The Knights Dawning (The Crusades Series)

by James Batchelor

  “He should have armed himself before insulting my honor,” Vincent said darkly, not moving his sword.

  “How can one be insulted about something one does not possess?”

  Vincent roared and started forward. William rolled back over his shoulder and was on his feet again.

  “If this truly is a matter of honor,” Leah said, thinking quickly, “should it not be settled in noble combat on the lists, as knights do?” Vincent hesitated, and the marshals of the field were there.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Jean de Wycliffe demanded. “Fighting outside of the sanctioned event is grounds for ejection from the tournament.”

  Vincent sheepishly sheathed his weapon. “I have insulted his honor,” William said boldly. “Sir Vincent was just challenging me to a duel, is that not so?”

  Wycliffe looked between them. “He is not a knight,” he said to Vincent. “This is not appropriate for a tournament and cannot be held in conjunction with the other battles.” One of the two marshals of the field was provided by the Dawnings and the other by the Braddocks. Jean de Wycliffe was closely associated with the Braddock family and had been so for as many years as the aging but still powerful Martin de Boutillier had been with the Dawnings.

  Vincent nodded. “Very well, we will match now as part of the exhibition. My honor is more important than some silly tournament,” he declared heartily to Jean’s skeptical look.

  “You know he is not a knight; he has nothing to lose,” Jean said confidentially to Vincent. “But you have everything to lose in your first tournament with your father looking on. This is not worth the risk.”

  “My honor is not worth the risk of defeat?” Vincent glowered at him. “Then what is it worth?” he demanded. “I am not some silly child playing at being a knight. I have been insulted and I will receive satisfaction.”

  Jean looked at Martin de Boutillier. The other marshal only shrugged.

  “Very well,” Jean said, stepping back. “Prepare yourselves, gentlemen, as you are up next. I will announce you.” The marshals returned to their posts on opposite sides of the yard.

  “Now, Dawning,” Vincent said with a malicious grin,” you are about to feel firsthand what it means to be a real knight.

  “I already know what it is like to have a parent that is at a loss for a birthday gift. Perhaps I will ask for a knighthood for my next one as you have done.”

  “Keep laughing, Saxon. Keep laughing while I run my Norman lance through your Saxon heart.”

  William’s jaw tightened at his insult. It was one that he had heard often as his mother was, in fact, a Saxon. “How much more the insult then, when you not only lose your honor to a simple, un-knighted nobody, but to a lowly Saxon. Will there be anywhere you can travel in all of England that you will not be laughed at for more than your oversized armor?” Vincent looked as though he would take another swing at William but only turned and stalked away, pausing just long enough to make a curt bow to Leah.

  Leah, who had stood tensely, watching this whole ordeal unfold, called to William as soon as Vincent had gone. “William, please don’t do this,” she said. “I have a sense of foreboding about this.”

  William smiled at her. “Why concern yourself, milady? This is the hero of Dawning Court you are talking to.”

  “William, please, no jokes. I cannot tell why, but please make an excuse, apologize to Vincent, anything.” She looked very earnestly into his eyes.

  “Leah, I find your confidence in me very moving,” he said caustically. “But I can beat this fool. These silly games the knights play are dependent upon everyone playing by the same rules; otherwise it is not fair and they are easily put down. I will put Vincent down.”

  “William, what are you trying to prove?” she whispered urgently. “You berate the chivalry for their vain pride and stupidity and yet here you are being led by the same impulses. He is a knight!” she said desperately and immediately wished she had not.

  William’s jaw tightened and his eyes narrowed at the insinuation. “He started this, not me,” he said stiffly.

  “Win or lose, do you think that would change my affections? Would I be less inclined to one man who holds my affections because he beat or was beaten by another? Is that important to me?” she demanded.

  “He started this, and I will finish it.” William turned to leave, but Leah pursued him, stepping over the other spectators as she followed him on the other side of the railing that separated the stands from the field.

  “William will you tilt with him when you know nothing of such things?” Her pleas were taking on an air of frustrated anger at his obstinance. “You have a great many talents, and I have no doubt that you could best him in hand to hand combat, but you know nothing of such sports as this.” He did not slow his pace or give any indication that he had heard her at all. “William, people get killed for such trivials as this,” she said desperately.

  He whirled to face her and stopped with his face very close to hers. His eyes were hard. “There is only one thing I am bred for. There is only one thing that I was trained to do, and this fool has chosen this thing in which to test me! If there is blood spilled today, it will be Braddock blood!” He roared the last at her with a murderous look in his eye. Leah watched him storm off in a stunned silence. What was happening? How could what had been a perfectly pleasant day only moments before spiral out of control so quickly? She wanted to run after William to make him see, but there was no point. Men and their stupid vanity! All she could do was wait to see and pray for the best. She fidgeted and squirmed and sat tensely in her seat with a presentiment of evil that she could not shake.

  ***

  They faced each other across the lists. William was on a borrowed destrier that would not seem to hold still, sensing the excitement of the crowd and the tension of its rider. It stamped nervously and cantered slightly in this direction and that.

  Meanwhile, Vincent looked every bit the noble knight in his new jousting armor with a reinforced, oversized left shoulder plate. His shield had a lion’s head emblazoned on it crossed by two swords underneath and the motto “Lion Hearted” engraved beneath it in a childish emulation of England’s late great king, Richard, Cur Du Lion. William smiled to recall his unwitting insult of this earlier when he had compared Vincent to a lamb that thought himself a lion.

  For all his jabs at Vincent’s skills, Vincent was bigger than William, and he was from a strong family. William was not at all sure of himself. But he had been unable to resist. He hated that Vincent had such an obvious design on Leah, and he was even more uneasy with the fact that Vincent was very close to the age where he could make an actual suit for Leah’s hand. Then to be humiliated by him in front of Leah was more than he could bear.

  William began to feel nervous. He knew well what he planned to do, but he had scarcely trained in the knights’ arts of chivalry. Jurou’s instruction had been far more pragmatic and devoted little time to “silly games,” as Jurou called them. “I’m teaching you to stay alive, not win a silly contest,” he would say whenever William asked about it. Nevertheless as a consequence of this training, William could see a hundred weaknesses in the mode of attack Vincent was guaranteed to employ on this occasion. There was no cunning or strategy at all involved, it was simply a test of who could take a hit better, and William had no intention of taking a hit from Vincent. In fact, he would unseat Vincent so dramatically that no onlooker would have any choice but to acknowledge the folly of such foolish games as any real test of prowess in battle. His mind was made up, but even as he contemplated his course of action, his resolve waivered. William suspected that his actions would be frowned upon for his unconventional method. “And what do you care for the approval of these people who have so long made you the object of their scorn?” he demanded of himself. “You have been trained for one thing and one thing only: to win. Jurou did not waste time with pretended nobility or vanity. He trained to keep you alive, and that is exactly what you are about to do. You can
see how easy it will be to crush this dolt who has challenged you and who sets his lustful eyes on Leah; why then do you hesitate?” Jurou’s words echoed in his ears: “It is too late to turn back now. This is your life! The time for fair play is before the battle has begun. If you should not be at odds with an opponent, you halt the situation before it deteriorates to combat. But once the battle is joined, there is only the living and the dead!”

  Yet even as he contemplated all this, something else was eating at him. “Anger is not your ally,” Jurou had said a thousand times to William, who had come to him as an angry young man. “Anger robs you of your strength prematurely; it puts blinders on you so all you see is what's in front of you, not what's around you. And it robs you of your most important weapon,” he said, poking William in the forehead. “Your mind. Great warriors are not emotional warriors but calculating, detached intellectuals! This is the most important lesson for you.” William had long struggled to control his rage; although Jurou had said this was his most important lesson, it had also proved to be the hardest of all Jurou's lessons.

  When he remained in control of his emotions, he was amazed by the almost transcendent power he seemed to have over the battle. But he loved the cathartic release of focusing his anger on a single target and destroying it. It was how he had always dealt with his emotions and the only way he really knew to release them. Jurou's method taught him to not let himself get worked up, but that was easy for one as naturally calm as Jurou. For William it was a daily fight. He knew that anger was controlling him now, but he didn't care. He wanted this. He had always wanted this, and the pleasure of the kill was so much richer in the moment when he surrendered to the rage that fueled him.

  His eyes fell on Leah, anxiously watching from the stands. He made a mental note to apologize to her when this was all over. Leah was exceedingly soft-hearted, and he worried that he often injured her with his coarse manners. She was only concerned for his well-being, and she was perhaps the only person who did care about that at this point. William tore the cumbersome helmet from his head. He had been trained to use every sense, and he could not tolerate the restricted visibility and hearing the helmet brought with it. The added protection was not worth the sacrifice. The marshals of the field had insisted on it as a well-placed lance to an unprotected head would be the end of any that were so met, but again William had no intention of being there when Vincent’s lance crossed his path.

  He and Vincent stared each other down across the lists, and William felt very out of place sitting astride a strange horse, holding his spear instead of a lance.

  He could almost see Vincent’s smirk as he considered William’s unprotected head. William felt every eye on him. The blood coursed in his ears, and his anger flowed into him and tensed his muscles.

  As if sensing his thoughts, Vincent dropped his visor and spurred his horse into a charge. William did likewise. Those assembled drew a collective breath. Though they were only boys, it was to the inexperienced that the most grievous injuries were often dealt, the victor not being able to judge the force of his strikes and the loser not being able to absorb them safely. This was even more the interesting battle as it was the only Braddock - Dawning contest that would take place that day and symbolized the next generation of Braddocks and Dawnings crossing swords in bitter rivalry. Today’s was a joust that no one would soon forget. The lines were clearly drawn between the two sides, and that was typically the biggest draw for all the locals. John Dawning had been good, as he rarely but occasionally lost in such contests. Richard was an old favorite as he never lost, and now the two youngest sons of each of the powerful barons were facing off for the first time. William Dawning had taken a dramatic turn indeed from the upbringing and chivalry of his father and siblings, but no one assembled there could have known just how far from his father’s legacy this son had grown; they were now about to find out.

  The two young nobles galloped across the meadow, their horses’ hooves churning up the earth with each thundering step. Vincent’s armor was slightly oversized for the young man, and William’s something outlandish that none assembled had ever seen before, much more sleek and oriental in design. It was at that moment that they saw the function of its design. When the two combatants were only a few paces from each other and a collision imminent, William rolled to his left out of his saddle and onto the soft turf with a fluidity and grace that was inconceivable in the bulky iron suits his contemporaries wore. He came to his feet with his spear in hand. Vincent could only watch in confusion as he charged past the riderless steed. He was unable to rein in his mount in time even as he understood what was happening. William was swinging his spear with both hands at Vincent’s mount’s forelegs as if he were swinging an axe at the trunk of a tree. He was in a full gallop and there was nothing to be done. The horse’s legs were torn from beneath it. With a piercing whinny it pitched forward, catapulting the young knight face first into the dirt. He hit the ground hard and his back arched unnaturally, his mailed boots snapping up almost to the back of his helmeted head. His lance tip stuck into the ground and stayed standing there at the angle in which it had fallen. There was a terrible crash of armor and barding followed by a profound silence. Astonishment struck the assembly dumb for a moment as no one had ever witnessed anything like this.

  Vincent struggled to his hands and knees and crawled forward in a daze. William stepped up to him with disdain and put his foot on the mailed side of the severely injured competitor. “You lose, Sir Knight.” His words dripping with contempt, he shoved Vincent down into the dirt.

  As if this was the signal, the shock of the moment wore off all at once and the crowd was on its feet, howling its displeasure. The marshals spurred their horses forward and raced out to the competitors.

  “Surrender your weapon!” Jean ordered of William while Martin tended to Vincent.

  William looked up at Jean in mild surprise. “Since when is it a custom to demand the weapon of the victor?”

  “How dare you claim victory for such an unchivalrous, unbecoming—” The marshal’s words failed him as he sputtered in rage. “How dare you speak in such a way! Shame, William Dawning, shame! Now surrender your weapon!” He took a menacing step forward and William’s spear fired out of his right hand. He let it slide through his hand until the point was only a few inches from the throat of the marshal before tightening his grip to halt its progress. The marshal instantly froze, looking down at the point of the weapon uncomfortably close to his unprotected throat.

  “I take such actions as this to be threatening. And I will only surrender my weapon when it has been struck from me. Do you believe that you are the warrior to do that?” His spear was steady and his gaze leveled at Jean. “I await your decision, Sir Knight.” William said the last to the aging marshal with the same derision he had said it to his young counterpart, who by now had his helmet removed to reveal a face that had been crushed on the inside of the helmet. Vincent’s nose was broken, his jaw was twisted, and there were lacerations running across all visible parts of his face. His eyes were rolled back in his head and there was such an effusion of blood that William’s resolve waivered slightly to see the damage he had inflicted.

  The marshal looked for help from his comrade, but Martin was already racing toward the stands yelling for help. Feeling helpless, Jean only repeated with all the force of passion he could muster. “Your coat of arms shall be reversed and subject to derision for your misdeeds. You shall be known as a coward and as unchivalrous. How dare you? How dare you? Oh shame, shame, William Dawning!”

  At the sight of Vincent’s condition, William began to feel the moment of the marshal’s words, but the hissing, booing crowd strengthened his resolve to behave as if this were what he had intended all along.

  Baron Braddock and his entourage were running across the field toward Vincent. William felt this was a timely moment for his departure. Wordlessly, he whirled his spear back under his shoulder with a flourish and stood upright from his guard posi
tion. “Do as you like. I am not a knight, and your threats are meaningless to me.”

  William mounted his horse, trying not to show that he was in a hurry, though he felt any moment he would be seized from behind. He turned his mount to leave the field. As he did so, he had to pass the gallery of the nobles where his mother was seated, as well as Leah and Vincent Braddock’s family. One by one, each spectator in the stands of the nobles turned their backs to him, disavowing any connection with him. Everyone in turn followed suit in the general crowd, taking their cue from the nobles. All at once the field was silent save for the exertions of those laboring to assist Vincent. Only Martha and Leah had not turned their backs on him, but his mother had her eyes fixed on the ground.

  Leah’s eyes were wide and full of emotion as she watched him. William stopped and looked at her for a long moment, he saw in her face concern and disappointment. It was in her fervent gaze that William found the shame that he had refused to feel up to that point. She looked as if she would go to him, but some unseen hand would not permit it.

  Instead he continued his solemn ride from the lists, refusing to flee from the palpable scorn of those assembled as he so desperately wanted to do. But to do so would have been a sign of weakness, and all his actions today had been to project strength, to prove himself. There was extra commotion around Vincent that caught William’s attention. William’s eyes locked with Daniel Braddock, who was cradling the body of his son, which hung in an unnaturally limp position. Daniel set his son down gently and stood and roared across the lists to William: “I will avenge this insult that has been done to my family! I swear to drink your blood, William Dawning. You and I are enemies, and I will consider any who aid you as an enemy to the Braddocks also.” William did not respond. He did not show any emotion. He was terrified that he could have turned so many people against him in an instant. Even Daniel Braddock, who had known him since birth, not only hated him but had sworn a blood feud against him. Braddock took his silence as disdain and only grew angrier. “I would challenge your honor if you had any honor to challenge. You are a fool and a coward!” he screamed at William’s retreating back.