naked and armed only with an old-fashioned shield. Sir Richard had regained his equilibrium. He swung quickly at my bare shins and laughed as I skipped out of the way of his blade. ‘This is going to be more fun than I had imagined,’ he rumbled, and I saw that he really meant it. He was enjoying the fact that the odds had moved a little in my favour, but it was clear that he still had no doubts at all that he could kill me easily. He slashed at me again, and seemed delighted when I stumbled. I was still trying to edge round towards my weapons, but every time I moved that way, he warded me off with a few well-aimed sword blows and I had to skip and dodge and block to stay alive. I stared at him, panting, over the rim of my shield; hating him with my whole heart and soul. I felt that dark current of rage move again, and this time it began to bubble up inside me, erupting in my brain as a black fighting fury — I knew I could not be killed by this man. I knew I would kill him — for Nur’s sake, for Ruth’s sake, for Reuben’s sake, for my own sake. This day his soul would be travelling to Hell.
He must have seen something in my face, for he stopped laughing, and muttered ‘Well, that’s enough jesting, time to end it,’ and he stepped forward striking right and left in a welter of powerful blows that would have carved me into ruin had they landed. I blocked and parried, and waited for the swing that I wanted — a backhand blow that opened his body at the end of the strike, and when I saw it coming, instead of defending myself with the shield, I ducked his swing, lifted my left elbow and lunged towards him. He was already coming forward, and the tapered point of the shield smashed hard up under his chin, straight into his Adam’s apple, with the full force of my weight behind it. The cartilage in his voice box exploded with a glutinous pop, the windpipe collapsed and his feral eyes flew wide as he dropped to his knees in front of me, both hands clutching at his crushed throat, unable to breathe or comprehend what had happened. I leapt a yard past him and swung the edge of the shield back and down in a vicious arc, crashing the hard frame into the back of his neck like a wooden axe. There was a sound of cracking bone, his head flipped backwards and he flopped to the ground, his feet drumming on the sand, his head canted to the side at an unnatural angle that could only mean one thing.
I spared no time to look at him but rushed up to the stunned man-at-arms, ripped my sword from its sandy sheath, which lay beneath his body, and sliced through his throat in almost one jerky movement.
‘Oh, Alan,’ said William, ‘that was bra-bra-bravely done indeed. I have never seen a more knightly disdisplay of prowess.’ As I stood there, trying to control my ragged breathing, watching the man’s blood drain into the sand, naked but armed with a bloody sword and battered shield, I had never felt less like a knight in all my life; in truth I felt like a fighting man from the mists of time, one of those blue-painted warriors who defied the red-cloaked Romans, before the Normans and their horse-knights even existed. And then the moment was gone. My heart began to calm, and I gave William a grin, and lifted my sword in salute.
‘Will you un-untie me pl-please, Alan,’ said William. And I took a step towards him — and then stopped suddenly. I looked at him again with fresh eyes. There was something about the way he was bound that struck a distant chord of memory with me. His knees were bound to his chest, his hands tied to his feet, in front of his knees. He looked like a bird ready for roasting at a Christmas feast. And then I knew; I had suspected for some time, but now I was certain. I knew that William was Robin’s would-be murderer. And I knew why he had been trying to kill Robin for all these long months.
Chapter Twenty
I stared at William for a few heartbeats, sitting trussed as he was on the sandy beach. Then I laid down my sword and shield in the sand, pulled on my braies and chemise. Though the sun was sinking, I felt too hot and bruised to dress fully — I would have liked another swim but there was no time. However, I swiftly recovered my sword belt and strapped it around my waist before I went to kneel beside my faithful servant William.
For a few moments I merely stared at him, making sure in my own mind that he was the one. William looked puzzled; then he said: ‘Of your go-goodness, master, will you not cu-cut me free? My bonds are pa-paining me.’
‘Tell me your name first?’ I said.
He frowned at me. ‘But sir, as you well know, my name is Wi-William.’
‘Tell me your full name; tell me the name of your father,’ I said coldly, thinking of snakes, and poison, and falling rocks and giant spiders.
He stared back at me, his expression slowly changing. His normally helpful mien — a servant’s look; humble, cheerful, honest — changed and became hard, bleak and stone-like. He said nothing but stared at me with ancient pain-burnt eyes glowing in an adolescent’s downy face.
‘Your name is William Peveril,’ I said. It was not a question. ‘Your father was Sir John Peveril — and Robert Odo, now Earl of Locksley, had him mutilated, humiliated, destroyed as a man before your very eyes.’
He still said nothing. As I stared at him my mind went back three years to a time when I was not much older than William himself. I remembered a wooded glade in Sherwood at dawn, a big man strapped to the forest floor, the wet crunch of Little John’s axe as he hacked three of the man’s limbs off at Robin’s command, leaving only his left arm. And the boy, a ten-year-old lad whom we thought harmless and tied up like a Christmas goose but left alive to spread the tale; the same boy who now was tied up before me on the beach and staring at me with bleak, vengeful eyes.
‘Speak!’ I shouted at him. ‘You have nothing to gain by silence. Tell me that it was you who put vermin in Robin’s bed, and poison in his food and wine; admit it was you who pushed masonry on to his head at Acre…’
‘Why do you care?’ hissed William. ‘You hate him, too. I have heard you raving in your fever that he is a murderer, a thief, a Godless brute. He took my father’s manhood and left him a mewling beggar, unable to care for himself, unable even to shit with dignity.’
I noticed that his stammer had completely disappeared.
‘There was no one else,’ he went on still in that hate-filled tone, so unlike his ordinary voice, ‘so I cared for him: changing his pus-filled dressings, clearing away the shit from his arse, begging, stealing food for him — and each day resenting him a little more. For a full year he lived, a half-man, a despised cripple, until he found the courage to end his miserable life with his own dagger. I hate Robert Odo for what he took from my father, and for taking my father from me. But I know that you hate him as much as I do. He is evil and you know it. Cut me free and we will kill him together, you and I, cut me free and we will rid the world of a piece of rancid filth…’ And he burst into a fury of racking sobs, a thin slime bubbling in his nostrils, tears streaming down his cheeks.
‘Tell me first, William, how you came to be among us. Was this murder always in your heart? Had you planned this from the day we first met in Nottingham?’ He nodded. I was awed by his commitment to this vengeance. And not a little frightened. The stammer, the humility, the good-fellowship, it was all a fraud, all a means to his lethal end. ‘When my father had ended his own misery, I made a holy vow. I swore before the Virgin that I would kill the Earl of Locksley or die in the attempt.’
‘But I trusted you with my life!’ I said. ‘Would you have cut my throat too while I slept?’
‘Not you, sir, never you. You were kind to me.’ He sniffed wetly. ‘But I would gladly have killed the monster and crept away in the night, perhaps to join a monastery as a servant and spend the rest of my days repenting.’
‘And what about the boar?’ I said coldly. ‘That came near enough to killing me in Sicily.’
‘I am truly sorry for that, sir,’ sobbed William. ‘I fixed the nets to fall but then the Earl-monster moved his position. I did not mean to hurt you, sir, on my life, I did not!’
I could still hardly believe that my biddable servant had planned this, my cheerful William, who had served me so faithfully for so many miles, had had this dark murderous secret, and had kept it hidden, so well, for so long.
‘If I let you go now, will you promise to forgo vengeance on my master Robert of Locksley,’ I said formally, half-dreading the answer. ‘Will you swear on our Lord Jesus Christ, and in the name of the Virgin, and all the saints, to leave off your attempts to kill my master, and to leave our company and never return?’
‘Never!’ His eyes flashed at me. ‘I will never stop trying to slay that monster; I will hunt him down to the ends of the earth to have my vengeance; he must die a death worthy of his malignity…’ I saw that flecks of spittle had formed at the corners of William’s mouth and, foreseeing his fate, he began to struggle against the ropes that bound him.
I moved behind him, drew my poniard and, may God have mercy on my soul, I cut his throat as quickly as I
