Warlord(37)

‘He gave me a few manors, yes, and you the rich manor of Clermont-sur-Andelle, as I recall,’ Robin’s tone was icy. ‘But your Clermont and the Norman manors that Richard has given over to me are presently occupied by the enemy; all of them are in the eastern part of the Duchy and are now under the control of Philip’s men. Nary a penny will either of us see from those gifts until the French are beaten. Richard gave us both rewards that we must fight in his cause to claim. That is largesse with rather large strings attached to it, don’t you agree? So I believe that I am entitled to a little taste of honey when I secure some trifling payment from a pack of shifty merchants who have been thoroughly disloyal to their rightful lord.’

Robin was genuinely angry now, but I could only tell by the cool, reasonableness of his tone – and the dangerous glitter in his eyes. I had no wish to argue further with my lord over this matter, and so I bowed and bade him a good day. As I turned to leave the tent, I caught a glimpse of an object moving very fast out of the corner of my eye. I whirled to face Robin, and something large, hard and round smashed into my chest. I only just managed to grasp it, rocking back on my heels in surprise.

‘That is your share, by the way,’ said Robin drily and I looked down into my hands and saw that I held a heavy, bulging linen sack, the round outline of silver coins clearly visible through the thin material.



You may call me a hypocrite – and I shall surely have to answer for it on the Day of Judgment – but I kept that money: five pounds of mint-bright silver pennies. It was half what the manor of Westbury yielded in a whole year! I could make excuses, such as I needed it to pay for new weapons, saddlery and tack, or that my clothes had been worn by hard travel and needed replacing. But the truth is I wanted to have it: like Robin, I was not immune to the lure of Mammon. I shared a little of it with Hanno and gave a few shillings to Thomas – but the rest I wrapped in an old sheepskin and stuffed guiltily into my saddlebag.





Chapter Seven



King Richard was delighted with the ‘gift’ that Robin had squeezed from the Tourangeaux – and no royal notice was taken of the fact that my lord had appropriated a fat slice of it. So the King was well pleased with us, and as a mark of his approval he made the Locksley men his honour guard and reserve force in the engagement two days later, when he assaulted the formidable castle of Loches. He stayed only one night at Tours, lodging with the mutton-headed Roger and, as promised, there were celebrations, rose-petals strewn and monks singing Hosannas at his arrival. The very next day, Richard rose long before dawn and marched his army the thirty-odd miles south-east to Loches.

The castle, which stood on the borders of the counties of Berry, Touraine and Poitou, was the eastern gateway to Richard’s continental lands. It barred the path along the Loire Valley, denying that route to the King of France and his vassals who held the lands to the east. Loches was famous for its massive, thick-walled keep, and had the reputation for being almost impossible to take by force. It was only occupied now by the French troops because Prince John had cravenly given it away to Philip as part of a secret deal they had made together when they were united against Richard. Sancho of Navarre’s men – a strong force of a hundred knights and a hundred and fifty crossbowmen – had been besieging the castle for more than a week, but Lord Sancho himself had been suddenly called away to the south, across the Pyrenees, to his father’s deathbed. His remaining men had neither the will nor necessary heavy equipment to capture Loches in his absence. The Spanish troops had surrounded the castle and prevented anyone from entering or leaving it – but there had been little else they could do. With King Richard’s arrival, all that was about to change.

To my mind, Loches was the very opposite of the castle of Verneuil, with its weak, stubby, crumbling keep and strong outer walls, which I had defended so successfully only ten days before. Loches had a huge, oblong, immensely strong stone keep about eighty foot long and forty foot wide, and soaring up more than a hundred feet into the air with a slight taper towards the top. It loomed over the rest of the castle, completely dwarfing it – the rest consisting of a twenty-foot-high stone curtain wall, only two-foot thick but studded with half a dozen round towers and surrounding the usual timber buildings: stables, a forge, bakeries, cook-shacks, barracks and so on. There was a large stone church in one corner of the castle bailey, and a chapter house – for this mighty fortress had been built around an ancient monastery. To the east of the castle flowed the slow River Indre, which through time immemorial had protected its flank from attacks coming out of the territory of the kings of France.