his own city. He was returning to the abbey from the castle after dinner and a gang of armed men, routiers, gutter scum, men of the lowest sort, attacked his procession. His men-at-arms were swiftly killed and the monks driven away by these vermin — may God strike them down!’ The hosteller paused and gulped; there were tears in his eyes — and I had no doubt that his grief was genuine.
‘They stole his ring,’ the hosteller blurted out, and I turned again to the gigantic corpse in the chair. I saw that the index finger, the damp, dog-smelling finger that had once borne a proud jewelled ring, had been roughly severed at the knuckle. I looked further up his body, and saw through the blood-crusted scarlet robe a dark hole, a stab wound a little to the left of his sternum, made by a dagger thrust directly into his heart.
Hanno was at my shoulder: he leaned forward to peer closely at the wound in the Cardinal’s chest. ‘It is perfect,’ he said. ‘It is the perfect kill — a single blow, exactly on target, resulting in instant death. Perfect!’
I gathered up my men, our horses and possessions, and we made our way as quickly as we could out of the city of Vendome. The sun was touching the western horizon and I knew the town gates would be closed at dusk; but I had worse concerns than being locked inside the city for the night. As the three of us cantered through the gates, across the wooden bridge and on to the road leading north towards King Richard’s encampment, one thought was flapping around in my head like a panicked bird trapped in a bedchamber. Three clerics were dead; three innocent men of God had been murdered, and every time I tried to find out about my father, another man died. Somebody was trying to prevent me from learning any more about the life of Henri d’Alle — and that somebody was prepared to kill indiscriminately, even to kill those protected by Holy Mother Church, protected by God himself, to prevent me from finding out the truth.
Chapter Nine
There was no sign of Robin when I reached our camp. I found Little John with two of the Locksley farriers, helping the men to shoe a dozen of our company’s horses. I only heard about half of that conversation with John, for it was punctuated by ringing blows of a hammer on an anvil as the head farrier struggled to get his task done as quickly as possible. We were expecting to fight the French in the morning and Robin wanted his cavalry all to be well-shod for the coming encounter. The Earl of Locksley himself, I gathered through the clanging of red-hot iron and the hiss of burning hoof, was out scouting the enemy positions and would not be back in camp any time soon, and so I left Little John to his work and retired to my tent to think.
It seemed to me that Father Jean in Verneuil and Cardinal Heribert in Vendome had both been killed by the same man, and in the same manner — a single dagger thrust to the heart. I was not sure about Brother Dominic — I still felt that it might be possible that he had been killed by Mercadier. And then it occurred to me that all three might have been Mercadier’s victims. But why? I could understand — though not, of course, forgive — the murder of Brother Dominic. That was a strike at me to pay me back for spoiling his vicious fun when I rescued the old monk from his tormentors; I could see that I might have injured Mercadier’s pride or his standing before his men by my actions and that he might wish to make a statement about his power. But why should he also want to kill a powerless small-town priest or a powerful cardinal? It made no sense.
As I lay on my pallet thinking hard, I found that there was something digging into my back. I fished around behind me in the blankets and pulled out a hunting horn. In the guttering light of a tallow candle, I examined its long, twisted shape, the sheen of the polished cow’s horn, and the elegant silver mouthpiece — it was the horn that Robin had given me on the march through the Perche, telling me to sound it if I needed any help while I was flushing out phantom ambushers. In my contemplative mood, I turned this object over in my hands. In a way, I thought, it symbolized Robin himself: elegant, even beautiful, a noble shape yet twisted, and dependent on silver to make it work.
I chuckled to myself: these were not thoughts that I would have been happy to articulate aloud to my lord himself. I hung the horn by its leather strap on the pommel of my saddle, which was on its stand beside the bed, and wrenched my mind back to the subject at hand.
Someone — presumably the ‘man you cannot refuse’ or one of his agents — had killed three men of God to prevent me from discovering any more about my father. And it had worked. I had found out little enough about his time in Notre-Dame and his expulsion from Paris. All that I had learned from Heribert was that whatever had been stolen had been ‘wondrous’ — a relic of some sort, perhaps, a drop of milk from the breast of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a fragment of the True Cross, a hair from John the Baptist’s beard or some such treasure; whatever it was, it was certainly something that the Cardinal was very keen to have returned to him. It seemed clear that the candlesticks, however valuable, were not the real objects of the theft after all. The relic was — but why should a relic be so important that someone was prepared to kill three men of God to keep me ignorant?
At that point I fell asleep.
The next morning the whole camp was alive with the news: the French King was withdrawing his forces. Philip was running away! I had barely had time to splash my face with water from a basin held by Thomas before Robin poked his handsome head through the flap in my tent and said: ‘Come on, slug-a-bed, we are summoned to the King. Get moving!’
The King was in a fine mood that morning, full of bounce and energy, issuing orders in rapid succession to his clerks and to various knights and barons who appeared briefly in his grand pavilion and then hurried away to do his bidding. When Robin and I presented ourselves, the King wasted no time in pleasantries, and just said to Robin: ‘The Marshal met a strong force of Philip’s best knights early this morning, and while he took a mauling, he broke them, and drove them off. They are all running now. Philip’s entire army is on the run. Get after him, Locksley — your men are the vanguard. Harry him, chase him, and don’t stop for anything. We’ve a chance to capture the King himself — and end his ambitions for good. But I need you to be quick. Go on, catch him for me. I’ll be following you, hard on your heel with the rest of the army, but for the love of God, go now!’
It was not hard to follow the retreating French army; they withdrew up the main road towards Chateaudun, heading north-east and roughly parallel with the River Loir, leaving a broad trail of debris in their wake. Robin had left his bowmen in camp to pack up and follow us as best they could, and I had left Thomas there with similar duties; on this pursuit my lord took with him only his light cavalry — more than a hundred well-mounted lancers — and we moved fast. The road, a wide, gently meandering dusty track through thick woodland, with a broad swathe on either side of it, had been much disturbed by the passage of thousands of feet and hooves — and it was littered with equipment and possessions abandoned by the French army in their haste to escape. As we galloped along, we even passed a few sick and wounded men and women lying by the side of the road, but we paid them no mind: we had our orders to harry the enemy, chase them hard, and not to stop for anything. We travelled as fast as we were able, in a great dusty, sweaty, jingling mass of men and horses, stopping once an hour to let the horses breathe and to snatch a mouthful of water to wash out our caked throats.
I was puzzled by King Philip’s apparent cowardice. Why, I asked Robin — at one of these brief pauses, when we were about six or seven miles north-east of Vendome near the hamlet of Freteval — would Philip bring his army all this way south to confront Richard, then run away with his tail between his legs after only a brief skirmish with the Marshal?
‘I believe he was trying to intimidate us,’ said Robin, wiping his sweating face with a linen cloth, and taking a swallow of water from a leather bag. We were all dismounted and gathered in a clearing in the forest at the side of the road, the empty thoroughfare winding on before and behind us. ‘A big battle is a very uncertain affair,’ my lord continued. ‘It should be the very last resort of any commander to commit his men to the hazards of a full-pitched conflict — it’s like rolling the dice to determine whether you live or die, not something anyone who has any other option would choose to do. I know you would prefer to believe that warfare is all about glory, valour, great deeds, and the thunder of charging horsemen, but, Alan, nobody wants to get killed or maimed, or captured and made a pauper with a crippling ransom. In war, you manoeuvre; look for advantage; try to find a situation in which you have the upper hand. And if you are wise, you avoid battle altogether, unless you are absolutely certain to win.’
‘I know all that,’ I said irritably, wiping Ghost’s sides with a damp cloth to cool him. ‘But why did Philip come all the way down here with his army, seeming to seek battle with us, and then run like a craven after one skirmish?’
‘Philip had to come down here. Richard has been winning too consistently in Maine, Touraine and Aquitaine for him to stay away. He has to keep the rebellion in the south alive — otherwise Richard will close down the
