Warlord (Outlaw 4) (47 page)

‘Next year,’ said Richard jovially, ‘next year, Blondel, we shall take Gisors, and once that is back in our hands, the whole of the Vexin shall be mine. Next year, God willing, I shall regain my entire patrimony from that French thief.’

I had been entertaining the King and his senior barons in the
audience room at Château-Gaillard, and when the rest had retired the King had asked me to stay behind and play something solely for him. There was but one choice: ‘My Joy Summons Me’ – a piece that I had played under the walls of Ochsenfurt in Bavaria and, by his response to it, from a high cell in one of the towers of the city, I had located my captive King when he was in the hands of his mortal enemy Duke Leopold of Austria.

I had expected the King to join me in singing some of the verses – after all, he had written the alternate ones – but while I played my vielle and sang, he stayed mute, watching me with his eyes half-closed, a smile on his lips. When I had finished, he repeated one of the verses, the third one that I had written, quietly in his normal speaking voice:

‘
A lord has one obligation

Greater than love itself

Which is to reward most generously

The knight who serves him well
…’

We sat in silence for a moment and then my King said: ‘Well, Blondel, you have served me well – I cannot deny that. You served me well in the German lands, and at Nottingham, and at Verneuil, too – and the Marshal tells me that you were the first man over the wall at Milly. Tell me truly, have I been a generous lord to you?’

I did not hesitate for a moment. ‘Yes, sire,’ I said.

‘Your master, my lord of Locksley, does not seem to think I am a generous lord. He complains that the lands I have given him are in French hands, and says that he will never live to enjoy them. What say you?’

I thought about Clermont-sur-Andelle, now destroyed. ‘We all live by the fortunes of war, sire, and the will of God. I think He does not mean me to enjoy Clermont.’

‘That is a good answer, Blondel,’ said my King, and he laughed. ‘When this war is over you shall have more and better lands to compensate you for Clermont – or if you choose, I shall give you the necessary silver to repair the ravages done to it.’

I bowed my head. ‘That is most generous, sire,’ I said. And I meant it. But the King was still speaking: ‘Robert of Locksley, however, does not feel that I have been open-handed. Now that the truce has been signed, he has requested that I allow him to leave my side and go off on some sort of treasure hunt – I do not fully grasp the details, but it seems he wishes to go to the Duke of Burgundy’s lands in pursuit of some fantastical object of miraculous provenance and exceedingly great value. And I am not minded to refuse him.’

The Grail
, I thought, with no little shock.
Robin is seeking the Grail
. But the King was still in mid-flow. ‘Locksley too has served me well and I must grant him this request. However, it does mean that I cannot spare you. I cannot have all my knights departing before the ink is dry on the treaty. Some must remain to garrison the castles or, truce or no truce, Philip will be beating down all the doors in Normandy. I know that you had wished to return to England to marry your sweetheart – a commendable desire, I am sure; my mother the Queen has met the lady concerned and tells me that she is a most beauteous, mild and charming creature’ –
not when her anger is roused
, I thought privately, but said nothing – ‘and I understand that she is an orphan, and a ward of the Countess of Locksley. Therefore, I propose that, with your agreement, when we have pushed Philip out of these lands, I should give the lady in marriage to you – with a suitable dowry, of course, of, say, a hundred pounds in silver!’

The King searched my face, and I could see that he was enjoying the look of surprise and joy he saw on it. A hundred pounds in silver – it was a great fortune, without a doubt; I could rebuild Clermont, if I wished, or purchase a far bigger, richer manor in England. But there was more.

‘I want you here at Château-Gaillard,’ said the King, ‘holding the place for me as the Constable. I shall be coming and going, but you will have the responsibility in the next few months for my fair castle on the rock. Will you do that for me, Blondel?’

I would be the Constable of the greatest castle in Normandy, a position of vast honour and responsibility – and all that the King desired in exchange was that I postpone my wedding for a while. I bowed once again, and said: ‘You are truly a most generous lord.’

I found Robin in his chamber in the north tower reading from a leather-bound book, seated at a table piled high with parchments and scrolls. I knocked and entered and Robin barely glanced up from his book but waved a hand vaguely at a tray on a sideboard with a flagon of wine on it and several cups. I poured myself a drink and one for Robin too and waited patiently while he finished the page he was reading.

‘What did he offer you?’ my lord said, laying down the book. I was slightly taken aback by Robin’s bluntness.

‘A hundred pounds in silver and the post of Constable of this castle.’

‘Constable, that’s good. Did he say when he would give you the silver?’

‘He offered to give Goody to me in marriage – and to let me have the money as a dowry. When we have retaken all Normandy, he will personally bless our union.’

Robin grinned. ‘That’s our Richard. He would always rather promise money to be paid at some future date than hand over the cash here and now. But well done, Alan!’

I said nothing for a few moments. Then: ‘So you are going to Burgundy?’

‘Yes, I’m going to see this fellow’ – he tapped the book in front of him – ‘Robert de Boron, a knight who serves the Seigneur de Montfaucon. Reuben knows him, apparently – our friend has
excellent connections down there – and has arranged a meeting in Avignon, which is close by.’

‘What’s the book about?’

‘It’s about Joseph of Arimathea, that blessed man who entombed the crucified body of Our Saviour Jesus Christ.’

I gave Robin a look, and he stared straight back at me, his expression grave and humble. I knew that look: Robin was trying to appear sincere. I could not help myself: I laughed. Robin joined me, chuckling and shaking his head.

‘You know why I’m going,’ he said, ‘don’t you?’

‘You want the Grail.’

He nodded.

‘In God’s name, why?’

‘I can’t fully explain. I’ve been thinking about it almost constantly since you first mentioned it to me. I could tell you that it is the most fabulous treasure in the world, an object worth a county at least, and that’s why I want it. I could say that I long to possess the vessel that Christ drank from and which held his sacred blood – but I think you would laugh at me again. I could say that owning it would make me the most powerful man in Christendom; and that taking it away from a gang of renegade Templars would give me enormous satisfaction. I could say that I have had enough of Richard’s endless petty wars and I need a new and better task to fulfil me. And all of that would be partially true. But the honest answer is, I want it, I want it with all my heart – and I will have it.’ Robin’s eyes were shining with a passion I’d not seen in years.

‘You realize that it is probably just an old bowl?’

‘That may well be. Still, I must have it.’

‘So what are your plans?’

‘I’m heading south – tomorrow, actually. I am going to Avignon to meet this Robert de Boron. He writes with authority on the Grail, and I am sure he must know more than he has written. After that, I will go on to stay with Reuben in Montpellier, then
through the county of Toulouse towards the Pyrenees. I’m not sure where the trail will lead. We will see what I can discover. The scraps of evidence that I have managed to gather’ – he waved a hand at the piles of parchment on the table – ‘all seem to indicate that the legends began down there. And the Master was originally from those parts, too, if I recall rightly.’

‘You make it sound like a pilgrimage,’ I said.

‘And perhaps it is,’ said Robin.

‘So you leave tomorrow?’

‘Yes, I’m taking Little John with me, and twenty men as a body-guard – but the rest I’m leaving with you. Can you manage them? I gather there was some … difficulty at Milly.’

I frowned. The Locksley men’s hesitation in that escalade was still a sore memory.

‘I’ll manage,’ I said gruffly.

‘May I give you a piece of advice? Don’t try to get them to like you. Keep them busy. Ride them hard. If any man challenges your authority, flog him half to death. If he challenges you a second time – hang him.’

I nodded again, but did not meet his eye. I still felt a little weak-kneed at the thought of hanging a man out of hand, the way my poor father had been hanged.

‘You’ll be fine. There is one thing I am worried about …’ Robin trailed off and I looked up at him, meeting his silver eyes with a touch of anxiety.

‘I am worried that you might die …’ said my lord.

‘What?’

‘I’m concerned that, with a long truce declared, you might well die – of boredom.’

And we laughed.

We had laughed together at Robin’s jest and yet, as is so often the case with drolleries, there was some scrap of truth in it. Life is dull
for a soldier in peacetime, and at times over the next few months I envied Robin and his questing in the southern lands. I took my lord’s advice about his men too, and rode them hard: patrols daily and regular arms training in the courtyard of the middle bailey, organized by Thomas. I even hanged a man – a thief who stole from his mates and whom nobody liked much anyway. I could not watch the execution, but I heard the man jeered into his grave by his fellow soldiers. I also kept the men busy at work on the surrounding lands.

As Constable of Château-Gaillard I was responsible for the manor of Andeli, which had once belonged to Archbishop Walter of Coutances. But the lands thereabouts had been much ravaged by the rough tides of war sweeping over them the past five years. And so I set my men to building bridges, occasionally borrowing a few skilled craftsmen from the walls of the castle itself – which was nearing completion – and to repairing barns and cottages that had been burned or ruined by the enemy, or in some cases by Mercadier’s foraging
routiers
. This work had several benefits: firstly it kept the soldiers busy and fit during that rain-swept autumn and winter, although we did stop work for a week in December when the land was blanketed by the first falls of snow; secondly our improvements increased the value of the manor, and so pleased King Richard. Lastly it made me feel more comfortable in myself, as I felt I was making some amends to the destruction that my fellow warriors had wrought on the land, and that God was looking down on my actions with approval. I was busy myself, and while I missed Goody and took pains to write to her regularly, having charge of a great castle meant that I had no leisure to mourn the postponement of our marriage. After a tolerably hard winter, when spring finally came I had the men out in the fields with the local villeins, helping to sow the seed for the new season’s crops.

The King came and went with a small group of his closest household knights – and on each visit he brought with him a
fevered sense of urgency, as if there were never enough hours to accomplish all that he had a mind to do; he did not come as often as I would have liked, for he had much business in Rouen but also found time to journey further south and visit his lands in Maine and Anjou. But whenever he visited, I found my heart lifted by his good cheer and boundless energy.

I saw almost nothing of Mercadier, who was based permanently in the south, except for one brief visit in March, when we observed chilly civilities at dinner and avoided each other as much as possible. William the Marshal and his men came to Château-Gaillard twice, and I had a suspicion that he was checking to see that all was well. But if he was overseeing me, he must have been satisfied that I was undertaking my role competently and there was no immediate cause for alarm.

The truce was largely observed all the way through until the early summer of the Year of Our Lord eleven hundred and ninety-eight – but if there was no actual warfare there was no let-up in the political battle. The Marshal told me that the King had persuaded the Count of Boulogne to join his side, which meant that we were even more strengthened in the north; and wily old Geoffrey of the Perche finally came back into the fold, among other barons that held land on Philip’s borders.

But the French King was playing the same diplomatic game: he made an alliance with Philip of Swabia, a German magnate, in which they both swore an oath to aid each other in war against Richard, and, in Aquitaine, he managed by means of a vast bribe to seduce Viscount Aimar of Limoges, Richard’s unruly vassal, to his side.

This news, delivered to me by the Marshal, filled me with concern for Robin who would have passed through the turncoat’s lands. Now that Aimar had revealed himself as an enemy of our King, I was concerned that Robin might be captured and held for ransom. But a week later I received a much travel-stained
letter from the Earl of Locksley himself, informing me that he had met Robert de Boron and talked long into the night with him and that he was safely in Montpellier, in the County of Toulouse, Richard’s new southern ally, and staying at Reuben’s sumptuous house in the centre of that ancient and most civilized city.

Robin was careful in his letter not to openly mention the Grail – he called it ‘the bowl’, a reference to our last conversation before his departure from Château-Gaillard – but he said that he had learned much about the origins of ‘the bowl’ and had encouraging news about its whereabouts, and also the whereabouts of ‘a masterful old friend of ours from our time in Paris’.

When I read these words, I felt a sudden chill, like a cold draught of air. I had not troubled myself with thoughts of the Master for many months. He had seemed phantom-like; a dream figure beyond the grasp of my waking mind. But Robin’s words kindled something inside me and I found myself clutching the parchment letter and suddenly trembling with a rage too long suppressed. My heart was thumping in my chest; my palms were damp. Thomas was with me at the time, we were going over a list of the castle’s stores together, but when he asked what ailed me, I could not tell him and merely said it must be the beginning of a summer ague.