The King’s Assassin (25 page)

I pulled the misericorde from its sheath on my left forearm, the black steel slipping willingly into my hand. I surged up with the shield, pushing his weapon aside, and punched forward with the blade, plunging it into the meat of his upper thigh. He gave a noiseless gasp and, looking at him over my shield rim, I saw that he was white as bleached wool with shock. I stepped in, knocking the sword away and plunged the misericorde deep into his naked belly, cutting the blade sideways to slice through his intestines.

He fell to his knees, dying, with a look of astonishment written across his face.

I left him to die, slid the misericorde, still wet, back into its sheath, and went to recover Fidelity. By chance, our duel had taken us near to the horse and the dead knight, and I quickly pulled his corpse from the saddle and recovered my beloved blade. I had meant to take possession of the horse too, but the animal, perhaps spooked by so much death and blood, cantered away in a shower of earth-clods before I could grasp its bridle.

I looked about me and saw the shapes of men-at-arms on foot converging on me, left and right. The enemy were certainly not fleeing, and were closing in to finish us. I looked ahead and saw the familiar wooden walls of Westbury.

I hurled my battered shield away and ran towards them.

I would not have made it to the main gate of Westbury but for the skill and courage of the men inside. For I was chased like a deer the hundred or so yards from the enemy encampment by a dozen howling men on foot and a-horse. And I was not the only man running for cover. I saw two of Robin’s troopers cutting their way clear of a mass of furious black-clad infantry; Little John surrounded by a sea of foes, slicing at them like a reaper, using his poleaxe like a scythe, and at last surging his way through a spray of gore and towards the gate and safety. There was Robin just by the main gate, with a handful of our troops; the gate was opening, men were slipping inside. Merciful God be praised.

Westbury had not been insensible of the battle taking place beyond the walls. The palisade was lined with archers and it was these men who really saved me. I was conscious of a dozen arrows fizzing over my head as I ran helter-skelter from my enemies up the slight hill towards the gates, dodging left and right and, occasionally snatching a glance behind me, I saw my pursuers staggering, smacked in the chest or leg by yard-long shafts of wood, falling away – and I was clear.

The main gate was opening wider now.

I had expected some form of sortie from Westbury, the cavalry sallying forth to drive the attackers away from the gates. What happened instead left me gaping in shock. The gate was wide open now, and instead of a swarm of Westbury cavalry only two horsemen emerged, clearly recognisable as Thomas and Hugh. They were in full armour, sword and shield, and mounted on big strong horses, but they were not charging pell-mell into the enemy ranks, they were pulling a huge hay-wagon, piled high with wood and straw, doused in oil and burning like the fires of Hell.

I stood by the gate with my mouth open and watched as the huge burning wagon, pushed by a dozen men-at-arms from inside the gates as well as pulled by Thomas and Hugh outside, rumbled forward, found its own momentum and rolled ponderously down the slope into the heart of the enemy camp. When the wagon was trundling forward, picking up speed, the two men cut the ropes that attached their frightened horses to the burning mass, and circled back to the gates.

There they were joined by the rest of the Westbury horsemen, and as many of Robin’s men as were still in the saddle, and now they all charged, pouring out of the gates in a compact mass in the wake of the rumbling, spark-spitting, unstoppable inferno that was cutting a fiery swath through the enemy encampment.

That fire-wagon probably killed or injured no more than a dozen men who were unable to get out of its path in time, and Thomas’s cavalry charge contained fewer than a score of riders, but the combination of the two, added to the arrows of the archers on the palisade, was enough. Confusion and panic had come to our aid at last.

The enemy ran.

They streamed away to the south, scores of men-at-arms and camp servants, knights, too, abandoning their tents, provisions, weapons and stores to get as far away from the chaos of the burning camp as fast as they could.

Westbury was saved.

A little before mid-morning, I stood on the walls of Westbury in my borrowed hauberk with Robin beside me, and watched as the last of our foes disappeared into the woods beyond the pastures on the far south of my land.

Of all the joys of life, there is nothing like victory. And for the first time in months, I felt as happy and light-headed as a schoolboy released from his lessons. Westbury was largely unscathed and happily our casualties had been light – although only two of Little John’s five footmen got back into the castle alive, and Robin’s troop of twenty was now reduced to sixteen men.

I learnt from Sir Thomas later that day that the enemy had arrived the day before, and a knight who had identified himself only as Nicholas of Hainaut had demanded that the gates be opened to him. He intended to conduct a thorough search of the manor, he had said, and Westbury should submit or face the consequences.

Sir Thomas had immediately ordered the Westbury archers to loose, and the knight had been cut down in front of the gate by a blizzard of shafts. My dark-haired friend was not a man to waste time when battle was at hand: and he was perfectly justified in his actions, as the knight had come arrayed for war to his gates and had issued threats. There had been no formal or even informal truce agreement in place. However, the enemy, furious at the precipitate slaughter of their envoy, had made a concerted attack on the walls, fifty men-at-arms with ladders, supported by a score of dismounted knights, but they had been driven back without too much difficulty by the defenders. The money I had paid out to strengthen the palisade had been well spent, I considered. Hugh had distinguished himself in the defence of the western wall, where the main attack had fallen, slaying the enemy in droves and casting the ladders loose wherever they landed on the battlements.

I thanked Hugh and Thomas with tears in my eyes for defending my home. But Hugh surprised me by saying that he and Sir Thomas could not take the full credit for the success of their defence.

‘You have Robert to thank for that,’ Hugh said. ‘It was his idea to use the fire-wagon, and I would say that that was the move that tipped the scales.’

Robert had been dispensing ale to the thirsty men-at-arms from a large jug – and the men were drinking deep. And he seemed strangely shy when I summoned him over to confirm Hugh’s words.

‘Is it true, Robert, that the burning wagon was your idea?’

‘Yes, Father. I hope you do not mind the loss of the wagon. I chose the oldest one we had, the one I felt we could most afford to lose.’

I hugged him, then, too choked with pride to speak.

As we sat down to dinner that day, just after noon, Robert brought round the water ewer, bowl and towels to allow the guests to wash their hands, and I saw that he managed this ordinary task with aplomb. He had just taken part in his first siege, he had very likely saved Westbury with his quick thinking, and now he was fulfilling his duties as a squire, in a fresh tunic, hair combed, nails clean, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. His hand did not tremble as he poured the wine; he carved the meat – we were eating fat roast pork with crispy crackling, at my insistence – in neat, thin, even slices like a master butcher.

My heart swelled with love at the sight of him: so what if he was not the world’s finest swordsman? He would make a fine knight, a fine man, one day.

When we had eaten, I rested for several hours – although I had not been wounded the battle had taken its toll on my still weak body and I found I could barely stand. But the next morning I rose early and went out to survey the battlefield and join in the clean-up. The whole of Westbury was already there, picking over the leavings of the enemy: villagers scooping up discarded items of clothing, searching for a forgotten purse or a silver buckle; even the dogs of the manor and the village were out, scouting for any scraps of bread and meat that had been left behind.

Although I was sure that they came from the sheriff of Nottinghamshire, I was more than curious to discover exactly who the enemy had been, for the name Nicholas of Hainault meant nothing to me. It seemed they had left behind some evidence of their identity: a particular kind of wooden overshoe found in the Low Countries, some thick, waxy cheese rind discarded in the midden, a broken shield painted with a device derived from one I had seen on a knight from Leuven.

We concluded that they were Flemings.

‘Mercenaries,’ said Robin without a hint of condemnation. He could not very well sneer, as he had been one more than once, and so had I.

‘The sheriff of Nottinghamshire is hiring mercenaries to collect his taxes, is that not self-defeating?’ I said. ‘Any money he gets will go to pay his soldiers.’

Robert’s lurcher bitch Vixen was sniffing my shoes. I ruffled her behind the ears.

‘Not necessarily. They may well be already bought and paid for by the King, who is lending them out to his sheriffs while they await orders for the continental campaign. It is actually quite a good use for men who might otherwise be idle.’

‘You sound as though you approve of the King’s tax-collecting methods,’ I said.

‘I don’t object to taxes,
per se
,’ said Robin. ‘Do I not charge my tenants rent? Do not you charge yours? What your friends, my lords Fitzwalter and de Vesci, propose is an end to taxation – and that is absurd. They would have a pauper king, weak and easily controlled by men such as them. What I would end is the arbitrary use of force by the King to seize whatever money he wishes, whenever he wishes it, as if he were a greedy child. But the only thing that can truly check him, de Vesci and Fitzwalter would say, is armed force. Armies, battles, civil war. They want to use the ultimate force against the King. I would do things quite differently.’

I hung my head. I knew I’d been unwise and that Robin, at great cost, had saved me from the consequences of my foolish plotting with de Vesci and Fitzwalter. I was glad I had burned Fitzwalter’s letter now and resolved never to have anything to do with either man again.

I found the corpse of my horse that afternoon, and spent a moment or two in mourning for that noble beast who had taken the lance blow meant for me. The knight’s spear had plunged straight through the saddlebag and deep into the horse’s lower bowels. I had seen men die from that kind of wound and knew that it was both painful and foul, as faecal matter from the lower gut mixes with the blood and spreads all over the wound and the outer body.

I have seen some men-at-arms take five days to die from such a wound and in agony for all that time. It is in God’s hands, of course. But I was glad that it had been swift for my equine friend.

I glanced inside the saddlebag to check for valuables and came across the pasty that Tilda had given me, fat pork and healthy spices in pastry. It had smelled delicious when she had given it to me in the courtyard of Kirklees Priory, but now, sadly, it was the very opposite. The lance had ripped it apart and the glorious pasty was covered in blood and the half-digested contents of the horse’s belly. I dug out the sticky pieces from the torn saddlebag and threw them away.

I looked over the enemy’s former encampment and into the pastures beyond and saw Robert playing with his lurcher. Throwing sticks for Vixen to chase and bring back to the boy. Yesterday he endured a siege and today he plays like a child, I mused. I was almost overwhelmed by a feeling of love for him. We had fought here on this ground to protect him, and lost comrades in that struggle. We had won, yes, but I had risked his life over a little money. How would I have felt if Robin had not helped me, if Sir Thomas and Hugh had not been so staunch, if Westbury had been overrun and Robert was taken, and God forbid, torn apart by the sheriff’s ogre?

I found Robin later in the courtyard of Westbury, examining the new tower.

‘It needs to be higher,’ he said. ‘You need to put a couple more storeys on top, and that way you will have the height to—’

I interrupted him: ‘I can’t afford it. I can’t afford anything. I have almost no silver left and I’ve decided to promise to pay the sheriff what he wants, even if I have to mire myself in debt to do so.’

Robin looked at me. ‘I cannot help you, Alan. The cost of arming and outfitting for the Flanders expedition has hit hard. I’d like to help, but thirty marks…’

‘No, no, my lord,’ I said. ‘I do not ask it of you. I will borrow from the Jews or come to some arrangement with the sheriff.’

Robin said: ‘Are you sure? We’ve taught him a lesson, I’d say. He should keep his distance.’

‘I cannot allow myself to be permanently at war with the sheriff of this county. I would be made an outlaw – I may be one already – and I cannot hide my entire household in the forest for the rest of my life. I must live here, I mean to grow old here, and they will always know where to find me, where to find Robert. If we are to go to the Low Countries this summer, I would be leaving Westbury to the mercy of Philip Marc and Sir Benedict Malet. I must come to an accommodation with them, and as soon as possible – I will ride to Nottinghamshire tomorrow.’

‘Do you want me to come with you? We could show a little force, it might help your negotiations.’

‘No, I will go alone. I must appear humble, a penitent.’

‘Very well,’ said Robin. ‘But keep this in mind as you wrangle with the sheriff. We depart for Flanders soon – and that expedition may well prove as lucrative as the attack on Damme. I make no promises, but your fortunes could well be restored by battle. One rich French knight captured and the ransom could change everything. Anyway, something to think on. If you are sure you know your mind, we will take our leave of you this afternoon. But, if you will permit me, I will send a message to Nottingham Castle, reminding the sheriff that you are under my protection and that if any harm comes to you they must answer to me.’