Love and Chivalry: Four Medieval Historical Romances

by Lindsay Townsend

"Get your things now." Edith pelted to the back of the tent, tore open the flaps of the back entrance and ripped another hole in the canvas with her knife—this was no time to be thinking of the pretty cloth: she could hear the crackling of the fire now, and smell it. The wind must have changed direction and the fire was eating its way toward them. This was a big fire, she guessed, already spreading out of control. "Go out to the swing: the green woodland will be slower to burn than here. Go on! All of you!"

  She caught Mary by her arm and thrust her out of the tent, followed by Simon and Lucy with her baby. "Go with them, Teodwin," she ordered, as the steward hesitated, clearly unsure whom to follow. "Find Maria and the rest, take our new folk with you and go out to the swing. The swing!"

  Without waiting to see if he obeyed she ran out of the tent through the main entrance, snatching up a shovel tossed amidst the tent guide-ropes.

  She ran into a glare and wall of flame. Whatever had started this: a forge exploding, or bad flour, or a brazier overturned, or a watch-fire or brand carelessly extinguished, the fire was king now and playing tyrant all over the hillside.

  "My lady!" The captain, already covered in smuts and soot, was gesturing to her, his words lost in the tumult of other raised voices and the roar of the blaze. Behind the flames, Edith caught the distant sound of chanting, coming from the direction of the smoke-obscured church yard. her spirits plummeted as she imagined the mob—had they returned? Had they set off this fire? She scanned the horizon but already the castle was lost in the smoke. Worse, the woodland Ranulf was hunting in, with her enemy Giles, oblivious to this terror, was also wreathed in a thick grey fog.

  She came to where a group of men were digging, trying to create a fire-break. "It is too close!" she called out. "The fire will leap that. You must dig here!" She ran back up the hill and set her own spade into the turf.

  "What do you know?" one man protested, while others ignored her and another dragged himself and his spade up to where she was digging.

  "This lady fought with dragons!" he announced, "She knows fire!"

  I do, too, thought Edith, as she dug, cutting and clearing a space of bare earth that had no twigs or cloth or wheel-spokes or anything for the fire to devour. From the forge, I know it well, and this fire is almost beyond us. She kept on digging, however, encouraging Ranulf's men to do the same. While others careered about, seeking buckets and water, foolishly trying and failing to dowse the flames with wine or ale, yelling with terror as the fire jumped from wagon to wagon because they were still parked close together, she hacked and cleared. Her people were behind her, and her multi-coloured tent, and all the devices that made her a princess of Cathay.

  God is stripping away your lies, Gregory scolded in her mind, but Edith thought that God was more likely busy elsewhere in this tourney camp, as people saved each other or hindered each other. Then she forgot God and tried to ignore the smarting ache in her shoulders—as princess she had grown soft and unused to hard work.

  The captain came beside her, with a rake. "You should not be here."

  "Nor you, nor any of us, sir," she panted, stamping out a small worm of fire with her spade. "But we are. We must do what we can."

  Around them the smoke swirled and the heat scorched one side of her body. Further down the hillside she could see burning wagons and beasts and men running in all directions.

  A horse and rider cantered out of the flames. Edith saw long, flowing hair and realized the rider was a woman. A young woman in a man's tunic and clothes, one of the dagger-girls of the tourney camp.

  "Ride behind us," she called, "you will be safe."

  "For how long?" the young woman shouted, but she urged her rough-maned pony up the hill. She was riding astride and bare-back and her cheek had been laid open by a flying splinter of metal or wood. As she approached, Edith finally recognized her as the red-haired dagger-girl who had spoken to her weeks before, while she had been in the company of lady Blanche.

  The girl recognized her, too. "You are Sir Ranulf's prize," she stated flatly, as if being so was Edith's fault.

  "She is the lady of lilies and princess of Cathay," the captain huffed beside her, but the girl merely shrugged as she dismounted.

  "Have you any ale?" she demanded. "My throat is as dry as a furnace."

  Edith glowered at her over the top of her veiling. The dagger-girl stared back. "I have no wine about my person," Edith said coolly, resting a moment on her spade. Part of her was ashamed at such status claims and games while the camp burned. But she was uneasy about the young woman, who seemed an angry, envious sort. "Have you, captain?"

  "I have," announced Giles.

  He emerged through the smoke on horseback, gleaming and clean, as if the fire had not touched him at all. Behind him, Edith could see his men desperately scrambling to save what they could of plates and wagons and tools and tents. Giles was as unconcerned with such grim, practical tasks as a maiden going Maying; his eyes were on the dagger-girl.

  "For you, sweet one." He handed her a flask. "I have cooling cloths, also, for your pretty hands and forehead. Come up with me." He extended his foot, inviting the young woman to mount before him.

  The girl lurched forward, her grey eyes bright with eagerness, her red hair burnished by the surrounding flames so that in that moment she looked as lovely as an angel. Watching her giddily close on Giles, Edith hoped the girl would be safe, before and after his fancy passed.

  "My lady, we should make haste," the captain warned.

  His urgency snapped Giles's attention off the dagger-girl and onto herself. He had not truly noticed her before, Edith realized, but now, as his dark good looks glowed, she braced herself for trouble. Acting on an impulse that she did not delay to question, she cut the tie around her betrothal ring and dropped the ring and strip of cloth into her bodice.

  "Ranulf's prize, veiled and wrapped in silk." Giles spurred his horse and rode straight past the dagger-girl, oblivious to her squeal of protest. Edith flinched away from his grasping, out-stretched arm, but he caught her veiling and rudely tore it from her head and shoulders.

  "Enough!" the captain roared, raising his spade. Farther along the line, more of Ranulf's men ran forward to defend her.

  There was a sickening, slamming sound as Giles fired a hunting cross-bow bolt directly into the captain's chest. The man dropped without a cry and, as the rest of the troop were stunned by this brutality, Giles moved.

  Edith saw his fist approaching her face, coming slow and heavy as trickling sand, and yet her limbs were frozen. On the very edge of her sight, she caught a small, brave figure in Ranulf’s colours with fair curling hair. Gawain had somehow come here, but he must not be seen. She screamed a warning, "Away" and tried to twist aside and flee.

  She knew she was too slow. Even as her mind was burning brighter and clearer than molten metal, she could not compel her limbs to obey her.

  “Not the yellow castle!" she cried, naming Giles's smallest and most private holding. Somehow she knew, in that preternatural quickness of her reason, that he would retreat there. She knew of it only by rumour, from what the branded villagers had whispered to her only that morning by the river-bank, but she had learned that it was close to Fitneyclare.

  A hammer struck her. The crackling brightness of the fire was extinguished and a red-sparked blackness closed her eyes.

  Chapter 38

  Ranulf saw the smoke for several bone-jangling, heart-wrenching miles as he urged the indifferent nag he was riding to its best speed. Too soon, and yet not soon enough, he and his reduced company galloped toward the dark pall hanging over the castle turrets. He thundered past stragglers clutching baskets and small chests but when he shouted, "What news?" he received no answers.

  He jolted past men sitting on the scorched earth, many with tears scoring down their smoke-blackened faces, but the wood behind the camp was still green in a world turned grey and black and he clutched to hope like a sacred relic. Edith would have reached the wood and would be safe there
: he knew this even as he entered the great field and saw the smouldering wrecks of tents and wagons.

  "Has there been a war?" Edmund asked, his voice cracking as if he was five years younger.

  Ranulf gritted his teeth and lashed his horse, weaving round the trails of ash and embers. The stink of fire, charred wood, burned cloth and flesh smacked him like a punch in the back of his throat. It had been a whirlwind of flame and destruction.

  He rode on, seeing a glove, a single gauge, pinned to a barrel by a long metal nail. It was a bizarre accident and, sickeningly, it reminded him of a glove he had seen before, pinned in a very different way. When he found Olwen dead on the track that fatal morning, a single glove—given her by Giles—had been pinned beneath her twisted body. In his shock and grief he had never thought of it, never saw it as anything but tragic mischance.

  What if it was more, though? Giles loves to gloat. What if Giles ordered that glove left under my Olwen, as a sign? What if he took the other glove as a grisly token of some kind?

  Perhaps he was wrong, but he had never found the other glove.

  When I return to the north, I must walk those woodland tracks.

  He had avoided it, because walking where Olwen had died gave him no pleasure. Now he recognized he had no choice.

  Later, that is for later. Where is Edith?

  Up ahead, sitting on the ground on a saddle without a horse, a lad with long red hair rocked to and fro. Ranulf called to the boy. "Hey! Have you seen —?"

  As the huddled figure looked up at him, he realized that this was a girl—one of the dagger-girls who haunted every tourney ground. Swiftly, he checked his first question, about Edith. "Do you need help, girl?"

  "To lose more?"

  Ranulf found his bag of coins and tossed it to her.

  "Thank you kindly, sir." She bowed her head and shook the coin bag, a strange smile hovering about her lips. "Are you sure?"

  Before he could ask her what she meant, his squire began shouting.

  "Sir! Look here, look you!" Off to one side, Edmund had dismounted and was kicking through ash piles further up the hill. Now he fell to his knees and began desperately scooping and flinging charred wood and canvas away from a prone figure.

  "Oh, God." Twisting onto his belly, Edmund was copiously sick.

  Ranulf swallowed his own mouthful of bile and swung down from the horse, kneeling stiffly beside his captain. Staring at the stricken face, twisted as a gargoyle, he acknowledged that the world was truly mad. Stephen had been a doughty fighter, a good man, betrothed to one of the maids. He had survived the war in France and the pestilence, now he was dead with a crossbow bolt through his heart. Forcing his icy hands to move, Ranulf closed the man's staring eyes and tried to recall a prayer.

  "Treachery." The girl spoke his thought. "Your man had no chance. When she allowed herself to be taken, the rest of your company lost heart and scattered. They are long gone."

  The girl shook the bag of money again. "Sir Giles offered her more gold than this. He killed your man when he protested as she took it."

  Ranulf closed his own eyes and tried, for the sake of Stephen's soul, to say a prayer. There was no doubt whom this distraught young woman meant by she, but he did not believe it. She loathed Giles, and with good reason.

  She lies, yes, and has lied, and doubtless will always stretch and mould the truth, but not to harm. Never to hurt others. She detests Giles! She has cause to hate him. You know this.

  "Fired at by a fellow knight." Edmund was shaking like a loosened window-shutter. "By a friend."

  "It happens," Ranulf said harshly, wanting to stop the lad from sinking into tears that he would loathe himself forever after for shedding. "Get off your knees and see if you can see any of the men hereabouts. Baldwin —” he called to another man who had gone out hunting with them; an older, steadier sort—"You look, too. The rest stay close.”

  He tore off his cloak and used it to cover Stephen, blocking out the deep hole in his body. The poor wretch looked as if he was sleeping, in a bad dream, which was worse, but at least the bloodstains were hidden.

  "You." He did not want to speak any more to the dagger-girl but need compelled him. "You say my lady is with Sir Giles?"

  She laughed, showing crooked teeth. "They went off together on horseback."

  Ranulf was glad his squire was out of earshot. "She went with him willingly?"

  "Eagerly, my lord. Most eagerly."

  You lie! Edith had never lied like this, for malice. What harm had she ever done this red-head? None, he wagered. Fighting it down, Ranulf mastered his rage and asked quietly, “How long ago was this? Which direction?”

  The girl shrugged, making a great play of stirring the ash near her feet with her heels. “Here and there. I did not notice. I cannot say how long.”

  "He can, though," said Lucy, coming alongside Ranulf. Carrying Rano in a sling, she had emerged from behind a heap of charred planks—part of a mock "castle" that had been caught in the conflagration along with so much else. Beside her, having just released her hand, Gawain held himself very straight, his lips moving as he whispered something over and over to himself.

  "Yes, my page?" Ranulf crouched so he and Gawain were a height.

  Gawain glanced up at Lucy, who nodded, and the boy took a deep breath.

  "My lady was beaten by Sir Giles and she fainted. He used his crossbow like a sword, hacking about with it. He did not see me because I hid behind a water barrel."

  Edith struck—Ranulf gripped his own arms tightly before he started smashing everything in sight. His head felt as if it might leave his body, he was so lurid and hot with anger. I should have killed him in the forest when I had the chance, without waiting to see justice done.

  Gawain chewed on his lower lip. "I did not challenge him."

  "You did right," Ranulf said quickly. "You kept watch for me."

  "See?" Lucy said, resting a work-roughened hand on the little boy's shoulder, "I told you your lord would not blame you."

  "Before he took her, she said something." Gawain frowned. "I do not understand it."

  Spit it out, boy! Ranulf rocked on his heels, grinding a charred tent pole under his boots, imagining it as Giles's face. "Whatever you remember is useful," he encouraged, as his guts boiled at the slowness of all this. "It will help me to find her."

  The dagger-girl snorted, but Ranulf ignored her.

  "Anything, Gawain."

  Gawain hopped from one foot to the other. "I want to come," he burst out. "I want to rescue her."

  "And you shall." Ranulf would have promised anything. "Where should we ride?"

  "To the yellow castle."

  Gawain took another deep breath and recited. "Not to the yellow castle. That is what my lady said, exactly."

  Giles has no yellow castles, was Ranulf's first thought, and he glanced from Gawain to Lucy. "What is it, and where?" he cried out. "Where? Where in all this realm of England do I seek her?" Frustration gnawed at him like a wolf chewing on a bone.

  "In the greenwood there are people with us who will know," Lucy answered, calm and warm as new milk "Our lady told us to gather there, and we have."

  Ranulf rose. "Take me to them."

  “She does not want to be found,” the dagger-girl muttered spitefully as he passed her. She still sitting in the midst of the smoking tourney field on the saddle without a horse. “A fool’s quest.”

  “Better a fool than a viper,” Ranulf answered.

  Stalking behind Lucy and his scampering page, he realized too late that he had forgotten his captain, lying dead and untended on the tourney field like so much midden rubbish.

  Forgive me, old friend, he thought, and he shouted to Edmund to see to Stephen's body and to gather the rest of his forces.

  "To the greenwood, quick as you can!" he ordered. "Bring fresh horses, good runners!"

  He wanted them all to be riding out again, within an hour or less.

  To this yellow castle, wherever that is.


  Lady Blanche looked out over the battlements of the bailey of her castle. With a sigh, she marked how one section of the curtain wall still needed repairs, and that after her husband had promised he would see to it. Richard of course was excited about his latest joust. He was like a boy playing with a barrel of apples, she thought, and the picture gave her no peace. Her husband's love of the tourney had, over the years, meant that she remained in this cold, small castle, and that her dowry had been spent on elaborate prizes and entertainments.

  And for what? The fools had succeeded in setting their own camp ablaze and so her careful plans were ruined: they would not now be spending money in her markets. She had been ill and none of those courteous gentle knights had called on her. The mob in the church-yard were back and Richard was making jokes about barring the castle gates. Her harvesters were demanding more money. It was not as bad as two years ago, during the time of the great death, but it was poor enough.

  She heard galloping horses and peered—her eyes were weak at distance—over the battlements again.

  "My Lady Blanche!"

  She recognized Sir Ranulf by his bellow and bowed stiffly to him. Where was her husband, to stand with her facing this handsome brute? Off stuffing himself with cheese and fruit tarts in the kitchen, no doubt.

  "I trust you are now recovered, my lady."

  She said nothing, refusing to be mollified. She still ached from the fever and was sore all over. He was plainly not riding to see her, or joining her joust of peace: he and his men were in drab battle dress and armed to the hilt. Sir Ranulf was in his usual black armour but it was very drab, mud-splattered, without shine, and no favours anywhere.

  He glowered at her as if she was a target and bawled out, "My lady, have you seen Sir Giles? And the princess? I must have urgent speech with them."

  Did he mean they were now a pair? Despite her aching back and sides, Lady Blanche began to be intrigued. "I am not sure," she called down. "Would they have passed this way?" Recalling now that the princess had never called or asked after her, she added, quite deliberately, "I may have seen a couple riding forth, oh, an hour ago. Very comfortable they seemed together. He was kissing his hand and hers as a sign of his admiration."