Sword of the Crown

by Paul J Bennett

  Gerald saw to his horse and then headed to the map room, where the baron was, no doubt, discussing the situation with his most trusted advisors. Taking the steps two at a time, he arrived at the door only to find a young Beverly, her ear pressed against it, listening.

  “What have we here?” he said, and she turned around, startled. “We can’t have people spying on us now, can we?” he chided.

  Beverly looked terrified. He reached forward, pushing the door open, holding out his other hand for hers. Never one to shirk responsibility, she placed her hand in his, and he led her into the room.

  Baron Fitzwilliam was standing at the map table along with Mason, the head archer, Tumly, the leader of the Bodden Foot, and Sir Garant, leader of his knights. “What have we here?” said the baron, turning at the sound of the door opening.

  “It appears, my lord,” said Gerald gravely, “that we have a spy.”

  The baron walked over to Beverly, looking down at her. “Have you been listening at the door?” he asked.

  “Yes, Father,” she said.

  “And what did you hear?” he asked in a stern voice.

  “Nothing, Father, I couldn’t hear a thing!”

  He stepped back and stared at her for a moment, stroking his beard with his fingers. “Well, we can’t have that can we.” He looked toward Gerald, who was still holding her hand. “Get her a chair, Gerald; she can’t hear a thing from the hallway.”

  Her face lit up as if by magic. Gerald dutifully grabbed a chair, bringing it over to the map table. The baron pointed to it, “Sit there and pay attention, my dear, these are important matters that we discuss.”

  She sat down, a diminutive figure amongst the large men, while they discussed what to do. Late into the evening they talked and planned, the baron making sure she was fed along with the others. Beverly was entranced with the proceedings, continuing to listen as the night grew darker and the candles were lit. They discussed what happened, why the raiders were here, where they had come from, who might be leading them. The conversation seemed to be going in circles.

  They were debating what to do to guard against future attacks, and the consensus appeared to be to increase their patrols, but they didn’t have enough horses.

  Sir Garant and Gerald were debating this very fact when a young voice spoke up.

  “What about a tower?” she said, navigating a small gap in the conversation.

  “A tower?” said Sir Garant. “What do you mean a tower? It would take months to build a tower.”

  Beverly stood in her seat as all eyes turned towards her. “Not a stone tower, a wooden one. Tall enough to see far away, on the hilltop here,” she said, pointing at the map.

  The baron was suddenly inspired. “By Saxnor’s beard, she’s right. We’d only need a few soldiers to man a tower. If we build a number of them, we’d see anybody coming from miles around. We can make simple observation towers, no defences, with a fire standing by to set them alight if we need to abandon them.”

  The room exploded into a cacophony of ideas, and soon the plans began to take shape.

  Baron Fitzwilliam looked over to his daughter, proud of her suggestion, only to see she had fallen asleep. She was lying, half on the table, one of the tiny wooden knights clutched in her hand. He could have called a servant and ordered them to take her to bed, but this was Fitz the Elder, and he liked to do things himself. “Keep them going, Gerald,” he said, “I’m going to put Lady Beverly to bed.” He picked her up carefully, carrying her in both arms and excused himself. They all watched him go, touched by his tenderness, and then, as soon as the door was closed, erupted into conversation again.

  He carried her down the stairs to her room and laid her on her bed. He tucked her in, looking at her sleeping face. On her bedside table was a portrait of her mother, and he gazed at her image longingly. “Oh Evelyn,” he thought out loud, “how proud you would be of your daughter.”

  “Papa?” the little girl's voice enquired, breaking his reverie.

  He turned to see the sleepy-eyed child before him. “Yes, my dear?”

  “Are they going to make the towers?”

  “Yes, Beverly, they are, and it’s all thanks to you.”

  “That’s nice,” she said, and then lapsed back to sleep.

  * * *

  The next day the garrison rose early to get to work and, much to the baron’s surprise, Beverly was up with them. Bodden's engineer, a humourless man called Stevens, worked out the details of the towers with a little trial and error. Soon, a practical design was created, and the towers would go up quickly. The work, though relatively easy, was messy. The characteristic spring rains had come and turned the ground into a soggy quagmire. The baron was there through it all, insisting on helping raise the beams they would use for the towers. They elected to put a horseman and bowmen in each tower; the horseman’s job was to ride them to safety should an attack occur. The bowmen would stay in the tower, watching for trouble. By taking shifts, they would cover the area much more efficiently than running patrols.

  At the baron’s insistence, they had left Beverly at the Keep, and she now took time to explore. She knew the entire place by heart, of course, but there were some areas where she wasn’t normally allowed to go and these, she discovered, were not guarded when all the men were out working. The most interesting one, to her mind, was the armoury. Here she discovered all manner of weapons, arranged in neat rows. Most were far too big for her to handle, but she could imagine heroic knights wielding these tools astride majestic horses. She was mesmerized by it all. The armoury was gated, of course, so she couldn’t touch anything, but she stood at the iron gate that blocked the door and looked on. It was then that she decided to pay a visit to the smith.

  Bodden had a number of smiths, but of these, only one was reckoned a master swordsmith. Old Grady, as he was called, had been with the barony for years. No one knew precisely how old he was, but he had served her uncle and when he died, her father after that. He was a dour man, constantly grumpy, but Beverly found him amusing. She wandered down to his smithy, drawn by the sounds of hammering.

  As she got closer, the hammering stopped, and she heard the telltale sound of quenching. She turned the corner to see him holding a red-hot blade in the water, his face turned toward his apprentice, yelling, as was normal. Grady’s apprentice was a man named Martin, but never was a man more ill-suited to his profession. Martin had originally been a farmer, and when his farm was destroyed in a raid, he was taken in by Grady as an apprentice. He had been at it for many years and yet he still hadn’t mastered the most rudimentary of tasks.

  She stepped into the room, looking at everything. There were half-finished blades on tables, spearheads sitting on the workbench, all manner of strange tongs and hammers hanging on the wall. This place was magical to her, and she loved seeing how everything worked.

  “Hello, m'lady,” Martin greeted her.

  Grady looked at her, but only grunted a greeting.

  “Hello, Martin,” said Beverly politely. “What are you working on today?”

  Grady snorted. “Nothing,” he blustered, “he can’t even manage to fire up the forge properly. He’s only been here six years, you’d think he’d of managed to learn something by now.”

  Beverly ignored the smith's bluster. She looked at a large set of tongs hanging from the wall. “Oh, those are large, what do you use them for?” she asked.

  To her surprise, it was Grady who stepped around from his workbench. “These,” he said, lifting them down from the wall, “are for shields. A sword is easy to hold in the forge, but a metal shield is quite unwieldy when you're pounding it with a hammer.”

  Beverly knew that Grady could be downright poetic when talking about his craft, so she spurred him on. “How do they work?” she asked.

  Sure enough, old Grady fell for the bait and soon he was talking at great lengths about how he forged shields. He was mainly a weaponsmith, of course, but had mastered the art of mail years ago. Once she h
ad him talking about shields, it was a relatively simple matter to get him to switch topics, and soon the idea of armour came up.

  “So, you make the armour for the knights, don’t you?” she asked.

  “Actually,” he grumbled. He liked to sound like he was complaining, “Most knights bring their own armour with them. I just repair it. I haven’t made mail in a couple of years.”

  “Is it hard? Making mail?” she asked.

  “Time-consuming,” he answered. “Chainmail isn’t difficult, but the metal plates we cover it with these days require a different skill set. The breastplate is perhaps the most difficult; it has to be custom fitted, you see.”

  Beverly was fascinated, and now came to the question she really wanted the answer to. “How would you make armour for a woman?” she enquired.

  “A woman? Don’t make me laugh,” the smith roared.

  “What’s so funny?” she said, upset at his behaviour.

  “You can’t make armour for a woman,” he said, trying to catch his breath.

  “Why not?” she asked innocently.

  “Well…because,” he answered hesitantly.

  “Because why?” she pressed.

  “Because women aren’t built for combat, they're too…delicate.”

  Beverly made a sour face. Grady looked amused.

  “Sorry, my lady, but it just can’t happen. Women are all the wrong shape.”

  “But what about the legends,” she persisted, “or the Elves?”

  The old man smiled, “The legends were written years ago, long before we had metal like this to work with. And Elves? Trust me you don’t want to wear what the Elves call armour.”

  Disappointed by this news, she decided she had had enough. “Thank you anyway,” she said politely, “you’ve been most illuminating.”

  She left him, heading back into the Keep. So he wouldn’t make armour for a girl. She would have to figure out something else if she wanted to be a knight. It was then that it cemented into her mind. She would prove him wrong; she would become a knight, a valiant fighter, a beacon of justice, a warrior to be spoken of in years to come. Of course, first she had to learn how to use a sword.

  Five

  Playing with Swords

  Summer 942 MC

  The great movement of soil the year before had been successful, and with the planting of the season’s first crops, an even better harvest was expected this year. The new watchtowers had proved useful since their construction, not only to spot enemy raiders before they were too close, but to deter them from future attacks. On three occasions alarms had been sounded, giving the troops time to respond, preventing the raiders from coming any closer. Each time the baron sent out a group of horsemen to hunt them down, even leading one sortie himself.

  The Keep became a busy place during this time, for the farmers were now closer, and the village that existed within the outer bailey grew to accommodate the increased trade. Beverly enjoyed walking through the village. It was a comfortable place, where people knew each other, and she soon recognized many of the villagers by name.

  It was a particularly hot day, late in the summer when Beverly was walking once more through the streets. She stopped to look at some nice fabric and was discussing it with the shopkeeper when she heard a sound in the distance; a distinctive thud of wood hitting wood. Not quite able to discern what was making it, she left the dressmaker with a promise to return and followed the sound which led her around the corner and away from the shops.

  Here, was a group of boys, close to her own age. They were fighting with wooden swords, daring each other to attack, and then swinging wildly. She recognized some of them as the sons of soldiers, while others, she assumed, must be related to the villagers.

  Leaning against the wall, trying to look nonchalant, she watched them play fight. One of them would lunge forward, striking overhead with their sword. The other boy would then block the swing and do likewise. She was struck by the simplicity of their movements, having seen her father's soldiers in training. It was the responsibility of the Sergeant-at-Arms to keep the baron’s men in tip-top shape, and she was sure he would be disappointed by these lad's feeble attempts at fighting.

  She was trying to recall the drills she had witnessed the soldiers practise when a voice interrupted her thoughts.

  “What d’you think you’re looking at?” the tallest boy said.

  “Pardon?” she said, shaken from her reverie.

  “This fightings for boys, not girls,” the boy said. “Go tend to your sewing.”

  As the baron’s daughter, she was not used to being treated so rudely, but she didn’t want to go running off to get help. Something made her want to make a stand, and so she looked back at the boy without moving. “You’re doing it all wrong,” she told him.

  The boy walked over to her, with the two others backing him up. “What would a girl know about fighting?” the youth accused.

  She stood up defiantly, “Obviously, more than you.”

  “What did you say?” the lad's face turned red. “Say it again, I dare you!”

  Clenching her first, she felt her anger rising, “I said, you’re doing it all wrong. Your strikes are too easy to block, and your attacks have no strength behind them.” She was quite prepared to get into a fight about this, so sure was she of her ideas. “Let me show you.”

  “No girl is going to show ME how to use a sword,” he shouted.

  She was sure he was about to hit her, saw him make a fist, but one of the other boys grabbed his arm and whispered something in his ear. The boy looked down as he listened, then looking back up at Beverly, his face paled.

  He growled something incomprehensible, and then turned around, “Come on,” he said, “we’ll go find some other place to practise our swordsmanship.”

  Beverly felt cheated. She had never practised with a sword, but her encounter with the raiders the year before had made her more concerned. She resolved to start practicing today, immediately in fact. She would show those boys how to use a sword!

  Making her way back to the Keep, she entered the practise yard. No one was here today. They were all out on guard duty or patrols, so she retrieved her sword and walked to the centre of the yard. She thought about all the times she had seen Gerald train the soldiers and decided to start with some basic drills. Taking up a stance, her right foot in front by about a foot’s length or so, she swung the sword from her right-hand side in a sweep and tried to step forward with her left foot, but found it awkward. She tried again, this time stepping forward with her right leg, but once again found the action clumsy. Getting frustrated, she tried swinging the sword in a backhanded motion, but the sword came loose in her grasp, clattering to the cobblestones. Embarrassed, she looked around sheepishly, but fortunately for her, no one was about, and so she picked it up and started again. She soon came to the realization that this was going to be more difficult than she had first thought.

  Baron Fitzwilliam was in the map room listening to Gerald, who was detailing the Keep's stores. Ever since the northern wars had begun, Bodden had been a prime target. It had already come under siege on three separate occasions, and the baron was determined to always have sufficient food stores to survive an extended siege if need be. The windows were open, letting in the sweet summer breeze and, as he listened, he moved toward the west window, the better to feel the breeze on his face. Gerald was going on about how many bushels of grain they would need to make up the shortfall when they were both startled by a rather loud clanging sound.

  Fitz looked out the window and saw below, on the practise grounds, his daughter trying to swing a sword. Gerald joined him at the window.

  “It appears we have a budding warrior, my lord,” said Gerald.

  “Mmm,” the baron replied, thinking deeply. “I wonder if we might encourage her a bit?”

  “Encourage her, my lord? You want your daughter to be a warrior?”

  “Why not,” he turned to face Gerald. “I daresay she has the determin
ation.”

  “Isn’t that a little dangerous?”

  “My dear Sergeant,” the baron said after a brief pause, “I think it’s apparent by now, that if Beverly wants to learn to fight, she’s going to do it with or without us. I'd rather she learn to fight properly.”

  Gerald saw the look of resolve on his lord's face, and he knew how this was going to end, but he had to play his part. “And how, my lord, are we to proceed in this manner?” he asked, knowing full well the answer.

  “I think it's best,” said the baron, “that you ‘discover’ her training, and offer a few tips, don’t you? She has to think it’s her idea.”

  Gerald sighed, “Very well, my lord, I shall see to it at once.”

  “Thank you, Gerald,” said Fitz, then added, “Oh, and Gerald?”

  “Yes, my lord?”

  “Train her properly, real training, not pretend.”

  He was about to object but saw the look on the baron’s face. He swallowed his pride, “Yes, my lord.”

  And so Gerald Matheson, the Sergeant-at-Arms of Bodden Keep marched down to begin training his newest protege, a seven-year-old girl.

  Beverly tried stepping, then swinging, then stopped. Her right arm was getting sore, and she rubbed it. She would never get the hang of this; she would have to watch the soldiers practise tomorrow and learn the basics. Her frustration level was rising at her own inabilities when a voice interrupted her thoughts.

  “Every new recruit needs to start with a practise sword,” said Gerald walking toward her. He tossed her a wooden sword which she managed to catch. “Put away the other blade; you’ll learn to handle it when your arm toughens up.”

  She leaned the sword against the wall and gripped the practise weapon in her right hand. Gerald guided her out into the centre of the yard and stood beside her. “Now, stand with your feet even with one another, but about shoulder-width apart. When you swing from the right, take a step forward with your right foot.”