The King’s Assassin (19 page)

Time passed and I heard voices raised in anger. The King’s, Aymeric de St Maur and William the Marshal, too. And that of Tilda as well, soft and comforting, and her cool hand on my brow – but dreams and reality could not be easily parted. I thought I was at Westbury, at one point, with young Robert weeping over my dead body, saying ‘Don’t leave me, Father, don’t leave me at the mercy of that man.’ I was back in the Holy Land with the blazing sun beating on my face. I was in Sherwood, still little more than a child, and Little John was crushing my head between his massive hands, the pressure tightening and tightening like a vice, and he was saying: ‘God’s fat greasy bollocks, Alan, you’ve drunk up all the ale again. You must be punished.’

I was in a cage, a wooden box on wheels with oak slats for bars, jolting over ruts in the road, and the sound and smells of horses, a sharp golden light in my eyes and rough hands pulling me from a slick of my own blood and vomit and the garlic-loving crossbowman punching me again and again before allowing me to slump down to the green turf. And blackness, sweet night and the blessed absence of light and noise.

I came to my senses in blackness. I truly believed that I might be dead and in some limbo state between Heaven and Hell. I opened my left eye. The other seemed to be glued shut. The blackness was the same with that eye open or closed. But my hands and legs were free and I reached up and touched my face and felt wetness and rough scabbing, and what seemed like vast hard lumps and bags of swollen tissue all over my face. I had no idea where I was or how long it had been since the day of the ceremony of papal homage. My hands roamed all over my body, feeling the tenderness in every inch of skin, the cuts and grazes, the pulpy ache of bruises no longer fresh. But I did not seem to have any broken bones: that in itself was a mercy, or perhaps in the afterlife all limbs were made whole. I was cold, deathly cold. Shivering like a man with an ague. I realised I was naked as a baby. And wet all over. I did not know whether the dampness came from sweat or blood or my own piss – my swollen nose was blocked solid and incapable of doing its duty. My questing fingers groped about my body and I felt cloth. Hallelujah! A blanket, by the feel of it. Furry with mould, torn and damp, but good English wool. I pulled it around my shoulders and sat up. My head reeled – streaks of red and yellow and silver exploding behind my eyes. My empty stomach heaved and I had to lower my head or I felt that I would die. I lay down and pulled the blanket over my shoulders and left the world once more.

I believe it was thirst that awakened me, my tongue dry and swollen twice its size and rough as oak bark. But I was still in the same dark place on a hard floor with a mouldy blanket over me and nothing more to cover my body. I could only conclude that I was alive. I was too aware of the aches and pains of my body to have left it behind on the mortal earth. Cautiously, I got to my feet. Every inch of my body hurt from my poor beaten head down to my bruised toes. I felt a wall on my left-hand side, rough, unplastered stone. Using my fingertips as eyes in the inky void, I began to explore my new world. It was a cold, barren place: four rock walls, a smooth stone floor and a ceiling about a foot above my head. I found a big, cool earthenware jug of water and a small wedge of rye bread, old and hard as hatred. Nothing more except a small wooden door set into the wall near one corner, on which I could feel the cold iron bands and studs that fortified it.

I drank half the water and used a cupful of it to soften the bread and get it down my throat. Using a strip of the blanket dipped in the jug I managed to unstick my right eye, though it was still swollen and tender and I could see no more in the blackness than before. I sat back down on the blanket and began to think.

I was a prisoner of the King, that much was clear. But where was I? Still in London? I thought not. I had been on a journey in that hellish stinking wooden cage, at least a day and a night. I reckoned that had been real. Though I had no idea where I had been taken or even in which direction. I thought about the King’s words before his guards had wrestled me to the ground.

They were the last thing I remember clearly: ‘There, Stevin, there. It’s Dale. The assassin! Take him, man, take him.’

The King had called me an ‘assassin’ and named me. He clearly knew what I had intended to do before I even attempted it. Which begged the question: why was I still alive? If the King knew I had meant to murder him, why had he not had me hanged out of hand? Or had my throat cut and my body dumped in the Thames. He had done something similar to Arthur of Brittany and on far less provocation.

My bladder required my attention. I groped around the black space once more, feeling with my fingertips at ground level and especially in the corners, and found what I was searching for. A round hole about six inches wide that dropped straight down below the floor for at least the length of my forearm. It was a drain. And this, I reasoned, meant that this was certainly a prison cell. Probably in the guts of a castle. The drain was to allow the noisome effluent produced by the prisoners to be swilled away by the guards. I used it for its intended purpose. Then sat back down on the blanket.

How long had I been in here, I wondered. I felt my chin and upper lip. There was a good deal of bristle beneath the scabs and filth – four days? Five? I had been shaved clean by a chatty London barber the day before the ceremony of homage. The ceremony had been held on Sunday, the saint day of Edward the Confessor, the thirteenth day of October. I had spent at least one night on the road, beaten unconscious by – what was that smelly brute’s name? Stevin? So we might assume two days’ travelling. In a slow cart two days might mean fifty miles. Had I imagined it, or had I seen the sun getting lower between the pair of horses that pulled my wooden cage along the road? If so, we had been heading west. I was probably about fifty miles west of London. As I was King John’s prisoner, it was likely that I was being held in the dungeon of a royal castle, or one held by his staunchest allies. I thought of the royal strongholds that I knew of fifty miles west of London. Oxford? No, too far. Windsor? No, too close to London. Then I knew it: Wallingford. A small but strong royal fortress a dozen or so miles south-east of Oxford.

I was in Wallingford Castle. And judging by my beard, it was Thursday, the seventeenth day of October. Or possibly Friday.

I cannot tell you how cheered I was by my reckonings. I believed that I knew where I was and the day of the week. Paltry foundations on which to build your courage, you might think. But they made a new man of me.

I got up and hammered on the door with my fists – hurting myself in the process; even my hands were torn and bruised, and I knew that I must have fought my abusers and landed some blows. I called out as loudly as I could for a guard. My voice was weak, little more than a croak. There was no response. The silence mocked me. A wave of raw despair closed over my head once more.

I drank more water. I slept some more, too, and dreamt that I was free and happy and back at Westbury with Robert. We were riding, racing each other, in fact, on horseback across a wide open meadow, with spring flowers crushed under our horses’ hooves scenting the air and the sunlight in our faces, hot sunlight …

I opened my eyes into a blaze of light. The cell door was wide open and a squat figure holding a burning pine torch stood in the doorway. The light burnt my eyes, and I had to shield them with a hand. The figure advanced and I saw it was holding a long, thick club in its right hand. Without a word, the gaoler came forward and struck at my head, hard. I got my shoulder and forearm up in time to stop the blow smashing into my skull – luckily, for I think it might have killed me. As it was, the blow thumped across my shoulder and clipped the top of my head and set off a hellish screaming inside my skull. I was immediately knocked flat on to my back, sprawled helpless on my blanket.

‘Want another?’ The creature raised the club over me. The voice was light, boyish, but I confess I cowered. On another day I might have taken that club away and forced it far up the fellow’s fundament. But I was weak, hurting and my whole left arm felt numb and leaden.

‘You behave yourself, like a good little boy, and you’ll get a nice, hot bowl of soup later, when we get ours. You give me trouble…’ The shape lifted the club.

‘Who are you?’ I said. ‘Where am I?’

The gaoler swung the club but I twisted away as fast as I could and the blow cracked agonisingly against my spine.

‘Bein’ a good boy means you don’t ask no questions. That vexes me, see?’

I said nothing. The pain was making it hard for me to breathe.

‘Now, you get up, up now, and you stand still.’

The guard prodded me with the club.

I thought: I swear I will pay you out for that, you whoreson bastard. But I did not dare say a word aloud, not a word. I hauled my battered body with considerable difficulty into a standing position.

It hurt even to stand.

‘Now be still. Just there. Don’t move a muscle.’

The squat gaoler disappeared through the open doorway. My eyes were a little more used to the light by now and I could see into the room outside my cell. It was slightly bigger than my chamber but similar in its stark lack of decoration and almost as empty. Stone walls, a table and a stool. The gaoler, I saw to my surprise, was a strongly built woman of middle years with long grey hair tied in a horse’s tail at the back and clad in a sleeveless leather coat. A vast sagging bosom protruded from the front of the coat, hanging over her belly. A filthy skirt hung to her ankles. She had her back three-quarters turned to me, had put her club on the table and was filling a small, iron-banded wooden bucket with a rope handle from a wooden butt on the far side of the room.

She came back to the door of the cell and flung a bucket of icy water directly in my face. I flinched from the shock and took one pace back.

The gaoler screamed: ‘Don’t you move! Don’t you fuckin’ move!’

Then she seemed to gather herself and she said more quietly. ‘Don’t you vex me, Sir Knight. Get back on that spot there and stay deadly still! I’m to clean you up, they said. Clean you up nice and make you presentable. You’ve got a visitor, they say. So don’t you vex me.’

I returned to the spot by the door that she had indicated, the water steaming down my face and naked body. The gaoler returned to her butt and refilled the bucket.

I stood quite still.

The gaoler drew back her arms to hurl the water. I braced myself. The cold water flashed towards me. I reached out my left hand, pushing it straight into the deluge, seized the rim of the bucket, more by luck than skill, for the flying water had blinded me, and hauled back.

The gaoler, still holding the rope handle of the bucket and utterly surprised, shot forward, and I punched her as hard as I could with my right fist.

It was not the best punch I have ever thrown. I was weak, dizzy, my body was battered and bruised in a hundred places, but it was a half-decent strike and – much as I hate to hit a woman – I felt a flare of bright joy as my knuckles crunched into her hard jaw and I felt the snap of bone. The gaoler staggered against the side of the cell, her legs wobbling beneath her. The empty bucket clattered against the stone floor at my feet. She shouted: ‘Alarm! Alarm!’ – a feeble cry, but it spurred me to action.

I stooped, picked up the bucket by the rope handle, and as the gaoler recovered slightly and straightened up, I swung it and the iron-banded weight smashed into the side of her head. The bucket disintegrated into a mess of metal hoops, splinters and kindling. She fell like a dropped stone.

I slipped out of the open door like a weasel. I had the club in my hand and came back into the cell to see that the woman was still alive, even conscious, and was struggling to get to her feet, blood streaming from her ear. She was a hard-headed bitch, I’ll give her that.

I killed her, God forgive me, with one chopping blow of the club to the crown of her head, putting a dent the size of an apple in her skull. Then I stripped the long leather coat from her corpse. Wrapping the mouldy blanket around my loins – it was light green, I discovered – and club still in hand, I limped to the door of the outer room. I was but one pace from the door when it swung open of its own accord. A crossbowman, a big bearded fellow, stepped into the room. His weapon was held to his right shoulder, it was spanned, a black quarrel in the groove, and pointed directly at my heart. I saw that it was my old garlic-eating friend Stevin – and behind him I could see four or five other crossbowmen, and beyond them a pair of men with long spears.

Stevin said: ‘Put the club down this very instant or you die.’

I could see his right hand tightening on the lever that would release the cord and drive the quarrel through two yards of air and deep into my chest. At that range, it would have punched a hole straight through and out the other side.

The club clattered to the ground.

‘Over there, sit on your hands,’ said Stevin, motioning me with the crossbow to the wall of the chamber. The other guards flooded into the room, jostling and gaping at me. I sat against the stone, my poor bruised hands under my poor bruised thighs.

‘Sweet Jesu, he’s killed Jessie!’ said one of the crossbowmen, peering into the cell at the gaoler’s corpse, his face pale as milk.

Stevin said, over his shoulder: ‘He is as vicious as they say. Tricksy, too, by all accounts. And not above murdering anyone in his path. I want men with bows on him all the time, every instant when he is not in the cell. Am I clear? Jan, Willi – you keep your weapons spanned and on him all the time.’

And to me: ‘I would as soon kill you now, assassin. But you have a visitor who wishes to speak to you, so I shall forgo the pleasure. Now, get on your feet. You walk three paces ahead of me. If you walk too fast, I kill you; if you run, I kill you; if you slow down, I kill you. Am I clear? If you make any sudden move, I kill you. Yes?’

I was marched down the long corridor outside the cell and its anteroom with three quarrel points making my back itch. I walked as well as I was able, a decent speed, neither too fast nor too slow – but not from fear at Stevin’s threat.