Robin looked at me hard, a glint of steel in his grey eyes. We were once again in his tent, alone but for a clerk who was seated in the corner, making notes on a parchment roll. In the centre of the floor was a waist-high mound of small, lumpy linen bags that chinked whenever they were moved by the clerk’s counting hand.
‘Most of it, Alan. Almost all of it,’ Robin said coldly. ‘I’m sending Richard two-thirds of the money — a full two thousand marks this very afternoon.’
‘That is very generous of you.’ I could not keep the vinegar out of my voice.
Robin stared at me for a long moment. ‘Earlier this year, you will remember, Alan, I was forced to give up a very lucrative trade in the East, at King Richard’s demand. I think I have the right to compensate myself fully for this loss. Do you not agree?’
‘The King gave you half a dozen new manors to compensate you for that loss, as I recall.’ In spite of myself, and my great regard for my lord, I was becoming angry at Robin’s unabashed greed. ‘Is that not enough for you?’
‘He gave me a few manors, yes, and you the rich manor of Clermont-sur-Andelle, as I recall,’ Robin’s tone was icy. ‘But your Clermont and the Norman manors that Richard has given over to me are presently occupied by the enemy; all of them are in the eastern part of the Duchy and are now under the control of Philip’s men. Nary a penny will either of us see from those gifts until the French are beaten. Richard gave us both rewards that we must fight in his cause to claim. That is largesse with rather large strings attached to it, don’t you agree? So I believe that I am entitled to a little taste of honey when I secure some trifling payment from a pack of shifty merchants who have been thoroughly disloyal to their rightful lord.’
Robin was genuinely angry now, but I could only tell by the cool, reasonableness of his tone — and the dangerous glitter in his eyes. I had no wish to argue further with my lord over this matter, and so I bowed and bade him a good day. As I turned to leave the tent, I caught a glimpse of an object moving very fast out of the corner of my eye. I whirled to face Robin, and something large, hard and round smashed into my chest. I only just managed to grasp it, rocking back on my heels in surprise.
‘That is your share, by the way,’ said Robin drily and I looked down into my hands and saw that I held a heavy, bulging linen sack, the round outline of silver coins clearly visible through the thin material.
You may call me a hypocrite — and I shall surely have to answer for it on the Day of Judgment — but I kept that money: five pounds of mint-bright silver pennies. It was half what the manor of Westbury yielded in a whole year! I could make excuses, such as I needed it to pay for new weapons, saddlery and tack, or that my clothes had been worn by hard travel and needed replacing. But the truth is I wanted to have it: like Robin, I was not immune to the lure of Mammon. I shared a little of it with Hanno and gave a few shillings to Thomas — but the rest I wrapped in an old sheepskin and stuffed guiltily into my saddlebag.
Chapter Seven
King Richard was delighted with the ‘gift’ that Robin had squeezed from the Tourangeaux — and no royal notice was taken of the fact that my lord had appropriated a fat slice of it. So the King was well pleased with us, and as a mark of his approval he made the Locksley men his honour guard and reserve force in the engagement two days later, when he assaulted the formidable castle of Loches. He stayed only one night at Tours, lodging with the mutton-headed Roger and, as promised, there were celebrations, rose-petals strewn and monks singing Hosannas at his arrival. The very next day, Richard rose long before dawn and marched his army the thirty-odd miles south- east to Loches.
The castle, which stood on the borders of the counties of Berry, Touraine and Poitou, was the eastern gateway to Richard’s continental lands. It barred the path along the Loire Valley, denying that route to the King of France and his vassals who held the lands to the east. Loches was famous for its massive, thick-walled keep, and had the reputation for being almost impossible to take by force. It was only occupied now by the French troops because Prince John had cravenly given it away to Philip as part of a secret deal they had made together when they were united against Richard. Sancho of Navarre’s men — a strong force of a hundred knights and a hundred and fifty crossbowmen — had been besieging the castle for more than a week, but Lord Sancho himself had been suddenly called away to the south, across the Pyrenees, to his father’s deathbed. His remaining men had neither the will nor necessary heavy equipment to capture Loches in his absence. The Spanish troops had surrounded the castle and prevented anyone from entering or leaving it — but there had been little else they could do. With King Richard’s arrival, all that was about to change.
To my mind, Loches was the very opposite of the castle of Verneuil, with its weak, stubby, crumbling keep and strong outer walls, which I had defended so successfully only ten days before. Loches had a huge, oblong, immensely strong stone keep about eighty foot long and forty foot wide, and soaring up more than a hundred feet into the air with a slight taper towards the top. It loomed over the rest of the castle, completely dwarfing it — the rest consisting of a twenty-foot-high stone curtain wall, only two-foot thick but studded with half a dozen round towers and surrounding the usual timber buildings: stables, a forge, bakeries, cook-shacks, barracks and so on. There was a large stone church in one corner of the castle bailey, and a chapter house — for this mighty fortress had been built around an ancient monastery. To the east of the castle flowed the slow River Indre, which through time immemorial had protected its flank from attacks coming out of the territory of the kings of France.
In many ways, Richard’s attack was a classic of its kind and amply demonstrated my King’s mastery of all the arts of war. After one very hard day’s travel, with all the men-at-arms and servants ordered to assist in pushing the great siege engines along the dusty road that ran for a goodly way beside the Indre directly from Tours to Loches, and knights galloping up and down the column urging on the sluggards, Richard had his entire force of more than a thousand men encamped outside the walls, a little to the north of the castle, by dusk.
The French garrison continued to defy us, of course. And the next day, in the weak pink light of early morning, when the heralds had reported to the King the castle’s bold refusal to surrender, the bombardment by the massive ‘castle-breakers’ began.
Robin and I were with the King on a slight rise about a quarter of a mile to the north of the castle. Robin had not yet forgiven me for questioning his ruthless mulcting of the merchants of Tours, and he barely spoke to me as the sun climbed into the sky to herald a glorious June day. I sat astride Shaitan, stroking his glossy black neck, and a tiny, cowardly part of me was grateful that I would not, unless something went badly wrong, be engaging in the brutal, slogging fight that the day promised. On the far side of the King, on a huge white stallion, sat William the Marshal. That well-seasoned warrior had begged leave to storm the first breach in the curtain wall, claiming that it was his right — but the King had merely thanked him for his zeal and said calmly: ‘This is work for Mercadier’s men. They know their business well and today they shall demonstrate that they are worthy of their hire.’
‘I must insist, sire, that you give me and my men the honour of making the first assault,’ the Marshal had growled, glaring at the King like a hungry mastiff that had had a juicy bone stolen from between its jaws.
‘No, William, I said no.’ Richard seemed a little irritated that his orders were being questioned. ‘It will be very hot, hard, bloody work, and I want Mercadier’s ruffians to bear the brunt of it. Once they have taken the outer wall, your men can tackle the keep. Will that satisfy you, you old gore-guzzler?’
The Marshal had merely grunted his assent.
Beyond the bellicose Earl of Striguil sat the Navarrese captain in earnest discussion with Sir Aymeric de St Maur, a Templar knight, who with another of his Order, Sir Eustace de la Falaise, commanded half a dozen black- clad Templar sergeants. Sir Aymeric was an old adversary of mine and Robin’s, with whom we were now publicly reconciled. He was a pious man and a renowned warrior, a serious, impressive fellow, and yet I could not respect him — this knight had tried to have Robin burnt as a heretic the year before, and had threatened me with dire torture. We had both evaded his malice and Robin had made an arrangement with the Templars — conceding his lucrative frankincense business to them to keep the peace. And so we were reconciled, although it could not be said that we were bosom friends. The Templars would not be taking part in any fighting during this campaign — it was contrary to their vows to fight their fellow Christians without a direct order from their Grand Master or the Pope himself. They were here as observers, to report the events back to the Master of their Order in London, and ostensibly to urge Richard to make peace with his fellow Christian monarch, Philip Augustus.
As I looked along the line of knights that flanked the King, I was struck by the noble profiles of the men as they gazed out over the castle, and I noticed a curious thing: every man had had himself shaved that morning in
