The King’s Assassin (38 page)

By noon, I was at home, dusty, panting and sore of foot. Thomas greeted me incredulously when I arrived at the gates of Westbury, and Robert rushed at me and hugged me with tears in his eyes.

‘Oh, Father, I truly thought I would never see you again,’ my son said. He looked fearfully up at Boot’s looming form.

‘What?’ I said. ‘Did you think there was a prison in England that could hold me?’ I was feeling dangerously light-headed, almost giddy with happiness. ‘I have friends everywhere, my boy. And if I don’t have them, I make them: this is our new comrade Boot,’ I said, and the huge man bowed low, quite elegantly from the waist.

‘Boot, this is my son Robert. I commend him to your care for the next few days. And I charge you with his safekeeping.’

‘I am honoured, sir,’ said Boot. ‘I shall guard him with my life. Do you care for music, little one?’

Robert said something about playing the shwarm, and I left my son discussing that less-than-exquisite instrument with my latest recruit while I began to rouse the manor for our imminent departure.

‘Baldwin, we cannot stay here,’ I said. ‘The deputy sheriff will be upon with all the force that he can command within an hour or so. Pack all that you can in haste and let us be away to Yorkshire – to Kirkton.’

With Thomas, Robert, myself and a handful of Westbury men-at-arms all fully armoured and mounted – there was no horse that could accommodate Boot’s huge size and no hauberk that would fit him – we headed north for Kirkton. I calculated that my son would only be truly safe from Benedict’s fury if he were inside Robin’s walls.

We marched within the hour. I had refused to answer their questions until we were well on the road, some fifteen miles north of Nottingham, and had stopped long after nightfall to make a dry, fireless camp in deep woods. As we munched bread and ham and passed around a large skin of wine, I regaled our company with the tale of how Boot had boldly rescued me from the sheriff’s clutches.

The story seemed to embarrass Boot, and he excluded himself from our jolly congratulatory conversations, keeping silent throughout, but my own curiosity about this huge man who had saved my life got the better of me and I asked him to give an account of himself and how he came to be in England.

‘I do not like to talk,’ said Boot in his high, child’s voice. ‘I am not one of those clever fellows who chatters and laughs and jests and makes play with words, I am a simple man, but I will tell you a little about myself, Sir Alan, as it is fitting for a man newly entered into your service.’

I passed him the wineskin and he sank a good pint of rough red wine in two huge swallows. Our company was silent by then, every ear straining to hear what the giant would say next.

‘I was born in a land far away, far to the south beyond the seas and the deserts, a land where the sun shines all day every day. I was born in a village, a poor place compared to Nottingham or other great towns of England, a place of small mud-walled huts and grass roofs. My father, who was a hunter, named me Kasa Vubu Ngbengu Mbutu in honour of his clan and the spirits of the forest – but the name is too hard for English tongues and so I am called simply Boot in your language.

‘I was a big baby, and as an infant I grew even bigger, I ate more than twice the amount that my brothers and sisters took, and we were a poor family, very poor, and there were many hungry mouths. One day my father took me north to trade with the men of the deserts, the Moors: horse warriors with long robes and lighter skin and great curved swords. My father sold me to them when I had seen only five wet seasons and I never saw him or my mother or my brothers and sisters again.’

The Westbury company was entranced by Boot’s tale. Not a man yawned or scratched himself or coughed, every eye was on the storyteller, a huge shape in the darkness talking slowly in his child’s voice.

‘The Moors did not keep me – well, they kept a part of me. They cut me, they cut away my stones – they took away my hope of manhood – and they set me to work tending their horses. But they feared me, even the poor ignorant slave that I was, as I grew taller than all the other boys. By the time I had seen twelve summers – about your age, Robert – I was taller than all of the men and far stronger too. The Moors admired at my size, but they feared me. They sold me again, this time to the Sultan of Oran, and I was housed in the palace and set to guarding the women’s quarters.

‘I ate and I grew, and soon I was bigger than all the other slaves, a monster they said, and my master sold me again – this time to a travelling man, who had a collection of human oddities like me – there was a pretty lady with a full red beard, a stupid youth with the face of a pig, and a pair of dwarfs who would tumble and turn tricks and make the audience laugh. This fellow – his name was Salim – took me north again, across the narrow water to the rich lands of al-Andalus, and there he showed off his charges at the courts of the emirs. I bent metal bars with my bare hands, I lifted oxen off the ground, I wrestled with local champions, two or three against one, and I was always victorious. And for this Salim was showered with silver, and I was given all the food I could eat and a warm bed at night. I learnt languages of all the places that I visited, the many kinds of Arabic and a little of the Latin tongue they speak there, and in the north of that land. I like languages, I hear the music in their rhythms. I heard the poetry in the language of Occitan, and I met for the first time the men who travelled from court to court playing their music.

‘It was in the north of al-Andalus near the Christian lands that I first heard music, real music, music of the kind that Sir Alan makes. And I fell in love. I set myself to learn the language of these troubadours, as they called themselves, so that I could hear the songs of these men and understand them fully. I was a full-grown man by then, as you see me now, and though I could never know the love of a woman myself, I swam deeply in these songs of love and pain and loss. They called to something within me. I learnt to sing them in Occitan, in French as well, and I dreamt of bold knights and the fair ladies that they loved and yet could never have.

‘Salim was not a bad master. I was a slave but he never beat me – he did not dare, if the truth be told – nor did he let me go hungry, less my strength be diminished. But I was not happy. One day I walked away from his encampment without a word of farewell. I wanted to see the lands of the infidels, as we called the Christian folk. I wanted to hear their music again. So I walked north.’

Boot reached for the wineskin and took another enormous swallow. It occurred to me that Boot was a man who would require a lord with a fat purse just to keep him in sufficient food and drink. But he would be worth every penny I spent on him, too.

‘How came you to England?’ I asked.

He shrugged. ‘I put the sun at my back and walked,’ he said. ‘I crossed mountains, I swam rivers, I trekked through deep forest, I marched until my bare feet were hard as leather and my clothes no better than rags. I made my daily bread by the same tricks I had used with Salim – I bent iron, I fought the strongest men of each village for coin or food, sometimes I sang in the market for scraps of bread. But mostly I walked. In the land called Touraine, north of the great River Loire, a terrible war was raging. Englishmen and French were fighting each other, and I fell in with a band of mercenaries under their captain, Philip Marc. It was with his men that I learnt to speak English – for many among their number hailed from these shores. They fed me and I fought by their side – but I am not a true man of war. I am strong but even the strongest can be overcome by hard steel. I do not care for war – these people did things to their enemies that I will not repeat; and they forced me to do the same … But I never fully understood who we were fighting and why we must do these foul deeds. I was glad when Philip Marc and his surviving men were recalled to England by their King. I thought that meant an end to war, an end to the slaughter.’

I heard Sir Thomas give a low chuckle at that statement.

‘Philip Marc is not an evil man – I know you will disagree, Sir Alan. He is a hard man who takes his orders from the King, nothing more. He gathers taxes, burns farms as a punishment and kills the enemies of his King, not from any pleasure in their deaths but because it is required of him in the role he must play.’

I did not agree but I remained silent.

‘Sir Benedict Malet is another kind of creature,’ said Boot. ‘It was his notion that I should become the executioner of Nottingham. “If you want to eat, you black lump, you must follow my orders,” Sir Benedict said to me. “When I say kill, you kill.” And I did – indeed, in that way I am no better than Philip Marc. I snapped the necks of people each week and sent them to Heaven. I told myself that if I did not do the task then another man would – and I would be expelled from the castle and must return to my life of wandering. So I killed for him – I killed scores, perhaps hundreds, and at each execution, Sir Benedict would be there. He liked to watch the dying of the light in their eyes. It gave him joy. He would torment them beforehand, too, with talk of how I would make their deaths…’

Boot fell silent for a while. I thought of Benedict gloating over me in my cell.

‘I am tired,’ he said. ‘I am tired from talking and from sorrow. I would sleep now: but there you have my tale. A half-man am I, his manhood cut away from him, a friendless man in a foreign land, a killer of innocents at the orders of others.’

It was Robert who spoke: ‘You are not a half-man. You saved my father from the sheriff and for my part that makes you more a man than many I have known.’

‘And you shall never be friendless,’ I said, ‘not while you are among us.’

Kirkton was once again preparing for war when I arrived there the next morning, but on a muted scale. A few score foot soldiers were drilling in the green sheep pastures outside the walls – the men who had come back alive from Bouvines and a few new recruits, but pitifully few. A dozen cavalry were training on the slopes down to the river. That disastrous Flanders expedition had greatly sapped Robin’s military strength and the failure of the army to gain anything in the way of booty had slowed the flow of young men willing to risk their lives as men-at-arms in his service.

Robin greeted me in the hall where he was playing chess with Hugh after dinner and it seemed he could sense at once that something was wrong. I told him about my imprisonment and escape from Nottingham and he looked at me gravely. ‘That was a reckless thing to do, old friend, to put yourself in their power. Swear to me you will not do so again. You should have come to me first.’

I laughed, and said: ‘Oh, I have learnt my lesson, my lord.’

Robin offered to house my entire following until such time as the threat to Robert and myself was ended – which was truly generous, for I had no idea when I might be able to return in safety to Westbury.

I thanked him and said: ‘There is something that I must tell you that I learnt during my imprisonment.’

‘Yes?’ he said, looking attentively into my face.

‘Do you remember when we came back from Damme and learnt that someone had attempted a robbery on Kirkton in your absence?’

‘Vividly,’ said Robin. ‘A gang of enterprising cushion-makers, we thought.’ And he smiled at me, remembering our joke.

‘Did you ever question the sheriff of Yorkshire about it?’ I asked.

‘I did – I took Little John and some men and we bearded him in his lair. I broke into his chamber at midnight in York Castle. Cost me a fortune in bribes, and more than a few favours, but I got in there without much trouble. I asked him and he swore on his children’s lives that he had nothing to do with it. I didn’t hurt him, if that is what you are driving at; he was scared enough by Little John looming over him in the darkness with an axe. I asked, he said no, and I believed him. Why?’

‘I think I know who those “thieves” were,’ I said. And I told him of the conversation I had had with Brother Geoffrey.

‘You think it was Templars searching for the Grail?’ Robin scratched his fair head. ‘Could be – they didn’t take much of value as common thieves would. Yes, I can see that. Templars – or men who had been bought by them.’

‘I also think that it was Templars who attacked Westbury after my illness, when we scattered them with Robert’s fire-wagon. Philip Marc and Benedict Malet seemed to know little about the battle – and, come to think of it, when I went to Nottingham straight afterwards, none of their men-at-arms were marked by combat.’

‘Yes, they too could have been Templars; they fought well enough,’ said Robin. ‘So I think we can take it that the Order is out for our blood. And a lot more will be shed if we don’t give them the Grail. It’s a shame we can’t do that then, isn’t it?’

I nodded. The Grail truly had been destroyed after a long war in the south. I had seen it burn. It no longer existed. Then I told Robin what else the Templar had said about his sources of information.

Robin gave a great heavy sigh. ‘You believe this almoner then, this prating, hair-pulling Brother Geoffrey, and his talk of an informer in our ranks. You think there is a man who is telling all our secrets to our enemies, who secretly wishes us ill.’

‘It would not be the first time.’

‘Indeed,’ said my lord. Ten years before I had suspected that there was a traitor in Château Gaillard. Robin had not believed me. But I had been right.

‘Why is there always someone who hates us and wears the mask of love?’ said Robin sadly. ‘Cousin Henry warned me about this, too. Do you remember? Come on then, Alan, tell me. Who is it? I know you have been thinking on this. I see it in your eyes.’

I looked at my boots. ‘It must be someone who is close to us,’ I said, unable to meet Robin’s eye, ‘someone who has or who has had contact with the Templars.’

‘That could be anyone,’ Robin said. ‘Hell’s teeth, my sons were both trained by Templars, Miles practically worships them, as many youngsters do – you surely don’t think they could be traitors?’

Robin looked at me; his eyes glinted like drawn steel. ‘Tell me that you don’t think Miles or Hugh is in league with the Templars, Alan, and tell me that now.’