The King’s Assassin (16 page)

I was standing atop the walkway above the gatehouse, with Robert beside me, both of us in mail and helm, when Sir Thomas arrived beside me to report: ‘The full garrison is turned out, sir, forty-four men and all ready for action. Orders, sir?’

‘Let’s see who they are first and what they want, agreed?’

I put a hand on Robert’s shoulder and looked down at my son. He was beaming with joy to be there with me, mailed, sword on his hip, ready for battle as my squire. I had forgotten how exciting an armed confrontation like this could be for the young.

I opened my mouth and roared: ‘No one is to loose an arrow, launch a spear, throw an axe or make any other move unless I command it. Do you hear me?’

And the men of Westbury gave me a cheer of assent in return.

The column of horsemen was fifty paces away by now and I could see banners borne by some of the leading horsemen and the gaudy surcoats of the riders. They came armed for war, there was no doubt about that, and I had a fairly good idea who they were and what they desired.

A herald trotted forward of the pack and stopped in front of the palisade: ‘These gates are to be opened immediately by order of His Royal Highness John, King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, Count of Anjou, Poitou, Maine, Touraine and Mortain, loyal and most Christian servant of his Holiness Pope Innocent III—’

‘I see no king among this company. Who usurps the King’s name?’ I bellowed.

There is a ritual, a formula to these encounters. Meaningless, of course, but I did not see any reason to deviate from it. I was counting their spears, judging the quality of their men and their mounts. A hundred and four, I made it. I was impressed.

‘I do,’ shouted a commanding voice from the mass of horsemen now a stone’s throw from my gates, and a big imposing man in full mail with a black-and-gold surcoat astride a pure white horse rode forward. He had short-cropped grey hair, a strong square face and his left eye was blind and milky and a scar ran down from it almost to his jaw. His right eye was a fierce pale blue, and he stared up at me without a shadow of trepidation or doubt.

‘I am Philip Marc, High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and the Royal Forests, and I serve King John, who is lord of all in this realm.’

I knew who he was, of course. Two men had emerged from the lines of cavalry behind him and took up positions either side of the sheriff. One man I also knew, a fat knight of good family and bad character; the other I had never seen before. He was a veritable giant. An enormous fellow, with dark skin the colour of old saddle leather, broad flat nostrils above a huge red mouth and black hair that curled in a hundred tight whorls on his head. The man was taller even than Little John and a good deal wider, too, with small, mean button eyes glowing in the rolls of fat on his angry-looking brown face. His horse was no destrier or palfrey – it was a heavy carthorse, as high as a man at the shoulder and perhaps twice the size of a normal horse. I knew this man-mountain, too, by reputation at least: he was the demon that had so frightened Baldwin. And yet he was truly no demon. He was just a man, albeit a vast man, from the forests of Africa to the south of the desert lands of the Moors. I had seen many men like him, although none so big, in the Holy Land and in Spain on the way home from the Great Pilgrimage.

‘What can I do for you, my lord?’ I said to the sheriff, still looking over his companions.

‘You can open these God-damned gates, sir, and you can open them this instant, or you may call yourself a traitor to King and country.’

‘You come here with men arrayed for war and demand that I open my gates, sheriff. But I shall not do that. The last time you King’s men came inside my walls you stripped it bare of food and livestock and silver. You shall not enter. I defy you.’

‘You can fight us, sir – if you feel inclined to test your luck – but I would advise against it,’ said Sir Thomas, in a calm, powerful voice. ‘I would suggest that you take yourselves away from these gates with all possible haste – because, if you do not, in about twenty heartbeats, I am going to begin the slaughter of your men.’

Sir Thomas made a hand signal and the archers, almost at the same time, all nocked arrows and drew back their cords to the ear.

Philip Marc smiled, a crooked little grin. He seemed not the slightest bit dismayed. ‘Hold hard there, my good man,’ he said. ‘Let us not be hasty.’

He grinned insolently up at me. ‘There is another choice, Sir Alan,’ he said.

‘And what would that be?’ I said.

‘We could talk,’ said the sheriff. ‘We could behave like Christians.’

I made Marc send his cavalry back a good half-mile before I opened the gates. And then, under an agreement of truce, I allowed him and his two companions to enter the courtyard, before slamming shut the gate and barring it securely again.

However, I could see no reason to be churlish. For all that the sheriff had come to me in force he was still the lawful representative of the crown and I was not, at least not yet, an outlaw. It crossed my mind that my plot with de Vesci and Fitzwalter to kill the King might have been betrayed, but while I watched carefully, I saw no sign of it on the faces of my guests. I had Baldwin organise a trestle table and benches to be set up in the courtyard and I told Robert to bring out ale and bread and cheese. Nothing too fancy, but not insultingly mean either. Philip Marc sat down, entirely at his ease, took a piece of bread and accepted the cup of ale poured by my son. The dark-skinned man-mountain ate and drank nothing and chose to stand at the south end of the table, and I was glad of it. I did not think the bench would have taken his colossal weight, and his height and bulk created some welcome shade.

The fat knight sat down opposite Philip Marc, next to Sir Thomas and, as he cut himself a huge chunk of cheese, I said: ‘Well, well, Benedict, I have not seen your ugly face for a long while – but I see you have not lost your appetite.’

Sir Benedict Malet glared at me. I knew him for a glutton who put his own greed ahead of the needs of his men – I had discovered it when we had been at Château Gaillard together ten years before. I also knew him for a coward and traitor.

‘Very true, Sir Alan,’ he responded through a mouthful of cheese crumbs. ‘I believe I have not seen you since the day you murdered my friend Sir Joscelyn Giffard, the lord of Avranches.’

‘It was a fair fight,’ I said hotly, ‘a duel. He spilled my blood that day, too.’

‘He did not choose to fight you – yet you killed him. That is cold-blooded murder,’ said Sir Benedict, cramming a hunk of bread into his mouth.

I put my hand on my hilt, snarling. Truce or no truce, I would not be called a murderer in my own manor. Not by the likes of Benedict.

‘Gentlemen, gentlemen,’ said Philip Marc, ‘a little decorum. We are here to talk business, not to cut each other to pieces. We can do that later, if it proves necessary.’

Sir Benedict carried on chewing but his stare was poison.

‘I see you have already met my esteemed deputy sheriff, Sir Benedict Malet. And that big fellow over there is Boot, he is my … let us say my factotum.’

I was in no mood for pleasantries.

‘Tell me what you want here, sheriff,’ I said brusquely.

‘I should have thought that was obvious – I want what most men want. I want money. Your money, to be exact. Benedict has a bit of parchment somewhere – it is your bill of accounting. I expect he will show it to you if you ask him prettily…’

Benedict made no move and I said nothing.

‘No? Not interested in the details?’ said Marc. I could tell he was enjoying himself. ‘Well, from my memory there is the matter of twenty marks or so outstanding for this year’s taxes. And the King declares a further scutage of – oh, let us say fifteen marks – no, I feel generous, we’ll call it ten marks.’

I stared at the sheriff in silence. Sir Thomas shifted on his part of the bench. I saw that he was staring up at Boot with an expression close to awe in his eyes.

No one spoke. So Marc said: ‘Well, if you would like to hand over the thirty marks – or twenty pounds, if you prefer – then we will be on our way and there will be no need for any further unpleasantness.’

‘That’s it?’ I said. ‘You are demanding thirty marks – an outrageous sum which you know I cannot give you – and that’s all you wanted to talk about? You could have shouted that up from outside the walls and saved everyone a deal of time and trouble. If you think you can take this manor – go ahead and try. I have powerful friends who will come to my aid. I wager we can hold you off till they come. And so … oh, just get out, will you, get out and take your fat friend and your factotum with you. Go!’

I got up and shouted for the servants to open up the gates.

‘Oh dear, oh dearie, dearie me, I am becoming so absent-minded in my riper years,’ said Philip Marc.

The doors of the castle had swung open and my grooms brought over the three horses of our guests.

‘There was one rather important point I forgot to mention…’

Philip Marc swung up on to his horse.

‘Is that your boy there? A pretty lad. He serves at table well: neat and quiet. I like that. You must be proud of him.’

I said nothing. Robert took a step closer to me. I could feel his presence behind my left shoulder.

The sheriff said: ‘Well, here is the thing. The King must have his money. He is adamant. And I am empowered by him to use any means – I say any means at all – to raise it. So here it is: if you do not pay thirty marks in silver to the crown within the month, I will have my large friend Boot here tear your son’s head from his shoulders. Boot! Show the gentlemen!’

I looked up at the sheriff with the blood draining from my face. He was sitting there smiling down at me from the back of his horse. Had he really just threatened my son’s life? In my own home? I turned to look at Boot. He had not moved from his position standing by the table. But he had grasped the edge of the trestle board with one vast hand. The top surface was an inch thick of seasoned oak. He squeezed the wood and seemed to rip it sideways as if it were no more solid than a loaf of rye bread, and before my very eyes that huge dark man tore a chunk the size of a trencher from my table.

The giant tossed the piece of wood at my feet, turned and lumbered over to his carthorse. As the three of them rode out of the gate, I looked down at the object at my feet. I could see the impressions of Boot’s broad fingers indented in the wood.

I did not pay the sheriff. I could have done, I suppose. I could have sold everything we had at Westbury and gone to the Templars or the Jews to raise the rest of the money. But I decided I would not give way to menaces, no matter what. Besides, it could have been no more than an empty threat. The King’s chief officer in Nottinghamshire must surely balk at murdering an innocent child. The other great men of the county would not stand for it. I decided that the sheriff must have been testing my mettle, trying to put fear into me, and I determined that I would continue to defy him. Nevertheless, it is a hard thing to hazard your only son’s neck and I did not sleep much in the next few weeks.

I kept lookouts stationed on the tower night and day. And Robert never left Westbury without a guard of at least half a dozen armed men. But I did not wreck myself and Westbury to pay over the sheriff’s spurious tax demand. As the weeks and then the months slid by I heard nothing more from Philip Marc and his minions. And with the passing of time, my mind grew easier.

I did hear that the King had summoned his mercenaries and ridden north with a host determined to confront the northern barons over their refusal to serve him in Poitou, but on the road from London the Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, a godly man, I had heard, and an honest one, had persuaded him that force was not the answer and King John had turned around and headed back south. I took that as a good sign. I heard nothing from Robin either that summer and I was loath to contact him as we had parted on less than cordial terms. That was bad, but I knew that if I saw him he would try to persuade me to abandon my plans for the King’s removal.

The day of the ceremony at St Paul’s drew closer and I grew more and more skittish. I practised drawing and stabbing with my misericorde for hour after hour until the sweet black blade seemed to leap into my hand – I had decided that I would make a frontal attack, plunging the blade into John’s belly from the fore and then forcing it upwards to slice into the heart and lungs. It was a sure way of killing a man, I knew from long experience, and if I kept my body close to the King’s while the steel went in and I shoved it upwards, I would be shielding my blow from many eyes.

In the week before the ceremony – in the drizzly, dreary start of October – I practised the blow so many times by day that I dreamt about the strike at night. On one occasion I caught sight of Thomas watching me seize the blade and mime the cut, but he said nothing and merely smiled, nodded approvingly and walked away. At the beginning of the second week of October, I handed over responsibility for the protection of young Robert and Westbury to Sir Thomas and his men-at-arms. Baldwin helped me to pack a satchel of fine clothes – I would need to fit in with the nobility of all England at the ceremony – and another of food and drink. I hung my sword from my saddle, strapped the misericorde to my left forearm, donned cloak and hood and, once again without squire or servant, I set off south on the road to London.

I had a King to kill.

I write these lines in haste and in secret. Disaster has befallen us. Prior William has been reading these pages eagerly, collecting them from me as soon as I have finished them and burning the candle half the night to read them in his private apartments. But when he summoned me not an hour ago, his rage was as mighty as a winter storm at sea: an assault of sound and fury on all the senses. He said that he’d had no knowledge that Brother Alan was so deeply involved in the plot to murder King John, our own dear monarch Henry of Winchester’s esteemed father, and he has forbidden both Brother Alan and myself to continue with our task lest we give encouragement to others who seek to lay rough hands on royalty. I think I understand why. Prior William has hopes that our good King Henry will make him a bishop one day – he has long had his eye on the diocese of Durham – and he fears that tales of regicidal plots emanating from Newstead will not win him royal favour. I pleaded complete ignorance of the conspiracy against King John, as well I might, for this came to me, too, as a revelation. Although in truth, from what I have heard of the character of Henry’s royal father – by all accounts a most cruel and evil man – I cannot condemn Brother Alan for his long-ago actions.