‘Just humbly doing my duty, sir,’ I said grinning up at him. My heart was full at the sight of him, though I noticed that he was paler and thinner than I recalled. Nevertheless, he was here in Verneuil in the flesh and I felt the weight of command, the warlord’s responsibility for the lives of his men, float from my young shoulders and pass to his infinitely broader ones. And for that, and for the sight of him alive and well, I gave thanks to God.
‘I’ve never much cared for humility,’ said my lord, with his familiar mocking smile. ‘And duty is merely the name we give to an unpleasant task that is unlikely to be rewarded. But I will say this: well done, Alan. You’ve done a man’s work here. And I am proud of you.’
I held his horse’s bridle while Robin swung down from the saddle; he was moving a little stiffly and he winced when his boots hit the beaten earth of the courtyard.
‘How is the leg?’ I asked. The wound he had taken at Nottingham was the second to that same limb in two years.
‘Almost mended. The muscles are still weak and I could have done with more rest; but the King summoned me and so I had to obey — obedience to one’s lord is one virtue that I do hold with.’ My own lord gave me a quick smile, to show that he was half-jesting, and his strange silver-grey eyes twinkled at me in the torchlight.
A massive blow, like a kick from an angry mule, exploded in the centre of my back, knocking me a pace forward. I turned fast, dropping the reins of Robin’s horse, my hand going to the hilt of my sword and half drawing the blade. A huge figure loomed over me, a human tower only half-visible in the leaping light of the pine torches. A thatch of blond hair crowned a vast lumpy red face that would have terrified an ogre — if it wasn’t for its broad, friendly and very familiar grin. It was my old friend John Nailor, known by all as Little John. I released the handle of my weapon, allowing the long blade to slide into its scabbard, and clasped the extended meaty hand that had slapped me so hard on the back.
‘God’s bulging ball-bag, young Alan, you are as jumpy as a lady rabbit in a fox lord’s bedchamber,’ said Little John, shaking his head in mock sorrow. ‘It must be a bad conscience. Feeling guilty about something, are you? Been indulging in one of your legendary bouts of onanism again, eh? Have you, lad? You can tell your old uncle John. Bit too much of the old hand-to-cock combat, eh? You’ve got to leave it alone sometimes, you know, Alan. You can’t go on threshing the barley stalk all day and night. It weakens your nerve, rots your brains, can make you go blind, too.’
‘You do talk some rare horseshit, John Nailor. My nerves are absolutely fine. Nothing wrong with them at all.’
I was blushing and I could see Robin trying hard not to laugh, covering his mouth with his hand and making as if to scratch his chin.
I summoned my wits: ‘I must say, John, it’s very good of you to finally turn up. We might have had a use for you a couple of days ago, before the battle — there was a good deal of heavy lifting to be done: boxes, bales, cauldrons of hot oil… Donkey work, of course, but it would have suited you perfectly. And I say “before the battle”; I doubt an idle fellow like you would have been much use during it.’
‘Aye, I can see you’ve had a bit of a scrap here,’ John said, looking around the battered castle, his eye fixing on the half-burnt front gate. ‘But I worry about you, Alan, I truly do. I’m not sure that you’ve got a firm grasp of proper tactics yet. It is generally not considered a sound idea to burn down your own defences. You know, I think it’s rather frowned upon by real soldiers. I can see I still have a lot to teach you.’ He shook his massive head sorrowfully, and made an infuriating tsk-tsk noise behind his big teeth.
I glared at John and opened my mouth to reply, but Robin interrupted our familiar bickering by handing me a heavy package, wrapped in sheepskin and tied with twine.
‘It’s a gift from Godifa,’ said Robin. ‘And it comes with all her love. Marie-Anne and Tuck send theirs, too.’
‘Is all well in Yorkshire?’ I asked my lord. He nodded. ‘Marie-Anne and Tuck have moved down to Westbury to be with Goody. And Marie-Anne is with child again.’ I looked at him and I could tell that he was much pleased by his wife’s condition.
‘I heartily congratulate you, my lord,’ I said formally, but with a happy smile.
‘Yes, it is good news,’ said Robin modestly. ‘I’ll tell you all the rest later. Are you not going to open your gift?’
‘I expect it’s a dozen pairs of fresh, clean braies,’ said John with an evil smirk. ‘She will know that, with all these nasty Frenchmen about, you’ll have been shitting yourself in fear like a stomach-sick goose…’
I weighed the package in my hands. Godifa, known as Goody, was my betrothed — a girl of startling beauty and immense courage, with an alarmingly violent temper, who had been raised by rough outlaws in Sherwood, and who was now attempting to learn to be a fine lady under the tutelage of Robin’s wife, Marie-Anne, Countess of Locksley.
I fumbled open the sheepskin and discovered inside a mace — a beautiful flanged mace: two-foot long with an iron-hard oak shaft and half a pound of wrought steel on the end. I had used one on the Great Pilgrimage, but lost it in battle in Cyprus. Goody knew that I prized it as a weapon, and that I missed the one I had lost. In the right hands, a mace was a fearsome killing tool. The head of the mace was covered with flat triangular pieces of steel welded in a circle around the head, the points facing outwards. It was brutally effective in battle, designed to smash bones and crush organs through a knight’s mail, but it was somehow an object of great beauty, too. I turned it over in my hands, thinking: How typical of Goody! How useful and how ungirlishly practical a gift this is. There was a scrap of parchment inside the package, and in a shaky, childish hand that I could barely make out in the gloom of the courtyard, these words were written in splotched Latin: God keep you safe, my love.
I felt a tremendous surge of emotion at those words; and I realized how much I was missing my beloved girl, my wonderful wife-to-be. I longed to be near her again, to kiss her perfect red lips, to stare into her lovely violet- blue eyes, to wrap her tightly in my arms…
‘You are probably puzzling over what it is,’ said John, crudely breaking in on my thoughts. ‘Let me enlighten you. It’s called a mace,’ he spoke the last word deliberately, as if I was a simpleton — ‘it’s a big club for hitting Frenchmen. If you are a very good boy, Uncle John will show you how to use it one day-’
‘Be quiet now, John,’ Robin said with absolute authority. He could see that I was struggling to keep my composure under the storm of emotions that were besieging my heart.
‘Owain is dead,’ I said, my throat swollen and clogged.
‘Yes, I know,’ said Robin. ‘He was the best of men.’
‘I miss him already,’ I said.
‘It’s all right, lad. We all miss him,’ said Little John.
‘Shall we go into the hall?’ said Robin, after a moment’s silence, and all I could manage was a snuffling grunt by way of an affirmative.
I performed ‘King Philip’s Folly’ for the French monarch’s royal cousin Richard the Lionheart that evening. In the castle’s small and rather shabby hall, now made as regal as possible with golden firelight and many beeswax candles, our knightly company enlivened with good wine, good meat and good cheer, I mocked the French King and made my own sovereign laugh until he wept, his white teeth flashing in the candlelight, his red-gold hair seeming to dance and sparkle with his immoderate joy.
The King had come to Verneuil with most of his strength, and among the faces that I glimpsed through the smoky hall were of some of the noblest and most powerful men in Europe: William the Marshal was there, his battered soldier’s face split with a huge grin at my impudence to French royalty, while Sir Aymeric de St Maur, representing the English Knights Templar, and Robert, Earl of Leicester, both seemed a little shocked at the crudity of my fabliau. Scar-faced Mercadier, Richard’s fearsome mercenary captain, stared at me steadily and soullessly. Gloomy John of Alencon seemed to be almost cheerful for once, and Sir Nicholas de Scras, an old friend and former Knight Hospitaller, who now served the Marshal, applauded my music vigorously whenever I paused, while Sir Aubrey de Chambois looked on, pale but contented, sipping his wine slowly and savouring his continued existence. A couple of Anglo-Norman barons whose names I did not know peered at me quizzically through the smoky gloom as I sang and played my vielle for Richard’s travelling court, but they laughed in all the right places — while the Earl of Locksley watched me perform with the air of a proud older brother.
I had recovered my composure during the course of the feast, and I followed my raucous performance of ‘King Philip’s Folly’ with a tender canso directed at my lovely Goody. King Richard was especially kind to me when I had finished, uprooting several barons from their places and seating me beside him; sharing his golden goblet of
