Warlord(151)

‘Do you see him, Alan?’ said Robin.

‘I do,’ I said, gazing up at the slim, dark figure we had sought for so long.

The leader of the squad of archers, a steady man named Peter, who had fought bravely with me at Verneuil, said quietly: ‘My lord, I believe I can hit him; may I try one?’ But Robin was staring hard at the monk with a fixed, almost manic intensity. The light was poor for shooting, all the world made up only of layer upon layer of grey, and I expected Robin to refuse the archer’s request. ‘Give me your bow,’ he said, extending a hand behind him to Peter.

Robin rarely carried his own bow these days; it was after all a yeoman’s weapon and he was an earl and a senior adviser to the King. But he took the proffered bow and nocked the arrow with all his old ease and skill.

At that moment the King himself came riding along the path with two of his younger knights. He reined in without a word when he saw Robin with the drawn bow in his hands. My lord pulled the cord easily back to his ear, and loosed the arrow in one smooth movement, and the shaft leapt from the string, up, up, straight and true, flashing towards the monk on the wall; and it would have spitted him, too, except that, at the last instant, the red-headed crossbowman gave a cry and swung a large round object up between the monk’s body and the hurtling shaft. The iron point of the arrow pinged off the make-shift shield and away – I could see now that it was a large iron frying pan that had saved the Master’s life – and behind me came a loud royal shout: ‘Bravo, well done that man!’

The King, clearly in a good humour, was applauding the swift reflexes of the crossbowman, or perhaps his ingenuity in improvising an efficient shield-substitute from a kitchen implement. ‘That’s the kind of spirit I like to see in a soldier!’ He was chuckling merrily to himself, the prospect of the coming battle as ever animating his spirits.

‘Beware, sire,’ said Robin, ‘that fellow is making ready to shoot again!’

Robin was right: the Master was pointing at the King, and the redhead was leaning over the parapet, his crossbow aimed in our direction. The distance was too great for accurate shooting, but every man in that group had his shield up, held with the top rim just below his eyeline – every man, that is, except King Richard. The King sat his horse, totally unconcerned, and I saw with a jolt of alarm that he was only wearing light armour, short-sleeved with very fine iron links, the kind that we used to wear in the heat of Outremer. His stout shield, with its golden lions on a blood-red field, was slung carelessly on his back.

‘Sire!’ said Robin urgently.

‘Be at peace, Locksley,’ said the King, ‘that bold fellow at the very least deserves a clear shot at me.’

The quarrel came on as an evil black streak and, with a cold splash of fear in my stomach, I saw it strike the King on his left shoulder, penetrating deeply despite the light armour; rocking his body in the saddle from the impact.

For three heartbeats nobody moved: we were as still as rocks. I heard a faint cheer from the battlements above, then we all surged forward at once, surrounding the King, some holding up their shields to protect him against any further missiles from the castle walls others helping him gently down from the saddle of his tall horse.

‘God’s legs, that was an unlucky blow,’ muttered the King, his face white, teeth gritted against the pain. ‘Get me to my tent, Locksley – quickly now, and quietly; cover my face with your cloak, it would not do to alarm the men.’



Three days later the engineers ignited the mine under the walls of Châlus-Chabrol. Thick black smoke boiled out of the tunnel that led into the hillside, in a huge dark plume, and an hour or so later, long jagged cracks appeared in the walls above. By mid-afternoon, with a great rippling crash, a wide section of wall collapsed, leaving a gap in the defences like a missing tooth in an old man’s mouth.

We were massed below the walls, out of crossbow range, the hundred or so Locksley men and my eight Westbury lads – we had lost one poor fellow on the field at Gisors, and another who died of wounds after the battle. Robin had begged for the honour of making the first assault on the castle, and Richard from his camp-bed had agreed. Behind us were the black flags of Mercadier’s men – some two hundred of the most foul-hearted, vicious, evil-looking scoundrels in France, and led by a scar-faced villain who topped them all for cruelty. They were there to support our attack, King Richard had ordered, but this was a war hammer to crack a hazelnut – there were only about forty defenders, and the Locksley men, even if they were to suffer heavy casualties in the assault, would still easily overwhelm them. More than likely Mercadier’s men, rather than genuinely wishing to support us, merely wanted to be in at the kill to have first pick of the loot. But then Robin’s motives in volunteering his men for the attack were not exactly pure either: by the private gleam in his grey eyes, I knew he was thinking of the Grail.