‘He tried to pull the quarrel out himself,’ Robin continued, speaking quietly in a toneless voice in the hope that he would not be overheard by the nearby men. ‘But he made a mess of it and the shaft snapped off in his hand. Then he called a surgeon, that fat little butcher Enguerrand, who hacked him about something awful — it was dark by then, and Enguerrand was, of course, drunk — but after digging about in his shoulder for most of an hour he managed to get the quarrel head out and bandage him up. But it’s not healing cleanly; the rot has begun and the smell of corruption in that tent is foul enough to make you gag.’
‘The King has been sorely wounded before,’ I said, ‘and has eventually recovered to full health.’
‘Several times, yes, he has, so let us all hope…’ Robin’s words were cut off by a trumpet blast. ‘Time to go, Alan; see you inside the castle — and be a good fellow and take the Master alive, if you can; beat him, maim him, cut him up as much as you like, but alive, if you please: I want to have a talk with him before we send him to Hell.’
Robin strode out in front of the troops. He turned to face them, raised his sword in the air: ‘In the name of God and our King — for Richard! For England! Forward!’ And the Locksley men cheered and, led by Robin’s nimble feet, with a deep, angry roaring, they charged up that slope.
It may sound absurd, but almost the hardest part of that assault for me was the run up that very steep, grassy hill, and the scramble up the rocky staircase to the breach. Although my wounded chest was long healed, my wind was still not as sound as I would have liked and I found myself breathless, red-faced and panting when I eventually reached the breach in the wall. The Westbury men and I were not in the vanguard, thank the Lord; and we ran hard, but my lungs felt as if they were on fire, and by the time we reached the gap in the fortifications, a flood of angry Locksley men had swept it clear of enemies. As I stepped over the broken rubble of the wall and down into the tiny courtyard, still breathing heavily, Thomas was at my side, carrying a crossbow he had acquired from somewhere, and a loose cloud of Westbury men were all around me. The first thing I saw was that almost all the fight had gone out of the garrison. Enemy men-at-arms were lying dead in bloody heaps, and others were attempting to surrender or being cut down by furious Locksley men; on the far side of the courtyard a lone knight, Viscount Aimar himself, I believe, battled against a mob of green-clad men. He killed one of our fellows with an elegant backhand, and then was himself overrun by a mass of stabbing, hacking, yelling fiends. To my right, at the foot of the round tower, a scrum of men were fighting outside a small door that led into the castle’s last redoubt. I saw flashing white surcoats adorned with a blue cross: and for the first time that day the battle-lust surged through my veins. I rushed forward, shouldered a Locksley man out of the way and engaged the nearest Knight of Our Lady. He snarled at me and cut; I blocked, feinted, ducked a blow and swept him off his feet with a sword strike to the ankles, and the Westbury men swarmed over him, stabbing down with awful efficiency. The other knight was very fast on his feet; he was already inside the tower and was desperately trying to swing the heavy wooden door shut in my face.
But I was faster.
I took a quick step towards him, punched the cross-guard of Fidelity into his face, crunching teeth and knocking him to the floor, then I stabbed down hard, plunging my blade through his heaving belly. And I was inside the door, in the tower, climbing and glaring upwards, the blood rushing hot in my veins. A stone, spiral staircase turning to the right, a dim form above me. I stepped back just in time as a spear clattered on the stone steps in front of me. Then I started to climb again. My sword arm, my right arm, was impeded by the central core of the spiral stairway, but this was not so for the knight above me; he smashed a blow down on me, aiming for my head, and I caught it on my shield, feeling the manic force of the strike right down through my spine. I was knocked back two steps, and looked upwards to see the mad, gleaming black eyes of Sir Eustace de la Falaise staring down at me through the gloom. He had a sword in his right hand, an axe in his left, and he smiled happily as he took a step down towards me, and unleashed a ravaging storm of blows from both hands.
Sword and axe, sword and axe, right and left — the strikes battered my helmet and shield and my hunched mailed shoulders with a terrible ferocity. I could barely use my sword either to defend or attack; the design of the stairwell, with the rising steps rotating sunwise, making it impossible for me to swing my blade. I took as much of the punishment as I could on my shield, but that article was soon battered into a shapeless mass of splintering wood and flapping leather. I fended off Sir Eustace with jabs of my sword point, giving ground, step by step, being forced back down, down and around to the ground floor. Sir Eustace shouted: ‘Die, die, you peasant scum,’ and hammered down his left hand, his axe hand. I felt the blade crunch into the muscle of my shoulder, splitting the iron mail links and just penetrating the flesh. I staggered back another step, but managed to catch my enemy’s next sword strike on the remains of my shield.
Somebody was under my stumbling feet, and I glanced down swiftly to see Thomas coming up and forward under my shield arm, his knees on the steps; from the level of my thighs, he poked the crossbow upwards, aimed, loosed, and the quarrel shot forward and punched deep into the side of the ranting, spitting knight above me, just as he was raising his sword to strike again. He gave a shout of outrage and looked down at the quarrel sticking from his waist. Another crossbow twanged from below me, from the jostling mass of Westbury men who had followed me into the tower. The bolt clattered harmlessly off the round wall behind Sir Eustace’s snarling, bestial face, but it caused the knight to scream in frustrated rage and to hurl his axe at my head, end over end, with shocking force. I ducked in the nick of time, the axe blade crashing on to the round top of my helm and bouncing away. And he ran. Sir Eustace bounded up the stone stairs away from me like a mountain goat; disappearing instantly from view, his slapping steps diminishing and finally ending with the clear sound, high above, of a slammed wooden door.
Even so, we climbed the stairs cautiously. Myself in the lead, with a fresh red Westbury shield furnished by Thomas on my left arm, and my squire advancing behind my left shoulder, his crossbow spanned and ready once again.
At the top of the stairs we paused in front of the door. I looked at Thomas. ‘If it is possible, I want to kill him myself, do you understand?’ I said, nodding down at the deadly loaded crossbow in his steady hands.
‘For Hanno?’ asked Thomas.
‘Yes, for Hanno — and all the others.’
The door yielded to one hard stamp of my right foot, and I was in a large round dim chamber; the only light coming from arrow slits in the stone walls. And there was the Master, on the far side of the room, his hands calmly folded inside the opposite sleeves of his robe, in the position in which I had first seen him. Hiding his thumbs.
A flicker of movement to my left — but hardly unexpected. I relaxed my knees and bobbed down and a sword blade flashed over my lowered head and struck sparks against the stone wall behind me, but I was already moving away, circling the room. I saw that Sir Eustace de la Falaise had the sword in his right hand; he had drawn the lance-dagger, the strange weapon that had ended Hanno and so many other good men, and was holding it in his left.
The crossbow quarrel was deeply embedded above his right hip, and his white surcoat on that side bore a large and growing red stain. I smiled at him: and I swear at that moment I felt no fear at all. God had placed him in my path so that I might have my vengeance. He smiled back at me with his amiable idiot’s grin, and mad little black eyes, swung the sword again, hard, and I took the blow full on my new red shield. Almost at the same time, less than a heartbeat later, he lunged forward with the lance-dagger, lightning fast, aiming for the centre of my chest. But I had anticipated the move and twisted my torso side-on in time to allow the strange blade to strike nothing more precious than air. Then I struck: a full, sweeping downward blow with my sword that would have split his skull if it had landed. But the man had been a Templar, a true Templar with all the martial skill of that famous Order, and wounded or not, he was still formidable. His sword whipped up and deflected my strike harmlessly away and to his left, and we both stepped back at the same time and began warily to circle each other again.
The room was filling with my men, but Thomas kept them against the walls, leaving Sir Eustace and I room to fight our duel. The Master had not moved from his stance by the arrow-slit window on the far side of the round chamber. One glance at his serene, handsome face, his blue eyes watching us, seemingly filled with compassion for all mankind, and I felt a wave of nauseous disgust. He looked like a bishop, a grave man of God, someone who should be revered. I knew better: he was filth, murdering filth, hiding behind a godly robe and a pious manner.
I wanted to hear him scream for mercy.
Sir Eustace attacked again, using exactly the same manoeuvre: a swing of the sword and a snake-quick thrust with the lance-dagger. And once again I blocked the sword with my shield, and dodged the dagger thrust. Then I came at him — hard, fast and with all the bottled anger in my grieving soul. I swept Fidelity laterally at his neck, from the left and then the right, punched at the quarrel shaft protruding from his waist with my shield, driving
