I summoned my wits: ‘I must say, John, it’s very good of you to finally turn up. We might have had a use for you a couple of days ago, before the battle – there was a good deal of heavy lifting to be done: boxes, bales, cauldrons of hot oil … Donkey work, of course, but it would have suited you perfectly. And I say “before the battle”; I doubt an idle fellow like you would have been much use during it.’
‘Aye, I can see you’ve had a bit of a scrap here,’ John said, looking around the battered castle, his eye fixing on the half-burnt front gate. ‘But I worry about you, Alan, I truly do. I’m not sure that you’ve got a firm grasp of proper tactics yet. It is generally not considered a sound idea to burn down your own defences. You know, I think it’s rather frowned upon by real soldiers. I can see I still have a lot to teach you.’ He shook his massive head sorrowfully, and made an infuriating tsk-tsk noise behind his big teeth.
I glared at John and opened my mouth to reply, but Robin interrupted our familiar bickering by handing me a heavy package, wrapped in sheepskin and tied with twine.
‘It’s a gift from Godifa,’ said Robin. ‘And it comes with all her love. Marie-Anne and Tuck send theirs, too.’
‘Is all well in Yorkshire?’ I asked my lord. He nodded. ‘Marie-Anne and Tuck have moved down to Westbury to be with Goody. And Marie-Anne is with child again.’ I looked at him and I could tell that he was much pleased by his wife’s condition.
‘I heartily congratulate you, my lord,’ I said formally, but with a happy smile.
‘Yes, it is good news,’ said Robin modestly. ‘I’ll tell you all the rest later. Are you not going to open your gift?’
‘I expect it’s a dozen pairs of fresh, clean braies,’ said John with an evil smirk. ‘She will know that, with all these nasty Frenchmen about, you’ll have been shitting yourself in fear like a stomach-sick goose …’
I weighed the package in my hands. Godifa, known as Goody, was my betrothed – a girl of startling beauty and immense courage, with an alarmingly violent temper, who had been raised by rough outlaws in Sherwood, and who was now attempting to learn to be a fine lady under the tutelage of Robin’s wife, Marie-Anne, Countess of Locksley.
I fumbled open the sheepskin and discovered inside a mace – a beautiful flanged mace: two-foot long with an iron-hard oak shaft and half a pound of wrought steel on the end. I had used one on the Great Pilgrimage, but lost it in battle in Cyprus. Goody knew that I prized it as a weapon, and that I missed the one I had lost. In the right hands, a mace was a fearsome killing tool. The head of the mace was covered with flat triangular pieces of steel welded in a circle around the head, the points facing outwards. It was brutally effective in battle, designed to smash bones and crush organs through a knight’s mail, but it was somehow an object of great beauty, too. I turned it over in my hands, thinking: How typical of Goody! How useful and how ungirlishly practical a gift this is. There was a scrap of parchment inside the package, and in a shaky, childish hand that I could barely make out in the gloom of the courtyard, these words were written in splotched Latin: God keep you safe, my love.
I felt a tremendous surge of emotion at those words; and I realized how much I was missing my beloved girl, my wonderful wife-to-be. I longed to be near her again, to kiss her perfect red lips, to stare into her lovely violet-blue eyes, to wrap her tightly in my arms …
‘You are probably puzzling over what it is,’ said John, crudely breaking in on my thoughts. ‘Let me enlighten you. It’s called a mace,’ he spoke the last word deliberately, as if I was a simpleton – ‘it’s a big club for hitting Frenchmen. If you are a very good boy, Uncle John will show you how to use it one day—’
‘Be quiet now, John,’ Robin said with absolute authority. He could see that I was struggling to keep my composure under the storm of emotions that were besieging my heart.
‘Owain is dead,’ I said, my throat swollen and clogged.
‘Yes, I know,’ said Robin. ‘He was the best of men.’
‘I miss him already,’ I said.
‘It’s all right, lad. We all miss him,’ said Little John.
‘Shall we go into the hall?’ said Robin, after a moment’s silence, and all I could manage was a snuffling grunt by way of an affirmative.
* * *
I performed ‘King Philip’s Folly’ for the French monarch’s royal cousin Richard the Lionheart that evening. In the castle’s small and rather shabby hall, now made as regal as possible with golden firelight and many beeswax candles, our knightly company enlivened with good wine, good meat and good cheer, I mocked the French King and made my own sovereign laugh until he wept, his white teeth flashing in the candlelight, his red-gold hair seeming to dance and sparkle with his immoderate joy.