The Ill-Made Knight

by Christian Cameron

  Perkin smiled.

  I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘professionally speaking, yon’s a fine audience. Just don’t die.’

  I nodded again.

  The sergeants on the gate got it open. Suddenly, there was a great deal of screaming from the ladies on the wall.

  I thought it was for me, so I pranced my way out onto the bridge like, well, like a young man performing for young women. This was just like a London square, except that I had a lot more armour.

  The rights and wrongs of it meant nothing to me, in case you wonder.

  But as soon as I was clear of the gate, I saw what they were screaming about. Two of the young knights were down.

  I ran.

  Running in plate legs is – not as hard as it sounds, but it requires some practice. Legs are soft. Steel is not soft. Everything has to fit, or the top of your greave pounds into the top of your instep, or the back of your greave slams into your ankle, or your knee gets clamped in the main plates of the articulation . . .

  Really, there’s a lot to go wrong.

  I ran.

  It was about fifty paces to where the two knights were down. They were in full harness, but the nearer of the two had a Jacques on his chest and another towering over him with an axe.

  I didn’t save him.

  Sam did. His first arrow spitted the lad on the knight’s chest the way a butcher spikes a carcass.

  The axe man swung, and buried his axe in the Jacques who’d just swallowed Sam’s arrow. Bad luck.

  The axe man could see me coming. He couldn’t take his eyes off me. He got his axe up over his shoulder and stepped back for room to swing.

  I cut off his hands. Maybe not ‘off ‘, but I didn’t stop to check.

  Then I knocked him flat as his limbs pumped blood onto the cobbles of the bridge.

  The man behind him got my pommel in his face. I caught the tip of my sword in my left hand and started using the whole weapon like a two-handed dagger. I ignored blocks and attacks – that’s what you do in armour, when your opponents have no armour. Anything an untrained man can throw one-handed can be ignored.

  Maybe not always, but in a crisis.

  Some of them had staves and many had spears. A few had axes or pole-hammers. Of all those, the spears are the most dangerous if well-used. Spear blows I had to turn. But some got through. Early on, one came in and hit my faceplate, raised it a fraction and went in under the plate, slicing along my cheek and punching in between my head and the helmet liner.

  I killed the bastard.

  I was sure I was dead. I had a spear sticking out of my helmet.

  It fell out.

  There was some blood, but I didn’t seem to be dead.

  I made it to the second downed man. Another of the young knights had straddled him and was holding his ground.

  I stepped up next to him and roared, ‘Form a line!’

  I took a breath, knocked a spear aside with a flick of my blade, turned my whole body – one thing you can’t do well in harness is turn your head – and shouted, ‘Tom, kill everyone behind us!’

  Then I faced front, made a sweeping two-handed parry and started clearing space. I made wide, sweeping two-handed cuts, and the unarmoured men stepped back.

  One of the young French knights stepped up on my left.

  Something hit my leg, caught in the butterfly on my right knee, and suddenly my leg was bleeding. I stepped back onto something squishy.

  Tom had a man in red and blue up against the bridge railing, and another was crouched over the clothyard shaft in his guts, the red blood running between his fingers. He was praying to the Virgin.

  A fourth knight joined our impromptu line, and we filled the bridge.

  In front of me, a big sergeant in good mail raised a huge, spiked club – what the Flemings call a ‘Guden Tag’. He called, ‘They are only four! We can—’

  One of Sam’s arrows buzzed over my head like a huge wasp and struck him, and dust came off his mail and coat. He looked at the arrow and I thought, You never think it will be you.

  ‘At them!’ I called, and the four of us charged.

  They gave way.

  We killed a few. I was already tiring. Armour makes you almost invulnerable, and it’s really very comfortable, but when you fight on foot in armour, you spend your strength like a drunkard in a brothel. And I had not yet learned to save my strength.

  Nevertheless, we cleared the bridge all the way to the chapel at the far end – the Meaux bank.

  A crossbow bolt hit my breastplate like a punch in the gut and I staggered.

  The man next to me took one in his vambrace, and it deformed the metal and broke his arm.

  ‘Back!’ I shouted. Christ, why hadn’t they just pelted us with crossbows from the first?

  The whole thing was insane.

  ‘We can’t retreat,’ said the man at my right. ‘Ladies are watching.’

  ‘We cleared the bridge, messieurs. They will have to deem that enough chivalry for one morning. I bid you retreat, messieurs.’

  I suited action to word.

  Another bolt struck, and this one whanged off my helmet.

  The man on my right took a bolt in his thigh, right through his cuisse, which, on examination, proved to be boiled leather over iron splints.

  He gave a squawk and fell, and the Jacques came for us in a wave.

  Paternoster, qui est in caelis.

  We were in a lot of trouble.

  The knight with the broken arm had already walked back. He was halfway across the bridge, and he was the smartest of the lot.

  As the knight on my right went down, he stumbled into me, and by habit I let go my sword with my left hand – I had my right on the hilt and my left near the point – and caught him. I had him from behind and my luck was holding, so I began to back across the bridge, dragging the young scapegrace.

  The Jacques wanted him, though, and they bayed like dogs as they ran after us and started stabbing with their spears. These weren’t peasants with pitchforks, but prosperous men in hauberk who probably served in the Arriere-ban. But, to be honest, they were mostly stabbing at the man I was dragging, so I kept backing.

  The man on my left turned and ran. I won’t say he didn’t choose wisely; I’ll just say that he left me.

  I backed another few paces, and Tom ripped into the men on my left like a harrow cutting spring earth, and bounced away like a boy playing ball. He was light on his feet. I had time to admire him.

  I made another few steps. There were blows to my feet and blows to the back of my legs, chest and arms. A hail of blows.

  Every step became harder. Oddly, it wasn’t the weight of my armour, although that was something, nor the pain of my left leg harness, which was killing me – I didn’t know till later that a chance blow had cut my thigh strap – it was the weight of the French knight, all on one arm. A body is an unwieldy thing at the best of times, and an armoured body is heavy, floppy and very smooth. And I couldn’t quite get my arm all the way around him.

  Tom bought me a moment’s respite.

  I decided that I had to change grips. I tried to hoist the wounded, or dead, man on my hip, and I lost him and he fell.

  He screamed, because he fell on the crossbow bolt, which was firmly wedged in his leg.

  On a positive note, he was alive.

  There were a dozen adversaries right there. In a fight, one thing can lead to another as firmly and logically as one note leads you to sing the next at Mass. I parried a spear-thrust, a half-sword parry that turned my body to the side, left leg forward. A spear shaft slammed into my left side, knocking me off balance, but I stepped with it and snapped a cut up from below. Then I hit something and the spearmen fell away – I swept my sword up over my head and flicked it from side to side, the way a man with a scythe cuts grain.

  I thrust one poor bastard though the body, and my sword stuck fast. I took a blow, staggered and got the tip free, rolled my wrist i
n a little windmill and drew blood.

  Tom finished a man I’d wounded, then killed his partner.

  I couldn’t breathe. I’d reached a point of fatigue where I couldn’t raise my arms.

  I looked back.

  Sam was on the bridge. He had four arrows in the fingers of his bow hand, and he ran at us.

  The Jacques nearest me flinched away.

  I got a deep lungful of air, bent over and passed my sword blade under the French knight’s arms, so I had him from behind, pinned against me, with the blade in front like a deadly embrace. He slumped forward and the blade bent.

  If it broke, we were done.

  I began to shuffle back as fast as I could go.

  Sam’s first arrow picked up the man closest to me and spun him around like a heavy punch.

  As I stumbled back, Sam leaped up on a bridge stanchion for a clear shot, balanced a moment and loosed into the next Jacques, who fell noisily. I gained another three paces.

  Tom blocked a spear thrust.

  Sam feathered a third man.

  He had one more arrow, and he showed it to the Jacques. He flicked them two fingers and they cursed and growled, then he drew his great bow all the way to his ear and held it there, in their faces. Tom spiked the boldest fellow in the knee, and we gained five more shuffing paces.

  The castle’s crossbowmen loosed a volley, all together – six or seven bolts that felled the front rank of the men on the bridge in a spray of blood – and we were in the gate.

  My French knight was alive.

  I wasn’t sure I was, and I sat in the dirt and bled for what seemed to me a long time.

  Perkin appeared. He handed me a cup of water and I drained it, then another and another. He began to unbuckle things.

  My hazel-eyed Venus appeared. I was sitting on a barrel in the yard with Perkin under my arm, unlacing my left arm harness while I drank water with my right hand. She curtseyed.

  ‘You were brilliant,’ she said. ‘The Dauphine sends you this as a token of her esteem, messire.’

  I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I don’t think I’d ever wanted a woman as much.

  She had an embroidered riband in her hand, and she was, I think, a little put out that I wasn’t leaping to my feet. She leaned down.

  I smiled at her. ‘My lady, I beg your pardon, but I’m not at my best,’ I said.

  ‘You could unlace his right shoulder,’ Perkin said.

  ‘Oh!’ said my beautiful visitor. She took the cup from my right hand and drew off the gauntlet. She smiled at me and draped my right arm over her shoulder as Perkin had my left.

  ‘There’s blood—’ I said.

  ‘Christ on the cross,’ Perkin muttered. ‘Why didn’t you say?’

  But my chivalrous lady reached in and unlaced the right harness at the groin – her eyes flicked to mine – and then she unbuckled the straps inside the thigh – one, two – and brought her hand away covered in blood.

  She smiled at me and licked at the blood on her fingers.

  I swear to you.

  ‘I love a brave man,’ she said.

  By our sweet and gentle saviour, I was ready to be transported to heaven in that instant – or to kill every Jacques in the town.

  Or to have her on the straw.

  She wiped her bloody hand on her fine gown and got to the buckles on the greaves. She and Perkin took the whole right leg off in one pull.

  There was a lot of blood in my hose.

  And then I was gone.

  I awoke when the hot iron touched the back of my leg. I wanted to scream, but there was something nasty clenched between my teeth.

  My first thought was, Sweet Christ, I’ve lost my leg. And it was my last.

  I wasn’t out long. A barber was rubbing ointment over the whole wound, and it hurt as if all the demons of hell had decided to torment my right knee.

  Then he pasted honey over the ointment. He looked at me. ‘It’s really nothing,’ he said. ‘Happens to horses all the time – get a wound right on a blood vessel. Easy physic, if I get to it in time.’ He held out his hand and Perkin handed him a length of fine white linen, which he began to wrap around the wound.

  Perkin leaned me forward and looked into my eyes. ‘You in your right mind?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  He smiled and handed me a cup of mint tisane with honey. ‘Drink this. Here, chew on these,’ he said. He handed me two wizened red things like dried flowers. They had a wonderful taste.

  ‘Chew. Chew more. Now spit,’ he said, holding out his hand.

  I obeyed.

  ‘Now drink the rest of the cup,’ he said.

  The surgeon tied off the cloth. ‘Change it twice a day. Tell me if the flesh gets proud.’ He smiled. ‘Horses don’t get gangrene,’ he said, then he bowed and withdrew.

  ‘What was that stuff?’ I asked.

  ‘Drink it all,’ he said.

  I complied.

  He took the cup. ‘Good night, m’lord.’

  It always made me feel funny when men addressed me as ‘my lord’, as I was lord of nothing but a horse, a sword and some armour.

  I lay back, wondering what the sharp-tasting drug had been.

  There was a very quiet knock and my chivalrous friend opened the door. She smiled sweetly and slipped in, carrying a wax taper in a stick. ‘The Dauphine says one of us must sit with you all night,’ she said.

  She had on a plain working woman’s kirtle with an apron.

  ‘I’m sorry that I bled on your lovely gown,’ I said.

  She smiled. ‘I will wear it at court. My dear man, there is no better adornment. I will say, ‘Oh, that’s the blood of William Gold, who saved the Duke de Bourbon on the Bridge of Meaux. I was helping him with his armour.’

  There was another knock, and she went to the door and took a covered cup.

  ‘Here,’ she said. ‘It’s honeyed milk with a little spice. My father used to take it when . . . he was hurt.’ She smiled.

  I had seen rings on the fingers of the hand holding the cup.

  ‘Am I being served by all the Dauphine’s ladies?’ I asked.

  ‘Two at a time,’ she said.

  ‘Am I so dangerous?’ I asked.

  ‘I imagine that you are quite fearsome to your enemies, messire,’ she said. For the first time since the courtyard, she let her eyes meet mine. ‘But as I have a high heart of my own, I believe that I can meet you in an encounter – alone. I felt that two of us might put you . . . at a disadvantage.’

  ‘Ah, mademoiselle, I’m afraid I am no match for you, and you alone have me at a grave disadvantage,’ I said. I’d listened to a romance or two. The girls at the Three Foxes used to read them aloud, those as could read. And players would recite them. The Provençal ones and the Italians were the best.

  She settled gracefully on the edge of my bed. ‘Drink from our cup,’ she said.

  ‘Does the cup come with a kiss of friendship?’ I asked.

  She leaned over, almost bored, and kissed me lightly on the lips. I caught her – my hand against her back – and kissed her harder.

  I’m not sure what I expected from a high-born girl. But I didn’t expect her mouth to melt open under mine, and for her to lean into me and breathe into my mouth.

  Later, she said, ‘Did you expect me, then?’

  I denied it, and she jumped off the bed and hit me lightly. ‘Liar!’ she said. ‘I’m too predictable. A light of love.’

  ‘My sweet and beautiful friend, I had no expectation but of an uncomfortable night with a nasty wound.’ I smiled at her – winningly, I hope.

  She frowned. ‘And yet you chewed a clove. I can taste it in your mouth.’

  ‘Medicine,’ I said.

  ‘Only for foul breath,’ she said, but she laughed. ‘Perhaps our horse doctor uses it.’

  ‘Please come back,’ I said, patting my narrow bedstead.

  ‘No, messire. Too many such kisses and a girl may find herself with an unwanted swelling about
the waist.’ She smiled. ‘Do you think my blood is any less hot than yours?’

  I knew the answer to that.

  ‘I do hope that you stay on watch all night,’ I said, ‘because I’m not sure my strength is up to two or three or four of you.’

  ‘Fie!’ she said, swatting me. ‘That was ungentle.’

  ‘Benidictee! You may tax me, and I may not tax you back.’ I was getting the pace of her conversation.

  She smiled. ‘Precisely, messire. I am to be adored, not to be teased.’

  ‘I could, perhaps, adore you more effectively if I knew your name.’ I smiled.

  She nodded. ‘I am Emile de Clermont.’

  I put my hand on hers without thinking about it. ‘Your father was the Marshal of Normandy?’

  She dropped her eyes. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I met him. At Paris. With the Dauphin.’

  ‘You did?

  ‘Last autumn. I was acting as courier for the Prince of Wales. Your father came to the gate of the Louvre, fully armed. We—’ I smiled. ‘We almost fought. Par dieu, we were so cold and wet.’ I smiled at her. ‘Clermonts must be destined to rescue me.’

  I was prattling on in this manner when I realized that she was crying. Like my touch to her hand, her tears were not in the game. She was truly crying.

  ‘They killed him,’ she said. ‘By My lady the Virgin, the canaille killed him. And two days ago, I saw my mother’s castle burn. Christ – I want to be braver than this.’ She stood up. ‘I’m sorry, Master Gold, you are a better man than I thought. Let go my hand.’

  Instead, I pulled. I didn’t pull hard.

  In a fight, you can learn everything – everything – from an opponent at the moment when your swords meet. The contact of the two blades is so intimate that a more experienced swordsman can read intentions, skills and weaknesses in one quick beat of a man’s heart.

  How much more, then, can a boy or girl learn from the touch of a hand?

  She didn’t want to go.

  She came into my arms and turned her head away.

  I wiped her tears with my free hand and then licked my fingers.

  ‘That’s not funny!’ she said. ‘You are mocking me.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I admitted. ‘You are afraid.’

  ‘So? I’m a weak woman. Women are afraid of everything. So I’m told.’ She was pulling away.