The King’s Assassin (15 page)

‘Get out, you cretin, before I take my sword to you!’ And Fitzwalter bodily lifted de Vesci off his feet and shoved the protesting lord of Alnwick Castle out of his own tent and into the arms of the two men-at-arms beyond the flap.

As I struggled to compose myself, wiping the tears of laughter from my cheeks, and Fitzwalter got his breath back from his brief struggle with our host, a servant nervously poked his head through the tent flap.

‘More wine,’ growled Fitzwalter to the man. ‘And be quick about it.’

‘I can only apologise for that boorish fellow,’ Lord Fitzwalter said a few moments later. ‘We cannot always choose with whom we must ally ourselves.’ We had resumed out seats in the gold-painted stools and were enjoying yet more delicious cooled wine. ‘To think that a man like you would be swayed by the offer of a title and a wealthy marriage; or even moved by de Vesci’s silly threats. It is quite absurd.’

‘I think if you tried hard enough I could be persuaded to accept the burden of great riches and a grand title,’ I said.

Fitzwalter and I caught each other’s eyes and smiled.

‘And, it is true, my wife is dead and I would welcome another – if she were pretty and to my liking and if she freely chose me and were not forced to marry against her will. I could be persuaded to undertake that burden, too, I believe.’

Fitzwalter chuckled. ‘You will be handsomely rewarded, my friend, do not concern yourself on that issue. Money, land, titles, whatever you desire. But may we get to the business; how do you see the plan? Would it work, do you think?’

As I rode south the next morning, I realised that I had not in fact agreed to undertake the murder of King John. It had merely been assumed between Lord Fitzwalter and myself that I would do the deed. And I would do it – not for titles and a rich heiress but as Fitzwalter had said: for my honour, for the memory of dead friends, for justice, and for the good of the country. Also, by the time I left Alnwick Castle, I had been convinced that I could kill John and get away free and clear. I had made one change to Fitzwalter’s plan. I had insisted that de Vesci’s men play no part in the distraction that was to draw attention away from the King at the moment I was to strike. I insisted that Fitzwalter’s men organise the distraction, which was to be a cat-fight between two hired prostitutes, as well as providing the blocking force to cover my escape – I did not trust de Vesci. That is not to say that I thought he would betray me. It was his competence that I did not trust. His crude bullying and cajolery marked him out to my mind as a man of low acuity, not someone to whom I would care to entrust my life. He was a blunderer. If he or his men got the timing of the disturbance wrong – as I feared he would – or if it was not loud enough or compelling enough to draw all the eyes of the crowd, I might be left facing the King with a drawn blade in my hand and all the armed knights in the service of the King of England looking on. If that happened, I was a corpse. So Fitzwalter had finally agreed that de Vesci would have no part of the affair beyond providing the money for any expenses that might be incurred – the man was, it seemed, extraordinarily rich and used to having his own way, which might account for his graceless manner. Indeed, as I bade my sullen host farewell the next morning before setting out on my journey, after a little prodding by Fitzwalter, de Vesci handed over a heavy purse of silver for any expenditure I might make on the journey home, which was generous, and he did his best to wish me a good fortune and God’s blessing until we met again in London in three months’ time.

I spent the rest of the summer busily engaged in the affairs of Westbury. Baldwin and I embarked on a series of building works. With the help of the men of the village, when the crops had been harvested and were drying in my barns – it was indeed a bountiful harvest, praise God – we improved the fortifications of Westbury, strengthening the main gate with new oak cross-timbers, and reinforcing the wooden walls around the whole compound, with laths of ash and hazel. But the greatest project of all was a tower that I began to build of stone in the north-west corner of the courtyard, abutting the wooden palisade. It was not much to begin with, merely a grey box of granite twelve foot by twelve with a small iron-bound wooden door but no windows on the ground floor. The master mason that I employed to undertake this task assured me that at a future date (when I could afford it) I could extend the keep upwards and make it a properly impressive fortification. But just the first two storeys took two months to build and when they were finished, the season was late, and the weather was becoming too wet and cold to set mortar, and I called a halt to the work. That was my excuse; indeed, the true reason was that the fearsome cost of men and materials had far exceeded my expectations and I did not want to reduce Westbury to beggary just before the winter. However, when it was finished, though I scarcely had a penny left to my name, I did feel like a proper knight with a proper stone keep. It looked just like a miniature castle, in fact, squat and strong, imposing. I filled it with a month’s supply of dried food, barrels of water and wine, boxes of clothes, tools and firewood, and a collection of weapons and armour.

Sir Thomas Blood truly began to earn his keep that summer too. He made no more visits to Nottingham alehouses to gamble, as far as I knew, and he dedicated himself to Robert’s education. Every day just after dawn he took my son out into the courtyard, rain or shine, and began to tutor him in the arts of shield and sword. Robert was not a complete novice. He had received some training from myself and from other passing knights, friends of mine who were kind enough to spare a few hours in his instruction, but for a boy of eleven he was well behind other lads of his age and class, and I could see why they had teased him so unmercifully in his brief time at Pembroke Castle.

Sir Thomas began with the basics, teaching the boy to step and cut, to block and parry with sword and shield, and I watched them sometimes after breakfast as they fought their mock battles, with fond memories of my own long-ago education in the skill of arms. Occasionally, when I was not engaged in the rebuilding of the palisade or getting in the way of the masons at their work on the tower, I would take an old dull blade and put the boy through his paces.

God knows that I loved my son with all my heart and soul, but I cannot lie to you and tell you that he was a gifted soldier. He lacked the aggression necessary to make a fighter. When I urged him to attack me, his blows were weak, even limp. I was puzzled by this at first and when I questioned him he said that it was because he was afraid of hurting me. When I dared him to try, and knocked him down to make him angry, he responded, not as I had hoped with a spirited attack but with childish tears and a refusal to spar any longer with me.

Sir Thomas was made of sterner stuff than I. If Robert made a mistake or displeased him in some way, he punished the boy by making him run in full armour (an old cut-down suit of my mail) with sword, helm and shield and a sack filled with sand on his back around and around the courtyard sometimes until the boy was sick with exhaustion. It would be fair to say that Robert hated Sir Thomas. Loathed him. But Sir Thomas was implacable, and when the knight gave an order, my son jumped to obey it. One afternoon, when Thomas was working the boy very hard – he was learning unarmed methods of disabling an armed man, as I recall – the teacher knocked his pupil down one time too many and Robert curled into a ball on the ground and began to bawl his eyes out. I had been watching and leapt to my feet, feeling that I should comfort the lad – but almost immediately I sat back down. The boy needed, most of all, to be tougher. Mollycoddling him would never answer. Though I may tell you that standing by and watching your only son being repeatedly hurt and humiliated – even in a righteous cause – is a trial that is hard to match.

Sir Thomas calmly ordered the lad to stop his caterwauling and get up and fight like a man. And to my surprise, after a moment, Robert did shamble to his feet, wipe the tears and snot from his face and adopt the crouched fighting stance that Thomas had taught him. It occurred to me that, if not a great warrior, perhaps we might make a decent man of Robert yet.

And if my son did not shine as a fighting man, he did have other qualities that I discovered with great pleasure over the next few months. We played chess a few times that summer. And at first I barely concentrated on my moves, having so many other thing to occupy my mind. The first time he beat me, I thought it must have been luck. Second time, I thought I must have made a serious blunder. But when he began to beat me easily, every time without fail, even when I tried my hardest, I knew that without a doubt he was my master at this game. It is a strange feeling for a father, to be bested by his son: and not altogether unpleasant. He was, I soon realised, as quick-witted as any boy I had ever known; but he also had a facility for invention, for thinking things that other boys – even other men – could never imagine in a lifetime.

It happened that Little John was passing through Westbury, returning from some errand of Robin’s in the south, and he dropped in to give us his news and to find out how we were faring.

Over a mug or three of ale, Little John told me that the King was more determined than ever to recover Normandy. But the King knew he could not defeat the French on his own. His strategy was, in fact, not a bad one, Little John admitted. The King planned to mount an expedition to Poitou and attack Philip’s men along the line of the River Loire. This would force the French King to come south from Paris and defend the territory he had captured from the Angevins, and then the second blow would come from the north. From King John’s allies. He had been sending barrels of silver and military help to the counts of Boulogne and Flanders all year and supporting his nephew Otto, the Holy Roman Emperor, in his struggles against rival claimants to the title, too.

‘He might have bought himself some support in Flanders and Germany,’ chuckled Little John, ‘he’s sorely lacking in aid from home. Hardly any bugger heeded him when he called for English fighting men for the Poitou expedition.’

‘Are they not sworn to aid him?’ asked Robert, who was serving us the ale.

‘They may have sworn a mighty oath, youngster,’ said Little John, ‘but that doesn’t mean they’ll honour it.’

And Little John was right. He told us that a group of northern barons, led by my new friends the lords de Vesci and Fitzwalter, had issued a joint proclamation declaring that though they held their lands from the King of England, and duly owed him military service for it, they had no obligation to fight in his wars outside his kingdom.

‘But that’s nonsense,’ said Robert. ‘English knights have been fighting abroad for their kings since the days of the Conqueror!’

‘Quite right, youngster,’ said Little John, looking at Robert in surprise at his shrewdness. ‘But the barons are like anyone else. They like to back a winner.’

While he was with us, I asked Little John to give Robert the benefit of his years of combat experience and, with Sir Thomas’s permission, the big man and my little son spent an afternoon in the courtyard working on ways in which a man on foot could defeat a mounted knight. I did not witness the display – I was on the far side of my lands helping to pull a ewe out of a patch of marshy ground in which she had been mired – but that evening over supper Little John surprised me by saying: ‘He’s a rare boy, your Robert.’

I asked him what he meant – bracing myself for John to say something derogatory about my son’s lack of martial skills.

‘He can’t fight worth a damn,’ said the big man, ‘but you know that already. But he does have a wise head on his shoulders for one so young. I was showing him how a spearman can dismount a knight, the old leg-heave method, when he said something extraordinary. He said: “Instead of pushing him off the horse, Uncle John, why don’t you pull him down? If you had the right sort of hook, you could pull him down like a bundle of hay off a wain.”’

‘You can’t go into battle with a hay-hook,’ I said. ‘You’d look ridiculous, and you couldn’t really harm the knight when he was down. Are you sure he understood what he was talking about? He is very young, after all.’

‘Oh, he grasped it completely. And it’s certainly worth thinking about.’

I merely shrugged and then our talk turned to other matters.

Two days after Little John’s departure, the alarm was raised by the lookout on the new tower. It was now the highest point in Westbury and gave a view of the surrounding flattish countryside for miles. The man-at-arms spotted a column of horsemen approaching on the road and immediately rang the big hand bell attached to the flagpole to alert the people in the courtyard below.

I was pleased by the way Westbury reacted to the alarm. The big wooden gates in the front of the courtyard were speedily closed and double-barred with thick oak beams that lay snugly in iron brackets on either side of the portal. Every man-at-arms was rousted from their barracks or from the hall and mustered on the walls and on the roof of the tower. Our bowmen – a dozen men, sadly, no more – filed up on the right and left of the gatehouse, and strung their staves. A score or so of men-at-arms – mostly veterans, but also a handful of recruits from Westbury and the surrounding villages – manned the walls all around the palisade, while ten spearmen with heavy shields massed in the centre of the courtyard prepared to repel the attackers if the gate was breached. Baldwin marshalled the servants by the base of the tower; he was ready, if I ordered it, to start filling the keep with extra food, blankets and provisions and to get everybody inside in the time it takes to say an Our Father.

All this happened smoothly, with the minimum of fuss, and for that I had Sir Thomas to thank. He was captain of the guard at Westbury as well as Robert’s tutor, and he had insisted on running drills for all the fighting men at least once a week from the very first day he had arrived. He was well liked by the men, many of whom had fought with him in the south. And those who did not like him feared him enough to obey his orders without hesitation.