As the sun dipped behind the hills to the west, much of the town was ablaze, blood and wine flowed in the gutters and bodies littered the streets. Drunken men-at-arms blundered through the burning town, naked steel in hand, tripping over their own feet and snarling at shadows, looking for unmolested houses to pillage, women to rape, another barrel of wine to broach. More often than not, the drunken man-at-arms or archer would collapse unconscious in a doorway, all his lusts slaked — and a good few had their throats cut by morning by locals seeking revenge for daughters deflowered, sons cut down before their own hearths and property destroyed or stolen. Fear and death stalked the fire-splashed darkness, as the citizens cowered in their cellars, or hid behind barred, even nailed-shut doors and prayed for the nightmare to end. But dawn was a long way off, and the desires of Richard’s victorious men were far from satisfied.
King Richard and his household knights, including my master Robin, had ridden to Hugh de Lusignan’s house. He was quite safe, firmly barricaded in a strong two-storey stone building with a score of well-armed men to protect him, and the bodies of a dozen Griffons at his door. After ceremonially embracing Hugh — the King had, after all, ostensibly attacked Messina to come to his defence — Richard withdrew back to the monastery on the hill with his household knights to bandage their scrapes and enjoy a victory feast together. Robin, rather reluctantly I believe, accompanied his liege lord; he was obliged to, in truth. But I had the strong feeling that he would have preferred to do a little lucrative plundering in the burning town. Little John had long disappeared, presumably in search of merriment and valuables, and I was left alone, walking Ghost up a narrow street, stepping around the bodies, heading towards the Jewish quarter. I wanted to be sure that Reuben was unharmed. Although I knew he could take care of himself, I was uneasy with memories of the last blood-crazed mob of fanatics I had encountered in York.
I rode slowly past a dark side street, and glancing into it, I saw a knot of men-at-arms, perhaps a dozen or so, shoving and squabbling excitedly. There was a woman on the floor and some ruffian was covering her, while the others waited to take their turn. I paused, and half of my mind wanted me to go to her, save her, and drive off those drunken beasts. But I was alone, and they were a dozen violent men. I hesitated, like a craven coward. Was it my duty to save that poor woman? She was a legitimate prize of war, an enemy. My own King wanted her punished. I remembered something that Robin had said to me the year before. I had not understood it at the time, although I thought about it often since then. He had said: ‘Right and wrong is rarely simple. The world is full of evil folk. But if I were to rush about the earth punishing all the bad men that I found, I would have no rest. And, if I spent my entire life punishing evil deeds, I would not increase the amount of happiness in this world in the slightest. The world has an endless supply of evil. All I can do is to try to provide protection for those who ask it from me, for those whom I love and who serve me.’
He had told me this only a few hours before he had ordered that a captive brigand, an evil fellow called Sir John Peveril, be strapped to the earth of a woodland glade and have three of his limbs chopped off in cold blood in front of his ten-year-old son. The man Peveril lived, I was told, if you can call him a man after that: he was just a trunk, a head and one arm. My master let the boy live, too; not out of kindness or mercy but to spread the tale of this horror.
I now understood what Robin meant by his little speech about right and wrong: that woman was nothing to me, so why should I risk my neck to save her? But I also knew what the right thing to do would have been. I knew what a truly chivalrous knight would have done. Sadly, the coward in me was too strong and, as I argued right and wrong with myself, Ghost sensibly walked on past the alley, and I surrendered to my weaker side and rode on by, cursing my own cowardice.
When I reached the house where Reuben had taken lodgings, I saw that there was nobody at home. The place was heavily boarded up and not a chink of light escaped from the shutters into the dark street. Reuben, probably sensing trouble, had evidently abandoned the town for some other safer place. While I was worrying about him, I thought bitterly, and braving the streets of a blood-drunk town, he was probably playing dice in some snug shelter north of Messina with Robin’s men — and no doubt winning.
I turned Ghost back towards the main gate of the town. As so often after a battle, I felt a sense of melancholy. I was tired, my foot, where the boot had taken a sword blow, was aching, and I couldn’t stop thinking about the girl being repeatedly raped by a dozen lust-crazed men. Then, just as I was passing a wide wooden two-storey house with the door smashed to kindling and hanging from its hinges, I heard a long, drawn-out scream of fear. It was a woman’s voice, a young woman, I believed, and she was in mortal terror. I stopped Ghost this time, and she screamed again, a long rising howl of utter dread. Then I heard a man laugh, an evil gloating sound, and a jest shouted to someone else.
Without allowing myself to think this time, I got down from Ghost’s back, tied him to a post, drew my sword and entered the house.
It was the dwelling of a rich man, clearly. The large front room with its high ceiling, which had once been a fine chamber, had been completely ransacked. By the moonlight that spilled through the open shutters in front window, I could see that ornate furniture, smashed, was scattered about the place, priceless hangings had been torn down from the walls, and there was a strong smell of wine and excrement — someone had recently relieved themselves in that plush chamber and I guessed that it was not the owner. In the dim light, I could just make out the corpse of a very fat man, richly dressed and lying in a black puddle at one side of the room. I ignored the body and threaded my way through the detritus of his house, towards the rear of the building. I heard the scream again, but this time it ended abruptly in a hideous bubbling gurgle. It sounded exactly like a woman having her throat cut.
I stepped through a doorway into an open-air courtyard that was brightly lit by a pair of torches fixed to beckets on the wall. And I saw that I had walked into a slaughter yard. The stone floor was literally running with blood, trickles of the liquid oozing between the cobbles, and the naked form of two young women were lying curled together on the floor, their plump white lifeless bodies resembling the carcasses of butchered pigs in the flickering torchlight. A third girl was hanging limply from an upright wooden frame in the shape of an X. It was a whipping frame, I realised, and I knew I was in the slave quarters of a merchant’s house. The girl was obviously dead. Though her back was towards me I could see that her throat had been cut to the bone. And the man who killed her was standing by the whipping frame gaping at me in surprise. The girl had been whipped, stabbed through the buttocks and no doubt raped before the man had ended her life. He wore a scarlet and sky blue surcoat, spattered with her blood and the blood of her dead sisters. And he carried a long, smeared knife in his right hand.
I said no words of challenge but simply took two steps towards him and swung my sword at his head in a fast round-house cut. He desperately tried to block my strike with his gore-smirched dagger, and it saved my blade from burying itself in his skull, but then I stepped in towards him and smashed the iron pommel of my weapon into his mouth, shattering teeth, smearing lips and dropping the man to the floor. He stared up at me, as I stood over him, and he just had time to scream through his broken mouth, ‘My lord, help me!’ in English before I plunged the sword point down hard into his throat and silenced his voice for ever.
I stood away from him. In my black fury, I could have hacked his dead body into morsels — but I managed to control myself. I had done murder, although I did not regret it for a moment, and I knew I must leave this place as quickly as possible. King Richard had vowed that he would execute anyone who killed a fellow pilgrim: on the voyage from Marseilles, he had had a murderer tied to his dead victim and thrown into the sea to perish. I cocked my head to one side: could I hear singing coming from somewhere? It must be my imagination. As I looked around the courtyard before making my departure, I noticed a fourth girl, bound and gagged and crouching naked in the corner of the space by a shadow-dappled whitewashed wall. She was so still and white, she almost seemed part of the wall. But when I went to her, I saw that eyes were huge and dark with horror, and her hair was a slick of shining black down her naked back almost to her tiny waist. Even terrified as she was, and in that place of blood and pain and death, I saw that she was beautiful; extraordinarily beautiful. But she had seen me kill the man-at-arms. She was a witness. A thought flashed across my mind: I knew what Robin would do in these circumstances; she was a witness to a capital crime, she would have to die. In our outlaw days in Sherwood, Much the miller’s son had once killed an innocent page boy because he was a witness to a murder Little John had committed. Much even boasted about it until I told him I would shut his mouth for him, if he did not. So I knew what Robin, in his ruthlessness, would advise me to do. But I was not Robin.