Warlord (Outlaw 4) (20 page)

‘I understand how you feel, Robin,’ I said, evenly. I was determined to be calm about this subject, even though I found Robin’s opposition to my quest hurtful and more than a little baffling. ‘But I must resolve this mystery – or it will cost me my own life.’

‘We’ve found another one, sir,’ said one of the clerks, holding up a large sheet of parchment. ‘Robert de Dignac in correspondence with King Philip last year—’

‘Not now,’ said Robin to the clerk, but he was staring at me. ‘What do you mean, cost you your life?’

‘Those knights yesterday – the men with the blue crosses on their shields – they hunted us like wild animals. And when I offered my surrender, they would not accept it. They wanted me dead – and I would be, too, were it not for your intervention. Somebody, most probably this “man you cannot refuse” is trying to prevent me finding out about my father. Those knights of the blue cross serve this “man you cannot refuse”, I am quite certain of it, and while initially he was content with silencing those who might tell me about my father, now, it seems, he has decided to have me killed too.’

Robin put his head on one side, and half-smiled at me: ‘Mysterious
knightly assassins hunting you down? A sinister, all-powerful, “man you cannot refuse”? Are you sure this is not some addle-brained fantasy?’

‘Those knights of the blue cross wanted me dead – and not just because I was their foeman in a skirmish. They wanted me, Alan Dale, dead. Cardinal Heribert is dead; so is Father Jean – so too is poor Brother Dominic. I’m not inventing this; this is no addle-brained fantasy. I
must
go to Paris. If not, the knights may succeed at the next attempt.’

Robin gave a long sigh and stared at the floor of the tent for a while. ‘Well,’ he said finally, ‘if you can persuade the King to release you, I won’t stand in your way.’

I found the King at the horse lines, inspecting a dozen fine new warhorses that had been sent to him as a gift from Count Geoffrey of the Perche. Clearly, that wily nobleman, currently sitting up the road behind the walls of Chateâudun, and shortly expecting to give shelter to Philip’s retreating army, was sniffing the wind and attempting to assure himself of a welcome should he decide to change sides and renew his allegiance to our King.

Richard was gracious enough to receive me and listen once again to my petition to take my leave of the army. I told him that it was urgent that I speak with Bishop Maurice de Sully, who must now be an aged man, before he died. But I did not mention my uncle Thibault – having a close relative, and a rich one too, on the side of the French King might, I felt, cast some doubt on my devotion to Richard. As the Lionheart seemed in a jocular mood that morning – I even essayed a jest to sweeten my request.

‘If I may make so bold, sire, it is entirely your fault that I need to embark upon this journey. Were it not for your hasty actions in Nottingham, I would already know the name of the man who ordered my father’s death.’

The King looked at me quizzically. ‘So it is all
my
fault, is it, Blondel? How so?’

‘Well, sire, had you not ordered Sir Ralph Murdac to be hanged as a lesson to the other traitors in the castle, he would have been able to tell me the man’s name!’

The King chuckled. ‘You cannot blame me fully for that,’ he said. ‘It was at your master Robert of Locksley’s suggestion that I had the man hanged. If Robin had not bent my ear, that rascal Murdac might even be alive today. I might well have pardoned him.’ And the King laughed.

I tried to match his merriment, but I felt as if a dark storm cloud had crept over the sun. The King carried on speaking, oblivious to my sudden discomfort. ‘Well, Sir Alan, because I am an exceedingly kind and generous lord – and because I have this very morning heard that the French are seeking to negotiate a truce with us – I shall grant your request to depart, and I will go so far as to wish you luck in your quest. May you return soon to my side, wiser and more content with your place among my best men.’

I managed to make my bow, and leave the royal presence with some dignity. But my head was reeling like a drunkard’s after downing a barrel of wine.

Robin had urged the King to summarily hang Murdac! Robin had silenced Murdac and prevented him from speaking to me about the orders to kill my father. A monstrous, unthinkable idea was growing in my mind. Robin himself was the ‘man you cannot refuse’. Robert Odo, Earl of Locksley, my liege lord and master, my dear friend and mentor – Robin Hood was the man who had ordered my father’s death.

Part Two

Chapter Eleven

I have shown these pages to my grandson Alan and, while he read them without pausing and with seeming enjoyment, he is a little bemused by them, I think. He has difficulty in seeing the young warrior that I once was, valiantly defending castles for kings and skirmishing with bands of murderous knights, in the white-capped, dry stick of a man I am now. I believe that he feels I must be playing some sort of trick on him, perhaps weaving too much romance in with the truth. But he tells me that he likes the tale, so far.

‘I am glad that you went to seek vengeance for your father,’ he told me gravely. ‘That is what I would have done – it is a knight’s bounden duty to protect his honour.’

Why is vengeance so appealing, particularly to the young? There is no material reward that springs from it; a man is not richer, or healthier, or even happier as a result of it – quite often the reverse. Why does a young man’s heart beat faster at the thought of bloody vengeance taken for a hurt received? Why do we thrill at a tale of revenge? I know that we do, or at least that most men do; so many of the great lays and stories of knights and warriors are built around this idea. Is it because all men have been wronged at some point in their lives but few have
ever received just recompense for their hurts? Is that why the male heart eternally thirsts for vengeance? Perhaps.

I remember on one occasion, when I was newly come to Robin’s band of outlaws and about the same age as my grandson, my lord spoke to me of the virtue of vengeance. I had been weeping over my father’s death and Robin had spoken to me quite brutally: ‘A man does not snivel when a member of his family has been murdered,’ he said. ‘A man does not cry like a babe, seeking pity from those around him for a wrong he has suffered. He takes his revenge. He makes the guilty men, the men who took that kinsman’s life, weep in pain; he makes their widows sob themselves to sleep at night. Else he is no man.’

As a youngster, I had absorbed Robin’s simple but savage message, I had thought on it often in my private moments, and it had become part of my warrior’s creed.

‘And was the Earl of Locksley really the “man you cannot refuse”, Grandpa?’ young Alan asked, when he had finished reading the parchments. ‘And did you ever have your vengeance on him?’

‘You will have to wait until I have written my whole story down to find out,’ I told him.

‘But I must return to my duties at Kirkton tomorrow,’ said young Alan, quite cast down. I confess I was slightly pleased by his sorrowful tone; but then, what storyteller does not delight in delaying the pleasure of his audience?

‘You shall read the whole tale on your next visit to your mother – perhaps at Christmastide,’ I said.

‘That is six months or more away,’ protested the boy.

‘As a knight, you must learn to bear a vast degree of suffering without complaint,’ I said, smiling fondly at him. And young Alan, to his credit, tried very hard not to sulk.

Within an hour of receiving permission from the King, I was on the road. I was heading for Rouen, Richard’s Norman capital, and mounted on Shaitan, with Thomas on his brown rouncey
and Hanno reduced to riding a packhorse and leading a mule that bore my possessions, kit and weapons. One should not really ride a costly destrier when merely travelling, but I possessed no other horse, and I would not even contemplate taking one from Robin’s string: I felt the absence of Ghost as an ache in my heart.

I had left the army without speaking to Robin, or any of his men. I could not face him; I was almost certain that he was the ‘man you cannot refuse’ and I knew there would have been bloodshed if I had set eyes on him. My gut roiling with rage and confusion, we took the road west towards Le Mans and I ran over in my mind the workings that had made me believe that my lord, my hero, the man I looked upon as a respected older brother, had, in effect, killed my father.

King Richard’s words rang like a church bell in my head:
It was at your master Robert of Locksley’s suggestion that I had the man hanged. If Robin had not bent my ear, that rascal Murdac might even be alive today. I might well have pardoned him
.

Robin was well aware of our sovereign’s vast appetite for forgiveness – he had been pardoned himself by the King when he had had the sentence of outlawry lifted five years earlier. Did Robin fear that if Sir Ralph Murdac was not hanged he would ultimately go free? Was that why Robin urged the King to execute his enemy Ralph Murdac? Or was there some deeper reason? Did Robin secretly wish to prevent Murdac from revealing any more information to me about this ‘man you cannot refuse’ – because he himself was that very man?

I pondered what I knew about Robin’s history. Ten years ago, when my father had been ripped from this world, Robin had already been a powerful man; living outside the law, to be sure, but a much-feared warrior with a ruthless reputation for killing and mutilating anyone who stood in his way. He was then known as the Lord of Sherwood, and he held absolute if unofficial sway over a hundred thousand acres of England, from Nottingham to South
Yorkshire. But Murdac had been his hated foe. Or had he? I remembered Robin telling me a few years previously that he had once had the Sheriff of Nottinghamshire in his grasp in those days and had demanded a ransom for his life – one that Murdac had subsequently failed to pay. However, Robin had said that for a year or more after that incident, Murdac had acknowledged Robin’s authority over Sherwood, despite his outlaw condition, and had left him and his men in peace to run their larcenous affairs as they saw fit. During this unspoken truce between the two most powerful men in central England, could Robin have asked Murdac for a favour or a boon? Could the outlaw have asked the sheriff to have one insignificant peasant summarily hanged? It was possible – Robin would not shy away from ordering a man’s death, if it served his purposes. And Murdac had been the sort of creature who would have a man hanged in an eye-blink purely for his own vicious amusement. I cringed in the saddle: I knew that it was entirely possible that Robin was the ‘man you cannot refuse’. There was nothing in my master’s character – and I knew him well – that would disavow this supposition. But was it probable?

Why? I asked myself. Why would Robin seek my father’s death? They had known each other, Robin had admitted that when he and I had first met, and they had liked each other, or so he said. What could have happened between them to cause Robin to resort to making a deadly agreement with his enemy Murdac? I had no answers for that – or for the many other questions tumbling around in my head.

There was, indeed, something to my mind that seemed to strongly indicate Robin’s guilt: ever since I had told my lord that I wanted to track down my father’s killer, he had tried to discourage me from the task. He had told me on at least three occasions to let the matter lie, insisting that no good would come of my investigations. Was he protecting himself? Was he trying to prevent me from discovering that it was his secret hand that had caused my
father’s death? And there was one more thing: Robin had been present in the castle when Father Jean had been murdered at Verneuil; he was at Loches when Brother Dominic was killed; and he had been missing from the army on a private ‘scouting mission’ when Cardinal Heribert had been stabbed in his chair. Could my lord have accomplished these murders? Certainly, he was capable of them. Had he committed them? Was he even now trying to accomplish my death?

These questions chased themselves in weary circles for the next seven days, as Hanno, Thomas and myself made our way in easy stages, careful to spare Shaitan’s costly legs, on the main roads west to Le Mans and then north, through Alençon and Bernay, to Rouen. The weather was mild and cloudy but with only one rain shower during the entire journey, and we slept rough in hayricks, woods and remote barns, eschewing the company of other travellers. I was very aware that I had the best part of five pounds in silver in a broad leather money belt around my waist, the proceeds of Robin’s milking of the Tourangeaux, and now that we were away from the army, I had no small fear of meeting a well-armed gang of footpads. Large organized gangs of such lawless men infested many of the wilder regions of France, robbing and murdering unwary travellers, just as they did in parts of England. Some of these bandits were
routiers
who had grown bored with army life; others were peasants forced into outlawry by bad harvests, the ravages of war or by their own cruel lords. Some were simply evil men.

I did not want to meet any of them.

On the outskirts of Rouen, we stayed for one night in a monastery, and I discovered from one of the monks that what Richard had told me was indeed true: the French King was holding talks with King Richard’s Chancellor, William Longchamp, and a truce between the two sides now seemed to be imminent. The agreement was likely to allow each side to retain what territory it had. Both sides, the monk said, were exhausted by months of warfare;
there would be a cessation of hostilities for a long while, God be praised.

I was weighed down with fatigue myself; Richard’s hard campaigning in the south had worn me thin, and my suspicions of Robin dragged at my spirits. I could not decide what to do about them: I knew that I must avenge my father, but challenging Robin was an unthinkable prospect. I needed to know more about the events around my father’s expulsion from Paris; and that knowledge could only be obtained by travelling to that great foreign city and demanding answers from Bishop Maurice de Sully and my uncle Thibault, the Seigneur d’Alle. I vowed that I would not leave that place until I had fathomed this mystery; and, furthermore, if it proved that Robin was responsible for my father’s death – despite my long friendship for him, and all that I owed him – I would seek a fitting revenge.