feet.
‘We have fought, and we have won,’ said Robin in his carrying battle voice. ‘And many have died. And after victory comes justice. Here, before you, is a man who was once your comrade but today he rode with the enemy; this man, who was once your friend, with whom you shared your daily bread, is a traitor. What shall we do with him?’
The courtyard rang with cries of: ‘Boil him alive!’ and ‘Flay him!’ and ‘Hang, draw and quarter him’. A wag yelled: ‘Tell him one of your jokes!’ Robin held up a hand for silence. ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘The punishment shall be-’
And then I was shouting: ‘Wait, wait. I claim his life. I claim his life in single combat.’ I don’t know why I did so; I could have sat back and watched my enemy meet his deservedly cruel end — and even enjoyed it. But there was something about his pathetic air, the way he had appealed to me before, and perhaps my sense of guilt was stirring. If I had not engineered his expulsion from Thangbrand’s with the stolen ruby, maybe he would have fought with us this day.
So I said it again: ‘I claim his life. I will fight him and kill him in single combat, if the prisoner is willing.’
Robin looked at me oddly. ‘Are you sure?’ he said. ‘What about your arm?’
‘It will be fine,’ I said, though I was far from sure. The cut was burning, my arm felt weak and I was trembling even as I loudly made the absurd boast: ‘My sword requires his life.’
‘Very well,’ said Robin. ‘The prisoner will face single combat with our brother Alan. Swords the only weapons. If he wins, he shall go free.’ There was some grumbling from the crowd at this, although a good many seemed to consider a sword fight to the death a fine entertainment to crown such a bloody day. ‘Does the prisoner accept the challenge?’
Guy had lifted his bruised head at this strange turn of events. He looked across at me, doubtless remembering the many times he had beaten me on the practice ground at Thangbrand’s. He half-smiled, a mere twitch of his dry lips, and said: ‘I accept.’
Behind me I heard a deep voice whisper in my ear. ‘By God’s swollen loins, you are a fool, young Alan. But don’t you worry; you’ll easily slaughter him. And if by some mischance, he wins, I’ll chop his head off myself.’
Both Guy and I stripped our tunics and shirts off to fight bare-chested in the warm evening. Robin had flaming torches brought out for light and I found myself facing my childhood enemy over the point of my sword inside a ring of jeering outlaws. As we circled each other, I felt the weight of my blade for the first time in months; my cut arm had weakened me more than I had supposed, and I was bone-weary from two days of battle. But then Guy spoke quietly, so that only I could hear him: ‘I enjoyed hearing you sing in Winchester, little
Then he sprang at me, and he was as fast as I remembered him; a lighting quick flurry of blows which I parried with my wounded sword arm. By God, he was strong, too, he was fighting for his life, and he had learnt a thing or two since our days at Thangbrand’s. But, then, so had I.
He attacked hard down my right hand side, hammering backhanded blows against my blade. By luck more than skill, I managed to fend him off and we broke apart, both panting for breath. I looked down at the bandage on my forearm and noted with dismay that the bleeding had started again, and a large crimson patch was seeping across the white of the cloth. He came at me again, this time on the left, then left and right in succession. He was driving me back, the outlaws scattering behind me, back towards a surviving stretch of palisade, trying to corner me to a place where he could hammer me down.
And then he over-reached himself — he must have been tired too, for he mistimed his sword stroke and I was through his guard in a heartbeat, slashing him across his naked chest. A shallow cut but bloody, a foot long and an inch or so above his nipples. The crowd gave a great animal roar of approval. First blood to me. He looked down in complete surprise, as the gore welled and spilled down his bare chest and on to his belly. And then I was attacking. I used a combination of cuts and lunges that Sir Richard had taught me. Guy seemed bewildered by this change in my demeanour. In his heart, he still believed me to be the snotty thief that had been an easy target of his bullying only the year before. Or the cringing victim, screaming for mercy in that Winchester dungeon. But I was no longer that boy. I was a man, a full member of Robin’s band, a warrior. He tried a desperate counter- attack to break my lunge-and-cut routine, but it was another mistake. I let his blade slide past my head and chopped down into the meat of his right bicep. He roared in pain and dropped his sword and I could have killed him there and then. The blood-drunk crowd was shrieking for his death. But I did not strike. I heard again his laughter at my humiliation, my agony of body and mind in that cell, and it was not in my head to give him a quick death.
I made him pick up the sword with his left hand and fight on. But after that cut to his arm, the battle was all mine. He was no swordsman with his left hand and in three passes I had sliced his chest again, slashed into his side, stabbed his calf muscle and, with a contemptuous flick of my wrist, made a deep cut on the unbruised side of his face. He was staggering and crying now. He could see his death in my eyes. His defence was at an end and he barely moved as I swung and sliced deep into the muscle of his left shoulder. By now, weak with loss of blood, he could barely lift the sword. And suddenly all my anger drained away. Here, in front of me, was a wreck of a man, bleeding from a half a dozen cuts, right arm useless, humiliated. I had had my revenge.
He stood there panting, his clean sword trailing in the dust, waiting for the death blow like a bullock at a slaughterhouse. I felt disgust for myself; this was not how a true warrior behaved, to torment a beaten foe. I stepped away from him and looked round the ring of eager blood-lusting faces. The marks of recent battle and the firelight from the torches gave them an evil cast: they looked like a circle of demons glowing with a hideous desire. They began to chant: ‘Death, death, death. .’ But I wanted no more part in their gory entertainment and said in a loud voice: ‘I have finished. Let him go. The fight is over. Release him.’ And I turned my back on that bleeding remnant of my childhood and started to walk towards the manor house.
Then someone shouted my name and I whirled round fast. Guy had raised his sword in his left hand and he was charging at me across the torch-lit courtyard, a scream of humiliated rage in his throat. He swung the sword hard at my head but I ducked easily and lunged forward, spitting his already blood-slicked chest on my blade. His own momentum drove him forward on to my sword and he came to rest, inches from my body, his face close enough to kiss. I could see the light dying in his eyes and, feeling a last flicker of hatred, I leant forward and whispered in his ear. ‘It was me who planted the ruby in your clothes chest, Wolfram. Take that knowledge with you to Hell.’ He gurgled blood, a crimson stream running from his lips. I could see he was trying to speak, to curse me, and then he slumped at my feet, dead, on his back with my sword still stuck between his ribs, the hilt pointing to the heavens.
Chapter Twenty
The great hall of Nottingham Castle was filled with the scent of fresh flowers and fine beeswax candles. Sweet herbs strewn on the floor added their notes to the heady odours of a happy celebration. The brightly coloured robes of royalty and their noble entourages dazzled the eye, outshone only by the gorgeous tapestries woven with gold and silver thread that hung from the walls. I was as gaudily attired as anyone in this cacophony of colour in a pair of new green and yellow hose and a gorgeous scarlet robe, embroidered with silver thread, which reached almost to my ankles. My feet were encased in the lightest kidskin shoes, my head adorned with a soft, bright scarlet woollen hat that draped down one side of my face in what I believed was a magnificently aristocratic manner.
I was almost as pleased with my attire as I was to be witnessing the marriage of the Earl and Countess of Locksley. Robin and Marie-Anne, dressed respectively in sumptuous gowns of green and blue silk, were standing at the head of the hall being blessed by a solemn priest in black; a short, powerful man who bore a striking
