‘God’s rotting toe-rags, lad, it’s good to see you! I was worried that you had given up the noble profession of arms and decided to spend your days as a stay-at-home, wimple-wearing milk-sop.’
He laughed and hugged me, and I broke away and tried to lift up a corner of the bandage that covered the right-hand side of his face. ‘What’s this, John? Did one of your catamites get jealous and try to scratch your eyes out?’
Little John actually blushed. ‘It’s just a scrape; a French knight got lucky with his lance at a tiny dust-up we had near Vernon. It will heal in a day or two.’
‘You’re getting old and fat and slow, John,’ I said, grinning cheekily at him, and poking a finger into his big, steel-hard belly. He nodded in agreement and then, noticing my disappointment — I had been hoping for our usual friendly exchange of insults — he added quickly: ‘Not too ancient to put you across my knee, you, you, you… battle-dodging brat!’
I could tell by this lacklustre response that even Little John was weary to the bone; and I felt a sense of shock and sadness. I had never seen the big man flag before, either physically, mentally or verbally. He had always been a pillar of strength and I was oddly embarrassed, even a touch shamed, by his weakness.
Then I was engulfed by a crowd of familiar smiling faces, my back slapped, my shoulder pounded and my hand shaken vigorously by calloused archers’ paws. Robin’s warriors were making me welcome. Lastly I spotted a mounted figure in red at the back of the sea of green-clad men-at-arms, a tough, lean-faced fighter armed with lance and sword, and bearing a red shield marked with a fierce wild boar device; I almost didn’t recognize my squire Thomas.
He dismounted and greeted me shyly and I saw that he had grown taller in the year since I had seen him. He would never be as tall as me, but I was standing in front of a man — and a formidable one at that.
Robin took me aside: ‘We have work to do, Alan, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Nothing too onerous, but we’re to escort a pack of chattering English masons and a train of building supplies to Chateau-Gaillard, and we must make haste, the King insists that we make haste.’
Chateau-Gaillard — the ‘saucy’ castle. Even far away in northern England there had been much talk of the cunningly fashioned, gigantic, apparently impregnable stronghold that Richard was constructing on the very edge of his territory, right on the threshold of the French King’s possessions. Rumours of the vast expenditure in silver that the King had poured into this undertaking had reached my ears, even in such a backwater as Westbury, as had stories about his feud with Walter de Coutances, Archbishop of Rouen, who had once been his staunchest supporter. The rift had come about because Richard had insisted on building his huge new ‘saucy’ castle on the Archbishop’s land — at a crook on the River Seine in the manor of Andeli — without that venerable prelate’s consent. In protest, the Archbishop had gone so far as to place an interdict on the whole of Normandy, which in effect caused all offices of the Church to cease. But Richard had taken the case to the Pope in Rome and, there, old Celestine had sided with the Lionheart. It had been smoothed over now, and King and Archbishop were reconciled: probably because Richard had promised Walter two other rich manors and the port of Dieppe as a douceur.
‘How go things with the King?’ I asked Robin, as we walked our horses along on the road south from Barfleur at the head of a lumbering train of supplies and a marching double column of burly masons in square white aprons, their precious tools slung in sacks on their broad backs. At first Robin did not answer: he merely frowned down at his hands holding the reins. ‘Between you and me, Alan, last summer was disastrous for Richard,’ said my lord finally, in a low voice. ‘Philip got his tail up, and snatched the advantage in the field several times; and now the French have made alliances with the counts of Boulogne and Flanders…’ These were two very powerful princes, I mused, lords of the rich lands to the north of the French King’s domains, and with very strong trading connections to England, in wool and cloth and wine, mainly. This was bad news indeed.
Robin was still quietly speaking: ‘… and no doubt emboldened by this diplomatic coup, Philip sallied out last July and besieged Aumale. He’s learned a lot from Richard since the early days of the war — he’s still cautious, but when he moves, he moves very fast. And now his siege train is even bigger than ours — with at least two dozen “castle-breakers”, I’m told. It was certainly powerful enough to knock the mortar out of the walls of Aumale. When he heard the news of the attack, Richard rushed up there with too few men, in his usual gallant, reckless fashion; he took Nonancourt, and ravaged Philip’s territories, but when the French King declined to come away from Aumale and fight him like a man in open battle, Richard charged in and attacked him before its walls and got himself very badly mauled. The French were prepared for him, well dug in behind ditches seeded with wooden spikes, and our knights got handed a bloody whipping — our Locksley boys weren’t with Richard that time, mercifully, but the Marshal’s men were badly cut up. Richard had to withdraw and shortly afterwards the Aumale garrison was forced to surrender to Philip. To make matters worse, Richard got himself wounded a few weeks later — shot in the knee outside Gaillon by a crossbowman — and that put him out of action for the rest of the summer.’
‘Is he recovered?’ I asked anxiously. A wound, even a small one, could easily become infected and gangrenous on campaign. I had seen several good men die from mere scratches in the Holy Land, and quickly too, sometimes only in a matter of days.
‘Oh, you can’t keep Richard down for long,’ Robin laughed. ‘He’s back on his feet now and still taking big risks as if he were some brash young knight trying to make a name for himself. Come to think of it, he reminds me of you! But he has changed his strategy of late. The few weeks he was incapacitated gave him time to think: since then it’s been more about diplomacy than mad dashing about.’ Robin glanced about him quickly to check that we were not overheard. ‘Richard’s planning to suborn Philip’s new northern allies. If we can get the counts of Boulogne and Flanders away from the French and on to our side, Richard believes that we can outflank the French King and attack him from the north and the west simultaneously.’
We had left the coast behind us and were entering an area of scrubby woodland. Robin halted his horse and summoned his fat-headed squire Gilbert from the column of a hundred or so men behind him. He issued a rapid series of orders; Gilbert seemed not to understand them, but after several repetitions the oafish lad finally managed to grasp what was required and galloped off to the rear of the column.
Robin looked at me and grimaced: ‘He’s very nearly an idiot; but I can’t get rid of him. His father is an old friend. Where were we? Oh yes, the King. The other thing that is greatly occupying our sovereign’s mind at the moment is his damned “saucy” castle.’
‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘Nothing. Brilliant idea — a large forward base, packed with well-armed knights and powerful enough to resist a siege for months, if not years. A big, looming threat right on the edge of the French lands. It’s an inspired strategy. But the King seems to want to have it constructed in a matter of months. A castle that size, with its many layers of defences, might ordinarily take ten years to construct: Richard wants it done by tomorrow morning — before breakfast. He is stripping materials and men from across Normandy and sending them to Andeli, and now bringing in craftsmen from England too,’ Robin jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the marching masons behind us, who were singing a jaunty song in time to their steps.
‘He is spending everything he has on Chateau-Gaillard, and more — he seems to have no money left for anything else. No money for bribing Boulogne and Flanders to come over to our side; no money to feed the troops; no money to spend on new siege engines or weapons or replacement horses. Mercadier’s ruffians haven’t been paid for months. They take their living by force from the French lands — or from our own Norman peasants, when they can get away with it. And the other paid men are drifting away from the army day by day. Meanwhile, the rest of us are being worked to the bone to keep Philip’s men at bay. On top of that, he asked me to make him a large loan.’
I gave an involuntary snort of laughter, and regretted it immediately. ‘It’s not funny,’ Robin said crossly. ‘All the barons were asked to make a contribution to the building of his precious Chateau-Gaillard and I had to hand over five hundred marks. No way of getting it back either. Richard hinted that he knew about the Tourangeaux arrangement — you remember that? — and also suggested that I had hogged more than my fair share of the booty from the royal wagon train we took at Freteval — and when I countered that the manors he had “given” me were deep in French territory, and that I had many hungry mouths to feed, he merely replied that that should inspire me to strive harder to drive back the French and claim what is rightfully mine.’
I stifled a grin, and said: ‘But surely, Robin, as the Earl of Locksley, you can easily spare the money…’
‘Is that what you think?’ Robin glared at me. ‘When you grow up a little, Sir Alan of Westbury, you will realize just how fragile the dignity of a title really is. What counts is land and revenues and cold, hard silver in your coffers. Thanks to Richard, I have given up the golden frankincense trade, and have not been recompensed for it, and Locksley is a minor honour, compared with some English earldoms, and the income it provides is relatively meagre.
