The Iron Castle (Outlaw Chronicles) Read Online Free PDF

trust his barons, see, but he does trust his paid men. Robin has carte blanche, as far as he is concerned – although there was a little unpleasantness recently from the Abbess of Caen…’
    ‘What happened?’
    John chuckled fondly. ‘She was a spirited old bird, that one. Plenty of guts, but not enough brains. She refused Robin’s kind offer of protection, rashly – threw him out of the Abbey, if you please – and called him a blackguard to his face. But then, sadly, an unknown group of ruffians – fearsome, desperate fellows, it seems – completely stripped her lands of livestock and grain. There wasn’t so much as a billy goat left untouched. She ended up paying the King forty marks to give her protection from future attacks by these unknown marauders – silly old duck. And John was well pleased, you’d best believe it, Alan. He was forty marks up on the game.’ Little John laughed like a delighted child.
    ‘No, Alan, you can be sure that our esteemed King doesn’t care a jot what Robin does. So long as he gets a buttered slice of the loaf and there are enough loyal swords at his command when the real fighting comes – as far as he is concerned, Normandy, and all its abbesses, barons, knights and peasants, can go hang.’
    ‘Doesn’t seem right,’ I said. ‘I know Robin has no love for the Church, but to extort money from an old lady, a holy person, too…’
    ‘Where do you think the money comes from to pay your wages, Alan – to pay for this fine meal, this liquor?’ said John, sloshing his cup of cider under my nose.
    I had nothing to say to that.
    The next morning we rode south – thirty-four Wolves, Kit, myself and Little John, heading for the Castle of Falaise. I was impressed with the Wolves: they did not drink themselves into insensibility the night before, as many a company of hired killers might have done, although there was drink enough and to spare; and they were all up before dawn, saddled and ready while I was still yawning and scratching and fumbling about for my boots. Kit was doing duty as my squire and had brought a breakfast of apples and cheese, and I munched them in the saddle as the sun rose and we jogged along the sunken lanes through the well-kept fields and pretty orchards of upper Normandy.
    Little John and I rode at the head of the column. He explained that we had been assigned to garrison duty in the formidable Castle of Falaise under its haughty and high-born castellan Hubert de Burgh.
    ‘I’d better warn you, we probably won’t see much action,’ Little John said with a grimace. ‘Lord de Burgh’s men and our lot are there only as a threat to stop the Bretons invading Normandy from the west. The war – what little of it there has been so far – is happening in the east. Or in the south…’
    ‘Let me see if I have this correctly,’ I said. ‘To the west we have the Bretons, loyal to their own young duke, Arthur – who despite being lord of all Brittany thinks he should be Duke of Normandy, too…’
    ‘And King of England,’ John said. ‘He is the son of Geoffrey, King Henry’s fourth son, now both rotting in their graves, and you might argue that he has as much right to the throne as our John, who is old Henry’s fifth and youngest son. But who has more right to the throne – the grandson or the son of King Henry? I don’t think anyone truly knows the answer…’
    ‘The man who is rightful King is the man who has the main strength to hold the kingdom,’ I said, and then paused, a little shocked by my own cynicism.
    ‘Very wise, young Alan,’ said Little John, nodding seriously, ‘very wise – and very bloody obvious, too. Have you noticed that the sky is blue? And that patch of grass over there – what colour would you say that was, O wise one?’
    We rode on for a few minutes in awkward silence, and I said, ‘So, we have Duke Arthur in the west, and in the east we have King Philip of France, who wants Normandy for himself and nothing more