feathers. Goody snatched it back. ‘I said “look” not “touch”.’ Suddenly she was all busy-ness. ‘Now Alan, I need you out of the way, we have to make the place properly clean for the baby,’ and she shooed me briskly out of the chamber like a middle-aged goodwife dealing with an unruly schoolboy.
Travelling as part of an army is obviously a very different experience to journeying as a lone man, or as part of a small group, as I had been used to. We carried with us a sense of sprawling menace that nothing could dispel even in our own land. Shepherds would flee before us on the peaceful downs, and villagers would bar their doors and shutter their windows at our approach, even in the tranquil southern counties of England. It was not so long ago — grandfathers could clearly recall it — that, during the Anarchy of Stephen and Maud, gangs of armed men would roam the land, pillaging at will. And country folk have long memories.
But we did not despoil our own people; we had plenty of supplies, thanks to the loans of silver from Reuben’s friends, and each night when we made camp in a fallow field or common wood, we killed an animal or two and roasted the mutton and made merry. My music was in great demand. Almost every night, I would be called upon to sing and play for my supper, and I was glad to do so. I sang the old country songs, for the most part. Amusing peasant ditties about unfaithful husbands and angry wives, songs of the farmer and his beasts, or tales of great battles fought long ago by King Arthur and his knights. The cansos and sirvantes, the songs of courtly love and satirical poems that I used to sing in the halls of the nobility, were less popular with the rough soldiery. Occasionally, Robin would call his officers together and we would dine and make plans for the next few days or weeks, and at the end of our gatherings I would indulge my audience in a more sophisticated musical offering: there was one I was particularly proud of which I composed at that time. The song tells of a beautiful golden brooch, with a pin in the shape of a sword, worn by a noble lady. The brooch is in love with the domina whose breast he adorns — and guards from the touch of another lover — but of course there can never be true love between a jewel, however beautiful, and a great lady, the brooch can only ever serve his mistress, he can never possess her, but he is content with this role. Tragically, at the end of the canso, the brooch is cast away by the lady, who says she has grown tired of it, and the bright jewel rests in a deep, muddy ditch, remembering its love until Judgment Day.
You might think that my mood was particularly black when I wrote that song of talking jewellery and tragic love, but in truth, I was feeling very optimistic. My relations with Robin were more or less back to normal. I had decided to forgive him — I told myself that I must strive to be a loyal vassal and support all of his decisions, whether I agreed with them or not — and I was happy in the company with the other captains and vintenars, with the exception of James de Brus. But that was no problem: I was merely courteous and distant with the Scotsman, and he with me. And I had a new body servant, which made me feel very grand. William — the boy who had helped me steal the ruby from Sir Ralph Murdac — had been summoned from Nottingham Castle. The loyal fellow had been regularly sending verbal reports on the activities of Murdac through some mysterious network of Robin’s spies and as a reward, as we marched past Nottingham on our way south, young William had joined us as my manservant. He was a diligent lad, quick-moving and eager to please, very intelligent, though with a slight stammer, and good at anticipating my requirements. He kept my applewood vielle and its horsehair bow, a much prized gift from my old musical mentor Bernard, in a highly polished state and he was always on hand to fetch and carry. He was a grave boy, though, only smiling rarely and never up to the high jinks that I indulged in when I was his age. But I liked him, and I was glad of his service.
The one cloud in my sky was that Tuck was not accompanying us on this great adventure. Partly as a result of William’s reports — Murdac had apparently repeated his offer of a hundred pounds of silver for Robin’s head — Robin had asked Tuck to remain at Kirkton Castle to watch over Marie-Anne and the baby with his two enormous, battle-trained wolfhounds Gog and Magog. These great beasts could tear the arm off a man as easily as I could tear the leg off a boiled capon, but they were as mild as the Baby Jesus around Tuck’s friends. Robin had also left a score of bowmen, ten cavalrymen and ten veteran spearmen as a garrison. It was not enough to hold the bailey of the castle but, if attacked, as I well knew from my experiences in York, they were a big enough force to hold the strong keep.
Instead of my friend, the jolly fighting monk, we were accompanied by Father Simon, the priest of St Nicholas’s Church in Kirkton — a man I did not particularly care for, who seemed to have been born without a chin; his mouth merged seamlessly into his neck, almost as if somebody had removed his lower jaw. Father Simon held brief prayers every morning before we marched, mumbled in bad Latin and incomprehensible to the men, and on Sundays he sang Holy Mass, out of tune, I may say, for the whole army. I got the distinct feeling that he did not like Robin much; in fact, I could sometimes imagine that he hated him, although like any sensible mortal who wished to remain on this earth a while longer, he feared my master and treated him with respect.
I believe I knew why the priest disliked him: as many of the men knew, Robin had been involved in the old pagan worship of the Mother Goddess during his time as an outlaw, and although he now paid the proper homage to the True Religion of the Living Christ, his devilish past allegiances had not been forgotten. Whatever Robin felt about Father Simon in return, or privately believed, we were on a holy pilgrimage to the birthplace of Our Lord and it would have been unthinkable to travel without at least one priest. So the chinless cleric came with us.
I have this to say in Father Simon’s favour. He did not set himself above the men, as some priests are wont to do. He just got on with his allotted tasks. Before we embarked on to three great cargo ships at Southampton, Father Simon insisted on blessing the vessels to protect us from the dangers of the deep; and his prayers seemed to work. The crossing was smooth and uneventful, and took only a day and a night before we were trooping out at the quay at Honfleur, King Richard’s port at the mouth of the great river Seine in Normandy.
I had never been out of England before, and was astounded to find that Normandy looked almost exactly the same as my homeland. Perhaps I had expected the grass to be blue and the sky green, I don’t know. But the sensation of familiarity was extraordinary. The fields looked the same, the houses were similar and, until they opened their mouths to speak French, the people could have been easily mistaken for good honest English folk.
During the march through the Norman countryside, as we made our way southwards, there were certain elements of our army — mainly the folk who had previously been outlaws — who held the opinion that the French peasants existed solely to provide us with free food and drink. Robin had other ideas and was determined to maintain strict discipline. This land was the patrimony of our King, he said, and we were not to ravage it. Little John caught and summarily hanged two cavalrymen for stealing a chicken on the first day on Norman soil, and Robin gathered the men together and made a quiet, determined speech directly under the swinging heels of the looters.
‘You think I’m being harsh?’ he asked the four hundred angry men who were assembled before him. He used his loud, carrying battle voice. ‘Do you think I’m being unjust? I don’t give a damn. No man under my command steals so much as a penny, desecrates a Church, or beds any woman without her consent — unless I have given them permission. I will hang any bastard who does so from the nearest tree. No trial, no mercy, just a final dance at the end of a rope. Is that clear?’
There were a few sullen murmurs from the men, but they knew that there had to be discipline, and the former outlaws among them also knew that Robin could be a great deal more brutal if he chose to.
But Robin had not finished: ‘And that goes for the officers, too. Any captain who robs or rapes will be whipped in front of the men as a lesson to all, and then demoted.’ This was most unusual. Shocking, too. By common custom the officers were disciplined under different rules to the men, and their chastisements never included corporal punishment. Perhaps Robin had said this because we were, unusually, an almost entirely basebom contingent of King Richard’s army. Although led by an Earl, we were mercenaries — or we would be when Richard paid Robin the money he had promised. I saw Sir James de Brus glowering at Robin, and fingering his sword hilt. He was the only man among us, apart from Robin, who had been born noble, and I could almost hear him thinking: I will die with my sword in your belly before I submit to a whipping like an errant serf. But he said nothing. He was, after all, a good, professional soldier and he knew when to hold his tongue.
There was little need for rape: as we marched through Normandy, women seemed to appear from nowhere and attach themselves to our column, like bees attracted to a honey-pot. Some were whores looking for rich pickings, and some were fairly virtuous women who were looking for adventure and who believed that by attaching themselves to a strapping young man-at-arms they would see the world. And, as they made no complaints to Robin, he did not need to enforce his discipline. One extraordinary creature caught my eye, though not for the reasons you might expect a young man to find a woman interesting. She was a very tall woman of about thirty or
