Grail Knight: Number 5 in series (Outlaw Chronicles) Read online

  As I cantered along the tunnel between the trees, I reflected that in the full robes of midsummer, Sherwood was as fair as a maiden on her wedding morning: the oak and elm and ash each cloaked in glowing green hues; each trunk plump with sap and bursting with life; each sun-blessed clearing fecund with bright wild flowers. The forest floor was alive with the scuttle of rabbits, the boughs rattled with the chasings of squirrels, the calling and clatter of pigeons through branches and the quick-moving shadows of large game, red deer and the very occasional glimpse of wild boar.

  I surged along that narrow track, urging the bay ever onward, out of sheer exuberance. The quickening forest life all around, the rhythm of my breathing, the cleansing feeling of swift forward motion, all added to my bubble of well-being. A hart bounded out in front of my horse’s nose, surprising both me and my mount and I tugged the reins to check my pace, clamped my knees to keep my seat and hauled the bay to a halt. I found then I was laughing in the saddle after that slight shock, laughing for no reason but from a profound lightness of heart; a beneficent balance of the humours I had not felt in many months.

  The mare was tiring, pecking against the reins and the sun was now soaring above me, not far off noon, so I turned my mount back towards the main road, and was content to walk her sedately along the leaf-padded track through the trees. I was thinking then about dinner at Westbury, and how pleasant it would be to sit at the table with Goody and share a dish or two of meat with her and a flagon of good wine; and after dinner, perhaps, we would retire to our chamber together during the long, hot afternoon, and close the wooden door on the world. Perhaps this afternoon we might between us make our first strong son…

  I heard a rustling in the wall of leaves to my right, the sound of a large animal moving through the undergrowth with little attempt at stealth. And ahead of me to my left I heard the crack of a breaking stick. In my joy-fuddled state, I merely frowned, puzzled as to what could be making these unusual noises – a clumsy deer, a sick boar? And then, simultaneously, four men stepped out of the greenwood and stood in the track to bar my path ahead. They were very dirty, ill-clad peasant folk in greeny-brown rags, three of them favouring dark hoods, and armed with a motley collection of weapons: cudgels, quarterstaves, an axe; two held rusty swords, one a spear. I had my hand on my own sword hilt by then, and whipped my head around when I heard a noise behind me. Three men of similar ilk stood on the path behind my horse.

  Seven desperate men were now ranged against me; wild men of the woods, no doubt; thieves and killers … well, I had fought and won against longer odds – I was well schooled in war, well armed, well mounted, young and dauntless. I took a deep breath, my stomach muscles tightened and…

  ‘Look up there, Sir Alan, if you please,’ said the foremost man, a slim, almost girlishly good-looking rogue, with dark curly hair on his bare head and a vicious-looking woodsman’s axe resting on his shoulder. His right arm was pointing upwards, ahead of the mare’s nose and to my left. My eye followed his pointing finger and my heart sank. Standing on a stout branch of a tree, twelve foot above the forest floor, was an archer: a long yew bow was in his powerful hands, an arrow nocked and aimed at my heart, the trembling hemp string in his fingers pulled back all the way to the man’s grubby right ear.

  ‘Take your hand off your sword hilt, Sir Alan – and sit very, very still if you wish to live,’ said Curly-hair.

  I did as I was ordered. The men swarmed around the bay, two of them taking a firm hold on either side of the bridle, and Curly-hair pulled my long sword from its scabbard and held it up in the air with a whistle of admiration, as well he might. It was a beautiful object: a long slim blade of Spanish steel, sharp as a barber’s razor and engraved in tiny gold letters along the fuller with the word ‘Fidelity’. Above the wide steel crosspiece, a long leather-wrapped wood-and-iron hilt balanced the unusual length of the blade and the pommel was made of a thick, heavy ring of silver encasing a magnificent jewel, a sapphire of palest blue. It was a costly sword, worth almost as much as Shaitan, and a blade that I had won in single combat to the death with its previous owner: it soured my belly like a draught of bad wine to see it in another man’s hands.

  Curly-hair’s greed for that blade was plain to see. ‘I shall safeguard this for you, Sir Alan,’ he said, in a voice thickened with a kind of lustful envy.

  Surrounded by these men, I was led, still a-horse, off the main tunnel-like track and into deep forest. For several miles, indeed for more than an hour, we plodded along pathways that were often no more than deer tracks a few inches wide. The men were silent, watching me closely from under their hoods, with Curly-hair leading the way, my sword Fidelity on one shoulder and his axe on the other. They offered me no harm as we travelled along, and when I asked them where they were taking me, their only response was to mutter that I had been invited to dinner. And I began to relax, for I knew who it was that had ordered these men, these desperate outlaws, to fetch me. It could only be one man; and, as far as I knew, he did not wish me any harm.

  At last we came upon a wide clearing in the forest, an encampment of some permanence. A few crude shelters had been constructed at the edge of the space from cut wood and branches. A deer carcass turned on a spit over a fire in the centre, and two dozen or so men, women and children busied themselves; the men sitting in groups and drinking from a barrel of ale, or playing at dice or cleaning their weapons; the women sewing furs, mending their rags, moving about with bundles of firewood or bawling lovingly after scampering children. Two tall figures stood on the far side of the open space: one, a giant nearly seven foot tall, with shaggy blond hair that fell below his shoulders, was leaning on a vast double-headed axe. He was in earnest conversation with his companion. This fellow, though a little shorter, was still a well set-up, handsome man of about thirty-five years old, unshaven, dressed in a scuffed leather jerkin and black hose, a long sword at his waist. He watched me advance across the clearing and dismount before him, a smile on his lean, stubbled face, his lively grey, almost silver eyes sparkling with mischievous joy.

  ‘Ah, there you are at last, Alan,’ said Robin. For before me stood Robin Hood, Earl of Locksley, my friend, mentor and liege lord. ‘Don’t you ever leave the comfort of your hall for a healthy breath of fresh air these days? I’ve had men all over Sherwood waiting to waylay you for some days.’

  I turned to my curly-haired captor, who was now standing beside the blond giant, and held out my right hand. ‘I’ll take my sword now, if you please.’ The young man glanced quickly across at Robin and with a deep sigh of regret he flipped the blade off his shoulder and put the leather hilt of Fidelity into my hand.

  ‘God’s bulging ball-sack, I’m surprised to see you out and about, young Alan! I imagine you’ve barely left your bed, these past few weeks,’ said the huge man, chuckling lewdly. He turned to Robin and said, ‘You know what these lusty newly-weds are like: rut, rut, rut, all day, all night … I’ll wager Alan and Goody have been banging away five times a day like a pair of love-drunk rabbits.’ He affected a hideous, false woman’s voice. ‘Ooh, Alan, do come back to bed and bring your big sword with you…’

  I paused in the act of sliding Fidelity back into its scabbard and glared at the giant. ‘I give you fair warning, John Nailor: if you ever speak about my wife in that disrespectful way again, I will shove this blade so far up your fat arse that you’ll be using the point as a tooth-pick.’ I looked hard at the big man, holding his eye, then slammed the sword home into its sheath.

  Little John’s mouth opened but he said nothing for a couple of heartbeats; out of shock, I am quite certain, rather than fear. But I do not believe he had been seriously threatened for many a year. Young Curly-hair took a step forward, but John put a massive hand on his chest that stopped his advance and said, ‘Hold up, Gavin.’

  There was a long, awkward silence, during which John and I stared at each other. It was finally broken by Robin. ‘He’s right, John. That was most discourteous of you. I think you should
make an apology to Alan for speaking ill of his lady.’

  Little John looked over at Robin in disbelief. ‘Apologize? You want me to say I’m sorry?’

  ‘I accept your apology, John,’ I said, grinning at him. ‘And I particularly appreciate the handsome way in which the apology was made. Now, this fellow here made a mention of dinner. Was that merely a ruse to bring me here without a fight?’

  That golden July afternoon, at a long trestle table of greenwood planks set up in the centre of the clearing, we ate roasted venison, pigeon pie and barley bread and a simple sallet of wild leaves and herbs, washed down with a goodly quantity of freshly brewed ale. As we ate, I studied my lord, the notorious Earl of Locksley, and I was struck by his simple, radiating happiness; his deep, uncomplicated enjoyment of life. Here was a man entering the middle years, although still as slim and fit as a twenty-year-old, who had been one of the greatest nobles at the court of King Richard, and one of his greatest warriors – and he was living like an animal in the wilderness of Sherwood, surrounded by a score of cut-throats, with a price on his head. Yet, while I’d known Robin for ten years or more, and knew him as well as any man, I’d never seen my lord more contented.

  He had been recently outlawed, of course, and not for the first time. As a youngster he had been declared beyond the law – after he had killed a bullying, abusive priest – and Robin had taken to the predatory life of a thief in the woods like a pike to a fishpond. He had robbed from the rich who were foolish enough to travel through his part of Sherwood, and taken their silver by the sackload, and he had given protection to the poor from other bandits and evil men, and even from the law – for a price. Robin was known then across the land for his ruthlessness to his enemies and for his reckless generosity to his friends – to cross him meant death or mutilation, but if you were inside his circle, quite simply, he would die for you. At the height of his fame, he was one of the most powerful men in the country, able to purchase a full pardon from King Richard with barrels of stolen silver, and be granted the fair hand and fair estates of the Countess of Locksley, his sweetheart Marie-Anne.

  After his pardon, Robin had served Richard well: in the Holy Land fighting the Saracens, in England during the rebellion, and in the long bloody wars in Normandy against Philip of France. But our hero-king Richard was dead, killed by a crossbow bolt outside an insignificant fortress in Aquitaine. And the new King, Richard’s weak, vengeful and duplicitous brother John, had no love for Robin and had repaid my lord’s loyalty to his older sibling by declaring the Earl of Locksley an outlaw, whose head was worth a small hill of silver to any man bold enough to try to take it.

  There had been no trial, no assembly of the barons to weigh the merits of the case: a proclamation had been issued by the new Sheriff of Nottinghamshire – a greedy, short-legged crony of King John’s named Sir William Brewer – and a strong force of knights and men-at-arms had galloped north to occupy Kirkton, Robin’s castle in South Yorkshire that overlooked the Locksley Valley. They had found the place deserted; an echoing shell without a soul in residence, without beasts, fowls or a roaming stray dog. Even the fishpond had been emptied, every pot and pan packed up; every bale of hay and peck of corn long gone. Robin had given his goods and chattels to his friends, sent his horses, trained men and armour to his elder brother William, a petty baron who held the honour of Edwinstowe, and sent his wife and two boys across the sea to live under the protection of the Queen Mother, the venerable Eleanor of Aquitaine, where they would be safe from John’s vengeance. Robin himself had slipped away into the vast, tangled depths of Sherwood, the haunt of wild men cast out by decent society, my lord’s old playground – and his true home.

  I had served King Richard too. He and I had even made music together, as we were both trouvères – poets who ‘found’ or composed songs during our leisure hours. And I mourned the loss of the Lionheart deeply, I had liked and admired him as a man and a fellow warrior, and he had been most generous and kind to me – knighting me personally, despite my lowly origins, and granting me lands and a place among his trusted companions. But I mourned him too because I hated his brother John perhaps even more than Robin did. I had served John once, reluctantly, and had vowed that I would never do so again. Indeed, I had no obligation to do so: one of John’s first acts as King was to appropriate the lands that Richard had granted me: the rich manors of Burford, Stroud and Edington in England, and the war-ravaged manor of Clermont-sur-Andelle in Normandy. But I considered myself lucky – I had not been outlawed like Robin and, had I still had possession of these lands, I would also have owed John my service as a fighting knight. However, on that gorgeous summer afternoon, as I feasted with Robin and Little John, and jested and swapped stories, all that I had to uphold the dignity of my rank was the small manor of Westbury, which I held of the man sitting across the table from me, the outlawed Earl of Locksley.

  While we ate, we passed the time in idle conversation: how was Marie-Anne, and her two boys? All well, Robin assured me, the boys growing up fast in Queen Eleanor’s travelling court. And was Goody pregnant yet? Robin knew that a son to follow in my footsteps was my heart’s desire. No, not yet, but it was still early in the day. I looked at John sternly, half-expecting him to utter some crude comment about our attempts to make a baby – I had meant what I said about fighting him if he showed the least disrespect to Goody – but he seemed to have taken my threat to heart, and the big man merely grinned at me, winked cheekily and busied himself stripping the flesh from a whole haunch of roasted venison with his teeth.

  ‘So you’ve had men looking for me about Nottinghamshire,’ I said, when I had finally eaten my fill and I was sitting back, picking my teeth with a splinter from the table. ‘Why did you not just send a messenger to Westbury? Or come and see me yourself. Goody would have been delighted to receive a visit from you.’

  ‘I’m a wanted man, Alan,’ said Robin with a happy grin, ‘I can’t go wandering about the countryside paying calls on the gentry whenever I feel like it. The Sheriff of Nottinghamshire is after my blood and I tremble at the thought of his terrible wrath.’

  ‘Could it be, just perhaps, that the Sheriff is wrathful because a party of his tax gatherers was ambushed last week and robbed of nigh on ten pounds in silver up by Southwell?’ I asked.

  ‘Could be, could well be.’ Robin’s grin had become dangerously close to a smirk. ‘Who knows what makes that funny little mountebank angry? Silly man. He stamps around Nottingham Castle, ranting and raving, pulling his own hair out – his own hair, mark you – and issuing dire threats that he cannot possibly fulfil – no sense of moderation, no sense of dignity and no manners either. I sent him a pair of venison the other day, two fine plump hinds. A noble gift, you might well think. But did he have the courtesy to thank me? No. My people in the castle tell me that he harangued his men-at-arms for an hour, then raised the price on my head to fifty pounds! Fool.’

  I laughed. ‘Are you deliberately trying to goad him?’ I asked. ‘Sending him a brace of the King’s deer, poached from under his nose? What did you expect – a big wet kiss and an invitation to keep Christmas with his wife and family this year?’

  ‘I have no desire at all for his company, still less that of his appalling wife and her snotty brats – a simple thank-you would have sufficed. People are so ungrateful these days. But that brings me rather neatly to the reason why I wanted to see you.’

  ‘No,’ I said quickly. ‘The answer is no.’

  Robin looked hurt. ‘I haven’t even asked you the question.’ He looked over at Little John. ‘You see what I mean – there is no gratitude in the world. None at all.’ Then to me: ‘Come now, Alan, don’t you even want to hear my proposal?’

  ‘You want me to help you do something bad, I feel it in my bones, something far beyond the law and very likely immoral too – you want me to murder or kidnap someone; or, most probably, to help you steal something valuable that you have set your heart on. And that will put me afoul of the Sheriff, an
d have him coming after my blood. The answer is, no, thank you, Robin. I just want to stay quietly at home at Westbury, write a few half-decent chansons, tend to my lands and put a baby in my wife’s womb. That’s all I want. I don’t want to go on a wild escapade with you; I don’t want to hurt anybody. I’m sorry, Robin, but whatever your proposal is, the answer must be no.’

  ‘I want you to help me right a great wrong,’ said Robin, looking absurdly pious. ‘I want you to help me help a poor man, a friend of a friend of ours, who has been cruelly ill-used by a powerful lord. I have always thought of you as a decent man, Alan, a man on the side of all that is good and right. And now you have the chance to do something fine in this ugly world.’ Robin fixed me with his odd silver eyes. ‘Surely, as a good Christian, you want to make the world a better place, to help the poor and weak. Will you do that, for me, Alan? Help me to help someone. For the sake of all that we have done together, for our friendship?’

  I said nothing, but I felt my heart beginning to sink.

  ‘Allow me to tell you a little story,’ said Robin, smiling like a fox outside a chicken run. ‘Then you can give me your answer.’

  Chapter Two

  ‘Malloch Baruch is not a rich man,’ Robin began, ‘although to make his livelihood he deals with expensive materials, and must keep a goodly store of them. He is a goldsmith by trade, a Jew, of course, and he and his family lived in York – until ten years ago.’