Apart from his bitter enmity with my master, I, too, had cause to hate Ralph Murdac: when I was nine years of age, his men-at-arms had burst into our peasant cottage before dawn, ripped my father from his bed and, after falsely accusing him of theft, had hanged him from an oak tree in the centre of the village. Four years later, the same Ralph Murdac had threatened to cut off my right hand when I was caught stealing a pie in Nottingham market; and later still he had had me cruelly tortured in a dungeon at Winchester in an attempt to get information about Robin. If I ever had the chance, I would kill him in a heartbeat, with a great deal of pleasure: he was less than a clump of rotting duckweed in my eyes, and the world would be a better place with his filthy presence expunged from it.

By the grace of God, and the kindness of Robin, I had risen in rank since the days when I was a poor fatherless village boy, forced to thieve to fill my belly. I was now Alan of Westbury, lord of a small manor in Nottinghamshire that had been granted to me by the Earl of Locksley. This gift was something for which I would be forever grateful. I had been a nobody, a starving cutpurse, but now I had a place among men of honour, among noble warriors, not only as a holy pilgrim newly returned from Outremer, but as the holder of half a knight’s fee of land. I had made the impossible, almost unthinkable leap from humble peasant to horse-borne lord of the manor; and I had Robin to thank for it.

I tried my best to repay my debt to Robin by loyal service in war and in peace, and by giving him the gift of my music. For now, as well as being one of his captains, a leader of his ragtag troops, I was Robin’s trouvere, his personal musician. I hummed a snatch of music softly under my breath as I walked through the camp of my mortal enemy, striding as confidently as I could manage and trying not to trip over the guy ropes in the darkness.