The Red Knight

by Miles Cameron

  He bowed, and she waved him away, so he went out into the stairwell. It was dark.

  Her door closed, and he began to feel his way down the stone steps when a hand closed on his.

  He knew her in a moment, and pulled the hand to his lips – faster than she could take it away. He heard her sigh.

  That moment he considered crushing her against the stone wall. But it occurred to him that she must be there by the Abbess’ commission, and it would be rude, to say the least, to attack the novice outside the Abbess’ door. Or something like that went through his head – before her lips came down on his and her hands pushed against his shoulders.

  His heart pounded. His mind went blank.

  He could feel her power, now. As their bodies moved together – her tongue probing his – they were generating power.

  She broke their kiss and stepped away – a sudden absence of warmth in the dark – and said ‘Now we are even.’ She took his hand. ‘Come.’

  She led him down the dark stone steps. Across the hall – the bonfires in the courtyard made the stained glass figures flicker and wriggle as if they were animated, and fitful rainbows played across the hall floor. After the complete darkness of the Abbess’ solar stairwell, the hall seemed well enough lit.

  She was taking him to the books. Halfway across the hall they kissed again. No one could have said which of them initiated it. But when his hand moved across her bodice, she stepped away.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I want to show you this, and I am not your whore.’

  But she kept his hand. Led him to the book. ‘Have you seen it?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you understand?’ she asked, flipping the pages.

  ‘No,’ he admitted. There is nothing a young man enjoys less than telling the object of his affection how little he knows.

  Her not-quite-a-smile played somewhere in the corner of her mouth. ‘You are one of us, are you not? I can feel you.’

  His eyes were on hers, but when she looked at the book he looked too. Looked at the alembic in St Pancreas’s hand. And followed the saint’s pointing finger to a diagram, lower on the page – a tree.

  He flipped to another page, where another saint pointed – this time to a cloud.

  ‘Is this a test?’ he asked.

  She smiled. ‘Yes.

  ‘Then I guess the book is a code. The shapes that the saints point to indicate the shape of a template that, when covering the text, will indicate what the reader should read.’ He ran his finger over the text across from St Eustachios. ‘It is a grimoire.’

  ‘A fantastically detailed, internally coded, referential grimoire,’ she said, and then bit her tongue which he found, just at that moment, intensely erotic. He reached to kiss her, but she made the dismissive motion women make when boys are tiresome. ‘Come,’ she said.

  He followed her across the hall. He was conscious, at a remove, that he had a watch to oversee; a siege to command. But her hand in his held such promise. It was smooth, but rough. The hand of a woman who worked hard. But still smooth; like the surface of good armour.

  She dropped his hand the moment she opened the courtyard door, and they were in the light again.

  He wanted to say something to her – but he had no idea what he wanted to say.

  She turned and looked back at him. ‘I have one more thing to show you,’ she said.

  Even as she spoke, she pulled a cowl of not-seeing around herself.

  He was being tested in another way.

  He reached into the palace of his memory and did the same. He was there for long enough to see Prudentia looking at him with ferocious disapproval, and that the green spring outside his iron door was building up into a storm of epic proportions.

  And then they slipped across the courtyard. They were scarcely invisible – one of the Lanthorn girls, spinning in a reel with a young archer, saw the captain clearly because she was dancing and she deftly avoided him as she whirled.

  But he was not interrupted as he passed.

  She stopped at the iron-bound dormitory door and he manipulated his phantasm so that it linked to hers. It was a very intimate thing to do – something he had never done with anyone but Prudentia, and which the sight of her had reminded him of.

  She used to say that the mind was a temple, an inn, a garden, and an outhouse, and that casting with another magus partook of worship, intimate conversation, sex, and defecation.

  But as his power reached to hers, hers accepted it, and they were linked.

  He winced.

  She winced as well.

  And then they were in the dormitory, standing in a small hall where, on his former visit, older nuns had sat to read or to do needlework. There was light here. Most of the nuns were out in the yard, but two still sat quietly.

  ‘Look at them,’ Amicia said. ‘Look.’

  He didn’t have to look too hard. Tendrils of power played about them.

  ‘All of you have the power?’ he asked.

  ‘Every one of us,’ she said. ‘Come.’

  ‘When will I see you again?’ he managed, as she led him along the northern curtain behind the stable block. An apple tree grew there, in a stone box set into the wall. There was a bench around it.

  Amicia settled onto the bench.

  He was too befuddled to seek to kiss her, so he simply sat.

  ‘All of you are witches?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s an ugly word for you to use, man-witch,’ she said. ‘Sorcerer. Warlock.’ She looked out over the wall.

  Far to the east he saw the barest smudge of orange, and it instantly recalled him to his duty. ‘I must go,’ he said. He wanted to impress her – he wanted not to seem to need to impress her. ‘I’ve sent people to do something I should have done myself,’ he blurted.

  She didn’t seem to pay him any heed. ‘I thought that you needed to know what the stakes were,’ she said. ‘I don’t think she is going to tell you. This is a place of power. And the Masters of our Order have filled it with women of power, and with powerful artefacts. Now it shines like a beacon.

  He felt blind and foolish at her words. But Prudentia’s rules – on the use of power, on using the sight of power – which were wisdom in a world that distrusted the magi, had deprived him of this insight.

  ‘That, or she meant me to tell you,’ Amicia added. Her head slumped for the first time that evening.

  ‘Or she expected me to reason it out for myself,’ he said bitterly. He felt the time flowing away as if he had an hourglass in his hand – he felt tonight’s raid slipping west into the trees, and he felt the lack of alertness on his watch, and sensed a thousand forgotten details, like a tendril of power attached to his soldiers that was pulling him from her side. And the glow far in the east – what was that?

  And then he felt her, and it was like a chain that tethered him to the bench.

  ‘I must go,’ he said again. But youth, and his hand, betrayed him, and he was again in her arms or she in his.

  ‘I do not want this,’ she said as she kissed him again.

  So he broke free. Broke the binding between them with a thought, and stepped away. ‘Do you often come here?’ he asked, his voice hoarse. ‘To the tree?’

  She nodded, barely perceptible in the odd light.

  ‘I might write to you,’ he said. ‘I want to see you again.’

  She smiled. ‘I imagine you’ll see me every day,’ she said. ‘I don’t want this. I don’t need it. You don’t know me. We should walk away.’

  ‘If I strike you now we can end as we started,’ he said. ‘With a kiss and a blow. But you want me as I want you. We are bonded.’

  She shook her head. ‘That sort of thing is for children. Listen, Captain. I have been a wife. I know how a man feels between my legs. Ah! You wince. The novice is not a virgin. Shall I go on? I lived across the wall. I was an Outwaller. No, look!’ She peeled back the collar of her gown, and her shoulder was covered in tattoos.

  Bathed in the dist
ant firelight her shoulder gleamed, and all he felt was desire.

  ‘I was taken young, and grew to womanhood among them. I had a husband – a warrior, and we might have grown old together, he as war chief and I the shaman. Until the Knights of the Order came. They killed him, they took me, and here I am. And I do not need rescuing. I live in the world of spirit. I have come to love Jesus. Every time I kiss you, I hurtle backwards in my life to another place. I cannot be with you. I will not be a mercenary’s whore. I sacrificed myself this evening so that you could see what you are so obviously blind to – because you are so very afraid of your power.’ She turned her head. ‘Now go.’

  The lines of power to his soldiers were taut as cables. He was ignoring his duty. It was like a broken bone – a scream of pain. But he couldn’t let what was between them rest.

  ‘You wanted me as much as ever I wanted you, from the moment your eyes met mine. Don’t be a hypocrite. You sacrificed yourself this evening? Rather, you craved this evening and built yourself a reason to let yourself have it.’ Even as he spoke the words, he cursed himself for a fool. It was not what he wanted to say.

  ‘You have no idea what I do or do not want,’ she said. ‘You have no idea the life I have led.’

  He took a half-step away – the sort of half-step a swordsman takes when he changes from defence to attack. ‘I grew up with five brothers who hated me, a father who ignored and despised me, and a doting mother who wanted to make me a tool of her revenge,’ he hissed. ‘I grew up across the river from your Outwaller villages. When I looked out of my tower I saw you Outwallers in the land of freedom. You had a husband who loved you? I had a succession of sweethearts placed in my bed by my mother to spy on me. You would have been an Outwaller shaman? I was being trained to lead armies of the Wild to crush Alba and rid the earth of the king. So that my mother could feel avenged. Knights of the Order came for you? My brothers ganged up to beat me, to please my supposed father. It was good fun.’ He found that his voice was rising and spittle flew from his mouth.

  So much for self-control; he had said too much. Far too much. He felt sick.

  But he was not done. ‘But fuck that. I am not the Antichrist, even if God himself decrees I should be. I will be what I will, not what anyone else wills, as can you. Be what you choose. You love Jesus?’ he asked, and something black passed into his mind. ‘What has he done for you? Love me instead.’

  ‘I will not,’ she said, quite calmly.

  He didn’t will himself to walk away. He didn’t feel a thing – he didn’t feel an urge to reply. It was like being cut with a very sharp sword, and watching your arm fall to the ground.

  The next he knew, he was standing in the guard box over the gate.

  Bent, the duty archer, stood with his arms crossed. When he saw the captain he twirled his moustaches. ‘You’ve sent out a sortie,’ he said. ‘Or somewhat similar. I can’t find Bad Tom or half the men-at-arms for duty.’

  ‘It’s about to happen,’ the captain said, mastering himself. ‘Tell the watch to be alert. Tell them—’

  He looked up. But the stars were silent and cold.

  ‘Tell them to be alert,’ he said, at a loss. ‘I have to attend the Abbess.’

  He got himself to the jakes and threw up. Wiped his chin on an old handkerchief and threw it after his puke, which would have scandalized a laundress. And then he pulled himself up straight, nodded, as if to an invisible companion, and walked back into the hall.

  The Abbess was waiting for him.

  ‘You met with my handmaiden,’ she said.

  His armour was adamantine. He smiled. ‘A merry meeting,’ he said.

  ‘And you saw to your guards,’ she said.

  ‘Not enough,’ he said. ‘Lady, there are too many secrets here. I do not know what the stakes are. And perhaps I am simply too young for this.’ He shrugged. ‘But we have two foes – the enemy outside and the enemy within. I wish you would tell me what you know.’

  ‘If I told you everything I knew you would scourge me with whips of fire,’ said the Abbess. ‘It is a passage in the Bible on which I often ponder.’ She rose from her throne and crossed the hall to the book. ‘You have solved this riddle?’ she asked.

  ‘Using the enormous hints provided,’ he answered.

  ‘It was not my place to tell you,’ she said. ‘When our kind swear oaths, those oaths bind our power.’

  He nodded.

  ‘You are as tense as a bowstring,’ she said. ‘Is that the effect of Amicia?’

  ‘I have played a trump card tonight,’ he admitted. ‘And I let my tryst interfere with duty. Things are not done as I would like on an evening when I have taken a gamble that now seems reckless.’ He paused, and said what he had boiling inside him. ‘I do not enjoy being toyed with.’

  The Abbess picked up her onyx rosary and adjusted her wimple. She shrugged. ‘No one does,’ she said dismissively. ‘I don’t deal in the imagery of gambling,’ she said. ‘But perhaps we can do some good, and by our presence prevent the dicing and the deflowering you were worried about,’ she said. ‘Let’s walk among our people, Captain.’

  They walked out, and she put a hand on his arm, very much the lady, and a veiled sister came and carried her train, which was longer and more ornate than any other sister’s in the convent. Indeed, the captain suspected that her habit was far from the rule as laid down for sisters of Saint Thomas. She was a rich and powerful woman who had somehow turned to this life.

  When they entered the courtyard all conversation stopped. A ring of dancers moved to the sound of a pair of pipes and a psalter played by none other than the captain’s squire. The musicians continued to play, and the dancers paused, but the Abbess gave them a firm nod of approval and the dancing continued.

  ‘When will they come at us?’ the Abbess asked quietly.

  ‘Never, if I have my way,’ the captain said pleasantly.

  ‘It’s better to make your money without fighting?’ she asked.

  ‘Always,’ he said, bowing deeply to Amicia, who stood watching the dancers. She nodded coolly in return. But he had armed himself against her and he continued without a pause. ‘But I also like to win. And winning requires some effort.’

  ‘Which you will make eventually?’ she said. But she smiled. ‘We spar so naturally I might have to do some penance for flirtation.’

  ‘You have a gift for it that must have won you many admirers,’ he said gallantly.

  She struck the back of his hand with her fan. ‘Back in the ancient times when I was young, you mean?’

  ‘Like all beautiful women, you seek to make an insult of my flattery,’ he returned.

  ‘Stand here. Everyone can see us here.’ She nodded to Father Henry, who was standing hesitantly between the chapel and the steps to the Great Hall.

  The captain thought that the man was a-boil with hostility. A year ago, the captain, in one of his first acts on taking command, had executed a murderer in the company – an archer who had started to kill his comrades for their loot. Torn had been a non-descript man, an outlaw. The captain eyed the priest. He had something of the same look. It wasn’t really a look. A feel. A smell.

  ‘Father Henry, I don’t believe that you’ve been properly introduced to the captain.’ She smiled, and her eyes flashed – a glimpse of the woman she had been, who knew that a flash of her eyes would restore any admirer to obedience. A predator who liked to play with her food.

  Father Henry offered a long hand to shake. It was moist and cold. ‘The Bourc, his men call him,’ he said. ‘Do you have a name you prefer?’

  The captain was so used to dealing with petty hostility that it took a moment to register. He turned his full attention on the priest.

  The Abbess shook her head and pushed the priest by the elbow. ‘Never mind. I will speak to you later. Begone, ser. You are dismissed.’

  ‘I am a priest of God,’ he said. ‘I go where I will, and have no master here.’

  ‘You haven’t met Bad Tom,’ the
captain said.

  ‘You have a familiar look about you,’ Father Henry added. ‘Do I know your parents?’

  ‘I’m a bastard, which you’ve already found cause to mention,’ the captain said. ‘Twice, man of God.’

  The priest withstood his glare. But his eyes were as full of movement as a man dancing on coals. After too long a pause, the priest turned on his heel and walked away.

  ‘You go to great lengths to hide your heredity,’ the Abbess noted.

  ‘Do you know why?’ the captain asked.

  The Abbess shook her head.

  ‘Good,’ said the captain. His eyes were on the priest’s back. ‘Where did he come from? What do you know about him?’

  The dance had finished, and men were bowing, women dipping deep courtesies. Michael had just noted that his lord had witnessed his troubadour skills and flushed deep red in the torchlight, and the Abbess cleared her throat.

  ‘I told you. I took him from the parish,’ the Abbess murmured. ‘He has no breeding.’

  The sky to the east lit up, as if from a flash of lightning, but the flash lasted too long and burned too red, for as long as it took a man to say a Pater Noster.

  ‘Alarm!’ roared the captain. ‘Gate open, all crossbows armed, get the machines loaded. Move!’

  Sauce had been watching the dancers. She paused, confusion written on her face. ‘Gate open?’ she asked.

  ‘Gate open. Get a sortie ready to ride, you’ll be leading it.’ The captain pushed her towards her helmet.

  Most of his men were already moving, but if he hadn’t been beguiled by the evening’s revelations, they’d have been in their armour already.

  Already, a dozen men-at-arms stood by their destriers in the torchlit gateway, their squires and valets scrambling to arm them. Archers scrambled from the courtyard onto the catwalks around the curtain walls, some even bare-arsed in the light of the courtyard fires, their hose down and their shirttails dangling.

  There was a second flash of fire to the east, half as long as the last.

  The captain was grinning. ‘I hope you didn’t need olive oil for anything really important,’ he said, and squeezed her arm in a very familiar way. ‘May I take my leave? I should be back with you before the next bell.’