The Death of Robin Hood (17 page)

I cringed
inside. And prepared myself to fight, as best I could with my broken leg. This was not a sensible way to talk to a man with a thick club who held us in his power.

‘They tell me you are also called Robin Hood? Is that true … my lord?’ said Winkyn.

‘I have been called that,’ admitted Robin.

The turnkey’s face bloomed with happiness. ‘Robin Hood! Bless my soul. Robin Hood. In my own gaol. I never imagined such a thing. My boys will be so proud. Robin Hood! We know all the stories, of course. All of them. How you defeated the three-headed giant in Scotland! How you cut off the head of the Sheriff of Nottinghamshire and served it to his widow for dinner! Robin Hood, well, well, well. It’s an honour to have you here, my lord.’

‘The honour is all mine,’ said Robin.

Winkyn walked to the door, happily muttering, ‘Robin Hood, Robin Hood, the actual, real-life, honest-to-goodness Robin Hood,’ to himself.

The next day Robin was invited to enjoy a cup of fine wine in Winkyn’s cubbyhole. Vinegary stuff, Robin told me later, but well worth stomaching. Within a week, my lord had come to some sort of arrangement with the awestruck gaoler. He’d persuaded Winkyn to smuggle a message to Kirkton informing them of our whereabouts and received one back telling us that Miles had made it safely home and my son Robert and my household were ensconced there, and that all, for the moment, was well.

All was not well in the rest of the country. Buoyed by his success at Rochester, King John had left his half-brother, William Longsword, the Earl of Salisbury, to keep the rebels penned in London and hold the south, while he embarked on a great
chevauchée
north and east from his new base at St Albans.

This was a terrorising tactic, to be brutally honest, often employed in France and in other foreign lands to weaken a lord by pillaging and destroying
his villages and towns. This time King John set his wild Flemish mercenaries loose on his own kingdom and his own people. Those savage warriors burned, raped and plundered their way northwards through the heartlands of England, hitting hardest at the estates owned by the rebel barons, but not always discriminating – it was said afterwards that in those dark days not a man, woman, child or cleric in England was safe. The Flemings used torture a great deal, Robin told us in a flat unemotional voice, applying hot irons or the knife to force folk to reveal where they had hidden valuables. Hearing of their advance, the denizens of York had paid a thousand pounds to one of the Flemish captains to avoid their city being sacked. So far, however, Kirkton had been overlooked by the marauders, for which I thanked God. Yet Robin was confident that Hugh could hold out against them if they did come – and had the funds for a bribe to leave them in peace, if necessary.

Hugh was a good man and a dutiful son and had even managed to send a little money to his father, through the good offices of Winkyn, with which we bought a few luxuries: a flagon of wine from time to time, a piece of cured ham and a wedge of cheese, or some dried sausages, hard-boiled eggs, decent bread.

We began to eat better.

‘It is my money and my meat,’ Robin said to a shame-faced William d’Einford who came over begging for scraps one day. Robin’s attitude had always been that he had an absolute duty to his
familia
, to his kin and the people who served him, but absolutely none to anyone outside that charmed circle. Yet I saw him slip the hungry knight a slice of cheese later that day when he thought neither Thomas nor I was watching.

The pains in my broken leg grew much worse and then slowly better as I recovered from the journey to Corfe and the bone began to knit itself. Robin unwrapped the bandages and repositioned the splints on the first day in the dungeon, and within a month I
was able, just, to hobble to the bucket in the far corner where we held our noses and emptied our bowels.

With the discomfort of my leg and the worst hunger pangs assuaged, the main curse of imprisonment was boredom. Robin and I scratched out a chessboard on the stone floor of the cell and using pieces made from chips of rock and pieces of old bone, we played for hours each day. I managed to beat him from time to time, which pleased me inordinately.

When not playing chess or silently contemplating our sorrows, we talked, openly, honestly, with almost no barriers of shame or pride or privacy. I remember Robin admitting quietly one freezing January evening, as we sat in the gloom of that stinking cell, that since they had been wed, he had never once been unfaithful to Marie-Anne. I was astounded. He, just as I, had been away from home on campaign sometimes for months and even years at a stretch, and in all that time he had never once tumbled a pretty serving girl or kissed a lord’s lovely daughter, or even rutted with one of the tough, squat professional trulls that followed every marching column.

‘Never,’ said Robin, ‘and I will tell you why. I see my fidelity to Marie-Anne as a badge of my honour. I have no doubt she would forgive me if I were to go behind a hedge with some strumpet out of dire necessity. But I choose not to because, if I did, that would make me a liar, an oath-breaker. My honour, not Marie-Anne’s, would be sullied by that meaningless tupping and in all honesty I love my honour more than I wish to honour my lust.’

‘But you do feel it – lust, I mean?’ I said to him. In the dim light of the cell I could not be certain, but I would have sworn my lord was blushing.

‘Of course, all men do.’

‘And?’

‘Well, I have been tempted certainly. And perhaps one day I will forfeit my honour and embrace temptation … if I met someone dark and
lissom and lively when all the stars were aligned correctly. But I hope that will never happen. Anyway, Alan, enough of that … shall we have another game?’

‘It’s too dark to see the pieces,’ I said. ‘And this is much more interesting. Have you ever come close – to, ah, giving in to temptation?’

‘Close, yes, several times. There was a woman in Spain, the daughter of a great Saracen lord, fiery and dark-eyed, but … I’ve never yet given in. I love Marie-Anne, Alan, it’s that simple. I love her and no other. I always have. So … if we can’t play chess, shall we sing something?’

We sang. We sang a great deal in those long dull days. We sang all the songs I had ever written, some thirty compositions, we sang all the old English folk tunes that Robin loved so much, indeed we sang almost every tune,
canso
, ditty, lament, psalm and dirty poem we had ever heard. Robin and I made a tuneful intertwining of different melodies between us and even Thomas, once he had overcome his usual shyness, joined in on the choruses with a deep rolling boom that sounded as if it should have come from a man four times his size.

In the biting cold of February, when a layer of crisp snow lay like a mantel over the hills of Dorset, and at dawn the cell sparkled with frost, Robin arranged to have thick furs and wide blankets delivered from Kirkton. A brazier with a decent amount of fuel was brought in and, at last, praise God, we were warm. My leg was mending well by then and I could walk without too much pain. Thomas, Robin and I began to exercise our limbs, my two friends working out a punishing daily routine, and me bending and stretching as much as my leg allowed. Slowly, slowly, I grew stronger. Robin spent a great deal of time working on the muscles of his arms and chest, and with the better food we were consuming, I began to notice a marked difference in his physique. I asked him why he was doing this and he brushed aside my question, merely muttering something
about trying to put on a little beef. One day, I asked him discreetly if he thought Winkyn could be induced to smuggle weapons in to us, a knife or sword apiece, and whether we might try to make an escape. But my lord said no. In fact he’d already sounded out the gaoler about this and, despite the man’s evident regard for Robin, had been rebuffed, with Winkyn primly claiming it would be a foul slur on his professional competence if any man were to escape.

Robin told me to be patient, he was working on a ruse of his own to get us out of Corfe, he said. If I would bide my time and put my trust in him, I would surely find myself a free man in due course. He did arrange a small parcel to be brought in for me, a gift, he said. Winkyn carried it over in person; it was wrapped in a clean piece of linen sheet and the turnkey presented it as if it were a holy relic. I unwrapped it with a rising sense of anticipation.

It was an old vielle and a horsehair bow.

I was delighted. It was not a fine instrument; the varnish had peeled from the wood of the sound box in long yellow strips and the pegs were clumsily carved and loose. Certainly it was not nearly as beautiful as the vielle I had at home in Westbury but, once it was tuned, the sounds it made were perfectly true, even rather charming in a rustic way. Our singing that night took on a deeper, richer dimension. Indeed that cold February night in the depths of Corfe, although you will say I flatter myself, we made a very fine sound, which no doubt echoed through the whole castle. Let them hear us, I thought. Let our captors know that while they may hold our bodies, our spirits cannot be caged.

The other prisoners gathered around to listen and Robin even conjured a small barrel of red wine, a whole boiled ham and several loaves of good white bread with which to aid our merrymaking. We piled the braziers high with cordwood and served out wine and bread and ham to all. It was not quite a feast but, for once, the dozen surviving knights in that cell went to sleep warm, with music in
their ears and a belly full of meat. The gaolers – half a dozen sons of Winkyn who all seemed to be taller, thinner versions of their father – came into the cell and at the end of the night, the turnkey hugged me to his skinny breast and praised me to the moon and back. That night shone like a beacon in the grey sea of tedium that made up most of our time in Corfe.

And it was a night that bore rich fruit.

Two days later, Robin came back from another cosy conference with Winkyn in his cubbyhole and said, ‘We have been summoned.’

I looked at him blankly.

‘The Prince commands us to attend him and we are to amuse his royal ears, and those of his noble mother, with our music.’

Henry
of Winchester, the eldest living legitimate son of King John and Queen Isabella of Angoulême, was a small chubby boy of about eight years, dressed in a purple velvet tunic with a thick sable collar, black silk hose and fine purple kidskin shoes. He had a pleasingly round face, a healthy boyish glow to his cheeks and one eye, the left, over which the lid seemed to droop as if he were always tired. I had never set eyes on him before, yet his greeting to Robin, myself and Thomas was as warm and enthusiastic that afternoon as if we were old and trusted playmates. In contrast, his mother Isabella, could not have been less welcoming. Seated beside him on a pair of thrones at the end of the great hall of Corfe, the Queen was a stiff icy figure in a tall square gilded headdress secured under her chin by a band of cloth.

‘You will stand over there and play your instruments quietly,’ she ordered in French, flicking a hand to the side of the room furthest from the roaring fireplace. ‘You will be still – no capering about, no hooting, snorting or making lewd gestures. You will take care not to distract us from our conversations.’

‘Nonsense, Mother, I want to hear them. I invited them to play for my
pleasure not to stand silently in a dusty corner. Over here, gentlemen, over here by me, if you please.’

The Prince turned back to his mother: ‘Winkyn says they are quite marvellous. Come closer, good sirs, do not stand on ceremony. Do you need a table? Stools? Some water for your throats? Or perhaps some wine. Hey, Matteus, bring these fellows some of that new Bordeaux, hot, sweet and spiced. And be quick about it.’

‘
Winkyn says
…’ the Queen sniffed.

That morning we had begged a bucket of hot water from Winkyn and a razor and soap, and while the gaoler looked on unhappily, his hand on the cudgel stuffed into his belt, we took turns to shave each other with that keen blade and to make as best a job of our ablutions as we were able from the bucket and one thin, grey linen towel. The cell door stood open while we three made our toilet, splashing and joking at the novelty of it all, and we saw no sign of Winkyn’s lanky sons – it occurred to me that it was now quite within the power of my strength to overcome the gaoler, cut his throat with the razor and make an escape through the castle, scrambling down an outer wall, stealing horses and riding north for freedom.

‘Don’t get any silly ideas, Alan,’ murmured Robin, who had clearly been looking directly into my mind, as he so often did. ‘Let us see where this royal summons takes us. Don’t do anything hasty, I beg you.’

‘What are you two muttering about?’ said Winkyn, taking a tighter grip on his club and eyeing the long open razor in my right hand. ‘I want more shaving of chins and less wagging of them.’

In the great hall four hours later, with a cup of spiced wine warming my belly and loosening my throat cords, I was glad I had not sliced up the old fellow and made a dash for freedom (he had, after all, dealt fairly with us, even been kind). With an expectant Prince before me and a vielle and bow in my hands, this was a most pleasant
change to our circumstances. I felt almost like my old self.

I introduced Sir Thomas and named Robin and his title, and we all bowed low before the Queen and the Prince, and then I tucked the vielle into my elbow, raised the horsehair bow and began to play.

I began with an old favourite, ‘My Joy Summons Me’, which I had written with King Richard many years ago, and it seemed I had made the correct choice. Prince Harry clapped his hands with delight, lightly bouncing up and down on his throne-like chair and beaming at me like the sun in midsummer. We continued with some of the old French lays, stirring but simple works about ancient heroes dying nobly surrounded by a ring of their slain foes. Then we moved on to the love songs,
cansos
about young knights who loved their lord’s ladies and yet could never have them. We ended the recital with a couple of amusing ditties about animals and their ludicrous adventures. And I had the young Prince actually crying with laughter over ‘The Lusty Fox and the Lady Rabbit’.