The Ill-Made Knight

by Christian Cameron

I said, ‘I forgive you, Monsieur le Maingre.’ I nodded and drew myself erect.

  Listen, you wretches. I’m very proud of this part.

  I said, ‘I’m going to pray a paternoster. When I’m done – maybe even a word or two before . . .’ I shrugged.

  He bowed. ‘You should have been a knight,’ he said.

  I started my prayer.

  ‘Paternoster, que est in caelus . . .’

  It is remarkable how we can think about many things at once.

  The prayer was genuine. I had led a worthless life, and my soul was condemned to hell, but I truly repented, and my understanding was that my repentance was good for something. Even from a worthless murderer like me.

  But at the same time, it was curious how long I’d taken to say the first line – it was as if time slowed. I had time to think about several things, about the taste of Emile’s skin in my mouth . . .

  Santificeteur nomen tuum . . .

  About the feeling of the charge of 2,000 lances . . .

  Adveniat regnum tuum . . .

  About the moment when the gates closed on the Bridge of Meaux and I had saved Jacques de Bourbon . . .

  About serving the Prince at table . . .

  Fiat voluntas tua . . .

  About meeting de Charny in the shop . . .

  Sicut in cael, et in terra . . .

  About putting my dagger in him at Poitiers . . .

  About my sister, and my uncle . . .

  Panem nostrum cotiadianum da nobis hodie . . .

  About Nan, my first woman . . .

  Et dimitte nobis debita nostra . . .

  Meeting Richard; the Inn of the Three Foxes . . .

  Sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris . . .

  The Abbott, my sister, Emile, Richard, Sir John, de Charny, Sir John Chandos . . .

  Et ne nos inducas in tentationem . . .

  Almost at the end.

  The convoy of churchmen had arrived. I could hear them – the creaking of the carts, the hooves.

  ‘Stop!’ said a loud, harsh voice.

  I opened my eyes, Hoping against hope. Why not?

  I saw the Franciscan whose horse I was riding.

  His heavy blue eyes met mine. ‘That is my horse,’ he said.

  Camus laughed. ‘When he’s dead, you can have it back.’

  The Franciscan looked at Camus, and I swear the servant of Satan flinched. ‘It is my horse, and I will talk to this man,’ he said, riding up to me.

  He was a poor rider. You could see that.

  In a moment of about-to-die insight, I guessed my wonderful horse had been given to him by a rich patron, precisely because he rode so badly.

  His eyes weren’t mad, but they had something of the same quality as Camus’. This was not a man who saw things in shades of gray. ‘Have you confessed?’ he asked me.

  I shook my head. ‘Nay, father, I’m excommunicate,’ I said.

  He smiled and his face lit. ‘It happens,’ he said, ‘that I have a special power conferred by the Holy Father to shrive such as you,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry I stole your horse,’ I admitted.

  ‘Is that the sum of your confession?’ he said with a surprisingly gentle smile. ‘Perhaps your good cloak was a fair exchange. I never needed a war horse.’

  ‘Father, I’ve led a hard life, and my sins are about as black as they can be.’ I didn’t shrug. It was for everything – me, this priest and my soul.

  ‘Are you in a hurry to die, then?’ he asked.

  Can you imagine a man who makes you smile when you have a halter around your neck?

  I bowed my head. ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned grievously, and I can’t even remember when I last made a full confession.’

  ‘Better,’ he said.

  I heard hoofs – clip clop. A damn big horse.

  But I kept my eyes down. I began my confession. I won’t bore you with it, messieurs. You’ve heard the meat of it, anyway.

  The Bourc Camus shouted, ‘Hang him – push the priest off. By Satan! Must I wait all day?’

  ‘Silence,’ ordered Boucicault.

  ‘Fuck you,’ said Camus. ‘I knew I should have put the sword to him when I had the chance. I will not be gainsayed.’

  ‘I don’t believe you were done confessing,’ said the priest.

  But I had to look.

  Camus drew his sword.

  Boucicault drew his sword.

  The black and white men-at-arms outnumbered the French at this point, but I don’t think Camus could have taken Boucicault.

  It didn’t matter, because one of the men-at-arms from the religious column, dressed in the long black riding cloak of the Hospitallers, trotted up the road. He didn’t even have a sword in his hand. He reined in between the French and Camus.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he said firmly, as if they were his children.

  Boucicault breathed deeply. ‘Sir Knight,’ he said and sheathed his sword.

  Camus laughed. ‘Out of my way,’ he said, and he slammed his blade two-handed at the black-cloaked knight.

  It wasn’t magic. I saw what he did. When you are on the edge of death, you see things.

  His right hand collected the cloak and intercepted the blow. It must have hurt, but he showed no sign, and his right hand ran up the blade and seized it near the point, while his left hand, travelling with the speed of a thought, seized the hilt. He leaned forward and his horse lunged powerfully – it must have been trained to do just that – and he used Camus’ sword against him like a staff, getting the point right under his chin.

  Using the Gascon’s own sword as a lever, he threw him from the saddle. Camus hit the ground and didn’t move.

  The Hospitaller nodded to Boucicault. ‘My lord is taking this man’s confession,’ he said. For the first time, I think, he actually looked at me.

  It was, of course, my acquaintance. How many Hospitallers did I know? How many were riding the roads of France that spring?

  Two black and whites came and took their master.

  Boucicault bowed. ‘May I leave this in the hands of the church?’ he asked. ‘I mislike the murder of this man, even given the life he’s led.’

  The priest nodded. He had the accent of a Provençal – of a peasant, in fact. He nodded. ‘I take responsibility,’ he said. ‘Body and soul.’

  Boucicault nodded at me. I swear he might have winked.

  Had he kept us waiting there all that time, waiting for the priest? I won’t ever know.

  But I think he did.

  The Hospitaller walked his horse to me.

  I swear, all he did was look into my eyes. ‘Pierre?’ he asked the priest.

  ‘I am only a few months into this young man’s life,’ he said. ‘I would despair, except that he is but the product of Satan’s will in our time.’

  The Hospitaller tugged at his beard. His eyes never left mine. ‘Look at his cap,’ he said.

  By happenstance – in an attempt to dress myself better, I suppose – I was wearing my best arming cap. The one my sister had made, with the cross of the Order of St John on the crown.

  ‘Tell me what you want more than anything,’ he said suddenly.

  There are times when, despite inclination, all we can do is tell the truth.

  ‘I want to be a great knight,’ I said.

  ‘More than you want to live?’ he asked. ‘More than you want to save your soul?’ he asked.

  Now that I had said it, I wondered at myself.

  I burst into tears and said, ‘Yes.’

  There I sat, a halter around my neck, on a stolen horse in rusted armour, weeping my fool heart out.

  For me, that’s the end of Brignais.

  Italy 1362–1364

  It is our custom to rob, sack and pillage whoever resists. Our income is derived from the funds of the provinces we invade; he who values his life pays for peace and quiet from us at a steep price.

  Konrad von Landau, German Mercenary Captain

  We’re almost the
re, messieurs.

  Italy.

  I didn’t get there by any direct road.

  Before they took the halter from around my neck, Sir Thomas – the Hospitaller – made me swear.

  He made me swear to obey the law of arms. And to obey him.

  And Father Pierre Thomas made me swear to go on crusade, when and where he commanded me.

  Of course I agreed. I was about to die. It is something, when they offer you everything you want, and the punishment is the reward. And then . . .

  And then Father Pierre Thomas took the halter from around my neck. ‘Be reborn into the life of Christ,’ he said. His gentle smile was there, as if he saw humour in his own comment.

  Sir Peter – fra Peter, as I was to find was proper – shook his head about my armour. He cut it away from me. He didn’t even unbuckle the straps; he cut them.

  One piece at a time fell off me to lie under the tree. A pair of mis-matched splint greaves; a right cuisse in faded blue and copper, and a vibrant crimson cuisse in leather, studded with iron and brass in alternating rows of rivet heads. I fancied that cuisse, and it fit well. He cut the straps.

  A heavy coat of plates – sixty or seventy in all, raw from the hammer and covered in leather on both sides, well-riveted in brass a long time ago, with a dozen tears, rents and weapon-wounds, some lovingly closed with expert stitches; some barely holding with old thongs or badly placed threads, or bound in wire. I would guess five or six men had worn that armour. It wept rust.

  It made a noise as it fell to earth – an almost-human protest.

  Arm harnesses – matched, but very poor. Badly made, garish, ill-fitting.

  And my poor helmet. It was the last thing I had left of a finer harness – covered in dents, but lovingly maintained by my squire. The chain aventail shone and rippled, and the turban I’d wound around it to hide the worst damage . . .

  Clank.

  I had a chainmail haubergeon. I’d had it since Poitiers. Perkin had kept it clean and it was a uniform, well-oiled brown. Fra Peter examined it.

  ‘It’s one thing to symbolize rebirth,’ he said. ‘And another to be a damn fool. Get the mail off and we’ll oil it for you.’

  His squire came forward. He was not English but Spanish, Juan di Ceval. I had never met a Spaniard – even in the odd glow of ‘not-death’, I was curious to meet him. He came and collected my mail. He also unlaced my aventail from my old basinet. He took them both and rolled them in hides that were themselves so oily they shone in the sun.

  Sir Thomas looked me over. ‘You stink,’ he said. ‘It’s not just sin. Do you really live this way?’

  I was not in the mood to make excuses, but this stung. ‘I’m a soldier,’ I said.

  Sir Thomas raised an eyebrow. ‘Young man, I have fought in the East for fifteen years. I wore my armour for three weeks at a stretch, during the siege of Smyrna. I am used to living in the open and fighting in all weathers. You are dirty because you choose not to practice the discipline that would allow you to be clean.’

  I said nothing, which indicates, I think, that I was not an utter fool.

  They stripped me to my skin. Father Pierre Thomas walked me to the stream beyond the crossroads and watched while I bathed with Fra Peter’s soap. Fra Peter brought me his razor. I had never owned a razor as fine as his – he even had a small bronze mirror in an ivory case.

  He smiled, as if reading my thoughts. ‘I have a weakness for nice things,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘I am a man, not a saint.’

  I sat naked on a saddle, and he and his squire shaved my beard. It was odd, as if time was suspended. No other traffic came down the road. Birds sang. The sun came out for the first time in days. I shivered, warmed and shivered again.

  Father Pierre Thomas opened his panniers and produced a pair of braes and a shirt. They were very fine, the cuffs lovingly worked.

  He blushed. ‘People . . . give me things.’ He shook his head in wonderment.

  Sir Thomas nodded. ‘Because you are a living saint.’

  Pierre glared at him. ‘Please stop saying that,’ he asked politely. ‘I am a sinful mortal like everyone else.’

  Sir Thomas nodded, his head tilted to one side like a puppy’s. ‘Like everyone else, except that you cure the sick and bring happiness wherever you go.’

  Father Pierre Thomas shrugged his shoulders. ‘I do not mean to show impatience,’ he said, ‘but while the saving of this young man’s immortal soul is worthy, we are due in Avignon.’

  Sir Thomas nodded. I put the clean shirt and braes over my clean skin. Fra Peter handed me a pair of brown hose, my own boots and a long brown robe.

  The brown robe had the eight pointed cross on the right breast.

  ‘I’m not worthy to wear this,’ I said.

  ‘None of us is,’ Fra Peter said.

  Juan picked my spurs up from the road. He and Fra Peter re-strapped them in two minutes, from leather they had in a basket on a donkey. I was surprised.

  I walked the stolen horse over to Father Pierre Thomas, now fully dressed. ‘Father?’ I asked quietly as he was looking out over the valley.

  There was a great deal to see in that valley, if you were newly reborn. The sun shone on fifty fields choked with weeds; at the southern edge stood a stone keep, fire-blackened, the near wall cracked; closer to hand, a small ring of village huts had been burned, and their thatched roofs had fallen in, so that they appeared as black cups on the green board of the earth. And just off the road, where Father Pierre Thomas’s eyes went, was a church. Its destruction was too new to warrant the name ‘ruined’. It had been burned. A human skull lay on the lintel.

  He sighed. ‘Yes, my son?’

  ‘Your horse,’ I said, holding out the reins.

  He smiled. ‘A beautiful horse,’ he said. ‘Do you know that I am the papal legate for the east?’

  I had no idea. I thought he was a village curate.

  He laughed. ‘I am the least warlike of men, nor do I think that fire and sword are the weapons to convert Islam. Look what they do here.’ He shrugged. ‘But the Count of Toulouse, my father’s lord,’ he smiled again, ‘gave me this war horse. Because in his notion of the world, I would need such a beast to fight the infidel.’ He patted the horse’s nose, which, to be honest, I would have hesitated to do.

  He looked at the horse. And at me. ‘Men like Fra Peter reassure me that not all violence is towards destruction. That some men must fight to cauterize the wounds that Satan makes on the earth.’ He shrugged. ‘I do not need a war horse. But you will.’

  He leaned forward and breathed into my horse’s nostrils. ‘I was born a serf. My father is still a serf,’ he said. ‘We helped raise this horse. I know the dam and the sire. As there are horses, raised by hand with love for man’s purpose to fight well, so may there be men, trained with love, to fight well for God’s purpose.’

  I asked no questions. It really was as if I’d died. I simply rode away with them and headed south. We rode through the ruptured landscape, and I was forced, through eyes just opened, to see what the last six years of war had done to the richest province in France.

  Ah! You don’t want to hear about it? Eh?

  War destroys, my friends. Sometimes, the builder must knock down the old foundations to build anew, but otherwise, we call a man who knocks down a house an arsonist, or worse. Eh?

  We’d raped France a hundred times by then. We rode along roads choked with fallen branches and weeds. We rode through villages without a single roof, and we passed fifty churches whose stones were cracked and burned, like the teeth of a charred corpse. We saw vacant-eyed people on the roads. Some wore ragged finery. Had they been gentry, brigands or peasants?

  You couldn’t tell. They all had the same empty eyes.

  Once we were into Provence, the roads improved, and so did the scenery. The towns were walled, and most of them had destroyed their suburbs and walled up all their gates but one, which made entering and exiting a laborious process.

  One of t
he curious aspects of donning a Hospitaller robe is that suddenly I was admitted to these towns without further question. I was served cheerfully at tables by young men and women who would have cringed to see me, or fled at the rumour of my approach.

  Some days passed in a haze. It was, truly, as if I had been reborn. I’ll pass over that now.

  We were south of Pont-Saint-Esprit, in country I’d never seen. I think it must have been our last night before Avignon. Fra Peter, Juan and I were to sleep on the floor of the common room of an auberge just inside the gate of the town – a small place, really just a house, recently converted to an inn by a young man and his wife, eager to benefit from the increase in trade from pilgrims travelling south. We had a leek soup that was delicious, and then Fra Peter sat back, unbuckled his sword and leaned it against the wall. He waved to the good wife, who appeared delighted to serve us.

  ‘My lord?’ she asked.

  Fra Peter nodded. ‘How’s the wine hereabouts?’ he asked.

  She nodded, eyes wide and serious. ‘My father has his own vines,’ she said. ‘Our wine is very good. A cardinal told me so.’

  ‘Well,’ Fra Peter said. He barked his odd laugh. ‘He’d know. Pour us a pitcher and bring us some cups.’

  She curtsied and reappeared with wine.

  I hadn’t had wine since I was hanged. I drank off my first cup rather quickly, and I looked up to find the squire and the knight watching me. Fra Peter was smiling.

  ‘Our Lord loved good wine, too,’ he said. ‘Never forget the Feast of Canaan.’

  Juan drank his with relish. The pitcher was vast and deep, good red clay and nicely glazed. We poured our second cups.

  ‘You can’t wear my habit in Avignon,’ Fra Peter said. ‘Nor is it my intent to make you a brother knight. I can’t see it.’ He smiled down into his cup. ‘But that may just be my own arrogance.’

  I said nothing. I confess I felt some disappointment. Odd, as vows of chastity and poverty would not have suited me at any time.

  ‘But you have sworn to accompany Father Pierre Thomas on crusade.’ He looked at me. ‘I wonder if you would wear the red habit.’

  Juan smiled. ‘As I do,’ he said.

  I had never seen Juan wear any habit at all. I said as much, and they both laughed.