Hope and the Knight of the Black Lion

by Mary C. Findley

  The knight, who held his slotted helmet in his arm, turned toward my mother and bowed in a very formal, old-fashioned manner. His mail and helmet had been carefully polished but were battered and scarred. His surcoat was blood red and bore the profile of a black lion’s head thrown back and in full roar. I had never seen that insignia before and I had made some study of heraldry. He seemed very stiff and slow in his manner. I could see a mass of black hair shot with gray curling around his shoulders. Mother apparently could see his face, which to me was hidden in the shadows of the poorly lit hall, and she gave a gasp of fear and shrank back.

  “Who are you?” she asked. I scuttled to the other side of the dais across the felt carpeting but still I could not see what had frightened her. He seemed to hear my movement, for his head snapped up and moved in my direction. I retreated quickly into the shadows.

  “My name I cannot say, Lady Ada,” the knight’s deep, resonant voice said. His speech was strangely accented, foreign. “Believe me that I mean no harm, and let me speak with Baron John Cloyes. He will understand my business. It can only be told to him.”

  My mother glanced at the two retainers who stood near the door and they raised their lances. “Sir, I cannot possibly permit you to disturb the baron if I do not know you name or business,” she said. “I do not know your face or form, or the house whose emblem you wear. I cannot tell if you mean good or ill. Give me some sign by which I may know your intentions.”

  “I say again, I mean no harm, my lady,” the knight said. “But that is such a new thing with me in this house I cannot think how to prove it.”

  “Sir, you cannot expect me to take that as a proper answer,” my mother said. “Nay, that I cannot, my lady,” the man said, and I could hear a deep sadness in his rough voice that touched me in spite of my puzzlement at his failing to make himself known. “As you say, I will go, and tomorrow see if the baron will receive me. Good night, Lady Ada. God grant you and the baron safe rest.”

  “Sir …, Where shall you bide the night?” my mother asked as he turned to go. “Where I can, lady. It has been my habit. One more night I will bide where I can, and then, perhaps tomorrow…”

  “Sir…” My mother hesitated. She was, as I had been, touched somehow by this mysterious man who gave us no reason to pity him except that desolate sound in his voice. “It is not my nature to refuse any visitor hospitality, but…”

  “Oh, my lady, do not trouble yourself about it,” the man said. “I have given you no reason to show me kindness, but great reason to send me hence. Farewell.”

  And so he was gone. After the door closed my mother stood in the hall a long time, and we heard a sound of singing. The knight had a very fine baritone voice and we thrilled to the sound of O Sacred Head Now Wounded. My mother stood transfixed, listening, and twice or thrice started forward as if she would call the man back before the singing faded in the distance. I could not tell why, but I wanted her to do it with all my heart. But at last she turned and approached the dais again. I was frozen in my absurd spying attitude and she caught me there. I unbent myself and followed her up to the solar.

  “Go to bed, My Hope,” she said softly as she turned back into the study room.

  I crawled into my bed but my mind turned round and round. Mother and I had just been arguing again before the stranger had arrived. Robert Talcott had been making very open and insistent overtones of marriage to me. I would have been glad of anybody’s overtures of marriage, but Robert happened also to be handsome, witty, wealthy and well-landed. I could not understand why my mother and Uncle John both continued to oppose him. And it was becoming more and more difficult to resist his physical presence. I had to meet him in secret, alone, of course, and his desire was plainly growing. We had to marry before I ran out of clever excuses or the wish to make them.

  It was the specter of Cousin Richard again. We had passed from October into March with my uncle the baron and still his son had not been heard of, not that five months would make a difference when fifteen years had not. But I was not to think of marrying anyone else. Richard was my burden to carry until I could somehow prove he was not coming back. My mother and Uncle John both still believed he was alive and would return. It was an absurdity I could not reason them out of. The Earl himself had confirmed that he had joined the crusade of Louis IX to take Alexandria in Egypt but his ship had apparently been lost in a violent storm that had blown the rest off course to the city of Damietta. Thousands of knights went to the Crusades. So many did not return and were honored as fallen heroes but everyone knew they were dead. Why could not Uncle John and Lady Ada let Richard be dead?

  And this ridiculous business of questioning the faith. No, it was not even questioning. My uncle was simply a heretic and I was sure my mother was already of his persuasion. Since my uncle’s health had begun to decline so sharply my mother had helped with the lessons and they both openly accused the Church of wrong teaching. I continued to read the Scriptures myself and they pointed out to me every day new differences between what the Church taught and the Scripture said. We should all have been burned if we had not kept quiet and had most unusually discreet servants. Of course they would have been burned right along with us. This was one reason I resisted the Latin lessons. Of course I was learning it – much better than I wished, but I feared to repeat these lessons that made me doubt what I knew it was damnation to question. Robert would soon rescue me from this heretic household. That was my only hope.

  Hope. I hated my name sometimes, because it was like a joke when it crept into everyone’s speech and made him or her stare at me. “I hope it will rain,” the gardener would say, and then smile at me. “It is my hope that you will honor my wishes,” Uncle John would tell me, and look at me as if I was not his Hope if I was not going to obey him. I knew he was good and wise and loved me but I had not gotten over my anger with him about Robert. He and mother would have to accept that I had hopes of my own.

  I heard a voice calling outside, something muffled, but I could tell it was in French. The hour was late, now, and the sky had grown overcast with a smell of rain. Who would come at this hour? I slipped out of bed and ran to the window. Leaning out, I could see an odd, orange-tinted glow which lit up the drizzly night over the roof of the small baking house. Past the oak-shingled granary I glimpsed horses coming along behind the dairy. I started as I saw a flickering at the henhouse.

  The old wood structure where the servants slept began to glow strangely. I heard more muffled voices and heavy hoofbeats. Two barns beyond the inner wall practically burst into flames. The manor was enclosed by a moat which had long since dried up because of the lack of rain over the winter. Too ill to attend to it, the baron had allowed the outer wall to fall into disrepair. The sparse but overgrown hedge certainly presented no obstacle to invaders. I feared to know what would become of the stables of cows and oxen and the pigsty.

  I rushed through the solar to see a company of men on horseback burst through the great wooden front door and ride straight into the hall.

  I heard screams and clashing of weapons as the guards futilely engaged them. Old Simon ran toward them in his nightclothes waving a torch. To my horror the leader of the group, whom I could see in the light of Simon’s guttering torch was a huge, hawk-nosed man with yellow hair and pale eyes, clubbed Simon to the ground.

  “Hope! Hurry! Put on a cloak!” I turned away from the scene and saw my mother rush across the dais. She carried my dark blue cloak and threw it over my shoulders. We retreated to our own chamber. “Out the window with you, my love,” mother hissed. “I know you have crept away enough times to go for your midnight rides. Go now, and ride for all our lives. Try to get help.”

  I scrambled out onto the window ledge and was down on the ground in a few moments. I looked up through the increasing shower and saw my mother at the window. Then a man’s arm snatched her back out of my sight. I ducked under the overhang as a head poked out, looking down. I scuttled away under cover of the jutting wall and ma
de it to the stables where our horses were kept. Thankfully it had not yet been set ablaze and I was able to drive out our few mounts and draft horses. I did not even think of saddling Cairn when I came to him at last. I simply threw myself on his back, cutting the rope with my little knife and kicking him backward out of the stable. He turned and flew off down the road toward the castle of Chelmsford and Robert’s father’s soldiers. Once I glanced behind me through the downpour that had finally burst loose. Flames shimmered through the haze of rain from the windows of Uncle John’s manor house.

  I nearly killed poor Cairn that night. We arrived at the earl’s mud-splattered and exhausted and I roused the castle with my cries for help. The earl came out to me bleary-eyed and half-dressed, with a deep purple velvet mantle thrown over his nightclothes, but he came alert as he heard my tale and immediately gave orders for soldiers to go to Colchester and give assistance. Robert came into the audience chamber a moment later. I saw his handsome face and slim figure and all my tension and worry to burst out. I collapsed into his arms.

  “Say, Hope, I am sorry for your trouble, but I cannot say I mind this,” Robert laughed. He stroked my wild, dripping black hair. His own golden curls were in some disarray, falling over his merry brown eyes and his blue and red parti-colored tunic was all askew. I had always liked his ready humor before. But just now it was a most unwelcome trait. I pulled free of his grasp.

  “You must not know what has happened,” I said coldly. “This joking is unseemly at such a time, Robert.”

  “How can I mend it by being grim?” Robert said. “Father has called his best men to go, and they will be led by the greatest knight in England. Come along and see them off. Mayhap that will cheer you.”

  I followed him through the heavy curtains out onto the balcony. In the courtyard below a company of soldiers mounted up and stood ready in the rain as the earl came out on his balcony with us. From beneath us somewhere came a mud-plastered man leading a winded-looking, limping horse. I stared in horror as he looked up at us.

  “That is the man!” I shrieked. “My lord Earl, that man is the one who forced his way into Colchester and struck down our seneschal!” Robert and the earl stared at me as if I had gone mad. The hawk-nosed man looked into my eyes and said nothing.

  “You are mistaken, Lady Hope,” the earl said icily. “This is my great friend, Hugo Brun. He saved my life in London.”

  “Nay, my lord, I do not mistake!” I cried. I had seen the man’s face so clearly. How could this be happening? It was worse than any nightmare could be. “The man who may already have murdered my mother and uncle is being sent to their rescue?” I demanded. “He must have left his filthy minions behind while he rode back to cover his tracks. Look at his horse! It is as spent from running as my Cairn. If he has not come from Colchester why is his horse caked with mud, lathered and blowing so?”

  “Mah lord the earl knows Ah went riding this evening, Mademoiselle,” the man said evenly, his words heavily-accented. “Ah am not familiar with this country yet, but Ah did see a ‘ouse afire. I tried to approach to warn those within but the flames were already too great. ‘Is grace will tell you that Ah arrived only a few moments ago and was getting a fresh ‘orse and men to return and give aid. Merci.”

  He patted his horse as a groom came up with another animal and led his away. “See to ‘is off ‘ind shoe,” he called after the groom. “Ah believe it came loose. Ah tried to spare the poor beast.” He gave the horse another pat and then swung onto his new mount. The earl’s lips had become a fine line.

  “Robert, take the Lady Hope to rest. She is disordered in her mind,” the earl said. Robert grasped my shoulders and hurried me away.

  “What ails you?” snarled Robert. He dragged me down the hall like a meal sack while I pounded him helplessly with my fists. “Hugo Brun is a hero! He is the man I told you about last fall, the one who carried back hundreds of messages from men who died in the Crusades. He is on a holy quest and has gone all over Europe bringing comfort to grieving families. You accuse him of being a murderer? Stop it, Hope! Why do you beat upon me?”

  “I tell you he attacked my uncle’s manor!” I screamed. “Why will you not you listen to me? You are only sending him back to finish his murdering! He will help no one! He will just have your father’s approval of his devil’s work!”

  “Here! Get the Lady Hope to a room and see that she stays there!” Robert grunted, pushing me into the arms of a startled servant girl. “I will ride with him myself and see what has been done and will be done. Will that satisfy you?”

  “Yes,” I said. He stormed off and the girl quickly took me to a guestroom. She helped me undress and got me into bed. I leaped up again, though, when I heard her turn a key in the door. I thumped and shouted but no one paid any attention. At last I fell back onto the bed in sheer exhaustion and went to sleep.

  Something woke me a long time later. A rustle. I looked up toward the window curtain behind my bed without moving. A shape slid across and I saw a man slip out into the darkened room. When I saw the knife in his hand I grabbed the heavy bronze lamp stand by my bed and clouted him as hard as I could. He dropped like a pole-axed cow and I hit him three or four more times before I realized he was not going to get up again. I was not safe here in this place where Sir Hugo was considered a saint. I had to get out, but until I glanced again at the assassin at my feet I could not see how. Rapidly I changed clothes with the man and shoved him into my bed, turning his face down into the pillows and covering his hair with a nightcap. After I had lopped off my hair to the same length as his I sheathed his dagger at my waist. I jammed his cap low onto my head and slipped out the window the way he had come in.

  Climbing down to the courtyard was more difficult than it had been at home, especially since the stones had now become slippery with the night’s rain. I did not dare take my poor Cairn, and did not suppose he would be able to make the trip back at any rate. Dawn was just breaking and I was able to slip out of the castle unnoticed as the tradesmen and market people passed in and out. I thanked God that the rain had ended as I slunk through woods and hid in village back streets across a countryside I had never even walked over before. The sun rose higher and began to dry the ground, but I stepped in every bog and blundered into every briar patch between Chelmsford and Colchester. And every time I stopped to rest or thought I must ask for help or directions, I saw in my mind Hugo Brun towering over me in his blue and silver knight’s trappings. I saw that man who would have liked nothing better than to find me in some forlorn place and finish what he had begun at my home that was no more, and I went on.

  Chapter Three: A Shrouded Demon, A Red Boar, A Sign of Weakness

  Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.

  Luke 15: 22-24

  It was afternoon, sunny and warm, before I arrived back at Colchester. All the outbuildings lay in charred ruins. Smoke still rose from the empty solar windows. I sank to the ground beside what had once been our henhouse and gasped for breath. I heard a crash inside the manor and started up. To my astonishment the knight of the black lion, soot streaking his scarlet tunic, emerged from the ruined doorway.

  “What are you doing here?” I cried out. The helmeted man jerked round to look in my direction. I saw his head dart upward, and heard a noise behind me. As I turned to look he lunged forward, dragging out his enormous broadsword. I crumpled to the ground with a plea for mercy on my lips as his sword swung through the air with a blow that would surely have cut my slight frame in two. Instead, however, the sword struck the arm of the man who had been swinging a mace and chain at my head. The fellow screamed and his body cartwheeled away from me. Another attacker fell prey to the backswing of that amazing sword and he fell on top of me and did not move again.

/>   The knight of the black lion seized me by the shoulders and dragged me to my feet. “Who are you, lad?” he demanded. “What has happened here?”

  “The manor was attacked last night, sir knight,” I said, trying to make my voice gruff and male. I thought it best to let the fellow think me a boy until I was sure of his intentions. “Are all killed?”

  “I found many bodies – servants and guards,” the knight replied. “I cannot tell what has become of – Attacked, you say? By whom? And why?”

  “The man is called Hugo Brun of March,” I said bitterly. “I was sent to the earl to get help. He is the earl’s friend, and the earl does not believe it was he. But someone tried to kill me at the earl’s house and I had to escape for my life. I saw this Hugo Brun attack Colchester. He felled our old seneschal before my eyes.”

  “ This is your house?” the knight pulled off his helmet suddenly. I gasped and backed away. His face was almost black from a sun England had scarce ever seen and a livid scar cut his cheek from mouth to eye. His dark eyes burned. His face was lined and haggard and he terrified me. It was no wonder my mother had feared him.

  “Who are you?” He demanded. He stepped closer and I dodged away. Like a snake his hand shot out and he seized me by the shirtfront. “You are a maid!” He exclaimed, quickly withdrawing his hand.

  “I am Hope, daughter of Charles Fitzhugh, Baron of Maidstone,” I said haughtily. “My mother is Lady Ada. We have lived with Baron John Cloyes at Colchester since my father’s death.”

  “Lady Hope!” The knight staggered and all the color in his face fled. “Is it e’en so? Nay, I knew the years had fled, but you were three years old and a chubby chattering magpie when I…” he broke off suddenly. “Your pardon, lady. I forget myself. I … I knew your family many years ago. I knew them very well.”