The King, clearly in a good humour, was applauding the swift reflexes of the crossbowman, or perhaps his ingenuity in improvising an efficient shield-substitute from a kitchen implement. ‘That’s the kind of spirit I like to see in a soldier!’ He was chuckling merrily to himself, the prospect of the coming battle as ever animating his spirits.
‘Beware, sire,’ said Robin, ‘that fellow is making ready to shoot again!’
Robin was right: the Master was pointing at the King, and the redhead was leaning over the parapet, his crossbow aimed in our direction. The distance was too great for accurate shooting, but every man in that group had his shield up, held with the top rim just below his eyeline — every man, that is, except King Richard. The King sat his horse, totally unconcerned, and I saw with a jolt of alarm that he was only wearing light armour, short-sleeved with very fine iron links, the kind that we used to wear in the heat of Outremer. His stout shield, with its golden lions on a blood-red field, was slung carelessly on his back.
‘Sire!’ said Robin urgently.
‘Be at peace, Locksley,’ said the King, ‘that bold fellow at the very least deserves a clear shot at me.’
The quarrel came on as an evil black streak and, with a cold splash of fear in my stomach, I saw it strike the King on his left shoulder, penetrating deeply despite the light armour; rocking his body in the saddle from the impact.
For three heartbeats nobody moved: we were as still as rocks. I heard a faint cheer from the battlements above, then we all surged forward at once, surrounding the King, some holding up their shields to protect him against any further missiles from the castle walls others helping him gently down from the saddle of his tall horse.
‘God’s legs, that was an unlucky blow,’ muttered the King, his face white, teeth gritted against the pain. ‘Get me to my tent, Locksley — quickly now, and quietly; cover my face with your cloak, it would not do to alarm the men.’
Three days later the engineers ignited the mine under the walls of Chalus-Chabrol. Thick black smoke boiled out of the tunnel that led into the hillside, in a huge dark plume, and an hour or so later, long jagged cracks appeared in the walls above. By mid-afternoon, with a great rippling crash, a wide section of wall collapsed, leaving a gap in the defences like a missing tooth in an old man’s mouth.
We were massed below the walls, out of crossbow range, the hundred or so Locksley men and my eight Westbury lads — we had lost one poor fellow on the field at Gisors, and another who died of wounds after the battle. Robin had begged for the honour of making the first assault on the castle, and Richard from his camp-bed had agreed. Behind us were the black flags of Mercadier’s men — some two hundred of the most foul-hearted, vicious, evil-looking scoundrels in France, and led by a scar-faced villain who topped them all for cruelty. They were there to support our attack, King Richard had ordered, but this was a war hammer to crack a hazelnut — there were only about forty defenders, and the Locksley men, even if they were to suffer heavy casualties in the assault, would still easily overwhelm them. More than likely Mercadier’s men, rather than genuinely wishing to support us, merely wanted to be in at the kill to have first pick of the loot. But then Robin’s motives in volunteering his men for the attack were not exactly pure either: by the private gleam in his grey eyes, I knew he was thinking of the Grail.
‘How does the King?’ I asked him as we stood side by side, looking up the slope at the gap in the wall, which was still shrouded with billowing clouds of rock dust.
‘Not well, Alan, not well, indeed.’ Robin was one of the few barons who had been allowed to visit him in his tent: the King wished to keep his injury a secret from the troops for fear of their losing heart. It had not worked; despite his seclusion, every man in the army knew that the King had been badly wounded, and the sense of raw, vindictive anger among the ranks against the defenders of the castle beat like a feverish pulse.
‘He tried to pull the quarrel out himself,’ Robin continued, speaking quietly in a toneless voice in the hope that he would not be overheard by the nearby men. ‘But he made a mess of it and the shaft snapped off in his hand. Then he called a surgeon, that fat little butcher Enguerrand, who hacked him about something awful — it was dark by then, and Enguerrand was, of course, drunk — but after digging about in his shoulder for most of an hour he managed to get the quarrel head out and bandage him up. But it’s not healing cleanly; the rot has begun and the smell of corruption in that tent is foul enough to make you gag.’
‘The King has been sorely wounded before,’ I said, ‘and has eventually recovered to full health.’
‘Several times, yes, he has, so let us all hope…’ Robin’s words were cut off by a trumpet blast. ‘Time to go, Alan; see you inside the castle — and be a good fellow and take the Master alive, if you can; beat him, maim him, cut him up as much as you like, but alive, if you please: I want to have a talk with him before we send him to Hell.’
Robin strode out in front of the troops. He turned to face them, raised his sword in the air: ‘In the name of God and our King — for Richard! For England! Forward!’ And the Locksley men cheered and, led by Robin’s nimble feet, with a deep, angry roaring, they charged up that slope.
It may sound absurd, but almost the hardest part of that assault for me was the run up that very steep, grassy hill, and the scramble up the rocky staircase to the breach. Although my wounded chest was long healed, my wind was still not as sound as I would have liked and I found myself breathless, red-faced and panting when I eventually reached the breach in the wall. The Westbury men and I were not in the vanguard, thank the Lord; and we ran hard, but my lungs felt as if they were on fire, and by the time we reached the gap in the fortifications, a flood of angry Locksley men had swept it clear of enemies. As I stepped over the broken rubble of the wall and down into the tiny courtyard, still breathing heavily, Thomas was at my side, carrying a crossbow he had acquired from somewhere, and a loose cloud of Westbury men were all around me. The first thing I saw was that almost all the fight had gone out of the garrison. Enemy men-at-arms were lying dead in bloody heaps, and others were attempting to surrender or being cut down by furious Locksley men; on the far side of the courtyard a lone knight, Viscount Aimar himself, I believe, battled against a mob of green-clad men. He killed one of our fellows with an elegant backhand, and then was himself overrun by a mass of stabbing, hacking, yelling fiends. To my right, at the foot of the round tower, a scrum of men were fighting outside a small door that led into the castle’s last redoubt. I saw flashing white surcoats adorned with a blue cross: and for the first time that day the battle-lust surged through my veins. I rushed forward, shouldered a Locksley man out of the way and engaged the nearest Knight of Our Lady. He snarled at me and cut; I blocked, feinted, ducked a blow and swept him off his feet with a sword strike to the ankles, and the Westbury men swarmed over him, stabbing down with awful efficiency. The other knight was very fast on his feet; he was already inside the tower and was desperately trying to swing the heavy wooden door shut in my face.