I wanted to laugh, but my stomach was still paining me, so I merely grinned back at him and said: ‘You are one to talk: I’ve seen you rip the shirt from your own back when the battle-fire is burning in you. Anyway, I’m not much good at using a shield… don’t really have your craven skill at hiding from my enemies behind a piece of wood.’
He laughed. ‘Well, that is easily remedied. When you’re on your feet, I will teach you. Somebody has to. It looks like we’ll be here for a few weeks, so you’ll have plenty of time to get strong. But, I swear on Christ’s bones, Alan, if you go into a proper battle again without a shield — I’ll damn well shoot you myself!’ And he turned and stomped out of the dormitory.
The next day, when Nur had fed me some gruel and washed me from head to toe, Robin came to see me. He was holding a bunch of grapes somewhat awkwardly in his hands, and he seemed not to know what to say or what to do with the fruit. Finally he placed them on the small table beside my head, sat down on the bed and said: ‘Reuben says you must eat green fruit. Apparently, it is good for ridding the body of evil humours. Green fruit reduces the amount of bile — or is it phlegm? — it reduces something bad anyway.’
I thanked him for his gift and again there was a slightly uncomfortable pause. I noticed that he looked tired.
‘Well, you seem healthier,’ he said after a while, ‘almost human again, in fact.’ And he smiled, which lifted the lines of worry from his face. I told him that I was feeling much better but terribly weak. ‘Reuben was certain that you would die,’ he said, ‘and I was very worried — worried that I’d have to go to the trouble of finding myself another trouvere.’ He smiled at me again and his silver eyes sparkled with something like their old mischief. ‘Reuben said that mending your wrist was the easy part,’ he continued — and I obligingly flexed my right wrist for him, which was stiff, skinny but mobile and had a fresh purple scar running up the forearm — ‘but the old Jew said the crossbow bolt in the belly would kill you, and when it didn’t, he was convinced that the fever you contracted after that would finish you off. I told Reuben, I told him, that you were made of strong stuff and that I didn’t believe a single raggedy Griffon crossbowman could put you in your grave but…’ he tailed off.
‘It wasn’t a Griffon,’ I said quietly. ‘It was Sir Richard Malbete.’ Robin stared at me for a few moments, his luminous eyes probing mine for the truth.
‘Now that is interesting,’ he said at last. ‘Sir Richard is very much our preux chevalier these days. Since he captured the Emperor’s standard in Cyprus, he has become the golden knight in the King’s eyes; he can do no wrong. So what really happened?’
I told him, and his mouth opened in surprise. ‘That fox-faced shit needs killing, if anybody ever did,’ he muttered when I had finished my tale. ‘But we have a little problem, Alan — nobody is going to believe you if you claim that Sir Richard, the golden knight, that shining example of chivalry, tried to kill you. You’d better keep that to yourself while we work out how to fix the bastard. Don’t go off trying to take him on your own, we’ll do it together. But it’s not going to be easy; he’s with the King a good deal these days, part of his household now…’
I had come to a similar conclusion myself. It would not be simple but, easy or hard, I was also determined to kill Malbete one way or another — for my own personal safety, if for no other reason. Although there were more than enough other reasons to put the Beast down: for Ruth, for the Jews of York, for Nur, and those butchered slave girls in Messina…
We sat in silence for a while. I took a grape; they were delicious: cool, firm and sweet as honey.
‘Robin,’ I said, slightly hesitantly, ‘can you tell me what happened; how we got here, how we took Acre. I don’t even know what month this is.’
He stared at me. ‘Yes, of course, has nobody told you? Well, it’s July; we took Acre a week ago, not without some trouble, but the garrison surrendered in the second week of July, the twelth day of the month, I think.’ He paused and looked at me. ‘I’d better start at the beginning.’ He reached over and tore off a cluster of grapes and popped them in his mouth. When he had finished chewing, he said: ‘We found you, and Ghost, in the dawn after the night battle in the olive grove, and we took you down to the beach where a hospital had been set up. The Emperor took to his heels again in the middle of the battle, which was lucky for us, because if he had rallied his troops they would have crushed us like a man stamping on an ant. But he fled, and we won, and your foxy friend Malbete came out of it looking like a hero, the golden standard in his proud right hand. He presented the standard to the King as a wedding present for his marriage to Berengaria in Limassol, a few days after the battle. He’s a wily bastard, Malbete; it was exactly the right move to make, and the King was delighted.
‘Anyway, we chased the Emperor around the island for a while, but the local barons had turned against him and finally he had to surrender — oh, and you’ll like this,’ he took another grape, ‘the Emperor gave himself up on the strict condition that King Richard would not bind him in iron chains. Richard agreed, and when Isaac Comnenus came in, Richard had silver chains forged and had him bound in those. He’s got a nasty sense of humour, our royal master, very nasty.’ And he laughed with, I believed, just a touch of bitterness.
‘So we had Cyprus, and Richard then set off at last for Outremer, and we ended up here at Acre. The siege was in full swing but going nowhere: the Muslim garrison inside the walls still defied us, and the Christian troops outside were themselves surrounded by Saladin’s forces. Of course, King Richard’s arrival changed all that. He started building siege engines immediately, great monsters that can knock holes in stone walls, you should see them, Alan, much more formidable than a mangonel. Anyway, we smashed a few holes in the walls, but every time we tried to make an assault, Saladin would attack us from behind. Eventually, after a lot of bloody fighting on two fronts, and when the holes in the walls were big enough, the garrison surrendered — first having received their master’s permission, of course. And, as part of the deal, Saladin withdrew as well. We’ve been lucky, though; I managed to keep our men out of the worst of the fighting…’ He gave a sour smile. ‘That is to say we were not invited to join in the bloodiest assaults.’
There was a tiny pause. I knew what a great dishonour this simple statement meant. He straightened his shoulders and looked me in the eye. ‘The truth is, Alan, I’m not in favour at court, for one reason or another. I believe the King has taken against me and that some members of his circle are whispering against me… spreading rumours about my family… If I knew who it was I’d slaughter the mealy-mouthed sons of whores. But I don’t.’ He looked at his boots for a few moments, and then pulled himself together. ‘No matter,’ he said. ‘On the bright side, we haven’t lost too many men, and you are clearly on the mend. But I’m not sure I shall be staying in Outremer all that long, the way things are going. I have a few matters that I need to arrange, and then I may well go home and look to my affairs there.’
I couldn’t meet his eye. I knew what these rumours were suggesting. That Marie-Anne had made him a cuckold, and that baby Hugh was not his son.
‘We may all have to go home soon. I think the whole expedition may be coming apart at the seams,’ he continued. ‘Our gallant King Richard seems to have managed to quarrel with everybody here. King Philip, well, you know how things are between them, and they’ve got worse. Philip feels that Richard stole his thunder by taking Acre when he couldn’t manage it alone. So that’s an irritant. But did you know that there are now two men claiming to be the rightful King of Jerusalem? Guy de Lusignan and Conrad of Montferrat — neither has a very good claim, as it happens, only through their women, and as Jerusalem is in Saladin’s hands you might think the point moot. But no, it’s the cause of another royal quarreclass="underline" Philip has declared his support of Conrad of Monferrat, and Richard has taken the side of Guy de Lusignan. So there’s more bad blood between them. The word is that Philip is thinking of going back to France anyway. He’ll blame his departure on Richard but he just wants to go back so he can snatch some land in Flanders.’