I could not see them clearly in the dancing flames, but I could make out their distinctive shapes in the gloom: a tall man on the left, taller than me by half a head, and I am six foot high in my bare feet; but, while I am broad in the shoulder, deep in the chest and well muscled in the arms from long hours practising with a heavy sword, he was thin, painfully thin, like a man who has survived a long famine or a terrible disease.
His height and thinness were accentuated by his shadowy companion’s extraordinary shape: he was a huge bald man, and I swear on Our Lord Jesus Christ that he was as broad as he was high; a round mass, neckless, squat and lumped with muscle, like an ogre from a children’s tale. They looked like a stick and a ball standing side by side.
Then Ralph Murdac spoke, and his familiar high-pitched French whine set my teeth on edge: ‘Thank my lord prince for his noble gift,’ he said, and he slightly raised the jewelled box, ‘and tell him that I will attend his royal court in less than a month; the moment that I have concluded matters here.’
‘My lord,’ the squat ogre rumbled in French, and his voice sounded like the grinding together of two enormous rocks, ‘His Highness has requested your presence on the morrow; he has had bad news from abroad and desires your counsel. He was most insistent that you should attend him.’
‘I will attend him as soon as I am able,’ snapped Murdac crossly. ‘But I must have my son. I must reclaim my son from this nest of bandits. Surely His Royal Highness will understand…’
The two men said nothing, but the ogre gave a mountainous shrug, and they both turned away at the same time and disappeared into the great tent.
I wanted to be gone; the knowledge that I had very nearly thrown my life away in an ill-considered, suicidal attack raised goose bumps on my whole body. I had missed certain death by a heartbeat. Those two grotesque men would have shouted a warning to Murdac before I could even get within spear-range, and I would then have likely missed my mark and been hunted through the camp like a lone rat in a pit full of blood-crazed terriers. I was Daniel in the lion’s den, I told myself, and only by remembering this and putting aside any thoughts of revenge against Murdac would I live to see another dawn.
I walked quickly away from the great tent without being seen — regretfully leaving the silhouette of my enemy unharmed by the fire — and once again bent my steps towards the dark mass of castle on the southern skyline. There was a sentry on the far side of the camp, alert and patrolling his section of the perimeter with an unnatural keenness for the late hour. Leaving the encampment behind and walking the bare twenty yards of open turf towards him, I notched up my courage for a final pantomime. I marched straight up to the man, my right hand casually behind my back, and called to him abruptly, in my most officer-like tones: ‘Hey you! What’s the password? Come on, come on; don’t tell me you’ve forgotten it.’
He looked at me strangely, noting the mud- and blood-smeared black surcoat, and the odd combination of my youth and my arrogance. Then, perhaps reassured by the direction I had come from, he said: ‘I haven’t forgotten it, sir: it’s Magdalene. But I might well ask, sir, who are you?’
‘I’ve been told to relieve you. That’s all you need to know,’ I said rudely. ‘Sir Ralph’s orders.’
He nodded, but still seemed a little uncertain. The hand behind my back gripped the handle of the misericorde tightly; in a couple of moments he was going to feel its point in his heart if he didn’t accept my explanation. I stared at him challengingly, straight in the eye. But finally he seemed to be convinced by my high-handedness and he shrugged and pushed past me, heading back towards the encampment. I watched him until he disappeared into the crowd of dark tents and finally relaxed, breathed out a huge lungful of air, and slid the slim blade back into my boot.
I had used up a lot of my nerves in this one night, and I noticed that my hands were trembling slightly, but I still had one obstacle to overcome: the walls of Kirkton Castle itself.
In the event, getting into the castle was simpler than I had expected. I merely walked away from the mass of tents, through a wide empty expanse of silent sheep pasture and towards the looming black bulk of Kirkton. When I was fifty yards away, a torch sprang to light on the battlements and, in response to it, I shouted: ‘Hello, Kirkton! I’m a friend. Hello! Don’t shoot. I come from Robin. I come from Lord Locksley.’
An arrow slashed past my ear and buried itself in the ground a dozen yards behind me, and I lifted both arms in the air and shouted again: ‘Hello, Kirkton. I come from the Earl of Locksley; let me in for the love of God.’
Another arrow hissed past and I heard a deep, Welsh-accented voice, a voice I knew well but had not heard for more than two years, shouting, ‘Stop shooting, you ynfytyn, stop wasting arrows.’ And then, much louder: ‘Who is out there? Come forward and name yourself.’
‘Tuck, it’s me — Alan. Get that idiot to stop trying to spit me like a bloody capon. Don’t you recognize me, you great tub of pork dripping? It’s Alan Dale. It’s me.’
‘God bless my soul!’ said the Welsh voice. ‘Alan Dale, back from the Holy Land, back from the dead. Miracles and wonders will never cease.’ And a rich, golden-brown belly laugh rolled out towards me through the darkness.
Chapter Two
They hauled me up over the wooden battlements on a loop of rope in less time than it takes to skin a rabbit — my old friend Tuck and a burly but shame-faced archer on guard duty called Gwen, whom I knew only slightly. The front gate was barred tight shut, Tuck told me in a low tone, and awakening the gate-guard to explain why the main portal needed to be opened would have taken too much time and caused far too much fuss. I was so pleased to see my stout friend that I hardly minded at all that I had trodden in a month-old corpse — my foot sinking into its rotten guts almost up to the boot top — that lay in the ditch below the palisade, while I was waiting for the loop to be thrown down.
Tuck had hardly changed at all in the time I had known him; he had the same cheerful round face, creased from half a lifetime of smiles, the same bulbous nose, reddish-brown hair, now dusted with a little grey, but still cut in the tonsure. While he was no longer a monk, as he had been when I first met him, he was still a member of the clergy: now the personal chaplain to Marie-Anne, Countess of Locksley. His new rank did not seem to have changed his attire. His brown monk’s habit was perhaps more worn and stained, and he seemed to have lost a small amount of weight — but apart from that he was exactly the same strong, broad, confident man that I had left behind at Kirkton when Robin and I rode out of its gates for the Holy Land more than two years ago.
The castle, too, was wonderfully familiar, even in the darkness. And as Tuck, leaving Gwen still mumbling apologies to continue his sentry duty, led me down from the walkway that ran all the way around the inside of the wooden battlements, down into the bailey courtyard of the castle, and over into the great hall, he chatted away happily as if we had parted just the week before. I was only half listening to him, my head being filled with such emotions after my bloody adventures that night; and I was further fuddled by the joyful sense of homecoming that almost overwhelmed me as I looked around at my master’s stronghold in the darkness.