The King’s Assassin (41 page)

‘Good idea,’ said Fitzwalter. ‘I know what I want – I want the King’s habit of demanding scutage whenever he damn well feels like it stopped – he can have it if he’s captured in battle and we need to raise a ransom, or on other special occasions, but he can’t just call scutage whenever he likes and wring the country dry. Oh, and I’d better get something in there about the rights of London, or my merchant friends there will not be pleased at all.’

‘I want a full pardon for any crimes,’ said de Vesci, who was suddenly cheerful. ‘Not that I admit to any. Ha ha! And I want to be able to move freely about the country – and abroad – without the King declaring me an outlaw. Not all of us want to have to sleep in the woods like a villein, Locksley! Ha ha!’

Robin smiled blandly but said nothing. And so the evening progressed with something almost approaching a spirit of celebration. Wine was drunk, articles were proposed, amended and then turned into fine-sounding legal words by the three wise men, who read them back to us from time to time with suitable gravitas. I stayed aloof from the discussions for the most part, but I marvelled at the way Robin had manipulated these men into willingly going along with his extraordinary plan.

After several hours of hearty discussion, Robin said to me: ‘And you, Alan, you are awfully quiet – what is it that you want from the King?’

I said without thinking: ‘I’d be happy never to have to go back to that gaol in Wallingford – to Brien’s Close. I’d be happy if I never had to fear being seized and flung into prison and left to die by inches without the chance to defend myself or explain. It is a fate no free man should have to face.’

I looked hard at de Vesci and Fitzwalter.

De Vesci looked away. But Fitzwalter held my gaze. ‘We wronged you, Alan, I know we did. We pulled you into our schemes and then abandoned you. There is no excuse, except that after we were betrayed we had to go into hiding for a few months ourselves to escape the King’s wrath. But we were wrong, I admit it. We should have helped you. All I can say now is that I am heartily sorry. Can you find it in your heart to forgive us?’

I was dimly aware of the archbishop conferring with the tall clerk. I thought about his forgiveness for me at the beginning of the meeting. I thought what it would mean to carry a burning grudge against these two men for the rest of my life – or until I could take a suitable revenge. It was not worth it. Truly, it wasn’t. I was not permanently damaged by my experience in gaol – Robin had saved me from that awful death and here I was now, hale and whole.

‘I forgive you,’ I said. ‘I forgive you both for any wrong you have done me. Let us put it behind us and never speak of it again.’

‘Well spoken, Sir Alan,’ said the archbishop. ‘Spoken like a true Christian knight.’ He favoured me with his broad smile. Fitzwalter embraced me in a bear hug, and even de Vesci shook me limply by the hand and muttered something about regrettable events and no hard feelings.

‘There is one thing I would say to you, Sir Alan,’ said Fitzwalter, ‘which perhaps I should have said before. You remember that we thought we had found a traitor in our midst, a fellow who had taken the King’s silver to spy upon us?’

I did.

‘Well, it seems that he was not the man who betrayed us at St Paul’s. My men were very persuasive – I won’t go into details – but he refused to admit that crime under indescribable pain. He denied it even as he died. So, it looks as if it was someone else who betrayed you. Perhaps someone in your own camp.’

I looked at Robin and raised my brows.

He nodded and said: ‘I heard him, Alan. But we need to talk about that another time.’

‘How does this sound to you, Sir Alan?’ said the archbishop, and he waved his hand to the small clerk, who rose to his feet and read out in a strong voice the following words, words I remember as clearly today as then, words I hope I shall never forget: ‘No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land.’

‘That will do fine,’ I said, sniffling a little and wiping my face, for my eyes, unaccountably, seemed to be blurred with tears.

The next few weeks were frantic. The archbishop’s clerks wrote out the charter in fine Latin and copies were circulated to many of the most powerful men in England. The earls of Norfolk, Essex, Oxford, Hereford, Hertford, Albemarle and Winchester, dozens of lesser barons and hundreds of knights all received copies from Robin with notes inviting them to contribute to the clauses contained within it and to the wording of the document: the charter was loose in the kingdom, it was discussed, derided, dismissed, but very often lauded in knightly halls from Penzance to Penrith.

Not all the barons of England were in favour of it – and few would publicly state that they had joined Fitzwalter and de Vesci’s party, who were openly defying the King’s officers by this point. I personally delivered a copy of the charter to the Earl of Pembroke – and William the Marshal, that grizzled old warhorse, a man who I respected enormously, gave me an embarrassing public dressing down, accused me of disloyalty to our divinely anointed King, fomenting rebellion and civil war, and tore the document up in front of my face. Were it not for our long friendship I think he might have offered me harm, or tried to imprison me and deliver me to the King.

Indeed, England
was
on the lip of civil war: John had returned to England in mid-October with a substantial army of Poitevin and Flemish mercenaries – he no longer trusted even those English knights who had agreed to serve him – and these foreigners he installed as sheriffs, bailiffs and foresters in all the counties where he still held sway, with orders to raise as much money as they could by whatever means they saw fit. It was tantamount to a declaration of war on his own kingdom. These foreign sheriffs proved to be as ruthless as Philip Marc in the collection of taxes – and while they caused great hardship, they advanced our cause immeasurably.

Men from all over England were now writing to Robin and contributing clauses that they hoped to see included in the charter, and most were accepted and swiftly incorporated by the archbishop’s clerks. But one article that was proposed proved to be more controversial.

Lord Fitzwalter had been invited to Kirkton for Christmas. His grand fortress in London, Baynard Castle, had been destroyed by the King two years before and, while he had some lands and a small wooden castle at Dunmow in Essex, he had been residing with de Vesci in Alnwick for some time now. I believe he had had his fill of the boorish lord of Alnwick and sought a respite, which is why he was welcomed at Kirkton for the Feast of Our Lord’s Nativity.

One evening in mid-December, Robin and Fitzwalter were wrangling over the charter as usual, going into great detail on the changes to the law of scutage, when the subject of guarantees came up.

‘Even if we can get John to agree to this charter, is there any guarantee that he will keep his word afterwards?’ I said, not meaning to stir things up but in a spirit of genuine enquiry.

‘He would be perjured and the whole country would know it,’ said Fitzwalter. ‘His authority would be utterly destroyed if he broke his word. He could not do it.’

Robin looked at me. I shrugged.

My lord said: ‘Our experience of King John has been that his word of honour means next to nothing. I think Alan has a point here. We need some device to keep the King honest after he has agreed to the charter. Otherwise he is most likely to agree to it and then repudiate it whenever he feels like it.’

‘What do you have in mind?’ said Fitzwalter. ‘How does one ensure that a dishonourable King keeps his sacred word?’

‘I think if we appointed a council to oversee the King,’ said Robin, ‘say twenty-five powerful barons and senior churchmen whose task it was to ensure that the monarch kept to his agreement and who were empowered by law to seize the King’s castles and lands if he broke his word … That might work.’

‘A Great Council of barons, earls, bishops and abbots, eh?’ said Fitzwalter. ‘To meet regularly, discuss the issues of the day, advise the King and keep him in check. You mean what the French would call a “parliament”.’

‘You realise,’ said Robin, ‘that if we include this Great Council clause we make it that much less likely that John will agree to it.’

‘We are going to have to put a knife to his throat to make him set his seal on it anyway,’ said Fitzwalter. ‘Why not put a Great Council in the charter. I think it is a splendid idea … Why are you both staring at me like that? I meant knife to his throat in the figurative sense. I didn’t mean to actually put a knife at … unless Alan, you feel strong enough…’ He grinned at me.

‘No,’ I said. ‘We are not going down that path again.’

‘I was merely jesting, of course,’ said Fitzwalter. ‘But do not delude yourselves, my friends, that this can be done with fair words, flowers and kisses. The King must be brought to heel and compelled to set his seal on this charter. By force.’

The King refused absolutely to countenance the charter. A version of it – including Robin’s Great Council idea – was dispatched to Windsor Castle at Christmas, with a letter from twenty principal rebel barons, most of them northerners, including, of course, Robin and my lords de Vesci and Fitzwalter, wishing the King joy of the season and inviting him to consider their demands for the sake of the country.

The refusal reached us at Kirkton in the last days of December. It said that the charter was totally unacceptable – a crime against the King’s dignity, an affront to all the laws and customs of England – and it reminded all the noble participants of the document that they had done homage to the King and therefore owed him absolute loyalty. However, he also summoned the rebel barons, under a flag of truce guaranteed by William the Marshal and the Archbishop of Canterbury, to St Paul’s Cathedral in London on the sixth day of January to discuss the matter. John was saying no, and at the same time hinting that maybe something might be managed.

I did not attend the meeting at St Paul’s between the northern barons and the King for the very good reason that I was not invited. And, in the event, I was glad that I had not made the arduous journey to London and back in mid-winter, for Robin told me later that nothing at all was achieved.

In February, I returned to Westbury after my long stay at Kirkton with Robert, Thomas, Boot and Baldwin and a strong force of men-at-arms – a hundred men belonging to de Vesci, enough men to defy the sheriff indefinitely, if he should come for me. And a few weeks later, there were once more armed men outside my gates.

The Earl of Pembroke, William the Marshal himself, rode up to the gates of Westbury on a mild day in the middle of March. He came in peace, of that I was sure, for he brought with him only half a dozen men-at-arms, enough to see him safe on the roads. He also brought with him his almoner, Brother Geoffrey.

As it was one of the first days of sunshine since long before Christmas, I was sitting at a trestle table in my courtyard, allowing the slight warmth to bathe my pale skin, while the Westbury servants turned out the hall, swept out the floor rushes and the cobwebs, washed and dried all the crockery, pots and pans, laundered the linen, aired the blankets, flung open all the shutters and allowed fresh spring air to circulate and flush away the dense fug of winter. Twenty yards from me, Sir Thomas and Robert were halfway through their sword practice, going at it hammer and tongs right across the yard and back again.

I greeted the Earl with considerable warmth, for I was very fond of him despite the unpleasantness of our last meeting. Brother Geoffrey I greeted coolly and it seemed that we both tacitly agreed not to mention that encounter. Whether the Marshal knew or not what had occurred between the Templar and I in that cell in Nottingham last autumn, I did not discover, but the situation was very different now. I had my own men-at-arms around me and a hundred spearmen belonging to Lord de Vesci. There would be no hair-pulling this time, no threatening interrogation.

I served the Marshal and his almoner wine at the table while his men were fed and their horses watered and given hay across at the stables. I called Robert over to greet the Earl of Pembroke and was most irritated to see that he was unwilling to come to the table. In fact, one moment he was in the courtyard sparring with Thomas and the next he had completely disappeared. I sent Thomas to fetch him and told his tutor in no uncertain terms that I expected my son to behave with proper courtesy towards our noble guest. Robert’s theft of a horse from the Marshal’s stable and his desertion from his post still haunted my conscience.

After an awkward wait, Robert did eventually appear. He bowed low to the Earl and his almoner and made a stumbling apology for his past behaviour, and the Marshal graciously said it was no matter and all was forgiven. And then Robert begged to be released to continue his training session with Sir Thomas and I had little choice but to agree. We drank wine and nibbled sweetmeats and watched Robert and Thomas have at it in the courtyard – and though he had made considerable progress in the past few months under Thomas’s careful instruction, that day, to my irritation Robert was particularly clumsy, even dropping his sword at one point. The Earl of Pembroke watched this dispiriting display without comment and, after we had spoken of the weather and the state of the roads, the Marshal came to the nub of his business.

‘It’s this damned charter, Alan,’ he said. ‘It won’t do, you know. The King will never agree to it, not in its present form. He must be free to raise taxes from his barons – how else can he fight his wars? – and he will not be governed by this devil-spawned Great Council. He must rule ungoverned – he is the King!’

‘It was his ungoverned rule that brought us to this pass,’ I said mildly.

‘God’s blood, Alan, how can you side with this contumelious rabble? I know your master, my lord of Locksley, is an outsider, an outlaw, a natural rebel, if you like. But he is also a man of honour, you and I both know that. Why he should ally himself with scum like de Vesci and Fitzwalter is beyond me.’