The Ill-Made Knight Read online

  I went to France.

  Brother John and I left the monks without a goodbye and walked across the river at the bridge. I had to pass my former master’s shop, but no one recognized me. We walked out into the meadow, and there were the city archery butts – really, they belonged to Southwark, but we all used them. And John – no longer brother John – walked straight up to an old man with a great bow and proclaimed himself desirous of taking service.

  The old man – hah, twenty years younger than I am now, but everyone looks ancient when you are fifteen – looked at John and handed him his bow.

  ‘Just bend it,’ he said. ‘And don’t loose her dry or I’ll break your head.’

  John took the bow which, to me, looked enormous – the middle of the bow was as thick as my wrist. It was a proper war bow, not like the light bows I’d shot. A good war bow of Spanish yew was worth, well, about as much as a fine rondel dagger.

  John took it, tested the string, and then he took up an odd posture, almost like a sword stance, pointed the bow at the ground and raised it, drawing all the while.

  He didn’t get the whole draw. I was no great archer, but I knew he should have pulled the string to his cheek and he only got it back to his mouth, and even then he was straining. He grunted, exhaled and let the string out gradually.

  ‘Too heavy for me, master,’ he confessed.

  The old man took an arrow from his belt and turned to face the butt. He took his bow back the way a man might receive his wife back from a guardian at the end of a long trip. His right hand stroked the wood.

  Then he seized the grip, pointed the bow down as John had, lifted it and loosed his arrow in one great swinging motion. His right hand went back almost to his ear, and the arrow sang away to bury itself in the butt – it was no great shot, yet done so effortlessly as to show mastery, just as a goldsmith or cordwainer might do some everyday craft so that you’d see their skill.

  An armourer once told me that any man might make one fine helmet, but that a master armourer made one every day just as good.

  At any rate, the master archer watched his arrow a moment. ‘You know how to shoot,’ he admitted to John. ‘Have your own bow?’

  ‘No,’ John confessed.

  The old man nodded. Spat. ‘Armour?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ John said.

  ‘Sword?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’ John was growing annoyed.

  ‘Buckler?’ the old man pressed on.

  ‘No!’ John said.

  ‘Rouncey?’ the old man asked. ‘I am only taking for a retinue. We ride.’

  ‘No!’ John said, even more loudly.

  The old man laughed; it was a real laugh, and I liked him instantly. He laughed and clapped John on the shoulder. ‘Then you shall have to owe me your pay for many days, young man,’ he said. ‘Come and I’ll buy you a cup of wine, then we’ll go and find you some harness.’

  ‘I’d like to come to France,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘Can you pull a bow?’ he asked.

  I hung my head. ‘Not a war bow,’ I admitted. ‘But I can fight.’

  ‘Of course you can. God’s pity on those who cannot. Can you ride?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  That stopped him. He paused and turned back. ‘You can ride, boy?’ he asked.

  ‘I can joust. A little,’ I admitted. ‘I can use a sword. My father was a knight.’ The words came unbidden.

  ‘But you have no gear.’

  I nodded.

  He looked at me. ‘You are a big lad, and no mistake, and if your hair is any sign of your fire, you’ll burn hot. I misdoubt that my lord will take you as a man-at-arms with no arms of your own, but you look likely to me. Can you cook?’

  Here I was, being measured as a potential killer of men, and suddenly I was being asked if I could cook. I could, though.

  ‘I can cook and serve. I can carve. I know how to use spices.’ I shrugged. It was true enough.

  He reached into his purse and handed me flint and a steel. ‘Can ye start a fire, lad?’

  ‘I could if I had dry tow, some bark and some char,’ I said. ‘Only Merlin could start a fire with flint and steel alone.’

  He nodded and pulled out some charred linen and a good handful of dry tow.

  I dug a shallow hole with my heel because of the wind and gathered twigs. I found two sticks and made a little shelter for my bird’s nest of fire makings, and laid some char cloth on my nest of tow. Then I struck the steel sharply down on the flint, with a piece of char sitting on the flint. I peeled minute strips of metal off the face of the steel with the flint – that’s really what a spark of metal is, as any swordsman can see, just a red-hot piece of metal, too small to see. A few sparks fell on my charred linen and it caught. I laid it on my nest and blew until I had flame, and laid the burning nest on the ground and put twigs on top.

  The old man put out my fire with one stomp of his booted foot. ‘Can you do it in the rain?’ he asked.

  ‘Never tried,’ I admitted.

  ‘I like you,’ he said. ‘You ain’t a rat. Too many little rats in the wars. If I take you to France to help cook, you’ll still get to France. Understand me, boy?’

  ‘Will I fight?’ I asked.

  He smiled. It was a horrible smile. ‘In France, everyone fights,’ he said.

  So I went to France as the very lowest man in a retinue: the cook’s boy.

  It’s true. In Italy, they still call me Guillermo le Coq – William the Cook. It’s not some social slur. When I started fighting in Italy, I was riding with men who could remember when I was their cook’s boy.

  Because in France, everyone fights.

  We’re almost to Poitiers, so hold your horses. I went and said goodbye to my sister. She wanted to be a nun, but we were too poor – convents required money for women who wanted to take orders – and the Sisters of St John, the women who served with the knights, were very noble indeed, and didn’t take women without more quarters of arms than my sister would ever be able to muster. But they were good women, for all that, and they accepted her as a serving sister, a sort of religious servant. It was low, but so was the rank of ‘cook’s boy’. I was lucky I wasn’t visibly branded a thief; she was lucky she wasn’t spreading her legs in Southwark five times a day. And we both knew it.

  Before I saw her, the lady of the house came in person. I gave her my best bow and the sele of the day, and she was courteous. She spoke beautifully. She was the daughter of one of the northern lords, and she spoke like the great aristocrat she was.

  ‘Your sister has been grievously miss-used,’ the lady said.

  I kept my eyes down.

  ‘She has a real vocation, I think. And my sisters and I would, if certain conditions were met, be delighted to accept her.’ She honoured me with a small smile.

  I bowed again. I was a convicted felon and my sister was a raped woman. A gentleman knows, but among peasants, rape is the woman’s fault, isn’t it? At any rate, I had the sense to keep my mouth shut.

  ‘It is possible that you will, ahem, improve yourself,’ she said, her eyes wandering the room. ‘If that were to happen, with a small donation, we would be delighted to accept your sister as our sister.’ She rose. ‘Even without a donation, I will make it a matter of my own honour that she is safe here.’

  I bowed again.

  The lady’s words – and her unsolicited promise on her honour – are probably what prevented me from murdering my uncle on the last night I was in England. Before God, I thought of it often enough.

  Her suggestion fired my blood and helped set me on the road to recovering from the darkness that surrounded me. Remember, gentles, I had lost my girl, my sister’s honour and my own.

  I had nothing and I was nothing. Brother John was right: I’d have been a sneak thief in days.

  But the lady gave me an odd hope, a sense of mission. I would take a ransom in France and buy my sister grace.

  My sister had recovered some in three days. She wa
s sorry to see me go, but truly happy to be staying with the sisters, even as a servant. She managed to embrace me and wish me well, and gave me a little cap she’d made me of fine linen, with the cross of her order worked into it. She saved my life with that cap. It may be the finest gift I ever got. At the time, I was so happy to hear her speak without whimpering that I paid it no heed.

  At the gate, there was a Knight of the Order chatting with the porter. He smiled at me. He was one tough-looking bastard, with a tan so dark he looked like a Moor, a white line from his brow across one eye and across his nose. He wore a black arming coat with the eight pointed cross-worked in thread and black hose. I bowed.

  ‘You must be Mary’s brother,’ he said.

  I bowed again. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘She says you go to France. To war.’ He fingered his beard.

  I nodded, awestruck to be talking to one of the athletes of Christ. ‘I want to be a knight,’ I said suddenly.

  He put his hand on my head and spoke a blessing. ‘Fight well,’ he said. His eyes had a look, as though he could see through me. ‘May the good shepherd show you a path to knighthood.’

  We sailed for France in a ship so large I could have got lost in the holds. The ship was assigned to Lord Stafford and some young menat-arms. John had two doublets, a fine fustian-covered jack, a dented basinet and a pair of boots that were like leather hose. His sword was rusty and his buckler wasn’t as nice as the one my uncle had robbed me of.

  I spent all my time on the boat fixing his gear. I’d done some sewing – how John, who’d been a monk, had avoided sewing is a mystery to me, but he wouldn’t sew a stitch. I begged needles and thread from some of the women. All the older archers had women –some were mere whores, but others were solid matrons, married to their archers. Two were dressed like ladies. A master archer after Crécy might have more money than a moneylender and could dress his lady as well as many knights.

  Any gate, I was pretty enough, and by the standards of a company of archers, I had excellent manners, so they cosseted me and loaned me needles and thread, and I mended everything John owned. Our first night in Gascony, I took his helmet to an armourer – the castle was ringed with them after so many years of English armies coming – and begged the use of the man’s anvil and a mushroom stake. You don’t need a hammer to take the dent out of a helmet.

  The armourer was kindness itself. I’ve often noticed that people will be friendly to the young where they might be stiff to an older man. So he fed me some cheap wine, and watched while I unpicked the liner of the helmet, laid it aside (filthy, ill kept and needing repair) and carefully bashed the dent against the stake – from the inside.

  I couldn’t budge the dent.

  Finally the Gascon laughed, took the helmet from me, and removed the dent with three careful whangs against the stake.

  ‘You know how,’ he said. ‘You just aren’t strong enough.’

  It’s true. I’d watched a master armourer in Southwark take the dents out of a knight’s helmet once, so I knew the technique. I just didn’t realize that the simple motions required great strength and technique – there’s a lesson there for swordsmen, if you like. The armourer made it look simple. Like the master archer, eh?

  Since the cheap wine was free and he fed me, I sat in the Gascon’s forge and repaired the liner, mending the places where the raw wool of the padding was leaking, washed it and hung it by the forge fire to dry. There truly are Christians in the world, and I mention him to God every time I hear Mass. He and his good wife fed me a dozen times during the weeks we were in Bordeaux.

  My point is that I got John’s kit into better shape, and the master archer, Master Peter, saw it. That was good.

  The cook was called Abelard the Deacon. The word in the company was that he’d been ordained a deacon as a young man, and they’d cast him from his order for gluttony. In truth, he wasn’t fat like other cooks; he must have had some curse on him, for he ate and ate and never gained. He was tall and very strong, and I saw him fight and he was a killer. He was like a monster – no skill, but lots of strength. Sometimes, they are the most dangerous men.

  He was also well read, and when he found that I had read some of the words of the great Aquinas, my status changed more than it would have if I could have arrayed myself in new armour. He became my protector against archers with a tendency to young men, and against men who simply like to haze the young, and against my true foes, the squires.

  By the sweet saviour, they were my first enemies. I hated my uncle, but he was just a sad sinner, a miser and a rapist. The squires were my age, nobly born and very full of themselves. Their leader, Diccon Ufford, had made a campaign the year before with his knight, but the rest of them were as green as I was, and eager to improve their status by putting themselves above someone else. I was just about the only man they could be lord of, as the archers treated them with the scorn they richly deserved. To be fair, Diccon scarcely troubled me, but his lieutenant in all things was Richard Beauchamps, and he never tired of humiliating me.

  As the cook’s boy, it was my place to do whatever was asked of me, and I found that the squires devoted themselves to using all my time. My second night in Gascony, I was kicked awake to curry horses. The next night I cooked for my Lord and the captain of our retinue, Thomas de Vere, Earl of Oxford. I didn’t try to play on our relation. Richard Beauchamps was the lord’s squire; when I went to cut the beef, Richard took the knife from my hand and kicked me.

  ‘That for your impudence, bastard!’ he said. ‘Carving is for gentles.’

  I watched him for a moment – I was proud of my control – as he failed to carve the beef. My hands were shaking with anger, but I made myself take deep breaths.

  ‘Then perhaps you’d like me to show you how to do it?’ I said in my mother’s best accent.

  The Earl was watching us, and his squire couldn’t really attack me in public, so he turned.

  ‘You’re dead,’ he said. ‘I’m going to beat you blue and make you beg me to stop.’

  I smiled.

  War.

  Our war amused the archers. I’d love to say they all backed me, but they didn’t. Most of them were twenty-five, or even older, and the affairs of boys were beneath them. Even John, who liked me and was truly grateful, then and later, for my work on his kit, still thought that any bruises I got from boys my own age were either deserved or part of growing up.

  Try the organized hatred of six older boys.

  When I carried a tray, I was tripped. When I curried a horse, dirt was poured on its back. When I cooked, hands would pour pepper and salt into my dishes. When I built a fire, people would piss on it.

  The archers found it funny, in the way mistreating a mongrel dog can become funny.

  I may have red hair and a temper, but I had never been the scapegoat, the Judas, before. I was usually top boy or close enough. I didn’t have the right armour for the contest, and a bitter month passed while I grew some.

  It wasn’t the beatings. Richard beat me three times, I think. He lacked the pure evil to kill or maim me, and he wasn’t as vicious as my uncle. But the endless hatred had an effect.

  I never seemed able to get one of them alone, yet they quite regularly got me, three or four to one. The worst was when I was bathing. They took my only set of clothes and burned them. Then three of them beat me very thoroughly, leaving me bruised and naked by the river. Walking naked through a military camp is a good way to make yourself known to a great many men, let me tell you. I was the laughing stock of the camp for two days.

  John found me clothes – too big to fit, dirty and full of lice.

  I survived.

  But I yearned to turn the tables, though I never seemed to manage it. I lay in wait for one of them and he never came to water his knight’s horse, even though he’d done it three days in a row. I put salt in their food, and they either didn’t notice or I hadn’t used enough.

  It was the cook who saved me. He liked to talk, so we talked
, and after a few doses of Aquinas he started to protect me. Just in small ways.

  ‘Two boys seem to be waiting under the eaves of the armoury tent,’ he said one evening.

  ‘A mysterious hand tried to salt the goose,’ he mentioned the next day.

  ‘I found a squire with no work to do, so I made him wash pots,’ he grinned a week later.

  At the same time, I had found something to love, and that was riding. I had never owned a horse. Indeed, I’d scarcely learned to ride, even while learning to joust – like many young men, it was enough to stay on through the course. I laugh now at what I thought was good riding, back as a boy in London.

  Master Peter purchased me a small riding horse. I’ll never know what the old archer saw in me, but he saw something – that horse cost him nine silver pennies of Gascony. I rode every day, everywhere I could – I remember fetching six leather canteens full of water on horseback, once, to the vast amusement of the archers.

  The truth is that, when I tell this tale, I make my life sound hard. The other boys annoyed me, and sometimes they hurt me, but I was also outside, riding, cooking, getting taught how to use a sword and a spear. The knights – men I worshipped the way the ancient men worshipped their gods – were not distant beings. They were right there with us, and every day I had a chance to speak to one or other of them.

  My favourite, of course, was our own Earl of Oxford. He was a great lord, but he had the common touch. He spoke to the older archers as if they were comrades, not inferiors, and he ruffled my hair and called me ‘Judas’, which may sound harsh, but it was better than ‘bare arse’, which is what most of the men called me after the river incident. We were in his contingent; Peter was one of his sworn men, and we all wore the Oxford badge on our red and yellow livery.

  Like many boys, I was in a constant state of anxiety about my status. Technically I was a cook, not a soldier, and I was worried I would be left behind – either when the army marched or when the day of battle dawned. By blessed St George, what a pleasure it might be to be left behind for a battle! Bah. I lie. If you are a man-of-arms, it is in arms you must serve, and that was my choice. But fear of being left behind made me work very hard, both as a cook and as an apprentice soldier. I was big, even then, and I would walk out into the fields below the castle to cut thistles with my cheap sword, or to fence against a buckler held by my friend the cook.