whispering in my ear.
‘Have you heard the story of how, during her war with King Stephen, Duke Richard’s grandmother, the Empress Matilda, escaped from Oxford Castle in the middle of the night when a brave knight led her through the snow to safety?’
‘Indeed I have. Every child in England has been told that story.’
‘Well, that knight was Earl Harold.’
I smiled, but I was not surprised to hear this latest revelation because, by now, I had realized how extraordinary the old warrior was. However, I remained concerned about his welfare.
‘Sire, I hope you don’t intend travelling alone. Take Godric and a couple of the men with you.’
‘I don’t need a nursemaid, young man. I’ve travelled the length and breadth of this empire many times.’
‘But, sire, if I may say so, you were younger then.’
He smirked at me, before turning away to give the girth of his saddle one last tug. He then called for a mounting block, thanked Godric and his men and seated himself for his long journey.
‘Father Alun, offer Sir Ranulf wise counsel; he will need it. Sir Ranulf, take good care of our future King; he will need you. I have said goodbye to the Duke. The bargain is struck. You will join his entourage as a knight of Aquitaine and, like Godric and his men, will carry my grandfather’s colours.’
He then kicked his horse on and, without a second glance, rode off towards the east and the old bridge over the Garonne.
As his form became smaller and smaller in the distance, he soon became no more than a receding silhouette against the white background. Snow covered his shoulders like a shawl of fur, but he never bowed his head against the inclement conditions. He was too proud for that.
I wondered whether he had tears in his eyes. He had completed the final task of his long life; his adventure would soon be over.
But mine was just beginning. I turned to Father Alun.
‘Don’t you think it strange that Earl Harold is so certain that the Duke will be King one day? After all, his brother Henry is not yet thirty and is already anointed as his father’s successor.’
‘I know, I’ve often thought about that. However, the old man has an uncanny habit of being right about things. I’ve come to trust his judgement and accept his predictions without reservation.’
I turned back to stare into the distance. The silhouette had disappeared from sight. I wondered if I would ever see the Earl again.
5. Grand Quintet
Although the time Duke Richard had spent with Earl Harold had had a mollifying effect on the young man’s demeanour, he remained tempestuous and volatile. The day after the old Earl had left, Father Alun and I were summoned to see the Duke.
Warm air had returned to Bordeaux and the snow had melted, but not so the harshness of the Duke’s tongue.
‘Gentlemen, I have accepted the offer from Earl Harold that you join my retinue. But you must understand that I will not accept the Earl’s recommendations about you at face value. Like everyone else in my service, you will have to prove yourselves.’
I readily accepted the Duke’s pragmatic position.
‘Of course, my Lord; you are right to require that our actions speak for themselves.’
‘My senior captains will soon return from their homes to begin our campaign in the south. When they do, you and your men will each be assigned to a captain. From that moment onwards, I expect total loyalty to him and to me. Is that clear?’
‘Yes, sire.’
Father Alun nodded his agreement also.
We both left the meeting with the same feeling: the Duke was well named. And we had been asked to hold this particular lion by its tail!
Three days later, on 6 January 1177, the Duke’s loyal henchmen returned from their estates. I had never seen such formidable men before. Not many men could stand as equals in the presence of Duke Richard, but the men of this quintet could. They each had their own entourage of four or five knights and a conroi of cavalry bedecked in their personalized armour and colours, which added to their spectacular arrival.
There was a cacophony of greetings and bellows of delight as the column rode into camp. This was the core of Richard’s army – a far more formidable group than his Brabancon mercenaries – which made me wonder what would have happened had they been with the Duke when Earl Harold raided his tent.
The first of them was from the Artois, Baldwin of Bethune. A man about the same age as Duke Richard, he sat tall in his saddle, his long mane of auburn hair and his bushy beard making him look ten years older. He spoke with the strong accent of a man of his region, a tongue much influenced by the languages of the Low Countries.
Robert Thornham was a little older, perhaps twenty-five; the son of a middle-ranking Anglo-Norman father, he had come to prominence as a knight while competing in tournaments. A dark-haired, powerful man, adept with sword and lance, he had been noticed by Duke Richard at the age of nineteen when he had taken one of Normandy’s most formidable champions clean out of his saddle at a tournament in Rouen. He had been with the Duke ever since.
Both Baldwin and Robert had soon been recognized in the ballads of the third member of the quintet, Jean de Nesle. De Nesle had such distinctive hair, the colour of dry flax, that he was known to everyone as ‘Blondel’. Not only was he one of the great troubadours of his age, but he was also a prodigious warrior, just as capable of striking an enemy a mortal blow with his mace as he was of smiting a lady with his beguiling lyrics.
Then there was a man from Provence known only as ‘Mercadier’, who was very dark skinned with jet-black hair. He spoke with an accent strongly influenced by the language of his region (which, I was told, was mainly spoken in Barcelona and the lands south and east of the Pyrenees). In his late twenties, he had the aura of a man to be avoided. Straight away, it was obvious the Duke would want him as an ally in battle, not as an adversary.
The oldest of the five was perhaps three or four years older than me. Although no more than thirty, he had already established himself as the epitome of the chivalrous knight. The name William Marshal had already been in circulation in Europe for several years; it was a name I had heard mentioned many times with a hushed reverence. And now here he was, larger than life, standing before me.
Famously, when his father, John the Marshal, Keeper of the Horse for the old King Henry, was fighting for the Empress Matilda in her war against King Stephen, young William was taken as a hostage by Stephen. When John the Marshal refused to relinquish Newbury Castle to the King, Stephen threatened to tie the boy on to a trebuchet and launch him over the walls and into the castle’s keep. His father then responded with the riposte, repeated over many a camp fire, ‘Do your worst, I still have the hammer and the anvil to forge more and better sons!’
The King was at first furious at the response and ordered that the five-year-old boy be sent to his death as a human missile. But when the boy showed no signs of fear and just looked at the King defiantly, he relented and ordered his release. Thus, the legend of William Marshal was born.
Another story had become legend, even though it had happened only a few years earlier. It was said that while campaigning for King Henry, William Marshal had been badly wounded in the thigh and that the gash was big enough to accommodate a man’s fist. Lying as a prisoner in the dungeon of his captor, Guy of Lusignan, infection and a slow, painful death was almost inevitable. But such was the impression the young knight had made on the ladies of the household, they secreted bandages and ointment in a loaf of stale bread and had them sent to his cell. He made a full recovery before being ransomed by Eleanor of Aquitaine.
Perhaps a couple of inches taller than six feet, he had a red mane not unlike Duke Richard’s, but he was
