The Knight's Conquest

by Juliet Landon

  Grabbed on the turn, Sir Owain’s lance danced to the same tune as the previous one before being tucked, couched and levelled at a ferocious speed as the herald called again. Eloise found that her hands were clenched into tight fists, her nails digging into her palms. Her brother was slower this time, his aim late, the collision catching him full-on before his lance-point could make contact, sending it wide away and useless. Sir Owain’s lance glanced off Sir Rolph’s shield and across his breast-plate, ripping the green and gold chevrons into tatters.

  Eloise yelped, then caught sight of Griselle’s ashen face, her mouth pulled into a grimace of fear. ‘Rolph!’ Eloise yelled. ‘Come on! Stay up, Rolph!’ No one thought it strange.

  His horse was strong and agile, able to retain its balance without tipping Sir Rolph off, but their return to the far end was nothing like his opponent’s flashy gallop. His squires fussed around him as Sir Owain watched and waited, controlling his horse’s impatience to be off again, yet at the herald’s third call, it was he who shot away with the clean velocity of an arrow while Sir Rolph’s steed reared at the sharp jab upon its flanks.

  Again, Sir Rolph’s aim was mistimed by a split second and this time the unsettled horse and rider were levered up high into the air on the end of Sir Owain’s lance before crashing down backwards, Rolph taking the full weight of the horse on top of him.

  Eloise had hoped they might be a good match for each other, but now she saw the difference. Sir Owain’s speed, control, sheer strength and accuracy were awesome. Not one of the previous contestants, not even her father or Lord Pace, had shown the same remarkable ability which, albeit unwillingly, Eloise was bound to accept and admire. She heard Griselle scream and saw her struggle to stand as nearby hands tried to hold her back.

  ‘Eloise,’ her mother said, ‘shall you…?’

  ‘Yes. I’m going.’ Eloise was already pushing past, heading for the wooden staircase that led to the ground. ‘You stay with Griselle.’

  Her brother was carried into his arming-tent only moments after her arrival there, by which time she had commandeered a trestle-table and covered it with blankets ready for the unconscious and battered body. Piece by piece, men and youths unbuckled his harness and padded gambeson, working to her quiet instructions. They had seen all this before, many times.

  Eloise did not look to see who they were but took charge, giving orders to have hot water brought, linen clothes torn into strips, wooden splints to be made.

  ‘Splints, my lady?’

  ‘Yes, splints. There’s at least one break here. I don’t want any arguments. Do it. And somebody go for my physic-chest. It’s in my chamber. And find Saskia. Tell her to bring long bandages.’

  ‘I’ve brought my physician,’ a voice said. ‘He can take over now.’

  Without looking up from her task, Eloise dismissed the offer. ‘No, he can’t. This is my brother, and I can do all that’s necessary, I thank you. Get him to tend the others.’ Her fingers prodded and gently probed, testing the joints with care. ‘Collarbone broken. His jaw, too. That’ll keep him quiet. And this wrist is bent where it shouldn’t be. Tch!’

  Not one of her commands was queried by the de Molyns men who knew at first hand her reputation for healing. And of the strangers who did not, none were left in any doubt after seeing how skilled she was at a diagnosis, her setting of bones, the repair of wounds and the salving of bruises, the staunching of bleeding.

  ‘Don’t just stand there, man!’ she chided one of those who watched her. ‘Tear some strips, then hold these splints against his ankle while I bind him.’

  A familiar voice spoke gently into her ear. ‘That’s Sir Owain’s physician you’re speaking to, my dear.’

  ‘I don’t care…what? Father? You here?’ She turned, suddenly aware that she had an audience. Next to her father stood Sir Owain, both of them still in harness, bare-headed but streaked with sweat, their hair sticking flat to their foreheads. A trickle of drying blood from Sir Owain’s nostril lent an extra cogency to his expression of concern. ‘And you, sir?’ she said, coldly.

  ‘Will he be all right?’

  ‘Eventually. His brain’s addled, but that’s sparing him some pain. Bruising. Fractures. He’ll mend.’

  ‘Can I do anything? Can my man assist you?’

  The physician spoke up for himself, a monk in his middle thirties, darkly tonsured and wearing a grey-white habit that Eloise had not had time to notice until now. ‘The Lady Eloise is allowing me to assist her, sir, and that is all I ask. To take instruction from such a master is no hardship, I assure you.’ He passed another bandage to her, holding the previous end in place as she continued to bind.

  ‘Forgive me, Brother…?’ Eloise puzzled at his accent.

  ‘No need. Father Janos, m’lady. I’m happy to learn from you.’ He pronounced it ‘Yannosh’, but still she couldn’t pin his accent down.

  Her father laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘I’ll get them to prepare a litter to take him to the castle as soon as you’re ready. Father Janos can go with him, if you want to stay. But we’re almost through now. Is there anything you need?’

  ‘No, Father, I thank you. Saskia is on her way. Except…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Griselle needs a litter too. And keep her away from here.’

  His hand squeezed her shoulder, and he turned to go.

  Sir Owain lingered as if about to say something, his hesitation suggesting to Eloise that he might wish to make some expression of regret. But then, glancing at Sir Crispin’s retreating figure, he leaned towards her, whispering, ‘Janos Leuvenhoek. Flemish.’ Then he was gone, and in his place was Saskia, her arms hung with baskets of bandages, salves and unguents.

  The maid saw immediately where her help was needed, as she had done previously on numerous occasions.

  ‘Sir Owain’s physician, Father Janos,’ Eloise said to her by way of introduction while taking Sir Rolph’s pulse. ‘Though I’d have thought his employer would be more in need of a chaplain than a medic if this is his usual St John’s Day habit.’

  Father Janos looked up from his task with a quick smile. ‘I am Sir Owain’s chaplain, my lady, as well as his physician.’

  Eloise and Saskia both stared. ‘Then he must keep you exceptionally busy, Father,’ Eloise said. ‘You are obviously more effective at this than the other. I wonder you’ve not given up on him.’

  The smile lingered over her unconcealed astringency, but he carried on applying a poultice of pounded alder leaves to her brother’s bruised and swollen wrist. ‘But you must agree, my lady, that if I was not needed, there’d be no reason for me to stay, would there?’

  ‘I wish you’d make that same point to Sir Owain sometime, Father. The sooner the better. Now, my brother is going to have a nasty headache when he comes round. What do you usually prescribe for that? A darkened room and another woman or two?’

  ‘A piece of raw meat applied to the back of the neck often helps, my lady.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Would that be ox meat, or a slice of his victim?’

  Accustomed to concealing his thoughts, the priest-physician gave nothing away on this occasion either, although the look exchanged between himself and Saskia might have been interpreted as concern at the lady’s rancour.

  The lady herself was past caring about her tone. Foremost in her mind was an image of the tall and overwhelmingly powerful creature who flaunted her pink silken tippet on his arm as if he had her approval. Which was very far from the truth. She must retrieve it before he began to believe it himself.

  Chapter Four

  Eloise’s attempt to use her maid and the physician for the unpleasant task of retrieving her favour from Sir Owain’s pavilion was doomed to failure, their combined expressions of utter scepticism setting her hopes on the wrong track to begin with. Within minutes, the three of them had returned, Sir Owain flinging back the canvas flap of Sir Rolph’s tent just as the litter-bearers were making their exit with his bandaged and prone form. />
  ‘Go with him, Janos, if you please,’ said Sir Owain, not so much requesting as commanding. ‘And Mistress Saskia, have the goodness to wait outside for a moment, if you will.’ Without once looking at Eloise’s astonished face, he snapped at the remaining servants, ‘Out! You can finish your tasks later.’

  Left suddenly and unexpectedly alone with him, and infuriated by the failure of the mission, Eloise launched into another attack. ‘There was no need for you to come in person, Sir Owain. Neither is there a need for this high-handed treatment of my—’

  ‘Before you go any further, just listen.’

  ‘No! You listen! If you think you can make your victory parade with my favour on your arm after that disgraceful episode…’

  ‘It was not disgraceful. It was a perfectly legitimate hit, woman.’ He had not changed out of his armour, but it was obvious that he had dunked his head in a bucket of water since their last meeting, for now his hair was wet and combed back, his face clean and damp, giving him the sleek black hard-edged masculinity of a champion fighter rather than a courtier.

  Eloise found him alarmingly intimidating. ‘I’m not referring to that, sir,’ she said. ‘If my brother chooses to have his limbs broken by you that’s up to him. I’m talking about your flagrant disregard of my wishes not to bestow my favour on any contender today, of all days. You knew of my intentions, and yet you…no!’

  His slow advance towards her, which she assumed would not continue, brought him too near for her to evade the lightning quickness of his hand, and he caught her wrist before she could ward him off, bringing her so hard into his chest that she could feel the ridges of his plated cuirass beneath the linen surcoat. Her head was flung back with the suddenness of his embrace, giving him an instant advantage.

  ‘Yes, lady. I knew of your intentions. You made sure I did, didn’t you? And now you know mine. Or shall I make them even plainer?’ Without waiting for her reply, he took the thick base of her plait in one fist and, holding her head immobile, lowered his mouth to hers with no more warning.

  Having dreamed of a time when she might melt in his tender arms in the softly scented darkness of a feather bed, the pain of his fierce grasp and the stuffy odour of a knight’s tent lit only by a smoking brazier brought the realities home to her in a way no dream ever would of how a full-blooded male, jubilant and aggressive after his success, was not the best person to confront over a point of etiquette even if it was, to her, an important one.

  He lifted his mouth so that she could feel his next words upon her lips. ‘Is that plain enough for you? Don’t ever send messages to me like that again before my friends and servants. I wear your favour on my arm and that’s where I shall keep it for all to see. Did you think I’d ignore your challenge, woman?’ Giving her no time to answer him, he kissed her again, holding back her inevitable surge of anger so successfully that she felt it slipping to the back of her mind like a receding tide.

  He was every bit as skilled as she had supposed, and as different from the uncontrolled blundering of Sir Piers as a professional harpist was from a howling choirboy. She felt herself responding to him while fighting the voices of conscience that warned her of the countless others who had gone before. Yet, on the verge of raising her arms to his shoulders, she caught the distant echo of his last words.

  ‘Challenge?’ she panted, tearing her mouth away. ‘You have challenges on the brain, sir! That was done intentionally to humiliate me, though I’ve done nothing to deserve it, despite your warning last night. Let me go!’ She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, twisting herself out of his arms.

  ‘Humiliate you?’ His hands fell to his sides. ‘Is that what you believe? That I wore your favour to humiliate you?’

  Angry tears welled up into her eyes as she recalled the picture of his lance with its fluttering pink trophy, felt the stares, heard the laughter. ‘Are you blind, sir? Deaf? Don’t tell me you didn’t know how it must have seemed to every one of those people out there,’ she pointed. ‘You heard their response, but have you the smallest idea how shamed I felt, on the anniversary of my husband’s death, to have one of the men involved parade my favour in such a fashion? Have you? Whatever the penalty you had in mind, sir, nothing you could devise could have been more humiliating than that. If you are quite determined to wear it again tomorrow, then I cannot prevent you. But you’ll wear it without me, for I’ll not be there.’

  To divert her mind from his unwelcome presence, she fumbled impatiently with the knot that tied the bloodstained towel around her waist. Shadows and the moving lights from flaming torches drifted across the walls of the tent, her tears distorting them as they passed. Darkness had fallen. A roar from the crowd wavered across the brief silence between them. Tear-blind, she flung the towel away from her, the day soured and ruined. ‘Go away,’ she croaked, turning her back on him.

  Ignoring the dismissal, he went to stand at her back as he had in the orchard. ‘Let me point out to you,’ he said softly in her ear, ‘that I had no way of knowing what colour kirtle and surcoat you would be wearing today and that, if the spectators saw some significance attached to my lance piercing your—’

  ‘Stop! I shall not listen to this.’

  He caught her and held her against him with both steel-clad arms. ‘Your pink sleeve-tippet,’ he continued, ‘then ask yourself whether you’d be quite so upset if you’d been wearing, say, blue or green. Would you?’

  ‘I don’t want to hear you.’

  His arms tightened across her. ‘And think on this, too. Why would a widow intentionally wear her hair in a maiden’s style if not to signal that she had reverted to her maidenly status? Unconventional you may be, my lady, but you cannot have it both ways. Grieving widow or available woman. Which?’

  With a superhuman push, Eloise released herself and paced across to the other side of the pavilion in fury, though her progress towards the exit was anticipated by Sir Owain’s timely manoeuvre. ‘I do not owe you an explanation for what I wear or how I wear it, sir. But even a mole would be able to see the obstacles involved when a woman has made her intention to remarry as clear as I have. You cannot pretend to have missed that, too, when I told you myself. That alone should have cautioned you to behave more discreetly. And as for your behaviour in the practice-lists earlier this afternoon, that was shamefully crude, sir, and unworthy of a knight.’

  ‘Ah…’ He smiled. ‘You saw, then? And didn’t that warn you of what I intended to do later? It was meant to do.’

  ‘No, it didn’t. It confirmed only what I knew already.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘That your mind runs along the same narrow track as every other male of your pathetic breed. Thank heaven women have more interesting things to think about. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Saskia and I must return to the stand. And don’t think your mauling of me will convince me that your feelings are any finer than the next man, Sir Owain. Any man can learn to kiss a woman if he practises long enough. In that, it must differ very little from jousting.’

  ‘An interesting observation, but I believe one must also allow for some natural ability,’ he said, attempting to hide a smile.

  A call, muffled by the thick canvas, reached them from outside. ‘Sir Owain! Sir Owain! You’re needed in the parade, sir! The heralds await you!’

  ‘Coming!’ Sir Owain called back. ‘Bring Dunn here to me.’ He turned to face Eloise, his expression once more serious. ‘Forgive me, lady. It was never your tears I wanted. Come…’ he held out a hand ‘…will you allow me to escort you and your maid back to the stands?’

  Determined not to concede any of the ground that she had won, she held herself rigidly away, shaking her head. ‘No, I thank you. Tell your friends how you managed to snatch a kiss from the Lady Eloise, just to show her who’s master. They’ll love it.’

  The call came again, more urgently. ‘Your horse, sir!’

  ‘Damn!’ he muttered, under his breath. He strode quickly away through the triangular opening t
owards the dark silhouette of his horse, vaulting in one swift leap into the saddle and clearing the high back as if it had been no higher than the garden gate. The stallion snorted and bounded away, scattering a group of servants, his squires chasing after him with helm and lance in the direction of the lists where the parade was already forming.

  Trumpets blared a medley of fanfares as the day’s winners paraded in triumph. Tomorrow they would joust together for an outright winner.

  Meanwhile, in the deserted silence of her brother’s pavilion, Eloise clung to Saskia and wept for all that had happened and for all that would never happen, for her courage as well as her frailty, for her pain and for the secret spark of forbidden pleasure she had experienced in his punishing embrace.

  He had handled it badly, he knew. To blame the conditions, the lack of time and the lady’s anger was tempting, but none of these could excuse his clumsiness. She had every right to be angry. Sir Owain of Whitecliffe lifted one arm mechanically for his squire, ignoring the jolting as the buckles were loosed and the metal plates removed, upper and lower vambrace, the cop to protect the elbow, the ailette laced to his shoulder. He should not have embraced her wearing this stuff. Not even in anger. His half-annoyance alerted the young squire.

  ‘Sire?’ said the lad.

  ‘Nothing. Get on with it.’

  ‘Will it please you to sit, sire?’ The lad was not as tall as his master.

  Sir Owain sat on the rug-covered chest, allowing access to the buckles that fastened the plated and padded cuirass over his chest, seeing the events of the day in a more critical light after Lady Eloise’s volley of resentment. To be honest, he told himself, the whole palaver was fraught with double meanings that few would be able to ignore, one way or the other. Lances piercing rings, the giving of favours, colours, conquests and yieldings: no small wonder that any combination of these was enough to raise her hackles again after that earlier first smile of peace. He had seen the problem as soon as she tied the pink tippet to his lance, but by then there was nothing he could do about it. He smiled.