thickened with every passing moment, as townsmen, terrified of what our victorious troops would do if set loose in their homes, swelled the wall. Those with armour were pushed to the front, and there was a fairly credible barrier of linked shields and spears to stop our advance. The shield wall might have been almost formidable — a difficult obstacle to overcome — but for two things. We had plenty of archers, who were now grinning with pleasure at the chance of loot and mayhem and hastily stringing their bows, and King Richard was our commander.

Robin and Owain formed up our bowmen in no time at all and at a nod from the King, they began to loose volley after volley into the wall of Griffons. Waves of grey shafts fell like sheets of winter rain on the townsmen’s shield wall. The slaughter was appalling, relentless; and the Griffons had no reply. They stood bravely, bleeding and dying in defence of their homes and families. As the needle-tipped arrows slashed down again into their ranks, men screamed and dropped to the floor by the dozen at each volley, clutching at yard-long ash shafts that sprouted from their bodies before they were dragged in a gore-slicked trail to the back of the wall and nervous, unhurt men took their places. The wall began to thin, to waver under the bowmen’s onslaught, the back ranks began to fade away in ones and twos, family men slipping away into the back alleys of the town, shunning the fight to protect their children, and King Richard, seizing the moment perfectly, hauled out his blood-encrusted sword, and shouted ‘For God and the Virgin! Havoc! I say havoc!’ and he and every able-bodied man on horseback — there must have been sixty or seventy of us gathered by this time — raked our horses sides with our spurs and thundered forward in a great galloping steel-clad mass and crashed through the enfeebled shield wall like a birch broom through a pile of dry leaves. We charged into them, swords raised, punched easily through the wavering curtain of frightened men — and unleashed hell on the ancient, once-peaceful town of Messina.

Chapter Nine

The sack of a town is never a pretty sight. But this was one of the worst I have ever seen. King Richard had cried ‘Havoc!’ and this meant that his men were set free to plunder and rape and kill to their hearts’ content. No quarter would be given, everything in the town now belonged to the victorious troops. Richard was deliberately punishing the town for its insolence, for the rotten fruit thrown and the jeers when he made his magnificent entry into the harbour. As the cavalry careered through the last defences of the town, the archers and footmen came roaring after them, racing into the streets beyond, kicking down doors and charging inside private houses, killing anyone who opposed then and ransacking the interior and more often than not setting fire to the buildings for sheer spite. They were looking for wine and coin and women — but not necessarily in that order. It was as if they had all run mad, like the Christians of York, crazed with lust and cruelty and the urge to shed human blood.

As the sun dipped behind the hills to the west, much of the town was ablaze, blood and wine flowed in the gutters and bodies littered the streets. Drunken men-at-arms blundered through the burning town, naked steel in hand, tripping over their own feet and snarling at shadows, looking for unmolested houses to pillage, women to rape, another barrel of wine to broach. More often than not, the drunken man-at-arms or archer would collapse unconscious in a doorway, all his lusts slaked — and a good few had their throats cut by morning by locals seeking revenge for daughters deflowered, sons cut down before their own hearths and property destroyed or stolen. Fear and death stalked the fire-splashed darkness, as the citizens cowered in their cellars, or hid behind barred, even nailed-shut doors and prayed for the nightmare to end. But dawn was a long way off, and the desires of Richard’s victorious men were far from satisfied.

King Richard and his household knights, including my master Robin, had ridden to Hugh de Lusignan’s house. He was quite safe, firmly barricaded in a strong two-storey stone building with a score of well-armed men to protect him, and the bodies of a dozen Griffons at his door. After ceremonially embracing Hugh — the King had, after all, ostensibly attacked Messina to come to his defence — Richard withdrew back to the monastery on the hill with his household knights to bandage their scrapes and enjoy a victory feast together. Robin, rather reluctantly I believe, accompanied his liege lord; he was obliged to, in truth. But I had the strong feeling that he would have preferred to do a little lucrative plundering in the burning town. Little John had long disappeared, presumably in search of merriment and valuables, and I was left alone, walking Ghost up a narrow street, stepping around the bodies, heading towards the Jewish quarter. I wanted to be sure that Reuben was unharmed. Although I knew he could take care of himself, I was uneasy with memories of the last blood-crazed mob of fanatics I had encountered in York.

I rode slowly past a dark side street, and glancing into it, I saw a knot of men-at-arms, perhaps a dozen or so, shoving and squabbling excitedly. There was a woman on the floor and some ruffian was covering her, while the others waited to take their turn. I paused, and half of my mind wanted me to go to her, save her, and drive off those drunken beasts. But I was alone, and they were a dozen violent men. I hesitated, like a craven coward. Was it my duty to save that poor woman? She was a legitimate prize of war, an enemy. My own King wanted her punished. I remembered something that Robin had said to me the year before. I had not understood it at the time, although I thought about it often since then. He had said: ‘Right and wrong is rarely simple. The world is full of evil folk. But if I were to rush about the earth punishing all the bad men that I found, I would have no rest. And, if I spent my entire life punishing evil deeds, I would not increase the amount of happiness in this world in the slightest. The world has an endless supply of evil. All I can do is to try to provide protection for those who ask it from me, for those whom I love and who serve me.’

He had told me this only a few hours before he had ordered that a captive brigand, an evil fellow called Sir John Peveril, be strapped to the earth of a woodland glade and have three of his limbs chopped off in cold blood in front of his ten-year-old son. The man Peveril lived, I was told, if you can call him a man after that: he was just a trunk, a head and one arm. My master let the boy live, too; not out of kindness or mercy but to spread the tale of this horror.

I now understood what Robin meant by his little speech about right and wrong: that woman was nothing to me, so why should I risk my neck to save her? But I also knew what the right thing to do would have been. I knew what a truly chivalrous knight would have done. Sadly, the coward in me was too strong and, as I argued right and wrong with myself, Ghost sensibly walked on past the alley, and I surrendered to my weaker side and rode on by, cursing my own cowardice.

When I reached the house where Reuben had taken lodgings, I saw that there was nobody at home. The place was heavily boarded up and not a chink of light escaped from the shutters into the dark street. Reuben, probably sensing trouble, had evidently abandoned the town for some other safer place. While I was worrying about him, I thought bitterly, and braving the streets of a blood-drunk town, he was probably playing dice in some snug shelter north of Messina with Robin’s men — and no doubt winning.

I turned Ghost back towards the main gate of the town. As so often after a battle, I felt a sense of melancholy. I was tired, my foot, where the boot had taken a sword blow, was aching, and I couldn’t stop thinking about the girl being repeatedly raped by a dozen lust-crazed men. Then, just as I was passing a wide wooden two-storey house with the door smashed to kindling and hanging from its hinges, I heard a long, drawn-out scream of fear. It was a woman’s voice, a young woman, I believed, and she was in mortal terror. I stopped Ghost this time, and she screamed again, a long rising howl of utter dread. Then I heard a man laugh, an evil gloating sound, and a jest shouted to someone else.

Without allowing myself to think this time, I got down from Ghost’s back, tied him to a post, drew my sword and entered the house.

It was the dwelling of a rich man, clearly. The large front room with its high ceiling, which had once been a fine chamber, had been completely ransacked. By the moonlight that spilled through the open shutters in front window, I could see that ornate furniture, smashed, was scattered about the place, priceless hangings had been torn down from the walls, and there was a strong smell of wine and excrement — someone had recently relieved themselves in that plush chamber and I guessed that it was not the owner. In the dim light, I could just make out the corpse of a very fat man, richly dressed and lying in a black puddle at one side of the room. I ignored the body and threaded my way through the detritus of his house, towards the rear of the building. I heard the scream again, but this time it ended abruptly in a hideous bubbling gurgle. It sounded exactly like a woman having her throat cut.

I stepped through a doorway into an open-air courtyard that was brightly lit by a pair of torches fixed to

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