The King’s Assassin (20 page)

It seemed to me that I was a dead man already and it could only be an hour or two at most before I was in my grave.

I was marched along the corridor, and glancing right and left through open doors, I saw that there were at least four other cells with antechambers just like mine. Through one door I saw a larger room with a brazier glowing a dull red and manacles hanging from the walls. An emaciated wretch was strapped to a table in there, pale as a frog’s belly, except where the irons had blistered his skin purple. His eyes were closed and I prayed that he had found his eternal rest. This was clearly a prison, designed specifically for holding men, punishing them, absorbing their screams. And, oddly, I was a little cheered by this. I had heard tell of such a place: known as Brien’s Close after a fierce nobleman in the days of war between King Stephen and Empress Matilda, or the ‘Anarchy’, as that period of lawlessness is now called. And it
was
inside Wallingford Castle. I had been correct in my calculations. I would know where I was to meet my death.

We went up a set of stone steps and along another corridor: guardrooms on this floor, and kitchens, by the smell of it. Onion soup cooking. Then we came out of the building into the grey light of an October day and I found myself in a large courtyard perhaps a hundred and twenty yards wide. It was surrounded on all side by high stone walls, with towers set into them. To my right was a vast mound of packed earth a hundred feet high and atop it a curtain wall beyond which I could make out a strong square tower, the motte. Directly in front of me was, of all things, a vegetable garden: a rounded square filled with neat rows of leeks and onions, herbs and medicinal plants; a section of apple trees and trellises of plums. For some reason, Tilda and the new herb garden at Kirklees sprang into my mind. I had never seen it and I never would. I would have liked to have seen Tilda one more time, too, before the end. But that was clearly not to be.

The crossbowmen closed up around me as we crossed the courtyard and the people walking about in that space, men-at-arms, servants, a monk or two, stopped at the sight of me and gawped. I felt painfully conscious of how I must have looked: a prisoner, filthy and bloody, bruised and cut, dressed in a dead woman’s leather coat with a mouldy blanket wrapped around my middle. A drunken pair of knights guffawed at my state and pointed, slapping their sides with mirth; a passing priest closed his eyes and began to pray as I shambled past awkwardly barefoot with my cloud of watchful guards.

I was herded, not towards the motte and the high tower at its summit, but to the far side of the courtyard, towards the open gate through which I could just glimpse a broad expanse of water – the Thames, I assumed. I thought for a moment about trying to run. The main gate was wide open, and if I could slip my wardens I might find a boat … But I knew it was futile. I would not get ten yards before I was skewered by a trio of lethal quarrels. And I did not want to die. Not yet. The perennial prayer of the condemned man:
Dear Lord, not now, I beg you, not now.

My captors took me to a large hall on the far side of the courtyard, and bustled me inside. It was half-filled with folk – castle servants, men-at-arms, countrymen and women, dogs and even a couple of hawkers with their birds on their arms – and I was shoved roughly to the floor by the wall and told to sit quietly and wait. While Jan and Willi stood over me with their bows – I was gratified to see that they were very tense and seemingly much afraid of me – I rested my head back against the wattle-and-daub wall and closed my eyes.

‘Good Lord, you look a mess,’ said a voice. I opened my eyes and looked up at a tall man with cropped iron-grey hair, dressed in a rich scarlet-coloured ankle-length tunic. He had a long sword at his waist and an ivory crucifix on a golden chain around his neck.

It was Aymeric de St Maur, Master of the English Templars.

The Templar began issuing orders: ‘Get this man a stool, now, and a cup of ale – for the love of God. And something to eat.’

Stevin and the others had disappeared, but Jan and Willi looked at each other, hesitating.

‘Get on with it, you fools. Now!’ Sir Aymeric’s words cracked like a whip. ‘I’ll watch him. He will not run, I promise you.’

As Jan unspanned his bow, tucked his quarrel in his belt and hurried away to obey the words of command, Willi looked sick with fear, but he held his ground and kept his crossbow pointed unwaveringly at my head like a good soldier.

‘Well, you’ve really done it now, Sir Alan,’ said Aymeric in a kindly tone. ‘They say you were all ready to cut the King’s head clean off. Is that right?’

I said nothing and closed my eyes again.

‘Answer me, man, we don’t have much time. Were you trying to kill the King?’

I was spared from answering by the arrival of a pair of servants with a stool and a jug of ale. I drank it greedily and set it between my feet as someone handed me a bowl of oat porridge with a handful of raisins stirred into it. I sat on the stool and slurped the food and washed it down with the ale, and Aymeric de St Maur looked down at me with a silent compassion.

When I had finished he said: ‘Alan, I know you are a good son of the Church, and if you are to be executed, I know that you will want to die in a state of grace. I can shrive you of your sins, I can guarantee you a place in the Heavenly Kingdom, and I would do it – but if you care for your soul, you must answer this question.’

I remained mute.

‘Where is it, Sir Alan?’

I goggled at the man. What on earth was he talking about?

‘Where is it? Tell me, Alan, and I will save your soul.’

‘What?’ I stammered. ‘I don’t know…’

Just then Stevin returned with Jan and a trio of crossbowmen. He snarled and kicked the porridge bowl out of my hands, then he and another guard hauled me roughly to my feet and began to march me to the end of the hall.

‘Tell me where it is, Sir Alan, I beg of you. There is no time. Tell me and I will save you—’

I heard Sir Aymeric’s words clearly as I was hustled away, three big angry men pushing and shoving me onwards, nigh on lifting me towards a big carved chair on a dais at the far end of the building.

And there was the King.

John looked old. His face was pouchy and grey, his red-gold hair was streaked with silver, his belly had thickened and slumped around his middle like a wide belt of flesh. Apart from those few brief instants outside St Paul’s I had not seen him close up for many years – and those years had not been kind. He looked at me as if he could taste something disgusting on the tip of his tongue.

‘I should have you hanged, drawn and quartered,’ he said. ‘I should have torn out your innards and fed them to my dogs long since. You have been a stone in my shoe, Alan Dale; a mosquito that I have been too soft-hearted to swat; a beetle that I have neglected for too long to squash.’ His voice rose to the ugly croaking that I remembered well. ‘This is how you repay my extraordinary leniency? With this?’

The King held up the black misericorde attached to the archer’s bracer that Fitzwalter had given me. He was shouting by now, quite purple in the face. ‘You murderous, gutter-born turd. You presume to lay hands on
me
!’

I let the royal fury wash over me. I would die, for sure, and I only prayed that it would be swift. It would be soon, I knew. I prayed that I would be reunited with my love, my dead wife Godifa, in Heaven.

‘I would tear the flesh from you with red-hot pincers –’ flecks of royal spittle rained down on my face – ‘I would have you trampled by wild bulls and thrown still breathing to the lions of my menagerie…’

Suddenly the King’s fury seemed to be spent.

‘But your
friends
’ – he spat the word – ‘your friends at court tell me I cannot kill you without the risk of the whole of England rising in rebellion. They say there is no proof of your intent and that you are innocent of any crime. I say they are wrong. What say you?’

I had almost lost the wits to speak. Almost.

If I were a truly brave man, I would have spoken the truth and damned him for a foul and murderous tyrant who richly deserved death at my hands. But I did not. And in such moments as these the mark of a man is revealed. I played the craven – I was craven. I did not actually beg for my life but I did the next best thing.

‘Sire,’ I said, ‘I am innocent of any crime. I did not strike at you or harm you. At St Paul’s I merely wished to ask you a boon, to crave your royal grace’s blessing on a private matter. There is no proof of my crime because … because I am truly innocent.’

I am damned as a coward. And a liar, too.

‘No proof?’ shouted the King. ‘I say this is proof enough!’ And he waved the misericorde in front of his face.

‘Give me that blade and I will gladly prove my innocence with my body against any man you care to name.’

‘Oh, you would like that, wouldn’t you? Oh yes. You have a name as a cold-blooded killer. No doubt you would like to add one more corpse to the black tally on your soul. But I will not risk one of my good men against you. No, no, no!’

The King looked at me. He seemed to be thinking.

‘Was it Fitzwalter? Or Lord de Vesci? Or both of them. You were seen at Alnwick Castle not three months ago. Did you hatch your little plot with them? Tell me? Do you think we do not watch them – those creeping northern reptiles?’

I shrugged. ‘I am innocent, sire.’

‘You lie – and yet I have given my word to your
friends
’
–
again that word – ‘that I will not harm you without sufficient proof. And I am a man of my word. So I shall not harm so much as a hair on your head.’

I looked at the King, unbelieving. Was this truly a reprieve? Then I saw that a horrible smirk was twitching at his wine-red lips. He repeated: ‘I swore that I would not harm you – and I will not.’

He gave a little chuckle that froze my blood.

‘Take him away,’ he said.

I was marched back across the courtyard with my head spinning from the encounter. What did he mean when he said that he would not harm me? And why did this uncharacteristic clemency seem to amuse him so much? As we entered Brien’s Close, down the stone steps, through the corridors, and back to my black stone cell, the awful answer began to form in my mind. I was shoved roughly into my prison and before the door was slammed shut, I noticed something that chilled me more than I can say: the corpse of the woman gaoler was gone and in its place someone had set the big water butt from the antechamber. It had been filled to the brim. The door banged behind me and, a few moments later, to my horror I heard the slap of planks and the sound of eager hammers driving nails deep into wood. And, as the blackness wrapped itself around me once again, I had the answer to the riddle.

I wept. I confess it. Unmanly as it must seem to all. I wept like a baby – for I knew how I would die in those hours after I was nailed securely into my dark and silent tomb. I had water – many gallons, enough to last me for weeks. But apart from the few spoonfuls of porridge in my belly, I knew I would receive no more nourishment in this life. I thought of Maud, the brave and foolish lady of William de Braose, and her son who were imprisoned in Corfe Castle until they expired of hunger; not killed directly by the King’s men, but just as dead nonetheless. King John would not harm me, just as he had said, but nor would he give me my liberty until I was a lifeless husk.

So I wept. I prayed. I wept again. And I slept once more, wrapped in a dead woman’s coat and a mouldy green blanket.

What can I say about the hideous lifetime I spent alone in the darkness in that cell? It was a small freezing hell, lacking in all comfort save the water barrel – and believe me I drank my fill. I also washed myself from head to foot and dried myself on the blanket. I cautiously stretched my body and loosened my bruised and aching muscles as well as I could.

Over the next few days, I searched the cell with my fingertips, every bump, every crevice, every fold in the rock walls. There was nothing in there but myself, my blanket, my sleeveless coat, the water butt and the drain. And not a sound to be heard nor a sight to be seen. Most of the time I sat on my blanket and thought – I thought about, well, I thought about nearly everything.

My musings first turned to Robin. My lord. How bitterly I regretted our last words to each other. I had been a fool to have abused him so. I had called him a coward to his face, perhaps the worst insult one could throw at a fighting man. I knew Robin had been hurt – angry, too. After our estrangement over my foolish attempt to take down the King – how could I have been so bone-headed as to think I would succeed? – and my gross behaviour, I knew I could not expect him to come to my aid. Indeed, I knew no one was coming to my aid. I believed that he might have had words with the King on my behalf – he and perhaps the Master of the Templars, and perhaps William the Marshal, too, were my ‘friends’, as the King had so scathingly called them. I believed that they and Robin might have warned the King not to harm me. But my lord could do nothing, even if he were so inclined, to extricate me from my tomb. I was in one of the strongest prisons in the country, inside a powerful fortress. Even with a mighty army Robin could not ride to my rescue, and to raise the force required to take Wallingford Castle, Robin would have to openly side with the rebel cause – something I knew he would not do. But even if he did, even if he overcame his doubts about rebellion, why would he sacrifice his soldiers to take a stronghold just to free one man – a man who had so insulted him? He would not. Robin was not coming for me. Nobody was coming for me.

In my weakness and self-pity, I wept again.

A day or so passed. Even so soon, I began to lose my grip upon the surface of the world. My belly was soon empty, and I drank water, pints of it, to give it the illusion of satiation. I worked on my aching body some more, losing myself in the strengthening routines that all soldiers know. I lay full length on my back and pulled myself into a sitting position, time and time again until I fell back exhausted. I lay on my front and, keeping my body stiff, I pumped my full weight up and down using only the strength of my arms. I paced that tiny cell corner to corner to keep my legs from becoming weak: one, two, three, four paces, then turn, and one, two, three, four back to the far corner. I walked for hours, until sheer exhaustion, and a knowledge of the futility of my actions, led me to cower miserably under the damp blanket and seek the solace of sleep.