The Tournament of Blood

by Michael Jecks

  Bloodshed was no doubt one of the reasons why the Church set its face against all forms of tournament, but other objections weighed heavily too. The Church disliked the fact that tournaments encouraged dangerous knightly passions: lust and greed. Still, the idea of condoning deaths in the field was not a happy one for bishops or popes. They banned tournaments.

  The ban was extensive: no participant could be buried in consecrated ground if he died in the lists. However, this prohibition cannot have succeeded because the Church had to keep repeating the message regularly. We know that knights who died in tournaments were routinely buried within churches, cathedrals, graveyards and elsewhere – with supportive churchmen holding the services. Eventually the Church had to give up and permit tournaments once more.

  There were, in fact, good reasons why the Church rescinded the ban in 1316. Acre had fallen, meaning that the Kingdom of Jerusalem was lost. It was essential, in the minds of many of the Christians of this time, that a strong force of knights and men-at-arms should be trained for war in order that they could participate in a new Crusade.

  The same opinion did not strike so much of a chord with kings throughout Europe. When great lords declared themselves keen to hold tournaments, gathering together all their adherents and peers, trouble could soon follow. For instance, after he had signed Magna Carta, King John’s nobles got together and began plotting against him during a tournament.

  It is noticeable that strong kings supported tournaments, no doubt seeing in them a means of keeping warlike lords occupied and training up youngsters, while weaker monarchs tended to ban them, fearing, like King John, that the motivation for holding them was more to hatch plots and treason than for the delight of getting beaten about the head by an axe-wielding lunatic on a heavy horse.

  British kings, in turn disliking and then promoting tournaments, were far too worldly to think that the Church’s prohibition could succeed, so monarchs from Richard I onwards began a tradition followed by successive governments: when in doubt, tax it. A fee was charged to hold a tournament, and all those attending must also pay on a scale according to rank.

  There were attempts to prevent injuries; Richard I’s ordinance was itself partly intended to reduce the butcher’s bill. Edward I improved on the safety aspect by requiring participants to swear to keep the peace – and pay for their licence up front! He also restricted the number of followers that men could bring with them, insisting that grooms and footmen should be unarmed, that squires alone should be allowed to join their lords for feasts, and that all weapons should be bated, or blunt. This was known as fighting with arms à plaisance, rather than weapons of war, which was called à outrance. Béhourds, in which men fought with padded leather armour and non-metallic weapons, were popular with the knights; the garments, one imagines, being a great deal lighter and cooler than full armour.

  It was at this time that the social aspect of tournaments developed: they became pageants, with market stalls, feasting, dancing and acting on offer for the elite. Expectations of the sports altered and new methods of running tournaments had to be thought up.

  Just as today people turn up in their thousands to watch a boxing match or motor race, in the medieval period people wanted to go and watch their heroes battle it out. When the course could be anything up to some ten miles long and wide, when all the fighting could take place anywhere within those hundred square miles, it was hard for spectators to see the action – and possibly hazardous too. Far better that the action should be contained in a smaller area, that fighters should be roped off, or stands built for fans, with all the business being presented before them.

  To do this, the old system of mêlée had to change. Fights started being contained within a ‘ring’ of sorts, with stands all about. But this was not all. Now, with the growth of chivalrous stories such as those of King Arthur, men wanted to have an opportunity of showing their personal courage and skill. That was impossible in a seething mass of fighting bodies, so the individual tilts began to develop – and as they developed, so rules were designed for them. There was a gradual move away from the massed battle towards the more civilised joust. Only gradually, of course, because in this bloodthirsty age people wanted to see death and mayhem, but there was a move to have tournaments over several days, with jousting acting as a warm-up for two, three or four days, leading to the grand finale of the mêlée. One assumes it would have been impractical to reverse this: the knights would all have been sore and probably deaf after the mêlée.

  King Edward II was always very keen on tournaments: his favourite, Piers Gaveston, was a talented fighter, by all accounts. However, Edward was soon persuaded that tournaments were inherently dangerous and he should not allow them to continue. This was because 289 knights met at Dunstable for a tournament during which they co-ordinated their grievances against Gaveston, which were then related at the following Parliament in the April of 1309. Again, in 1312, a tournament was used as the excuse for a gathering which allowed rebels against Gaveston to raise an army. After this, Edward set himself against any tournaments until 1323 when he submitted to the wishes of his brothers and permitted one.

  This being the case, the reader may be surprised that I have decided to set my tournament in 1322. It is even more surprising when one realises that under Richard I’s law, only some five specific fields up and down the country were to be used: they were near Salisbury, Stamford, Warwick, Brackly and Blyth. None was near Okehampton.

  However, if there is one thing which is clear about history, it is the fact that nothing is clear. Even if one hears that hard and fast rules were imposed, one soon learns that the opposite is recorded. When I began to conceive this story, I read of Edward II’s ban on tournaments and was going to try to make the story fit his brothers’ event of 1323, but then I heard of a knight who had been forced to flee from a joust and beg for a pardon because he accidentally killed his opponent in 1318. This clearly happened during Edward’s ban, and equally clearly the location (Luton) wasn’t a site selected for licensed tournaments.

  I believe that the evidence shows that the kings never intended to stop all training for knights. The intention of the royal prohibition was to prevent great multitudes of grandees gathering and plotting the current monarch’s downfall. Thus Edward would not have wanted Earl Thomas of Lancaster and the Earl of Pembroke to meet with all their men because the two were powerful and could unite against him – but a lesser baron like Hugh de Courtenay was not in the same league, and if Edward wanted Hugh’s men to help in the King’s host, should Earl Thomas rebel (as he did), obviously the King would want Hugh’s men to be capable of serving him. Therefore I believe that limited ‘training’ tournaments went on all the time; they were marginally less expensive for participants and were probably looked upon as handy for keeping rural knights and squires in training. England certainly had need of trained fighters – as she has all through history. It is only in the last fifty years that the British Government has become so fearful of its own subjects that successive Parliaments have banned target pistols, shotguns, target rifles, and even pea-shooters.

  For those who wish to find out more about knights and tournaments, there are remarkably few good books. One I would recommend is Chaucer’s Knight by Terry Jones, because although it tells of a time a few decades after this, it is so readable and informative that it is invaluable. I would also recommend Chivalry by Maurice Keen, an excellent, scholarly work that explains much about the motivations of knights, squires and heralds. I can also highly recommend The History of the Tournament in England and France by F. H. Cripps-Day – but I fear that few will be able to find it, since it was published in 1918.

  The main setting for this story is in and about Okehampton Castle. I have always been very keen to pick locations which readers can visit and ideally imagine how things might have been, and Okehampton gives a better impression than many other places.

  Tournaments would often have been held in market squares – for the simple reason that
contestants and spectators needed access to food, drink, clothing and weaponry. Pictures and woodcuts show townsfolk looking on as a pair of knights charge each other, or as a small army battered at each other with axes, swords or maces. All about can be seen shops and hucksters, clearly showing that the market continued while the knights fought.

  However, I think it’s likely that a warlord like Hugh II would have wanted to be closer to the comforts of his castle than in a small town like Okehampton. He would, I think, have wanted to stage a tournament in a more magnificent setting, somewhere with the potential for processions, for drama and display. The castle is perfect from this perspective.

  I have described the whole setting in the story itself, but perhaps a brief outline of the lands beneath the castle walls would be helpful. In effect it is a series of meadows. The first, at the eastern end, is a tapering area which is not quite so large as the others, bounded on one side by the river and the other by the castle. The next is a kind of rough oval, again with the river on the southern side, but following the contour of the castle’s ridge on the other. Finally there is a third area, which this time is less long and thin and is instead broader, if a little shorter. There is one ford up near the castle’s front gate, and a second in the third meadow.

  The castle has been imaginatively protected from collapse by English Heritage without detracting from its character. The meadowland beneath the castle, lying within the sweep of the river, is flat and broad. Walking over it, it’s easy to imagine the small fair set up, trestles all over with pots and jugs of ale or wine, barrels broached and tapped, pies and poultry cooking over smoking fires, bread being offered by maids with baskets, the odd hawker, a beggar or two at the gate, while further on would be the merchants with their bolts of silk and velvet, trying to tempt the knights into buying presents for their wives, their lady loves, or more likely for themselves, to make them appear still more gaudily marvellous.

  Okehampton Castle has suffered dreadfully over the centuries. It was built soon after Hastings, by Baldwin Fitz Gilbert, Sheriff of Devon under William the Bastard, and was mentioned in Domesday. It became a de Courtenay property when Robert de Courtenay married Baldwin’s great-great-granddaughter in 1172. The earls of Devon were the de Redvers family, but the male line died out in the 1200s. Hugh de Courtenay married one of the de Redvers women, and subsequently became Earl in her right in 1335.

  There are enormous cracks in the walls, and the outer curtain wall to the north has all but disappeared, but this little castle has a wonderful feel to it, especially if one makes the laborious ascent to the old tower on top of the steep spur. From there you can peer down at the yard before you, or gaze down the steep hill toward the meadows, up at Dartmoor, or at the line of the old roadway. It may have been a small fort, but lying as it did on the main road from Cornwall, it had a tremendous strategic importance. It is well worth a visit.

  After the forgoing, the more vigilant readers will have noticed that I spelled the town’s name as ‘Okehampton’ and not ‘Oakhampton’.

  When I wrote the first of the Templar series, I wanted to use old spellings of place names. I thought they were more interesting, but to my surprise a number of people have complained or have accused me of not knowing the area because I can’t spell the town’s name properly. For them, all I can say is that I wanted to use the names as they would have been spelled in the past. In the same way I have stuck in the main to old-fashioned spelling of people’s names.

  For those who dislike the ‘Oak’ spelling, I hope that seeing the more modern spelling here in the Author’s Note will satisfy them. After all, the Author’s Note is written in and about the twenty-first century – it’s only right that Okehampton should be given its contemporary spelling!

  With a work of this type the writer has to study many aspects of history, from methods of fighting to the clothing worn, to how Okehampton Castle would have looked in the 1320s. I am hugely grateful as always for the help of the Exeter University Library staff and the staff of the Devon and Exeter Institution, and any errors are entirely my own.

  I’ve found it enormously enjoyable getting to grips with tournaments and I only hope you find the story as interesting to read as it was for me to write.

  Michael Jecks

  North Dartmoor

  April 2000

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter One

  Benjamin Dudenay, known to most people as ‘Ben the money-lender’, was not popular, so his murder caused no distress except to his three outstanding creditors, whose demands for compensation were stolidly rejected by his widow, Maud. She was content to live on the proceeds of his wealth, feeling no need to maintain his business, and steadfastly claimed impoverishment whenever bailiff or beadle asked that she settle the dead man’s debts.

  Fortunately Benjamin’s death was much easier to arrange than his murderer had anticipated. And it was equally fortunate that the killer was unknown, that he had been away from the city of Exeter for so long that his victim could not anticipate an attack.

  It had been such a shock to see the banker after so many years, that Philip Tyrel dropped his cudgel.

  His life had altered so much. Even his name had been changed now, though he still thought of himself as Philip, but to see Benjamin again made the years fall away.

  Somehow Philip had expected the fellow to be dead. Benjamin wasn’t a young man when he’d killed his victims and Philip had momentarily thought he must be mistaken – it must be a trick of the light that made this fellow look like Benjamin. Yet he followed him all the same, wondering if his memory was playing games with him after so many years. Then, when the money-lender entered a hall, Philip heard him accosted by name – Benjamin Dudenay – and he had to lean against a wall to prevent his falling. This was the devil who had ruined Philip’s life in the pursuit of his own profit. This was the fiend who made money from the deaths of men, women and children.

  Philip could have walked away from Exeter and put the place from his mind if he had not seen Benjamin, but now he felt revulsion fill his soul.

  He had never before harmed a man, let alone killed one, yet when he saw Benjamin later, strutting down the street and smiling suavely at other leading citizens, saw him arrogantly dropping coins into the alms bowls which the beggars thrust towards him, Philip felt his anger rising. As he stood staring at the rich building that proclaimed Benjamin’s importance, his blood called out for vengeance.

  That night, Benjamin haunted his dreams, alongside the faces of Benjamin’s victims, who cried out for justice – as they had every night in the years since they had perished. Philip shot awake, sweating as they called to him, searing his soul with their pitiful pleadings. Each time he dozed they returned to him, tortured, shrieking faces, until another traveller at the inn grew so irritable at his restlessness that he heaved a boot at Philip’s head and demanded tersely why he didn’t go and seek his mother among the whores at the river and let other people sleep.

  Philip went out. Before light he found himself out
side Benjamin’s hall again as if his feet had themselves instinctively made the decision to take him there. The usurer left his house as the sky was changing from violet to gold and the sun was beginning to lift above the horizon. As if in a trance, Philip set off after him.

  The streets were quiet at this time of day. A few people scuffed to church, an apprentice ran to his work after spending the night with his girl, a cat arched its back and spat at a lean and expectant-looking terrier.

  Benjamin strolled past them all, ignoring both people and animals. Philip was torn between excitement and terror. Walking swiftly, he overtook the man and then stopped at the entrance to an alley, bending to retie his hose. The light from the waxing sun caught Benjamin’s face and Philip felt his anxiety slip away. There could be no mistake: it was definitely him. The money-lender still wore that same supercilious smile of yore. He glanced down his nose at Philip and in that moment his fate was decided.

  The cudgel dangled from his belt. Ben took one last, fateful step and Philip snatched it up, cracking Benjamin over the head. The banker fell like an axed hog, flat on his belly. Working speedily, Philip dragged him into the alley. A short way in he found a low doorway leading to a tiny cell-like room, a storehouse, and he hauled the dead man inside. Then Benjamin moaned.

  Philip nearly dropped him and bolted, he was that close to panic. He’d hoped the blow had slain Benjamin, yet now the man was feebly moving, grunting to himself. Swallowing hard, Philip gripped his cudgel. He lifted it again even as Benjamin’s hand began to move towards his battered skull. Then Ben’s eyes opened and he squinted up.