me. I remained still, this time, silently applauding this display of horsemanship, sword resting casually on one shoulder, as the ranks of the enemy cavalry hurled themselves at me. At a distance of fifty paces, the trumpet rang out again one long note, repeated three times, and, miraculously, the reins were hauled back once again, the lances rose to pierce the sky, and with much snorting from the protesting horses, tearing of the turf, and swearing from the riders, the whole huge mass of sweaty horse and armoured man-flesh came sliding to a halt about a spear’s length from Ghost’s soft nose. I stared at the heaving ranks of cavalry, saluted them with my sword, and slid the blade back into its battered scabbard.
‘Did we give you a good scare then, Alan?’ said the bareheaded rider, only slightly out of breath, and grinning at me like a drunken apprentice celebrating a holy day.
‘Of course, my lord,’ I said gravely. ‘I was so terrified by your fearsome manoeuvres that I believe I may have soiled myself.’ There were a few guffaws from the ranks, which I had intended. Then I grinned back at Robin and said with mock humility: ‘It was, truly, a very impressive display. But one suggestion, sir,’ I paused. ‘I’m no expert on horsemanship, of course, but would it not be even more effective if all the horses charged together… in the same direction
… at the same time?’
There was more merriment from the horse soldiers as I pointed behind Robin to the other side of the dale, where a dozen of the Earl of Locksley’s newly formed cavalry could be seen tiredly forging up the far slope, the horses lathered in white and still wildly out of control. Robin turned, looked and smiled ruefully.
‘We’re working on it, Alan,’ said Robin. ‘We’re working hard on it. And they’ve still got a little time to learn before we get them to Outremer.’
‘They are a damned indisciplined rabble, that’s what they are. You ought to have the hides off the lot of them!’ snapped a man seated on a magnificent bay stallion next to Robin. I looked at him curiously. The ranks of heavily blowing cavalry were filled with familiar faces and I had nodded cheery greetings to half a dozen former outlaws by now, but he was a stranger to me. A tall man of late-middle years, clearly a knight from his dress, weaponry and the quality of his horse, with sandy blonde hair and a battered, much-creased face, the result, I assumed, of a permanent frown.
Robin said: ‘May I introduce Sir James de Brus, my new captain of horse, the man responsible for knocking these rascals into shape. Sir James, this is Alan Dale, an old comrade, a good friend and my very talented trouvere.’
‘Pleased to know you,’ said Sir James. I noticed that he had a slight Scottish accent. ‘Dale, Dale…’ he said in a puzzled tone. ‘I don’t think I know the name. Where are your family’s lands?’
I bridled instinctively. I was ashamed of my humble origins and I hated to be asked about my family, particularly by members of the knightly class, who loved to talk about their Norman lineage as a way of demonstrating their superiority. I glared at the man and said nothing.
Robin spoke for me: ‘Alan’s father came here from France,’ he said smoothly. ‘And he was the son of the Seigneur D’Alle, of whom I am sure you will have heard. Alan is the lord of Westbury in Nottinghamshire.’
What Robin said about my father was true. He had been the second son of an obscure French knight, but Robin had not mentioned that he had been a penniless wandering musician, a trouvere like me, but without a master. He had made his living, for a time, singing in the halls of the nobility, where he had met Robin, before falling in love with my mother and settling down to raise crops and three children in a small village outside Nottingham. When I was nine, soldiers had burst into our cottage before dawn, ripped my father from his bed and, after falsely accusing him of theft, had hanged him summarily on an oak tree in the centre of the village. I have never forgotten the sight of his swollen face as he choked out his life on that makeshift gibbet. And I have never forgiven Sir Ralph Murdac, the Sheriff of Nottinghamshire, who ordered his execution.
Sir James grunted something to me that might have been: ‘At your service, sir,’ and I inclined my head at him with the barest civility. Robin said: ‘Well, that’s enough fun for today; shall we adjourn to the castle? I think it is time for a bite of supper.’
‘I have urgent private news for you, sir,’ I said to Robin.
‘Can it wait till after supper?’ he asked. I thought for a moment and then nodded reluctantly. ‘Come to my chamber after the meal, we’ll talk then.’ He smiled at me. ‘Good to have you back, Alan,’ he said, ‘Kirkton has been dull without your wit and dour without your music.’ And then: ‘When you are fully rested, perhaps you’ll sing for us. Tomorrow?’
‘Of course, sir.’
And we turned our horses and began to make our way up the hill to the castle.
The smell of hot soup from the kitchens filled my mouth with water. It is one of the most pleasant experiences that I know: to be physically tired, but washed and clean, and to be hungry, but with the knowledge that good food is just around the corner. I was seated to the left of Robin’s place, which was empty, not immediately next to where he would be sitting, but not far away — a position that reflected my standing in Robin’s court at Kirkton. In a few moments, Robin would join us and the food would be brought in, and for me it couldn’t come soon enough. I gazed around the hall as I waited for the meal to begin. The wooden walls were hung with rich, brightly coloured tapestries, and the banners of the notable diners: Robin’s device of a snarling black wolf’s head on a white background being most prominent, his wife Marie-Anne’s badge of a white hawk on a blue field hung beside it, and next to that a strange device, a blue lion on a red and gold background, which I guessed must be Sir James’s emblem.
About three dozen of us were waiting to be fed: Robin’s familia — his closest friends and advisers, top lieutenants, and the senior members of his armed troops. Some of the faces about the long table I knew very well — the giant man seated next to Robin’s empty place with a thatch of straw-coloured hair was my friend and sword-teacher John Nailor, who was Robin’s right-hand man, and the iron enforcer of his master’s will; farther along was a squat muscular shape clad in a raggedy brown robe: Brother Tuck, a Welsh master bowman turned monk, who men said jokingly acted as Robin’s conscience; across the table were the gap-toothed grin and red curls of Will Scarlet, a friend of my own age and the nervous horseman I had clashed with that afternoon — but Robin had been recruiting busily in the weeks that I’d been away and at least half the members of the happy throng were unknown to me. Sir James de Brus, I noted with satisfaction, was seated further away from Robin’s place than me, his bulldog face creased in to its habitual scowl. He did not seem to fit in that cheery, easy company, where little distinction of rank was made and, saving Robin’s superiority over us all, every man believed himself to be equal in worth to his fellow.
But, I noticed as I looked round the hall, things at the castle had changed in my absence. Not just new faces, but a new atmosphere: it was more formal, less like our carefree days as an outlaw band. Of course, that was right: we were no longer a pack of murderers and thieves, with every man’s hand against us — we were a company of the soldiers of Christ, blessed by the Church, and sworn to undertake the perilous journey to Outremer to save the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem for the True Faith.
Many of the changes to Kirkton were physical, too: indeed, the bailey courtyard had been almost unrecognisable to me when we had cantered into through the high wooden gates that afternoon. It was filled with people, teeming — soldiers, craftsmen, servants, traders, washerwomen, whores — all hurrying about their tasks, and it seemed crammed with new buildings, too, wooden structures thrown up to house the bustling multitudes. The castle courtyard was designed as a vast circle, about a hundred paces across, surrounded by a high oaken palisade, with a wide empty space in the centre. Before I had left, there had been a handful of buildings around the edge of the circle: the high hall where we now sat, with Robin and Marie-Anne’s solar, or private sleeping chamber, attached to one end; the kitchen, the stables, the stoutly-built counting house that was Robin’s treasury, a few storehouses and that was all. Now, the courtyard almost resembled a small town: a new low building had been constructed to house the men-at-arms, a large two-roomed blacksmith’s forge had been set up against the palisade, and a burly man and his two assistants were hammering endlessly at bright strips of metal, manufacturing the swords, shields, helmets and spearheads necessary for the troops. A fletcher was at work outside a small half-built hovel, watched closely by his apprentice, painstakingly binding a linen thread around the goose feather flights of an arrow to hold them in place, with a stack of finished missiles beside him.
They would both have plenty of work in the weeks ahead. A good archer could fire twelve arrows a minute in battle and Robin was planning to take nearly two hundred bowmen with him to the Holy Land. If they had to fight only one battle, which lasted only for an hour, that would still mean expending a hundred and forty-four
