The King’s Assassin (18 page)

It was a summons from the Templars.

And, for a courteous man, it was couched in none too courteous terms.

I was due to dine with Robin that day but it was almost noon when I took my leave of the ladies and made my way down towards Queen’s Hythe, where Robin was staying with a wine merchant friend of his.

The wine that was served with dinner was magnificent but my welcome into the presence of my lord was not. There were a dozen other noblemen at the feast, including William the Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, and William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, the King’s half-brother who had led us to victory at Damme. There were also several of the grander merchants of London. I noticed that all the noblemen gathered there were staunch supporters of the King – none of the discontented northern barons were present. Had Robin chosen a side? Had he chosen to take the King’s part?

I must admit that we feasted royally: roasted venison and wild boar, and spitted hares and dripping capons, great baskets of bread, bowls of freshly picked sallet leaves, crayfish stew, lamprey pies, cheese, fruit, puddings, nuts and wine – and more wine. I ate and drank with the rest of my lord’s guests, but I was placed as far away from Robin as was possible given my rank as a senior knight. Indeed, whereas I had once frequently sat at his right hand, I now occupied a place far down the table among the lesser men-at-arms. My lord was angry with me. That much was clear.

‘He knows what you are up to, Alan,’ Little John told me in a loud whisper, when I stopped the big man after the feast and asked him why I was being treated so coldly. ‘He doesn’t like it. It would be best if you abandoned your little plot.’

‘Not you as well, John,’ I protested. ‘Surely you know why I’m doing this; surely you agree that the man is a royal turd who must be washed down the chute.’

‘Oh, aye,’ the big man said, ‘I have no problem with you taking out the King. And I’m sure you can do it. But I have a problem with you going against orders to do it. Robin is my lord – and yours – and he says no to this. Now, I won’t stand in your way, for the sake of our friendship, but don’t ask for my help either.’

Robin was cold and formal when I finally got to speak to him alone, long after all his guests had left. After the dinner he had been closeted with some of the greater barons and merchants for several hours and by the time I was admitted to his chambers, it was growing dark. Robin looked ill-tempered and out of sorts. I repeated the Master of the Templars message word for word so as to convey its rudeness and urgency. But Robin merely grunted and looked at me with apparent distaste.

‘So now you are mixed up with the Templars, too, are you?’ he said.

I frowned. ‘I am not mixed up – as you put it – with the Templars. I am merely delivering the message of the Master, who is an old friend of mine. And I am offering to take a reply back to the Temple tonight, if you desire it.’

‘I have no reply for them.’

‘Do you know what they want?’ I asked.

‘No, and I don’t care. I have had enough of Templars to last me a lifetime. The last time I went to the Temple, if you remember, they put me on trial for my life.’

‘They will think you churlish if you don’t reply.’

‘God damn you, Alan. Why must you always seek to tell me what to do? I will have nothing to do with the Templars and their plots and politics – I have enough on my mind as it is – and if you were a wiser man, you would have nothing to do with them either. And nothing to do with those other cowardly schemers, de Vesci and Fitzwalter. Can’t you see that they are merely using you? You are acting like a fool!’

I lost my control then. My anger had been simmering ever since the humiliation of dinner and the long wait to see him, and it boiled over in that instant.

‘You call Fitzwalter a coward – and yet he at least has the courage to strike at the tyrant. You, apparently, do not. Perhaps it is not he but
you
who is the coward!’

Robin’s face was white as salt.

‘Get out!’ he said quietly. ‘Get out of this house before I do something I regret.’

I was already wishing my words back in my mouth. I had called my lord a coward to his face. I wanted to say that I did not mean it. I wanted to apologise to him and ask for his forgiveness, but before I could speak, Robin, for the third time, even more quietly and infinitely more menacingly, said: ‘Get out, Alan. Now!’

I found my legs moving as if under the control of another man, taking me out of the chamber and towards the front door.

I must have walked back to my lodgings in Friday Street, a house owned by Lord Fitzwalter, but I have no recollection of it. I must have taken myself up to the garret at the top of the house where I was staying and washed and undressed and rolled into my cot. I must have fallen asleep. The next day, I rose late, long after dawn, with a double sense of dread, and washed and dressed myself in my finest clothes: the striped hose with the leather soles, the sky-blue wide-sleeved tunic and black hat. I do not think I have ever felt quite so alone. I strapped the misericorde to my left wrist and checked that it could not be seen when my arm was lowered. I drew it once and practised the killing stroke: a thrust, and twist upwards of the blade to find the heart.

My own heart was beating like a tambour. I felt the fear of what I was about to do weigh like lead upon my soul. My palms were wet, my hands shook. I felt sick to my stomach. God give me strength, I prayed. Do not let me prove to be a coward today, of all days. But despite my milksop quaking and the terrible deed that lay before me, half of my mind was on what I had said to Robin the night before. I wanted to rush directly round to the merchant’s house in Queen’s Hythe and throw myself on his mercy, beg for a reconciliation, tell him that I must have been drunk or mad to say such a thing. But I could not do it. Apart from pride or my dignity or anything of that nature, I had not the time.

The killing hour was upon me.

As I arrived at St Paul’s Churchyard, I could hear the glorious singing of the monks from the cathedral spilling from the arched windows and the great open door in the south transept. It steadied me somewhat, that holy music, and I wiped my damp palms on my tunic and willed myself to be calm. God is here, I told myself. He sees me, He loves me. He will guide my arm this day. He is my strength and my shield.

I waited with the mass of people south of the cathedral, twenty yards from the dais and its gaudy purple awning where the ceremony would take place. It seemed as if the whole world was gathered in that courtyard to catch a glimpse of the King: apprentices with glowing faces, joyful with youth and at having a day of leisure; poor knights perhaps hoping for a chance to impress the court; big London goodwives angling for a touch of the King’s mantle or a blessing for a sick child, merchants, shopkeepers, butchers, barbers, sailors at liberty from their ships, country folk in white smocks and floppy straw hats, children, dogs and horses. The great nobles and their retinues were already inside the church but I looked closely at the sea of faces and saw to my relief a captain of Fitzwalter’s guards, bold in a gorgeous golden cloak with half a dozen men-at-arms at his back and a pair of slatternly women giggling beside him, there on the far side of the dais. He saw me looking at him from thirty yards away and gave me a small discreet nod of acknowledgement.

Be calm, I told myself. You know why you do this. For poor murdered Arthur, Duke of Brittany, for my son Robert, so that he may grow up and prosper in a just and fair land not under the yoke of a tyranny, for England and all her people …

And yet … And yet. He was the King. And what I was about to do would echo throughout England, throughout the world. God Himself had set King John over us, and I was presuming to know the mind of the Almighty, to know that He willed this King’s life to be cut short by my hand. For a moment I contemplated walking away, pushing through the crowds and out into the vastness of London. I would find a tavern and drink until I knew no more. I was no assassin. What had I been thinking? I was a knight – I hoped a man of honour – and here I was, contemplating this foul murder of the highest in the land. My back was slick with sweat, my knees were trembling, I could not seem to stop swallowing my own spit. And where, where was the King? The singing had long ceased in that vast House of God. Why was he not coming out of the cathedral? Had he changed his plans; had he somehow got wind of the plot? Was he toying with me? For an instant I stepped out of my body and contemplated the sweaty, trembling wretch I had become, his gaudy holiday clothes covering his black assassin’s heart, one evil man in a crowd of happy innocent folk. Enough, Alan, I told myself. Be a man, for the love of God. Do not think; just do!

And, at last, they were coming out. A blast of trumpets. A blaze of bright colour. A file of Flemish crossbowmen wearing the lions of England on their red surcoats were shoving the crowds back. And there was the King of England, John, son of King Henry, brother of lionhearted Richard, a sallow figure, short, stooped, with greying once-bright hair but eyes as dark as his soul. He was dressed in a long purple cloak with white ermine at the shoulders and a thin circlet of gold around his brow. The crowd gave a vast roar – Love? Joy? Hatred? Contempt? Who could say?

The Flemish men-at-arms cleared a path for the King, brutally forcing the people back with their big wooden crossbows, using the heavy T-shaped weapons like cudgels and leaving more than a few bloodied faces in their wake.

John strolled into the centre of the courtyard, in an area of empty space, serene, yet with a slight supercilious smile playing over his lips. Behind him, out of the church door in a flood, came the other nobles, dazzling in blood red and leaf green, sea blue and silvery white, black fur and pale silk, jewels on every hand and at the neck, glinting in the sunlight.

I saw Fitzwalter’s captain of guards in gold and scarlet scanning the crowd for me, finding my face and starting to push his way towards me. There was Robin, too, in dark forest green, bareheaded and standing beside the papal legate, Master Pandulf, an austere figure in black with touches of wine-red at neck and cuff, and Stephen Langton, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Robin saw me, I know he did, but his eyes moved over me as if we were strangers. Then he turned his back and began speaking to the legate. Fitzwalter’s captain was at my shoulder by then. A comforting golden presence with eight mailed men forming a dense wedge behind him.

‘Ready, sir?’ he said.

I could not speak. My tongue and throat had become knotted. I managed a curt nod. The King was ten paces from me moving slowly towards the dais inside a loose ring of crossbowmen. John deigned to speak to a few of the men in the crowd; smiled and waved at others; a woman threw a rose at him that landed on the royal chest before slipping to the ground and I saw him flinch, for a moment, utterly terrified. William the Marshal called out a greeting to the King and was rewarded with a raised hand and a wave. The King was five paces from me, almost at the steps of the dais.

‘Now!’ said the captain in my ear.

Don’t think, Alan, just do! Do it, now.

I moved jerkily towards the King, my eyes fixed on his face. I heard the sound of women shouting far behind him and away to my left; felt a wave of movement in the crowd. A burly crossbowman stood before me, a bearded man, reeking of garlic, but his head was twisted away, searching for the source of the commotion.

The women’s screams had doubled in volume. I saw the red-haired wench seize a handful of the other woman’s hair. A slap rang out. Men-at-arms were moving in to separate the women. More screams and harsh male shouts.

The Flemish crossbowman was distracted; his eyes fixed on the struggling women and the knot of soldiers around them. I slipped easily past his shoulder. The King was a mere three paces from me, with nothing between us but air.

I ran over in my mind the words I planned to say to the King at the moment the misericorde plunged into his belly: ‘This death is made in the memory of Arthur, Duke of Brittany, whose murder at your orders I witnessed with my own eyes. Arthur thou art avenged!’

I realised that my lips had been moving to the words in my head.

Don’t think, Alan; just do!

The King’s gaze flashed to my face. He opened his mouth. I took a step forward.

‘There, Stevin, there. It’s Dale. The assassin! Take him, man, take him.’

My right hand was at my left sleeve; I was a yard away from the target.

But before I could even touch the handle of the weapon a force like a charging bull slammed into my back and hurled me sprawling to the ground. I saw a garlic-stinking bearded face snarling above mine and smashed my right fist into it. I lifted my head, my belly and upper legs pinned by the dead weight of the crossbowman and another fellow crashed down on top of my head and torso, flattening me back to the earth. I kicked and punched, writhed, squirmed and tried to reach my blade, but in an instant both my hands were held fast. Then my ankles were seized. There were booted legs all around. I felt a kick smash into my ribs. The pinning body suddenly lifted from my head and I stretched out my neck, teeth snapping, trying to bite anything within reach, and saw the shadow of a black, wooden T-shaped object swinging towards me. It crashed into the side of my head and I knew no more.

I have been knocked out of the world before, God knows, more times than I care to count, and mostly I recovered soon enough without serious hurt after a little rest and quiet. This time it was different. Perhaps it was my advancing age. Perhaps the savage blow from the crossbow stock to my head shook up my brains in some unusual way. Perhaps it was because over the next few days the beatings never seemed to cease and I was never allowed to properly recover my senses. In any case, I cannot fully recall the next section of my life.

I know that I was bound, hand and foot, and stripped naked of my holiday finery, like a hog ready for slaughter, that every passing man-at-arms seemed to take a delight in kicking my bruised and roaring head. I was blindfolded, too, for a while, or maybe I just became blind for a period for I remember blackness and noise and pain – an ocean of pain. The beatings continued and I think I was in a church at some point – perhaps the cathedral itself, although it seemed a far smaller building. I smelled incense and wax and for some strange reason frying bacon and orange blossom.