Warlord(122)

Robin’s letter brought the events of my time in Paris back into my mind; it felt long ago and far away – as if those terrible occurrences had happened to another man, a stranger. I wondered idly where the Master was hiding, and whether he would surface now that his old spiritual lord was dead. But I could not bring myself to care overmuch; my time in Paris seemed like a bad dream, and one that I had no urge to recall. Hanno’s death was still a deep and painful wound, only lightly scabbed by time.

The months passed with a surprising swiftness. The Feast of the Nativity came and went, and in January I was forced to dole out grain from my store houses and open several casks of salted pork to distribute to the poorer villagers of Westbury in the harsh winter months, else they would have starved to death. But I received scant credit for my largesse. Even that cruel winter, with drifts of snow covering the iron-hard fields, was said by some to be the work of the black witch. And, of course, it was I who had rashly brought her wrath down upon our community.

Our spirits began to lift with the coming of spring, as they always did. And I began to feel restless. I thought of my friends in Normandy and began, for the first time in many, many months, to feel the pull of war.

I broached the subject with Goody after dinner one blustery March day while she was spinning wool sheared from our sheep into fine thread – a seemingly endless task – by the hearth in the centre of the hall.

‘Yes, we are rather stuck,’ she said. ‘We fear the curse too much to be married, and yet we cannot find that wretched woman either to make her lift it or, indeed, to kill her. And while she is out there somewhere, you fear that by going off to war, to do your duty as a knight to the King, you will leave me in danger. We are trapped by our fears.’

I looked at Goody with no little surprise. It was an intelligent, candid, merciless expression of our situation. And one that was absolutely true, of course.

‘So what should we do?’ I asked.

‘We must do what good men and women have always done when beset by fear. We face it, we walk up to it, nose to nose, and spit in its eye – and we do what must be done regardless of our fears. You must go to Normandy; I will pack up Westbury and go back to living with Marie-Anne in Kirkton until you return. And when you return victorious from the war, my dearest love, we shall be wed here, in our home, and to Hell with that foul bitch and all her works.’

I took her into my arms, and at that moment I loved her as much as I had ever done. It was a deep love, a love of the soul, not inspired merely by her beauty, although she was truly as lovely as the dawn, but by her courage and strength, her clear-eyed intelligence and certainty.


I departed from Westbury a month later, having spent the intervening weeks training half a dozen or so of the more adventurous local lads as men-at-arms. We had not the leisure for sophisticated teaching but by the time we left they could all wield a sword and shield with moderate competence, and hit a man-sized straw dummy with a lance in two out of three passes from the back of a galloping horse. In fact, I was pleased with my little troop. I left three of the older men-at-arms with Baldwin to help him in his duties about the manor, and the Countess of Locksley had agreed that she would send a strong party of bowmen to escort Goody to Yorkshire, when she was ready to move in with her friend at Robin’s castle. And so it was that I led ten fully equipped men-at-arms south with me that April – although the majority of the men had been farm boys the month before – and I must confess, for the first time in many, many months, my heart was light.


We took one of the ships that now regularly plied between Portsmouth and Barfleur supplying Richard’s army, and after a rough day’s passage, which was the first sea journey for most of my men, and an occasion for much grey-faced groaning and vomiting, we arrived on Norman soil. Almost the first person I saw on the quay at Barfleur was my lord of Locksley. He had been waiting for me.





Chapter Twenty-three



Robin seemed tired and thin, the skin stretched tightly over his cheekbones, but his grey eyes sparkled with pleasure as we clasped hands in greeting. He put his hands on his hips, looked me up and down and said: ‘Well met, Alan – you look like your old cheerful self again. I’m glad to have you back among us where you belong.’ And I felt the familiar glow of affection at seeing my lord.

Beyond Robin stood Little John, a blood and muck-stained bandage wrapped around half his face covering some cruel injury. ‘About bloody time, too,’ growled the big man. And then he spoiled the effect by grinning at me. ‘God’s rotting toe-rags, lad, it’s good to see you! I was worried that you had given up the noble profession of arms and decided to spend your days as a stay-at-home, wimple-wearing milk-sop.’