The Death of Robin Hood (35 page)

The King moaned. He tried to raise his head but failed; his eyes flickered and fixed themselves on Robin’s face.

‘The treasury …’ he quavered, his voice like that of a petulant child. ‘What do you mean, Locksley? You cannot have lost it. We must have that money to pay the men.’

‘We were deceived, Sire,’ said my lord. ‘The scoundrel who was our guide led us falsely and before we knew what had occurred, three of the wagons were plunged into the bog and, in the time it would take to say an Our Father, they were gone. Disappeared from view beneath the watery surface of the mire. We were too occupied with saving the rest of the train to salvage them. Alas!’

The King was stirred into action, straining, struggling until his head was raised a few inches from the bed. Tilda came silently forward and slipped a pillow beneath his faded locks, supporting his head, which now appeared inhumanly large on his long, skinny white neck.

‘There was a hundred thousand marks in those wagons, Locksley – at least that much in jewels, plate and coin. You cannot possibly have lost it all.’

‘I know, Sire, that you are a man who believes in swift punishment, so
it may ease your distress to know that I hanged the rascally guide from the first tree we could find.’

The King let out an inchoate bellow of pain, a harsh rattling sound that seemed to tear at the cords in his throat. ‘It is you who will hang for this – guards, guards! I want the Earl of Locksley in chains. Now! He is a thief and a liar. Guards!’

Two of the Flemish men-at-arms stepped forward. I took a grip on Fidelity’s hilt. But Wulfram stopped the men dead with an upheld palm. The two men looked perplexed but stepped back against the walls of the bedchamber at their captain’s command.

The King slumped back on the sheets. He whispered: ‘You have killed me, Locksley, I am a dead man this day and it is all your doing – all of it. And after everything I’ve done for you, all my kindness, you ungrateful, cold-hearted bastard.’

‘Indeed, Sire,’ said Robin.

We
left the King’s army that very hour. Robin, Hugh, Tilda and myself rode out of Sleaford with our remaining men – Robert and Boot had already departed from the column. They had, in fact, not come with us across the treacherous mudflats of the Wash with the rascally local guide. In truth, there had never been a rascally guide outside of my lord’s imagination. My son and his bodyguard, accompanied by a score of our men-at-arms, had simply taken the three wagons, heavily loaded with silver, jewels, regalia (and, at Robin’s whim, the portable chapel), and headed at their greatest speed west towards Nottingham. We had paid Wulfram his agreed price, which was a single chest of silver that he said he would share with his men. I never discovered if he did so, for I never saw the man again. He and many of the mercenaries – knowing that King John was on his deathbed and now, thanks to Robin, almost as penniless as a church-porch beggar, and that Prince Louis, Lord Fitzwalter and the rebel army were fast approaching – quietly slipped away in the next few days, many taking John’s possessions, weapons, tapestries, wine, furniture – anything of value – as payment for their military services.

King John,
we later heard, managed to make it as far as Newark Castle in the next two days where, surrounded by monks and tended by the Abbot of Croxton, he made his last confession, dictated a will and departed this life. After his death, his body was left deserted, even by his closest servants; it was stripped of the clothes he had worn, his rings, and everything of value in the chamber was removed by the fleeing remnants of his court. The corpse of the King of England lay in a cold chamber of Newark Castle for two days, untended, unclothed, unmourned.

And may he burn for eternity in Hell.

It took us three days to reach Westbury, for the wagons we stole from King John had been the heaviest in the train and even clear of the marshy flatlands of East Anglia, it was hard-going on the roads. But all our muddy labours were made light by the joy in our hearts: Robin had sworn that every one of us would share in the treasure and when each man-at-arms had been given his share, and Robin had appropriated his own largest slice of the haul, I knew I would still be rich beyond my most excessive dreams for the rest of my life. Robert’s future and the future of his children was secure. Best of all, the King – the bloody tyrant who had oppressed England for the past seventeen years, who had squeezed her lords, imprisoned her knights and despoiled her lands with fire, rape and murder – was dead at last.

On the march to Westbury, I marvelled at Robin’s sense of timing. He had positioned himself as Master of the Royal Baggage just at the time when the King had accumulated all his wealth from the treasuries of his castles for the war effort and, in doing so, he had robbed the King of all his vast riches days before his death, thus ensuring there would be no royal revenge for his crime. There would be no army at the gates of Kirkton to crush him and his family. It was, I believed, a perfect coup, one that dwarfed his other exploits many times over.

We celebrated his achievement at Westbury. The wine flowed like water.
Baldwin and Alice ransacked the larders for the finest foods that my manor could provide, and we all ate like gluttons and drank until our veins ran red only with the juice of the grape.

After one such repast, when I was bursting with stewed venison, roasted hare, pork sausages and good Bordeaux wine, I staggered off to my solar at the end of the hall meaning to take a short afternoon nap while the rest of my guests continued with their jollity. I found Tilda in my chamber folding a stack of clean white chemises in the clothes chest at the foot of my bed. I was slightly embarrassed to see her in my private room and considered withdrawing to allow her to continue her duties in peace, when I saw that she was weeping.

I was astonished. I had not paid much attention to her over the past few days, being busy first with the theft of the three wagons, then with bringing them safely to Westbury and finally with housing and feeding the swollen numbers of men lodged in my home.

‘Tilda, what is it? What’s happened?’ I asked, closing the door behind me.

She turned her white and pink face towards me and I felt a lurch in my heart: even so disarrayed she was truly beautiful; her grey-blue eyes seemed to sparkle with her tears and her bottom lip was quivering.

‘It is nothing that should concern you, Alan.’

‘Tell me, my dear, I cannot bear to see you distressed on such a happy day.’

‘I cannot say,’ she said, and a fresh burst of weeping shook her slight frame.

‘You can tell me, Tilda, whatever it might be, I will not judge you.’

I put my hand on her shoulder and I could feel the fragile bones beneath the thin material of her gown.

‘Tilda,’ I said, my throat thick with emotion.

‘I have
committed a sin, a mortal sin,’ she said, her voice no more than a whisper. ‘And I know I shall be made to pay for it by God. Robin – he made me …’

‘Shhh,’ I said. ‘Shhh, my dear, I know, I know what you have done.’

Somehow she was in the circle of my arms, her huge eyes looking up at me. Then we were kissing. I felt a roaring in my ears, like the sound of a colossal sea storm breaking over my head. Her small body was pressed hard against mine, her arms curling around my back. We tore the clothes from each other, ripping the fabric, stumbling half-naked to fall heavily on to the bed. She pulled me down on top of her and made a noise somewhere between a wail and a sob, her fingernails digging in, drawing blood against my back. I kissed her cheeks, her tightly closed eyes, her hair. As I bucked and writhed, she curled her legs behind my back, urging me onwards with loud, animal cries. I thrust brutally as if I would crush her – yet she pushed her body into me. I bellowed like a dying bull into the soft curve of her neck and thrust and thrust until I felt the pressure build inside my loins, and then with one last glorious surge against her hips I erupted deep inside.

Afterwards, spent, we lay in each other’s arms, the sweat cooling on our sprawled limbs. I kissed her tenderly and gazed into her eyes. All the hatred, suspicion and fear, all the betrayals of the past, all the pain and hurt, was washed away in that first cleansing flood of love.

‘Father,’ came a voice at the door of the solar. ‘Are you all right in there?’

‘Go away, Robert!’ I growled.

‘It’s just that I heard some odd noises – are you sure you are quite well?’

‘Go away, son, and leave me in peace. I have never been better in my life.’

We did not speak, Tilda and I, we just lay in each other’s arms for an
hour – or two? Three? Who can say? – and savoured the union of our souls. We made love again, more gently than the first time, exploring each other’s bodies with lips and fingers and tongues. We kissed and held each other and then, with Tilda’s head resting in the crook of my arm, I fell asleep.

I awoke to see her at the foot of the bed dressing herself in one of my chemises. The first pink of dawn showed at the solar window. She saw me watching her and came over to the bed in the ridiculously large, flapping garment and kissed me tenderly, stroking my hair back from my face.

‘I must go now, my love,’ she said. ‘People will be wondering where I am.’

‘Don’t go,’ I said. ‘Please.’

‘I must.’

I felt a pang of cold hard anguish. ‘Is it Robin?’ I said. ‘Are you concerned about what he will say? Do not worry, I will speak to him today. He is a married man, after all, he cannot have you and Marie-Anne both. He’ll see reason, I’m sure.’

‘He will see reason – what on earth do you mean? What? Can you seriously believe that Robin is my lover? How can you think that? I would never …’

‘But you told me, last night, the mortal sin – you said you had committed …’

Tilda stared at me. ‘Surely you know. You must know. I killed the King. That is the mortal sin that will damn me. I poisoned our sovereign lord, God’s anointed ruler on Earth, pretending to heal with Christ’s love and … I killed him deliberately, slowly, painfully – and at Robin’s secret orders. He … he made me do it …’

I sat up in bed. A piece of the puzzle clanked into place.

‘Wait,’ I said. ‘You say Robin ordered you to kill the King? With poison?’

‘Yes, I thought you must know. You are his closest companion, his oldest
friend. How could you believe that I slept with him. I
hate
him. He brought about my ruin.’

This was all going too fast for me.

‘Robin brought about your ruin?’

Tilda sat down on the bed. She took my big rough hand in her tiny one.

‘I love your child-like innocence above all of your other sweet qualities, Alan, but, my darling, you are being particularly slow this morning. Robin, or one of his agents, told Anna, Prioress of Kirklees, my lover, that I had been found in the bed of Benedict Malet in Nottingham. Anna was overcome with jealousy. She beat me and threw me out in the clothes I stood up in – after more than ten years of humble service to the Church. She slammed the Priory door in my face and made me into a beggarwoman. Robin was the cause of my ruin. He caused me to be expelled from my home. I cannot believe that you would think I could love him.’

I was aware that my mouth was hanging open and I closed it hurriedly.

‘When I had been expelled, I went to see Robin, in a rage, I don’t know why – perhaps I hoped to kill him or hurt him in some way. But he sent his wife Marie-Anne to speak with me instead. She told me to throw myself on your mercy, that I would surely find a place in your household. She said you would never turn me away in my hour of need. She was right, and I will always bless you, my darling, for your kindness.’

Tilda reached out and took my other hand in hers. ‘I love you, Sir Alan of Westbury, and no other, perhaps I have loved you since we were together in Normandy. I hated you, too, for a while, yes, that is true. But what is hate but the reverse of love? My love for you has never truly died. When Marie-Anne told me to seek your help, it made a kind of sense of all that I had suffered, all my life. It made sense of my expulsion. I discovered that deep inside my
soul I wanted you. I knew you were good and kind. I knew you were brave and loyal and would never hurt me. You made my heart beat faster. I wanted to be close to you, even if I could not have you. I wanted to be at your side for ever.’

I could find no words but squeezed her small hands in mine.

‘Then, when I was settled in your household, Robin came to me and told me that one day he would call on me for a special service and that the price of my continued residence in your home was obedience to that request. I had no choice. He told me if I did not do what he asked, he would see to it that I was expelled from your life. And what he asked was that I kill the King. I know I am damned for it but at least I shall have some happiness in my life with you, won’t I, my love? Won’t I?’

Her eyes were beginning to fill with tears.

I moved towards her and took her into my arms.

‘You shall always have a place with me, if you so desire it,’ I said, my throat constricting. ‘Always.’

I went to see Robin that morning. When I found my lord seated with Robert at the long table in the guest hall on the other side of the courtyard, I saw that my son was smirking like an idiot and the cheery greetings and questions that I received about the state of my health, and the inquisitions about the quality of my sleep, were tantamount to outright mockery.

‘Yes, I am quite well, thank you, Robert, and yes, it is a beautiful morning. But would you mind leaving us. I wish to have a few words with my lord alone.’

When the boy had gone, I took Robin to task. I accused him of manipulating me, of lying to me, of meddling in my affairs to an outrageous degree. I told him his behaviour towards Tilda had been despicable and that – as everyone seemed to know – now she was my lover, I would have no more of it. Enough was enough!

When I had finished saying my piece, Robin gave me a long slow look.
‘King John, our mortal enemy, the scourge of the people of England, is dead at my hand. You now have a mountain of silver in your counting house – more money than you could ever spend in this life. You also have a beautiful and, by the terrifying sounds we heard last night, extremely loving woman in your bed. What exactly are you complaining about?’