weeping, others praying, some just sat stoically, grim-faced and silent. There was a large wooden box about three feet high in the centre of the group, which the men had been using as a kind of table for their dice games earlier that evening. And I saw that there was a man stretched across it — a French knight, I guessed, though he had been stripped of his armour and most of his clothes. His back was to the box, his body arched over it, his eyes pointing heavenwards: what was left of them. As I looked, a routier, was lifting a pair of iron pincers holding a large red-hot coal from the brazier away from his face. The knight was whimpering from the pain, and I could see a stream of viscous fluid running down his cheek, and it was clear to me that he had been blinded in both eyes only moments before.
As I looked on, I saw the other routiers guffawing with laughter as they cut the poor man loose and shoved him into a corner against the wall, one routier hurling a wine-soaked cloth after him to allow him to bind up his burnt face. Then another French knight, this one fighting like a madman, was wrestled by a dozen of Mercadier’s cut-throats down on to the table. He was secured in a few efficient moments and, as the man jerked his body against the ropes frantically and whipped his head left and right, I saw with a horrible, sickening sense of despair that it was Roland d’Alle.
He caught my eye, stopped his wild thrashing and fixed his terrified gaze on mine in mute appeal, but I was already striding over to the mercenaries, my hand on my sword hilt.
‘Hold hard,’ I said. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘What does it look like… Sir Knight?’ said the man by the brazier, and I realized that I recognized him from that long ago day when he and his mates had held Brother Dominic in their grasp, and Hanno had shot their red- haired friend stone dead with the crossbow bolt. I would have given my right arm, at that moment, to have Hanno, shaven-headed, fully armed and growling by my side.
‘These men are prisoners of war,’ I said. ‘They are knights who have surrendered and given their word that they will not escape, and who will be ransomed by their families in the fullness of time.’
‘We know who they are… Sir Knight,’ said the man by the brazier, leering at me. I noticed that the lump of charcoal held in the iron pincers in his fist had been extinguished. He saw where I was looking, dropped the black lump into the brazier and selected another, this one glowing the colour of a ripe cherry. He moved towards Roland and I was transported back nearly a decade to a stinking cell in Winchester where an enemy of mine had threatened me with a similar torment.
‘No, wait,’ I said. ‘I forbid you. You cannot do this!’
‘And why not, Sir Knight?’ said a cold voice, chilling as the grave, that came from behind my right shoulder.
I turned to look upon Mercadier. His scar was a furrow of black that cut across his swarthy face; his eyes stagnant pools of malice.
‘Why can I not do this?’ he repeated.
‘It is inhuman — it is immoral. It runs against all the laws of God and chivalry.’
‘Chivalry?’ said Mercadier. ‘There is no true chivalry in war, that is a mere fancy, invented by milk-sop poets such as yourself for the amusement of bored ladies. There is only victory or defeat; the living or the dead; friend or foe.’
‘These men are prisoners; they have surrendered and so must be treated honourably. They can do us no harm.’
‘They are the enemy,’ he said in his quiet, stone-like tone. ‘Too often we have taken men in battle, accepted their surrender, handed over their living bodies for silver and then had to fight them again the next year. That will not happen with these knights. We will ransom them, yes. But they will never fight again against King Richard.’
‘Does the King know about this… this outrage?’ I was beginning to feel desperate.
Now Mercadier laughed, a slow, evil grating sound. ‘Do you think the King does not know what I do for him?’ he said. ‘Everything I do, Sir Knight, I do with his royal blessing.’
The man with the hot coal moved forward towards Roland. My cousin closed his eyes, and lay there, his brow beaded with sweat but immobile, accepting his fate.
‘Stop,’ I shouted. ‘Stop, right now. I will buy this man from you — unharmed! I will ransom him from you. Name your price, Mercadier.’
‘You, Sir Knight? You will ransom this Frenchman?’ For the first time, Mercadier showed emotion, if greed can be called an emotion. ‘Now that is an interesting idea: what price shall I name then?’
I said nothing. Roland had opened his eyes and was looking at me. I kept my gaze fixed on him, willing him to take courage, silently promising him that I would not let him suffer this awful mutilation.
‘You can have him for a hundred pounds in silver,’ said Mercadier blandly.
‘What!’ I was genuinely astounded by the price. ‘A hundred pounds? You are jesting. He is a young knight, not a duke. His ransom should be no more than ten.’
I was not haggling for the sake of it; ten pounds was a year’s revenue from Westbury, and the most I could raise in Normandy, even if I went to the Jews of Rouen.
‘You refuse? Very well, Jean, carry on — blind him.’
‘Wait,’ I shouted, ‘wait!’ I thought about the King’s offer of a dowry of a hundred pounds — it was a huge sum of money, and if I promised it to Mercadier, it would mean that I might never be able to rebuild Clermont or buy another, better fief.
‘I will pay it,’ I said. ‘Release the prisoner.’
‘You want him very badly, it seems. But I think a man who will pay a hundred pounds for one enemy knight will willingly pay two hundred. The new price is two hundred.’
For a fleeting moment, I thought about drawing my sword and slicing my blade into his ugly face; but I knew I would not live to boast of my actions: Mercadier had thirty men there, I was alone. But I honestly could not pay the sum he asked. I did not have two hundred pounds and I had no way of raising it. I looked at Roland, and my despair must have been apparent. But he was smiling at me ruefully, and shaking his head. ‘I thank you for your efforts, Sir Alan,’ he murmured. ‘But apparently it is God’s will that I must suffer this.’
‘I cannot pay it; I truly cannot!’ I said, speaking to the friend, the cousin whose sight I could not afford to save.
‘But I can,’ said a voice, a strong, commanding voice, the voice of an outlaw, or an earl. ‘I shall pay this trifling ransom. You have made an offer of two hundred pounds, and I accept it. There will be no further negotiations. Cut the Frenchman free.’
Mercadier looked over at Robin who had appeared at my shoulder. He frowned at my lord, confused and angry. ‘Very well, my lord. I will release him to you — when I have been paid the full amount — in silver.’
Robin turned his head and shouted across the courtyard: ‘John, be so good as to bring me two of the chests from Paris. Quick as you like.’ A few moments later, Little John and two Locksley men came lumbering over with a pair of heavy wooden boxes, which they dumped on the ground at Robin’s feet.
‘Open them, would you, John; their contents are for our zealous friend here, Captain Mercadier.’
I think I was as astonished as the mercenary to see what the boxes held: each chest was packed with small, lumpy white canvas bags marked with a bold red cross. It was a symbol I had seen before. Each bag was the same size as the one Robin had given me after fleecing the merchants of Tours and, as I knew very well, they contained five pounds in silver pennies. If each chest held twenty bags, and they looked as if they did, I was staring at two hundred pounds in silver: to be exact, two hundred pounds of silver that had come from the vaults of a Templar preceptory.
Roland gulped at his wine cup, emptying it and silently holding the vessel out to be refilled; and who could blame him? My cousin, Robin and I were sitting at a table on the ground floor of the Dangu keep, in an area that the Locksley men had made their own. A few of Robin’s men-at-arms looked at the young French knight curiously — word of the vast sum that Robin had expended on him had spread speedily through their ranks.
From the courtyard outside came the sound of screams — although we had rescued Roland, the blinding continued. Mercadier was making sure that these French knights would never fight again. Each time a scream echoed around the courtyard, Roland flinched. I did too — I thought of Mercadier’s parting words as we walked away with our shivering captive and shuddered: ‘Would you like any more of them, my lord?’ the scarred mercenary had asked with elaborate courtesy. ‘I have another ten of these French rascals, if you have the silver to spend on saving them.’
