said, slightly formally, ‘you swore that you would be loyal to me until death; do you stand by that oath?’
‘I hope I am not an oath-breaker, — ’I said, a little too haughtily.
He finally looked up from his pages and stared at me, his eyes as cold as naked steel in winter. ‘You might not be an oath-breaker, but you are insolent. What I want to know is: are you obedient?’
It hurt me to be at odds with my master: despite his many faults, he was still a man I respected and liked enormously. In a slightly more conciliatory tone, I said: ‘I serve you, sir, with all my heart, and in doing my duty, I strive always to be as loyal and obedient as I can.’
He finally smiled: ‘Good,’ he said. ‘I need you, Alan, to come with me tomorrow on a… on a training exercise. Speak to no one of this, but tomorrow we will be riding out. Be ready, mounted and armed, here at dawn. Oh, and don’t wear anything with my badge or blazon on it. You might say that we are to be travelling incognito.’ And with another brief smile, he looked back down at his papers; I was dismissed.
When I returned to the palace just before dawn the next day — mounted on Ghost, armed with sword and poniard and carrying my old-fashioned shield, with the snarling wolf device painted over with limewash — I was surprised to see Reuben, his leg a massive bundle of splints and bandages, mounted on a horse. He looked pale and had a slightly bemused look on his face, but he greeted me cordially, and I returned his affectionate words with gratitude. ‘What’s going on, Reuben,’ I asked. ‘In the first place, what are you doing on a horse, in your condition? You should be in bed.’
‘Best to leave the questions till later,’ advised my dark friend in a slightly slurred voice. ‘Let us just say that it is necessary that I accompany you. Do not be concerned for my discomfort — I have taken a strong draft of hashish dissolved in poppy juice — and the pain is hardly noticeable. In fact, I feel… I feel wonderful.’ And he giggled a little.
He might be feeling wonderful. But I was not. I had slept badly and awoke feeling dizzy and sweaty, with a slight but persistent headache. But I pushed all thoughts of my bodily weakness aside as we rode out of the high gates of Acre and turned our horses south. We were forty men in our company, roughly half archers and half men-at-arms, and all of us mounted on well-fed and rested horses. As we rode over a makeshift bridge that spanned the trenches that our army had dug while we were besieging Acre, I noticed that almost everybody in the party had a very familiar face: nearly all of them were former outlaws, who had been with Robin for many years. We were an elite group, I presumed, chosen because each man knew and trusted his fellows and had shared hardship and battle with them. There was also a sense of excitement in our band that I had not felt since we left England. We were going to undertake a training exercise, Robin had said, but it felt as if we were riding through Sherwood Forest on some mad escapade that would put silver in our pouches and a blush of shame on the Sheriff’s face.
We crossed a shallow river and turned south on to a wide expanse of sand, barely a road at all, that ran along beside the sea, and I saw that the countryside here could not have been more different to Sherwood: away from the deep blue sea, it was a stark, sun-bleached landscape, sandy and spare and even at that early hour glowering with the threat of a brutally hot day to come. To our left was a rank stretch of marsh land and beyond that, five miles or so away, rose a steep wall of green mountains — somewhere in those mountains, a mere morning’s ride away, Saladin was waiting with his vast army of Saracens, but I saw none of his famous Turkish cavalrymen that day. However, after a half a dozen miles of riding through that blindingly bright sand, the countryside began to bear the marks of Saladin’s presence: we passed burnt-out farms, charred olive trees, and the blackened stubble of whole fields of corn and barley that had been put to the torch. We saw no living thing, save the lizards that stared a proud challenge at us from the rocks on the side of the road before scuttling away at our approach. Saladin had emptied the area of anything that might give comfort to his enemy, and burnt anything he could not carry away, and we rode through a grim, blackened wasteland that stank of smoke and fear.
We stopped about mid-morning for a drink from the water skins — my headache had grown worse with the ride and now it felt like a tiny man was beating a great drum in my skull — and Robin passed out large black squares of silken cloth. ‘Tie these over your nose and mouth,’ he said. ‘It will stop you from breathing in the dust.’ We all tied these on and when we had ridden on for a few hundred yards, I did find that it was easier to breathe without choking on a fine mist of dust and powdered cinders from the burnt landscape. I also noticed that wearing these kerchiefs over our faces, it was very difficult to identify us. We were now a band of masked men, I realised, riding through enemy teffitory. For some reason the phrase ‘bandit- infested’ kept echoing around in my skull. And suddenly I knew why. And the realisation hit me like a mace to the face. We were the bandits, we were the predators who infested the countryside; and I then knew what the target for our ‘training exercise’ would be. It was a camel train loaded with frankincense, worth more than its weight in gold.
Robin was not content with merely telling the merchants of Gaza that they were getting a very good deal by selling their incense to him in that southern port; he was going to demonstrate in brutal terms why it was a big mistake not to trade with him.
Chapter Sixteen
As noon approached, Reuben led us off the coastal track and on to a path that led into the foothills. My head was splitting, but we were all suffering in the tremendous heat by that point, the sun beating down on our heads like the open door of a furnace. We all wore thin leather gloves, even in the heat, because to touch a piece of metal that had been so many hours in the sun was to receive a painful bum. Finally we turned off the track on to an even smaller path, fit for no more than goats, and steadily rising. We travelled in single file, and in silence, at Robin’s order, heads down, enduring the heat, our universe restricted to the dusty haunches of the horse in front; the only sound the clop-clopping of hoof on stony outcrop, blindly trusting that Reuben would lead us right.
Finally we stopped, long past noon, in a grove of cedar trees, which miraculously contained a small trickling spring. I watered Ghost and tied him to a bush, stripped off my mail hauberk, felt under-tunic and sodden chemise and sponged my body with deliciously cold spring water. I seemed to have no strength at all; my head was pounding, my body felt alternately hot and then very cold. I began to shiver even in the heat of the day. I tried to eat a little, but could not force anything down. Many of the men curled up in the shade of the trees. But I resisted an almost overwhelming the urge to sleep.
Little John was idly sharpening his great war axe beside the spring and I sat myself down next to him, hoping to distract myself from my discomforts, and said: ‘John, what are we really doing here?’
‘We are following orders like the loyal soldiers we are,’ he said, and carried on working the whetstone smoothly along the round edges of his weapon in rhythmic sweeps.
‘Seriously, John, please tell me. What are we doing here? What is going to happen?’
‘You don’t look well, lad. Are you ailing?’
‘I’m all right,’ I lied. ‘Tell me what is going to happen.’
He sighed. ‘God’s greasy bollocks. Don’t get all high and mighty, Alan. What we are doing is just the same as what we always used to do in the old days in Sherwood. We are going to stop a train of fat merchants, and relieve them of their wealth. See those scouts up there on the ridge?’ I looked over to the slight rise to the east of us; I could make out two human forms lying flat against the dun-coloured earth just below the crest. ‘I see them,’ I said.
‘They are watching for the camel train,’ said John. ‘When it comes, we are going to go up that crest, shoot the train full of arrows, charge down the other side and kill everybody who resists us. In short, we’re going to ambush them. We are going to take their goods — and teach them a lesson.’ He grinned at me, his old reckless battle-mad grin. ‘It’s what Robin wants; and as his loyal men we are going to carry out his commands. Some people might call it banditry, some might call it highway robbery. I call it a rewarding day’s work! Any road, Alan, you cannot speak of this to anyone, ever. Do you understand?’
I stared at him. I knew all the rules of being in Robin’s familia; and silence was one of the first. I was about to say something about Christ’s teachings, right and wrong, good and evil, but suddenly the world seemed to spin, my eyes fluttered, I felt myself falling, falling and everything went dark.
When I came to, I found I was wrapped up like a baby in my cloak and set under a broad cedar tree. Clearly the fever had returned and I found I hardly had the strength to move. I vomited once, copiously, and felt if
