‘Then we shall get along very well,’ I said, and took him into my service.
We had ridden no more than ten miles south of Robin’s Caves, and our horses were only just getting into their stride for the long journey, when one of the scouts who had been ranging ahead of the column rode back to me and reported that there was a strange woman, apparently alone, chanting nonsense by an old stone preaching cross a mile or so down the road. I had told the scouts that they were to report anything out of the ordinary to me directly they saw it — for I went in mortal terror of a well-laid ambush or some ruse by Prince John’s men that would rob me of the silver hoard the packhorses carried.
As we approached, I saw a small figure, hooded and swathed in heavy black wool, with her arms stretched out sideways in imitation of Our Lord’s Passion, standing beside the cross which stood on a mound of earth next to the highway. It seemed that she was speaking to that holy symbol. And with a shock that was like a plunge in an icy mountain tarn, I realized that she was speaking in the Arabic tongue.
Suddenly the woman turned her body towards us and swept off her hood. I held up my hand to halt the column but I believe the whole cavalcade would have been stopped by her appearance alone. She had a truly hideous face, mutilated so much that it was almost beyond recognition as belonging to a human being: the nose was missing, leaving two large holes in the centre of her face, surrounded by ridged scars, like a truncated pig’s snout; I saw that her ears, too, had been hacked off crudely, and her lips were gone as well, so that her narrow yellow teeth showed in a dreadful skull’s grimace. Her hair — grey and long and matted into rats’ tails — was whipped about her gaunt white face by the wind, and two dark eyes glowed in their sockets like the black-burning fires of Hell. She looked like a witch from a child’s nightmare. From behind me I could hear the frightened muttering of the mounted men. And yet, for all her cruel looks, I knew she was no hag; in truth, I knew that she was not yet twenty summers old.
You see, I recognized her. This wreck of a young woman, this demonic personification of ugliness, with a face that would curdle fresh milk, had once been my lover. I had once smothered that terrible visage with my kisses and received them, too, from her now absent lips. For this was Nur, the once-exquisite Arab slave girl that I had met on the long journey to Outremer. There was a time when I had been entranced by her beauty — by her midnight hair that spilled like dark oil down her back; by her huge brown eyes and snow-white skin; by the soft, generous curves of her body and the way she gave it up so joyfully for my pleasure. But then my enemy, Malbete, had taken her and his men had abused her brutally before hacking away her luminous, radiant looks with their blades; desecrating her perfection to punish me. She had shown her mutilated face to me, one dark night when I lay in a sickbed in Acre, and I had screamed in horror at her disfigurement — and she had fled. That had been two years ago, and I’d not seen her since. Yet here she was before me, in Nottinghamshire, as real as the rough stone cross on the grassy mound behind her.
‘Nur,’ I said. And then was lost for words; pity and shame welling up inside me in equal parts.
‘Alan, my love, we meet again,’ she said, holding out her arms as if to embrace me.
I flinched at her use of the words ‘my love’. And I tried to ignore the invitation in her open arms. With her beauty gone, I had been forced to face the truth: that I was a shallow man, interested only in the outward form of a woman. I discovered that I was a man who could not love, truly, deeply, with the heart and not just the eyes, as women claim to do. I had behaved most ignobly — for, although she had run from me, I had not searched for her. It was my fault that she had come to look this way, yet I could not even make amends by giving her the love that she surely deserved for all her suffering.
‘Nur — what are you doing here?’ I said, trying to sound as if I had just encountered an old acquaintance in a tavern — and hating myself even as I spoke. ‘Why did you leave your homeland? We all thought you must have gone back to your village, to your family. But here you are!’
‘I followed you, my love’ — I flinched once again at those words — ‘I followed you halfway across the world, through storm and drought, through pestilence, fire and battle; I followed you hungry and shoeless…’
As she spoke, my mind traced her journey. I could only dimly imagine the hardship and dangers she must have faced, a woman alone, travelling so many thousands of miles of wild and lawless road.
‘But why?’ I said. ‘Why follow me? What do you want from me?’
‘Did you not promise, when you held me in your arms aboard that Frankish ship, to love me for ever? Did you not vow it? I have come to you. I followed you to prove that, despite my misfortune, despite my ugliness, I am worthy of your love. My darling, my true love — I have come back to you. We can be united once again.’
My stomach felt as if it were filled with clay. I had promised to love her for ever; I had said so many things in the heat of passion, then — but now I could not even bear to look at her, let alone touch her; the idea of kissing her made my belly squeeze tight up into my chest.
How could I tell her that I would never love her again, that I could never love her again?
‘But why were you waiting here, on this spot?’ I asked, still in the same jolly tavern-acquaintance tones.
‘I have been waiting for you. And while I waited, I have been talking to your Christ God,’ she said, indicating the stone cross behind her with a dirty, bony finger. ‘I have been telling Him about my troubles and asking Him to heal my wounds.’ Here Nur waved a dirty hand across her poor tortured face. ‘And he spoke to me!’
I could feel all the men behind me crossing themselves. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw young Thomas straining forward in his saddle to get a closer look at her deformed face. But Nur had not finished.
‘He spoke to me — your Christ God! And He promised to heal me, and He has promised me that we shall be together. You and I, Alan, my love, together at last.’
I could not help noticing that her command of English was much improved since I began teaching her our tongue on the voyage to Outremer two years ago. But I also felt an almost uncontrollable urge to run from her, to gallop far, far away so that I would never have to see her poor mutilated face again or feel the shame that it aroused in my breast.
‘I think we must be married soon, my love; your Christ God has decreed it,’ Nur continued. And behind me I heard a manat-arms snigger and I stiffened in my saddle. I had to tell her once and for always that I did not love her.
‘I am afraid that cannot be, Nur, my dear,’ I said, trying now to sound like a kindly uncle. ‘We may have shared our lives in Outremer, but here I am a different man. I can never be with you. I am not the marrying kind, alas. And I cannot linger here chatting either, for I must ride south this day on important business. Here, take this,’ I said, and, feeling like Judas’s paymaster, I plucked a small leather purse containing a dozen silver pennies from my belt and held it out to her. ‘Take this purse and follow the road north from here, and you will be stopped by two armed men. Say that you come from me and that you are to be given food and shelter. Robin of Locksley is there; you remember him. Go to Robin and he will shelter you until I return.’ I threw the purse to her and her bony hand, snaked out and snatched it out of the air.
‘I must come with you, my love, wherever you go. We are one, you and I — we must never be parted again,’ said Nur in a weird sing-song voice. It was as if she had heard nothing of what I had just said. The purse had disappeared somewhere inside the folds of her black robe.
‘It was very pleasant to see you again, Nur, after so long. But much as I would like to hear the tale of your travels, I cannot take you with me. You must go north to Robin; he will care for you until I return. Try to understand…’