Outlaw

make mistakes or ink blots and ruin a fine piece of writing material.

This was frustrating: Thomas would have loved to have knowledge of everything that the Queen wrote, but I dared not push the clerks too far and, when I did casually question them about the Queen’s letters, they seemed to have a blind spot as to their content, almost as if they were merely copying the words without truly taking in their meaning. So here I was, able to physically see the letters she was sending out, but unable to read their messages. I dreaded my next meeting with the one-eyed man.

Then two events occurred that were to change my mood — and the course of my life. My duties with Fulcold were light and on sunny afternoons I was still occasionally performing with Bernard in the castle gardens for the ladies. One day, after we had played together and been lavishly praised, Bernard suggested that I should make my debut as a solo trouvere in front of the court. The ladies thought it was a wonderful idea and the Queen suggested that I perform at a feast that was taking place in a week or so, at the beginning of July, to honour some important visitors to the castle. I would be performing in front of Sir Ralph FitzStephen, the constable, for the first time and so I was determined to make a good impression. The second event occurred when one of the clerks fell ill and Fulcold asked me to help with the making of palimpsests. As I have said, parchment was very expensive, even for a Queen, and so many of the letters that were sent to Eleanor were scrubbed clean and reused. Fulcold gave me this task and this is how I finally learnt a secret worthy of Thomas.

It was a painstaking process: the used parchment was clamped to a wooden board, where it would first be gently washed with fresh cows’ milk and then scrubbed with oat bran, which would remove most of the dried ink from its previous use. However, if the writer had pressed hard on the animal skin, some of the ink would be more deeply ingrained in the parchment and this could only be removed by scraping with a pumice stone, a grey crumbly rock that was so light it would float on water. This was a delicate task; the parchment was very thin and scraping too hard with the pumice could tear holes in the material. If you scraped the parchment too gently, of course, the resulting palimpsest would still be covered with the original writing.

‘You will be careful, my dear boy, won’t you?’ said a worried Fulcold as he assigned me a stack of parchments, some of which had already been partially cleaned.

I took special care with the parchments he gave me that day and the chamberlain was pleased with my work. Of course, I also read each document thoroughly before I cleaned it. I did so well that this became my regular employment in Fulcold’s establishment and I was pleased with myself: if I could not yet read the Queen’s outgoing correspondence, I could at least read what people were saying to her. Some letters were very intimate. Eleanor, it seemed, had an insatiable curiosity about a noblewoman named Alice, the daughter of the King of France, who it was rumoured had been King Henry’s mistress. She received several letters that I saw in the same small cramped hand describing, in extraordinary detail, the life of this unfortunate princess, who was now betrothed to Richard: what she ate, what she wore each day, even the number of times she visited the privy.

Mostly the letters contained dull fare, information that would not be of the slightest interest to Robin, I judged. For example, one letter revealed that the Count de Something had a young and beautiful daughter and the writer wondered whether Eleanor would help to arrange a suitable marriage. The Abbey of Quelquepart invited Eleanor to become a patron, their church needed a new roof and perhaps the Queen would like to contribute. .

Then, at the beginning of July, I came across a letter that drove all this trivia from my mind. Irritatingly, it was a parchment that had already been partially cleaned but I could still make out some parts of the missive. It was a letter dated the eleventh day of February of this year, and it was from Sir Ralph Murdac.

He was coming to Winchester; in fact, he was the special guest for whom I would be performing the next day. My heart gave a jump but almost immediately I steadied myself. He could not possibly know me: we had met only once face to face, more than a year ago in Nottingham, when I was a bruised, snotty thief apprehended for stealing a pie. He may have seen me briefly again, or at least my back, when I was fleeing through the snow from his horsemen, but surely he would not remember me, surely he could not connect that ragamuffin, that peasant ‘filth’, with the polished trouvere playing (I dared to hope) exquisitely at a royal court. It was impossible, I concluded, and then I even began to relish the thought of performing before Murdac, inspired to greatness by my hatred for him.

But other parts of Murdac’s parchment were much more disturbing. After an illegible patch, the letter continued ‘. . it would be a most suitable match, I believe; the Countess of Locksley has much property but she needs a strong man to manage both her and her lands. I am that man and I mean to press my suit with her during my sojourn at the castle with the greatest vigour; who knows what magic a sweet word and a lavish gift may work on a young girl? I trust I may have your support in this venture, though I note that you mentioned in your last letter that she has formed some sort of attachment to Robert Odo of Edwinstowe. I must warn you, and I shall certainly inform the Countess, that this Robert Odo is a scoundrel, a scofflaw and that the moment the loyal forces of the King lay hands on him he will be hanged as a common felon. He has made a great nuisance of himself in Nottinghamshire, indeed all over the north of England, but his run of luck is nearly at an end. I know his every move before he makes it and I shall soon have him in my grasp and, I swear by Almighty God that I will punish him for his misdeeds to the full and fatal extent of the law.’

I read the letter through twice and then, thinking furiously, I washed it and began to scrub the parchment with pumice. That diminutive French popinjay, that lavender-scented swine, wanted to possess my beautiful Marie-Anne. The thought of his sweaty little paws on her body in the marriage bed, on her white neck, her breasts. Never. I’d see him dead first. I’d walk right up to the bastard at the feast and smash the vielle over his head. I’d plunge my poniard into his black heart. To Hell with the consequences. I was scrubbing so hard that I tore the parchment, and Fulcold came clucking over. Seeing the tear, he relieved me of my duties and sent me to lie down in my chamber and recover my temper.

I warned Marie-Anne that evening but, to my surprise, she seemed unconcerned. ‘There are many men who would marry me for my lands,’ she said. ‘Some would even try to force me to marry them. But I am safe here under the protection of the Queen. Don’t fret, Alan, I am safe while I am at Winchester.’ I was to remember her words well a few days later.

I spent most of the next day getting ready for my performance at the feast. I would be using Bernard’s vielle and I was worried that my technique was a little rusty, so Bernard helped me to prepare for the evening, running me through scales and suggesting small refinements to my bowing. I was to play four pieces only — unless my audience demanded more: firstly, a simple song that I had written in praise of the Queen’s beauty, comparing her to an eagle, as she had been in a famous prophecy, and admiring her haughty looks and towering personality. I was certain that it would go down well. Next, a canso about a young squire who is in love with a lady he has never even seen; he is in love with her reported beauty and the stories he has been told about her goodness. Then I would perform a sirvantes, a witty satirical ditty about corrupt churchmen and their dull-witted servants, which I had written while in Sherwood and which had them rolling on the floor when I performed it at Robin’s Caves. Then finally, Bernard and I would play a tenson, a two-part musical debate in which I would suggest with my verses that a man could love only one woman, while Bernard would argue, in each alternate verse, that it was possible for a man to love two women or even more if they were all of comparable beauty and virtue. At the end of the tenson, we would ask Queen Eleanor to judge which of us had proved our point more convincingly and which of us should be declared winner of the musical debate.

We practised for most of the morning, then I bathed, changed into my best clothes and we waited in an anteroom off the great hall where the guests were dining noisily. Bernard was sober and fidgety, he kept plucking at the ribbons entwined into his green silk tunic. I was nervous but I kept thinking of Sir Ralph Murdac and trying to use my hatred of him to banish my nerves. Then Fulcold was at my shoulder; it was time to go in.

We made our way into the great hall of Winchester Castle to a blast of trumpets. Bernard walked over to the wall at the side of the great hall — it was to be my performance, after all, he was only going to accompany me in the tenson. Then, with an unnaturally loud voice, completely different to his usual gentle tones, Fulcold announced: ‘My lords, ladies and gentlemen, for your pleasure, I give you the renowned and talented trouvere Alan Dale.’ I bowed low, lifted the vielle to my arm and ran my eyes over my audience.

The guests were seated at a long table in the shape of a T in the centre of the great hall of Winchester Castle. At the high table, the cross piece of the T, sat Queen Eleanor, splendid in a jewelled gown of gold cloth, Sir