meet Malbete in this room where Reuben and I now waited after Vespers that same evening. It was a meeting of a discreet nature, said William solemnly, and would Sir Richard be so good as to come alone. Malbete had agreed, and William had left unmolested, and now Reuben and I waited in the dark.
I heard footsteps outside the door, a man’s confident tread, and then a soft knock at the door and a voice saying. ‘Sire?’ The door opened and light from a pine torch spilled into the dark room. There was a tall figure in a scarlet and sky blue surcoat, looming in the doorway, his face in shadow, and I leapt forward and clamped my arms around his middle, trapping the man’s elbows against his body. He dropped the torch in his surprise and, my face buried in his chest, I twisted him out of the lit doorway and round into the darkness of the room. Reuben slammed the door shut. The man gave a short cry of terror and then Reuben was reaching over my back; his knife flashed once and stabbed into the side of the man’s neck, seeking the big pulsing vein there; the victim’s body jerked violently as the questing blade cut deeply into the soft skin, and a spray of blood drenched the top of my head and told me that Reuben had found his mark. I kicked the man’s legs from under him and released my arms, and he crashed to his knees, bubbling a cry of alarm and clutching his spurting neck. I drew my own poniard, intending to stab the bastard a dozen times, to make sure he was truly dead…
Then the door burst open with a shattering crash, and bright light flooded the room. There were armed men spilling into the chamber all in scarlet and blue and I recognised the mocking, red-scarred face of Malbete at the back of the swarm of intruders. Someone swung a sword at me and I stopped the blow with the hilt of my poniard, twisted the blade free and buried it in his belly. He fell and I pulled the dagger out of his entangling guts and stepped back to give myself space.
‘Go, Alan, go,’ shouted Reuben, ‘the window.’ A second man lunged at him with a spear and he knocked the shaft aside with his long knife and neatly slid the blade deep on and into the man’s armpit, leaving him screaming with pain. Then my friend drew his scimitar, the fine metal coming out of the sheath with a whispering sigh, and he slashed once at another man-at-arms and sliced his face to the bone. I was about to draw my sword, but Reuben shouted again: ‘Go, Alan, go!’ and I hesitated no longer but sheathed my bloody poniard and leapt for the window. I heard a clash of steel behind me, and a shout, and I hurled myself out of the arch, only just catching the rope as I half-fell over the lintel, before climbing down the knots as swiftly as I could. I heard more screams and shouts above me, and again the fast clash of blades, and as I reached the bottom I looked up and saw with relief the thin form of Reuben, ten foot above me on the rope, climbing like a monkey. I saw a head poked out of the window, a dark silhouette, and saw a flash of steel at the ledge. Reuben was nearly with me, he had only ten feet more to climb, when suddenly, sickeningly, he fell; dropping like a hanged man to land with a crack of bone and a hideous scream on the stone-flagged floor of the courtyard. The rope, freshly cut, fell about his body. I had not been idle: I had untethered the horses and with many curses and a good deal of heaving, I managed to get Reuben on to the back of his mount. His left leg was snapped through the shin bone, the bone poking through the skin of his thin leg, and he was moaning, half-delirious in pain, but I got myself on to the back of Ghost and was about to lead Reuben’s mount away from that ill-fated place, when I heard a familiar, much-hated voice calling softly from the window above. And stopped dead, in spite of myself.
‘O singing boy!’ crooned the voice. ‘O singing boy; did you think I did not expect you to try this?’ said Sir Richard Malbete. ‘Do you take me for a fool?’
I said nothing, but my heart was burning with rage at my own stupidity. Of course, he must have expected this. And I had involved my friends in this disaster.
‘Are you there, singing boy?’ Malbete called again, and I had to bite back a foul retort. ‘It seems you have cut up another one of my people, singing boy. I think perhaps I shall now cut up one of yours.’ He laughed a low, dark, bubbling chuckle. I had heard enough, and I dug my heels into Ghost and led Reuben’s slumped and moaning form away from the evil sound of laughter in the dark.
‘What the hell did you think you were playing at?’ said my master, his silver eyes glinting like a pair of barber’s blades. It was later that same night and we were in the Hospitaller’s quarter, where a cowled bone-setter was efficiently splinting Reuben’s broken leg. Outwardly, the Earl of Locksley appeared icily calm, but I knew that he was incandescently angry. ‘You nearly got yourself killed, and, more importantly, you nearly got Reuben killed, and I’m told you even involved your servant William in your childishly stupid scheme.’
‘All you care about is saving Reuben for your grubby money-making plots,’ I flashed back at him. ‘Killing Malbete is important! It is a matter of personal honour for me. Not that you’d understand that, you
… you merchant!’
To my surprise, he merely laughed; a dry hollow chuckle, admittedly, and not a pleasant sound; but it was the sound of human mirth. ‘You were a snot-nosed little thief when I found you, a cut-purse of no family, no money, no lineage, and now you — hah! — you are lecturing me about honour, and calling me a merchant!’ He snorted. ‘You ridiculous, unworldly little puppy; go on — get out of my sight.’ And I found myself walking away from him; and fighting back a great black wave of self-pity. He was right: I was a snot-nose thief, a cut-purse of no family and no lineage — but I did know about honour.
Reuben’s leg was a clean fracture, and though very painful he was well tended in the Hospitallers’ dormitory, where I went to see him and to apologise. ‘Do not concern yourself with it, Alan. We tried to take him; we failed. There will be other opportunities,’ said my Jewish friend — and I felt better about the whole sorry affair. Robin had not spoken to me since our argument, and I knew I was in disgrace, because even Little John was distant with me and found some excuse to cancel our shield practice the next morning. As a result I spent much of the next few days making love to Nur in the little house she shared with Elise in the women’s quarters, and in the light of what was to happen, I was very glad. I can still remember her perfect face — dark eyes you could drown in, her exquisite little nose, the high cheekbones, her luscious berry lips that begged to be kissed… I remember her face so clearly, even now after more than forty years. She was so fragile, so beautiful — it sometimes makes me weep to remember her. I remember her words to me that night, too, when I told her about my spat with Robin: ‘I know that you always try do the right thing, Alan, always. It is one of the reasons why I love you so very much.’
A week or so later, in the searing heat near the middle of August, I was summoned again to see Robin, by William, who found me practicing with sword and shield, alone, in the courtyard of the Hospitallers’ quarter. He was accompanied by Keelie, now a glossy, confident fully-grown lion-yellow dog, who bounded over to greet me and lick my face. King Philip had left Acre at the end of July, taking a some of his knights with him, but others had remained and were prepared to fight on under King Richard’s banner. There was an air of quiet purpose in our army, a sense that we were very soon going to march; and I was determined to prove myself on the field of battle against the Saracens. So despite the crippling heat, and the sweat that drenched me, I practiced my sword and shield patterns every day. There was one fly in the soup: Saladin still had not paid the huge ransom on the three thousand Muslim captives, nor had he returned the True Cross to us — and many said that he had no intention of relinquishing such a wondrous object to his enemies. I secretly thought that the King would have to release the Saracen prisoners before we marched on; we could not possible guard and feed such a multitude on the road to Jerusalem. It would be a blow to his prestige — but what else could he do?
‘The Earl wa-wants you,’ said William, hauling a slobbering Keelie off me and offering a shy smile of greeting. I had hardly seen him since our disastrous attempt on Malbete’s life and even in that short amount of time he seemed to have grown a couple of inches; his face seemed to have changed, too, become less round, the cheekbones more prominent: he must be twelve or thirteen now, I guessed, and it was clear that he was becoming a man. ‘Something bi-big is going on at headquarters,’ he said, ‘everybody is bu-bustling about looking pe-pepleased with themselves: people sharpening weapons, packing ba-ba-bags. I think we might all be on the momove.’
I doubted it; there would have been plenty of rumours if the whole army were to depart Acre. The moon had been waxing in the past few days and, by my amateur calculation, would be full tomorrow night. It was more likely that whatever Robin had arranged with Aziz the sailor would be happening tomorrow.
Robin was curt when I presented myself to him, not a little nervously, that afternoon in the main ground- floor room of his palace by the sea. He was richly dressed in a long silk gown, seated at a table, going through a stack of parchments, checking accounts of some sort. Although I now regretted my outburst of the week before, he looked, in truth, exactly like a merchant. He wasted no time in pleasantries: ‘Are you fit?’ he said. I told him I was. He merely grunted and carried on writing. ‘When you entered my service, two, two and a half years ago,’ he
