in the outer bailey.
There were five corpses still hanging there like ripe fruit on a tree of death, including the body of Sir Ralph Murdac. The King, splendid in his finest armour and towering above them on horseback, looked sternly at the twelve men, his face a cold mask of royal justice.
‘You have defied your lawful King, and so committed treason — and for that the punishment must be death,’ Richard began. Then he continued: ‘But one of my most valiant knights, Sir Alan of Westbury, has pleaded for the life of one of your number.’
I was startled by my King’s words. I had pleaded with him, of course, but what did he mean by Sir Alan of Westbury? I was no knight. Did he think I was? Was he confused in the head by the battle?
‘After listening to the counsel of Sir Alan, my trusty and well-beloved knight,’ the King went on, his words having a strange emphasis on the work knight, ‘I have decided that one man, Sir Nicholas de Scras, shall receive a full pardon for his crimes against my person, and shall not, on this occasion, receive the penalty he so justly deserves.
I caught Sir Nicholas’s eye and he smiled ruefully at me, nodding his thanks, but with more than a little relief in his careworn face. I was thinking of the friendship he had shown me in Outremer, his tender nursing of me in Acre when I was sick, of the time he saved my life outside the Blue Boar tavern in Westminster, and the advice about Milo’s weak left leg that he had whispered to me before the wrestling match. He owed me nothing, by my reckoning.
The King was still speaking: ‘The rest of you’ — he paused for a long moment and then pointed at the eleven other linen-clad knights, penitent and pathetic — ‘shall also escape death today and shall be set free upon agreement of a suitable ransom from each of you.’
And the King smiled. There were cheers, and shouts of joy, and not only from the eleven knights who had cheated death. Hoods and helmets were thrown into the air and all of a sudden that grim place, in the shadow of five dangling bodies, took on the atmosphere of a holy day. Some people shouted: ‘God save the King!’ Others cheered the reprieved knights. A group of travelling musicians — not real trouveres but lowly market jongleurs — struck up a jaunty tune, and I saw people beginning to tap their feet. Before long there would be dancing. England had been racked by violence and uncertainty for too long. But now the King was back and, with the capture of Nottingham Castle, he was fully the master of his kingdom once more.
I walked over to King Richard’s horse. ‘Sire,’ I said, my heart beating fast, ‘I thank you for your clemency to my friend Sir Nicholas de Scras. But I must say one thing… I am no knight. I fear you are mistaken in that. I am merely a lowly captain under the Earl of Locksley.’
King Richard smiled down at me: ‘Not a knight, you say?’ His blue eyes were twinkling at me. ‘You think that I do not know that, Blondel? You are no knight, that is true, but you have shown more courage and resource and skill in battle than many a man of more illustrious parentage. You are not a knight at this hour — but by God’s legs you shall be before the hour is up. Get down on your knees!’
I goggled at my sovereign, my knees folded under me, and while the King dismounted, I stared at him, and watched while he beckoned over a household knight who handed him a package wrapped in black silk.
‘Give me your sword,’ said the King. He stood looming over me, tall and proud, the spring sunlight glinting off his red and gold hair. I fumbled with my plain sword hilt, but just then young Thomas ran forward out of the crowd and held out Rix’s beautiful blade. I noticed that my hard-working squire had somehow found the time to clean the blood and filth from it.
The King took the weapon from Thomas and admired it for a moment. ‘A fine blade, and worthy of you, Blondel,’ he said quietly. He looked at the word engraved in gold on the shining blade. It read ‘Fidelity’. The King
