The next day, by the early afternoon, we were walking our horses through the low arch of Micklegate Bar — with its gruesome array of the severed heads of criminals set on spikes on top — and into York. It was my first visit to this great northern town, and I was most curious to see the place. As we rode down the centre of wide street to the old bridge over the River Ouse, I took in the closely packed workshops and houses, the milling citizens, the noise and smells of the streets; there seemed to be a great number of people out of doors, far more than would be abroad in Nottingham at this hour, and many seemed to be agitated about something. There were also, I noticed, many more men-at-arms among the throng that would be usual in a town this size.
Robin seemed to be reading my thoughts: ‘Sir John Marshal, the Sheriff of Yorkshire, is assembling local contingents here to go on the Great Pilgrimage,’ he noted. ‘You need to mind your manners, Alan, with so many soldiers about. Don’t get into any trouble; don’t provoke anyone to violence.’ As so often when he spoke to me, Robin was half-serious and half-joking.
Crossing the old bridge over the river, Robin and I moved into single file, and I covered my nose at the stench of the public latrines — wooden shacks that had been set up, their backs extending out over the slow moving brown water so that the townsmen could relieve themselves directly into the Ouse. To my right, a couple of hundred yards away, was the mound and high wooden walls of the King’s Tower, the great keep of York Castle, that glowered over the town as a reminder of the King’s power in the North. On my left, a quarter of a mile away, was the magnificent soaring bulk of the Minster, a huge monument to God’s glory on Earth; and next to it, slightly closer to the river, was the Abbey of St Mary’s, one of the holiest institutions in Yorkshire. Robin I knew had had problems with the Abbot in the past — he had mocked him publicly for his wealth, and robbed his servants as they travelled through Sherwood — and I knew he wanted to avoid the place, if at all possible.
We headed neither right to the castle nor left to the Minster, but straight up the hill through ranks of squeezed in houses, some of them two or even three storeys high. It was an impressive town. And yet, even though I had never been in York before, I could sense that something was wrong in the place: fellows would scurry about shouting half-heard messages to their fellows; a gang of apprentices crossed our path heading north, and drunkenly singing a song that ended in the chorus… ‘Ah-ha, ah-ha, ah-ha, another pint of ale, my boys, ah-ha, ah-ah, ah-ha, and then the Jew shall die, my boys, ah-ha, ah-ha, ah-ha
…’ It seemed that a great many people were walking up the road with us and towards the market; a tide of humanity all moving in the same direction.
I felt uneasy and glanced at Robin; he too was frowning but we pushed on up the hill until a space opened up to our left and, by the ripe smell of rotting meat, I knew we were passing the town’s shambles. Robin put a hand on my arm and we reined in at the entrance to the meat market. In a wide space, lined with rough stalls selling bloody cuts of pork and beef, and with row upon row of dead chickens hanging by their feet, a huge crowd had formed. Standing on a box at the back of the market, a short, middle-aged man dressed in a robe like that of a monk — except that it was a grubby off-white colour, instead of the usual brown — was haranguing the multitude. As Robin and I stopped to listen, more and more townspeople joined the throng in front of the monk, straining to hear his message: it soon became clear that his theme was the Great Pilgrimage, and the urgent need to free the Holy Land.
‘… and yet their beasts continue to defile our Holy places; the unbelievers’ cattle shitting on the very floors of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre itself; their Satan-black slaves pissing in the font where many a devout Christian babe has been baptised. How long, O Lord, how long will you suffer these Saracen desecrators to live? Where is the strong right arm of the Christian faith? Where is the army of the righteous who will scrub the Holy Land clean of these filthy, Christ-denying wretches?
‘I tell you, brothers: the great men of the land are doing their part; even our good King Richard has made his solemn vow to recapture Jerusalem and rid it of these unbelieving lice that swarm on the very stones where Christ preached his blessed ministry. And all the great lords of England and France, too, are doing their part to rid the world of the foul corruption of the paynim: our noble Sheriff, Sir John Marshal, brother to Christendom’s greatest knight, William the Marshal, is summoning his men, brave knights from across the county of Yorkshire, to cross the seas and vanquish these stinking hordes of the Devil.’
The crowd was cheering by now; wrapped up in the white priest’s words. ‘But what can I do, you ask; how can I play my part in this great endeavour to rid the world of sin and faithlessness? What can I do?’ The white monk paused, searching the crowd with his eyes. ‘I am no great knight, nor lord nor king, you say. I am but a humble man, a good Christian but no sword-wielding horse-warrior, with wide lands and great estates. And to you I say this: the Devil is among you! Here! Today! In this very town!’ There was a collective hiss from the crowd. The white monk held out his arm, index finger extended and he moved it slowly over the crowd. For some strange reason, it was difficult not to follow the pointing finger with your eyes.
‘The Devil is here, I say, among you, at this moment. You do not need to go to far Outremer to fight the good fight. You do not need to risk life and limb on the long road eastwards. There are evil heretics, unbelievers, demons shaped like men who dare to reject Christ, to spit in the face of Holy Mary Mother of God… and they are right here in York; living among good Christian folk like human rats. You know of whom I speak; you know this form of mankind; they are the ones who steal the bread out of honest men’s mouths; who with their God-cursed debt payments ruin the lives of honest men; they are the race who defy Christ, who murdered our Blessed Saviour on the Cross; who even today kidnap little Christian children and slaughter them for their foul Satanic rituals…’
The growls from the crowd had been growing and then somebody shouted: ‘The Jews! The Jews!’ and the crowd took up the chant, drawing out the long syllable into a deep booming ‘Oooooooh’. It was a sound to freeze the blood, the deep roaring of the crowd chanting: ‘Jooooooos; kill the Jooooooos; kill the Jooooooos,’ low and reverberating, like the base howling of a crazed beast.
‘It is God who wills it; God wills it, I say; it is God Almighty who demands that the Jews, that race of degenerate fiends, be wiped from the face of the Earth…’
Robin was watching the monk’s performance with a grim face. The white-robed man had flecks of spittle at either side of his mouth as he exhorted the crowd to hatred. ‘Someone should cut down that madman before he drowns the world in blood,’ Robin said quietly, almost to himself.
I looked at him, worried by his tone. He meant it; and yet to kill a monk or a priest, it was sacrilege of the worst sort. As a youth Robin had been outlawed for killing a holy man; surely he could not be contemplating another gross mortal sin of that magnitude. ‘I’ve heard more than enough here,’ said Robin. ‘Let’s ride on. We need to warn Reuben.’
There was no need to warn Reuben: when we approached the Jewish quarter, which was just outside the town’s earth and wood ramparts, we could clearly see that the area had already been attacked. The street was filled with burnt and broken chattels. What had been the large stone building of a wealthy man was now a smouldering ruin; Christian looters scurried in and out of the building with armfuls of smoke-blackened goods; pots and pans, blankets and chairs, small items of low value mostly but I saw a man making off with a small iron-bound chest that looked as if it had been used for storing jewels.
‘That is Benedict’s house; or rather, that was his house,’ said Robin grimly. ‘He is the leader of the Jews in York, if he still lives. But Reuben’s place seems untouched — so far.’ He led us to a stout two-storey wooden structure a hundred paces from the bumt-out shell, set in a large garden filled with strange exotic shrubs, and huge beds of herbs, for Reuben was a healer as well as a moneylender. We stopped and dismounted at the gate. The smell of the herbs was intoxicating: I could detect fine whiffs of sage and borage, rosemary and marjoram…
I was just stepping through the gate in the garden, and looking up at the tightly shuttered windows and studded oak door, when suddenly I felt a great shove in my back and I sprawled on the brick paving of the garden path. There was a thud behind me and I turned to see the neat black handle of a throwing knife vibrating in the gatepost.
‘Reuben, it is me, Robert of Locksley, and young Alan Dale. We are your friends. We mean you no harm,’ called Robin, who was crouched behind a small bush behind me. ‘Reuben, you know us! Let us enter!’
A window shutter opened a fraction on the first floor, and I saw a brown face peering out suspiciously, curly brown hair and oak-tough brown eyes. ‘What do you want with me, Christian?’ said a hard voice.
‘Actually, I want to borrow some money,’ said Robin and his face creased into one of his finest smiles.
