The Ill-Made Knight

by Christian Cameron

  ‘Gloves?’ I asked hopefully. I loved gloves. They protect your hands in brush, or in a street fight.

  ‘Gloves, for monsieur. My god-brother can make them. Chamois or deerskin?’ His stylus poised over the wax.

  I had no idea what the difference was. ‘One each?’ I asked.

  Judging from his face that was a foolish answer, but that’s what I got.

  In between visits from the tailor, I read about chivalry. My host had de Charny’s questions, and I read them. Some of them made little sense to me – his refined sense of what might constitute right and wrong in the taking of a man’s horse and arms in a tournament were beyond my experience – and he didn’t seem to ask the questions to which I wanted answers. How many peasants can you torment for their grain before you cease to be a knight? Must you fight, regardless of the odds against you? When is surrender still ‘worthy’?

  But other questions fascinated me.

  And Vegetius might have been a captain of routiers. Some of his advice bore no relationship to war as I knew it, but his views on ambush and the chance of battle seemed solid enough. And scouting. Par Dieu, monsieur, the old Romans knew about scouts and spies, eh?

  My host, the Captain of Reims, Gaucher de Chatillon, appeared at my bedside the next morning, dressed in immaculate green and gold. Three days closeted with a tailor had caused me to examine clothing. I still do.

  He bowed at the doorway. ‘Monsieur, please accept my apologies for not attending you before. My lord the Marshal has told me how you helped to defend our cousin the Dauphine, and all French gentlemen owe you a debt of gratitude.’ He bowed again. ‘I am also given to understand that you preserved my friend the Duke de Bourbon in the face of the foe, and the Comte d’Herblay.’

  It is very difficult to bow from a bed, but I tried.

  ‘Your lordship does me too much honour,’ I protested.

  ‘Faugh,’ he coughed. ‘I do not. But I am here with the pleasant duty of telling you that your ransom is paid and you are a free man. Indeed, I can go further and suggest that we travel together, as I am going to the King of England’s tournament and passage of arms at Calais, in honour of the peace, and I thought you might care to come. Peace may be in the air with spring.’ He coughed in his hand. ‘But the roads are still full of brigands.’

  He handed me a scroll. I opened it to find a letter from the Captal.

  ‘I didn’t bring a man to read it for you,’ the Captain said with a bow. ‘I gather monsieur is a voracious reader, as I’m given to understand he is galloping through my small library.’

  ‘Ma fois, my lord! I had no idea there were so many fine books about chivalry!’ I said, or something equally passionate.

  The Captal had arranged for me to fight on the Prince’s English team, if I was recovered.

  I all but leaped from my bed. This was recognition – forgiveness – perhaps a permanent appointment, all at the tip of my sword.

  A spike of pain rose from my right arm to the middle of my chest, and I gasped.

  De Chatillon caught me as I stumbled. ‘I took a bad wound in ’57,’ he said. ‘It took me months to recover. Muscles forget their duty in bed.’

  The French had treated me as a gentleman – in fact, as an aristocrat – so I couldn’t very well tell this famous knight that I needed the tournament at Calais as my chance to prove myself. Or perhaps I was just too proud.

  ‘I’ll be ready to ride,’ I said. ‘When?’

  He smiled. ‘So eager,’ he said. ‘I won’t be at leisure until Monday next.’

  So I had five days to be in shape to ride.

  Du Guesclin came to tell me I was free. I undervalued you,’ he said ruefully. ‘Five hundred florins would have been a better price.’

  ‘At least I pay,’ I said, more nastily then I had intended.

  When he asked, I told him about the knight I’d taken at Poitiers, who had never paid.

  Du Guesclin tugged his beard. ‘This disappoints me,’ he said. ‘I don’t know the gentleman, but I will endeavour to find him.’ He came and sat on my bed. ‘Your horse and arms are safe,’ he said. ‘A certain person paid me a small patis to release them. I shouldn’t charge for your arms at all – really, my friend, you need a new harness.’

  ‘Alas, I would have to capture two or three worthy gentlemen to have the cost of a harness,’ I said. ‘Rather than enjoying your hospitality.’

  ‘It would seem unpatriotic if I wished you good luck,’ du Guesclin said, but he grinned. ‘Will you fight at Calais?’

  ‘If I’m healed enough. It means . . . everything to me.’ I wasn’t afraid to admit this to du Guesclin. He knew me.

  ‘May I . . . loan you some armour that I’m almost positive will fit?’ He looked away to hide a smile. ‘I have a fair amount. Captures and the like.’

  As a brag, it was clever.

  ‘I can’t wear your captured English armour at Calais, you rogue!’ I laughed.

  He made a very Norman shrug. ‘Armour has no name,’ he said. ‘And I have a nice cuirass from Italy – with a lance rest.’

  ‘Well . . .’ I had tears in my eyes. Life hadn’t prepared me for people to be so kind. To be frank, I was suspicious, but I couldn’t imagine a reason for du Guesclin to humiliate me.

  On Friday, between eating salt fish and trying to swat the pell with my sword, I was visited by the tailor.

  Four young boys carried my panniers up the stairs to my tower and laid them on my floor, and he spent more than an hour showing me the ins and outs of my wardrobe. I had everything he’d written on his tablet, and more – a dozen black scarves, neatly folded; a new purse on a new belt with a hook for de Charny’s dagger, in red and black; a sable hat with a scarlet feather. Two pairs of gloves, one red and one chamois coloured. The malle had a razor and a small horn box for soap, and a sewing kit with hanks of red and black linen thread for maintaining all my finery, and needles, and white linen thread for shirts. There were hose and matching garters in red and black leather with fine buckles.

  He insisted that I try every garment. Meanwhile he and his boys sat on my floor, despite his own fine clothes, and re-tailored the lining of my red and sable coat; adjusted the fit of all my hose, the four of them stitching back seams at the speed of running mice. Finally, they all worked on my arming coat, parti-colour in red and black. It came in panels of heavily quilted wool fustian, and they constructed it before my eyes, chatting away merrily.

  I felt a pang of longing for my master’s shop. I tried to sit and help, and the master shook his head.

  So I watched, and chatted, and marvelled that all these riches were to be mine.

  I am only repeating last Sunday’s sermon to say that the outer man often reflects the inner man. At Reims, I did some good for Emile and began to learn a little about chivalry – and in return Emile clothed me. Indeed, she set my taste for life – par dieu, gentlemen, I still wear those colours, as you can see.

  I attended Mass on Sunday dressed in my new clothes. No one commented on them, but for a day, I was as fine as Jehan le Maingre and I outshone du Guesclin, who glanced at me at the holy-water basin and said, ‘To look at us, monsieur, men would think you took me. I knew I charged you too little.’ But he winked, and I couldn’t take offence.

  I wore Emile’s ring, as well.

  My hip hurt, but I could ride and walk and swing a sword.

  Emile came to see me after Mass. I had made it to Mass and back under my own power.

  She had two women and a man with her, and I heard her laugh from the base of my stairs. She came in like a breath of spring, and even as I bowed, carefully showing a fine length of sable fur trim, she laughed again.

  ‘By the Virgin, sir, I heard that you were so eager to be gone from us that you leaped from the bed on hearing there was to be a tournament at Calais.’ She had on a high head-dress that made her look like a Turk – or at least, how I imagined a Turk back then. The scarf fluttered in front of her eyes when she curtseyed.

 
I blushed and stammered.

  She smiled at my confusion. ‘Here are some friends of mine,’ she said. ‘This is my sister, the Vicomtesse de Chartres. You remember my friend Isabelle from the castle at Meaux?’

  ‘How could I forget so old a friend,’ I said.

  The small blonde woman frowned, and snapped me a quick and rather empty courtesy. ‘Monsieur,’ she muttered.

  ‘And the foremost musician of our age,’ she said. ‘My friend Guillaume.’

  He raised his eyebrows slightly, gently turning away the flattery. ‘I love music, and I serve it, but there are better men then I and better women, too, in every convent and monastic house.’ He smiled. ‘My lady thought it might please you to hear some music.’

  What could I say? I had hoped that she would contrive to visit me privily, and I had imagined . . . well, I had imagined things.

  Love is jealous. Here I was, with her, and yet already bitter. Why had she brought all these people?

  The man called Guillaume was dressed far more richly than I, and I put him down as a popinjay. He played the lute and sang so well that I dismissed him. The three women talked among themselves, and I sulked.

  Youth. Wasted on the young.

  Thankfully for everyone, my host appeared with du Guesclin. Du Guesclin had two boys with armour. Chatillon bowed to me and then to the musician.

  ‘Ah, monsieur!’ he said.

  The musician rose and bowed with an irony that moved him up in my estimation.

  ‘Our musician was knighted by the King,’ Chatillon said with a wry smile. ‘Now he is Monsieur de Machaut.’

  ‘So our worthy captain forced me to bear arms and fight you English in the siege,’ Machaut said.

  Now I was interested. ‘How did you find it?’ I asked.

  Machault shrugged. ‘Terrifying,’ he admitted. ‘I am not bred to it like your gentlemen.’

  ‘Monsieur Machaut is too modest,’ du Guesclin said. ‘He stood in the gate for an hour, crossing swords with the flower of English chivalry. He honoured his name and the act of his knighting.’

  Machaut laughed. ‘I was beaten to the ground by three men wearing Clarence’s colours, and then I lay under their feet, trying not to be killed or taken for ransom.’ He was competely at ease – unafraid, in this company, to own up to his failure as a man-at-arms.’

  Suddenly, I saw a great deal in him to admire. ‘We are all terrified, are we not, messieurs,’ I said. ‘Not once the fighting starts, but before, yes?’

  ‘Faugh!’ said Chattilon. ‘I wouldn’t admit to such a thing. For myself, I know no fear. I sometimes shake with eagerness to be at the foe.’ He bowed to the ladies. ‘Sometimes I shake so hard in my eagerness that my knees strike together.’

  Du Guesclin nodded his approval. ‘It is in facing the fear that we are brave, not the absence of fear,’ he said.

  Machaut caught a louse in his collar and killed it between his nails. ‘Yes – well. I fought three times, and it was harder to make myself go forward each time.’

  My eye met du Guesclin’s and we both knew what we knew.

  It gets harder to go forward.

  For all the seriousness of the conversation, I had a new appreciation of Machaut’s quality, and now I listened more attentively to his music. In some way, he reminded me of Chaucer. He was witty and widely read. Every time he mentioned a writer – he sang us a poem by the great Italian, Dante, and then he said the words in French – I was determined to read everything they’d written.

  I was determined to learn to ride better, to read more, to learn to fight better and to joust constantly. What I needed was enough money to live like a gentleman. A gentleman could do all these things.

  My little room was crowded with all these people and my panniers of clothes and armour, and Chatillon graciously allowed us to move to his wife’s solar, which was the next level in the tower and a much larger room. I was the last out my door, and Emile was just ahead of me – she rested her hand on mine in the doorsill, leaned back as if to speak and put her lips on mine.

  I have met Catherine of Sienna, the living saint. She said that God came to her like colour to a blind man. In the minute she said as much, all I could imagine was that kiss of Emile’s.

  She moved away, and I was left unable to breathe.

  The rest of the afternoon slipped away – idyllic. I tried to touch her again, but there was no chance and too many eyes. I told a few tales, and du Guesclin recounted how I took him in the darkness, and Chatillon told some tales from the sieges. Machaut sang us a lay of Lancelot, and another of Sir Tristan.

  When the ladies rose to leave, du Guesclin’s eyes met mine.

  ‘Next time I find myself questioning the value of chivalry,’ he said, ‘perhaps I will think of this afternoon.’ He glanced at Machaut. ‘He surprised you, yes? He surprised all of us. He was really very brave.’

  ‘I can see that,’ I said.

  As Emile made ready to depart, I took her hand and bowed. ‘I owe you a great deal,’ I said to her hand.

  ‘Ma fois, my dear,’ she said. ‘It was a pleasure, and doubly so to see you so fine, and with men of your own caliber. This is where you belong. I wanted you to taste this.’ She leaned forward. ‘Come back to me, my Lancelot. I shan’t always be fat as a hog.’

  Her hand squeezed mine, caressing the ring.

  ‘I will come back,’ I said. ‘On the sanctity of the cross I swear it.’

  She smiled, and then she was gone.

  We rode north and west across Normandy to Calais. The company was excellent – Chatillon was years my senior, but a gentler man, a better knight, I don’t think I ever met. He reminded me of Chandos – indeed, they were peers. His household were men of his own stamp, and du Guesclin and I were fast friends by the end of the ransom time.

  When we came to Calais, after much sorting of safe conducts and the like, we found that the peace talks, far from being over, were still going strong, with the King of England and the King of France locked in a fight over the precedence of their renunciations. The King of England had to renounce his claim to the throne of France, and the King of France had to renounce his claim to the parts of France being ceded by treaty to England. Neither man relished the prospect. Half a thousand churchmen seemed to gather around them like vultures and ravens at a battlefield.

  The first night in Calais, I found a note from Emile inside my chamois gloves. I read it a dozen times. I still have it, and I’ll be damned if I share it with you, but she did mention in an appendage that she was looking into the ransom of my prisoner from Poitiers.

  Somehow, that little detail brought home to me that we would meet again.

  I was three days in Calais before I could arrange a meeting, through Tom, with the Captal. I attended him at breakfast – he had a whole inn, while I lived under the eaves of a cottage.

  ‘The Prince will receive you,’ he said. ‘Now that you are ransomed, I’ll try and get you in today. Tomorrow at the latest.’

  Sure enough, I attended the Black Prince that very evening.

  I bowed my very best bow. The Prince was having a dinner for many of the French knights he’d taken at Poitiers, and the Captal arranged that I be invited. I sat with du Guesclin, who had most definitely not been taken at Poitiers.

  Chaucer was there. I found it hard to hold on to my dislike of him, and I greeted him warmly. He, however, kept his distance.

  Sadly for me, the Prince’s reception was about the same. Sir John Chandos took me by the arm, the Captal stood by me, and I made my best bow to the Prince as Sir John said, ‘My lord, here is Master Gold, who has done your Grace and his father good service in Gascony since we last heard of him.’

  ‘We heard of him quite recently, and under circumstances most entirely creditable to a squire,’ the Prince said. He glanced at me. ‘I am told that Master Gold was falsely accused by a man. To the great detriment of his repute,’ he said, somewhat acerbically. ‘The enmity of a peer of France is not timely, Master Gold.
Sir John Chandos has been unstinting in your praise. Sir Robert Knolles states that you are the best man of your companions.’

  My Prince had never spoken to me so long, or so fairly, and I was almost unable to move.

  ‘And Monsieur de Chatillon and Monsieur de Guesclin are your ardent admirers.’ The Prince leaned a little closer. Not for nothing was he called the black Prince. He was at the edge of anger, and his scowl was dark. The Captal cleared his throat. ‘Your Grace,’ he said chidingly.

  ‘John, I cannot have him,’ the Prince said very distinctly.

  I flushed.

  ‘Sir John did not let go my hand. ‘Your Grace,’ he began.

  ‘I detest to be made to appear ungracious to my vassals.’ He took my hand. ‘Master Gold, you deserve better by me, but while you hold the determined dislike of a peer of France, I cannot have you by my side in a tournament that has enough political difficulties to start a new war.’ His brow clouded over as fast as an April day in London. ‘John – enough. Master Gold, whatever passed between you and a Princess of the royal house of France, the rumour that sticks to you precludes your direct employment by the crown of England. And you have the reputation of a brigand and a routier.’

  I stood perfectly still, trying to make the words go away.

  ‘Perhaps in a year or two, something can be done. In the meantime, I imagine that Sir John will provide you with work.’ He inclined his head.

  I bowed. Should I have barked? Spat? Damned him for an ungrateful Prince?

  Perhaps I should have asked, ‘Who gives us our orders?’

  But I bowed deeply and withdrew.

  The Captal clamped my arm in his and pulled me, literally, through a curtain. I knew where I was – this was the side-table where the squires and cooks prepared meats for table.

  The Captal looked at me – that look, again; the one that said he was sorry for the injustice of it – but he was going about his business.