Unless shot from very close, the arrows would not penetrate through our mail and felt under-jackets, but stuck in the metal rings leaving us looking, after a prolonged cavalry attack, like human hedge pigs. Each arrow strike was no harder than a slap from a man’s hand but it was still unnerving and painful to feel a weapon strike your body, even if little damage was done. The real danger was to the archers — who built themselves makeshift shields from old wicker baskets or empty wooden boxes and who wore as much extra padding as they could in the searing heat — and to the horses: clad only in a cloth trapper, these brave animals were especially vulnerable to the arrows. Although they penetrated only a hand’s breadth into the animal’s muscles, half a dozen arrows could drive a horse mad with pain, and several animals went berserk during the march, killing men of our own side by kicking and biting like demons, until they were put out of their misery by a brave knight with a sword or, more often, a crossbow bolt or arrow from a few yards away.
Robin’s company fared better than most. The Saracens soon learnt that if they came to close to our ranks, and the great Wolf’s Head banner that we marched under, they would lose scores of their men from the sharp arrows of our bowmen. In fact, we were seriously attacked only three times over the next ten days as we marched through that heat-blistered terrain.
We marched past Caesarea, which had been razed to the ground by Saladin, and did not even pause for a drink at this once-proud Biblical city; but we did not lack for supplies, even though the baggage train was attacked on an almost daily basis. In the early evening, food, supplies and sometimes great barrels of fresh water and ale were brought ashore from the galleys of the fleet. And, on the whole, we ate well in the cool of the dusk. One evening, the King asked me and several of the other trouveres to come to his fireside and sing, but, while we pretended some jollity, drank his wine and made verses together, it was an uncomfortable meal. Sir Richard Malbete was there and he spent the whole meal staring at me across the fire with his feral, splintered eyes, but saying nothing. I imagined that I could see the mutilated face of Nur hovering above his shoulder, and it put me off my versifying. The King had received a spear thrust in his side during one attack on the column, not a serious wound, but enough to give him pain when he moved too quickly, and he was not in the best of form as a musician. And, on top of all that, it felt somehow wrong to be singing witty ditties about fair ladies and their elegant games of love, when we were in the middle of a desert, with the cries of the wounded breaking the night, and with a vast army of pagans somewhere out there in the darkness who would be trying to kill us in the morning.
One evening, William came to me, bearing a message from Robin. My master had been distant with me since the raid on the caravan, despite the fact that we were now officially reconciled. And I was not unhappy with that state of affairs.
‘The Earl wants you to come to his te-tent, as quickly as possible,’ said William.
I found Robin in his pavilion, seated on an empty box with a drawn sword in his hand.
‘What is it, sir,’ I asked as I entered. Robin jerked his chin at the bed, a simple pallet with a rough wool blanket on it. ‘Pull back the blanket, carefully. It’s not a snake this time,’ he said. The hairs on the back of my neck bristled. And very cautiously I peeled back the woollen covering. Then I stepped back with a gasp of disgust: a huge, mottled brown furry ball as big as my hand was lying in the centre of the bed, and then, very slowly, it moved one of its many greasy legs.
‘What is it?’ asked Robin. He used the flattest, dullest tone possible, the one he used when he was feeling some strong emotion but wished to disguise it.
‘I think it is a spider, but I have never seen one so big,’ I said. ‘Reuben would know.’ Suddenly, Robin moved — he stood up, lifted his sword and lunged all in one smooth action, stabbing the great hairy beast through the centre of its body, the blade splitting the canvas of the pallet. The legs writhed as the animal was impaled on Robin’s blade, and biting back my deep disgust, I could see yellow pus seeping from its death wound.
Reuben was summoned and he hobbled into the tent on a pair of crutches. His broken leg, it seemed, was healing well, and he had suffered no ill effects from his horseback jaunt with Robin on the day of the frankincense raid. ‘It’s a tarantula spider,’ he said. ‘Give you a nasty bite but not fatal. And it was in your bed? Again?’ He sounded incredulous.
Robin waved us out of the tent — he wanted to sleep, he said, but Reuben stopped me just outside. Taking my arm, he led me out of earshot and said: ‘I understand that you have had a falling out with Robin.’ I made some meaningless grunt by way of reply. ‘He is a hard man, certainly; ruthless, and he can be cold as the grave, but you must try to put yourself in his shoes. He carries the weight of many lives on his shoulders, and he does not complain: his men, his wife Marie-Anne, and their little son, you, and even myself — we all are beholden to Robin. And he does the things he does, even the terrible things, to succour us all.’
I said nothing. I knew Robin’s philosophy well: he would do anything to protect those inside his familia, his friends, loved ones and retainers, and all the men and women who served him. But anyone outside that charmed circle was nothing to him; enemies, strangers, even comrades of the Cross did not exist as real people for him. They were to be used, lied to, tricked, ignored even killed if it served his aims.
‘I am a Jew,’ said Reuben, ‘I understand about family, and about protecting your own. And I know why Robin does what he does. And I can respect that. He is a great man, truly he is. And that is why,’ he stopped for a few moments, ‘that is why, if you know who the person is, within our camp, who wishes to harm Robin in these foul and underhand ways, you must tell me now.’
He looked at me, his dark eyes catching a hint of firelight, and waited for me to speak. I wondered if he knew that Robin had abandoned his daughter to death in York, and how that would change his opinion of the ‘great man’. Perhaps he had not seen, as I had, Robin make that awful decision. I guessed not. But something stopped me from telling him the truth about Ruth’s death. Instead I said, slowly and clearly: ‘I do not have any idea who it is who wishes to kill Robin.’
I was lying. I was almost certain who the guilty person was. I just did not know why he wanted my master dead. And a part of me was not sure any more that I wanted to stop him.
Chapter Eighteen
Saladin had picked his battlefield well: a wide, gently rising plain of short springy turf, which might have been designed by God for horsemen to exercise on. Naturally, he took the higher ground, to the east, farthest from the sea. As we marched out of a deeply wooded area to the north, and on to the wide plain of Arsuf, as this place was known, I saw the whole Saracen host arrayed against us: a great moving smear of black and brown and white, almost a mile long. It was difficult not to be awed by their numbers. Rank upon rank of Turkish cavalry on their small wiry ponies, green and black flags flying above them, helmets shining in the clear air; thousands of warriors in neat rows, bows in their saddle holders, their horses’ heads down cropping the grass. In the centre of the line were the huge Berber horses, their riders’ heads draped with white cloth against the heat, long, sharp lances gleaming in the morning sunshine. Here and there were regiments of footmen, with big swords and small round shields. These were strange semi-naked dark men from the far south of Egypt, I had been told, well- muscled brutes, with faces and skins the colour of aged oak, and brilliant teeth. It was rumoured that they could leap over a horse with a single bound, that they felt no pain, and drank their enemies’ blood from cups made out of skulls.
The scouts had reported the presence of the Saracen army before we debouched from the forest, and Richard had issued clear orders to the whole army. We were to stay together, all the divisions tightly connected, the rows of men so close together that an apple thrown into the ranks would not hit the ground, and wait for them to attack us. We were to hold fast and not to attack until the King gave the signal. He repeated this point many times. We were to endure their assault until the time was ripe, and then on the King’s signal, we would charge: two trumpet blasts from the first division, two from the second, and two from the third. Robin had issued extra arrows to our bowmen, some of the last of the ones we had brought from England. Then he checked that everybody understood the King’s orders.
As we filed out from the forest that early morning in September, the King was in the vanguard with his military household and two hundred white-clad knights of the Order of the Temple of Solomon. They were followed by the warriors from the wide Angevin lands and Aquitaine; the Normans came next, and we English, and I gazed up at the great red and green Dragon Banner of Wessex that Robin’s men had been personally charged with protecting by the King that dawn. It was strange to see a great Saxon symbol in all this Norman pageantry,
