The Leopard Sword

by Michael Cadnum

  “Not everyone envies men-at-arms,” said Edmund as we explored a neighboring field later that day. “Perhaps many folk would rather sleep under a peaked roof than travel with a sword.”

  The farmland here was thick with dust, walls of mossless stone thrown up where I expected to see hedgerows and cow-mucky ponds. Bees tasted thistle flowers, and vineyards were festooned with tar-dark bunches of grapes.

  Large columns of stone lay among the weeds. Father Giles had told me about the Greek knight Achilles, and the travels of the knight-errant Ulysses, and had explained that the ancients worshiped gods and goddesses in temples of marble. A goat perched on the stump of a column and made no sound as we approached.

  “Was there a famous siege here?” asked Edmund, referring to the ruined columns, half hidden by grasses.

  “No doubt,” I ventured.

  Edmund drank in the sight of the marble ruins and nodded. “In the time of our great-grandfathers.”

  “Longer ago, I think.”

  He wondered at this.

  The earthy clods made a comforting sound under our feet, and birds chattered and bickered in the twisting arms of a fig tree. The happy song of these starlings, much like the familiar birds of home, emboldened me to mention the subject uppermost in my mind.

  “Maybe no harm will come of Nigel’s insult,” I said.

  Sometimes Edmund takes a long moment before he responds, as though thoughts were leaden pigs—ingots of raw metal, difficult to move. One of the virtues I love best in Edmund is his deep study of any question I put to him.

  “It’s possible,” he said skeptically,“that Sir Jean will ignore Nigel’s offense—but not likely. Knights love a fight.”

  “Better than wine,” I agreed.

  “I think neither of us will ever be perfect cowards,” he added. “But I think Nigel and Rannulf both love bloody steel more than we do.”

  Edmund had tolerated the human wreckage of massacre and battle better than I, and with his height and broad shoulders he was perhaps better suited to war. But I was by far the better hand with sword and buckler, and could sit a horse more easily.

  “If you had to lead a band of young squires into battle,” I said, “what would you tell them?”

  “Squires as pitifully ignorant as I used to be?”

  “As bare of experience,” I responded with a laugh, “as both of us were.”

  “I wouldn’t tell them anything,” he said, watching the starlings take flight from the fig tree. “Every word ever told about war is a lie.”

  He turned to me and smiled. “There were five birds just then. A blessed omen, no doubt.”

  It’s true that five is one of the sacred numbers. Christ suffered five wounds on Good Friday, and people hoping for lucky omens count birds, moths around a candle, and even flea bites, hoping the fortunate number will show itself.

  That’s another thing I like and admire about my friend—he is more devout than I am and, without knowing it, shows me the way to Heaven’s favor.

  When we returned to the inn, spearmen were stationed at street corners, sent forth by the local nobles to protect the town from Crusading warriors. They were a thin, mousy bunch of guards, older men with tight, unhappy faces, and young men who would not meet our eyes. It never failed to impress and amuse me how ordinary villagers feared Crusaders, even a pair of novice men-at-arms like ourselves.

  That evening, after a dish of roast lamb and fat capons, and enough red wine to heal the soul, Nicholas came before us, dressed in his finest kirtle and belt, his sword at his hip. He stood erect, one hand on his sword hilt, exactly the way a squire is trained to appear when delivering important tidings.

  “My lord,” he sang out, “the worshipful and God-fearing Christian knight Sir Jean of Chartres requests an apology from Sir Nigel.”

  Nigel said nothing.

  Nicholas waited several heartbeats. Then he continued, “My lord challenges Sir Nigel to an ordeal of arms.”

  It was my duty to respond to these words on behalf of my master, but I could not remember the appropriate formula. Such challenges were the stuff of poetry. No one uttered them in real life—or so I tried to believe.

  Besides, it was hard to take the message seriously in my wine-cozened condition. The air was sweet with the smell of hill spices, thyme and sweet basil and other herbs considered precious in an English garden, and here as common as weeds. The growing dark was cool, but the spreading tree and the music of the village around us so welcoming that none of us wanted to retire to our cots. A single lamp of clay burned with a gentle feather of smoke, the olive-oil flame giving off a warm perfume.

  I nearly offered Nicholas a place at our table. Edmund gazed with one hand on the wine pitcher, Rannulf leaning forward to hear what I would say. I was taking too long to shape a response.

  Nicholas waited, giving me his smile, chin forward, the one that meant he was superior to me in every way. And yet it was not a purely arrogant smile. It let me see that at some other time, on another island, he and I could have been friends. I half believed that Nicholas was tempted to unfasten his sword belt and join us in the lamplight.

  But Sir Nigel set down his wine cup and stood.

  I recalled my duty, and rose with him.

  “On behalf of my most worshipful Christian lord and master,” I began. I couldn’t remember the rest.

  Nigel glanced at me. Go on.

  I summoned the words, battling the effects of the wine. I continued on, reciting the phrases, more or less, that were customary in accepting a challenge. I left out the phrase God-fearing, perhaps not willing to use the word fear. Otherwise I had the phrasing in something like the proper order, and I pronounced the Frankish words as well as possible.

  All the while, through the fumes of the wine, I began to realize that the words were not mere language.

  I accepted the challenge that could cause Nigel’s death.

  NINE

  A joust would take a few days to arrange properly, but everyone was eager to see the thing done right, just as it would have been done in Flanders or Saxony.There was no reluctance to do battle—there was a desire, as Rannulf put it, “to see that the greatest amount of harm might be done when the fighting starts.”

  We had no chargers—no warhorses of any kind.An elderly knight from Poitou, overseeing the construction of the castle, provided capable mounts, for a price. Nigel had sold his battle lance in the Holy Land to a Cretan knight whose weapons had been stolen by skirmishing Bedouins. New lances, too, were provided by the Poitevin knight for the appropriate amount of silver. Sir Nigel insisted that he would need time to examine various sites for the forthcoming contest, and Sir Jean quickly consented to any necessary delay.

  I set to work, shaking out the inevitable kinks in Sir Nigel’s chain mail, inspecting the bridle and saddle as I had been trained to do. Sir Nigel’s horse, a rough-haired stallion the Greek handlers called Nereus, shied at my touch, flared his nostrils, and made one of those magnificent horse sneezes that blast the air out of the stables. I called on Edmund to help, and he soothed the animal with a single whisper.

  “Sir Nigel’s bones have not healed,” I said, speaking in a quiet voice as I readied the leather trappings, the handle of the shield, the inner lining of the helmet. Even the lowliest plowman could estimate the amount of time it took for Heaven to accomplish its will: three months, three weeks, three days for a sow to farrow; three fortnights for a broken bone to mend.

  “He’s been tossing stones against a wall,” said Edmund pensively. “Big cobbles from the beach.”

  It had been less than a month since Sir Nigel’s injury. I could not speak for a moment, I was so filled with feeling.

  “Nigel will depend on you,” said Edmund.

  “No doubt,” I offered, “Sir Jean is not as murderous as they say.”

  “I hear he’s a cruel man,” said Edmund unhappily, “and a sure-handed killer.”

  I ran a comb over my own warhorse, a gray and brown spotted
creature named Proteus. My mount gave every indication of great calm, and I was sure no amount of effort would ever get it to act like a proper charger. Squires were expected to fight in light armor, squire against squire, on less impressive mounts.

  I knew full well that I would be required to attend my master in the joust—perhaps go so far as to do some fighting myself. Even though I had studied sword work with the best tutors my father could afford, the thought made the spleen run thin in my body.

  “I believe Nicholas is one of those proud squires,” I said hopefully, “who can’t handle a sword.”

  “I would fear him as much as Sir Jean,” said Edmund with a dogged earnestness.

  I flung away the comb and seized Edmund by the shoulders. “You are choosing your words very unwisely, Edmund,” I said. “With a great lack of tact,” I added, wishing I could laugh—or weep.

  “I am praying for you, Hubert,” said Edmund, surprised by my sudden outburst.

  “Praying!” I was about to say that sacred words would not sharpen a lance or keep an untried horse from panic.

  “To Saint Mark, who has blessed us all this long journey.”

  I had forgotten how uncommonly full of faith Edmund is, even in a world of devout and prayerful warriors. Surely his prayers go directly to the ears of the saints, while mine—if I may be forgiven for saying so—drift swallowlike, finding the way or not, as the wind wills.

  I practiced with a dull sword, Edmund doing his best to imitate a knight’s swordplay.The battle hammer is Edmund’s best weapon—at sword work he could parry without ever gaining ground, strong enough, but with little cadence. I swung the blade until my arm was weak and the landscape swam in my vision. “More,” Rannulf would say from one side, and finally take Edmund’s place, driving me back, and back farther, showing me what real skill could do.

  Osbert slipped into the stables, carrying a cloth heavy with cheese.

  “Sir Jean is jousting at a fan, my lords,” he confided. A fan was a form of quintain, easy to improvise, a shield on one end and a bag of sand on the other.“He got knocked off his horse once.”

  “Only once?” said Edmund unhappily.

  “No more than that,” said Osbert.

  We shared the crumbly goat cheese, and washed it down with wine.

  “He sent for a warhorse from Paris,” Osbert added.

  “It will take months,” I protested, “for a horse to get here from—”

  “He bought it from a Parisian ship bound for the Holy Land, and borrowed fine silver to pay for it. His servants saddled it this morning.”

  “And he fell off,” I offered hopefully.

  Osbert was a servant, but he was also an older man, and expected a trace of respect even from his masters. He gave me the sort of almost silent sigh teachers use when they are waiting for a young scholar’s attention. “Wagering men wouldn’t risk a bet on Sir Nigel, at first. He’s admired and liked by every man who ever drew a blade, but he’s too hurt, they say. I placed a few secret bets through my friends among the water bearers and the sergeants, if you’ll forgive me, my lords.”

  Osbert paused meaningfully, cheese crumbs along his lower lip.

  “What else, Osbert?” asked Edmund gently. He did not have a merchant’s son’s impatience with servants.

  “I met an honest man from Beaune,” he said. “A shield bearer, who lost a thumb outside of Acre.”

  Edmund ate cheese and sipped wine, listening with interest, but I was weary of waiting for Osbert to complete a thought. I said, “The thumb was stolen by Sir Jean, no doubt.”

  “Such an injury is a grievous one for a shield bearer, my lords,” said Osbert.

  “We’ll pray for the soul of this thumb, Osbert,” I said.

  “And this shield man from Beaune,” said Osbert, “is thought to be an expert at sword combat, my lords.”

  I didn’t want to hear what Osbert was about to say.

  Osbert had the grace to lower his voice. “I nearly struck the words out of his mouth with my fist, my lords. He says you’ll make Nicholas de Foss sweat, my lord Hubert. But he’ll stick your head on pike.”

  In the busy town where I spent my childhood, there were wealthy peasants, field folk who had worked the land for many generations and gradually prospered. Such men wore the finest homespun, not hairy cloth speckled with chaff but supple, pleated blouses, with ox-leather belts. Sometimes such monied farmers could afford a few ells of North Country wool, and they would enter my father’s shop respectfully, pulling off their caps deferentially but paying king’s coin, just like any franklin’s wife. My mother made a point of remembering their children by name, although in truth most of them were either John or Lucy.

  One such hardworking plower was Alf, a man I always associated with tireless labor and good cheer. He was always splitting a stump, or hanging a hog carcass from an oak. And one Michaelmas, Alf drank more ale than usual, and stumbled over a neighbor passed out drunk in the road.

  The surgeon in Coneygate made Alf some wooden splints, and wrapped them so securely that he was able to steer a harrow and wave to any passerby even as his bones mended. I considered this, and reflected on Edmund’s skill with his hands, whether mending a helmet or a delicate jewelry hasp.

  I drew a sketch in the dirt.Wagons rumbled through the town, past the fountains, laden with jiggling mountains of black grapes, emerald grapes, pink grapes, the entire harvest of Chios beginning all at once.

  I was concerned that Sir Nigel would shake his head and say that if Heaven willed him dead, then he would be dead. Nigel liked his wind rough and his wine tart, and tried to smile if something hurt him. Perhaps my master believed that a knight had to demonstrate unending dureté—toughness—to his squires. But to my great relief, he knelt and studied the sketch I had scratched in the sand.

  “Brassards,” I said, using the Frankish term for such armor. “Edmund can make one for each forearm.”

  “You think God will not strengthen me?” asked Nigel with a gentle laugh.

  “God and your willing squire,” I said.

  Nigel smoothed his boot sole over the sketch.

  “If it pleases you, Sir Nigel,” I added urgently.

  Nigel chuckled. “If it pleases you.” But he gave a nod. “I will wear your brassards with gratitude.” His bright eyes peered into mine. “And you, Hubert—is your sword arm ready?”

  The morning of the joust was cold.

  I had not slept, and neither had Edmund, we both admitted as we stepped out of the inn under the morning star.We each ate fresh brown bread in the early light, with honeycomb spread over the warm slices.

  What words we utter, and what words we carefully do not say, can shift a day one way or another. Edmund made the sign of the cross, and his lips moved in silent prayer. I asked Heaven to heed what Edmund asked for, and to forgive my sins.

  We went out to the place where, later that forenoon, the joust would take place. Frost-glazed thyme stroked our leggings. The flat, fallow field had been curried by the wind into an almost perfect surface, sun-baked but free of what folk in my town called popples—small stones. Knights preferred what Rannulf called a true fight, with no peaks or stumps to allow an advantage or hiding place.

  I could not keep from feeling strangely detached, both myself and a stranger, like a court player paid to imitate me in a fete. My father employed such travelers on festival days, musicians and jongleurs from Derby. They wore pied-patterned leggings and colorful caps. I knew how the balladeer would describe me, his voice lifted handsomely in song:

  Hubert, Squire Hubert, stands upon the field.

  Where he will die.

  TEN

  I was afraid for myself, of course—many a squire has his liver lanced during a joust. But I was afraid, more than anything, for the life of my master.

  Fear is a poison that makes the fingers cold, and the mouth dry. It is a great cause of sweat and of piss, and I found myself hurrying to the chamber pot all morning. It weakens the bowels, too, a
nd it stirs the mind so badly that no single thought can settle. I was certain that the hour would never arrive, and in my anxiety half convinced myself that the long, slowly passing morning was proof that time was creaking, and falling still.

  But the hour came.

  Sir Nigel rode out into the sunlight.

  He wore a brilliant blue cloak, bought especially for this joust from a knight from Arles, and combed and mended by a fuller, one of many men who came forth to offer Sir Nigel their best help. It was held by an enameled clasp the shape of a lozenge. He wore a surcoat of finest white lamb’s wool, a fabric that my father would have kept stored and brought out one bolt at a time for his most wealthy customers. I had fussed over the fabric and ordered the hem mended where a minuscule tear had marred one corner.

  Sir Nigel carried his lance erect, the ashwood weapon sharpened with a soapstone and polished by my own hands, using the training drilled into me by stern and expert masters in the years when I could only dream of such tournaments. His shield was blue, decorated by the Crusader cross in white, polished by me to a satisfying luster.Wool clothing is rich with oil that accumulates on the hands, and I used it to bring out the light in the metals, and the glow in Nigel’s leather. The shield hung from a jousting strap around his neck and over his left arm.

  I carried Sir Nigel’s helmet.The hair of his head had been close-cropped by a shearer from Whitby. Nigel’s newly cut hair made him look younger, as did his bright gaze. Father Giles was right—the eye is the source of the world, and when someone like Sir Nigel closes his eyes, something is taken out of it.

  Sir Jean’s shield was scarlet, decorated with the symbol of a golden swift, a pair of stylized wings. Nicholas carried a standard, a muster flag of silk, that fluttered and tossed in the wind. The squire wore a surcoat of scarlet, and stabbed the standard into the earth, and plunged it in again, several times, until the rippling thing stayed where he wanted it, stuck into the field.