A forest of hands shot up into the air, many tied to other men’s — one particularly short man was jerked off his feet by the raised hands of two tall men on either side of him. And there was a clamour of voices declaring: ‘I will, my lord, gladly, I will.’ In fact, perhaps not very surprisingly, it seemed that the entire mass of prisoners was prepared to accept the offer of a life in faithful service to Robin.
As the prisoners were cut loose by the archers, each kneeling in turn to make the pledge of loyalty to Robin, placing their hands between his, I was struck by how clever my master had been. He had, at a stroke, recruited a score of trained menat-arms, which he badly needed, who would now find it difficult, if not impossible, to return to Murdac’s banner because they had publicly acknowledged that Hugh was Robin’s son. He had weeded out, and swiftly dispatched, the one man who would never serve him, and had displayed a ruthless strength, and a generous clemency which, it was to be hoped, would bind these soldiers to him more strongly. But would these men, Sir Ralph Murdac’s men, really remain loyal when the threat of imminent death had passed? I marked their faces and vowed that in future I would keep a wary eye on each and every one of them.
Chapter Four
During the next few weeks, Kirkton Castle enjoyed a period of peace and tranquillity that was a balm to the soul after our long wanderings. The early autumn weather was sunny and warm, and it seemed that my master Robin was pleased to be home once again with his wife Marie-Anne. Little Hugh toddled around the bailey, a cheerful, chubby little boy, who looked more and more like Sir Ralph Murdac with every passing day, although nobody was foolish enough to comment on it, and yet Robin seemed to have settled, at least in his mind, that the child was his, and he showed the infant a reserved fatherly kindness whenever their paths crossed.
In truth my master was a fully occupied man in these weeks following his return. After two and a half years of absence there was a great deal of administration of his estates to reconcile. Taxes and rents to collect, fences, sheep hurdles and bridges to mend, disputes to settle, and far-flung manors to visit, sometimes for the first time. I too had duties at my home and took leave of my master to return, briefly, to Westbury.
Robin had found a steward to run the manor for me, an elderly man, twig-thin, with steel-grey hair and a dry wit, called Baldwin — and I liked him from the first. I found when I visited that he had the place well in hand, running the manor fairly but firmly in my absence, ensuring that, after the tithes were paid to the Church, and taxes to the Crown, I had a small profit in silver and a surplus in grain. After checking his accounts, I found I had nothing to do there but ride about the lands trying to look lordly, spend the money he had gathered for me, and occasionally sit in judgement over the villagers in the manor court. Baldwin treated me with politeness and a small but satisfactory amount of deference, though he was of Norman stock, and he must have known that I was not born into the noble class. I was pleased to have such an amenable, competent man to run my lands.
There were a few empty, run-down cottages in the village of Westbury, and I gave them out to a handful of Robin’s veterans who, through injury or advancing age or just a desire to settle down and be married, wished to give up the dangerous life of a man-at-arms and till my fields and put down roots somewhere. It might be advantageous, at some point in the future, I reasoned, to have half a dozen seasoned soldiers at hand, in the event of an emergency, a fire or an attack by enemies.
I could not remain long in Westbury, however, for Robin soon had me travelling the country delivering messages to his friends and allies, testing the mood of the land. So I spent most of my days in the autumn and early winter of that year — which Tuck told me was eleven hundred and ninety-two years after Our Lord’s birth — in the saddle, and my nights at castles or religious houses up and down the length of the country. It was tiring work but not lonely as I took Hanno with me as bodyguard and companion. He had a fund of stories about his travels, telling me tales of black bears that lived in his native Bavarian forests, and the local witches, and ghouls and wicked elves who stole children away from their cradles…
Hanno had joined our company after the siege of Acre. King Richard had captured the strongly fortified port only a month after his arrival in the Holy Land, a feat that was much admired, even by his enemies. Acre had been under siege for nearly two years at that point, and was considered all but impregnable, but Richard’s arrival with siege engines and massive reinforcements had sealed its fate. I had been sick when the citadel fell; wounded and suffering from a mysterious malady that kept me in a feeble, dizzy condition for weeks. Hanno had also been wounded and we had been allowed to recover in the same quarter of Acre, the part controlled by the Knights Hospitaller, the healing monks who combined a deep love of Christ with a fearsome reputation as ruthless fighting men.
Hanno had been part of the German contingent in Outremer under Duke Leopold of Austria, but he had been left behind when his liege lord had departed for home after quarrelling badly with King Richard, the leader of the expedition. Our impetuous English monarch had kicked the Duke’s banner from the walls of Acre when it had been hung beside his own and the standard of King Philip Augustus of France. He said that it was not fitting for the flag of a mere duke to hang beside that of kings. Actually, it was all about money, as it so often is in warfare — and peacetime, too, as Robin was fond of telling me. Or rather, plunder. By displaying his banner next to Richard’s and Philip’s, Leopold was claiming an equal share — one third — of all the loot from the captured city of Acre. And Richard wasn’t going to allow this. From his point of view, Duke Leopold had failed to capture Acre after trying for so many months, whereas Richard had succeeded in a matter of weeks. The upshot was that, soon afterwards, Leopold quit the Great Pilgrimage, returning to Austria furious with King Richard and vowing to get his revenge.
Abandoned by his lord because he was too weak to be moved, Hanno had slowly recovered and then joined Robin’s force of Sherwood outlaws turned soldiers. Despite the language barrier, which Hanno soon overcame, after a fashion — he had the curious habit of always speaking as if the event he was speaking about was happening at that very moment — as a hunter and warrior he fitted in well with Robin’s gang of former deer-poachers and murderous brigands. And he seemed to adopt me, taking it upon himself to teach me everything he knew about stalking large prey — whether animal or human.
At the castles and great houses that I stayed in while travelling England on Robin’s business that winter, I was usually obliged to entertain my audience in the evenings with music, mostly of my own composition, although sometimes other men’s work, and I was pleased to notice that I had something of a growing reputation as a trouvere. At Pembroke Castle in South Wales, after hearing ‘My Joy Summons Me’ — a canso I had devised with King Richard the Lionheart himself in Sicily on the way to the Holy Land — the famous knight William the Marshal, now a great magnate and, in Richard’s absence, one of the justiciars of England, even paid me the compliment of inviting me to leave Robin’s service and join his household.