The White Cross

by Richard Masefield

  ‘So are we to infer that lances are the only weapons you know how to use?’

  De Bernay chose the very moment that I dropped my cloak and beckoned Jos for my massage, to raise his head and eye my naked body. ‘You’ll pardon me for wondering. But will that eager bride of yours approve so short a spear do we suppose?’

  It was one of those times that stay with you, that you can’t forget, another link in the long chain that’s drawn me to this place. He mocked me openly before our squires, and like a dog that can’t stand being laughed at my first thought was to turn and hide. My second was to use my fists to smash Hugh’s handsome face in. But all I did when it came down to it was scowl and flop onto my pallet, scarlet to the hairline, knowing I was outmanoevered.

  ‘And do try not to grind your teeth, boy,’ I heard him murmur from the hairy cradle of his arms. ‘It sounds so unattractive.’

  We dipped our lances side by side before the Earl and Countess, Hugh and I, as the appellants dipped theirs on the far side of the field for Archbishop Baldwin – a small man in black and white who sat with his secretaries and chaplains in a stand garlanded with bright red poppies to represent the blood of Thomas Becket.

  Returned to England for the trépignée and coronation, the Earl had come by road from Dover to join his lady at the fortress on the west bank of the River Ouse, Baldwin came up-river from Newhaven to his manor of South Malling on the further bank. Word of the tournament they were to hold between the two had spread like wildfire through the County. Spectators thronged the wooden barriers, burgesses rubbing shoulders with the peasants. Sunhats sprouted everywhere like mushrooms, some on children perched up on their fathers’ shoulders; and on a scaffold a small group of umpires sat apart, two knights from either camp to see fair play with scribes to keep a tally of the scores.

  ‘Knights of Sussex, hear the laws by which you may compete!’ A clarion fanfare announced a mounted herald in the Warenne livery of blue and gold, a man as slight as the archbishop chosen for his mighty lungpower.

  ‘By order of Prince Richard, by grace of God the rightful Lord of England,’ he bellowed with his hands cupped round his mouth. ‘No combatant on pain of death may bring onto the field of tournament a boar-spear, bow or arbalest, a dagger or a slash-hook. Knights may only fight with lances, swords and axes, flails and bludgeons. Squires must go unarmed. Those taken at a disadvantage must be dragged by main force to the stakes erected and there remain until their ransoms are agreed, with one half of all payments, or half the value of their confiscated steeds and armour to be rendered to the Honour of Warenne for contribution at Exchequer to the Kings’ Croisade.

  ‘Knights of Sussex, know that you are subject to your Sovereign Lord to do his bidding, and swear this day in presence of this great assembly to bear fealty to Lord Richard, King Elect.’ The herald’s face was flushed, eyes like a throttled cat’s. But none of us were free to arm until the words he’d memorised had been repeated.

  ‘I do so swear in life and limb and earthy honour,’ I recited with the others. ‘I swear against all men and women who might live and die, to be answerable to Richard Lord of England, to keep his peace and justice in all things.’

  And the girl up in the west stand with the Earl and Countess? The girl I was to marry? She was no more to me just then than a figure on the far side of a hill I’d yet to climb. Just then all I could think of was my own tense body, feeling as I’d only felt before at point of climax with a whore. Panting for achievement!

  I know that I was panting, for I’m panting now as I re-live it. ‘VICTOIRE!’ I couldn’t write the word. But it unfolded like a banner in my brain!

  Our squires were waiting at the barriers to arm us, my raddle-pated Joscelin and Hugh’s Fremund.

  ‘Well don’t just stand there, witless,’ I called to Jos as we rode up. ‘I’ll have the short arms and the gauntlets first, and then the shield.’

  There’s something comforting about the bulk, the sheer weight of armour once you have it on. All I could see of Master Jos as he reached up to tie the flail and bludgeon to the saddle rings and then to lace the gauntlets, was a freckled forehead and a nest of bright red curls.

  ‘Shield and helm, all here My Lord,’ he said.

  I looped the shield guige round my neck, then asked once more if he would check Raoul’s girths.

  ‘Are both bands…?’

  ‘Tight enough and sound?’ said Jos, who had a knack of knowing what I was about to say before I said it. He skipped back nimbly in the nick of time from Raoul’s savage teeth, to offer me the helm with a broad grin. ‘Tight as a nun’s cunt as a fact.’

  ‘As soon as I’m accoutred then, you’d best trot up the rail to where the first brunt’s like to be,’ I told him, busy with my straps. ‘If I should fall to an attaint, you know what you must do, Jos? You’ll not…?’

  ‘Fail you, Sir Garry? Never!’

  I blinked. ‘Am I so…?’

  ‘Obvious? No Sir, not by any means.’ My squire’s eyes, as round as shillings blue as periwinkles, considered me with helm and shield in place and chain-link aventail pulled up to guard my chin. A natural child of Father’s brother Anfrid, he’d known me since we both were boys and followed me with cheerful constancy through every stage of training – known me and supported me through every step of my career.

  ‘Sharp’s the word an’ quick’s the motion, Sir.’ He handed up the lance, much heavier than those we’d used for practice and painted in a spiral, red and green.

  Another beaming smile. A friendly pat for Raoul’s twitching flank, and off Jos ran to do my bidding.

  Anyone on Raoul’s back must look the part provided he could hold him. I shortened reins and wheeled to join the line of our defendants ready for the charge. Five lances to each line. Six lines deployed across the field to face the same formation at the other end. Two horses in our team were close to shying.

  I yawned as I’d been taught to do, to ease the tension in my lungs. No man is worth his salt, I told myself, until he’s given and received a blow.

  ‘Defendants show your mettle!’ our leader, Rob de Pierpoint, shouted over the heads of the excited horses. ‘Remember men, we fight in company, each one of us accountable for four confrères. We win by looking to each other’s interests. A man who fights alone may fall to rear attack, and we’ve no use for fallen heroes.’

  I saw the other knights stare sightlessly as I did, saving energy for all that lay ahead. Even now and at this distance, even here where all about me is serene, I can still feel the pulse, forge-hammer heartbeat, burning breath, sinew, muscle, blood and brain – the trembling muscles of my thighs? Or Raoul’s, gloved in satin, shivering beneath me? It scarce mattered which. I was as one with the great destrier whose pedigree I could recite back to Seville, and in another line to Duke William’s battle stallion, Mauger. We were as one, Raoul and I, sharing the need to use our fear to spur us into action.

  If I fear pain I’ll never show it. I fear no man and nothing save dishonour.

  The trumpeters put up their clarions to catch the morning sun. A sound like rising wind passed through the stands.

  Big breath and steady, Garon. VICTOIRE for the taking!

  And am I there? Or simply watching and recalling? Is there still something in me of the foolhardy youth I was that day, taut as a bowstring, knowing the defeat of fear was what made men, trembling on the brink of violence?

  WIN GARON! WIN THE CONTEST! I’d willingly have given the fingers of my left hand to achieve it!

  The ear-splitting trumpet blast struck like a bolt from heaven, resounding and rebounding from the hills and down the valley to the sea. The crowd’s roar reached a bestial pitch, as first the Earl, then the archbishop signalled for the action to begin.

  The strain of waiting over. A wall of sound. My sharp-spurred heels and Raoul’s response a single impulse, springing forward to a canter which in five paces had become a full-stretch gallop, grinding his great frame up to the speed that he was bred
for.

  The earth beneath us shuddered. Six muscled legs, two thumping hearts, four bouncing balls and any number of bared teeth. We were unstoppable!

  HAVOC! HAVOC! HAVOC!

  My own voice yelling with my friends. I felt invincible – like William Conqueror, the Cid of Vivar, Richard of Anjou and Sir Gervase my father all rolled into one. Charging with the heroes of my dreams!

  CHAPTER THREE

  The lance points ahead of us were glinting in the sun. Against the thunder of a hundred hoofbeats I sought the knight in the archbishop’s line who must by rights be mine, and held him him in sight – all else a frame for the marked man who was my target. From a distance of two hundred paces I could see his horse’s shoulders milling him to fighting speed. Then as I watched, his lance dropped to the couched position behind his yellow-painted shield. A second lance came down and then another. A rake of lances dropped together.

  The gap between us closed as sixty lethal weapons offered to collide at twice the speed of every charging horse. Not yet! I told myself. Wait! Wait, just wait…

  NOW, COUCH! For me the field had narrowed to a corridor of sunlit grass down which two riders hurtled on collision course. The sense of savage joy I felt pumped through my heart to fill my lungs. The only man I saw between Raoul’s flattened ears was covered by my lance point.

  Nothing now but fifty paces lay between us. His mouth beneath his nasal-guard was open wide

  With feet thrown forward in the stirrups, back hard against the cantle of my saddle, I braced myself for the terrific shock of impact.

  Now twenty paces and twelve foot of quivering ashwood from the brunt… NOW TEN!.

  The other’s face beneath his nasal guard was near as fearsome as the horse’s with it’s rolling, white-walled eyes. His lance swung in from nowhere. Struck hard. Deflected from the horn plates of the shield I flung to meet it…

  …as my own point jarred – slid- jarred again and reflexed, to lift me bodily and hurl me from the saddle!

  The sound of mass collision echoed from the hills, followed by a great roar from the crowd.

  Jagged splinters cartwheeled twenty foot into the air. Horses, pierced, uprearing, forced back onto their haunches, screamed in pain and terror. Riders bellowed for their squires against the thunder of the stands.

  Stunned. Winded. Sprawling on the turf, the first thing I saw was my opponent’s yellow shield, and the pain I felt became a small thing beside the large, surprising thing that was his corpse. It sat and stared at me, surprised itself by the ash shaft thrust through its teeth and sticking out a foot behind its shattered skull.

  ‘Dear Lord, it seems the only thing men love as much as killing one other and pestering us women, is making a loud noise while they’re about it.’ The voice of Countess Isabel across the bellowing of all those men.

  I can’t look up, can’t tear my eyes away from that poor wretch’s head with Sir Garon’s lance stuck through it like a skewer. Ugh!

  I’ve seen folk die before, of course I have, both my little brothers. And I won’t be sick, I can’t be, Maman would disown me.

  But see, the red-haired squire has caught Sir Garon’s horse. He’s on his feet again and mounting – God, he’s brave! He has his sword, but not the…

  His squire is tugging at the lance with one foot on the dead man’s face. At every jerk the dead eyes bulge grotesquely – a rim of tattered lips dragged forward like a pouting lamprey’s. Beastly!

  ‘How many more must die, do you think, before we know if we have won or lost and can ourselves retreat?’ the Countess is saying to the Earl. I can just see his profile shouting with the rest, but doubt he’s heard a word she said.

  Her face is in the shadow… But, mon Dieu, she’s looking at me!

  ‘I need hardly tell you that My Lord and Lady are your most powerful allies and protectors.’ (Maman’s latest words of wisdom, just this morning while Hod dressed me.)

  ‘I know you to be contrary, Elise. But if you’re sensible you’ll take care to oblige them.’

  That’s why I’m smiling greenly at My Lady like a perfect gooseberry!

  I stared a long time at the other’s body. At least that’s how it felt, while something vicious in me thrilled to see what I had done. I’d taken a man’s life and kept my own, the thing I’d trained for and far easier than I expected. I wished my father could have seen it.

  And yet because of you a Christian knight lies dead and excommunicate. His death is on your soul.

  A small voice like an argument inside my head, which I ignored. It was my first kill but it wouldn’t be my last.

  ‘Steel, Defendants! Steel!’ The moment, and that’s all it could have been, was interrupted by Sir Rob de Pierpoint. Thanks to my Jos I was back in the saddle straightway and surrounded by the hiss and clatter of drawn swords, of steel on steel, while riders all across the field vied for honours in the mêlée.

  ‘Haddertun, á moi!’ Another too-familar voice cut through the clangour, pulling me about to where Sir Hugh leant on the lance he’d used to pierce the hauberk of a squirming combatant and pin him to the turf.

  ‘I need help here if you’re still with us, boy?’ he shouted, and however much I may have cursed them for it, the rules of tournament obliged me to obey. To leave my bloodstained lance with Jos, to drag my horse around to cover Hugh’s retreat. To wheel about and challenge all who blocked our path. To hew and hack, and turn and turn about in practice of the art of tourney.

  My memory of the mêlée is confused. The action spread back from the centre as more captives, one by one, were dragged towards the barriers and lost their status as competitors the moment that they passed the stakes. Squires running for loose mounts danced in and out and round the fringes of affray with the agility of acrobats. Except one boy who misjudged a horse’s stride, to die in anguish, hours later we were told, within the surgeon’s tent.

  From my view only two things mattered, scoring and surviving. The sun’s glare was relentless. Light-headed with excitement I fought unthinking through the heat, trusting to an instinct forged from years of schooling in the castle wards. I sweltered in my padded felt and link-mail, basted in my own salt sweat. It filled my gloves, coursed down my face.Once I looked up to see a loose horse leap the double rails and plunge into the crowd. Twice I made the journey past the stakes with captives for the chequer of Warenne. Figures loomed and vanished. Horses farted. Dung was everywhere. The sound of blades and polearms pounded us like waves on shingle.

  We laboured to endure until the Priory bell rang Sext and summoned all remaining on the field to take refreshment, free ourselves of helms and mortar caps, gulp lungfuls of fresh air – to part our hauberk flaps to piss while squires fetched bandaging and ran for washing bowls.

  ‘The odds are with us, men. If we’ve the bowels for it the day is ours,’ Sir Robert told us as we lay on the turf exhausted, too tired even to think.

  Our way back to the arena led through the trampled area behind the stakes where captives slumped, attended by bone-setters and nursing brothers from the Priory. Our winded horses no longer pranced with arching necks, but sidled to the line with bleeding mouths and flaring nostrils – all but three who by the Rules of Poitou must be excluded to keep the numbers even for the second charge.

  I need one more, must bring another down, was what I thought. But when it came, the gallop and the brunt, my fresh lance shattered on the cantle of the man I’d chosen. Both horses swerved too sharply for attaint. Striking wide, the other’s lance-point scored a bloody groove down Raoul’s flank, and by the time I brought the screaming animal to trust his feet to solid earth, I’d lost my challenger to…

  …well naturally it had to be of all men on the field, my wretched stepfather, Sir Hugh de Bernay!

  It was a crucial moment for a novice, and having lost my man I made things worse by losing my own head. The guilt, the pain I felt for Raoul, my rage at Hugh, all came together in a red, unthinking fury. I needed urgently to feel my sword-blade bi
ting flesh. To see the blood. To kill!

  So when the captain of appellants, Wolstan de Bolbec, came in view, a brute as wide as he was high and solid as an ox, I kicked in spurs and charged him blindly. ‘Son of a whore!’ I shouted in the grip of battle madness.

  He heard me, waited calmly, chose his time and swung his sword with his weight behind it, catching me off-balance and unshielded. The first blow struck my blade in a bright shower of sparks. I took the second on my helm. Its force through layers of steel, a mortar cap and leather coif was stunning, truly! With sun and moon and all the stars exploding in my brain, I clutched my head and would have fallen. But my saddle bow upheld me for the fatal blow, the coup de grâce.

  It would have been, if Hugh de Bernay hadn’t intervened to catch Sir Wolstan in mid-stroke. To save me and to and shame me by unhorsing him with a swift lance-thrust to the temple.

  It was to be the last fall of the tourney. Leaderless and heavily outnumbered, the appellants had no option but to concede. Nor was the umpires’ choice of a Champion for our defendants in any kind of doubt from the time the giant Sir Wolstan hit the turf.

  Wrong man again. It would be, wouldn’t it!

  But no one could deny he looks the part without his helm, now that My Lady’s granted him the accolade and laurel crown – rowelling his spurs to make his stallion paw the air, smiling broadly, and directly at me!

  If only my Sir Garon wouldn’t look so… he hardly seems to know which way to turn, poor thing, to hide his disappointment.

  ‘By my faith, your lord has style as well as courage, Lady Constance,’ the Countess Isabel is saying to the woman at my side. ‘You must be gratified, for it isn’t every knight who’d save the life of one whose sons by right of birth must disinherit his.’