Then he urged Talos forward, and spoke a barely audible command. Talos dropped his head, clamped his teeth about the centre of the lance shaft, and lifted it up. As de Rosseley leaned forward, he turned his head and the knight took it from him. “Work with a horse, and it you’ll find it can be far more to you than just transport.”
And with a broad smile, he turned and left Asif sitting in the mud.
XXII
OVER SUBSEQUENT DAYS the company tested themselves, one against the other, each taking their turn as schoolmaster.
Galfrid showed them how to use a bowstave as a weapon. Tancred demonstrated sword moves that even those experienced in the art had never before seen—while Galfrid looked on with detached cynicism. Aldric showed them how to improvise deadly weapons from the most unlikely of resources.
De Rosseley became a reasonable archer, and Asif a fair horseman.
And Aldric Fitz Rolf even began to overcome the obstacle that had dogged him these past two years, thanks to his sparring with Mélisande.
“You think you cannot fight well because of your injured shoulder,” she said. “I can see it. But you just have to fight a little differently. And fighting differently is good; it is an advantage. Training develops reflexes, but it also breeds habits, patterns. Introduce surprises, and your adversary’s own patterns may be his undoing. That is how Tancred wins. How Hood outwits his enemies.”
He lunged at her with a knife. She sidestepped and grabbed his left arm, twisting it, and he froze, helpless.
“Fear is your first enemy,” she said, her face close to his. “You fear this shoulder will fail you. You try to keep it from harm, hold it back, and I see that. So I target it.” She released him. He stood back, flexed his left arm and straightened his tunic. “Don’t give your enemy such a gift. You may spare your shoulder only to lose your life.”
She stood ready for a fresh attack. Aldric crouched, dagger at the ready. “You know Gisburne also has an injured left shoulder?” she said.
“Gisburne?” said Aldric. He swiped at her. She saw it coming and dodged back. “I see no sign of it.”
“Precisely my point.”
“How bad?”
“He almost lost his arm at Hattin.”
“Gods... He was there? I had no idea.” Aldric tried a feint, then brought the dagger swiftly up, but Mélisande did not fall for it.
“He keeps it to himself. The injury, too.”
“Does it trouble him much?”
“Every day,” said Mélisande.
Aldric brought his hands together, shook his shoulders, then lunged at her with his right arm. She caught it, pulled him forward and locked it in a tight hold. Only then did she realise his right hand was empty. The knife was inches from her throat, in his left hand.
She grinned. “You’re learning, Aldric Fitz Rolf!” Then she ducked and twisted, throwing him clean over her shoulder so he slammed down on his back.
He lay for moment on the damp grass, regaining his breath. “Where did you learn to fight like that?”
“Here and there,” she said. “Mostly there.”
GISBURNE HIMSELF KEPT a quiet distance from proceedings. He sometimes ate with them, and from time to time joined their activities—the sparring or riding—but for the most part he left the company to their own devices. To “get to know each other,” he said. Mélisande understood his reasoning. She also understood why, for now at least, it was better—for the sake of the whole company—that the two of them maintain a respectful distance. She found it strange, nonetheless: him being there, yet not there.
Occasionally she spied him off at the archery butts, taking practice shots on his own, or taking Nyght, his black stallion, out across the grounds. It troubled her; there had always been a solitariness about him, but of late he had retreated further, and she wondered if it were something he could ever truly overcome.
In some ways, she missed him more now than when he’d been a thousand miles away.
One day, when they were resting between sessions, taking a drink about a fire they had built, she spotted him standing in the circle of dead earth beneath the great yew tree. He was leaning against its trunk, studying something—Tancred’s map, she thought. She wandered over and stood beside him. As she approached, he screwed the cloth into a ball and shoved it inside the half-open front of his battered, black gambeson.
“Do you care to join us?” she said.
“Better not,” he said. “I must get back to the palace. I am expecting a delivery from Llewellyn today.”
She smiled. “What is it this time, an apparatus for flying? A cloak to make you invisible? A sword that can cut through steel and stone, perhaps?”
He smiled back. “Nothing so elaborate.”
She looked at him intently for a moment. “Why are we here, Gisburne?” she said. “Doing this?”
He shrugged. “Always hone the blade before a battle.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Is that one of de Gaillon’s?”
“Is it that obvious?” He smiled. “It’s not just about that. It’s about the strengths and weaknesses. The alliances, the rivalries, the resentments... It’s not enough to throw ingredients in a pot—you have to boil them together.”
“Honing the blade. Boiling the pot. Is this really how de Gaillon spoke? I’d have screamed.”
“If there is a weakness, I don’t want to discover it out there.” He nodded his head towards the dark edge of the forest. Then, after a moment, he added: “How is Galfrid?”
She glanced back at the sombre squire. “He refuses to spar with Tancred,” she said. “He will not even speak with him. Every time he has a bow in his hand and the Templar in his sights, I see him fighting temptation like St Anthony in the desert. But he hasn’t killed him yet, so...”
“He’ll come round,” said Gisburne.
“You’d know all this for yourself if you were more involved.”
Gisburne, staring off into the trees, did not respond. Mélisande frowned and drew closer. “Why so distant, Gisburne? You’re as good a rider or swordsman as anyone. You understand stealth and tactics at least as well as I, and we both know you are the best bowman here. You will lead us into battle, so why are you not with us now? Leading us?”
Gisburne shrugged. “I don’t want to be the focus of attention. I want each to see the others’ skills, not just mine. To see their true worth, beyond status, sex, the colour of skin.”
Mélisande nodded. “I see that, and understand it; but an army also needs its general. It’s he that pulls it together.” She looked more intently at him. “Are you sure there are no other reasons you seek to separate yourself from us? Those things you said, when the company was first gathered, when you were for sending us away...”
Gisburne shook his head, and shifted awkwardly. “I was foolish. Not thinking.”
“Perhaps you were thinking too much. Perhaps you still do... When I asked why we were here, I meant also why are we still here? Time is wasting, and Hood also prepares. The pot has been boiling for days, now. You can’t put it off forever, Gisburne.”
“I am not putting anything off...”
“You fear you will fail us. All those months languishing in an empty house have made you doubt yourself.”
“Don’t worry about me,” said Gisburne, irritably.
“I know you were ill over the winter.”
“How did you...?”
“Because I find things out. Though it pains me to have to find them out that way. Christ, Gisburne—you could have died. Alone.”
“I’ve got through worse.”
She reached out and moved a strand of hair from his brow. “The capacity to survive is not infinite. There comes the day when it abandons every one of us. But others can help, if you let them.”
He looked her in the eye, and for a moment seemed to realise the impossibility of hiding from her. “It will all be over soon,” he said.
At that moment, a shout went up; Gisburne looked towards the palace
and saw a page running headlong towards him. The rest of the company turned at his approach and De Rosseley and Asif stood, all watching in anticipation as the lad knelt and offered up a tiny, tightly-folded parchment. Gisburne looked upon it with a grave expression, then, crushing it in his fist, strode across to the others and threw it into the fire.
“It’s time,” he said. “Richard has landed on the south coast and even now marches his army north. At dawn tomorrow, we ride into the forest, ready or not.”
XXIII
IT WAS LATE when Gisburne found himself climbing the stairs to the Queen’s Chamber, the single candle throwing a huge shadow behind him. He had waited until certain the others were abed; whether Mélisande would also be asleep, he did not know, but he would wake her if he had to. He knew he must see her now, or miss his chance. He stopped for a moment and listened: no sound, no movement, just the wind gusting outside, driving a light rain before it. Tucking the wrapped steel plate tighter under his arm, he resumed his steady ascent.
The thing under his arm made his mind drift back to the last meeting with Llewellyn. The old enginer had been sat in a chair in his perpetually smoky workshop hidden away in the bowels of Nottingham castle, trying to decipher a parchment with the aid of a glass, and failing. “Damn these eyes!” he had said, flinging it upon the bench.
He had looked old. He had always been old to Gisburne; it was something he took for granted, much as one might of a grandparent. But today it was different. Age was no longer just a quality of his—the same today as it was yesterday and would be tomorrow. Now it seemed to truly weigh upon him. Reducing him. Perhaps for the first time, Gisburne understood that Llewellyn would not live forever.
Gisburne could not remember once seeing Llewellyn outside of this chamber, or its equivalent in the White Tower. So oddly severed from the world was his experience of the man—made more profound by the bizarre, improbable devices that perpetually surrounded him in this chamber—that it almost had the quality of a dream. But today, he was flesh and blood, both of which were failing him.
“Oh, it’s you,” he had grunted as Gisburne entered. He then tried to rise, but Gisburne had waved him back to his seat, and he had slumped back with a wheezy cough. The grumpiness was reassuring, but as the old man’s hands were less steady, his eyes less quick to focus—if they could focus at all. In every one of their meetings up to now, there had come a point when Gisburne’s requests—always challenging, and sometimes impossible—had awoken a spark in him. But not today. He noted the requirements, scratching them upon a slate, then, as their meeting came to a close said, “I am not long for this world.”
The sudden candour shocked Gisburne. All traces of irascibility were, for that moment, quite gone. He seemed suddenly without guile—child-like, almost. And a little afraid.
Gisburne had dismissed the words, of course, and said that Llewellyn would outlive him—a standing joke between them, given Gisburne’s exploits. But today was the first time he felt certain it was not true. “You need to get out of this dark dungeon,” he told the old man. “Get the sun on your face and some fresh air in your lungs.”
“You mean for good,” said Llewellyn.
“Yes,” said Gisburne. “For good.”
HE STOPPED AT the top of the stairs and hesitated outside Mélisande’s door, his fist poised, ready to knock.
It opened before he could make another move.
“You know your right boot has a distinctive squeak?” said Mélisande. She stood before him like a ghost in the candlelight, her long red-gold hair contrasting sharply with the pure white of her shift. He gazed at her for a moment, caught up in her beauty—unadorned and bereft of the hard shell of recent days.
She put a hand on her hip. “Well, are you coming in, or not?”
Gisburne did not answer the question—but neither did he step over the threshold. “I just wanted you to have this,” he said. “Before tomorrow. Before we leave here.” He held out the wide, flat thing, crudely wrapped in plain linen.
“A gift?” said Mélisande, taking it from him with a smile and a frown. She took it, registered its weight, unwrapped the cloth. The polished steel breastplate sent dancing reflections about the dark corridor. She turned it over. It was shaped to fit her, its leather straps—dyed green—ending in bronze buckles. “Well...” she said, almost lost for words. “Most men just give a girl a ring.”
“The buckles are shaped like dragon heads,” said Gisburne. Quite why, he wasn’t sure; it was self-evident. He felt rather foolish, but he wasn’t at all sure what she was thinking.
She ran the tip of her finger over another tiny dragon stamped into the metal. “Llewellyn?” she said.
Gisburne smiled. “Who else?” Then, in case the gift were being misunderstood, added: “It’s not a mere trinket. It is made to be worn. Put to use.”
She sighed, and shook her head a little. He thought he sensed scepticism in her—even, he thought, irritation.
“Do you not like it?”
“It’s wonderful.”
“But?”
“You do know I already have armour? Among the finest in Europe, in fact?”
“This will provide extra protection against arrows,” said Gisburne. “Much more than mail alone. Where we are going...”
She put a finger to his lips, silencing him. “And if I came to you, suggesting—insisting—you change your tried and tested armour the day before a battle, how would you take that?” He did not know how to respond. She held his gaze for a moment, then relented. “I’m sorry. I appreciate it, I really do.”
Gisburne felt the moment slipping from him. This had seemed so simple in his mind. “I need to explain...” he said. “Do you know what happened at Inis na Gloichenn?”
Mélisande shrugged. “You captured Tancred.”
“But do you know how? How we knew him to be there? It wasn’t deduction. We were told.”
She frowned. “Told? Someone betrayed him?”
“Hood,” said Gisburne, and her eyebrows raised in wonder. “Tancred had collaborated with Hood’s gang—helped them effect his escape from the Tower. Then Hood helped us. Made us a present of Tancred’s whereabouts, so we might bring his reign of terror to an end.”
“It is hard to believe that altruism was behind that act...”
“You are right to think so.”
“Was it meant to eliminate a rival?”
“Perhaps. But I think there was more to it.”
“What then?”
“I think...” He pondered for a moment before continuing. “I think he wants me all to himself. To have... my undivided attention.”
She nodded slowly. “And that is why you starved him of it these past months. Why you were reluctant to pursue him...”
“It was all I could think to do—the one course from which he could make nothing. But I knew that one day the confrontation would come. And when it did, I also understood what his strategy would be. That he would target not me, but those around me. That he would hurt them, kill them. To keep me dangling on the hook. That is why I had this made.”
Finally she seemed to understand. He sighed heavily. “I have been told that putting others before yourself is a weakness. Perhaps it is. But I cannot simply let it go. I know no other way.”
Mélisande touched his face, then remembered herself and withdrew her hand. She pressed the elegantly curved armour against her, shuddering as she did so. “It’s cold!” Looking down at herself, she twisted and moved from side to side, her long hair swaying. “Impressive. The proportions are true. It will fit well over a gambeson. Doesn’t cut into the waist. Should even work well for riding.”
“I had to guess the dimensions...” said Gisburne. “Working mostly from memory.”
“It seems they were exceptionally clear in your mind.” She smiled coyly. “And I am glad of that. It is perfect. Thank you.” And she kissed him—a chaste kiss, for now, upon his cheek. “So, how good was your guesswork when it came Asif, de Rosseley an
d the others?” She gave him a mischievous look.
Gisburne reddened, and looked away.
“Gisburne?”
“There is no armour for the others. Just this.”
“No..?” Her face fell.
“There was time for Llewellyn to make only one. So I had him make it for you.”
“For me? Me alone?” Her eyes flashed with anger. “I did not ask for special treatment.” She took the breastplate off. “You could have had one made for yourself. Why did you not?”
“He doesn’t want to kill me. That is not his game.”
“Then what of the others? Do you consider them of less value than me? Or simply more capable? I’m not some damsel in distress, Gisburne. I have faced a dozen enemies without your protection. A hundred.”
Her anger baffled and exasperated him. “Hood is no ordinary enemy. I have seen him snatch an arrow from the air and shoot it back. This is not magic; it is real. And it is what we face, come tomorrow.”
“Everyone in my life from my father onwards has tried to protect me.” She fumed. “Or, more often, some idea they have of me. And each and every one has ended up doing the utter opposite.”
Gisburne grew more insistent. “Don’t you see? I do this only because I have no wish to see you die...”
The anger that had welled up in her seemed, momentarily, to turn to something else. “And don’t you see that I feel exactly the same? That if we were facing a hail of arrows, I would place that armour on you before myself?”
They stared at each other in cold silence.
“Please,” he said. “I only ask...”
“No one tells me what to wear,” she snapped, and slammed the door.
He stood for a moment in the corridor, listening to the swish of the rain. She would come round, somehow. Galfrid too. And Tancred would prove his worth. These things he had to believe, for tomorrow he would lead them to victory—or to death.
Guy of Gisburne- The Omnibus Page 106
