After a long day tilting at the quintain, Sir James invited me to share a flask of wine with him. It was late November and the days were growing short; on that grey afternoon we sat in the monk’s refectory alone apart from a pair of knights sitting at the far end of the room playing tables, or as some call it, backgammon.
We had been discussing the tactics of the Saracen cavalry. Sir James had already made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, before it was lost to Saladin, and he had been told much about the fighting style of Turkish cavalry — apparently they were superb horsemen, whose practice it was ride up close to their enemies, shoot arrows at them from horseback and then ride away swiftly — when Nur appeared at our table bringing bread and cold meat to go with the rather fine wine that Sir James had provided.
Brus scowled at her, but then he scowled at everybody, it was just his habitual expression. But Nur seemed afraid of him and stepped closer to me. Then she noticed a loose thread on my tunic, and with a classically feminine gesture, she tugged it away from the cloth and then smoothed the material down again over my shoulder.
I wasn’t paying attention to Nur, for once. I was watching Sir James and thinking about how one could defeat Saracen cavalry, and I saw his mouth fall open in surprise. When Nur had left, he leaned forward. And said to me in a low voice: ‘I beg your pardon, Alan, if I am being impertinent, but is that lovely lassie your bed-partner?’
I blushed, and said, ‘Of course not. She is not a common whore. She is a good girl, a young servant who I am helping to return to her family in the Holy Land.’
‘But you do ken that she’s in head over heels love with you?’ Sir James continued, ‘I mean, it stands out a mile.’
I was struck speechless. It had genuinely not occurred to me that my feelings for Nur might be reciprocated.
Sir James seemed to realise that he had stepped into marshy ground and he began to talk at random to give me time to recover myself.
‘I knew a beautiful lass like that once, well not as beautiful as her, and she loved me, too, but I had a rival for her affections,’ he said. ‘It was back in Scotland, oh, years ago, but I remember her face well. Dorothea, or Dotty, was her name…’
I wasn’t really listening. I wanted to run after Nur and grab her by the arms and demand to know if she loved me or not. Instead, I managed to control myself and said distractedly: ‘Is that why you left Scotland? For love?’
‘Ach no, nothing so fine. It was just a killing. I killed a Douglas, and if you kill a Douglas you need to watch yourself because they’ll all be coming after you, the whole boiling pot of them looking for revenge. They are as bad as the Murdacs for vengeance, but then, of course, the Murdacs would be on our own side.’
‘What happened?’ I asked, my curiosity aroused in spite of myself.
‘It was just a grubby squabble in an ale-house in Annandale, but tempers flew and swords were drawn, and before I knew it young Archie Douglas was dead at my feet. I went to the castle see the chief of the Brus himself, my uncle Robert, to find out what could be done about the matter, and he was sympathetic, right enough. He was no stranger to an accidental killing himself. And so he gave the Douglases a blood price — wee Archie wasne worth all that much, he was a wastrel and a drunkard, and the Brus was a rich man, but as part of the agreement to save a feud breaking out between our two clans, he had to send me away. The Earl of Huntingdon, who was staying at the castle at the time and who is kin to the Countess of Locksley, suggested that I join Robin’s cavalry and help whip them into shape. And, I’ll tell you this Alan, I’m glad I did. I’ve never been happier since I joined this crew of scruffy layabouts.’ He gave me one of his horrible screwed up smiles again — and I realised that I believed him. He was happy; the scowling and the ferocious demeanor was just his way of disguising his feelings, of protecting himself and his dignity from over-familiarity.
‘What was that you said earlier about the Murdacs,’ I asked.
‘Oh they’re worse than the very Devil himself for vengeance,’ said Sir James. ‘Cross a Murdac and there’ll be murder for sure, as we say at home.’
‘You said something about them being on your side?’
‘Oh aye, my mother was a Murdac; she was the daughter of Sir William Murdac of Dumfries and Mary Scott of Liddesdale. But, of course, her father, Mary’s that is, was a damned Douglas from Lanarkshire…’
I was only listening to him with half an ear, I had other, more urgent things on my mind: I needed to know how Nur felt about me, and for that I needed to be able to speak to her.
I found Reuben in the old town, back at his comfortable lodgings at the Jewish merchant’s home. After a good deal of cajoling, he agreed to teach me the rudiments of Arabic; we would have a lesson every day, and we would start the next day. I could have asked Reuben to act as an interpreter but was determined that I would be able to speak to Nur myself, and divine for myself her true feelings for me. At a moment of tender love, I did not want another man coming between us.
I rode back from the old town and my meeting with Reuben in high spirits: but when I reached the monastery I found the place stricken with terror. The Devil was abroad, one old soldier who guarded the gate whispered to me; and he had laid his red claw on the Earl of Locksley.
It was true that Robin was gravely ill, near death, and had been laid out in his bed, pale and streaked with his own vomit — but I did not believe it was the Devil’s work. Somebody in the monastery had tried to poison my master; the same person, no doubt, who had tried to kill him in Burgundy.
Chapter Ten
The whole of Robin’s force — just under four hundred archers, cavalry and spearmen — was drawn up at the harbour side to witness the punishment. It was a gloomy day, the fat grey clouds lightly spitting rain from time to time, a weak sun only rarely peeping through. The prisoner, a sailor called Jehan from my own hated ship the Santa Maria, had been gambling with a local fisherman. He had lost his dice game and owed the Griffon five shillings; more than he could afford. And so he had refused to pay the man, claiming that, as a pilgrim heading for the Holy Land, his debts should be frozen until he returned from his sacred journey. It was a cheeky way to avoid his debt, for it was true, the Holy Father, the Pope himself, had ruled that the debts of anyone on this Great Pilgrimage should be suspended until the debtor returned home. But that was a move designed to encourage knightly landowners with great mortgages to go off to fight for Jerusalem. His Holiness clearly did not intend his words to allow shifty gamblers to welsh on their agreements. The Griffon fisherman had complained to the Knights Hospitaller, who controlled his part of Messina, and they had reported the matter to the King; and Richard was determined to make an example of the poor man. Jehan should have paid up or, better still, heeded King Richard’s decree that outlawed gambling with the Griffons.
He was to be keelhauled — a harsh punishment that involved dragging the prisoner’s living body under the keel of a ship from one end to the other. And it is much worse than it sounds: after months at sea the keel of any ship is covered with tiny barnacles, sharp rock-like structures less than a quarter of an inch in height but rough and spiky enough to cut through skin and muscle if a naked body is dragged against them. The second danger, of course, is drowning. The man must hold his breath under water while undergoing the agony of being dragged over the keel-barnacles. Many drowned during this punishment; and those who did not were left appallingly lacerated. King Richard had ordered that this man must undergo keelhauling three times on three successive days. It was, in effect, a death sentence.
The man was stripped down to a pair of linen breeches, his hands and feet tied and attached to long ropes. He lay forlornly, eyes closed, skin puckered with cold, at the prow of the Santa Maria, which was moored about twenty yards from the quay, while a priest recited prayers over his thin, shivering frame. The rain began to fall harder.