One day when we were practicing, I heard a voice calclass="underline" ‘Move your feet, Alan, don’t forget to move your feet,’ and turned to see a tall man in a white cloak with a red cross on the breast, long sword at his side, and a wonderfully familiar face grinning at me from behind a huge black beard. It was my old friend Sir Richard at Lea, a Poor Fellow-Soldier of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, and one of the main reasons Robin had embarked on this Great Pilgrimage.
He and a hundred of his fellow Templar knights, perhaps the finest fighting men in Christendom, had come to our rescue in England at the battle of Linden Lea two years ago but only on condition that Robin brought his men to fight in the Holy Land. And here we were, and here he was.
I was tremendously pleased to see him, and clasped his right arm with enthusiasm, only wincing slightly as his powerful grip tightened on my recently mended wrist. He greeted Little John warmly and asked after Robin and Tuck, and then he turned and lifted his hand towards a man who had been standing beside him quietly smiling at our reunion: ‘May I introduce Sir Nicholas de Scras, a good Christian and a fine knight, but one who had the great misfortune to join the wrong order: he’s a Hospitaller, may God forgive him.’
‘Please pardon my friend,’ said Sir Nicholas, clasping my arm in greeting, although a good deal more gently that Sir Richard had done, ‘like many Templars, he has the great misfortune to think that he is amusing.’
While the Hospitaller politely greeted Little John, I studied him with interest: he was a man of medium height, iron-grey hair cropped short, slim, fit-looking with muddy green eyes and dressed in the black robe with the white cross of the Hospitallers. He looked a little too mild mannered to be a warrior, and I wondered if he eschewed battle and preferred to practice the gentler arts that this order of healing knights were famous for. I couldn’t have been more wrong. As I watched him, he picked up the shield that I had dropped and examined it closely, testing the strength of the layers of wooden slats with his thumb. ‘A strange device,’ he said, at last, turning the snarling wolf’s head towards me. ‘Am I right in thinking that you serve the Earl of Locksley?’
I nodded, and he continued: ‘And I understand his master of arms is showing you the finer points of combat with a shield?’ I nodded again. ‘Will you permit me to try a turn or two with your formidable friend? I might be able to show you something useful.’ I merely made a wide sweeping gesture with my arm that suggested that he was free to do as he liked in this quarter of Acre, owned as it was by his Order. And Sir Richard and I retired to a stone bench that surrounded the courtyard and sat down to watch the bout.
John looked a little uncertain to be facing an opponent who seemed so calm and yet who was so much smaller and lighter than him. ‘Don’t worry, Sir Richard, I promise to go easy on him,’ he yelled jovially over to us on the bench. But, despite his customary bravado, I think he sensed he was facing a master warrior.
‘Do your worst, John, he deserves a good thrashing,’ shouted Sir Richard cheerily, and he sat back on the warm stone to watch the fun. Sir Nicholas merely smiled at John, bowed his head, and they began. The two fighters circled for a few moments, and then John attacked, a heavy cut with his sword at Sir Nicholas’s shoulder. The Hospitaller merely shrugged it aside with a flip of his shield and immediately counterattacked with a series of lightning lunges to Little John’s face. The big man was forced back, back, ten feet, then twenty, back until he was almost against the stone bench on the other side of the courtyard; and then with the hollows of his knees against the warm yellow stone, he finally roused himself and, snarling at the smaller man, began to batter him with huge cuts at his head and upper body from the left and right in turn. Sir Nicholas blocked and blocked, again and again, using only his shield, gradually allowing himself to be forced back into the centre of the courtyard but continually holding his sword poised, his right elbow back, the snake-fast lunge always a potential threat. It seemed he was waiting for John to open up his body for the strike, but how Sir Nicholas survived that mighty battering from Little John without using his sword to protect himself I do not know — however, wherever John’s sword struck, there was the shield to deflect the massive blow. He did not use the wooden frame full on, to soak up the power of the sword, instead, Sir Nicholas used the curved outer surface to slide the blows away from his body, and waste John’s great strength on the air. And then the knight did something extraordinary: instead of blocking, he ducked a massive swing from Little John, which put the big man off balance, turned sideways, stepped under John’s sweeping blade and with the shield tilted the wrong way around — its rounded top down towards his own face, the narrow bottom end pointing upwards away from his body — he jabbed up with his elbow and slammed the tapered point up and hard into the side of Little John’s head, and immediately dropped the big man in a sprawling heap on the floor. He didn’t even look at John, but turned his head and stared at directly at me: ‘Did you see that, Alan?’ I gawped at him. He demonstrated the move once more, this time striking at empty air with the tapered point of the shield. Then the knight sheathed his sword, took off the shield, and went to kneel beside the giant on the floor. He wasn’t even out of breath. Little John had dropped his sword and, seated on his broad bottom on the stone floor, was swaying slightly and panting heavily. He had a dazed look in his eyes, and his mouth hung open in surprise.
I was no less stunned. I had never seen Little John beaten in a fight, and so quickly; it was almost unthinkable, and yet this slight man who only came up to Little John’s breast had dropped him in the dust with what seemed the greatest of ease. Sir Nicholas, kneeling beside his victim, examined Little John’s head, and called over his shoulder: ‘Richard, be a good fellow and get one of the servants to bring me a cloth and some water,’ and then he gently lifted Little John’s right eyelid, tilted his head back to catch the sunlight, and began to look deeply into his eye.
Sir Richard at Lea and I retired to the Hospitallers’ refectory and ordered a dish of roast fish, stewed peas, bread and wine from one of the brother-sergeants, and while we refreshed ourselves, I asked my friend what he had been doing in the past few weeks since the city had fallen.
‘The Grand Master has decided that we will make this place our headquarters until Jerusalem can be recaptured,’ he said. ‘So I have been busy arranging our new quarters. But the thing that takes up most of my time is dealing with the damned traders; I tell you, Alan, I’ve never met such a gaggle of greasy scoundrels in all my life. They’re a cowardly lot, always bleating about bandits attacking their camel trains and demanding protection from our busy knights. But then, damned nuisance that it is, protecting pilgrims and travellers from the human predators who roam the desert is one of our sacred duties here in the Holy Land.’ And he frowned and helped himself to another large piece of fish.