I do find it touching, if utterly bewildering, to watch Marie and Osric together: she so happy and girlish; he a great blundering mole-faced booby. Under my brows, I observe their tender glances, the way they fondle each other’s hands and arms, discreetly, whenever possible. It reminds me of my own first true love, of the first time I felt that breathtaking, swooping feeling, the hollow-ness in my chest in the presence of my beloved, the soaring joy at her smile, and the physical ache at her absence. I think, foolish old man that I am, that I’m in truth a little jealous of their happiness.
When I talk of my own first love, I do not, of course, mean with Reuben’s daughter Ruth, God rest her soul. I knew her only for a few days, in extraordinary, appalling circumstances, and if I felt any long-lasting emotions over her death, the uppermost one was guilt. I had liked her, admired her beauty and, wanting to play-act the chivalrous knight, promised to guard her life with my own. I broke my promise. In the months that followed I felt a huge pressing sense of guilt at her death, like a lead cope around my shoulders — and a wheeling flock of unanswerable questions circled inside my head: what if I had been quicker with my sword? Should I have fled the bailey of York Castle when I did? Would it have been more honourable to have stayed and died with her? I felt a little spike of hatred, too — for Robin. I fully believed that he could have saved her had he chosen to, though it would probably have meant abandoning Reuben to his doom.
I spoke to my solid friend Tuck on our return to Bradfield, at length and in private. Or as private as one can be in a castle packed with four hundred men all busily preparing for a long campaign.
‘He’s a deeply practical man,’ Tuck said to me after I had told him the story and revealed my feelings of shame, guilt and anger. We were sitting side by side on a great wooden coffer in the gloomy north-east corner of St Nicholas’s church. ‘And there is not much room in his heart for sentimentality. He sees that something needs to be done and he does it, regardless of the cost to himself or anyone else. As we both know well, he can be utterly ruthless.’
There were a handful of archers standing near the font while the priest, an innocuous but slightly silly man named Simon, blessed their bows with holy water before our departure for war, but the men were out of earshot. ‘And you must ask yourself, Alan — honestly — what would have been achieved by saving the girl?’ the monk said. I looked at Tuck, in confusion. Surely saving the girl, or any human life, was a noble end in itself?
‘I mean, if you take the longer view,’ he said. He had the good grace to drop his eyes, but he struggled on despite his evident feelings of shame: ‘By saving Reuben, Robin preserved this army. Without Reuben’s Jewish friends in Lincoln, who have since lent us a dragon’s hoard of silver, we would not be able to leave for France next month to join in the Great Pilgrimage to save the Holy Land. If he had saved the girl, but lost Reuben, well, without wages our soldiers here would slip away back to their homes, or take to the forests as footpads, and the army would have disintegrated; Robin would have disappointed King Richard, disobeyed him in truth. He would be out of favour; he might even have been outlawed again for dereliction of duty. No, as you have described it, with so many enemies about him, and so little time, he was bound to save Reuben
…’
I glared stonily at the floor. Tuck remained quiet for a while and then he said: ‘Remember that, even when we can’t see it or understand it, Almighty God always has a plan, Alan. Perhaps this poor girl had to die so that Robin might lead his men to recapture holy Jerusalem for the True Faith.’
I could see the point Tuck was making, although I did not want to acknowledge it; and I still felt a knot of anger in my gut at the seemingly easy way Robin had made up his mind to sacrifice the girl.
‘Tell me honestly, Tuck,’ I said at last, ‘will Ruth be received by Our Lord Jesus Christ in Heaven. Surely she was an innocent soul?’
Tuck sighed, a long low exhalation like the last breath of a dying man; then he looked up at me, his kindly, nut-brown gaze meeting mine. ‘I fear not,’ he said finally. ‘She was a Jew and, as Our Lord has taught us, the only way to find a place in Heaven is through His grace.’ I looked away from Tuck, tears pricking my eyes, and found I was staring at a great painting of Christ on the Cross on the church wall, a beautiful image of the Saviour suffering and dying for our sins. I was grateful that Tuck had not lied to me. Then, to my surprise, he went on: ‘But God is ineffable and all merciful, Alan, and his forgiveness is boundless. In His wisdom, He may perhaps see fit to take her to His bosom.’
I was comforted by his words. Christ preached love — and how could he fail to show His love to one who was so clearly an innocent, slaughtered by fiends possessed by the Devil.
We rode out of Kirkton on the last day of April, heading for Southampton to take ship to Normandy. Robin rode at the front of a long double line of horsemen, a hundred and two men strong, each clad in newly burnished chainmail and square-topped, riveted steel helmet, and armed with big kite-shaped shield, a sword and a twelve-foot lance. Beside Robin rode Sir James de Brus, the cavalry commander, scowling as usual and grumbling to himself as he twisted in the saddle and surveyed the ranks of our mounted men-at-arms. Behind the cavalry came the archers, one hundred and eighty-five men carrying long bowstaves, full arrow bags and short swords, laughing and joking but walking briskly in the spring sunshine. They were Owain’s pride and joy, men selected by him for their strength and skill with a war bow, who as the grizzled Welsh captain boasted, ‘could put a bodkin point between a man’s eyes at a hundred paces, and another in his belly before he fell to the ground’.
Next came the baggage train, ten big wagons pulled by huge, slow-moving oxen, and loaded impossibly high with food, wine, ale, tents, clothing, horse gear and extra weapons. Four of the ox wagons carried only arrow shafts, in bundles of a dozen, piled high and lashed tight to each lumbering wooden vehicle. Last of all came the rear-guard, ninety-three leather-jacketed spearmen commanded by Little John, with sixteen-foot broad-headed weapons, sharp hand axes in their belts and their old-fashioned round shields slung on their backs. They were responsible for the safety of the baggage train, and for driving the herd of sheep that would feed us en route, and they had orders to move at their own pace rather than try to keep up with the main body of Robin’s men.
Our mood was high as a hunting falcon: we were setting off on a noble task, doing God’s work and with the prospect of adventure, glory, loot and loose women ahead of us, and the promise of Heaven for any who died in battle. There wasn’t a soldier among us who did not feel proud to be part of our company. Swept up in the excitement of our leave-taking, I had temporarily forgotten that I was angry with Robin; the shade of Ruth grew fainter and I rode behind him and Sir James with the glorious sense of a great and exciting journey begun.
Joy, though, was not universal. Beside me rode Reuben. He seemed to have aged ten years since the terrible days at York Castle, and if I am honest, though he was only in his middle thirties, he was beginning to look like an old man, his lean brown face cut with fresh deep lines of grief. Robin had persuaded him to join us on this great mission to the Holy Land as our treasurer and Robin’s personal physician, and Reuben, perhaps because he was too dispirited to argue, had consented to accompany us and look after the financial matters of Robin’s army, and to tend to my master’s health. He told me in a dull voice that now that his daughter was dead, he had nothing in England to hold him here, and he longed to see his desert homeland once more before he grew too old. He rarely spoke now, and when I looked over into his red-eyed face as we rode along that spring morning, I realised that once again he had been weeping, and I felt a twinge of my old guilt.