by K. M. Grant
He removed Arondel’s bridle and handed it to a page. “You notice too much, Belle.”
“Don’t brush me off.”
He sighed. “Remember I told you about my sister?”
“Yes.”
“Well, the French knight she ran away with is Sir Jean d’Aubricourt’s son.”
“So your sister’s here?”
Walter shook his head slowly. “No. That’s not it.”
“What then?”
He suddenly lost all his bloom. “It means there’s a feud between our families that can only be settled by blood.”
I was aghast. “But you said the tournament was to be fun!”
He gave a pale smile. “Some people think that a blood feud is the most fun of all.” He would say nothing else, and from the moment we returned to the inn, he and his father kept to themselves.
Just before dinner, I took the salve and slipped down to the river to do my bandages myself. I closed my eyes. Why couldn’t the world stand still in a nice place? When I opened them, the summoner was sitting beside me and I cursed. I should have hidden myself better. Before I could move, he crushed my right hand under his left, those dreadful rings making dents in my fingers. He stared at my legs with open disgust. “You really aren’t a good girl, Belle. Those scabs! I never noticed them before. What a punishment!”
I didn’t speak.
“The Master’s ring,” he said, continuing to stare at my legs. “Do you know, now that he’s not wearing it, I can see it much more clearly in my mind’s eye. Perhaps I’ve caught some of the alchemist’s powers! And I find myself thinking it strange indeed that an indifferent poet should have such a ring.” He shuffled a bit closer. “Don’t you agree?” Since the evening of the thieves’ attack, I was quite cold inside. I suppose I really knew that he’d understood the significance of the ring, but to have him say it so boldly was like being struck. He delighted in drawing out the torture. “I think I know that ring.”
He was enjoying himself. He took hold of my shoulders and forced me around. “A few questions spring up. I’m sure they’re puzzling you too. Why should the Master stop wearing such a very important ring when it must have been given to him by a very important person?” He raised greasy eyebrows. “And where is it now? Has he hidden it somewhere amid these girlish curves?” Four fat and dirty fingers thrust themselves down the front of my shift. He spread his fingers, grunting his appreciation at what he found. “Come now,” he hissed when I tried to pull away, “a girl with legs like yours can’t afford to be fastidious.” Then he drew his hand up, pulled out my pendant, and snapped the strap.
“Give that back!” I tried to snatch it.
He held it high and opened it. “Ah, this will be more useful than that time waster.” He removed the lock of my father’s hair. “I’ll return it as soon as I’ve got the king’s ring and your promise to give evidence against Master Chaucer. You see, you haven’t been quite as helpful as you should have been.”
“You’re the devil.” My father’s hair in his horrible hand!
“Master Chaucer’s a traitor.”
“Look,” I begged, “please. I’m nothing and nobody. I just want to pray for my father at Canterbury. Keep the pendant, but give me back my father’s hair.”
“When I have the ring and your promise.” He let go of me. For one awful moment I thought he was going to scatter Father’s hair into the river, but he squashed it back into the pendant and tied the strap around his own neck. He watched as I rebandaged my legs. Occasionally he licked his lips, no longer a viper, but a stoat.
10
This stranger-knight so suddenly presented,
Bareheaded …
The sun wasn’t even risen when people began to stream out of the town. Nobody wanted to miss the tournament. News of the blood feud had somehow trickled out and, just as Walter predicted, this added an edge to the excitement. Some people walked, others squashed themselves into carts. We pilgrims rode, all except the prioress, who was carried in a chair, her dogs on her lap, and Sir Knight and Walter, who sat in the blue wagon. Sir Knight’s page walked Arondel and Granada to the jousting ground to keep them fresh. Walter was pale. His father seemed to be praying.
Riding just in front of me, the Master was trying to cheer a silent Luke. “You can use Dobs as a packhorse for the journey to St. Denys. A man with a packhorse somehow commands more respect than a man loaded down like a tinker’s mule.” Luke tried to be grateful. The Master waved the thanks away. Luke fidgeted. “Why don’t you go ahead,” the Master said kindly. “Picardy could do with a gallop.” Luke sped off at once, head down, spurs glinting. I began to follow. A gallop might ease the terrible gnaw of worry in my stomach, and what would I feel if Luke vanished with that bungled kiss his last memory of me? The Master caught Dulcie’s rein. “Luke has a temper to conquer,” he said, half-sympathetic, half-disapproving, “and you won’t help.”
“What’s going to happen?” I whispered, nodding at the blue cart. Walter and his father were now in deep discussion. “The feud’s between Sir Jean d’Aubricourt and Sir Knight, isn’t it? I mean, Walter won’t have to fight?”
“I don’t know,” the Master said shortly, “but we shall shortly find out.”
I held Poppet to my chin. I couldn’t look at the summoner. My pendant round his neck was an abomination. But as we rounded the final hill and the jousting ground was spread before us, the spectacle took even my breath away. This was to be no halfhearted affair. From tent to pennant, from tunic to trappings, from sky to grass, the place was awash with more colors than a tapestry. And the noise! It was like a fairground.
Master Chaucer took in the scene slowly, from left to right, then from right to left. “Sometimes I wish I were an illustrator,” he said, his eyes alight. “To capture such a scene in a drawing or to paint it on a wall; to capture it exactly in one split second, like the blink of an eye—now, there would be a skill. Am I wasting my time writing black marks on a page, Belle? Given a choice, wouldn’t you choose one picture over even the most well-chosen words?”
I couldn’t answer that. I just wanted the day to be over.
The broad, grassy turf where the jousting would take place had been pitched so that only one set of stands had to be constructed. A daisy-dotted bank served very well for both us pilgrims and the townsfolk. The tents of the knights, some grand and some not so grand, speckled the other side of the valley like decorated biscuits, and emerging from them, ready to take their seats under the stand’s striped canopy, were a variety of rich and high-born ladies, shimmering in silks and satins. Many had already attached fluttering favor ribbons to shoulders and breasts. With no threat of rain, jeweled slippers were on show, sparkling like diamond dewdrops amid the green. It was a scene from King Arthur, except that the blood would be real. I shuddered.
When the ladies spotted Dulcie, they waved, obviously thinking that only a lady like them could be riding such a pretty pony. However, when they took in my loose hair, my clothes, and, of course, the lumpy bandages peeping out from under my skirt, they whispered behind their hands. Despite my preoccupations, my face flamed.
We dismounted, tethered the horses, and found places to sit. The summoner, half gossiping with the pardoner, made sure he could see the Master at all times, and at every opportunity, he winked and touched my pendant. “Where could Luke have gone to?” My temper was fraying.
“Probably best he isn’t here,” the Master replied. “It’s hard for him to watch others fight when he can’t fight himself.” Luke jealous of men fighting. Jealous! Men are strange creatures.
The noise rose to a pitch: the hiss of steel; the persistent patter of the hog-roast sellers; the hawkers’ wheedling cries. Overhead, a couple of curious buzzards hovered, hoping for flesh. A trumpet sounded. At once, scores of squires hurried to set up their lords’ shields under a large crimson awning set beside the stand. It was clear at once that most of the knights were English, with only a dozen or so French captives. Chief of
these was Sir Jean d’Aubricourt, whose shield was set a little apart from the others.
After some delay, another trumpet sounded. There was an expectant hush. “Now it begins,” said the Master.
The first contestants emerged, and such was the weight and thickness of their armor that they rolled rather than walked to the mounting ladders, their pages close behind lest they toppled backward. Some of the townsfolk began to laugh.
“Never mock men dressed for war,” the Master reprimanded. “Fully armed knights aren’t made for walking.” The laughter subsided.
Two contestants settled at either end of the arena, their shields buckled to their breasts, and after fastening their helmets, they took up their lances—wooden headed in their case, for theirs was not a blood feud but fearsome nonetheless. The next thing I knew, splinters were flying as, with a terrible crack, the point of one lance went through a shield and shattered. The knights turned, ready to charge again, only one horse balked and refused to move. That was the end of the first contest.
Four more contests followed, filled with spurrings, gallopings, crashings, crossings, and refusings. Some women lost interest and began to gossip. Children squabbled and stole. Lovers grew intimate under blankets, and the very old fell asleep. There was still no sign of Luke, and Sir Jean d’Aubricourt’s shield swung unattended. At midday, I was struck by a very happy thought. “Perhaps Sir Jean’s gone home already,” I said to the Master. The Master shook his head and pointed.
A squire in the d’Aubricourt livery had just emerged, and he held high above his head a lance, the end of which glistened silver. The squire shook the lance: this was the blood-feud lance. The crowd sang like hounds on the scent. This was what they had been waiting for.
Walter appeared, bearing his father’s shield and a lance that matched his opponent’s. He walked stiffly, shouting some kind of war cry. The Walter of the horsely horse seemed very far away. I clutched at the Master. “He’s just doing what he has to do,” the Master said grimly. When Walter had finished shouting, he retreated to the crimson awning, where he stood quite alone. “I’m going to him,” I said, and was gone before the Master could stop me.
Walter blinked when I arrived at his side. “Tell me you’re not going to fight,” I begged. “Please tell me it’s just your father.”
“My father’s to fight first and … and … and if he falls, I’ll fight after,” Walter said in a flat, bloodless voice. “And I’m glad to. The fight may be over my sister, but I can carry your favor.”
“Don’t, Walter.”
Something in him began to melt. “Belle—” We were interrupted.
“Ho there! It’s time.” It was Sir Jean d’Aubricourt’s squire. “I hope your father’s in good jousting form, Walter. Sir Jean’s never been in better.”
Walter hardened again and, bidding me go back to the Master, went stolidly about his squirely business.
All the spectators were awake now. The old men dug each other in the ribs. The children’s eyes were round.
Walter settled his father on Granada, then stepped back to stand at his designated mark. Both he and his father moved like wooden soldiers. Sir Jean, on the other hand, mounted with a flourish and his squire strutted like a peacock. Only when the two knights settled their lances, the tips polished to deadly points, was Sir Jean’s squire still. Even a peacock fears the unpredictability of the tournament.
And what followed was unpredictable indeed. First, Granada galloped wide because Sir Knight’s helmet slipped and he had no idea where he was going. The crowd howled their derision. They did not appreciate a circus. Then, Sir Knight’s chain hauberk got hooked onto the end of Sir Jean’s lance and he was dumped like a pile of silver laundry in front of the stand. Sir Jean leaped off his horse and pulled out a sword as sharp as his lance. They would finish this off on foot. But when Sir Knight tried to stand, he crumpled. One ankle had twisted. When he did rise and pull out his sword, he was obliged to hop. Disgusted, Sir Jean sheathed his sword and stamped back to his tent.
Walter threw Granada’s reins to a page and hurried to help his father. I ran down again, and the Master followed, with the summoner close behind. “We’re disgraced,” Sir Knight moaned, trying and failing to walk properly, “and it’s my fault. How could I have thought to pursue a blood feud during a pilgrimage?” He ground his teeth. I’d never seen him so upset. “This is God’s punishment: public humiliation to add to the shame of my daughter’s elopement.” He was utterly crushed.
“We’re not finished yet,” Walter said.
“Yes! Yes! It’s finished,” I cried. “Please, Walter.”
But nobody took any notice of me. Sir Jean, still fully armed, then lumbered over. “Will you publicly crave mercy, Sir Knight? Will you go down on your knees in front of the stand? If you do that, we’ll forget this feud.”
“Impossible,” Walter said.
“What else can we do?” Sir Knight wrung his hands in some despair. “We’ve offended God by swapping the pilgrim staff for the lance when we’re just two days short of Canterbury. Without God’s favor we can never win. Oh, why of all people did we have to bump into you, Sir Jean?”
Sir Jean snorted. “If you’re fearful, sir, just say so.”
“I’m fearful of God,” Sir Knight said, trying to regain some dignity, “as any wise man is.”
Sir Jean turned to Walter. “Well, Sir Squire,” he said. “Are you less fearful than your father? Mount up! His horse is still fresh enough.”
“Walter will do as I do,” said Sir Knight at once. “As his father and lord, I forbid him to fight. I forbid it utterly. He’s a pilgrim too.”
Walter went red, then white, then red again as Sir Jean’s ardor cooled to contempt. “You English …” The insult hung unfinished.
“I’ll fight,” came a voice from outside. Luke pushed through.
My hand flew to my mouth. This was too much.
“No,” I heard Walter say loudly. “He’s not a knight, Sir Jean, and he doesn’t approve of tournaments like this.” Luke tried to interrupt. “You said so,” Walter said to him directly. “Everybody heard.”
“I don’t deny it. But no Frenchman should go away disappointed,” Luke said, his eyes glinting dangerously.
The Master quickly intervened. “Walter’s right, Luke. You can’t fight.” He turned to Sir Jean. “The boy’s not even a squire: he’s my scribe,” he said.
“And who might you be?”
“Geoffrey Chaucer.”
“Master Chaucer?” Sir Jean started. “Well, I never. One of the few Englishmen I admire. I write poetry myself. We might engage in some wordplay later.” The atmosphere lightened a little. Sir Jean looked from Sir Knight to Walter and back to Sir Knight. “Very well. I’ll go and disarm, but I warn you, I consider our business unfinished. We’ll cross lances again, and when we do I’ll show no mercy.” He found Luke in his way. “Move, boy,” he said. Luke didn’t move.
“Don’t, Luke,” said Walter quietly. “It’s over.”
“Is it?” Luke said, and making two hard fists, he punched Sir Jean’s breastplate as though it were a boxer’s bag.
Sir Jean lurched backward.
“Come on,” Luke said, and a bright red spot appeared in each cheek. “You seemed very keen just a moment ago.”
“You’re a scribe.”
“Then the joust shouldn’t be very long.”
“Don’t be a fool. You’ve nothing to do with this blood feud.”
“I’ve knocked on your shield.”
“Luke,” remonstrated the Master, “what are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking,” said Luke slowly, but with clear intent, “that I don’t care about any blood feud, but if I win, I want the whole of Sir Jean’s ransom.”
At this, Sir Jean began to laugh, and from behind the Master, the summoner laughed too. Luke glared at him, which made the summoner laugh louder.
Sir Jean waited for the laughter to die down. “And what would you do with my ra
nsom, boy?”
“I’d give it to somebody who needs it to care for her father.”
I almost stopped breathing. “Oh, Luke,” I said. “I don’t want the ransom money. I don’t want your charity.”
“It wouldn’t be charity,” Luke said, “it would be a miracle.”
I couldn’t allow it. “You have to refuse, Sir Jean. It wouldn’t be fair at all. As you say, Luke has nothing to do with any feud. He’s had no training, and anyway, nobody can joust in eyeglasses.”
“It’s true.” Walter piled in. “Eyeglasses are no good under a helmet. They’d steam up. He’d be fighting in a fog.”
But Sir Jean was regarding Luke with some speculation. “A half-blind scribe fighting for a miracle,” he remarked. “It’s almost better than a blood feud.”
“Do you accept my challenge?” Luke looked at nobody but Sir Jean.
“You’ll be hurt.”
“Perhaps you’ll be hurt.”
Sir Jean spread his legs like oak stumps. “You verge on the insolent.”
“Master Chaucer!” I beseeched. “Stop this!”
“I accept,” said Sir Jean quickly, before the Master had time to intervene again.
And that was it. There was no going back. Suddenly Sir Jean was hurrying to his horse and Luke was asking Sir Knight for his armor. Sir Knight flapped his arms vaguely up and down. “That was silly, very silly. Do you know at all what to do? I mean, it takes years, but perhaps we could start with how to hold—”
“I’ve been watching,” Luke said shortly. “I know enough.”
It took ten minutes to get Luke ready, and with all the padding, the armor was clearly much heavier than he expected. But when he moved toward me with that ungainly roll, I was not even tempted to laugh. In what odd ways our dreams come true. “I want to carry your favor,” he said. “It’ll be the one and only time. I’ll carry the pendant you wear.” My reply was a choke. He didn’t hear it because he had already thrust me aside and plucked my pendant from the summoner’s neck. I should have known he would have noticed. Walter gasped. Luke himself was wordless as he returned the pendant to me and I, equally wordlessly, fastened it under his collar. Luke nodded, then climbed up the mounting ladder and onto Granada.