The Ill-Made Knight

by Christian Cameron

  ‘Par dieu!’ I said, all but springing from my bed.

  ‘I have not told her that I met you as an apprentice in a shop.’ He smiled.

  Ha! I told her myself.

  At some point I had stopped wearing her favour. There’s something particularly grim about wearing a woman’s favour while you threaten peasants and bully women into revealing where they hide their grain. I wondered where it was. Packed with my spare shirts? I had a leather bag of clean, dry linen shirts, and it lived with my good doublet, my two best pairs of matched hose without holes, and some bits of jewellery – in the wagon of a Genoese banker who rode with the Captal. He held all my ready money, too.

  The next day, du Guesclin visited me. He was coming to be thought a great man amongst the French, which suited me – the more especially as he introduced me, at my bedside, to a room full of Norman and Breton knights.

  ‘William Gold, gentlemen. He took me in ’57 and was quite the gentleman about it; he helped save the Dauphine at the Bridge of Meaux – you know the story?’

  ‘By God, sir, did you save the Duke de Bourbon?’ asked a sprig.

  ‘Par Dieu, monsieur, I may have. I was busy, you understand,’ I drawled. Being a man of reknown – even a little reknown – was vastly more pleasurable than being thought a brigand, liar, thief or rapist.

  I received a certain amount of hero worship, and I felt much better.

  The worship of good men is itself anodyne, messieurs.

  After they left, I wondered why it was that I was more popular with my enemies than with my own people.

  A day or two passed. I hadn’t read a book in years, but my host, the French King’s lieutenant of Reims, had a library of over twenty books, and all of them were about chivalry. I had never seen a book about chivalry – I used to read a little Aristotle, but mostly Aquinas, psalms and sermons. I read a poem by John Gower once, and enjoyed it, although I’m pretty sure he wrote it against men like me.

  I knew there were books on chivalry. I knew that the great de Charny wrote a list of questions for the Order of the Star, and I knew that the stories of Sir Lancelot, for example, were written down. But I had never read anything like Master Llull’s book of chivalry, and I devoured it. I read it through, and then read it through again.

  When du Guesclin came, I asked him about the book. He shrugged. ‘I was never much of a reader,’ he admitted. ‘But my father’s master-of-arms says he was some sort of Spaniard – that he was a knight, and fought the Moors, and then became a hermit, and then a priest.’

  ‘He thinks that knights are chosen, by God, to protect the people.’ I looked down the page. ‘He thinks there ought to be schools to train boys to be knights.’ I looked at du Guesclin and he smiled.

  ‘Anyone can be a knight,’ he said. ‘Surely we’ve seen that in the last ten years. Give a peasant a good horse and a harness and a few year’s of training, and if he has a good heart and a set of balls, he can fight. You and I both know this.’

  I gnawed my lip. ‘But . . . isn’t there more to being a knight than having courage and a harness?’

  Du Guesclin shrugged. ‘No.’ He smiled wryly at me. ‘Well, perhaps there is more. A good sword is a help.’

  A voice from the doorway said, ‘Fie on you, Monsieur du Guesclin! I thought better of you, sir.’

  Now, in France, as in England, when you are sick (if you are lucky and have rich friends) you are put in a closed bed, a bed with heavy hangings, many pillows and a pair of feather mattresses over a roped frame. You can’t see anyone beyond the hangings. This means that women may visit you so long as they don’t enter the hangings, so to speak.

  That was Emile’s voice. I’d hoped, but how on earth could a noblewoman visit a routier without comment?

  ‘If any peasant with spirit can be a knight, why is this war so vicious?’ she asked. ‘Isn’t it true that when we let any lad be a knight, they murder and rob at will, drunk on the power of their arms, whereas true knights have discipline and restraint?’

  Du Guesclin was inside the hangings with me. His eyes met mine and he shrugged. ‘Madame may have the right of it,’ he said, ‘but when I need to go up a hill into a shower of English arrows, I care little about the ability my lads have to show restraint, and only that they have the spirit to face the arrow storm.’

  Emile’s voice hardened. ‘And when you’ve beaten the English and they all go home? What then?’

  Du Guesclin shook his head. ‘Not a problem for me, Madame. I am the merest fighting man.’ He rose from my bed.

  I grabbed his hand. ‘May I write a letter to Richard Musard? I asked.

  He shook his head. ‘The Black Squire has gone away south to Avignon on a mission. The Captal sent a squire – Thomas, an Englishman – with an offer to pay your ransom, which,’ he smiled, ‘I may have done you the disservice of accepting. He left before you returned to consciousness.’

  ‘I’d like some clothes and things,’ I admitted.

  ‘I’m sure you have friends in Reims who might arrange to dress you,’ said du Guesclin. ‘I must go. I’ll visit tomorrow. Do you know that the peace is signed? The King is to return to France at midsummer. The war is over.’

  The words chilled my blood. I was a soldier. I was in the twilight between being a man-at-arms, a squire or a knight – a recognized member of the community, a ranking gentleman. A knight would never need to feed himself, whilst a starving man-at-arms was called a brigand.

  The war was ending just as I was making my name.

  But I had no more time to consider the destruction of my fortunes, because Emile said, ‘Do you, too, believe any man can be a knight?’

  ‘I have to hope so,’ I admitted, ‘because I’m rather like any man myself. If only high birth makes a knight, I will never make the grade. And yet, my lady, I agree with you this far. I have recently seen what happens when boys are broken in spirit and trained to war like dogs to the chase, and it is truly horrible. Certes, if a man is to be a knight, he must know something of the rules and customs of being a knight – of chivalry – or he is a mere killer.’ I paused and opened my curtain a touch. ‘I missed you,’ I said.

  She was pregnant – well along, in a flowing kirtle that emphasized the pregnancy rather than hiding it. The whole kirtle was silk, figured in swans, her husband’s badge. Her kirtle and over gown were worth about twice my war horse’s value.

  I cannot tell you which shocked me more, her preganancy, or the slavish adoration inplied in the heraldic dress – a gown that emphasized her condition and her master. That stressed that she was property. Like a retainer, or a man-at-arms.

  All my thoughts must have been on my face.

  She laughed, the nasty little laugh she used to hurt herself.

  ‘There, you see me as I am,’ she said. ‘Fat as a hog, blotchy-faced and ugly.’ She hung her head in mock contrition, then glared at me, eye to eye like an adversary, daring me to speak. ‘If you’d kept the curtain closed, you need not have known.’

  ‘You are just as beautiful pregnant as not,’ I said. It wasn’t quite true, but really, one doesn’t have to be bred to court to know what to say to a pregnant woman. ‘And I am yours, body and soul, whether you are beautiful as heaven or come to me with leprosy.’

  Her smile.

  But my sense of honour was as sharp – and double edged – as hers. ‘I can’t say that I’ve brought your favour much honour.’ I hadn’t realized how bitter I was until I heard myself whining like a baby. ‘Killing peasants,’ I heard myself saying. ‘Burning towns.’

  We watched each other for some heartbeats.

  Both of us armed with the weapons to do the other hurt.

  She nodded and looked away. Bright – even brittle – she said, ‘Monsieur du Guesclin says that you require clothes. I took the liberty of sending for a tailor on your behalf.’ She smiled then.

  I was holding the hangings open to watch her, and now she rose – still graceful as a dancer. ‘As you are a cripple and I am a hog,
’ she said, ‘I don’t think that the gossips of the world will be troubled if I open your curtains and this window and give you some air. I know that the best doctors are against it, but then, my midwife says all man-doctors are fools.’

  I just sat back and smiled like a fool – and worried that I was unwashed and unshaven. ‘You will have to send the tailor back home,’ I said. ‘My ransom and the purchase of a new horse will wipe out what I’ve saved.’

  She leaned in and brushed my lips with hers, as fast and controlled as a master swordsman. Then backed to her stool. ‘That’s as close to an embrace as I’ll dare,’ she said, matter of factly. ‘I’m watched. This baby is very important to my husband.’ Her eyes flicked to the door and she smiled. ‘But I’m more than rich enough to satisfy my fancy. And I fancy getting you some clothes that don’t look quite so, mmm, manly.’ She had my doublet in her hands, having picked it off the back of the chair. It was almost unrecognizable to me, it was so clean and well-repaired by the servants of the chateau, but she looked at it as if it was covered in bugs.

  ‘Did you . . . make it yourself?’ she asked wickedly.

  In those days, a doublet was a small garment. Not the sleeved cote of today, but a sleeveless vest, usually two layers of linen (hence ‘doublet’ or doubled linen) whose sole purpose was to hold up the hose – hose were separate then. Par dieu! Messieurs may remember how we dressed when I was young. At any rate, the hose were pointed, tied with laces to the doublet, which was worn over the shirt and under the cote, or jupon. While I owned a couple of nice cotes and gowns, they were in my baggage. I wore armour, all day, every day, and I didn’t need to wear a gown with it. In winter, sometimes one put a gown over the armour.

  Ah! While we’re on the details of costume, I’ll add that sometimes I wore a quilted jupon over my doublet to protect my skin from my mail. That was a truly horrible garment. It smelled so bad that it attracted dogs. I saw that it was gone. Horrible as it was, it fit me and my mismatched harness perfectly.

  And as a final note, the doublet took especial stress as it also served to hold up my leg armour – don’t imagine nice white armour, but leather and splint contraptions with plate knees that weighed too much and tore the fibre of my doublet from the constant stress.

  Why have I shared all this?

  At that moment, I hadn’t owned clean, dry, fashionable clothes in years. Or rather, I owned them; I just never wore them. I was dirty and my seams split all the time, and when I slept with a woman, I usually begged her to work on my clothes while she stayed with me. My shirts were all sewn by whores and camp-followers.

  So when Emile asked me if I made it myself, I probably flushed.

  ‘Allow me to dress you,’ Emile said gently. ‘You saved my life.’

  ‘Your husband . . .’ I said quietly.

  ‘You saved my husband’s life, very publicly. The Dauphine approves of you. The nasty rumour, which, I confess, I believe was spread by my husband, has died away. Pregnancy has given me,’ – she smiled, and the fire in her eyes would have burned a monk – ‘power. ‘Let me do this.’

  ‘As a service for an old friend?’ I asked. She wore his colours: she was his woman now. So spoke the angry boy we all have in our hearts.

  She opened my small window – really, little more than an arrow slit. The air of spring wafted in. I could smell . . . growth. I must have inhaled a great gout of air, because Emile laughed.

  ‘I will give my thanks to God that you are on the road to recovery,’ she said. ‘Du Guesclin despaired of you in your fever. You know I came then?’ she asked, somewhat hesitantly.

  ‘No,’ I said. The angry boy was silent.

  ‘Boucicault doesn’t approve of me,’ she said. ‘He never has,’ she added. ‘Prig. Prude. Sanctimonious hypocrite.’

  I must have looked surprised.

  She looked away. ‘I wasn’t . . . a virgin when I was wed, somewhat hastily, to my husband. If I’d been a servant girl, I’d have been turned out of doors.’

  I laughed lightly. In London, among merchants and artificers, this sort of occurrence was so commonplace that I’m not sure I can remember a girl who was wed without a bulge under her gown.

  Emile choked, ‘I thought of killing myself,’ as if that was a matter-of-fact statement, a commonplace.

  ‘It is not so great a sin,’ I said. Odd to take the husband’s side. ‘It is really of no moment if your husband-to-be is a trifle ardent in paying his attentions—’

  She looked at me, and I wasn’t sure what her face was saying – anger? Indifference? Daring my comment? ‘Not my husband, dear.’ She turned and looked out the window. ‘I was not a good girl.’

  Why on earth do people tell each other these things?

  She was trying to hurt herself. Not me.

  It sat there, between us.

  Perhaps to a real nobleman, this would have been crushing, a proof that she was a soiled flower, a worthless, honourless trull. There was something in her voice that told me she was, in fact, daring me to be appalled.

  But I was a child of London and war, and all my other women were real whores. To me, she was the essence of – perhaps not modesty, but womanly dignity. Pregnancy sat lightly on her, and added . . . maturity, perhaps, without detracting from allure. Oh, no. The allure was shouting at me, despite her folded hands and the anger on her face.

  Perhaps it takes a many-times betrayed man of war to recognize a woman who has come a hard road, and is looking—

  I shrugged. ‘So?’ I said. ‘I’m sorry, Emile, are you trying to tell me you are of no worth? Because I know your worth. I care nothing for your other lovers.’

  She turned her head. Her face was in shadow, backlit by the spring sun. ‘How many do you think I had?’ she asked.

  There’s a moment in a certain kind of fight where you think you are winning, and then, without warning, you lose control of something – perhaps your opponent’s left hand – and there is a particular feeling as you realize you have lost it, and you know the blow is coming. And there’s nothing you can do to stop the blow.

  I cared nothing for how many lovers she’d had as a young girl – Holy Virgin, no one counted my score – but her face and her posture said that this was . . . vital. Essential. And I had lost control of the trend of the conversation.

  Except she wasn’t trying to hurt me. She was trying to hurt herself, of course.

  ‘You had enough lovers to tarnish your reputation and harm your opinion of yourself,’ I said. ‘But not enough to affect my opinion of you.’ I leaned forward, regardless of the pain. ‘I know who you really are. I know who you were in the siege. That is all there is, to me.’

  Her eyes widened. Leaping from the chair she sat in, Emile leaned over my bed and kissed me. ‘You are a true knight,’ she breathed. ‘I will treasure that.’ But she was gone before my left arm could pin her. ‘The tailor is a present from me. If you love me, don’t spurn him.’ She pulled a ring off her finger. ‘The Dauphine gave you a ring. Where did it go?’

  I sighed. ‘I pawned it,’ I admitted.

  ‘Holy Mary mother of God, you had a love token from the Dauphine and you pawned it?’ She shook her head.

  I shrugged. ‘Horses eat a lot,’ I said.

  ‘Will you promise not to pawn this one?’ she asked. ‘On your word as a knight?’

  ‘Does it come with a kiss?’ I asked. I shrugged. ‘I am scarcely a knight.’

  She waved a hand in dismissal, as if my hopes and fears on that subject were of no consequence.

  ‘Emile, you see me a captive, taken in arms by a good knight. You knew me in the siege as a rescuer, a man from a grail romance.’ Was I spurred by her recital of her past lovers? I’d never said this much to Richard. ‘I’m no knight. I ride with routiers and collect patis from peasants and sometimes I rob the church.’

  She set her jaw. ‘That is not who you really are,’ she said. Her eyes locked with mine, and they were as hard as diamonds. ‘We do what we must, eh, monsieur? But tha
t need not be the sum of who we are.’ She pulled the ring from her finger and reached it out.

  I tried to snatch her hand. She pulled it away.

  ‘If you aren’t faster than that, you’ll never beat Jehan le Maingre for me.’ She had avoided another attempt by my left arm to pin her to the bed. ‘I will visit again. Don’t get well too soon.’ She smiled and extended the ring again.

  I held out my hand, and she placed it gently on my finger. ‘Be my knight,’ she said.

  It is uncomfortable when you meet another person’s eyes for too long. It is as if you have no secrets left.

  I cannot say how long we were like that.

  It was long.

  Like a fool, I broke it. ‘You are beautiful,’ I said. ‘Pregnancy makes you . . .’ I tried to find a word for her.

  ‘Fat,’ she said. ‘A demain, m’amour.’

  My ransom didn’t appear from the Captal. The tailor came every day for three days, measuring, cutting and showing me fabrics at my bedside. The truth is that I agreed to everything he suggested. If I had any taste of my own, it was mostly direct emulation of older men I had admired: Sir John Cheverston, Sir John Chandos, Jean de Grailly and, most especially, my sometime mentor and nemesis, Jehan le Maingre, whose slim good looks seemed to mock my large build and bright-red hair. I told the tailor, in some detail, what I liked on each of these men.

  He was a patient man. He heard me out and asked some questions about styles. After two days, he pursed his lips and said, ‘Scarlet and black.’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘Those will be your colours. Your, mmm, patroness has suggested that I design arms for you, as well. Gules and sable.’ He fingered his beard. ‘I have a little scarlet broadcloth – a very little, dyed before the war. Black is expensive, but everyone wears it. Your hair, coming out of a sable cap, will be . . .’ he smiled. ‘You will be wanting a new arming coat,’ he said.

  I agreed.

  He nodded. ‘Two cotes, two doublets, two gowns, one with fur, six shirts, six braes, six black hose and six red hose. A hood hat. The short gown, trimmed in sable, and a second gown plain. Two pairs of shoes and a pair of boots.’ He smiled. ‘A pair of wicker panniers and a leather male, or trunk. A full cloak and a half cloak. Six linen caps.’ He looked up from his wax tablet. ‘Anything else?’