The Leopard Sword

by Michael Cadnum

  I carried no such standard, and the surcoat over my mail was the color of the sheep that had worn it on the hill, except for a fine blue border all around. Sir Nigel had said he preferred to spend his silver on wine and capons, and I tried to tell myself that I would turn the simplicity of my garment into a point of pride.

  Sir Jean allowed his charger, a roan horse brushed until he gleamed, to high-step back and forth along the edge of the field.This process gave us long moments to admire the way Sir Jean sat in the saddle, and the firm way he carried his lance, but it was important that a horse be allowed to drop dung before heavy exertion. At last this necessity was accomplished, bright green-yellow manuring the dry land.

  Sir Jean turned to one of his several sergeants and shield bearers, and motioned with a mailed hand. A crucifix on a long staff, the image of Our Lord, was carried out to him and held forth so that he might kiss it.

  Knights and squires had attended Holy Mass at the edge of an olive grove, celebrated by an ailing English priest from the Genoan ship Santa Croce. The Greek priests practiced a dubious variety of Christ’s creed, and Father Giles had warned me against worshiping in a sanctuary “not blessed by the Roman faith.” When I had peered into a white-walled chapel, I had seen niches of flickering oil lamps, and a bronze-green visage of a saint or martyr imprisoned in a wooden frame. It was essential that men about to die draw their swords in a state of grace, and even now, as I cinched the saddle girth of Sir Nigel’s horse just a little tighter, I was grateful that an Englishman—even one haggard from weeks of bowel flux—had blessed us.

  I studied Sir Jean’s ruddy face from a distance, looking for some trace of hesitation, some glimmer of doubt that honor required the death of at least one knight on this fine mid-morning, the sun warm, the air sea-fresh. He settled the helmet down over his head, hiding whatever feelings he might have.

  Sir Nigel released his cloak, and it drifted out, over the horse’s haunches. Sir Nigel accepted his helmet from my cold hands, the heavy iron bucket making a soft, dull chime as my fingers left it. He hefted the armored piece, like a market-day bargainer estimating the weight of a cheese. Now I heard myself saying what I believed could be my last words to my master.

  “In Heaven’s hands, my lord,” I said, sounding as devout and calm as I wished I truly felt.

  There had been a showy element to Sir Jean’s kissing of the cross. Sir Nigel’s prayer was almost silent, and reduced to two holy names.

  “Our Lady and Saint George,” said Sir Nigel.

  The look he gave me was one of purest serenity, and something more.

  Sir Nigel approached death as a famished man approaches a banquet. His arms were protected and strengthened by high-sleeved gauntlets, designed by Edmund. The gauntlet sleeves were fitted with splints of ashwood, provided by cutting up a spear and working it into the leather, the entire device strapped and bound into place. Sir Nigel had declared it the finest work since King David himself rode to battle.

  My master felt the interior of the helmet, making sure the woolen head pad was in place, and while my hand lifted upward, following the helmet as it fitted down and over his head, I did not touch it now, letting Nigel make the adjustments that suited him.

  I was sick at heart, certain I would never again see his face alive.

  ELEVEN

  A crowd of knights and their squires, as well as sailors and ship’s boys, had gathered, a wide circle of folk.

  The knights were hooded from the sun, the servants in flowing cloth caps of straw-brown homespun or once jaunty and now weathered colors.We were a battle-battered bunch. A few archers, jaundiced or heavily bandaged, sported the rounded leather caps of their kind. None of the Chian villagers had gathered. Even in a humming, welcoming port town, Crusaders had a reputation for unpredictable violence.

  A farmer along a distant rocky path paused to let his donkey browse a stand of thistles and gazed down on us from the hillside. A line of clouds streaked down from the north, and despite the warm sun there was a harvest coolness in the light wind.

  Sir Rannulf looked on, his eyes narrow, as though he watched what was taking place from a great distance. Edmund watched quietly, appearing even taller than usual. Both Rannulf and Edmund were armed, Edmund carrying his gleaming war hammer.A joust sometimes began with two knights, attended by two sword-wielding squires, and then as events spilled out of control, fell into a general melee.

  Edmund set aside his hammer and helped me strap on my simple brass and leather helmet, the chin buckle compressing my lips.

  “Keep the sun at your back,” said Rannulf.

  Perhaps I should have been more forgiving, but Rannulf’s advice annoyed me just then. He was a knight who could kill but could not battle, a cheerless, loveless fighting man who had won little glory on this Crusade. Besides, I thought, the joust would begin with the daylight against us, as anyone could see. The still climbing sun was behind Nicholas as that sturdily built squire adjusted his own head protection, a hooded coif of chain mail.

  I felt envy and further anxiety.The hood fastened with a tie under Nicholas’s chin and afforded him protection along his neck, and free movement. It gave a good appearance, too, and jingled softly as he shook his head to flex the armor, or show it off in the sunlight. No doubt, I tried to tell myself, the simple helmet I wore would protect against a blow almost as well.

  Osbert took my arm. “Remember, my lord Hubert,” he said, “they are liars and wretches.” Liyhers ant wrecches. “Such men can never fight bravely.”

  I thanked him.

  “And, Lord Hubert,” said Osbert, in a confiding whisper, “I hear Sir Jean cannot put his weight on both feet. If his horse spills, let Sir Jean try to stand up.” He winked. “Sir Nigel will cut him to pieces, even with two broken arms.”

  I recalled the only joust I had ever witnessed, a tourney on a green outside Sheffield.The church disowned, and generally warned against, tournaments because they so often led to brutal homicides, spiteful knights dispatching old rivals. The Sheffield tourney, however, had promised blunted lances, and a lord mayor, chief burgess, or some other worthy had dropped a white flag to initiate the first of many breathtaking charges.

  Clods had flown, and Sir William of Pontefract lost an eye, but wine had been drunk and rooks frightened. I recalled the black fowl clearly, perhaps what I could observe most successfully, being a boy among much taller city folk. The birds flew from nearby trees, settling again only to be frightened off once more, until after hours of broken lances and foaming chargers, the black birds at last had not bothered to stir a feather, and stayed where they were in the chestnut trees.

  I folded Sir Nigel’s cloak with great care. “Osbert says Sir Jean is weak-legged even now,” I said.

  “I can see that,” said Nigel quietly. “But my thanks to you.”

  Sir Jean lowered his lance and lifted it, a brief salute. Sir Nigel responded with a gesture, a toss of his own lance, and then Sir Jean hulked forward, like a man about to topple from his horse.

  He did not.

  He leaned, and the warhorse carried him. The lance rose and fell, and then steadied as he came on.

  TWELVE

  Sir Nigel was not slow in kicking his horse, or hesitant in couching his lance, seating it under his elbow and leveling the weapon.

  But Nereus the warhorse was not quick in responding. When the horse did react, he showed the wrong sort of spirit, tossing his head and snorting, the halter fittings jingling. Even when Nereus trotted forward, his ears were flattened, his eyes rolled, and he kicked out at nothing.

  Sir Jean was already halfway across the field when Sir Nigel’s voice, soothing and clucking, finally persuaded Nereus to barrel forward in the right direction. Sir Jean’s lance shifted and searched as the knight rode forward, the point of the lance looking like a living, lethal creature.

  Realizing that at the point of impact the two horsemen would not be approaching at equal speed, the cunning lance chose not to seek to impale Sir Nig
el or drive him off the horse. The point hunted upward, toward that vulnerable seam in his armor, where the helmet and the chain mail left the throat exposed.

  Horse furniture it is called, the breastplate and back plate of the saddle, girth and crupper of the leather, the snaffle bits of the harness. Every point of this furnishing strained as the lance point missed Sir Nigel’s head, and the shaft of the lance caught Sir Nigel across the breast. Sir Nigel reeled, but did not haul at the reins or lurch in the saddle. He sat well, riding on through the point of impact as the lance levered out of Sir Jean’s grasp and clattered to the dust.

  I had a sudden, inappropriate thought:There, it’s over and done, and now we can all feast and be friends.

  It was far from done.

  My own mount was trembling, shivers running along his frame, and it took only a touch of my spur knob to coax him forward. I rode hard through the dust in the air to Sir Nigel’s struggling form, where he worked to wheel his horse around. At Nigel’s side I tugged at his shield to straighten it—the strap had developed a twist. I helped him adjust his grip on the lance, neither of us speaking. As I turned to face Sir Jean and his squire, the sun was at our back.

  Sir Jean kicked his mount, the force of the blow making the harness leap, and the charger was quick to respond. When the horse suddenly went down a moment later, it looked like an act of willfulness, the animal deciding to dump his knight and rest for a long moment on the ground.

  The fall was so abrupt that even as I hauled at my reins, slowing my approach, I had to puzzle together what I had seen and heard: the horse flinging his forward-striding hoof too high, a hind hoof stumbling, the whites of the animal’s eyes wide and fearful. A loud, sickening snap.

  The horse screamed, a sound not at all like a human cry, but one that nevertheless chilled me. Again the big animal cried, a full-lunged shriek.The horse flung out a foreleg, and the hoof angled straight down, swinging, connected only by flesh and sinew.

  Sir Jean struggled to haul his body out of his saddle. It was no easy effort—one stirrup was trapped under the horse’s heaving form. The saddle that helped the knight stay mounted and secure now trapped him. Nicholas held out a hand, leaning from his own mount, but Sir Jean slapped it away.

  At last Sir Jean wrestled his bulk free of the horse. Nigel and I struggled to control our own chargers, both animals agitated by the agonized screams of the injured steed. Sir Jean drew his sword and in one blow cut his injured horse’s neck, nearly all the way through.

  One of Sir Jean’s ostlers wailed, his voice high and broken as the sight of this fine horse bleeding moved him beyond words. Nearly every witness, many of them wagering men, had something solemn and urgent to say to his neighbors, and the air resounded with an undercurrent of voices.

  Sir Jean used both hands to extricate the blade, pulling in a stiff, ugly movement, and then he brandished the weapon, gilded with blood. It was a gesture that both threatened and invited.

  Sir Nigel laughed, his sound both captured and amplified by the iron helmet. It was a single burst of merriment that from some fighters would have been empty bravado. But I knew Sir Nigel well enough. Mounted, Sir Jean, the bigger knight, had an advantage. But on foot, shield to sword, Sir Nigel could have traded blows with any warrior under heaven.

  Unless he broke his arms again.

  My own sword still in its scabbard, I held the leather bridle as Sir Nigel half fell from the saddle, caught himself, hefted his shield, and marched upon the larger knight, his chain mail skirt making the chink chink chink I found pleasant to hear under other circumstances.

  A single bee, a spiraling speck of amber, circled crazily around Sir Nigel’s helmet.The island of Chios was famed for its sage-flavored honey; from where we fought, straw bee-hives could be seen, a row upon the stony field. Sir Nigel hated insects and spiders, and even armored he hesitated now, letting this little chip of life make a wide orbit. Perhaps the bees mistook the blooming gush of scarlet all around for a sudden burst of flowers, because there were several insects, glinting brightly in the morning air.

  Sir Nigel circled. Sir Jean set his feet and landed a sweeping blow on Sir Nigel’s kite-shaped Crusader shield. In return Sir Nigel slammed his shield into Sir Jean’s, shoving hard. I winced, looking on, knowing that if the splints and gauntlets protecting Sir Nigel were going to fail, it would be now.

  “Pig!” grunted Sir Jean in English.

  Pygge.

  Sir Nigel cut through the air, his sword ringing out on the edge of Sir Jean’s shield.

  “Weak as a lady,” said Sir Jean in his simple, infirm English. “Weak as a little maiden lady.” May-den lay-dee.

  Sir Nigel drove his shield into Sir Jean. The heavier Frankish knight took a step back and began to breathe heavily, his breath echoing in the iron bucket of his helmet.

  “Thief master,” panted Sir Jean.

  I could not keep myself from stealing a glance at Squire Nicholas, wondering how embarrassing he found his lordship’s invective. Nicholas allowed the mail coif to shadow his features.

  Sir Nigel did not speak. The two knights circled each other. Sir Jean feinted once, twice. Sir Nigel, keeping his footwork economical, always thrust his left foot toward Sir Jean while the taller, stouter knight sometimes slipped, his feet confused, like a dancer too drunk to keep the tambour’s rhythm.

  “Piss hole!” gasped Sir Jean.

  Sir Nigel delivered a solid, convincing blow squarely on the golden bird on Sir Jean’s shield. Sir Jean shuffled, and his feet found the slop where the warhorse’s gore had pooled. The big knight slipped. He stumbled, and caught himself only by sticking his sword into the scarlet muck.

  Sir Nigel could have cut Sir Jean badly right then, the big knight exposed, but he did not. The Frankish fighting man staggered. He hopped on one foot, his mail skirt jingling, the sun bright along his polished shield. He swore by the Holy Face of Lucca, a favorite curse among knights.

  And he fell hard, unharmed by Sir Nigel.

  I was about to dismount. Nicholas’s shadow was in the corner of my eye, his approach distorted by the sweat that stung my vision.

  “Hubert!”

  Edmund’s voice.

  I turned toward the movement rising near me—the gleam of a gauntlet, the glint of a sword.

  But the sun was at my assailant’s back.

  With no warning, I was on the ground, flat, hands out, feet splayed, closing and opening my eyes. My ears were ringing, but I had no impression of having fallen. I was not concerned for the moment, and felt grateful for the flat, solid earth beneath me.

  But as I lay there, I began to experience a deep puzzlement. Had I planned to do this? Surely, I mocked myself gently, this was not a good idea. I tried to imagine that the joust was over—it was time to stretch out in thankful exhaustion.

  I had to guess my way through very recent events, and I found no logic behind my position here in the sunlight, men and horses moving about me, hooves kicking up dust.When I tried to sit up, I could not move.

  Nicholas de Foss knelt over me, pressing my head down with one hand. The squire’s mail coif whispered as he bent over me.

  He lowered a couteau—a long knife—to my throat.

  THIRTEEN

  A fist seized the rounded top of Nicholas’s coif and pulled him back.

  Edmund had Nicholas, and as tall as the blond squire was, my friend raised him high off the ground and threw him down.

  Edmund put the head of his war hammer on Nicholas’s chest and said, “Do not move.”

  I parted my lips, but no words came.

  “Where are your hurts?” asked Edmund, kneeling beside me.

  “I am quite well, Edmund,” I heard myself say—a perfect lie.

  “Hubert, can you move?” Edmund insisted.

  “When I choose,” I managed to say.

  A melee commenced, the field crowded with energetic, angry, impatient folk, excited to be battling again. Weapons made a terrible clash, shield against sword, ham
mer against armor.The sound makes the pit of the stomach leap, and the eyes blink. Mail-clad feet hurried around me, and the leather-bottomed boots of pikemen slipped in the bloody mud.

  Edmund stood over me, laying about him with his hammer, warning people away.The tension was easily spent, and few men had drawn swords with murderous intent. Besides, this scurvy, jaundiced, worm-eaten crowd could not fight long without fatigue. Edmund stayed right where he was, one mailed foot on either side of me, keeping me from harm. Sir Nigel’s voice rose over all the others. Just as in the Crusader camp, he won their attention, commanding men to sheathe their swords, and ordering squires to help their knights back to the tree shade where they could all drink cool wine.

  Rannulf’s voice reached me. In a calming tone he told some unseen warrior that if he did not scabbard his sword at once, he’d cleave his arm from his shoulder.

  An ostler soothed one of the warhorses, with kissing sounds and quiet urging. A water boy outfitted in Sir Jean’s worn and faded livery, a moth-eaten swift flying skyward on his breast, knelt beside Edmund.

  “Sir Jean sends to know,” said the lad,“if Sir Nigel’s squire is badly hurt.”

  I tried to speak yet again, but could not form a further word. A great pain began to expand in my head.

  “Good herald,” said Edmund, his voice taut with anger, “pray ask Squire Nicholas’s attendance upon us, if it please him.”

  Squire Nicholas wore his mail hood back, his blond hair sweat-soaked.

  Edmund let the squire wait, wiping my face with a cool cloth.Then he stood and folded the cloth and made a show of bored surprise at Nicholas’s presence. Edmund had learned a great deal among the Norman knights, and no one would have guessed he was a staver’s son as he looked Nicholas up and down with nearly Frankish coolness.