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blood into my face, a hot fountain that immediately drenched my upper body, and I knew then that he was a dead man.
    Dropping the knife, I scrambled out of reach of his flailing sword and scuttled back under the bed. The man’s howls filled the room, shrill and heart-rending, and I knew that the alarm had been satisfactorily raised. Scream upon scream echoed about me as his life jetted out of his slashed thigh. Then I heard him slump to the floor like a dropped sack of grain, weak and whimpering now, as he tried to staunch the torrent of spurting lifeblood. I could smell its sour iron odour. Even in the pitch dark I could clearly imagine what was happening, as I had seen it once before: I had deliberately cut through the great pulsing artery that ran down his inner thigh, and unless he could find a tourniquet to stop the blood flow, in less than thirty heartbeats he would be as dead as last night’s dinner.
    The door of the solar burst open and a crowd of men-at-arms rushed in, bringing torches and rush lights and an excited clamour to the room. The man was seated, legs widespread, in the middle of a lake of blood, his agonised face drained and white. I poked my bloody head out from under the bed and stared at him.
    He managed four words before he collapsed, lifeless into the crimson pool: ‘Not my boy, please ...’ he whispered and then he died.

Chapter Two
    The dead man was a nobody - an archer named Lloyd ap Gryffudd, one of scores of men recently hired by Tuck from south Wales. He was an experienced man with a bow and, as far as anyone knew, a trustworthy soldier - so Owain, the captain of Robin’s bowmen, told me. It was clear that Owain felt somehow responsible that one of his men should have tried to attack Robin; he was visibly upset as we spoke later that night over a cup of wine, which I badly needed.
    The household was quiet once again after the uproar. The servants had carried out the body and cleaned up the blood, and the grizzled Welsh bowman and I were chewing over the attack at the long table in the hall.
    ‘He must have been drunk, Alan, or just plain mad,’ said Owain. ‘He would never have been able to get away with it. He’d have been ripped apart by the men before he got a hundred yards. They love Robin, you know, absolutely bloody worship him.’
    ‘Maybe, maybe not,’ I said. ‘It was risky, yes, but everyone in the hall was asleep and he might well have been able to kill Robin and Marie-Anne and get away out of the window before anyone noticed. There was a saddled horse ready in the stables and, in the confusion after an event like that, Robin dead, the whole castle raising a hullabaloo - well, I think he would have had a good chance of escape. And I don’t think he was mad. I just think there was great pressure used - money or threats, or both - to force him to make the attempt.’
    Owain looked even gloomier. ‘I’ll make some enquires in the morning,’ he said. ‘What do you think Robin will say when he gets back?’
    ‘He’s not going to be happy,’ I said. And I rose from the table, leaving Owain staring into his wine cup, and took my exhausted body to my blankets by the fire. Although I knew it was ridiculous, and that nobody wanted to kill me, I lay for the rest of the night with my unsheathed poniard in my hand. And weary as I was, with the comforting feel of a foot-long razor-sharp Spanish dagger in my fist, I slept like a babe.
     
    Robin returned the next morning, another glorious sunny spring day, with his pregnant wife Marie-Anne. She was huge, flushed and riding like a queen in a great chair lashed to a donkey cart, surrounded by her ladies in waiting. I waved at one familiar face in her entourage, my little friend Godifa, and received a shy smile in return. Then I turned to greet Robin, and quickly apprised him of the events of last night. My lord seemed genuinely impressed that I had killed the would-be assassin singlehanded.
    ‘He came at you with a drawn sword, in