At Kirkton, we left behind us Goody, Marie-Anne and Robin’s newly born son and heir, Hugh. The Countess of Locksley had given birth two weeks before our departure; the labour had been long, a full day closeted in her chamber with Goody, a serving maid and the wise crone from the village, with only the odd stifled moan and request for more hot water making its way through to the hall. Robin, as was his habit when his raw emotions might expect to be engaged, had remained icily calm through out the experience, waiting hour after hour in the hall, reading a scroll of romances in a large ornately carved chair, almost a throne, and occasionally summoning me to sing to him or talk of inconsequential things. He ate and drank very little and did not move from his position in the chair until Goody threw open the door of the chamber and came running out, eyes sparkling, face clay-red, shouting: ‘It’s a boy, Robin, a healthy boy. Oh, come and see. Come and meet him. He is so beautiful.’
Robin’s son was a lusty child with light blue eyes and jet black hair and the squashed face of a monkey. To me, little Hugh did not look in the slightest bit beautiful and I was puzzled at first that the child should have this colouring: Robin had light brown hair and Marie had chestnut locks. But Goody explained the facts of nature to me, as we stood together over the cradle in Robin and Marie-Anne’s chamber a day or so later.
‘Oh Alan, you men know nothing about babies’ — this was from a twelve-year-old maiden — ‘some babies are just born with black hair. I was myself, or so my mother told me. And look at me now.’ She twirled in front of me, her Saxon-blonde hair, which had been tied in two braids either side of her pink cheeks, swinging as she moved.
I reached out and took a braid in my hand as it swung past me; it was the colour of spun gold but soft as feathers. Goody snatched it back. ‘I said “look” not “touch”.’ Suddenly she was all busy-ness. ‘Now Alan, I need you out of the way, we have to make the place properly clean for the baby,’ and she shooed me briskly out of the chamber like a middle-aged goodwife dealing with an unruly schoolboy.
Travelling as part of an army is obviously a very different experience to journeying as a lone man, or as part of a small group, as I had been used to. We carried with us a sense of sprawling menace that nothing could dispel even in our own land. Shepherds would flee before us on the peaceful downs, and villagers would bar their doors and shutter their windows at our approach, even in the tranquil southern counties of England. It was not so long ago — grandfathers could clearly recall it — that, during the Anarchy of Stephen and Maud, gangs of armed men would roam the land, pillaging at will. And country folk have long memories.
But we did not despoil our own people; we had plenty of supplies, thanks to the loans of silver from Reuben’s friends, and each night when we made camp in a fallow field or common wood, we killed an animal or two and roasted the mutton and made merry. My music was in great demand. Almost every night, I would be called upon to sing and play for my supper, and I was glad to do so. I sang the old country songs, for the most part. Amusing peasant ditties about unfaithful husbands and angry wives, songs of the farmer and his beasts, or tales of great battles fought long ago by King Arthur and his knights. The cansos and sirvantes, the songs of courtly love and satirical poems that I used to sing in the halls of the nobility, were less popular with the rough soldiery. Occasionally, Robin would call his officers together and we would dine and make plans for the next few days or weeks, and at the end of our gatherings I would indulge my audience in a more sophisticated musical offering: there was one I was particularly proud of which I composed at that time. The song tells of a beautiful golden brooch, with a pin in the shape of a sword, worn by a noble lady. The brooch is in love with the domina whose breast he adorns — and guards from the touch of another lover — but of course there can never be true love between a jewel, however beautiful, and a great lady, the brooch can only ever serve his mistress, he can never possess her, but he is content with this role. Tragically, at the end of the canso, the brooch is cast away by the lady, who says she has grown tired of it, and the bright jewel rests in a deep, muddy ditch, remembering its love until Judgment Day.
You might think that my mood was particularly black when I wrote that song of talking jewellery and tragic love, but in truth, I was feeling very optimistic. My relations with Robin were more or less back to normal. I had decided to forgive him — I told myself that I must strive to be a loyal vassal and support all of his decisions, whether I agreed with them or not — and I was happy in the company with the other captains and vintenars, with the exception of James de Brus. But that was no problem: I was merely courteous and distant with the Scotsman, and he with me. And I had a new body servant, which made me feel very grand. William — the boy who had helped me steal the ruby from Sir Ralph Murdac — had been summoned from Nottingham Castle. The loyal fellow had been regularly sending verbal reports on the activities of Murdac through some mysterious network of Robin’s spies and as a reward, as we marched past Nottingham on our way south, young William had joined us as my manservant. He was a diligent lad, quick-moving and eager to please, very intelligent, though with a slight stammer, and good at anticipating my requirements. He kept my applewood vielle and its horsehair bow, a much prized gift from my old musical mentor Bernard, in a highly polished state and he was always on hand to fetch and carry. He was a grave boy, though, only smiling rarely and never up to the high jinks that I indulged in when I was his age. But I liked him, and I was glad of his service.
The one cloud in my sky was that Tuck was not accompanying us on this great adventure. Partly as a result of William’s reports — Murdac had apparently repeated his offer of a hundred pounds of silver for Robin’s head — Robin had asked Tuck to remain at Kirkton Castle to watch over Marie-Anne and the baby with his two enormous, battle-trained wolfhounds Gog and Magog. These great beasts could tear the arm off a man as easily as I could tear the leg off a boiled capon, but they were as mild as the Baby Jesus around Tuck’s friends. Robin had also left a score of bowmen, ten cavalrymen and ten veteran spearmen as a garrison. It was not enough to hold the bailey of the castle but, if attacked, as I well knew from my experiences in York, they were a big enough force to hold the strong keep.
Instead of my friend, the jolly fighting monk, we were accompanied by Father Simon, the priest of St Nicholas’s Church in Kirkton — a man I did not particularly care for, who seemed to have been born without a chin; his mouth merged seamlessly into his neck, almost as if somebody had removed his lower jaw. Father Simon held brief prayers every morning before we marched, mumbled in bad Latin and incomprehensible to the men, and on Sundays he sang Holy Mass, out of tune, I may say, for the whole army. I got the distinct feeling that he did not like Robin much; in fact, I could sometimes imagine that he hated him, although like any sensible mortal who wished to remain on this earth a while longer, he feared my master and treated him with respect.
I believe I knew why the priest disliked him: as many of the men knew, Robin had been involved in the old pagan worship of the Mother Goddess during his time as an outlaw, and although he now paid the proper homage to the True Religion of the Living Christ, his devilish past allegiances had not been forgotten. Whatever Robin felt about Father Simon in return, or privately believed, we were on a holy pilgrimage to the birthplace of Our Lord and it would have been unthinkable to travel without at least one priest. So the chinless cleric came with us.