The Tournament of Blood aktm-11

by Michael Jecks

  He set the lance back in the rest and took up another. This was straight enough, and he gave a grudging nod of approval as he peered along its length, but as he lifted it back to the vertical and thumped the base against the ground, he thought there was a feeling of weakness in it, as if it had a crack in the wood.

  Putting the lance back, he eyed the arena. Imagining himself on horseback, he peered hard, searching for any potholes or tussocks which might conceal a molehill. The last thing he wanted was for his mount to stumble or swerve. With a heavy charger travelling at speed, that could end in disaster: the opponent’s horse might try to dodge, leading to the lance-point striking at an odd angle, perhaps slipping beneath the plate armour and hitting a vital spot, or the manoeuvre could lead to the horses colliding, killing both each other and their riders.

  The ground was clear so far as he could see. Reassured, he thrust his hands in his belt and leaned against the rack, idly watching the other squires and knights as they walked about, until suddenly his eye lit upon a slim, fair figure.

  He stood, his hand reaching automatically for his knife-hilt. Slowly he walked around behind the rack and watched as the figure approached.

  ‘Geoffrey!’ His low, hissing voice made the other squire start and gaze about him. ‘You cowardly whore’s whelp!’

  Geoffrey was only a few yards away, and he turned with a baffled expression.

  ‘Geoffrey! You shit!’

  ‘Eh?’ A man was standing near the rack, Geoffrey could see, but at this distance, some twenty feet, he could only make out an imprecise blurred figure. His sight was poor at the best of times, but here, in bright sunlight, it was hard to see who was standing in the relative shade of the trees at the riverbank.

  ‘Forgotten me, have you?’ Squire Andrew called. He pulled his knife from its sheath and stalked forward. ‘I’ve wanted to see you again ever since that night. You remember – the night before we ran into Harclay at the bridge? Only you wouldn’t remember, would you? You weren’t there.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean. Who are you?’

  Andrew smiled thinly. There was a subtle note of fear in the other’s voice. ‘So you have forgotten me – that’s sad. I was in your company when you were riding with your master at Earl Thomas of Lancaster’s side. I remember you perfectly. You were a bold little cock there, weren’t you? Offering your advice to all and sundry. Except you weren’t quite so brave when you realised that the King was getting near, were you? You went off to seek forage, only you never came back.’

  ‘Of course I didn’t!’ Geoffrey lied. ‘I got cut off by a raiding party. I fought through them and went ahead to return to the Earl’s side, only the bridge I had to cross was taken. Harclay and his men were already there. I had no choice.’

  ‘Liar!’ Andrew spat. ‘You bolted. You rode off as soon as you could; you deserted your master.’

  ‘I would never have deserted him,’ Geoffrey declared hotly.

  ‘You’re lucky he died with the others on the bridge. Shot down by a random arrow, then crushed beneath a horse. He died there honourably, Geoffrey. Just as you should have done. Except you were too cowardly to risk your neck, weren’t you? You had to get away.’

  ‘I had no choice,’ Geoffrey said weakly. ‘What would you have done?’

  ‘I’d have fought to get back, so I could die with my master,’ Andrew said. ‘As I did.’

  ‘Well, all I can say is, you can’t have been cut off in the same way I was,’ Geoffrey said. ‘I had no chance.’

  ‘Really?’ Andrew asked cynically. ‘Don’t you recognise me yet?’

  Geoffrey stared as Andrew approached him. Then his mouth fell open and he held up a hand as if to ward off evil. ‘But you were dead! I saw you fall!’

  Andrew smiled mirthlessly. ‘You thought so, did you? Well, if I died, I have been brought back to life to see you suffer for your cowardice, you bastard! And you’ll suffer soon, believe me. I’ll trample your reputation in the mire for running away from the enemy even when your master needed your support. You left him and your Earl to die, just as you left me and the others in the party to die. I shall denounce you.’

  Geoffrey retreated a pace as Andrew came closer, his hand reaching for his sword. His palm was slick and he could scarcely grip the hilt, but then a tussock caught his heel and he tumbled down with a squeak. He saw Andrew above him, a long knife in his hand, and he whimpered, snapping his eyes shut, bringing an arm up to protect his face.

  There was nothing. No prick of pain, no kick, nothing. He heard a low chuckle of contempt and when he opened his eyes, he saw Andrew’s back as the squire marched back to the fields.

  It made him want to sob. He couldn’t be shamed in front of all the people here. It would be unbearable – he’d never be able to hold his head up in public again. Terrible! Utter social ruin. And what of Alice? She would hardly want a coward for a husband.

  The scene came back to him with appalling clarity. He had been at the side of his knight, as he should be, when the little party had been given permission to ‘ride out’, the technical term which meant seeking plunder with the Earl’s permission. Of course he was already anxious because of the stories about the army which the King had brought up against them all. Who wouldn’t have been? It was scary knowing that you were committing treason. There was a special punishment for that: slow hanging till nearly dead, then drawing, being gutted while alive, the still-beating heart hauled from the chest before the body was beheaded and hacked into quarters. Hideous!

  He slowly climbed to his feet, the bile acrid in his mouth.

  When the suggestion that he should seek fodder was made, he hadn’t intended running. He was a squire, committed and determined to do his duty by his knight. He and a number of other men had gone. And Andrew had been one of them.

  He was dead. Geoffrey had seen him die! How could he have come back from the grave?

  Their route had taken them towards some smoke in the distance, thinking that it must be a farm. Farms had food. Except when they arrived, there was a strong force of the King’s own men waiting and the little group had been surrounded. Andrew had been one of the first into the medley, shrieking some weird cry, sword on high as he spurred into them. Geoffrey wasn’t going to fight – he thought he could ride back and get help, get away from the clattering, clanging battle, but when he looked over his shoulder, he saw that they were already cut off. There was only the one way to safety, and that was ahead.

  He had taken a moment to grit his teeth, swallowed his terror, clapped spurs to his mount and lowered his head as his charger leaped forward. There was one place where the fighting was thin. Andrew and others were in a solid mass to his right, but Geoffrey wasn’t stupid enough to head for them. The weight of him and his horse could have beaten back the ambushers, but he would have been embroiled in the same dangerous fight and he had no wish to die. Andrew had screamed at him, just the once, and as he thundered through the thin ranks of foot-soldiers, eyes squeezed tight shut against the horrible sight of polearms and axes aimed at him, he had glanced back quickly to see Andrew fall from his horse, dead. Or so it had seemed.

  Geoffrey had not stopped galloping until he was convinced he had not been followed, and then he had not known where to go. North lay the Earl’s own estates and men, but there were also groups of the King’s men who were trying to capture any stragglers. Southwards was the King’s host, and yet… If he were to go south, he might be able to avoid the King’s men, perhaps skirt around them all and make his way homewards. It was a better chance than any other.

  Shivering with fear, he had made his choice. He had no desire to die like Andrew and the others, and he had no desire to join the Earl’s men if they were all to be slaughtered as they subsequently were.

  That was his saving. He had escaped, and later he heard how the King’s men stopped Earl Thomas at Boroughbridge, holding him and his men at the bridge and a ford until the King’s main host arrived. There was a great killing there, the rive
r running red with the blood of the brave men who contested the passage over that long day.

  All Geoffrey knew when he heard of the battle was relief. He might have been there, and if he had, he would have been at the side of his knight Sir Hector, who died on the slick wooden bridge; if Geoffrey had been there, he too would probably have succumbed to an arrow, a bolt or a sword just as his master had. But thank God he had been saved from that doom, emerging unscathed from the danger and without anyone to accuse him of cowardice.

  And now a witness had emerged. A witness who could testify to his running from the enemy.

  Edith had paid for the sweetmeats before she realised she was free. Her mother was still talking to Sir Baldwin in a low voice some way off, and neither was glancing in her direction, they were too involved in their own conversation. Hugh was watching a man testing a bow. They had moved since she had left them, and that gave her the excuse she needed. She bent her gaze towards where they had been – she could easily say she’d thought they’d still be there – and under the cover of a small group of passers-by, she walked back steadily the way she had come, towards the ring where the swordsmen had been.

  They were no longer fighting, although their swords were still there lying on a table with other weapons: daggers, long-bladed knives and iron-shod staffs lay with axes and cudgels. She meditatively went to them and felt the edge of one of the swords. The blade was chipped and notched where it had hit the other, and there was a fine sheen like oil on it. When she took her finger from it, she saw that it was blood; there was a red stain on her hand which made her pull a face in disgust. She didn’t want to mark her new tunic, so instead she wiped her fingers on the table’s edge wondering whether it was the blood of the shorter man. It probably was, she reckoned. The taller man was almost unmarked.

  The loser wasn’t attractive, but Edith admired his courage in standing against an opponent with so much greater reach. It was silly of him to get into a fight like that, silly but brave, she felt, and she wondered what they could have been fighting over. Perhaps it was foul words, for men so often insulted each other with ‘villeinous and blasphemous swearing’ according to the local priest, but Edith hoped that there was something more honourable at the heart of their battle. Perhaps it was a fight over a woman.

  It was a lovely thought, that two men should fight for one woman’s favour. She imagined that they might fight over her, and smiled at the idea, hugging herself gleefully as a most unchaste thrill ran though her. That, she decided, would be best: to have two men risk their lives to impress a woman who would then grant her favours to the winner and hold him up, still bloody from his encounter, to everyone’s adulation – that would be really good. Everyone would judge her magnificence and beauty by the blood shed to win her.

  And it would show her mother and father that she was no longer a child to be commanded at their whims: to ‘go there, come here, do as you are told,’ she snarled to herself.

  That was the trouble: her parents couldn’t see she wasn’t a baby any more. Standing haughtily near a fence-post, Edith considered the field and the milling people while she brooded on her parents’ unreasonable attitude. They seemed to think that she needed to be constantly supervised and protected. It was so stupid! If she was left alone, she would be fine. She knew how to protect herself. She certainly didn’t need to be locked up at the house like one of her father’s prisoners at Lydford Gaol. Not that she was ever locked in, exactly, but it came to the same thing, being told she couldn’t go to Tavistock to see Susan when she wanted. Susan could go out more or less when she wanted, but no, Edith had to stay in. She’d told them, if they were worried, they could send Hugh with her to look after her, but although her father had initially said yes, that permission was immediately withdrawn when Simon heard that she had already asked Margaret and Margaret had meanly said no.

  It was Mother’s jealousy, Edith decided. Margaret couldn’t bear the thought that her daughter was more beautiful than her. Pure spite, that’s what it was. Well, she’d have to change her mind, that was all. Edith refused to be tied to the house just because of the misguided emotions of her mother. There were times when Edith almost thought she hated her mother.

  ‘Hello, my Lady.’

  She glanced up at the sound of the voice, low and respectful, with a hint of passion. ‘Good day,’ she said coldly. Although she had liked the look of him earlier, she had not forgotten the group standing at the fence, one of them making that disgusting sign to her. This squire was with them, she recalled, sitting upon the fence.

  ‘I have never before met a woman with such an enchanting smile. You make the sun seem dim.’

  She tried unsuccessfully to keep her features neutral. ‘I think you’re a little over fulsome, sir,’ she lied.

  ‘I am not. I was drawn to this place just by the magnetic power of your beauty, which would outshine Helen of Troy or Venus herself. Your smile could cure a man’s wounds, your touch would make him invincible, your–’

  ‘Enough! God’s blood, sir! After your friend was so crude and unpleasant, too.’

  ‘My friend?’ he enquired.

  ‘Your friend, that nasty boy who was with you earlier and made an unpleasant sign to me. And now you try to make me dizzy with your hyperbole. Do you always wait until your companions have insulted a woman and then introduce yourself to her in such terms?’

  ‘Never! May I fall dead if I ever praise another woman!’ he swore with well-concealed dishonesty, a hand pounding his breast. ‘I have seen you, and I can wish for no other. If a friend of mine annoys you, point him out to me and I shall make him regret his words or deeds. My heart is engaged. Whatever I do from now on, I do in your honour; whatever prowess I display, I do so to demonstrate the magnificence which you yourself possess; any feats of arms I achieve, I achieve solely by the power which your beauty lends to my arm. Everything good I do from now on, I do for love of you.’

  Her heart fluttered and she felt a sudden faintness. All thoughts of her parents were gone as she studied his face from beneath lowered eyelashes. Tall, well-formed, with good thighs and ankles, he had the body of an athlete, with strong shoulders and thick biceps. His handsome face was to her very finely moulded, with a small scar over one brow. His eyes exhibited only fervent desire for her. This was the first time a man had expressed such devotion – especially at such short notice – and it was intensely gratifying. Once more she struggled to keep her smile at bay while trying to sound mature and reproachful.

  ‘You think me some easy woman to tempt with your vows just because I am young? I am scarcely of Canonical age, when you must be full five years older.’

  ‘What does age mean to lovers? We are old enough to marry, my love. Would you consider me?’

  She held up a hand, seriously startled. There was a definite feeling of attraction to this fellow, but to speak of marriage was one step too far.

  ‘Ah – I have scared her! My love is too strong for her, may God forgive me. I shall leave you, my Lady. If my death would remove the fear I have put into your eyes, I shall seek it instantly.’

  ‘Be quiet a moment!’ she scolded. ‘Are you always this overblown? I won’t speak of marriage. It’s ridiculous! If I were to marry a man without asking permission of my father, it would be a man whom I loved, and I can hardly love you. I don’t know you.’

  ‘I don’t know you, but I love you already,’ he countered with a sly grin.

  That sudden twist to his mouth made him more normal, reduced his previous words to the level of flirting. She was comfortable with that, and could herself smile. ‘Perhaps, but I doubt even after all this whether you’d seriously want to wed quite yet. And I couldn’t wed a mere squire, anyway,’ she added, glancing away, feigning disinterest. ‘My father would hardly be happy to see me thrown away on a nobody.’

  ‘Then tomorrow, when I gain my spurs… ’ he teased.

  ‘You will?’ she gasped, then recovered herself. ‘Yes, well, I daresay several lads will be knig
hted.’

  ‘Ah, not so many. I shall be riding in the joust with some others, and when all is done, I shall be taken before the Lord and will accept my spurs and sword from him. And I shall wear the favour of my Lady, if she will permit me?’

  She eyed him haughtily and sniffed. ‘Oh, you think so? I am not so sure.’

  ‘My Lady, please. A small token, anything. It will spur me on to great feats in your name. Without it, I must surely lose. Perhaps even die for longing.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Edith said.

  ‘How can you doubt me?’

  ‘Easily,’ she retorted.

  ‘Let me persuade you, then.’

  She peered over his shoulder. ‘I have to find my mother.’

  ‘Can I see you later?’

  ‘I suppose we shall see each other at the feast,’ she said.

  ‘But how can we meet alone?’

  ‘Well… ’ She was reluctant to deliberately disobey her father, but surely if Simon knew what a pleasant fellow this was, he couldn’t object.

  ‘Perhaps if I speak to the heralds, one of them can arrange to bring a message to you,’ William said.

  ‘Perhaps,’ she agreed noncommittally.

  ‘So may I wear a token of yours?’ he asked.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ she said, and refused to discuss the matter further, but unaccountably, when they separated, she dropped her neck-scarf apparently without noticing.

  Chapter Fifteen