lands? It crossed my mind, only for a brief moment, I swear, that I should ride down to them and take my sword to them for their impertinence. Hanno and I could handle the knight and his son, I was sure of it: we were armed for war, and clad in mail, our weapons keen. We could very soon have overcome these men who were accoutred only for a day’s pleasant sport. I would teach them to appropriate my fief!
The moment passed. We were here on enemy territory. Even if I were to kill these men, take the village and occupy the fortified compound, I did not have enough men to hold it against the vengeance of the French King. And my own King Richard would not be best pleased if, after agreeing a sacred truce with the enemy, one of his unruly knights were to break it in a rage. No, I said to myself, I will keep the truce, as a true vassal should. I loosened my grip on the courser’s harness and felt the beast relax.
Dusk was not far away. One of the servants released a liver-and-white water dog and it galloped eagerly into the forest of reeds beside the slow-moving river, barking with joy and sending up ribbons of brown water with every hectic stride. It quested round for a moment or two, taking the scent, and then charged forward and launched its body into the deeper water. A pair of mallards rocketed out of the reeds, their wings slapping the air as they hurried to escape the splashing canine. The pair of birds beat strongly away from the Andelle, making for the wood in which we were hidden. But one duck at least was not fated to escape. A long blur of blue-grey, like a javelin flung down from the heavens, and the peregrine struck, hurtling into the right-hand mallard and striking with an explosive puff of bright green feathers, killing the bird instantly. The falcon bore the duck to the ground, no more than fifty paces from us and, spreading its dark wings over the limp water-bird like a cloak, as if from some avian shame it wished to hide its actions from the world, it began to feed. The hunting party spurred their horses towards the peregrine, now mantled over its prey, pecking and tearing at the mallard’s flesh. Eager to confiscate the falcon’s plump victim for their larder before that noble bird had eaten its fill, the horsemen were heading towards us at a gallop. I nodded at Hanno and Thomas and the three of us turned our mounts back into the wood and slipped quietly away into the gathering gloom.
The next morning, after a cold night under the stars, we found ourselves on the arrow-straight Roman road that led through the border county known as the Vexin and into Paris. We were not the only travellers on the road, and we soon fell in with a gang of rowdy, joyful English students, a little younger than me, who were heading for the great University of Paris to study under a renowned teacher: Master Fulk du Petit-Pont. The students’ leader, Matthew of Oxford, was slightly older than the others; he was a dark-haired fellow, too mocking and worldly wise for my tastes, but a clever man, and he had been to Paris before; indeed, it seemed that he had studied at several places in Europe: Modena, Montpellier, and even in Rome. I never warmed to Matthew, there was something about him, a kind of shiftiness, that made me distrust him instinctively, but he was a fund of information about our destination, and he was certainly a diverting companion. He and his four fellow students were much given to pranks and japes, to jesting with each other in Latin, and to drinking. I liked them: and their sober clerical robes and high spirits put me in mind of my father’s youth in Paris. Had he been anything like one of these carefree tonsured youths? I imagined so.
As the bells were ringing out for Vespers, we drew rein, my party of three and the five young students, at the gates of the enormous Priory of St Martin-des-Champs. To the south, less than a quarter of a mile away, I could see the tops of the larger churches and houses of Paris under a smear of smoke from the cooking fires of a multitude.
The hosteller of the Priory was summoned and he showed us where we could stable our animals, and the location of the dormitory. After a very fast wash in the horse trough in the yard in front of the church, we joined the monks of St Martin’s, who were streaming out of church after the evening service, for supper in the refectory. It was simple fare but in generous portions — a rich bean stew, loaves of barley bread and a hard yellow cheese. The monks also supplied several earthenware jugs of wine to wash the meal down. I was tired and a little out of sorts — the riddle of the ‘man you cannot refuse’ was preying on my mind — and I wanted to be away from other folk, no matter how congenial. And so, after supper, I left Hanno and Thomas with the students — passing around a big glass wine cup called a henap and calling ‘Wassail! Drink hail!’ before every draught in the old English manner — and went to scale the bell tower of the priory church.
It was very nearly full dark on that warm summer night by the time I reached the top of the tower and found a little shelf that served as a seat for the lookout. I could see for miles in each direction. To the south was Paris and, while I knew that it held as many as sixty thousand souls, I was still surprised by its size and its strange beauty when I saw it first that night — the watch fires in the streets, and as-yet-uncovered family hearths, and candlelight leaking from a thousand windows, where earnest young clerics were hard at their books after supper. It looked like a carpet of stars, spread out before me, or a vast field of burning embers.
Somewhere in that sprawling mass of humanity was the answer to the mystery that tormented me. Half of my heart told me that Robin could not truly be the ‘man you cannot refuse’, and the other half told me I was fooling myself because I cared for him. I knew that Robin had some feeling for me, too: he had saved my life on several occasions, at very great risk of his own — and therefore he could not be the man who had sent those knights of the blue cross to kill me. Yet the evidence against Robin was there; and had been there all along. Had I been so blinded by my affection for my lord that I had failed to see it?
I fell to my knees in that high bell tower, bowed my head and prayed to St Michael, that Robin might not prove to be the man responsible for my father’s death, and that my old friend would not be revealed to me as my secret enemy. I would find the truth in Paris, I vowed, and I swore a holy oath to St Michael, alone, in the darkness above the edge of Paris, that I would not leave that city until I had found out the truth. I am certain the saint heard me, for having so sworn, I felt eased in mind and spirit and descended the tower with a much lightened heart to seek out my bed. And for the first time in weeks, I slept like a newborn.
For me, Paris shall always be associated with the acrid smell of masonry dust and the shrill ringing of metal chisels on hard stone, for the city that we rode into early the next morning seemed to be one huge builder’s compound. The chink-chink-chink of tools cutting into limestone blocks began shortly after dawn, drifting on the cool air from the new headquarters of the Knights Templar that the Order was building a quarter of a mile to the east of the Priory of St Martin, in the broad fields there outside the city.
As we approached the half-built wall of the city of Paris, the metal-stone chinking sound intensified and mingled with the cries of workmen, the sharp crack of axe on wood, and the rumble and crash of falling rubble. At the Porte St Martin, I announced myself as a pilgrim wishing to pray at the cathedral of Notre-Dame before a most sacred relic, a lock of the Virgin’s hair. I paid the toll to the Provost’s men-at-arms and entered the city itself. As we emerged from the gatehouse, I looked to my right and beheld a huge finished wall, four times as high as a tall man and dotted with strong round towers every sixty yards, which curved around and down to the right towards the River Seine. It was a fortification to daunt even King Richard’s mighty castle-breakers. To my left, however, there was a stretch of half-built wall, thirty yards long and teeming with workmen even at that early hour, and then, almost shockingly — nothing; only the wide vegetable gardens of the householders of this suburb of Paris, open to the world, with no obstacle to an invader more impressive than an occasional sheep hurdle, low garden wall and rickety wooden hut.
We rode almost due south down the Rue St Martin into the city of Paris, our horses making easy progress on the broad stone-paved road, which Matthew told us had been laid down hundreds of years ago by the Romans, although the stones were now covered with a thick layer of dried black mud. This part of the French capital, to the north of the River Seine, sometimes called the Right Bank, or the Ville de Paris, was its mercantile heart — and evidence of the city’s trading wealth was everywhere. The houses that lined the street on either side were mostly tall, well-built structures of wood, wattle and lime-plaster, two and sometimes three storeys high, the wooden beams and corner posts carved and decorated in neat geometrical patterns. There were numerous churches too, the wealthier ones, and the grander houses, being built of pale local stone. Sudden wafts of incense made the horses snort, and the singing of monks could be plainly heard as we passed these houses of God and clopped along down the Rue St Martin.
The ground floors of many of the larger dwellings we passed served as shops, with a counter opening on to the street displaying the wares of the owner: wrought gold and silver trinkets, bright orange Scandinavian amber, fine Spanish swords and costly armour, exquisite Italian glassware for the table, fat beeswax candles and pungent spices from the Orient, beautifully worked leather goods — all were on offer, should we have a mind to buy. Pastry sellers, with huge square trays hung around their necks, strutted through the crowds, offering delicious-smelling savouries of chopped ham with pepper or soft cheese and egg in fragrant flaky casings. The shouts of a dozen
