by Dan Davis
“Jocelyn,” I said. “Please attend to the Lady Marian.” Jocelyn wanted to argue but his lust for the girl overcame his love of a fight. He swung his leg over his saddle and hurried to her, fussing over her like a mother for her firstborn child.
“I apologise for my men’s enthusiasm,” Sir Guy said, attempting a smooth smile. “Yet you must understand why I am here. Truly, I regret this misunderstanding and placing the girl in danger. But the fact is, the young lady must now return with me to Nottingham.”
“She will not,” I said.
“I cannot return without her,” Sir Guy said.
“And yet you must.”
Sir Guy looked at me and past me at my men, such as they were. “We outnumber you,” he said.
“We outclass you,” I said. “Do you really wish to trade more blows? You will lose men, perhaps even your own life. You would risk harming the lady even more than you already have.”
“I cannot return without her,” Sir Guy said, desperation edging his voice.
“The sheriff will punish you,” I said, nodding. “He must have been angry. He must have threatened you with all manner of consequences should you fail.” Sir Guy’s silence confirmed my words. “She is free to go where she wishes. And she does not wish to go to Nottingham.”
“She is a ward of the crown, entrusted to the sheriff’s care.”
I eased my horse close to his and lowered my voice.
“No, she is of age,” I said. “She is eighteen years old and free. You understand, Sir Guy, that I must defend her freedom. I will do so.”
“I have no wish to fight you,” Sir Guy said, lowering his voice so that his men could not hear. “I saw you slay half a dozen knights in just a few moments in that campaign. I never believed the rumours about you and the blood but I understood why they said it. You move with unnatural speed, Sir. So I tell you that I know I am no match for you. But the sheriff will not accept that I had her in my grasp only to allow you to leave. You know what the sheriff is like.”
“Strangely, I did not know until now,” I said and glanced over my shoulder. “Take the woman Eva back with you. Lay the blame upon her in some way.”
Sir Guy’s face set hard. “I’ll not go near that woman.”
“Why?”
“She is the archbishop’s,” he said. “I will not cross him. And she is unnatural.”
“How so?” I asked, glancing at her.
“Can you not see? She dresses as a man. She fights in the yard, invites challenges from squires and knights alike.” Guy spat.
“Oh? How does she do?”
Guy hesitated. “I will not take her back with me.”
I shrugged as if I did not care what he did or did not do. “You cannot have Marian. You will not take Eva. So keep riding. Chase about the country looking for me.” I raised my voice. “Find somewhere quiet to spend a few days. Come back to Nottingham having lost me. Having never found me. Your men will want to save their hides also. I will pay you and your men a few shillings to tide you over for the next few days. Why not find a nice tavern somewhere and spend it on drink?”
Guy’s men sat bolt upright and stared at him.
Ultimately, I suspect, it was fear of my sword that kept him from forcing the issue. Being known as the Bloody Knight sometimes had its uses.
***
Swein returned across the field with Tuck bound up across his saddle. I had to stop to gag him once more, which was a dangerous business now he was full of vim once more.
“You did not kill him,” Jocelyn said, surprised and offended.
“I am not finished with him,” I said. “Your little encounter with Sir Guy rather interfered.”
After we patched up the Lady Marian, we went on our way.
We spent the night in local lord’s tumbledown hall. The place had a sagging roof and the thatch was brown, wet and stinking. The lord was off with the king but his steward was generous enough, considering the way things were in England.
I could never have predicted but Eva and Marian seemed to make a friendship of sorts and they slept alongside each other. I suppose that Eva felt protective of Marian and the young lady was glad to have Eva’s attention in spite of the woman’s strangeness. Marian was otherwise alone in the world.
Jocelyn did his best to contain his desires for Marian and his anger at me, for taking him away from his own vengeance, from his chance at a stable life with a good woman and his confusion as to why I carried Tuck with me. Jocelyn was full of unspent forces.
The next day he rode on ahead, keeping clear of the girl. And me.
That morning, I fell in beside Eva as we rode and before I spoke, I shared a companionable silence with her. Anselm rode on one side of Marian, babbling at her. Swein led a horse on the other side, looking up at her almost continuously.
The weather was warm and I could not bear to wear anything more than a shirt and tunic. The sun was wonderful. Blossom burst forth among the uncounted shades of green in the hedgerows. The fields were sprouting their green shoots of wheat and rye and the people were out hoeing the rampant weeds from between them.
Eva was not nervous of me, nor of what I would say and she rode without even glancing my way. It was admirable.
“I was most impressed with the way you protected the young lady,” I said to her.
She nodded her head slowly, as if to say, “Of course you were.”
I pursed my lips, wondering how to get her to speak of herself.
“I suppose I also wonder why the archbishop’s bodyguard would fight the sheriff’s men in that way for some unimportant girl,” I asked.
She fixed me with her hawkish eyes over the long, straight nose. “If she is so unimportant, why not let them take her?” Eva spoke as if she was a lady who was halfway to becoming a commoner. I guessed that she was somewhat like me and came from the impoverished rump of the knightly class.
“I would have done so, had they not charged in so.” I was not sure if I meant it.
“They would never have tried it but they saw you were not there and they thought to seize their chance while they could.”
“Sir Guy says that you sought to challenge his men in the training yard?”
She laughed but with little joy. “Did he tell you how I beat them all?”
“Surely not,” I said, for it was not possible.
“Try me yourself.”
I had to laugh. “Where are you from?”
She scowled, staring straight ahead. “Nowhere.”
“You are certainly English,” I said. “But where were you raised? Who is your father? Does he know that you ride like a knight? How long have you been training?”
“So many questions,” she said. “Let me ask you some, first.”
“Gladly,” I said. “But you must offer something yourself. First.”
“Very well. Yes, my father does know that I fight and ride like a knight. Now, tell me what you are doing with that man tied up in the sacking.”
“He is no man,” I said. “He is a murderer and when we are south of Leicester he will tell me what I need to know. Then I will cut off his head.”
She looked at me then. “You should not trust a man like that to talk. You should kill him now.”
Eva spoke as easily of killing as an old soldier might. “How old are you?” I asked her.
“How old are you?” she shot back.
“Forty-seven, I think.”
She laughed, her face lighting up. Her mouth was suddenly wide and her eyes shone. She was a striking looking woman. “My father said the same but I did not believe it. How have you stayed so young? What is your secret?”
“Perhaps God rewards my service in the Holy Land. Who is your father?”
“Hugh de Nonant. The Archbishop of York.”
I did not know what to say.
“I see.”
“Do you?”
I thought about what the archbishop could be up to by sending her with me. Was she telling the truth? Why
would he clothe her in such a way?
“He dresses you as a knight?” I asked. “By your presence does he hope to unsettle the men he speaks to?”
She was silent and I chance a look. Her face was drawn tight over her bony face, her lips pressed together. I gathered I had given a great insult.
“Do you mean that you truly can fight?” I said. “As well as a man?”
“Better,” she said. “Better than most men. Better than most knights.”
I suppressed a laugh, as I did not wish to anger her any further.
“Where did you learn to fight?” I asked.
“It is your turn to answer my questions,” she said and she was quite right. “They say that when you were fighting for King John, in Gascony, you would drink the blood of the men you slaughtered. High on a castle wall before the army you swallowed the blood from a knight’s severed neck and threw the body down to the defenders.”
“I see the tale grows in the telling,” I said.
“So you deny it?”
I sighed. It was a beautiful afternoon. By speaking of such things, it was as though I was spoiling that glorious, holy thing. The most wonderful thing in all the world. An English summer day.
“We scaled the walls but only a few of us made it inside. I fought my way down the other side and chased a fleeing group of knights and squires into the ground floor of a corner tower. They were pressed together tightly, I thought I could trap them, kill them. But I was drawn inside. They shut the door behind me, thinking to kill me. There were twelve men in there. Men and boys. I was alone. Surrounded. They were behind me and halfway up the spiral stairway. I killed them all. I cannot remember precisely why I needed to be so thorough. I can recall a few of the survivors, on their knees, begging to be taken prisoner. But when the battle rage is upon you, what can you do? Certainly, I was very gravely wounded. My face was torn open, I could feel my cheek opened and flapping like the sole of a shoe. My knee had been smashed. I’d had my helmet torn away and my skull felt cut and crushed by heavy blows. I would have died. So I drank.”
She looked confused. Disbelieving. As well she might.
“You were dying so you drank the blood of dead men?”
“It heals me,” I said. “So long as the blood is somewhat fresh. It heals me completely, quickly and thoroughly, leaving no scar. I know that may surprise you. That you will not believe me. But it is the truth. And that is how they found me. They broke into the tower from above, came down the stairs. I looked up over the body I held to see a group of Monmouth’s knights crowded on the stairs. Of course, as I am sure you know, Monmouth and my lord the archbishop are enemies, of a sort. Before the day was out I had been denounced, the priests had proclaimed me possessed by a demon or the son of Satan or some other form of evil. They demanded my death.”
She looked closely at me, perhaps judging whether I was playing some game. Plainly, she doubted wounds so severe could be healed.
“How did you escape the accusations?” Eva eventually asked.
“There was no crime committed, as such. I denied it. I had fought bravely. I had won the walls. The king sent me home, hoping that the scandal would blow over. God knows, he was right. He has had enough of his own in the years since that it is no more than a rumour.”
“A rumour that is true,” she pointed out. “How long have you been this way? What does it have to do with the monk in a sack on that horse?”
“It is your turn to answer my questions,” I said.
She declined.
It was two weeks of riding to get to the Weald, on the southeast corner of England. We went west and south, then headed east once we were south of London. An interesting journey. I did not press the woman for details and, little by little, Eva revealed her story.
One night, sitting quietly together by the hearth in a hall in Wiltshire, she spoke more about her early life. The firelight flickering orange over Eva’s strong features, making deep shadows in the hollows beneath her cheekbones.
“The archbishop is your lord,” she said to me. “So you well know his nature. I have often wondered how many brothers and sisters I have in England and France. And Rome, too, no doubt and in every other village in between.”
I laughed politely. Yes indeed, I knew what the archbishop was like. And I knew that I was also a bastard, though not raised as one. Not quite.
“My dear mother was just a young girl when my father became infatuated with her,” Eva said. “So she says. She was the youngest of a poor knight up in Northumbria and they had very little, other than too many children. And mother was a beauty. Beautiful but weak of body and mean in spirit. I suppose now that they somehow thrust her under the archbishop’s nose. He used her, and then when she fell pregnant he put her away. Her brother took us in. And I was born in the cold, up north. And foisted onto my uncle, who was a knight.”
“Who was he? Perhaps I know him.”
“Perhaps you do,” she said. “And that is why I will not say.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “How did you end up working as the archbishop’s bodyguard?”
What I really wanted to ask was why she was telling me everything about herself and how much of it was true. What was her game? Was she really who she claimed to be? Was she still going to spy on us, report to the archbishop?
Surely, I thought, I should not expect her to slip a knife into my ribs one night.
“I am not sure why or how it started. But I loved to play at knights and Saracens with the boys. Even though mother and my uncle beat me bloody so many times. I would hide away, in the stable or go out into the wood and swing a stick around.”
“I was the same,” I said.
“Were you beaten when discovered? No, you were encouraged. As I got older, the boys did not like me playing with them. My cousins and the other girls would mock me. When I was eight or so, some of the manor and village boys caught me and gave me a hiding.”
“A gang of boys can be the evilest thing that walks the earth,” I said. “I wager your mother was pleased you’d had some sense knocked into you.”
“She was dead by then,” Eva said, dismissively. “She died in the winter. Died of her bitterness. She was abandoned by the archbishop and then no other man was good enough so she died bitter and lonely. I did not miss her.”
“Your beating did not cause you to give up,” I said, nodding in approval.
“I hunted those boys,” she said, the firelight glinting in her eyes. “One by one, over weeks. Days, perhaps. Time passes differently when you are young. I took the first boy, Thomas, in the woods by his den. I left his face a pulp. He would not admit who had done it but everyone knew. The other boys knew. They were on their guard all the time but still I got them. John the Pimple was their leader. He must have been twelve years old. He seemed a giant to me. He was canny. Wary. I had to stalk him for days. He thought that he was safe in his father’s workshop after dark. He was wrong.”
“You seem to be proud even now,” I said and she snapped her eyes to mine. “And you bloody well should be.” I banged my ale mug against hers and she smiled.
It was the first smile I had seen on her face. It was quite lovely.
“So you were sent away?” I prompted.
“Quite the opposite,” she said. “The boys’ fathers were livid. My aunt and the women were horrified. But my dear uncle began training me as he would any squire.”
“Good God,” I said, trying to imagine what my own people would say if I did something similar.
Eva nodded. “The first year or two they all tried to dissuade him. The priests, his wife, the villagers. My uncle never wavered. He told them all to shove off. There were a few of the boys also training. We were quite poor. They would never speak to me, let alone train with me.”
“Sounds like an isolated way to grow up,” I said, recalling my own chaotic upbringing amongst dozens of pages and squires. “Lonely.”
“I was never happier,” she said, a smile creeping back onto her face.
“Over the years, he taught me the lance, the sword, dagger. Wrestling, riding.”
“Ah,” I said. “A wonderful existence.” For these were the best things in all the world, as well as women and wine.
“Until my uncle went away to fight. He never returned. His wife, everyone else, forced me out. My cousins were triumphant. I had nowhere to go but to the archbishop.”
I winced. “I am sure that he loved that.”
“He denied that I was his,” she said. “At first. He tried to force himself on me. But I fought him, tripped him and threw him down. I thought he would kill me but instead he was impressed. He had one of his men test me with sword and shield. After that, he indulged me. In a certain amount of secret, of course. But even though word got out, everyone is afraid of the archbishop’s ire.”
“And then he took you into service as his bodyguard,” I said.
“You must know what he is like,” she said. “He knows that I fight well. Better than most men. But he has me by his side when he speaks to certain men.”
“Certain men?”
“Men such as the sheriff,” she said. “And other men that the archbishop likes to fluster with my presence. Most of his vassals and almost all of his priests and monks. He enjoys seeing the indignant expressions on their faces, he has told me. He enjoys making them uncomfortable and dares them to make mention of my presence. Dares them to challenge him. But he has never taken me anywhere near the king or his courtiers.”
“And he asked you to follow me,” I said. “When we left Nottingham. He knew I would not take you willingly.”
“Yes,” she said, not meeting my eye.
“And you were to do what? Watch me?”
She drank more of her ale. “To see that you did your duty and went to the Weald. He told me to do everything I could to keep you there and I was to stay with you. But if you went north or anywhere else, I was to find the archbishop immediately and tell him. He suspected you would go into Sherwood, or return to your home. I think he hoped that you would flee overseas.”
“Would he mind you telling me this, do you think?” I asked, confused as to why he would want me so very far away from Sherwood.