The Ill-Made Knight

by Christian Cameron

  I was mostly right, and the staff of the axe slammed into my shoulder plates as my blow deceived Rudolph and hit his arm just below his shoulder armour – it landed on mail, but it broke the arm. Heinrich’s hit on my shoulder landed on my pauldrons. That hurt, but pain was just pain.

  I thrust for Rudolph’s face – my best blow. Halfway to the target, I dropped my point the width of his sword and changed the direction subtly, so his parry moved nothing but the wind. My point missed his face but got into the chain aventail at his neck, bit deep, through chain and padding, and came away red.

  I caught that at the edge of my vision, because I was already turning to parry the axe. The giant cut, and I counter-cut at his hands. I hit first. I hit his hands so hard he voided his blow.

  Kenneth MacDonald got to his feet. He, too, had an axe, and he raised it.

  Heinrich rotated fully to face me. I’d cut away a finger and he bellowed like a bull, while MacDonald’s axe slammed into his chest. It didn’t cut through the heavy iron plates of his coat, but it must have broken ribs, and he sat down, falling back across his Prince.

  A trumpet was sounding the recall.

  I was breathing so hard I could hardly keep my point in line.

  Heinrich bounced to his feet again, blood pouring from his left gauntlet.

  I cut up from the boar’s tooth again, and took off the giant’s thumb. MacDonald passed behind me and cut at yet another man, probably saving my life, but that’s a mêlée. I was utterly focused on my giant.

  He had killed Perkin.

  He leaped forward off Rudolph von Hapsburg and I cut down, into his exposed thigh. He pushed through it and kept his feet a heartbeat, but the leg wouldn’t hold him, and I was reversing my sword, holding it with one hand on the hilt and the other at the point, as if it was a very short spear, or a shovel for digging.

  As he tried to get his balance, I slammed it into his faceplate. The visor held.

  The man fell back.

  The Germans were retreating, but they were also just realizing that their lord was lying on the ground at my feet. Heinrich had fallen across him as he tried to rise, crushing him to the ground. He fell with his arms spread – he’d lost fingers on both hands, and there was blood coming from under his helmet.

  I stepped on his right hand, pinning the axe hand to the ground. I could see his eyes. Not mad, or filled with hate.

  Just blue.

  I put the tip of my war sword against his throat, where the skin showed. He’d fallen with his head back, so his aventail didn’t quite cover his chin.

  I won’t say the battle stopped, just that I could hear men screaming in Italian and German, but very few men moving and everyone watching me.

  I put the slightest pressure on the pommel of my sword.

  So he’d know that I was the better man.

  ‘Yield!’ I said. Like a knight.

  ‘Ja!’ he said.

  They let us go from the barriers. For one terrifying moment, they thought I was going to kill their Prince, and when I accepted Heinrich’s surrender, Rudolph ‘graciously’ allowed us to retire.

  That’s what knights do.

  When they’re badly beaten.

  I had to have help to get over the barricades. With 15,000 people watching me from the walls and from our lines, I could barely walk without limping, because my left leg-harness had slipped a fraction and every step hurt.

  I forced myself to walk like a gentleman, with all the time in the world. I had to get my visor up to spit blood – my mouth was full of it and my white coat was covered.

  Baumgarten’s knights were cheering like heroes. They’d covered the barricade behind us, and many of them had fought, so no discredit to them. They walked back with us, slapping us on our backplates and calling things, which Fiore, who was all but glowing, refused to translate.

  ‘That was . . .’ he said. He said it twice.

  Baumgarten himself came forward, which seemed odd, since we were retreating. We’d made our point. In fact, we’d scared the piss out of Florence. Juan, Milady and Grice were apparently able to touch the gate before we retired.

  The archers were yelling, ‘George and England.’

  Baumgarten headed straight for me. His armour sparkled, and he wore the gold belt of a Knight of the Empire. He looked like a king.

  He opened his visor.

  A few paces from me, he stopped and handed his squire the baton he carried.

  ‘William Gold!’ he roared, so that they could hear him in the squares of Florence.

  I stopped in front of him, so utterly exhausted that I had lost the power of speech.

  Sir John came up – he was all but running – and men-at-arms crowded in.

  ‘William Gold,’ Buamgarten said again. ‘Kneel!’

  Kneel?

  Sweet saviour of man, I might never get up.

  But I knelt.

  Edward appeared from the crowd and began to fumble with my aventail. ‘Oh my God!’ he said. ‘My God, sir!’

  He got it over my head. There was a lot of blood in it from my mouth wound.

  Baumgarten turned to Sir John. ‘Do you wish to do this?’ he said.

  Sir John shook his head. ‘If you do it here, in bowshot of the walls, no one will ever be able to question the making.’

  Sir Hannekin Baumgarten drew his sword. ‘William Gold – birth enobles, but nothing enobles like a life of arms. A deed such as I just witnessed—’

  ‘Guildsmen coming. Winding their crossbows,’ muttered a squire.

  Sam Bibbo, I’m told, loosed a shaft then and there. I didn’t see it, but men who did say it flew 300 paces and frightened the wits out of a trio of Florentine guildsmen. Or killed all three, if you believe some.

  The sword smacked down on my right shoulder, a little too damned hard. ‘I dub thee knight,’ Baumgarten said.

  ‘By St Nicholas! What was it all for?’ cursed my lady Janet as we rode south.

  The days after my knighting were not pleasant. I had a fever from my mouth wound, and it wouldn’t heal. I got it stitched twice.

  If I were telling you a set of stories, monsieur, I’d tell you some pleasant fiction: that Florence sent out emissaries to Sir John, and he drove a hard bargain and settled an honourable peace.

  That sounds well, does it not?

  But what Florence actually did while I lay in my tent and moaned, was to pay a number of men, including the Imperial Knight who’s buffet had just enobled me in front of 20,000 onlookers. Florence paid them enormous bribes, and our army, victorious in the field, vanished like alpine mist under a Tuscan sun. The Germans left first, but the money went far – even into the White Company.

  In a week, those of us who didn’t sell out were retreating across the Florentine contada. Hawkwood was sanguine. I still don’t know if he received money, or not. You must know he has a sovereign price – a fine reputation – but he loved money.

  Any road, we retreated on Pisa. And Pisa, who had nearly bankrupted themselves to buy us, was none too happy. Neither were we happy. The men who’d been bought had ridden south – Andrew Belmont, who was angry over my elevation; Sterz himself, probably smarting that Pisa had chosen Hawkwood instead of him, and a dozen other officers. Belmont’s little company actually changed sides to serve Florence.

  Just north of Pisa, we made a camp – a walled camp covered by the Arno River. Hawkwood stayed in command, and began to buy a new army.

  Across the river, Florentine agents competed with ours to buy every available lance. And Sir Walter Leslie, from France, no less, arrived to compete as well. He was bidding for the pope, or so I understood. For a crusade.

  On our second night in the new camp, we threw a party. We had horse races and a military dance – a hundred of us danced in armour, in full sight of our adversaries. To show we were still the White Company. To thumb our noses at the men who had taken money to change sides.

  I came back from the dancing tired, but feeling better than I had in a week, to find
Fra Peter was having a cup of wine with my lady. She smiled at me – truly smiled. She was alight with happiness.

  Fra Peter was wearing his scarlet surcoat, the uniform of his order. He stood up as I approached.

  ‘William?’ he said.

  I grinned. ‘Sir William, to you,’ I said.

  He threw his arms around me and crushed me. I thought he might collapse my breastplate. Then he held me at arms length. ‘Well done,’ he said. ‘It sounds like a marvellous feat of arms.’ He looked at me. ‘You don’t seem surprised to see me.’

  I shrugged and grinned like a fool. Praise from Fra Peter was praise indeed. ‘Leslie’s recruiting for a crusade,’ I said. ‘Or so I hear. So I expected you.’

  Fra Peter nodded. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘Come and walk with me.’

  ‘Are we going to pray?’ I asked. I meant it as a jest.

  ‘We might, at that,’ he allowed. We walked a ways, stepping carefully over tent ropes and horse dung. I was still in armour and I had that bone-wrenching fatigue you can only experience from wearing iron on your body.

  ‘That was . . . a woman. In arming clothes, at your fire,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed, instantly on my guard. ‘She’s a fine lance. She’s won her place here.’

  Fra Peter nodded again. ‘Women can be trouble in war,’ he said. ‘But that’s Sir John Hawkwood’s business and none of mine.’ We’d come a long way, by then, right to the bank of the river. It was a soft summer night in Tuscany, and we sat under a chestnut tree as doves cried their haunting cries.

  ‘She is not my lover,’ I said, with all the righteousness a young man can project.

  There were campfires across the river – so close, in fact, that the conversations of the men at those fires carried. A loud voice proclaimed that someone was a ‘fucking sodomite’ and a ‘son of a whore’ in Thames-side English.

  Fra Peter’s craggy face – he had a big nose – was outlined against the firelight of the enemy camp, and he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking across the river.

  Finally, he spoke. ‘Will you come on crusade?’ he asked. ‘The King of France has taken the cross. Father Thomas has even convinced the Green Count to take the cross.’

  I thought that through. ‘Because the pope got John Hawkwood to leave his lands?’

  Fra Peter’s head made an odd motion. ‘Perhaps. I prefer to think that it was Pierre Thomas and his preaching.’ He shrugged. ‘You served with Hawkwood. What do you think of war in Italy?’

  ‘I think it is much like being a routier. Except we behave a little better and we are paid a great deal more.’ It was my turn to shrug.

  ‘You are a corporal now. You have rank – men follow you.’ Fra Peter turned, and his eyes were dark. ‘Aye, tis possible that you have all you want here.’ He continued to look at me, then he looked away. ‘I am wasting time, I think. I want you to come with me on crusade, but before I ask you, I have to give you something. This thing . . .’ His dark eyes were on mine like the heavy blade of an adversary. ‘This thing came into my hands without my seeking it. I think it may be wrong for me to give it to you. Father Thomas says no. He says that you must have your free will.’

  He reached into the breast of his red coat with the white cross and handed me a small envelope. It was of coarse brown cloth, covered in oil, and inside was another envelope of heavy parchment.

  I took an eating knife from my purse. ‘Is it . . .’ I think my voice was full of hope. ‘Is it from Richard?’ I asked. ‘Richard Musard?’

  Fra Peter blinked. ‘No, lad. Hah!’ His laugh sounded grim. ‘I’ll have to call you Sir William soon. No, but it is from Turin. When I took Father Thomas back to Turin, I was at the Green Count’s court for some days.’

  I got my eating knife and carefully slit the old cloth to get at the parchment. There was a small seal.

  Even in the dark, as soon as my thumb touched the seal, I suspected.

  My heart beat as fast as it would have in combat. ‘She sent me a letter before she died!’ I said.

  And Fra Peter shook his head. ‘No, William. She is still alive.’ He paused. ‘I have seen her – and spoken to her.’

  I ran. Wearing my armour, I ran to the nearest campfire, leaving the older man sitting with his back to a chestnut tree. I came up to a fire where a dozen servants sat – not men I knew. They scattered in real fear – fear of an armed man running at them for the darkness.

  I knelt by the light of their fire and used my eating knife to break her seal. The parchment unfolded, slim and short, and there was a tiny enclosure, shaped like a sacred heart.

  Dear William.

  I have learned that you think I am dead. I am not. I have so much to tell you.

  My husband, it would appear, used this story of my death to hurt you. I had a long recovery from my second child – I might have died – but – I smile to write this – I did not. In the last few days, at the court of the Green Count, I have learned many things, about you and about the Count d’Herblay and the part he has played. I have had opportunity to talk with Sir Richard Mussard.

  Monsieur, my husband has done all in his power to destroy you. I think it is worth adding that short of physical violence he dares do nothing to me, as I am not only the mother of his children, but the holder of his purse strings. I have my own retainers, indeed, now I have my own household. And so it shall remain, this I promise you.

  I send you this letter by means of the very good knight Fra Peter of London, in hopes that he will find you in good health – the way I imagine you every day – a true knight. Be all a knight should be, and if God so wills it, perhaps we will yet see a day.

  But I will commit no more to this parchment. Nor will I say adieu. Only, let your deeds so shine before men that I will hear of them, and clap my hands together.

  Emile d’Herblay

  I read the letter five or six times. I remember trying to decide . . . anything. It all went around like a meaningless whirl of words. She was alive.

  Alive.

  Apparently, I cared very much. I remember that letter the way I remember wounds I have taken – the shock of the pain, the shock of the blood.

  I actually fell over. I was kneeling by the fire and I lost my balance and fell. I lay there as if I had taken a blow, and then, as I got to my feet, the heart-shaped scrap of parchment came out of the envelope and fluttered to the ground like a moth.

  It was very small. On it, a fine hand had written, ‘Perhaps I will go on a pilgrimage.’ There was no signature.

  Pilgrims, like crusades, went to the Holy Land by way of Venice. And Rhodes.

  Fra Peter was standing a distance away.

  I pushed the letter and the heart into my purse and went to him.

  ‘I will go on crusade,’ I said.

  Fra Peter’s eyes twinkled in the firelight. ‘God works in mysterious ways,’ he said.

  Epilogue

  Sir William smiled his half-smile at Master Chaucer, who was leaning his elbows on the table. Froissart was awake – wide-eyed, scribbling notes on a wax tablet. John de Blake couldn’t take his eyes off his master. Aemilie had, at some point, acquired a stool and was asleep with her head against the wall.

  ‘You came back, I see,’ the knight said.

  Chaucer grunted. ‘What choice did I have, with your archers raising the roof?’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Worse than satyrs, and louder.’

  ‘Such a story!’ Froissart said.

  Chaucer’s eyes met Gold’s across the table. ‘Some of it’s even true,’ he said. He said it with venom, but Gold threw back his head and laughed. He roared.

  And Chaucer couldn’t help it. He laughed, too.

  Historical Note

  I am not a professional historian. I’m a novelist. That caveat aside, I care deeply for authenticity. I’m a reenactor and a collector, a patron of craftsmanship, and an amateur martial artist. I ride horses, I shoot bows, I cook at campfires, and I listen to music and read the languages and even fish with the
period fishing tackle.

  That doesn’t mean I get all of these things correct. But, since many of you will know me as a historical novelist who specializes in the Classical world, I feel I should state my credentials. I have a degree in Medieval History and I studied the fourteenth century and most especially the campaign of Poitiers before writing my honor’s dissertation on retinue service in the Hundred Years War. I may have some terms wrong, and my theories of warfare are open to argument, but in many ways, this is a subject that I know better than Classical History. The mid- to late-fourteenth century was, if you like, my first love, and it has been a joy to return to the world of chivalry – good and bad.

  It is essential to understand, when examining this world of stark contrasts and incredible passions, that people believed very strongly in ideas – like Islam, like Christianity, like chivalry. Piety – the devotional practice of Christianity – was such an essential part of life that even most ‘atheists’ practised all the forms of Christianity. Yet there were many flavours of belief. Theology had just passed one of its most important milestones with the works of Thomas Aquinas, but Roman Christianity had so many varieties of practice that it would require the birth of Protestantism and then the Counter-Reformation to establish orthodoxy. I mention all this to say that to describe the fourteenth century without reference to religion would be – completely ahistorical. I make no judgment on their beliefs – I merely try to represent them accurately.

  The same should be said for chivalry. It is easy for the modern amoralist to sneer – The Black Prince massacred innocents and burned towns, Henry V ordered prisoners butchered. The period is decorated with hundreds, if not thousands of moments where the chivalric warriors fell from grace and behaved like monsters. I loveth chivalry, warts and all, and it is my take – and, I think, a considered one – that in chivalry we find the birth of the modern codes of war and of military justice, and that to merely state piously that ‘war is hell’ and that ‘sometimes good men do bad things’ is crap. War needs rules. Brutality needs limits. These were not amateur enthusiasts, conscripts, or draftees. They were full-time professionals who made for themselves a set of rules so that they could function – in and out of violence – as human beings. If the code of chivalry was abused – well, so are concepts like Liberty and Democracy abused. Cynicism is easy. Practice of the discipline of chivalry when your own life is in imminent danger is nothing less than heroic – it required then and still requires discipline and moral judgement, confidence in warrior skills and a strong desire to ameliorate the effects of war. I suspect that in addition to helping to control violence (and helping to promote it – a two-edged sword) the code and its reception in society did a great deal to ameliorate the effects of PTSD. I think that the current scholarship believes that, on balance, the practice of chivalry may have done more to promote violence than to quell it – but I’ve always felt that this is a massively ill-considered point of view – as if to suggest that the practice of democracy has been bad for peace, based on the casualty rates of the twentieth century.