The King’s Assassin (45 page)

‘Make ready,’ hissed Robin. I began to unwind the bulky knotted rope that was wrapped around my torso, with three stout iron hooks welded together and attached to one end. My hands were shaking so badly that I could barely untangle the rope from the shield strapped to my back. I had never had the fear this badly before. I could barely control my body at all. Beside me, on my right, was Thomas, calm and cool. He saw I was in difficulties and deftly slipped the rope from my shoulders.

I found I was murmuring a prayer to St Michael, my protector, but in my heart I was screaming: ‘God, have mercy on me and preserve my miserable skin this night. I beg you. Let me not be slain or maimed or put in unendurable pain and I will give you anything you require, my chastity, my lifelong devotion, anything.’

My whole body ached; I shivered, my legs quaked. A voice inside me was screaming: ‘Run, run for your life.’ It took all my strength just to stand there, waiting, waiting for the order to die. I thought I would vomit at any minute; I felt a spurt of thick urine warm my legs and dribble stickily inside my mail-clad thighs.

On my left was a massive, dark presence and in my confusion I imagined that it must be Little John beside me. I think I must have been out of my senses with fear by then, for John spoke to me. I heard his deep familiar voice as clear as a church bell:

‘Live, Alan, live like a man – until you die.’

And suddenly I was calm. Just like that. I felt as if the endless strength of my huge friend, or perhaps his indomitable spirit, had entered my chest and belly like a solid fire. My torso felt strangely warm, hot even. I looked down at my hands and saw that the trembling had completely stopped. My vision seemed clearer, my limbs seemed to glow with renewed strength, my legs were springier, my arms more powerful. My heart was light and free of fear. I breathed in deeply and the night air on my tongue tasted as delicious as a clear mountain stream. I felt I could conquer armies single-handed. It was nothing short of miraculous. Little John had told me that Gavin had spoken to him on the eve of our defeat at Bouvines and I had not believed him, but here, now, John himself was with me, giving me courage from beyond the grave.

I turned to my left to the vast dark shape to thank John for his wonderful gift, the gift of courage, and I saw in the moonlight that it was only Boot, a long, knotted club in his hands, looking down on me with a strange perplexed expression.

I made one more brief, silent prayer for the soul of my dear friend.

‘Time to go,’ Robin said in my ear.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it is time. It is high time.’ And I launched myself eagerly forward – into the bloody fire of battle.

We ran, all twelve of us, with the ropes in our hands, splashing through the stinking sludge of the moat and up the other side. I looked up at the walls towering above me but there was no sign of the sentry I had seen before. It was well past midnight in the long lonely hours before dawn and I would not have been surprised if the sentry had found himself a quiet corner for a sit-down and maybe a snooze. I swung my hooks briefly in a circle and hurled them towards the top of the wall. Beside me I was aware of Thomas doing the same thing and further along Robin and a knot of Kirkton men swinging their iron hooks and letting fly. My hook bit into the top of the parapet with a dull metallic clang. And I was climbing like a monkey, buoyed up by a glowing strength from beyond the grave. I was only halfway up the rope, my arm muscles aching, when I heard a loud shout of alarm from above and a surprised face under a broad helmet peered over the parapet and straight down at my climbing form.

The sentry had not been as vigilant as he might have been, but he had not been asleep at his post. He was three feet above me, shouting ‘To arms, to arms!’ and I saw a blade flash in the moonlight – he aimed to cut my rope and send me tumbling to earth.

An arrow flashed through the air and smashed into the sentry’s cheek, and the face above me was jerked away. I gave a final heave and rolled over the top of the parapet, the first man there. I hauled out Fidelity – and just in time. A second sentry rushed at me along the walkway on the inside of the parapet, a spear in his hands. He stopped out of range of my blade and poked at me with the spear. I seized the wooden shaft of the weapon and hauled forward; the man came staggering towards me and I crunched Fidelity into his upper left arm. The blade was kept from his flesh by his mail but I felt bone crack and he screamed like a woman in childbirth.

I stepped in and punched Fidelity’s hilt into his face, knocking him backwards into empty air, and he fell kicking wildly and his back slapped on to the paving stones of the courtyard eighteen feet below. I paused for a moment to get my shield off my back and my left arm through the slings; my skin was burning, my heart galloping, a wild reckless joy running like white lightning through my veins.

An arched door at the end of the walkway, where the wall met the north tower, was swinging open and I saw half a dozen heads peering out. I snatched a glance behind me; there was Thomas, drawn sword in hand, and beyond him Boot, scowling like a fiend with a huge wooden club held across his chest. And beyond them Robin with two of his men. My friends were all with me. Little John was with me.

The enemy were now spilling out of the door and advancing along the walkway to me. The time for silence was over; the alarm had been raised all through Newgate. But I did not care a jot – I was lifted on the wings of battle. I roared: ‘Westbury!’ and charged straight into the pack of enemy men-at-arms by the tower.

The spirit of my friend possessed me bone and blood. I felt invulnerable, as mighty as a mountain and without the slightest shred of apprehension. I bowled into the men at the tower door, chopping my enemies down with Fidelity, punching them away with my shield; my blade was faster than a striking adder, more powerful than a thunderbolt – I burst through the half a dozen men cowering there, reaping lives like Death himself. Boot was at my back, swiping any man who escaped past me with his club, smashing skulls apart like rotten apples, and in one brief instant between the furious clash of steel and thump of metal on wood and the screaming of men, in one brief window of quiet, I realised that the big dark man was singing.

He was singing ‘My Joy Summons Me’.

The enemy were running before my onslaught. Thomas was at my side now, cutting and lunging. The press of men fell away, scurrying down the spiral stairs of the tower, and Robin was shouting: ‘The gates, Alan, make for the gates.’

I tumbled down the stairs after the fleeing foe, Thomas and Robin behind me, Boot behind them, his singing echoing like church music in the enclosed space of the stone spiral staircase. We shot out of the base of the tower and pulled up short – a score of men-at-arms and a pair of knights were formed up in the courtyard in a double line, rubbing sleep from their eyes, some still yawning, but armed and ready for battle.

I did not halt for an instant. I bellowed my war cry and charged them, throwing myself at the centre of their line, Fidelity swinging, a blurring silver streak. I chopped into the shoulder of one man-at-arms and he fell screaming at my feet. I lifted my shield high and took a sword-blow safely on the oak-rim. I felt a spear slide under the shield and punch through my mail at my waist. I had no sensation of pain. Just a feeling of a hard blow against my lowest ribs on the left. I surged forward, slicing my sword into the face of a screaming man; I killed another with a straight lunge to the throat, and cut the legs from beneath a knight at the back of the line with a low sweep. Robin was killing beside me, and Sir Thomas, magnificent as ever, was cutting down foes left and right with a chilly precision. A rush of fresh enemy men-at-arms from the right was met square on by Boot, who swept them casually aside with great loops of his club, like a goodwife clearing cobwebs with her broom.

A knight engaged me: two fast blows at my head and upper body. I parried the first, stepped in past the second, in close to his body and smashed my helmeted forehead full into his face. He staggered back and I rammed Fidelity hard into his belly, punching the blade straight through his mail and into the soft guts behind.

I looked behind me at the huge oak double door and saw that Robin and John Halfpenny were struggling to lift the vast bar that kept it securely closed.

I shouted to Boot: ‘Help them, man, help with the gate!’ and saw the giant nod, discard his club and lumber over to my lord.

We had killed or incapacitated a goodly number of the enemy by now; the bodies of dead or broken men were all over the courtyard, blood was slick underfoot. But we had not won. There were more and more men debouching into the courtyard from the buildings that surrounded it and the south tower on the far side of the gate. Twenty, thirty, now fifty men. But they were wary of us and our bloodied blades.

I shouted: ‘To me! To me!’ And gathered as many men as I could around Sir Thomas and myself. We formed a thin line, just eight men, protecting the gate where Robin and Boot had finally managed to lift the bar from its brackets.

The enemy were coming at us now in earnest. A knight in a full-face helmet with a red plume was exhorting them to battle and about two score men were now running forward, spears and swords, raised shields and grim expressions. They were twenty yards way, and the certain knowledge dawned on me. They would charge and swamp us. And that would be the end.

So be it.

I lifted Fidelity and made ready to run at them. Our feeble line would not hold against so many and I wanted to attack, anyway. ‘Live, Alan,’ I thought, filed with a searing, impossible joy, ‘live like a man – until you die!’

I opened my mouth, took a deep breath …

A swarm of arrow shafts hummed over my head and smashed into the advancing enemy. A dozen men fell in that one stroke. I looked behind me and saw that the gates were wide open and the archers of Sherwood were formed up on the bridge beyond. I saw Mastin drop his arm, and another lethal flight of shafts whirred through the air and smashed into the enemy. Half of them were now stuck with feathers, a quarter dead outright. And there were men-at-arms charging through the open gate by now, Robin’s men, eager and fresh. But the battle was over. I saw the red-plumed knight make one last attempt to rally his shattered men, but they were all running for their lives – disappearing into the darkness between the buildings on the far side of the courtyard, slipping away into the shadowy bulk of London and safety.

The knight gave one last despairing glance at me and then he, too, turned tail and ran swiftly away into the shadows.

The Army of God arrived an hour before dawn. They had been marching all night and were on the point of exhaustion. But their efforts were not in vain. We occupied Newgate and the surrounding fortifications and sent word with the dawn via Cousin Henry to Robin’s friends and acquaintances all across London. By the time the church bells were ringing out the office of prime, a cheering crowd had gathered that stretched from Newgate all the way down Watling Street to St Paul’s Cathedral. Within hours, the King’s garrisons in the city gates surrendered their arms – all except the Flemish mercenaries who held the Tower of London. However, they could not recapture the city and it would have cost us blood to take the strongest castle in England. So, on Robin’s advice we ignored the Tower, and left the Flemings, under watch by a company of Fitzwalter’s men, to their own devices.

London was ours and a mood of general rejoicing gripped the whole city. Apprentices were given a half-day holiday, merchants closed their warehouses, artisans put up the shutters and the taverns were thronged with celebrants. The church bells rang out from dawn to dusk in celebration; the streets echoed with happy singing and the laughter of men released from their labours. Even when the Earl of Salisbury and his troops arrived the next day, the mood of defiant joy continued. William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, was politely but firmly refused the city by Lord Fitzwalter and the Army of God, who manned the walls in a show of our strength, heavily reinforced with thousands of men from the city’s militia bands.

Longsword did not stay long. He withdrew his forces to Windsor, a day’s march away; for the King had finally quit Oxford and set up his headquarters in the castle there. The Earl was right to do so because, two days after the Army of God had entered the city, the first of the reluctant barons, those who had slipped away at Bedford, began to descend on London with their men, protesting that they had always been loyal to the rebellion, that they would gladly fight and die for the great charter. The waverers were flocking to our banner, just as Robin had predicted, and if Salisbury and his loyalist forces had not withdrawn, he would have been caught between two or even three vengeful rebel fires.

I missed most of the celebrations, however. The spear thrust to my waist had sliced through the skin and fat below my ribs but, praise God and all the saints, had not pierced my intestines. It was a long, deep painful cut, that had required to be stitched up, and the learned London physician who did the stitching – a rich friend of Cousin Henry’s – told me that I should not walk about or undertake any strenuous activity for some days and weeks. I spent the time at my former lodgings in Friday Street, where I was treated as a hero by my host, Master Luke Benning, a merchant friend of Lord Fitzwalter who had made his fortune in amber from the Baltic. Master Benning left me to myself but told me to treat the house and its servants as my own. I was, in fact, well tended by Boot, who bustled around me, bringing me potions and salves guaranteed to have a healing effect.

Robert had asked if he might lodge with Miles and Hugh at Robin’s merchant friend’s house in Queen’s Hythe, and I had agreed. It is no fun for a youngster to be around an invalid. And Thomas, after dumping his baggage in one of the chambers on the second floor, disappeared for two days and nights and I assumed that, despite his promise to the pretty Westbury girl Mary, he had surrendered to his old vice. I could not feel angry with him for I judged that he had richly earned a reward.