The Ill-Made Knight Read online

  One day – I think we’d been in France about two weeks, and the war horses were getting the sheen back in their coats after the crossing – I was cutting at the buckler, and Abelard was cutting at mine. This is a good training technique that every boy in London knows by the time he is nine years old, but I’ve never see it on the Continent. You cut at your companion’s buckler and he, in turn, cuts at yours. The faster you go, the more like a real fight it can be, but relatively safe, unless your opponent is a fool or a madman. The point is that you only hit the opponent’s shield.

  We were swashing and buckling faster and faster, circling like men in a real fight. Abelard was two fingers taller than me and broader, but fast. He was trying to keep his buckler away from me, and I was trying to close the distance.

  Suddenly there was the Earl of Oxford and half a dozen men-at-arms with hawks on their wrists. The Earl motioned to Master Abelard, who came and held his stirrup, and the earl dismounted.

  ‘So, Master Judas,’ he said. ‘Those who live by the sword will die by the sword, or so it says in the Gospels.’

  I bowed and stammered. I’d like to say that I held my head up and said something sensible or dashing, but the truth is that I stared at my bare feet – my dirty bare feet – and mumbled.

  ‘He’s very good, my lord.’ Abelard didn’t seem as tongue-tied as I was. It was also the first time anyone had told me I was good with a sword. I’d had suspicions, but I didn’t know.

  The Earl took Abelard’s buckler and drew a riding sword from his saddle. ‘Let’s see,’ he said.

  I bowed and managed to stammer out that he did me too much honour – in French.

  The Earl paused. ‘That was nicely said. Are you gently born?’

  I bowed. ‘My father was a man-at-arms,’ I said. ‘My mother—’ I must have blushed, because several of the men-at-arms laughed and one shook his head. ‘No better than she needed to be, I suppose.’ He laughed.

  It must be hard to be bastard born. Luckily, I’m not, so I felt no resentment. And, praise to God, I was intelligent enough not to claim to be a distantly related de Vere then and there.

  De Vere waved his sword. ‘Show me some sport, young Judas.’ He stepped in and cut almost straight up into the edge of my buckler. For a straight, simple blow, it was shrewd, powerful and deceptive all in one.

  I made a simple overhand blow, and he pulled the buckler back the way boys do when they make the swashbuckle into a game. I stepped with my left foot and caught it as it moved.

  Then I ducked away to the left, moving forward instead of back – another trick London apprentices use to deceive each other. Backing away is one way of fooling an opponent – closing suddenly is a better one.

  He stepped back and cut from under his buckler on the left side, again catching my buckler perfectly with a strong, crisp blow.

  We were close, almost body to body, so I sprang back and wind-milled my cheap sword, cutting the steel boss on Abelard’s buckler with a snack. I pivoted, he pivoted, and he thrust – faster than a striking snake – and caught my buckler as I pulled it back. We were going quite fast by then, and if you are a swordsman, you will know that I had a complicated choice to make in half a heartbeat. We were close, and if I stepped forward and he did the same, I’d miss my blow. If I sidestepped and he stepped back, I’d miss my blow.

  I was fast when I was young, so I stepped slightly off the line that we were moving on – circling a quarter step, you might call it – then passed forward fast and cut straight up – his blow thrown back at him.

  Snick. A smart blow into the lower rim. I was quite proud of it, as he stepped forward too late, trying to get the buckler inside my blow. I had scored a real hit on a trained man. I slipped to the right with another turning step that John had taught me, pulled back the buckler, and the Earl’s counter-cut—

  Missed the buckler altogether and cut my left arm above the wrist.

  At first all I felt was the cold, and the flat impact of the blow on my forearm. I laughed, because any hit to the body loses your companion the bout.

  Then the pain hit. It was not a sharp pain, but rather a dull pain, and when I glanced down, I was terrified to see the amount of blood coming out of the cut—a long, straight cut, almost parallel to my arm, from just above the wrist to the elbow.

  In hindsight, friends, I was the luckiest boy alive. The cut landed along the length of the bone, and the Earl, a trained man, pulled much of it, no doubt in horror. But at the time, all I saw and felt was the welling blood and the pain.

  He was with me in a moment, his hand around my waist. ‘Damn me – your pardon, boy.’

  Abelard had his own doublet unlaced, and now he pulled his shirt over his head and wrapped my arm before I could see any more. The white linen turned red. I sat down. Men and horses moved around, and I had trouble breathing. I remember looking out to sea and wondering if I would die. Then my vision narrowed. My mouth began to taste of salt, as if I was going to vomit. One of the Earl’s men-at-arms had a horn cup of wine, which he held to my lips. He was ten years older than me, round faced, with twinkling eyes.

  ‘Drink this, lad,’ he said.

  I must have been dazed as I said something hot, like, ‘I’m no lad! I’m William Gold!’

  He smiled. ‘I’m John,’ he said. ‘I meant no offence to such a puissant warrior.’

  That’s all I remember. If I passed out, which I doubt, it wasn’t for long. It was my first wound, and I took it from Thomas de Vere, Earl of Oxford. Nothing better could have happened for my prospects, because he was a debonair, chivalrous knight, and by wounding me, he felt he was in my debt somehow. The world is full of men-at-arms who would have cut my arm and told me it was my own fault. In many ways, that wound was the foundation of my career. The joke is, it was so slight it didn’t even leave a scar.

  The life of the young is never a straightforward progression. So just after the Earl wounded me and his men-at-arms began to speak well of me, with immediate consequences for their squires, someone came to the army from London. I never knew who it was, but I think it was yet another squire from the Earl of Warwick’s retinue. Whoever the bastard was, he spread the word that I had stolen a valuable dagger and been branded.

  Well, you are all soldiers. There’s nothing soldiers hate more than a thief – even though, if the truth be told, we’re all thieves, even the most chivalrous among us, eh? We kill men and take their armour; we loot houses and take convoys; we steal on a scale no poor man could imagine.

  Aye, but we despise a thief.

  Consequently, the squires, after a week of forced respect, had a new reason to hate me. And they were loud. They harassed me morning and night. I was ‘thief’ at campfires and ‘thief’ in the horse lines. Men who had liked me stopped speaking to me, and men who had been indifferent cheered when three of the squires caught me and beat me.

  I’d love to say that someone – the Earl, perhaps – came and saved me from that beating, but no one did.

  Of course I fought back! I left every mark I could on those popinjays, those pampered rich boys. I blackened their eyes and broke one blackguard’s nose. But at odds of three to one, I was hard put to accomplish much, and sometimes, if they took me by surprise, I wouldn’t even get to land a blow.

  I had two cracked ribs, my nose was broken so often it lay almost flat and my left hand was swollen like a club. I couldn’t be on my guard all the time, though I tried to be wary.

  I went to Mass with John, where I knelt on the stone floor and said my beads and looked at the paintings. I knew more Latin than the priest, but he said a good piece about Jesus as a man-at-arms.

  John rose from his knees. ‘See you at camp,’ he said.

  ‘You won’t stay?’ I asked.

  ‘I had a bellyful of this crap as a monk,’ he replied. ‘I’ve prayed enough for my entire life.’

  I hadn’t. The chapel was beautiful, decorated with the pillage of a generation of English raids and victories, I suppose, and it
was the finest church I’d ever been inside to pray. I felt safe, and happy. After Mass, I went and said my confession – only the second time, I think, that I had made a private confession, but soldiers are honorary gentlemen, in many ways.

  I was unwary walking out the door, and four of the squires were waiting for me. They pulled me down immediately – I didn’t even land a blow – and Richard sat on my chest while another sat on my legs.

  The bastard on my chest grinned and breathed his foul breath all over me. He was wearing Oxford’s colours.

  ‘Only criminals need to spend so much time in church,’ he said. He bounced a little, but he didn’t hurt me much – yet. Except, of course, that his bouncing moved my ribs.

  This was going to be bad.

  I cursed myself for a fool, letting my guard down. At the same time, I felt curiously absent. What kind of man attacks you just after you are shriven?

  Best to get it over with.

  ‘Is your breath so foul from sucking a pig’s member?’ I asked.

  He turned so red I thought he might explode. He began to beat me – one fist and then the other, right to my unprotected face. There was nothing I could do: left, right, left, right.

  I remember it well.

  And then God sent me a miracle.

  Like a mother cat picking up a kitten, the priest grabbed Richard by the neck and lifted him with one hand, then hit him so hard he broke Master Richard’s jaw. I heard it go.

  The other squires ran, but Richard just lay there and moaned.

  The priest kicked him.

  He screamed and moaned.

  The priest looked at me. ‘Go with God, my son,’ he said.

  It didn’t raise my popularity with the squires. But that didn’t matter as much as it might have, because we’d spent six weeks or more in Gascony, and suddenly the Prince was ready.

  I’d seen him at a distance, with Sir John Chandos and other famous men, all instantly recognizable to a boy like me by their arms and their horses. For me, seeing Chandos was like seeing Jesus come to earth. But the Prince – by God, messieurs, the Prince was one of the best men I ever saw: tall, debonair and as full of preux as any man could be. Too few men of high station have the bearing and power to maintain their status in the eyes of the world, but the Prince looked just as he was – one of the most powerful lords in all the world, whether by strength of arms or strength of lands.

  At any rate, the Prince did not ride out to visit the archers every day, so we seldom saw him, but at about the end of June, rumours began to fly that we were to march against the Count of Armagnac, because the French King and his army were busy in the far north, facing the famous Duke of Lancaster, our finest captain. Now, I could tell you that we didn’t know anything about the Prince’s plans, but I’d be a liar, because in an army of 5,000 men, in which 2,000 are men-at-arms, every man knew what the Prince intended, and his plans and stratagems were discussed round every campfire and in every inn. God help me I, too, criticized his plans. There is no critic louder than an ignorant fifteen-year-old making his first campaign.

  I therefore knew that the King, that is, King Edward, had decided to knock the Count of Armagnac out of the war. The whoreson count had promised to become the King’s man, but he had reneged, and we were going to make him pay – or so all the older men said. And certes, the Prince had hit Armagnac hard in the fall, so it seemed likely we’d march on Armagnac.

  But then, as so often passes in war, nothing happened.

  Aye, comrades. For weeks. We saw the ships sail in from England with more arrows and more livery coats – I finally got one of my own – and we practiced, and I cooked better meals. Some of the Gascon lords who had ridden in took their retinues and went raiding. I stopped bathing in the river to avoid being beaten or losing my new coat, which I had tailored to fit tight, like a knight’s jupon.

  And then we marched.

  Chapter Two

  When we marched, it was like a bolt of levin had flashed across the heavens and illuminated the landscape. Every man in Bordeaux – about 7,000 men – marched together, and we moved fast, heading north to Bergerac in the Dordogne. We were there before anyone could say where we were headed, and suddenly I learned a whole new set of lessons about finding firewood when 6,000 other men were doing the same; about finding a chicken, when 6,000 other men wanted one; about feeding my horse; about having time to sew; about finding a place to sleep. John was no help – he was as raw as I was myself. Abelard, on the other hand, was the consummate veteran, and he could spot a dry barn with a solid loft across six leagues of hills, predict it as being near the army’s eventual halting place and ride there cross country to set his camp. Although Abelard held no rank above that of ‘cook’ with de Vere’s retinue, he made himself indispensable by riding with the outriders, choosing a camp and arranging for the Earl’s great pavilion and all the lesser tents. He worked hard and I rode after him, and found that I was riding double the distance the army travelled. I became Abelard’s messenger boy, which suited me, as it meant I came in daily contact with the Earl and sometimes rode along with his men-at-arms or squires.

  I have to laugh, even now. Listen – boys torment each other when there’s nothing else to do and no Frenchmen to fight, but once we were on the march, that ill-feeling was mostly gone. You think I should have harboured a grudge? Perhaps. But to tell the truth, I was far more afraid that the Earl would leave me with the baggage then I was of the squires.

  A few of them felt differently, though, as you’ll hear.

  And I admit that when I saw Richard riding with a bandage on his jaw like a nun’s wimple, I mocked him.

  At any rate, when we arrived at Bergerac after five days rapid marching, I slept for most of day, rose, ate Abelard’s meal and slept again. It wasn’t until our third day in Bergerac that I pulled my weight or worked, because I was so tired and awestruck by the cook’s constitution. He was made of iron. He could ride all day and cook all night.

  After our lightning fast ride across Gascony, we stopped and waited.

  The waiting was brutal. And dull.

  By then, I was wary all the time. And after sleeping a long time and working a day or two, I was aware of a certain watchfulness from the squires. I hadn’t won them over. Most of the oldsters had something better to do than work on me, but the younger ones – and the fools, and Richard, who had had his jaw broke – weren’t going to change their minds, and the oldsters weren’t going to stop them. I could feel it. Abelard warned me – twice, in just so many words – that they meant me harm.

  I took what precautions I could, but I couldn’t hide for ever. We were still in Gascony, but I wore my sword all the time, and my jack when I could get away with it, and I did more work on horseback than any other boy my age.

  Richard Beauchamp watched me like a hawk watched a rabbit.

  I’d like to sound brave, but I was terrified, and the waiting made it worse. I was recovering from two broken ribs and a number of other, lesser injuries, and I was tired of pain. Pain wears you down – pain when you lie down hurts affects sleep, pain when you are awake affects your work – and lying on the ground makes everything worse.

  The rapid march had seemed so decisive, and all the raw men like me thought it presaged a battle. We truly were fools – all the old archers of twenty-five said we might march all summer and merely burn a castle or two, but we were in a constant state of excitement. So every day that we awoke under the ancient, mouldering walls of Bergerac and had no orders was a day of torment. The speculation ran wild. We were going to await the King, from England. We were going to fight Armagnac. We would march home. The King of France was coming for us.

  Nothing happened. And with the waiting came increased work, because foraging grew harder every day. Each day we had to ride farther to find wood, to ‘buy’ provisions from well-armed, well-warned peasants who hated us. Supposedly, we were their army, but ask a peasant who’s just had all his winter meat stolen how he feels about his protectors
.

  It was the fourth or fifth day of waiting, and I was out with Abelard, looking for food. We came to a farmstead with a dozen outbuildings and we could hear screaming.

  The peasant was dead. He’d been prosperous, and he was lying face down in his own yard with a spear through him.

  Abelard’s face grew hard. ‘I mislike this,’ he said. ‘The Prince hangs men for this. Let’s be away.’

  Still he hesitated. If the peasant was dead, his whole farm – a very rich farm – was open to us.

  You know how war is, messieurs?

  I was learning very quickly.

  Abelard dismounted in the yard, and I’ll give him this, he went to see the peasant and tried his body, but the man was dead.

  Peter went towards the nearest barn – a great stone barn that two men could have held against an army.

  I went towards the sound of the screams.

  Around the side of the house I saw the horses, and I knew them immediately. I recognized Richard Beauchamp’s horse and I knew Tom Amble’s, too. Both squires. The other horses were archers’ rounceys like mine.

  It has always been one of my virtues – or vices, whichever you like – that when I’m afraid I go forward. I saw their horses and I heard the screams, and I went forward.

  One of the archers was raping a middle-aged woman.

  She was screaming, and the other archer was mocking her.

  The two squires weren’t even watching. They were eating a ham, consuming it with the lust only a sixteen-year-old boy can bring to eating.

  I stood frozen for perhaps as long as it took my heart to beat three times.

  What is it that makes a knight?

  I ran forward and I kicked the rapist – in the head. My feet were lightly shod, but I put him down.