‘You moved so fast.’ And with a black-purple shoulder, bruised from a flailing hoof too!
‘All I needed to do was pivot on one foot. You made such a show of moving about that I reasoned it was to distract me from a coming blow. The only blow you could strike at such speed from that position was a lunge. All I needed was to anticipate which foot you would lunge with, so I kept my stance even, ready to pivot on either foot. All very simple. As, I am beginning to fear, are you.’
Arnau felt his lip twitch at the insult.
‘Come. Stop this crazed dancing and face me properly. If you have a tell you are trying to hide, then let me find it and I can explain how to nullify it, though there is a simple way to smooth out all such wrinkles in one’s martial actions.’
‘Oh?’ snapped Arnau, still irritated, but curious nonetheless.
‘The peace of the Lord. I am at perfect peace while I wait, for the word of God fills my veins and animates every sinew. My trust in Him is so complete that I am motionless and prepared. You are still too full of the vices and wiles of the temporal world, like Ramon. He also cannot stand still. But it is in the act of giving one’s entire being to the order that a man can achieve such control and peace. Perhaps when you are ready you will not need to dance like a leper’s bell, clanging this way and that.’
Arnau sighed and stepped back, making a futile attempt to dust himself off.
‘Very well. Let’s go again,’ he said to the German. ‘Perhaps you would care to try me?’
Lütolf shrugged and fell into his usual motionless stance. Arnau prepared himself, sword tip up, dancing just a little. He stood as still as he could, though there was an ache in his left knee from where he’d hit a cobble when he fell, and he momentarily changed stance to relieve the pressure.
The German was on him like the wrath of God. The practice blade in Lütolf’s hand swept through the air and halted an inch from Arnau’s neck once more. The younger man had had only moments to react, had managed to lift his own sword perhaps halfway to a decent parry, before the German, like a bolt of lightning, struck.
‘You are slow and sloppy,’ Lütolf said, removing his sword and stepping back. ‘Your knee was slowly giving. All I had to do was wait until you changed leg and catch you while your balance was uncertain. You move with the indecisiveness and clumsiness of a Hohenstaufen.’
Arnau sighed and stepped back. He’d always considered himself a good swordsman. He’d killed efficiently in that battle by the Ebro, for sure. Yet next to Lütolf of Ehingen he felt like a novice. And what was that about a Hohenstaufen? What had the emperors to do with anything?
‘What is your psalm of choice?’ the German asked.
Arnau frowned. ‘I would say the learning of Ethan the Ezrahite – eighty-nine – for it was my mother’s favourite.’
‘Recite it. Not out loud. In your head.’
Arnau, still frowning, concentrated, forming the words.
‘You look like you are trying to defecate,’ Lütolf noted. ‘Do not force yourself. Just relax into the psalm. You know it. You do not need to concentrate so.’
He was right, Arnau realised. He stood calmly, allowing himself to watch his opponent while the words of the psalm rolled through his mind.
I shall sing without end the mercies of the Lord.
In generation and into generation, I shall tell thy truth with my mouth.
I shall sing of the Lord's constant love forever. To all generations, I shall tell out thy faithfulness with my mouth.
For thou sayest: without end mercy shall be builded in heavens and thy truth shall be made ready in those.
I disposed a testament to chosen men; I swore to David, my servant…
The German struck once more like a bolt of lightning, that blunted sword coming this time not for the neck, but for the gut. He was so fast it was barely credible. Yet somehow at the last moment, Arnau’s sword was there, turning the blow aside, only partly, but it was impressive it had reached the position at all, given the man’s speed.
Lütolf stepped back, nodding in satisfaction. ‘Better. See how in the peace of the Lord you focus your instincts so much more easily? You did not plan to counter my strike, but because you were not overthinking your predicament, you were able to react so much more readily to my attack. Admittedly, while you avoided a belly wound that would mean slow and agonising death, a real blade would have cut into your liver and you would even now be going grey as dark blood pooled about your feet, but the reaction was still an improvement.’
Arnau blinked in surprise. He was unable to react or respond, partly through surprise, and partly through the remarkable pain that had built in his side and was even now attempting to fold him in two and drop him to the ground. He gasped.
‘There is still a long way to go,’ the German added. ‘You have adequate skill, and more than some I have seen in our order, but your concentration and your control is pitiful. You must learn control and peace if you are to be truly effective with that blade.’
Arnau gasped again.
‘We will take a few minutes for you to recover.’
Gasp. Arnau stood motionless, trying to override the pain in his side that he knew would already be blossoming into a good bruise. Gradually it moved from debilitating pain to dull, insistent ache, which rippled out into the surrounding flesh. They were wearing mail hauberks over specially thick padded arming tunics for practice work, and he dreaded to think what that blow might have felt like without the extra protection.
Slowly, quietly, the pain began to dissipate. He attempted to change his footing finally, and found that he could do so without too much discomfort. He rolled his shoulders. He was all right. The pain would be intense that evening, along with the aches in all his muscles, but right now, he was controlling it. A notion came to him.
He struck like an asp. One moment, he was standing like an invalid, gasping in breath that he no longer quite needed, recovery more or less complete. The next, his sword had flicked up and was moving for Lütolf’s own gut.
He missed the German knight by perhaps a finger’s width, staggering on into the dust before he finally turned, wide-eyed.
Lütolf shrugged. ‘You have tells for sure, but that was simple to anticipate. You were testing your readiness when you shifted position. I could see that, so I had an inkling that you would come. Still, it was well played and reasonably fast. There is hope for you.’
He continued on with rather backhanded compliments and dissections of Arnau’s lunge, but the young knight was no longer paying him any attention. His gaze was, instead, locked on the middle distance. As he’d staggered to a halt, he’d seen something flash momentarily, off in the fields surrounding Rourell. Sun on metal or glass, but what would glass be doing in a field? His eyes scoured that landscape. There it was again. A series of flashes. Definitely sun on metal. He could make out the shape of one of the farmers trudging along behind an ox-drawn plough, and the gleaming was beyond him yet by some distance. Half a mile away or more. At the edge of a small stand of trees.
He blinked as something smacked into the back of his head and he turned to see Brother Lütolf glaring at him with disapproval, his gauntlet swinging in his fingertips from the slap.
‘It is courtesy to pay attention to an instructor, not to mention the potential for saving your life.’
Arnau brushed aside the comment, gesturing out towards the trees. The flashing had stopped. ‘I saw something out there, by the trees. Could have been someone in armour. Maybe even two or more. Metal flashing in the sun.’
The German knight seemed entirely unimpressed by this. ‘Or a farmer with his tools. Or a travelling tinker. Or a boy with a bucket.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Arnau said, doubtfully.
‘Both Ramon and Mateu are circling through the estates. If there is trouble, they will find it. Tomorrow, you and I shall take on that task, but for today, leave such matters to Brother Ramon and his squire and concentrate upon the matter at hand. If the e
nemy is to be chastised for their wickedness it would behove you to know one end of a sword from the other.’
Arnau nodded absently, less than certain and ignoring the unsubtle jibe, fighting the urge to climb onto his horse and ride out to investigate the flashing. Finally, dragging his eyes from the middle distance, he focused instead on the irritated German.
‘Come for me again,’ Lütolf ordered, tapping his chest as he settled into a relaxed stance with his sword tip in the dust.
Arnau looked the man up and down. Lütolf could read Arnau like a psalter, clearly, and could anticipate his moves. Could he be distracted? Arnau remembered that battle by the Ebro. The Templar who had led the charge, singing his psalms of glory as he slew the heathen. Arnau had become so wrapped up in the man that he had let himself drift away from the Santa Coloma company, with disastrous results. Could such a thing distract the German brother? Not the glory of the Psalms, for that was bread and butter to Brother Lütolf. But perhaps there was a different way to have just such an effect.
He readied himself, sword in both hands, bent slightly at the waist and rocking gently from side to side.
‘We shall speak the praises of the Lord and His strength, and His power,’ Arnau sang suddenly. The German frowned in incomprehension. Why was the young man bleating out the seventy-eighth Psalm and not simply keeping it in his head as he had been instructed?
Arnau continued to sway gently. ‘And the marvellous deeds which He did. And He raised witnessing in Isaac…’
There it was. Just through the veneer of frowning disapproval, he saw Lütolf’s eyelid twitch at the misquote. The psalm called upon Jacob, not Isaac. The mistake cut deep into the German, down to his pious bones. Arnau had to force himself not to smile. He would make an opening.
‘And He set law in Israel. How great things commanded He to our fathers, to make those known to their sons.’
He managed to maintain a good musical tone as he continued, watching the German, waiting for the moment.
‘He smote a stone and waters flowed, and streams issued in abundance. Whether also he may give bread or make ready a board to his people? Therefore the Lord heard, and delayed, and fire was kindled in Isaac, and the ire of God ascended on Israel.’
Lütolf’s eyelid twitched and danced again at the transposition of Isaac for Jacob.
Arnau struck.
Once again, the German danced nimbly aside, but this time Arnau had been so close. He heard Lütolf’s indrawn hiss of pain as the younger man’s practice sword caught him a glancing blow on the hip as he moved away.
‘Clever,’ the German said in a voice dripping with disdain and disapproval. ‘But one must remember that Satan is clever. Some things are beneath a pious man.’
Typical, Arnau thought as he moved back into position. When he finally landed a blow on the man, Lütolf managed to make it Arnau’s fault for being ungodly. He was about to launch into a defensive diatribe on the value of using wit and guile against an enemy and the differences between that and the influence of Satan, when he was momentarily distracted by a flash once more. His gaze strayed up to the fields in the distance again, and he scoured that treeline, looking for the armoured figure he was sure was behind the glinting.
He staggered in shock as the blow landed. Brother Lütolf’s practice sword slammed into Arnau’s fist. The younger man’s sword fell to the ground from agonised fingers, one of which had broken with a loud crack.
‘Pay attention, Vallbona,’ snapped the German.
Arnau stared at him, then down at his hand and the sword lying in the dust. Ignoring Lütolf momentarily, he gently removed his mailed gauntlet, with some difficulty, for his little finger stuck out at an angle and was already swelling and red. With a hiss, he tried to push it back into line with the others and the pain that lanced through his hand made him yelp loudly.
‘Practice is over for now,’ the German said in neutral tones, and started to walk towards the preceptory. Arnau stared after him. Lütolf had not yet acquired a replacement horse for the one that had been killed beneath him, but Arnau had his mount with him. He bent, picking up his sword with his undamaged hand, and slid it into the scabbard, then grasped the reins and began to lead the beast back in the wake of the German. As they trudged through the hot arid dirt, Arnau three times shot glances back to those trees, each time failing to catch a reflection of a sunbeam.
Finally, he reached the gate as Lütolf entered. The German spotted the preceptrix with Titborga, striding across the courtyard towards the chapter house.
‘Sister,’ Lütolf called and made to intercept them. The two ladies stopped, the preceptrix’s eyebrow arching.
‘I have to report an incident,’ the German said. ‘Vallbona was distracted repeatedly during training and my irritation got the better of me. I sought to regain his attention, but in doing so have damaged his hand.’
Arnau was there now and he and his horse came to a halt.
‘Show me,’ commanded Preceptrix Ermengarda. Arnau did so, raising his deformed sword hand. The preceptrix’s already arched eyebrow arched even more, impossibly so. Even Arnau began to wither under her gaze and, since it was directed at the German, he couldn’t imagine how contrite Brother Lütolf must feel.
‘This is unacceptable, Brother. You know the rules better than most. Injuries during training are to be avoided. Deliberate injuries all the more so. You must not strike a brother Christian in anger. It is not our way. Remember the 235th rule. Had Vallbona been a full brother, I would now have that habit from your back.’
Lütolf bowed his head in penitence and Arnau almost jumped as the preceptrix turned to him. ‘Rarely, though, is there smoke without a flame. The rule also forbids brothers to incite anger in one another. You are new and yet to be granted full ceremony, so it would be unseemly to discipline you for such, but be aware that good conduct begets good conduct.’
Arnau blinked at the chastisement that seemed so unfair, but the preceptrix had already turned back to the German. ‘Brother Lütolf, you will do vigil in the chapel this night once compline is done. This will be your penance.’
The scarred knight bowed his head a little lower and then moved away without looking at Arnau. The younger knight was glad. There was a good chance some of the harsh words rattling around in his head might have crept out had the man looked at him.
‘Come, Brother Arnau,’ the preceptrix said, and then swept off towards the chapter house. Titborga threw a look of concerned interest at Arnau and then hurried away in the preceptrix’s wake, lifting the hem of her white habit from the detritus of the courtyard, Oddly, and also typically, the preceptrix’s habit remained down and yet had managed to stay pristine.
Just inside the door of the administrative heart of Rourell, the preceptrix found her maid, the consoror Catarina, and gestured to her. ‘Fetch Carima, please.’
The younger nun hurried away and the preceptrix crossed to her seat and sank into it, gesturing for Titborga to do the same. She then waved at Arnau. ‘Can you divest yourself of your armour, Brother Arnau, or will you require aid?’
Arnau shook his head, replied that he was fine, and then set about removing his mail hauberk and padded arming garment with considerable difficulty, to which he would not admit. When finally, panting, he stood before them in just his chain leggings and black sergeant’s habit, now considerably crumpled and grey with dust, he could see the faintly humorous expressions of the two women. He suddenly felt very self-conscious, even fully dressed as he was, in the company of two women, something the order’s rule warned a man to avoid for the temptations naturally offered by the descendants of Eve. His discomfort only increased when the young nun Carima entered and bowed, accompanied by the preceptrix’s maid. He was now alone in the chapter house with four women, two of whom were distractingly shapely and attractive even in the white habits of the order. He fought down the images that threatened to assail him, silently repeating the paternoster until he was focused once more, and he was immensely grat
eful when Brother Balthesar also entered and closed the door behind him. With a bow, he made his way to one of the seats and sank into it, drawing his blade and beginning to whet it with a stone from his purse.
‘Sit, Brother,’ young Carima said in a thick Leonese accent, gesturing to a seat.
In surprise, Arnau did so and then noticed in even deeper wonder that she carried with her a bag of medical supplies. The young nun whose duties, as far as Arnau knew, were limited to cleaning the preceptory suddenly dug into the bag and removed a thick piece of leather, part of an old belt.
‘Open,’ she commanded and, as Arnau opened his mouth, she slid it between his teeth. ‘Bite down.’
Wincing, now that he was fairly certain what was coming, Arnau did as he was told, and barely had he tasted the old sour leather than the young nun jerked his little finger straight with all the gentleness and compassion of a cart horse. He whimpered around the leather and continued to do so as she applied some sort of salve and then dug around for bandages.
‘Where did you learn such ministrations, Sister?’ he asked, through gasps of breath.
Carima shrugged. ‘My father, Abraham Ben Vidal, was physician to the court of the King of Leon,’ she replied in an oddly matter-of-fact tone for something so astonishing. In fact, the clear importance of her father distracted him from the more important fact buried in the statement. Carima’s father was a Jew and therefore so was she, presumably, by birth at least.
‘Perhaps it would be kind to distract his attention from his predicament, Sisters?’ Old Balthesar noted, nodding at Arnau who was blinking away tears and struggling with wrapping his mind around Carima’s heritage.
‘Wine, please, Catarina,’ the preceptrix said, garnering looks of surprise from the others. Wine was not commonly distributed in the afternoon, being generally saved until after compline. Arnau himself blinked. Rule thirty of the blessed Saint Bernard was the rule Arnau was least looking forward to applying to his life: wine should not be taken to excess, but in moderation, for wine corrupts the wise. The preceptrix smiled. ‘Yea, did not at Cana the Lord display the first of his miracles in producing wine where there was none?’
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