by H. M. Castor
And I’m thinking: this is my chance. Father is a soldier; if I can impress him with my fighting, he will notice me. Really notice me. I will count for something.
I climb down the steps of the spectators’ stand. My stomach is tight, my heart seems to be beating twice as hard as usual. There’s a pavilion at one end of the hall for arming and disarming, and I make my way towards it, keeping close to the wall, feeling sure everyone must be staring. Inside the pavilion it’s dark, lit by candles. Shadows stretch and loom over the fantastic creatures of the cloth wall, which ripple softly when someone walks by.
Soon Compton arrives with my armour. My breastplate glows green and gold in the flame-light. He helps me into it and tugs tight the soft leather straps. “You’re shaking.”
I snort. “Cold. There’s a draught, can’t you feel it?”
He hands me my helmet and gloves, and I bat aside the cloth to get back out into the hall.
♦ ♦ ♦ II ♦ ♦ ♦
It has to be a joke. I’m standing in front of the viewing gallery, having just been helped into my helmet, and when I push the visor up I see Brandon walking towards me, for all the world as if it’s him I’m supposed to fight.
I’m tall for my age and broad-framed, but still – surely this is ridiculous? I glance up to the canopied platform. My mother is looking anxious. My father is looking away.
“Can this be right?” I ask the herald who’s to act as referee. “Are you certain it isn’t supposed to be someone else?” I turn my head, scanning the hall. There are several smaller boys fighting nearby. I catch sight of Arthur, taking off his helmet. He looks amused.
“His Grace the King’s orders, sir,” murmurs the herald, dipping his head.
I swallow. Brandon’s even bigger than I thought, now I’m close up to him.
Compton’s team of pageboys has been efficient in fetching my equipment; he hands me my broadsword and I weigh it carefully, feeling for the right grip. Its point and edge are blunted, but still it’s a serious weapon – long, tapered and beautifully balanced. The air whistles and sings if you slice it fast.
Down the centre of the hall runs a wooden barrier, like a fence, which prevents collisions in a joust. The herald positions Brandon and me on the near side of it, closest to the viewing platform.
Brandon’s visor is raised – I can see a section of face. It grins. “Be gentle with me, sir,” he says.
“Not a chance.” I slap my visor down.
Then the herald lifts his baton and says loudly, “On guard, gentlemen! Seven strokes each, by order of His Grace the King.”
And so we start. We skirt around each other, keeping a good distance.
It’s all about who moves first. In attacking you seize the initiative but leave yourself vulnerable. If you wait for your opponent to move, you need lightning-quick reactions, to avoid or block the blow and counter-attack, preferably all in the same movement.
Brandon has adopted the inside guard stance now, his sword-arm held across his body, the blade pointing upwards at an angle. I mirror him. We’re both shifting, one foot in front, one behind, knees softly bent, as light on our feet as we can be in our half-armour, ready to move, fast and hard.
He attacks first. The blow swings in towards my head; I move my sword to block it and the blades clank together. I don’t feel much force in Brandon’s arm, and he makes no attempt to slip my block and land another blow; instead he disengages and moves back, on guard again.
And I realise: he’s going gently with me – just playing at it, putting a little boy through his paces. The thought makes me feel sick.
I go for him now, and yell as I do it, loud enough to be heard up on the platform. Everyone laughs when I miss. Brandon’s reach is longer than mine; he only has to lift his sword-arm and my strike, making contact with nothing but air, swings me off balance and sends me stumbling side-first against the barrier.
But I’m angry. Back on guard for an instant only, I attack again, aiming high – at Brandon’s neck. As he wards off the blow, I slip my blade down to cut his thigh, but he blocks me again, and in the same move lands a thrust to my body, jabbing hard against my breastplate.
Before the herald’s even declared the hit, we’ve sprung apart again. I’m breathing hard.
Damn. A point lost. But at least the laughter’s died. And I see Brandon shake himself and take up his stance again with purpose, as if he’s suddenly taking this seriously.
Fighting bareheaded, your opponent’s eyes are what you watch, not his hands or his blade. You get an instinct for the moment of decision; you sense the move a split-second before it starts. I love it – that feeling of being locked in together… daring each other… and then exploding into action. You don’t feel the bruises until later.
But with helmets, and no view of your opponent’s face, it’s much harder. Occasionally I glimpse dark eyes glistening behind the grille of Brandon’s visor, but I can’t read them at all.
And now he’s coming at me in earnest, aiming for my head; there’s a clash of metal as I block and shift to the side. We disengage and then I’m in again, my arm across my face, sword high, as if I’ll strike his right ear. But it’s a trick: as Brandon blocks, I turn my wrist, swinging the blade back over my head, and land a blow to the other side of his helmet.
He staggers; the spectators cheer and clap. But by the time the herald has declared the point, Brandon’s recovered and we’re grappling again. After two bungled engagements he grabs the wrist of my sword-arm and yanks it back, twisting outwards, off-balancing me. The next instant his blade comes down heavily from above.
My head feels as if it’s ringing inside my helmet like the clapper in a bell. I’m dizzy; against the blackness of my visor, thin strips of the scene before me fuzz and swoop sickeningly. I stagger back so far I could be accused of running away.
Bang. I collide with something behind me: it’s the contraption they use for jousting practice – a wooden horse mounted on a wheeled trolley, which has been parked at one end of the barriers. Playing for time, I hitch myself up to sit on it, sending it trundling a short way backwards under the impetus of my landing. The crowd laughs.
My view of the hall stops swooping, but I’m enjoying the moment, so I don’t get down. I jump my feet under me, stand up on the horse’s back and leap from there onto the barrier. Sticking my arms out like a tightrope walker, I run along it until I’m past Brandon, then wobble and drop down some way behind him. I find myself not far from Arthur, who is leaning against the barrier further along, helmet under his arm, blotting his face with a gold-fringed cloth.
In an instant I’ve snagged the cloth with the tip of my sword and whisked it from his fingers. With a sharp flick, I send it flying through the air. It seems to hang suspended for a moment like an airborne pancake, and then lands – more by luck than judgement – on Brandon’s helmet, covering his visor.
The crowd whoops and cheers. Brandon, for whom the world has suddenly gone surprisingly dark, turns about in confusion. Meanwhile I bound over and thwack the hardest blow I can to his shoulder-guard, bursting one of its buckles and causing its owner to kneel heavily in the sand.
I can hear muffled swearing from inside Brandon’s helmet. The noise from the platform is marvellous. I glance up, looking for my father, but before I can spot him the herald distracts me: maintaining a professionally straight face, he signals that the fight is over.
Brandon is now sitting in the sand with his legs out in front of him. He wrenches off his helmet; his brown hair is flattened and sweaty. He casts a squinting glance up at me and grins. “My God, you’re good, sir,” he says, rubbing his hair. “Remind me not to fight you when you’re older, won’t you?”
By the time I’ve disarmed and emerged from the pavilion again, I’m starting to feel my bruises. I find the hall’s been cleared of the foot-combat boys, and an archery target’s been moved into place at one end of the barriers, ready for the next display. Servants are laying out bows and arrows on a lo
ng table covered with a cloth, embroidered with my father’s crest in gold and red and blue.
Arthur is selecting his bow – drawing one, putting it down, trying another. He’s changed his armour for an outfit of expensive black velvet; above it his face looks pale. Brandon’s hovering near him, clearly expecting to shoot too, but as I make my way towards the viewing platform a herald waylays me to say that the Spanish would like Arthur to compete against me.
I nod my agreement, my face calm, hiding my excitement. As I change direction, walking with Compton towards the table, I hiss, “I’m impressing the Spanish! I’m actually helping. Is he looking? Is Father looking at me? Is he smiling?”
“I can’t see, sir,” says Compton. “Shall I send for one of your own bows?”
“No, I’ll be fine.”
Right now I feel I could draw any of those bows lying on the table, even the heaviest.
The mark to shoot from is placed on the hall floor directly in front of my father’s position on the platform. Arthur takes up his stance first, nocks his arrow, draws, holds, then shoots. The arrow flies smoothly, and embeds itself at the edge of the bull’s eye.
I’m fizzing with energy as I walk up to the mark. The bow I’ve selected seems to have almost exactly the same drawing weight as my own, but I’m beginning to wonder whether I’ll be able to relax enough to shoot fair.
As I take up my stance, I try to breathe deeply. I try to forget where I am, block out the hall, the distractions around me, the colours, the faces, the shuffles and coughs and muted conversations.
I uncurl my fingers. My arrow, straight and deadly, thuds into the bull’s eye, just off-centre.
We each shoot twice more, Arthur and I. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I see someone approaching. It’s a herald, the man who refereed my bout with Brandon. “Would you like to try to hit this, my lord?” he says to me. He is holding out a glove – a leather gauntlet, its cuff embroidered with gold. “It is a challenge, if you will accept it, from Ambassador De Puebla.”
My eyes flick to the viewing platform. I see the ambassador, his neatly trimmed black beard turned towards my father as he speaks. My father’s head is inclined a little, his gaze dropped – listening, concentrating. Neither of them is watching me. But talking about me? Perhaps.
I look at the glove, still offered on the herald’s palm. An expensive item. Does the Spanish ambassador really want it ruined – or does he think I don’t stand a chance of hitting it? I’ve played this game many times with Compton – usually with an old cap or two, out in the woods by Eltham. It’s easier than shooting birds – but then I can do that, too.
I say, “I accept.”
The herald pads away in his soft-soled shoes, carrying the glove carefully, as if it’s a basin of water that might spill. I step up to the mark, nock an arrow and, as the herald stops and turns, I half-draw it in readiness.
Up on the platform, conversations pause – heads turn. The herald shows me the glove, then throws it high into the air.
A glove flies differently from a cap, of course. The weight’s distributed differently – the heavy cuff with its trimming makes it spin differently in the air.
It’s the work of a moment – a half-moment. The full draw, the movement of the bow as you train it on the object’s line of flight, the release.
Yet in that half-moment, my concentration falters. My eyes slip from the spinning glove to a face beyond it – a face I have the weird feeling of recognising. The hair is straw-coloured and the eyes so deep-set as to be in shadow. Behind the face, wings are spread wide.
It’s a carved angel, gazing down at me from one of the hammer beams of the roof. It holds a shield: the fleurs-de-lys of France quartered with the lions of England. I see it all in an instant – the hair, the wings, the shield – but even as the arrow is loosed I know that that instant was crucial; I can’t have shot true.
The glove lands in the sand, but I’ve already turned away. It occurs to me, as I go back to my place at the side of the shooting area, cursing myself silently, that the applause is particularly generous considering I’ve missed. Compton grins at me when I reach him, so broadly that it gives me a flicker of uncertainty; I look back. The herald has retrieved the glove and is holding it up high, turning round so that all can see. My arrow has pierced the leather through the palm. I stare at it in disbelief.
Then I glance again at the roof, looking for the face. It has no golden hair, no colour at all – it’s just plain carved wood. I don’t recognise it now. Who did I think it was before? I don’t remember. I shake my head, as if I’ve come in from a rain-shower, just as Arthur starts forward, and signals that he would like to try this game too. A glove is hurriedly found for him, donated by another Spaniard; the herald throws for a second time.
On the viewing platform, a hundred faces tip upwards as Arthur’s arrow flies towards the mighty oak ribs of the roof. Arrow and glove pass elegantly, like the jets of a fountain. They land in the dust, ten feet apart.
There is a short silence.
Then the spectators break into applause. I see that Ambassador De Puebla has risen to his feet as he claps – the rest of his party is following suit. After a moment they turn and begin to move away from their seats – they’re coming down.
As they approach across the sandy floor, Arthur’s suddenly at my side. He hooks an arm round my neck and ruffles my hair. As if he’s fond of me.
My father leads the party, limping slightly as always. He has a permanent stiffness in his left leg – scar tissue from an old wound: his battlefield credentials are on display at every step. As they reach us De Puebla is saying, “… but remarkably skilful for his age. He is a talented child. Congratulations, Your Grace.”
My father smiles. “You are generous in your praise, Ambassador. I am proud of the boy. He has a fine spirit. He works hard.” A bony hand reaches out and grips my shoulder.
“Added to which,” De Puebla turns to me, “you have all the natural talents God could bestow, my lord prince. You are built like a warrior already. Nearly as tall as your brother when there are, what, five years between you? Impressive. Very impressive.” He bows to Arthur. “And, my lord, a most excellent display of your skills, too. We will be happy to make a report back to the King and Queen of Spain, full of the highest possible praise.”
Arthur and I bow, and express our humble thanks.
My father turns to his guests, opening his arms to herd them away. “Come, gentlemen, it is time to take some refreshments in more comfortable surroundings.”
I watch them go.
I am proud of the boy.
I look around me, blinking. I glance up to the angel on the roof again – but there are rows of them, one on each hammer beam, and I can’t remember which one it was I thought I recognised. The viewing platform is emptying. Arthur has melted away. A hand gently takes my elbow. It’s Compton. He guides me out of the hall and into the warren of passageways leading to the royal apartments. I can’t stop talking.
“Did my father see the strike before the last – with Brandon? Not the last one, I had open season on that, it doesn’t count – but the one before, I truly found a gap, such a small one, I was so fast!” I stop walking abruptly, and slap my gloves against Compton’s chest. “Tell me he saw that one.”
“He saw it.”
“Really?”
Compton shrugs. “I don’t know. I expect so, sir. I was watching you, not the King.”
We walk again. “Brandon’s good. He landed some amazing blows. I really should’ve seen that one at the side coming. And the way he twisted my arm, Christ – I want to practise that. I’ll get him to show me sometime. Do you think he’d practise with me if I asked? Regularly, I mean? I suppose he’d have to come down to Eltham and maybe that’d be a problem.”
We’ve reached my bedchamber now. Entering, I sling my gloves on a table and see that I have a visitor. “Oh.” I stop, staring at him. “Hello.”
It’s Arthur: I don’t remember th
at he has ever voluntarily sought my company before.
He is standing, accompanied by several of his gentlemen servants, beside the window. He says slowly, “I wanted to congratulate you on your excellent performance back there.” He pauses, looks at my servants. “Compton. Boys. You may leave us.”
The pages who have entered the room behind me bow and scarper. Compton hesitates; looks at me. I nod to him to go.
Then I give a shrug and bend down to scratch my calf. “I just practise a lot. You can’t be best at everything. Don’t let it get to you.”
As I straighten, I see Arthur signal to his men. Two of them move to stand either side of me; they take my arms.
“What’s this?”
He doesn’t answer me. Struggling, I quickly discover, only makes the men tighten their grip. Arthur says, “No, no. This isn’t the time for showing off.”
He’s pulling at the fingers of his gloves, one by one, unhurried. He slips the gloves off, places them one on top of the other and hands them to a servant. Then he curls the long white fingers of his right hand into a fist. And punches me hard in the stomach.
It knocks the wind out of me; leaves me gasping, stooped forward as far as the strong hands on my arms allow. I cough and can’t do anything about a drip of saliva that stretches down to the floor.
“What was that for?” I croak. “What’ve I done?”
No answer – just another blow. This time the knuckles make contact with my left ear and temple. There’s a ringing in my head.
Arthur says, “It’s not about fighting skills, you see. It’s about power. And power is, amongst other things, having someone to hold you still while I hit you.”
By the time I can look up, Arthur has taken possession of his gloves again and is examining them, removing minuscule traces of fluff, dust, dirt. “Or having someone to hit you for me.” He nods to someone unseen to my right, who slams a knee, hard as a cudgel, into my kidneys.
Nothing on my face, of course. Nothing where a bruise might be visible.
