XXXI

 

 

THEY TAUGHT YOU to aim for the chest. Then, if your aim was not true, you would still likely hit something. But Locksley was never much of a one for rules. In fact, as Gisburne had noted time and again, to him, rules were like a red rag to a bull. Locksley took pleasure in doing the exact opposite of what was expected – in proving the rules wrong, or merely defying them for his own perverse satisfaction. Gisburne had met plenty of men who had no respect for authority, or who resented it, but Locksley’s defiance verged on the pathological.

He had something else about him that the men responded to, though. Something more than charisma or charm – although he had barrel-loads of those too.

It was luck.

No matter how bold or foolhardy his actions, fortune favoured him – far more than any one man deserved, never mind a careless, amoral rogue such as he. It was as if he was somehow indestructible in both body and spirit, and in turn imbued those around him with a kind of boundless confidence – the feeling that if they simply stood near this charmed man, they would not, could not come to harm. It was this that had brought him to Gisburne’s attention, back when they had first met in the pay of William the Good, Norman king of Sicily. That, and the fact that this lowly archer had, in the space of only a few weeks, somehow gathered his own loyal retinue about him – an army within an army, formed about a locus of natural authority. Such things were not always welcome where authority was supposed to go hand in hand with status, whether blessed by nature or not. But Gisburne respected him, to such an extent that he chose not to question the fact that this common bowman spoke to him – a mounted serjeant, worth half a knight, so it was said – as an equal. Whatever it was the man had, you couldn’t fake it. And it got results.

Gisburne’s cool pragmatism, natural caution and orderly mind had also apparently intrigued Locksley. Though complete opposites in just about every way, they had gravitated towards each other, ultimately forming a kind of unspoken partnership. Men flocked around Locksley, and Gisburne commanded them as if his own company – though he always knew it was Locksley to whom they really belonged. Locksley himself had no commander, and never would. Yet the bond had endured through the madness of Willam’s bloody invasion of Thessalonika, and the doomed assault on Constantinople that followed. It had held firm as, time and again, they had watched whole companies perish around them to be replaced by new blood, and was made stronger as they two, out of all of them, somehow survived every extreme they faced. So formidable had they proved as a fighting unit, that when Locksley took to horse and affected the hauberk of a serjeant – and even began to address knights in a familiar manner that Gisburne himself would never have presumed – his employers let him have his head. When William’s crazed dream of conquering Byzantium had finally come to a shuddering halt on the banks of the Styrmon, the pair had headed south, seeking new employment in the Holy Land.

They had found it almost immediately in Reynald de Châtillon.

When they had left the carnage of William’s campaign, the cracks had already begun to show. It had been at Gisburne’s instigation. The sacking of Thessalonika – after which as many as seven thousand Greeks lay dead – had sickened him. He knew, too, that William’s luck was running out, and that theirs could not last much longer. He had also begun to realise that Locksley, fired by their successes, believed himself somehow untouchable. The man feared nothing. That was the source of his strength, but such beliefs were also dangerous. Gisburne had watched as Locksley had hurled himself ever more recklessly at his fate, and seen the delight in his eye as each time he had again come through unscathed, as if more deeply convinced of his own immortality. Where before it had spurred Gisburne on, now it began to unnerve him.

Locksley had finally agreed to accompany him south to the Holy Land on the promise of rich pickings – the protection of wealthy pilgrims en route to Jerusalem. This, at least, was an enterprise with some degree of honour. Locksley cared not a jot for that, but after Thessalonika, Gisburne had discovered a desperate need for it. He was a common mercenary, fighting for pay, fate having robbed him of the chance to be a knight. So be it. He had come to accept that bitter truth. But he could not ignore the knightly virtues with which he had been raised for half his life – could not simply unpick them from his being. He was not a callow fool or dreamer; he knew the terrifying realities of war. But now, perhaps more than ever, he yearned for his actions to carry some meaning, however slight. To work for something more substantial than the greed or ambition of a warlord. Slaughter – at which he had proved so proficient – had brought such feelings to the fore.

Gisburne had also begun to understand that Locksley had no such feelings, no such misgivings. He had begun to wonder what feelings the man had. Locksley had saved his life countless times, often putting himself in mortal danger in order to do so. But while Gisburne had once marvelled at his courage, and felt deeply indebted to his protector, what he could not fight off was the creeping suspicion – and the final, undeniable realisation – that Locksley had done it not for the sake of a valued friend, but simply because he could. It had begun to dawn upon him that Locksley not only had no friends, and no personal attachments, but had no real need of them. He loved only challenges – opportunities to push himself to ever greater extremes.

Gisburne had seen many such men on campaign, those who spurned company and toughened themselves for war, made fortresses of themselves. Armies were filled with them. But, almost without exception, they were in denial. They were building walls in order to protect some frail thing within – to save themselves the pain of personal attachments. Some could sustain it, but many ended up bitter caricatures of their former selves, or crumbled inward, into the growing emptiness they contained, and became wrecks of men. In Locksley, however, he had encountered something altogether different – a man who seemingly did not see the point of relationships – at least, not meaningful ones. He was a man who loved the void – who gazed into it and saw not the horror of emptiness, but infinite potential. When Locksley looked at other men and women, he saw about him not people, but a source of amusement. Obstacles, challenges, resources. To be used, overcome or tossed aside as part of a grand game that he would play and play until he had won. The irrepressible spirit that men so much admired – a spirit to which despair was utterly alien – was, in reality, an unstoppable, all-consuming force of chaos. Locksley was a man made for war – a man who was emotionally unhurt by it, because he had nothing whatsoever invested in it. Gisburne was not like him and could not be. And during those trying times, in which years of experience are compressed into months, he had invested heavily in their friendship. It was not something he could avoid, nor easily undo. But now he understood the investment was not returned, he realised it made him vulnerable.

Gisburne had encountered such a man only once before: Prince Richard, now King Richard the Lionhearted of England, Duke of Normandy, Aquitaine and Gascony, Count of Anjou, Maine and Nantes, Overlord of Brittany. Like him, there was nothing Locksley dared not do. Locksley had none of the advantages of birth that Richard boasted, but he had a ferocious intellect that Richard lacked. And, Gisburne suspected, he had known the reality of poverty. There was no telling what he might achieve if he set his mind to it – if he lived long enough.

When they fell in with Reynald – somewhat against Gisburne’s better judgement – things at first seemed to have come good. The Holy Land was ever turbulent, but it was not at war. There was great wealth to be tapped – they even minted their own gold coins here. The women were bewitching, the food and wine cheap and plentiful, and when the merchants tried to cheat you, they at least did so honestly, offering a smile and a shrug when they did not succeed. For battle-weary soldiers, it was idyllic. And Reynald himself was a knight of noble standing, devoted to the protection of Christian pilgrims. A straightforward task, or so it seemed.

As Gisburne was soon to discover, Reynald’s Christian zeal led him into actions far beyond the protection of pilgrims. In the first week that they were garrisoned at Reynald’s desert fortress of Kerak, they were sent on a foray to seize three Arab traders their new master had claimed were spies, and their possessions. When one had the temerity to protest, swearing he would petition King Guy of Jerusalem about the outrage, Reynald had him flung from the castle walls as the others watched. The body remained on the rocks below as a warning, its bones picked clean by vultures. As he gazed down at them in disgust, Gisburne realised that what he had taken for a tangle of dead, dessicated shrub and a tumble of stones on the rocks below was in fact a disordered pile of regularly replenished human remains bleached white by the sun.

Slowly, the grim realisation dawned on Gisburne that they had fallen into the service of one of the most odious tyrants in the whole of Christendom. That Locksley had begun to admire the boldness of his methods gave him no comfort. He sensed, for the first time, a kind of madness in this man he called “friend” – worse, a madness that was drawn to madness, that revered it, as if driven by some unchecked compulsion to dissemble and destroy.

Reynald, it turned out, was not merely a bully, a murderer and a thief, but a fanatic. As a much younger man, Gisburne learned, Reynald been captured by Seljuk Turks during a plundering raid on Syrian peasants at Marash, and was kept prisoner at Aleppo for sixteen years. The conditions under which he was kept were known only to Reynald, but Gisburne had seen two outcomes of long-term imprisonment of Christian knights at the hands of the Muslims. Some – such as Raymond of Tripoli – had come to a better understanding of their captors, even to respect them. Reynald, however, was of the other type. When his vast ransom was finally paid – one hundred and twenty thousand dinars, so it was said – he emerged more bitter, more unpredictable, and more dangerous than ever before, driven by hatred and a desire for vengeance.

He lost no opportunity to rid the world of Muslims – or separate them from their wealth – even where it took things over the brink of disaster. Just five years before Gisburne’s arrival, Reynald had attacked and plundered Saracen caravans, spitting in the face of the delicate truce between Baldwin, the Leper King of Jerusalem, and the Sultan Salah al-Din. Reynald’s dogged refusal to relent, even under pressure from his own King, had plunged the Christian and Muslim worlds into war. Reynald himself had joined the fray with characteristic vigour, his ships ravaging villages along the Red Sea coast in acts of unashamed piracy. He then attempted to destroy the Muslim holy places at Medina and Mecca. Salah al-Din vowed he would have Reynald’s head. But when peace was finally restored, Reynald’s head remained on its shoulders, his lusts for war and wanton destruction still festering within.

They were not contained for long. Early one morning Reynald called his men to arms, saying that a company of Salah al-Din’s men had attacked Oultrejordain. When they rode out to face them, they found not a column of soldiers, but a caravan of Muslim merchants with women and children, peacefully traversing an agreed trade route. By the time Gisburne realised what was happening, it was too late: Reynald had sounded the charge. Gisburne watched as all – Locksley included – revelled in the plunder. He packed up and left as soon as he could, dragging a protesting Locksley with him. Locksley seemed to have developed an unhealthy infatuation for Reynald – not as a man, but as a force – which disturbed Gisburne deeply. He knew Reynald himself wouldn’t fret over their departure – they were owed pay, and the noble knight cared far more for money than loyalty. The money didn’t matter much to Gisburne either – the important thing was, they were alive, and out from under that sick shadow.

At any rate, their service – and the lack of opportunity to put their pay and plunder to use – had made them wealthy. Gisburne had a slew of silver coins sewn into the quilting of an old gambeson – so many, he’d lost count. To the casual observer, it was a spare garment, somewhat worse for wear and much repaired. Until they tried to pick it up, of course, but they never did. Locksley simply carried his wealth in a leather bag – and, when that grew too small, a hood, tied around the top with a length of broken bowstring. It jangled unambiguously every time his horse took a step, in a way that clearly gave Locksley a perverse pleasure, and made Gisburne wince. Against all expectation, Locksley had never had any hint of trouble from potential thieves.

They resolved to settle in Jerusalem for a while, and enjoy the fruits of their labour.

For a time, it was a kind of paradise. Never before had Gisburne realised the extent to which his life had been dominated by the constant need to be vigilant, to make decisions. In combat, it was a neverending strain – one so immediate and all-consuming that one never stopped to think about it. If you stopped to think – if you hesitated – you died. Looking back, Gisburne could not remember a time when he had not been in battle, or preparing for it, or tensed and ready for some other new threat. Now he had stopped, the exhaustion flooded over him.

He welcomed the release. The first three days he slept almost without a break, in their luxurious new lodgings – a cool, airy upstairs room with thick, sand-coloured walls and large arched windows – only dimly aware of the gentle breeze that occasionally billowed the sunlit muslin curtains. Then a bored Locksley came and kicked him out of bed, saying there were better beds to be languishing in, with better company.

That was Locksley’s way. He was restless. Questing. Gisburne knew that this hunger for adventure would eventually make him tire of repose altogether, and he feared its return. But for now, Locksley seemed content to throw his energies into all the delights that the city had to offer. And they were many. Gisburne had become wary of Locksley’s friendship over the past months – had fought to detach himself from it, to resist relying on what he knew to be inherently unreliable. This was a new Locksley, one he had never seen before. Locksley during peacetime.

But the plain fact was, in the here and now, he was good company. The crazed fire that Gisburne had seen in his eyes faded, and he became a calmer, more languidly charismatic version of himself – an irrepressible charmer with deep pockets, an unquenchable thirst and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of songs, jokes, and magic tricks. Women fell at his feet; men would have too, given the chance. Gisburne, for once, allowed himself to relax and enjoy the ride, content to let Locksley take centre stage. Of course he could still be infuriating – often impossible – but Gisburne had at least grown used to those foibles.

Meanwhile, on the horizon, storm clouds gathered.

A new power had been growing. His name was Salah al-Din – “Saladin” to the Latins. It was clear to any with half a brain that he would one day challenge the long dominion that the Christians had had over Jerusalem – won through merciless slaughter of its largely Muslim population in 1099. But Gisburne, like everyone here, put all such concerns from his mind. It was easy to do in this city – not because no one talked of it, but because they constantly did. It was gossip. Background noise – like the din of a tavern or the hubbub of the souk. In theory, Muslims and Jews were banned from living within the city. In practice, Arab, Christian and Jew traded, ate, drank, argued and debauched as one. They talked of a day of reckoning, and laughed it off together. There had been nearly a hundred years of stability under Christian rule. None seemed willing to break the habit of complacency. None wished to believed that this state of paradise would end.

The scales fell from Gisburne’s eyes in dramatic fashion.

Although neither spoke directly of it, Gisburne had known for some time that both had begun to feel frustrated by luxury. Gisburne, because it was too disordered and directionless. Locksley because it was too staid and restrictive. Locksley’s revels had become wilder as time went on – too much for Gisburne. Gisburne’s natural response had, in any case, been quite the opposite of Locksley’s: increasingly, he absented himself and let Locksley go his own way. Their shared lodgings had become like those of a loveless married couple, each living their separate lives around each other. For a while, that proved a perfectly tolerable arrangement.

Then, the night before the arrière-ban, the friendship – or the pretence of it – ended for good.

It ended with Rose.