Nottingham Read online

  “If I die tomorrow,” William eased off back toward the main camp, “I am absolutely blaming you.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Robin followed. “But if you die tomorrow, King William, I’ll be so upset with you I very well might kill you.”

  William laughed. “And I’ll keep that in mind, King Robin.”

  * * *

  ROBIN DEMANDED A REPORT as they approached, startling the group of worried noblemen into an impossibly more baffled state. Some of these barons had never been to war before, and were ill-suited for every bit of it. There were others, particularly those who had been part of the Kings’ War fourteen years ago, that were anything but keen on taking orders from Robin or William. While wearing the crown they held Richard’s authority, but it was delightfully ambiguous as to how much power they held in plainclothes. Both Robin and William had learned quickly that this ambiguity played far more often to their advantage than not.

  “It’s not good, Robin,” answered an older man, the Earl of Derby, named William de Ferrers. His bald head and goblin-thin frame put him more at home in a cave than at a warfront, but his was a patient, gentle soul. He was one of the few commanders whose wisdom seemed sincere, and never treated Robin’s command with disdain. However, he stiffened when he realized Robin was not alone. “Wendenal,” the earl said respectfully.

  William ignored the greeting. “How is it not good?”

  Ferrers shifted back to Robin. “I would venture we have not even a single regiment that is fully outfitted. I’ve reallocated everything we have. Yes, we have complete battalions of swordarms, but at the expense of taking the shortarms from our archers and pikemen. Hazard, a thousand men have no weapons at all, and a thousand more have nothing for close quarters.”

  “Thrilling,” Robin said. Two full ships of weaponry had sunk into the Mediterranean off the coast of Cyprus, during the storm that had capsized King Richard’s family. Ferrers and his companions had been tasked with moving their remaining weaponry around, but it seemed they were slightly more fucked than Robin had guessed. “What about legs, do we have enough legs?”

  “Legs?”

  “Legs, two legs, like these ones.” Robin demonstrated what legs were.

  The earl seemed uncertain how to respond. “Are you asking me if the men have legs?”

  “I was going…” Robin laughed it off. “I was going to say that they may not have swords, but at least they can still run away.”

  “I see.”

  “It would have been funny.”

  “As you say,” Ferrers responded, but a slight smirk kept it light. Their situation was less than perfect, but there was no reason to be so dour about it all. “Replacement weaponry is on its way from England, we’ll simply have to wait it out.”

  Robin grimaced. It was only the sixteenth of June, barely six weeks had passed since those ships had met the bottom of the sea, not nearly enough time for replacements. The fastest messenger might have returned to England in three weeks, but a full cog would take longer than that to return. And that didn’t even include the time to collect new weapons, if they were even available.

  “Hooray,” Robin said dryly. “I’m sure Richard will understand.” The King was furious about the missing supplies, but would not suffer the embarrassment of acknowledging reality. He had gone to extraordinary measures to fund his Crusade, admittedly leaving quite a bit of England to disrepair, foreign hands, or the hangman while raising the capital. Given the option, Richard probably would have sold London herself rather than let the war perish from lack of support. Instead of waiting even longer for the new shipment, he would likely try to fix his problem by throwing more bodies at it. Robin looked to William, who seemed equally frustrated. “We’ll have to convince him to wait.”

  “He’s going to have us move forward with the trebuchets tomorrow,” William said seriously. “He wants to throw some stones. He’s waited too long for his toys, now he wants to play.”

  Robin wouldn’t have compared the king to a child, but he had come to the same conclusion. “He’ll be starting something we’re not prepared to finish.”

  “Hopefully you’re right,” William sent a meaningful scowl at the awaiting trebuchets, “and we barely scratch those walls.”

  “But we’re building more,” Robin calculated. “We’ll break a little hole through Acre’s walls eventually, without having done much damage to the rest of the city. He’ll send the army in, and if we don’t have enough weapons by then.…” The casualties would be devastating.

  William’s face grew as grim as Robin’s assessment. With no hint of emotion, his eyes burned a hole in the earl’s scabbard. “You carry a weapon.”

  Robin was surprised by the venom in his tone. Ferrers put a hand to its hilt, he recoiled only a hair. “Of course.”

  “Why haven’t you reallocated that one? Or will you be on the front line when we break a hole?”

  “I shall be with the King,” the earl said quickly, daring anyone to call that position coward. “This sword was my father’s. I’ve carried it into every battle. You would not have me give it up for a common soldier…”

  William said nothing beyond a cold staredown with the earl, who opted to silence himself. Robin was left with very little idea of what to say, but William fortunately abated the tension by wandering a few steps away.

  Ferrers turned swiftly back to Robin, his voice lowered. “Talk to Richard. Gives us more time for the swords to arrive. If we break that wall too early, it’ll be the last thing we do.”

  If there was anything in the world that Robin hated most, it was being handed a bucket full of other people’s mistakes.

  * * *

  “ABSOLUMENT PAS,” RICHARD GRUMBLED in French, readjusting himself on the velvet-covered close stool. What was already a disgusting task was made all the worse by the stifling hot air that persisted even through the night. But Robin had hoped Richard might be more amenable to advice in private, and the only opportunity for privacy was while the king was shitting in a box. It was as appropriate a metaphor for their situation as Robin could imagine.

  “There’s no need to rush,” Robin tried to explain. “Why not wait until more siege weapons are built, at least?”

  “While they sit and laugh?” The king reached for a linen and Robin desperately found anything else to look at. “They already watched one trebuchet tear itself apart. They won’t be afraid until we start to use them. I won’t suffer to be their source of entertainment another day.”

  “Better they laugh for a week now, than for centuries,” Robin said to the sky. “They don’t know we’re undersupplied. But if it comes to close combat too early, they’ll quickly figure that out. If we simply wait for the weapons to arrive—”

  “Then there will be some other problem!” Richard snapped. “There’s never a perfect moment to attack, Robin. You never have all the weapons you want, or all the men you want, or all the time you want. You make do with what you have, and I am exceptionally good at doing that. If you think I am nothing without shiny new swords, then you have not been paying attention.”

  Robin took it with humility. “I don’t think that. I just wanted to voice my concern. Part of my duty is to dissent.”

  “I know.” Richard tidied himself. “But I am resolute. Tomorrow we start the trebuchets.” He slammed the hinged lid of the close stool down, and Robin tried very hard to ignore the soft sloshing sounds of its contents. He followed Richard back into the command tent, and the commotion of its inhabitants made it clear that William had been equally unsuccessful in rallying reason into the king’s council.

  By night’s end, the two of them stole away to the edges of the otherwise furious tent, exhausted. They traded a few derogatory comments at the expense of the more useless advisors in the room, hoping to forget about their predicament. “You were awfully prickly with the earl, Ferrers, earlier,” Robin noted. “What was that about?”

  “The Earl of Derby is my father’s liege lord,” William expl
ained quietly, “and there is some dark history between his house and mine.”

  His tone spoke to the quality of that history. But Robin knew better than to probe farther. William did not keep much to himself, so his short answers meant he did not care to say more. “Ought to make you happy, then?” Robin asked lightly. “Giving Ferrers a hard time?”

  “No,” William’s mouth twisted. “Ferrers has had a long and difficult life, full of wrong decisions and failures. We are all only a few desperate decisions away from ending up like him.”

  Robin put his hand on William’s leg and shook it meaningfully. It was a rare thing to find a topic the two of them could not joke about. But it was war’s eve, and that always led some to grim thoughts and regrets. Robin let his friend to his contemplation, preferring a night of levity himself. About the command room, the lords of England’s favor sought to distinguish themselves in front of King Richard by inventing elaborate solutions to their unfixable problem, and Robin watched in bemusement. Many of the lords and earls who had followed their king to war were determined to be rewarded for their fealty, and thought Richard cared only about how quickly and deeply they bent their knee. The truth would have shocked them, that the man they called the Lionheart took their obedience with contempt. Not a single lord in the army understood that King Richard would never reward naked ambition with power.

  Neither Robin nor William were interested in the glories of prestige, which was precisely why Richard trusted them. And tomorrow they would launch the first volleys of war together, incessantly throwing pebbles to bounce off the walls of Acre until the world was Holy again.

  Robin laughed himself straight to sleep.

  THREE

  GUY OF GISBOURNE

  NOTTINGHAM CASTLE

  SUNDAY, 30TH DAY OF JUNE 1191

  THIS SORRY LOT WAS worse than the last sorry lot, which was precisely what he had thought about each previous sorry lot. With uncomfortable effort, Guy reminded himself that the most reliable men in the Nottingham Guard had trained in similarly sorry lots. Some of the least likely recruits had proven themselves with years of unerring service, while some of their more promising classmates had turned coward or deserter within months.

  That didn’t make this lot any less sorry.

  Guy of Gisbourne leaned against the rough sandstone parapet, overlooking the castle’s training yard below, and was keenly aware that he looked spectacular. This was no vanity, but strategy. He had selected this position that the morning sun would hover behind him, that his men could see the imposing figure of their Captain reviewing their work. Nottingham Castle’s tan stones always looked warmest at dawn, like a lover’s blush, while the air was thick still with glowing dew. He hoped the image might impress them, that they might see this castle as something nobler and greater than themselves. Because an appearance of grandeur was the only thing he could offer them of late.

  “I’m going to tell you a secret,” he said to Jon Bassett. His protégé’s ears perked up like the dog of his namesake, but his young face was hawkish. With angular features and shrewd, deeply set eyes—he was the very picture of scrutiny. “But first, look at these men down here, and tell me what you see.”

  Bassett lazed his way to the edge and glanced over. “I see the tops of their heads.”

  “I will throw you off the rampart,” Guy threatened flatly, but in truth he enjoyed Bassett’s arrogant swagger. His irreverence reminded Guy of himself when he was a fresh recruit in this very castle.

  The Nottingham Guard generally attracted the dull obedient type, which was—in full selfish truth—the reason Guy avoided the recruits right now. He had already met most of them once, which was exactly one time more than necessary. Besides, the quartermaster Simon FitzSimon was busy with the men below, barking orders in his thick Scotsman’s tongue. Hopefully, many would drop out before noon. Eligibility standards for the Guard’s trials had dipped to include anyone capable of walking and blinking at the same time, and some of these recruits might still have to test twice.

  Which, somehow, wasn’t even the worst of it.

  “Damnation,” Guy stared at them, wishing life would occasionally surprise him by being easy. “Swear to me you won’t repeat what I tell you here, not to anyone.”

  “I also see dirt,” Bassett added, intentionally unhelpful. When he received no reaction, he straightened his doublet and gave Guy his full attention. “Captain.”

  The men below had not come to serve the county, they came for free room and board. Skinny lads, mangy beards, they were an insult to the proud blue tabard of the Nottingham Guard. It frustrated Guy to no end to witness the erosion of his company through his fingers. Too many of Guy’s best men had left Nottingham to join the war, and not enough of his worst. The castle’s complement had been halved twiceover, while their work had doubled. Opportunists and thieves were quick to find advantage in the city the war left behind, and the goodfolk suffered the worst of it. The men under Guy of Gisbourne’s command were often the only defense between order and anarchy, not just in the city but across the county.

  Guy inhaled sharply and looked anywhere else. Nottingham Castle perched atop its hill—Castle Rock as some called it—and offered a stunning view of the countryside in every direction. Its three tiered baileys sprawled out until the castle walls stopped at the sparkling river Trent to the south, and the bulk of the city he loved to the east. Guy had seen Nottingham through every wave of prosperity and hunger, through peace and war. He’d fought bravely under his own predecessor fifteen years ago when an army swarmed Nottingham’s streets to scale the castle walls. Yet Guy had never feared for his men before, nor their ability to protect Nottingham’s people.

  Until now.

  The source of his fear loomed ominously over Jon Bassett’s shoulder. Squirreled away in the top level of the highest keep, the greatest threat to Nottingham now came from within. Guy had dutifully served three different men who sat in the High Sheriff’s seat, and never needed doubt the man’s orders. But yesteryear’s spring had brought them the Baron Roger de Lacy—and Baron Roger de Lacy had brought ignorance and corruption of the highest level to Nottingham.

  Ignorance from the top, and them from the bottom.

  Guy couldn’t identify any from his vantage, but they were there amongst the recruits, pretending to be honest men.

  Gerolds.

  “Captain?” Bassett asked, and Guy realized he’d drifted off into thought. Saying it all out loud would feel like an admission of failure, because that’s exactly what it was.

  “Damnation.” Guy ground his teeth, and told the story.

  * * *

  ONLY TWO MONTHS AGO Guy had received an order that from anyone other than Sheriff Roger de Lacy would have been a joke. Guy had immediately raged about its consequences, but the baron was predictably disinterested in logic. De Lacy only cared about quick results, and had presented an easy solution to low recruitment numbers.

  Once he had regained control of his bowels, Guy swallowed his pride and obeyed. But not without support—he summoned Simon FitzSimon to accompany him down to the tunnels beneath the middle bailey. Simon and Guy had risen through the ranks of the Guard together, dating back decades when they were themselves the greenest of recruits in the same class. They had actually hated each other at first—Guy hated Simon since he was so Scottish, and Simon hated everyone else because he was so Scottish. Over the years they forged a brotherhood, regularly strengthened over a cask of ale. They did not always see eye to eye, and there had even been times when they famously, and loudly, worked against each other—but always in the name of bettering the Nottingham Guard. It would be Simon’s responsibility to fulfill de Lacy’s bastard new policy, so Guy refused to let him do so blindly.

  “I’ve been instructed to recruit new Guardsmen from the prisons,” Guy told him, as evenly as possible. “As a way to work off their sentence. Non-violent prisoners only, of course. Tax evaders, poachers, war deserters.”

  It was the most backwar
d idea Guy had ever heard. Putting prisoners together with the men who imprisoned them was a catastrophe waiting to happen.

  Simon’s reaction was his own. “Interesting.”

  “Baron Roger de Lacy is the Sheriff now,” Guy continued, sensing Simon’s hesitation, “and wants you to put swords in the hands of criminals. That’s his right. You have the right to complain.”

  The previous sheriff, Ralph Murdac, would have spat at the idea—largely because Murdac had been a good man and a good sheriff. But Murdac was dead, and de Lacy reveled in changing the ways Nottingham operated. In the time since de Lacy had been assigned the position, a month rarely went by without some new list of asinine laws or procedures. They normally just made Guy’s life more difficult—restricting what types of horses could be trained, mandating daily inventories of weapons that never move—but this latest one was downright dangerous.

  “No complaints,” Simon said gruffly.

  “Nothing? Surely you have at least an opinion on this, no?” They stopped at the prison’s entrance, a gated tunnel that dug down beneath the earthen bailey. “This is your field. Tell me truly, which I swear to reveal to no other, how the hell you feel about prisoners turning guard duty in The Simons’ Yard.”

  “I would expect,” Simon mulled, “that some of these prisoner recruits might do perfectly fine. And that others will be terrible. Most will pro’ly desert at the first opportunity. And we’d best keep it secret, or the other Guardsmen will treat them cruelly. Or worse.”

  Those were only the most obvious of consequences. “Try not to overwhelm me with your deductive prowess. I’m asking how you feel about it.”

  “Are we talking our feelings now?” Simon’s accent turned it into a threat. “We’ve known each other all this time and I’m only now to find out that you’ve been courting me?”

  He smiled, but Guy ignored him. Simon had risen as far as he wanted and was perfectly content to train wet men to swing sticks. Simon had fostered a healthy neutrality to all things political—but he’d understand soon enough.