Nur. I felt a shiver run down my spine at the mention of her name. Nur, once the most beautiful, exquisite girl I had ever seen, had been my lover on the Great Pilgrimage to Outremer. I had sworn to protect her, but had failed. My enemies had taken her and destroyed her beauty, cutting away her nose and lips and ears, and leaving her alive, a monstrous mockery of her once-lovely self. I had not protected her, neither had I continued to love her after her awful mutilation. And her love for me had turned to hate: she had followed me, alone, on foot, all the way home from the Holy Land, becoming wild and mad and richer in malice with every step, and she had burst into my betrothal feast and cursed Goody and myself in front of hundreds of guests. And yet Goody, my fiery, passionate Goody, had rebutted her curse and had beaten her to within an inch of her life before expelling her from the hall. And now Nur wanted revenge for all the humiliations inflicted on her. Suddenly the breeze seemed to blow cold.
‘Alan! Listen to me,’ said my lord. ‘I have sent a dozen good men to Westbury as a garrison, and Marie-Anne and Tuck to keep Goody company there. She is safe, among good friends, surrounded by guards, and that poor, mad, bedraggled creature can do nothing to hurt her. Alan – trust me on this. Goody is perfectly safe!’
I prayed that Robin was right.
It took us more than a week to travel down to Tours, and while we encountered no enemies of any significance, it was still a busy time for me. One evening, bone-weary and lying in my blankets in camp, I reckoned that I must have travelled ten times the distance of a knight riding with the King’s household, for I was constantly galloping back and forward, ferrying messages between Richard and the Earl of Locksley. I had come to the conclusion that Robin was right about Goody. She had proven herself more than a match for Nur at my betrothal feast; and Tuck, a man of God, would easily be able to counter any magical nonsense the deformed madwoman might concoct. She was safe, spiritually and physically. And I was comforted.
I was riding Ghost, my grey gelding, one day, to allow the courser to rest, and had a message from Robin for the King in my saddlebag, when I heard the sound of screaming on the still June air. Hanno and I reined up simultaneously, and Thomas, who had been riding some twenty yards behind us, clattered up and stopped his mount to my right. We were passing through a wide, shallow valley, a sheep pasture with a stream trickling down from a spring to the east and heading away south. The rutted earth road we were on ran straight through the centre of the valley. The three of us sat in silence for a moment, and then a hideous wail of agony split the morning once again. It seemed to be coming from a small shrine – a one-roomed wooden-framed building no bigger than a cottage but with a tall cross on the roof ridge – built beside the spring, halfway up the side of the valley. I had ridden past this place the day before and had assumed that it was deserted. Now I could see a thread of smoke coming from behind the building and four horses tethered to a rail at the front of it.
Another scream wrenched at our ears. And I thought, A wise man, knowing he had an important message to deliver to his King, would just ride on by …
Hanno and I approached the shrine cautiously, having told Thomas to stay back on the road and if we got into trouble to ride for the safety of the main column, which we knew to be only half a dozen miles to the north. Our blades loose in their sheaths, all senses extended, and Hanno cradling a powerful crossbow that had been spanned and loaded with a foot-long steel-tipped oak quarrel, we walked our horses around the back of the wooden building. There we came across a knot of about a dozen rough-looking men gathered around a campfire. My eyes took in many things at the same time: something of a party or feast seemed to be in progress, the men were red-faced, glowing and some had hunks of bread and meat and what appeared to be cheese in their hands, and I could see a couple of half-empty skins of wine lying on the grass. One man was asleep in the lee of the wall of the shrine, cuddling a half-eaten joint of meat.
But this was no celebration; in the centre of the group of revellers was a tight knot of men subduing a struggling bundle in brown wool – a man, and by his robe I could tell he was a monk. His feet were bare and red and blistered, and I knew with a lurch to my stomach what had been taking place here. Only one man of that company was still a-horse, gazing down on the proceedings with a crooked little smile on his lips – a mop of shaggy black hair and a deep scar diagonally across his dark face; it was Mercadier.
He looked over at me, incuriously, and slightly inclined his black head. ‘Sir Alan,’ he said in his deep, stony voice. ‘Good morning to you.’