My master Robert, Earl of Locksley, had the answer. He stood up from his place at the high table, a place of honour that only Richard’s closest barons enjoyed, and raised a silver goblet: ‘Sire, if I may say a few words,’ he said in his battle-voice, and his tone caused a hush to fall around the room. ‘We have done mighty deeds this past year,’ Robin said, ‘and we have lost many dear companions…’ There was a murmur of assent around the circular room. ‘But now we have a truce, for however long it lasts, and our righteous war has been suspended for a time. We have sworn before Almighty God that we shall not trouble King Philip — even though his liegemen still hold many lands and castles that belong by right to our noble King Richard.’
‘Hear, hear,’ roared a royal voice from not very far away.
‘So what is to be done? Shall we sit in idleness, wrapped in costly furs, supping good wine by our hearth-fires and toasting our toes?’
‘Sounds like an excellent idea to me!’ said William the Marshal, with a tipsy grin. There was a burst of laughter.
‘You would not be able to sit idle by your warm hearth for long, Marshal, even if I had you chained there,’ called out the King, to more laughter.
‘My friends, we are men of the sword, we are knights sworn to King Richard’s service, not sleepy, muddle-brained, old drunkards — well, most of us are,’ said Robin, inclining his head towards the Marshal. More laughter, and the Marshal scowled grotesquely like a mystery-player and shook his fist in mock anger at the Earl of Locksley.
‘My friends,’ Robin continued, his voice deepening and his face becoming serious. ‘We are knights sworn to Richard’s service, and yet there is one unruly baron who yet defies his rightful King; there is one who has rebelled against his lawful lord and with whom we have made no treaty, one who is not protected by this truce. Can we call ourselves the King’s loyal men and not punish those who insult him? I say that we must hunt down this rebellious dog and destroy him!’ Muttering rumbled about the tables like wine barrels on cobblestones; the company had become uneasy — a good many men at the feast had at one time or another rebelled against Richard.
‘I speak, of course, of the traitor Viscount Aimar of Limoges,’ said Robin, to a general sigh of relief. ‘He is a wealthy man, with a hoard of silver and jewels, and his sun-lit southern lands are wide and rich.’ More appreciative murmurs. ‘And I say that, come the spring, we must go south and teach this proud rascal that our King will not be mocked! In the spring, let us go down to the Limousin, punish this haughty Viscount Aimar, and take our swords to this plump nest of rebels!’
A few cheers, but most knights confined themselves with nodding in benevolent agreement, and beginning to discuss with their fellows the delightful prospect of looting the rich territory of the Limousin.
The next day, in the mid-afternoon twilight of the short winter day, the King called me to his private chamber: he wanted me to play a little music for him, he said, to cheer a dreary season. But the real reason he summoned me, I soon discovered, was that he wanted me to play the informer.
‘What was all that nonsense about Viscount Aimar?’ he asked me. ‘Why does Locksley so urgently want me to go down and have at him?’
‘He has rebelled against you, sire,’ I said.
‘I know that,’ the King said impatiently. ‘He’s a fool and Philip has sent him silver and knights and turned his head with extravagant promises. But other men in Aquitaine have rebelled too. Ademar of Angouleme, for example: he’s made an alliance with Philip, too, and he’s a much bigger fish than Aimar. Why does Robin want me to go after the Viscount of Limoges?’
I stood there flat-footed, not knowing what to say to my King. I knew, of course, exactly why Robin wished the army to go south and attack Aimar. And, while he had not actually sworn me to secrecy, it was understood that one did not discuss Robin’s private affairs with anyone, king or commoner. I mumbled something about my lord being a loyal man, who hated all of Richard’s enemies equally.
The King looked hurt; his bright blue eyes clouded with sorrow: ‘My good Blondel,’ he said, ‘we have fought together, side by side, on many a bloody field, over many long years; we made the Great Pilgrimage together to Outremer and battled the Saracen hordes; you came to Germany when I was in despair and languishing in darkness, and you found me and brought me back into the light. Do not speak falsehoods to me now. Why does the Earl of Locksley wish me to humble Aimar of Limoges?’
I could not bear it; I felt that I was being pulled in two, my loyalty to my lord and to my King tugging my soul in different directions. And so I answered him.
‘There is a treasure,’ I said. ‘There is a great and wonderful treasure that Aimar of Limoges, or rather that one of his relatives has in his possession. And my lord the Earl of Locksley burns to possess it.’
‘Not that same treasure that he went off on a goose chase in Burgundy to discover last year?’ said the King.
‘The same.’
‘What do you know of this treasure?’ he said, looking at me keenly. ‘Have you ever seen it? Is it truly valuable?’
‘I have not seen it,’ I said, ignoring the first part of his question. ‘But I believe that it is truly valuable — perhaps the most valuable object in Christendom and certainly something that many men: counts, kings, even the Pope himself, would give a fortune to have in their possession.’
‘I think I should like to see this treasure,’ said the King.
Chapter Twenty-eight
That spring Richard’s knights and Mercadier’s routiers ravaged the Limousin without mercy: and Robin and I played our parts, too. We burned farmsteads, stole livestock and destroyed crops, although I would not allow my men to despoil churches — it was Lent, the season in which all Christian warriors are expected to observe the Truce of God and lay down their arms, but we served King Richard, and he was not a man to allow the strictures of the Church to stand in his way. So, may God forgive us, we fought all through that March even though it was Lent, harrying Viscount Aimar and his knights from manor to manor. We ate meat and eggs, too, when we could get them, but we left places of worship unmolested. It was a sop, a gesture, but my men were not unhappy at that curb: in battle we all need God’s protection, and it would not do to anger Him by stealing from His house. However, I felt the dark shadow of guilt on my soul during that southern spring of blood and fire: I believed Richard and his barons’ enthusiasm for the harrying of the Limousin, and the relentless pursuit of Count Aimar and his men, might have had a good deal to do with my talk of the fabulous ‘treasure’ in his possession. These rich lands were ruined, and many poor peasants were put out of their hovels, their meagre wealth snatched, their children brought to starvation, because Robin and I had moved the King to make it so. Such is war; but I felt the burden of it as a heavy weight on my conscience.
I do not know how Robin came into the knowledge that the Master and the remaining Knights of Our Lady had taken refuge with Viscount Aimar, but Robin had many friends in Paris, and all over France, who had been searching for news of the Master for nearly five years now, and so perhaps a better question would have been why had we not uncovered his whereabouts sooner. From the little that Robin had gleaned, it seemed that the Master and his men had been in hiding on the far side of the Pyrenees, in lands that the original members of the Order would have campaigned over in their glory days fighting the Moors. Doubtless, the Master still had allies there. But recently, Robin’s informants had told him, he had grown in confidence and forsaken the wild lands beyond mountains and had taken up a more comfortable position with his cousin Viscount Aimar — exactly as Bishop de Sully had predicted. And one thing was certain: wherever the Master went, the treasure we sought, the Grail, would go, too.