A Knight's Tale: Kenilworth

by Gabriella West

  I began to feel a mounting rage. “Will I be allowed to stay alone?” I said under my breath. “Or will I be forced in with you?”

  He looked at me in alarm. “No, I—I’m sure you’ll be allowed to stay alone, if that’s what you prefer.”

  “Don’t ever speak badly about him again, or else I’ll have to make you hold your tongue.” I patted the dagger at my side. It was the first time I’d ever made a threatening gesture to Thomas, and his eyes widened in shock.

  It didn’t stop him eating, though. I watched him gorge himself through the rest of the meal with distaste.

  “I’m your only friend here, Will,” he said at one point later, when we had both drunk overmuch. “Don’t push me away.”

  ***

  When I saw Stephen getting up, I arose from the table too. “I’ll be back,” I said to my mother and Thomas, the only ones who were attentive. She looked puzzled, while he looked troubled.

  I walked out into the courtyard, my steps unsteady. It was dim and cold outside. Brother Michael had mounted his palfrey and was riding slowly toward the gate.

  The overcast air seemed to hold its breath. Stephen was fastening his saddlebag. I moved towards him as casually as I could.

  Brother Michael hadn’t noticed and had passed beyond the gate now.

  “Don’t go,” I said, putting my hand on his arm.

  The horse shielded us from the gate. Leaning against its warm flank, I pulled Stephen into an embrace, kissing his cold lips just once.

  “Once for luck,” I said nonsensically.

  “I will miss you.” He clasped my hand, then mounted, as Brother Michael, returning, predictably called to him from the gate.

  “Where are you, boy? We have to get a move on for Warwick.” They would spend the night there, I realized, to break the long journey to Oxford.

  “Coming!” Stephen called. He looked down at me, and there was such longing and regret in his eyes for a moment. Just a moment. He spurred his horse and was gone.

  It happened so fast, just like that.

  Thomas was behind me then, his hand on my shoulder. And what happened next showed my age, too. I burst into tears while Thomas wrapped his arm around me.

  “I drank too much,” I blurted out, and Thomas said, “Of course you did.” He patted me gently on the back.

  “I’m sorry I threatened you back there. I nearly killed a man today.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying, Will.”

  “Yes, I do. Ask me tomorrow. I wish I had killed him when I could.”

  “I’m taking you to chapel for confession tomorrow,” Thomas told me kindly. “Actually, we will be all be there tonight for Christmas Mass, to hear the choristers.”

  “Shouldn’t that have been last night?” I slurred.

  “The Montforts do it differently.”

  “They do everything differently,” I said bitterly. “They’ll bring bad luck on all of us, just wait and see.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying, Will!” Thomas whispered. “Stop this.”

  It had begun to snow in fat wet flakes. I shivered but did not want to go in. Thomas had to drag me, muttering under his breath.

  Before we reached the Great Hall, I said loudly, “Mark my words, one or both of us will die because of these people.”

  “We serve these people! This family.” Thomas pushed me against the wall. “You’ve got to stop this mad talk.”

  “Do you think they’re worth dying for, Thomas?” I asked him. “I mean it. Do you?”

  “I don’t think about it.” His words were curt. “Only God will decide that,” he said finally.

  ***

  Back in the hall we ate frumenty, a honeyed wheat, currant, and raisin dish, before moving to the next course. The night seemed to last forever. I forced a smile to my mother, who had watched me sadly ever since I returned to my seat. The face powder she had carefully applied was beginning to fade, leaving the pockmarks more evident on her cheeks. She handed me a lavender-scented handkerchief to wipe my eyes and nose. She didn’t ask why I’d been crying. We were in public and it was too late for that now; I was already past the age where she was supposed to comfort me.

  But she wanted to, I knew. And I wished that I could let her, could confide in her about Stephen. She was the only one I could have told. Although my actions in front of Thomas had been strange and damning enough, I knew he would never dare to ask me anything further.

  He hoped I would forget Stephen. But that was the last thing I would ever do, I vowed.

  A lute player plied his instrument near the fire, and little Eleanor capered to the music, much to the company’s amusement. As I watched the Montforts and their eldest son at the high table that night, deep in conversation with an unruffled man garbed in the russet robes of the Franciscans, freshly arrived from France, I could have sworn that at one point Simon looked back at me with sympathy. He tipped his silver goblet to me slightly and then took a deep swallow.

  End of Part One

  Part Two

  Chapter 7

  1261

  Now it was May, the very same month that I’d come to Kenilworth, but a year on, and not much remained of the friendly, slightly lost boy who’d rode in through the gates on Lucy.

  Thomas and I rode out a few times a week to a place about a mile from the castle where a brook wended its way through the fields. We sat on the long, lush grass amid the tall meadow buttercups and lacy cow parsley. We brought meat pies with us, and quenched our thirst, and sometimes our feet, in the cool water.

  I didn’t speak much. I hadn’t been talking much since Christmas, though I tried to insert a few words in every conversation. It was an effort to listen to Thomas, but I was lonely sometimes and glad of his company. He hadn’t turned against me, at least, never spoke about Christmas, and made obvious, though futile, attempts to cheer me up.

  “When we’re knights we won’t have to answer to anyone, Will,” he said more than once.

  “Yes, but it’s three years off,” I would answer dully. He never had any rejoinder to that.

  On this day, he smiled as he lay back in the sun. “Christiana let me properly kiss her,” he said. “I mean, lying down...”

  “Did you enjoy it?” I asked finally, since he said nothing more.

  “Of course. Don’t be daft! Haven’t you ever kissed anyone?”

  I was silent. Then, “Yes,” I said coldly. The memories hurt me.

  He glanced over at me and blushed slightly. “Oh! Well, I won’t pry.”

  “I’ve never kissed a girl,” I continued, just to torture him.

  “You should. I recommend it.”

  He was insufferably smug. The good thing about Thomas was that he didn’t mind if I called him a smug bastard.

  Being fifteen felt different. We were allowed to be moody, and we both ate a lot. Spots broke out on our faces. Our voices sounded deeper, but when it’s your own voice you don’t think about it after a while. Christiana certainly blushed a lot more around Thomas and seemed to enjoy his attentions. I thought that she watched me covertly as well. She had been sweet to me in the months since Stephen left, and perhaps once a week I had climbed the stairs to the cozy little solar at the top of the castle where she kept her spinning wheel. With Stephen gone, I felt the need to talk to someone who had known him and truly liked him. Christiana was the only one.

  I had a hard time understanding why Stephen hadn’t predicted the move to the Oxford priory. Christiana reassured me that he’d told her years ago that he wasn’t always right about things, that sometimes people changed plans and he wasn’t aware of it when they did that. So something he had seen could be “wrong” in light of later events. She said she’d had to comfort him a few times when he was younger and bad things happened in the castle. He’d always felt responsible, as if he should have predicted it.

  But he hadn’t confided in her about Brother Michael’s mistreatment. I asked about that, as carefully as I could. He had told he
r about me, though. She said that last summer she had told him that she was in love with someone, and he had replied that he was as well. She had asked him to go first. In a very quiet voice he had said, “Will.” She had told him she wasn’t shocked. In fact, she’d known something was different between us, but couldn’t put her finger on it.

  Then she asked him to guess whom she was in love with. “That’s easy,” Stephen had said with a smile. He had whispered the name in her ear, since she didn’t want him to say it out loud. And he’d been right.

  “Why would he have to whisper Thomas’s name?” I enquired. “I figured it out the day the Montforts came back last year. I saw you looking at each other.”

  Christiana just smiled, turning red. Her smiles had become more radiant, her eyes more expressive. I would have said she was comely, but she didn’t attract me one bit. She even joked about this, calling me a cold fish. But things were easy between us. I enjoyed watching her spin the fuzzy clump of raw wool into yarn, standing upright against the wooden wheel. It seemed to calm me, watching her sturdy right hand turn the wheel while her other hand held steady.

  She was the one who gave me a strand of hope. She said that when I was a knight I could go claim Stephen from the priory. That those places weren’t well guarded, and it would be easy enough to fetch him, if I had a mind to it. “When you’re a knight, most people will be fearful of you, give you a wide berth. I know it seems strange now,” she mused. “Of course you can’t bring him home and set up house, but perhaps you can travel abroad.”

  Something in the ambiguous way Stephen had described it our future meeting made me certain that it would not be easy, though.

  “But he was generally right about things, do you think, Christiana?” I asked her casually on one of those peaceful, melancholy spring days.

  She nodded. “I always trusted Stephen. I didn’t ask him very much, because I don’t like to know the harsh truth. I’m one of those people who wants the people they love to live forever. Even people like Lady Eleanor and Earl Simon—you know.”

  Her voice was wistful.

  I wasn’t as altruistic or loving. I wanted my mother to do well, and perhaps my little sister, but besides Stephen it was hard for me to care about anyone else. The thought of something happening to Thomas never crossed my mind. Even the de Montfort sons seemed immortal, in a way.

  ***

  Amaury de Montfort had played an odd role, too, a few months previously, in helping me make sense of things. I was obsessed with the piece of parchment Stephen had left me, while not being able to make head or tail of it. For a while I thought of going to Brother Gregory, the new friar, but although I sometimes visited the little castle chapel just to kneel and soak in the sense of peace I felt there, I did not want to pique Brother Gregory’s interest in me. I felt an innate distrust of clerics now, and was sure that some hypocrisy must linger behind his mild manner. Also, I did not know if there was anything in the piece of writing Stephen had carefully transcribed that was meant for my eyes alone.

  I waited until I spotted Amaury one January day, sitting in the Great Hall playing chess by himself in the time between the midday meal and supper. It was true that a group of knights sat together at the other table, quaffing ale, but Amaury was near the fire and immersed in his game. It was on the twelfth day of Christmas, Epiphany, that my patience finally snapped and I asked Amaury if he would help me by translating a Latin piece.

  He looked up slowly, as if tearing himself from a real scene of battle.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt, my lord,” I said formally. I still remembered his “little squires” comment; it had not endeared him to me.

  “Not at all. William, is it?”

  His gray eyes were bleary and he blinked a few times, focusing on me. He was in his eighteenth year then, but seemed older, weighed down in some way that I could not understand.

  “Yes.” I produced the scroll and he glanced at it, then smiled slightly as if in recognition.

  “Stephen produced this, didn’t he? I recognize his hand.”

  I nodded.

  “A fair hand, Stephen had. You know, we are close in age and we received some of the same instruction together, from the chaplain. He had a good mind.”

  It was irritating to me the way he spoke about Stephen, as if he was long gone, or already dead.

  “You know he’s gone to the provincial House at Oxford,” I said bluntly.

  “I heard tell of it,” Amaury said. “I rather envy him, actually, being at a seat of learning like that. Sit down, Will.”

  He gestured to the bench, and I sat down with some clumsiness across from him. I was at the high table. How thrilled I would have been to be invited here once! Now it just seemed an empty formality.

  “I suppose he’ll meet some interesting men there,” Amaury continued. I found my hands clenching. I did not think he meant to needle me; perhaps he was oblivious of what it was like to love someone and to lose them.

  Amaury cleared his throat, glancing at me and seeing that I was stone-faced. He turned back to the parchment, eyes bright with recognition.

  “Ah. This is from the Carmina Burana, a collection of old and new poems put together in the last century by some scribes in a monastery in Bavaria, near Munich, you know, young men with time on their hands. Do you see the script is Gothic minuscule? That’s what they used. No wonder you had a hard time reading it. The poem is called ‘Omnia Sol Temperat.’ It’s rather pretty. It’s a love poem.”

  He glanced up at me sharply, only to see my face redden.

  “Stephen must have copied it a while ago, probably before you came to Kenilworth.” He said this to spare my blushes; I could tell from the kindness in his voice.

  “The poet starts out talking about the beauty and power of spring. I’ll translate the last lines, which are the really important ones, shall I?”

  “Yes. Please.” My words came out breathless.

  “All right.” In a slow, quiet voice Amaury said:

  Love me faithfully,

  Taking heed of my loyalty,

  With all your heart,

  With all your mind.

  I am closest to you,

  When I am far away;

  Whoever loves like this

  Rides on the wheel.

  “The wheel?” I asked. Now my voice was embarrassingly high, almost squeaky.

  “Yes, the Wheel of Fortune,” Amaury said, rolling up the scroll. “Rota Fortunae, you know. Are you familiar with it?”

  “Not... not really.”

  “It’s a pagan concept,” Amaury said. The ancient Yule Log on the fire crackled near us and suddenly spat. We both looked up, startled, then returned to our conversation. “It’s a way of explaining the painful events in life, as well as the lucky ones. The Ancient Romans thought it all came down to chance.”

  He said nothing more, as if his energy had all been expended, and as if he did not want to waste his breath on giving me a lecture on how superior Christian doctrine was in this matter.

  I got up hesitantly, unsure what to make of his explanation, or even his manner.

  “It’s a rather splendid poem,” Amaury said absently as he returned to his chess game.

  “Thank you. I won’t forget it.”

  He looked up and nodded. “No, I don’t think he would want you to.”

  “I meant, your kindness in this,” I said awkwardly.

  “Ah.” He thought for a moment as his hand lingered on a chess piece. It was a knight, I noted.

  “It’s not impossible that I might go to Oxford one day, to study,” he said, almost as if to himself. “It’s my dream, you know, to attend a university. It probably won’t happen, but if it does, I’ll take a message to Stephen from you.”

  “Oh, thank you!” My knees felt weak. “Thank you, my lord.”

  “Please,” Amaury said, holding up his hand. “It’s little enough. It’s little enough I can ever do for anyone, I fear, but I will do that. Remind me.”

>   “Yes of course, my lord.”

  “I don’t think my father particularly wants a student son. But Fortuna may have some say in the matter. The Romans saw her as a goddess, did you know?”

  I shook my head.

  “They saw spring as a goddess, too. Flora. They personified everything. I would say it’s wrong, but I’ve always had a fondness for the Ancient World.”

  “Have you ever been to Italy?” I asked, just to say something. I held the scroll in my hands, eager to return to my chamber.

  “Italy, no...” Amaury rested his pale eyes on me. They were a grayish-blue, contrasting pleasantly with his dark locks. He was a man who would go gray young, I thought. “Yet someday I think I will.” He glanced around at the knights to make sure no one could overhear. “Stephen told me I would. We talked about it once, my future. I was rather astonished by what he told me. It seemed so odd, compared to my own thoughts about it.”

  I remained at the table, staring at him. He looked back at me levelly.

  “He told me things I had a hard time accepting. That I’d live the longest of all my siblings. We’re not a long-lived lot, apparently. Did he tell you about our fates, Will?”

  I shook my head, feeling dizzy.

  “I’ve never quite been the same since he told me, actually.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said in a whisper. I swallowed, my gorge rising slightly. “That must be shattering.”

  He chuckled wryly.

  “It’s why I play chess a lot. Chess is a game of patience and strategy. And Stephen said that I would have to watch my father and brothers do terrible, foolhardy things. It’s already started.” He glanced over at the knights again. “I don’t think of the world the way they do. I wouldn’t take the same risks. I’m not looking for power or revenge. But I hope my mother can somehow help all of us survive the next few years, through her influence with the King.”

  Then Simon appeared in the doorway, his arm around Henry’s shoulders, shouting greetings to the knights, who responded raucously. Amaury smiled at me and then gave a slight nod, as if to say, “Off you go.”