by Alex Myers
The short of it (for the count did not keep it short) was that Danes, scenting the harvest in the fields, had sailed down to raid the coast. A local lord, Bertram, had welcomed the raiders and now their joint forces were pillaging; Bertram had attacked several of Lord Burress’s holdings and now laid claim to Lord Burress’s land.
‘The plan is for Lord Burress to approach from the west, while we will come from the south. Our force will make the main attack and while they are contending with us, Lord Burress will set fire to their ships. We’ll press them back towards the harbour,’ the Count of Nevers explained, ‘and thus they will be neatly caught.’
Silence and Alfred were sent to the armourer, who grumbled and mumbled but couldn’t deny the count’s commands. Silence was given a mail shirt, a dented helm, and a splintery shield; they both received swords that looked like they had been dragged out of a peat bog. ‘What else d’you expect on the eve of fighting?’ the armourer said. ‘Besides, you’re squires. So you’ll not be doing much but helping your knight, minding his steed and such.’
They spent the night sharpening the edges of their new blades; Alfred wanted to rub the rust from Silence’s mail, but the task proved tedious and, Silence pointed out, the rust caused no harm except in appearance. So Alfred contented himself with shining his own much-used armour.
At dawn, the knights and squires mounted, the footmen took up their pikes, and the army rode off, leaving behind a field of tents and carts. They carried with them food and water for a few days, but otherwise travelled light, to maximize their speed. The Count of Nevers rode at the forefront, a squire holding his banner aloft. They rode that day and stopped only at dark, sleeping beside their horses for the few hours before the horizon lightened. As they continued along that morning, Silence rubbed at his eyes (though exhausted from the ride, his excitement had kept sleep at bay) and caught a familiar scent on the air. ‘The sea!’ he said to Alfred. ‘Smell that?’
‘We’re nearly there,’ Sir Onfroi said. ‘The count will soon put us in order for attack. May God watch over us today.’
Silence turned in his saddle to study the force they rode with. He thought of all the stories he had heard, the songs he had sung, thought about how he would describe this day to others. ‘Would you say we are a mighty army?’
Sir Onfroi smiled. ‘I’d say we are a noble troop. We have only the knights of Nevers and the knights of Burress, who are fewer. An army would be many lords and counts joined together.’
Still. Silence rested his hand on the pommel of his sword. This would not be the pell. This would not be sparring for points. This would not be fending off robbers. His lance rested in the holder by his foot, the tip pointing straight up. Would he get to use it today? Or was the armourer correct, and he would be minding Sir Onfroi’s spare mount while the knight rode into the fray?
Seagulls wheeled overhead and, in addition to the salt air, Silence could smell smoke, heavy and acrid. They rode through a half-harvested field of oats and up a short rise; when he reached the crest, the smell of smoke grew stronger. Below him, the fields were ablaze, crackling with flame to his left and smouldering to his right.
‘Monsters!’ the Count of Nevers said. ‘It’ll be a hard winter for these crofters, and they have the raiders to thank for putting their crops to the flame.’ He rode his horse along the ridgeline. ‘I’ll see Bertram’s storehouses emptied to feed these good folk.’
‘Amen,’ said Sir Onfroi.
The count pointed out across the burning fields. ‘Over that rise, there’s a sheepfold and then Lord Bertram’s town and holdings. We’ll need to press them hard, send the raiders back to their ships. I am not certain what sort of forces Bertram has mustered, so we will hope for the advantage in numbers and training and surprise.’ He turned to his knights. ‘Ready your shields. We’ll charge as soon as we crest the hill. Onfroi on the left with Jean …’ He arrayed his knights, assigning footmen to each.
There was a pause as squires helped their knights into armour. Alfred and Silence, new to this task, took orders from Onfroi and tightened the shoulder plates, the greaves, the gauntlets, and assisted him in mounting. Then they pulled on their own mail shirts and greaves, and Silence helped Alfred with his chest plate. His own simple mail seemed paltry next to the knights’ gleaming armour. Paltry, but heavy. Silence mounted Wind with some difficulty. ‘When we’re back at the manor,’ Onfroi called, ‘we’ll practise more in armour. Do your best! I had thought we’d have more time to train you, but the Lord calls us at what time He desires.’
And then they set out across the smoky field. The horses whickered, not liking the embers that still glowed, nor the ash that plumed up with each step. ‘You will wait on the ridge until the charge is complete,’ Sir Onfroi told them. ‘I will signal you when you are to join me. I know you are excited at your first engagement. But you must not do anything rash. You are not to join the fray until I signal. Unless …’ He pointed a finger at them. ‘Unless you are expressly commanded by the count or another knight. Or I am unhorsed. May God protect me from that fate.’
Silence helped Sir Onfroi settle his shield and then he and Alfred wrestled on their helms and Wind’s hooves crunched through the burnt stalks of barley. They reached the ridge, riding up to the top and then spilling over. Sir Onfroi spurred his mount and couched his lance before Silence had fully taken in what lay before them: a ragged line of mounted men. A few in armour, all with shields. Some wielding lances and others waiting behind them with maces and swords and axes.
The Count of Nevers joined the charge. Wind jostled and frisked, and Silence gave him a pat on the neck with his gauntleted hand. ‘Easy, easy,’ he said, though he understood the desire to charge. It felt silly to wait here. He glanced at Alfred through his helm. Storm, too, danced and tossed his head. Some of the knights gave blood-curdling screams as they charged down the hill; a horn sounded from the town. ‘Almost, almost,’ Silence whispered as Sir Onfroi closed the distance between him and the enemy line; he thought he was aiming for a knight atop a chestnut horse with a red shield.
But Onfroi never reached this target. Just a dozen horse-lengths from the line, the knight abruptly slumped in saddle, dropped his lance, and pressed a hand to his chest. His horse quit its gallop. ‘What?’ Alfred stuttered. ‘What happened?’
Silence lifted the visor of his helm and squinted down. Onfroi’s horse had turned about, but the knights he had been charging at were riding towards him. Silence could see Onfroi grip his shoulder. ‘An arrow!’ Silence said. ‘He took an arrow to his arm.’
‘Charge!’ Alfred bellowed. Storm surged forward and Silence didn’t think he could stop Wind from following if he wanted to (he didn’t want to). He lifted his lance from its holder and couched it tightly under his armpit. Down the slope, past the sheepfold, the ground evening out. He could see the red shield ahead of him. He spurred Wind and the horse summoned up more speed. More. He saw nothing but red. Red shield. Red target. The tip of his lance aiming for red.
And he hit. A grinding crash, a jerk, an impact to his shield that sent him lurching in the saddle, but not falling, pushing through. Foot soldiers awaited, and Silence spurred Wind again – the gelding struck out with his hooves, scattering the men before him; Silence dropped his lance in favour of his sword and swung his blade through men not quick enough to dart away. Mud and iron. That’s what he smelled with every breath. Metal on metal and metal on flesh. He urged Wind forward, wheeled him around, urged him back.
On his second cut through the line, something hit him hard on his shield side, driving the shield into his helm, cutting his lip. Blood trickled down, salty as the air around him. He shook his head to clear it, saw a man approaching – boiled leather for armour, a round helm fitted to his head, an axe held in both hands. Silence nudged Wind to the left, waited for the man to lift the axe. Once committed to the strike, the raider would have no choice but to follow through. And follow through he did; cleaving at empty air as Silence spurred Wind to
the side, then slashing back with his sword, neatly landing the cut right on the man’s neck.
Around him the sound of the battle rose and fell. His own breathing roared in his ears and he wheeled Wind about, then held him steady, wanting to catch his breath. Wanting to see the whole field, as Sir Onfroi had often urged them in his nightly lessons. Sir Onfroi! Where was he?
The field was a mess. Churned mud, fallen men. A cluster of foot soldiers, surrounding one of the raiders. There, the Count of Nevers’ banner waving, at the edge of the town. The other knights were heading towards the banner and the remaining squires were coming down from the ridge to join them. Silence nudged Wind in that direction, scanning the horsemen he could see, looking for Alfred, for Sir Onfroi. As he approached the town, he caught sight of flames; Lord Burress’s forces had successfully reached the boats, setting them on fire on the beach. Great coils of smoke rose up and he could see Burress’s banner waving near the shore.
‘Maurice! There you are!’ Alfred’s voice called him, muffled by his helm. Silence turned and, lifting his own visor, saw Alfred drawing close on Storm. ‘How do you fare? I see blood.’
Silence touched a finger to his lips, felt the stickiness there. ‘A small cut,’ he said. ‘And you?’
‘I took a hit from a mace.’ He held up his shield; it had once been painted with the arms of Sir Ancient, but now it was mostly splinters. ‘I parried poorly, and he glanced my thigh. It’ll be a bruise. A big one.’ Alfred smiled broadly. ‘Nothing worse than I’ve had in sparring. Did you charge well? Did you unhorse someone?’
Silence thought back … he’d aimed at red. Red shield. He turned in the saddle and peered behind him. There were a dozen bodies on the ground where he’d charged and wheeled and cut through. ‘I don’t know,’ he said honestly. ‘Perhaps?’ They had drawn near the Count of Nevers’ banner and now Sir Jean saw them.
‘Maurice! Alfred! Weren’t you ordered not to charge?’ His own squire was still trotting down from the ridge to join them.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Alfred. ‘Unless Sir Onfroi was unhorsed. We saw him take an arrow and rode to his aid.’
‘Where is he?’ Sir Jean turned his horse, as if he would go out to the field and search for his friend.
‘Hold!’ the Count of Nevers boomed. ‘We must be sure of the town.’ He pointed to a squire beside him. ‘Sound the horn! Call the townspeople out!’
The horn blasted, one, two, three wails. ‘Come forward and surrender! If you come forward you won’t be harmed!’ Women, many with babies in their arms, stumbled through the streets. ‘Over here, over here,’ a couple of knights called, getting the women out of the way. A few men, one clearly a baker, with a flour-coated apron, also jogged out. The count watched, his eyes scanning the scene. ‘Let Lord Burress’s force advance. We will be ready for any they flush out.’
They found a few merchants cowering in their houses, children, too. But no more raiders. The town secure, they set out to gather prisoners and help any survivors.
It was Sir Jean who found Sir Onfroi, and he gave a great cry. Silence ran over, saw the arrow jutting from the joint in the armour between the shoulder and the chest. The bolt had sunk deep; even if they had found him sooner, there would have been nothing they could have done. The two of them carried the body over to where the Count of Nevers waited.
They found Bertram’s body as well, and the count ordered his head removed from his shoulders, to be mounted on a pike, a warning to any others who would think of rebelling. Silence turned away from this gruesome task and walked back across the field. The melee was a jumble of images, some moments clear, others murky. He found a body with a red shield strapped to its arm. Or the remains of a red shield; the wood had been sundered in two. Queasily, Silence put his foot under the body and rolled it over; a hole had been punched in the knight’s mail shirt, in his belly, to the side. A hole just the size of a lance.
Who was this man? One of Bertram’s knights. Was his family in the town? Had this knight fought before today? Silence couldn’t bear to raise the man’s visor and look upon his face; didn’t want to know if he was old or young. He had been the enemy; he had died as a knight ought to die.
The foot soldiers were picking their way through the bodies, gathering what goods they wanted. Silence supposed he could claim the knight’s purse, if he had one, but he couldn’t bring himself to do so. Already, crows hopped among the corpses, laying their own claim to the spoils.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Lord Burress welcomed them to his hall, a keep set half a day’s ride down the coast. It was a weary group that arrived there, bloody and bruised, but buoyed by their success. Silence, who had listened to Alfred recount the battle at least half a dozen times on the ride, took his time settling Wind in the stable, brushing the horse’s coat, picking mud from his tail, and telling him often that he was a very, very good horse.
The chapel bells rang and Silence gave Wind one last pat and hurried off … before catching himself. He was not at the manor house. Sir Onfroi would never again insist that they go to prayers. But still. He stopped a groom at the door to the stables and asked where the chapel was, then hurried there. It was a small room with a rounded wall at the end where the altar stood. He crossed himself and sat on a bench. There were few others in the chapel: two older women near the front. A guardsman, who looked near to dozing off. A young lady, her face covered by a veil. The priest began intoning the prayers and Silence followed along, kneeling when he ought and standing when he ought and saying Amen and thinking of Sir Onfroi, and where his soul was now.
The priest read a psalm for the day and then adjured them to think on their sins. Silence did. He had killed a man, but in the heat of battle and for a worthy cause. He had disobeyed his father, in his flight from Cornwall. A long-ago sin, but still one that bothered him. But the worst one, the one that rankled, that itched like a new wool shirt, was the lie he carried with him, the lie he lived every day. The lie of what lay beneath his armour, beneath his shirt: his Nature. He couldn’t possibly confess this. A bind and a double bind. His father had made him so, twice over. Silence knitted his fingers together, pressing them tightly. He could not be other than he was; he had been so born, he had been so raised. Both were true, though the world ruled that impossible.
Well, then, he was impossible. And as Sir Onfroi had said of his lance grip, he wasn’t right. He wasn’t proper. But it worked.
‘What troubles your mind?’
Silence looked up at the soft words and was startled to see the young lady standing in the aisle of the chapel. The service had ended; the others had left. Silence stood and managed an awkward bow. He began to smile and, intending to make light of his thoughts, but hesitated. He could hardly see the lady’s face through her veil, and somehow that blankness invited him to say, ‘A good knight lost his life today. I was thinking on the lessons he taught me.’
‘You are Maurice,’ the lady said.
‘How do you know me, my lady?’
‘When your company approached, I stood near the gate, and I asked who was the knight with the golden hair and the fair face with a lute strapped to his horse beside his shield. And I was told, Maurice.’
‘Indeed. But I am no knight, only a squire. And you have the advantage of me, for I do not know your name.’ He bowed again.
‘Shall we walk in the yard?’ she asked and then led him out to where the autumn sunshine still poured down and guardsmen milled about; turning past the stable, they arrived in a pleasant kitchen garden, where beans vined up a trellis and squashes lurked fat and yellow beneath wide leaves. ‘Was this your first fight?’
‘Indeed, my lady.’
‘And was it what you expected?’
What an odd question. Or rather, what a good question. He had to consider. ‘It was not,’ he said. ‘And it was. I mean to say, it was much more confusing and quick than I thought it would be. And yet, the heart of it … my body has been trained to those motions.’
The lady
turned her veiled face to him. ‘I love to watch the squires train, the pages, too.’
Silence laughed. ‘I would think it would be dull, to see them hack away.’
‘I am curious, that is all. I wonder what it feels like. My father says it is a great curse, to be a woman and to be so curious.’
‘But what would life be without curiosity?’ Silence said. ‘As a child, I was full of questions: how did streams know which way to flow? Why were there different types of trees? How come we could talk but horses couldn’t?’ He smiled, thinking of Ringmar, of the seneschal’s patience. ‘Even now, I find myself brimful of wonder.’
‘Ah,’ said the lady. ‘But you are a man and such things are appropriate. Ladies are not to question, not to ask, but are supposed to sit demurely and accept things as they are.’
‘That,’ said Silence, ‘is ridiculous.’
The lady placed a hand on his arm, just above the elbow. ‘Would you let your lady wife ask you any question she wanted? Or, when you are her husband and lord, will you prefer her silent?’
‘Maurice! Maurice!’ Alfred’s voice rang out, though from some distance.
‘I shan’t be marrying,’ Silence said. ‘And I still don’t know your name.’
The young lady lifted her veil, throwing the gauzy fabric back, revealing a face pale and lustrous, like the inside of a seashell: creamy white with a hint of pink. She had blue eyes with light brown lashes. ‘Ame,’ she said.
‘Maurice!’ Alfred called and then, ‘Oh, pardon me.’ He lifted his dark brows in surprise and Silence saw a mischievous smile spread across his face. ‘My lady.’ Alfred bowed low. ‘I must claim Maurice; we are wanted in the keep.’
Ame held out a hand to Silence; it was just as pale and pink as her face, and he took it in his own, held it with his palm face up, as he would hold his lance, so they were palm to palm, and he bowed low, letting his lips touch her fingers. ‘Your company has been a pleasure,’ he said.