Afton of Margate Castle (24 page)

Fulk’s prediction about Arnoul was realized. The vanquished Arnoul did not become Calhoun’s friend, but instead befriended every knight, squire, and page in the castle. Though he lagged behind Calhoun in physical skills, he excelled in cunning and conversation. Every night after supper, when Calhoun retired to his solitary garrison room to sleep, Arnoul entertained the other men around the open fire in the courtyard. Their ribald laughter echoed throughout the night and stirred Calhoun in restless sleep.

So be it,
Calhoun thought one night as loneliness washed over him
. I live alone, but they can keep their jokes and foolishness to themselves. I need no one else.

After a full year of training, Calhoun grew into his hauberk. It no longer hung loosely on the slender frame of a boy, but clung to muscles grown hard and sinewy. His face, which had held an aspect of softness and pampered nobility, was now bronzed and lean. More disguising than his physical growth, however, was his manner. The laughing boy had become a solitary knight, and Fulk thought one day that even Lady Endeline would have difficulty recognizing him.

Calhoun was surprisingly agile in his heavy armor. Over his heavy shirt of mail, he now wore a white tunic which would be exchanged for one in his family colors after he was officially dubbed a knight. On his legs he wore chausses, coverings of mail, and a conical helmet of steel covered his head. Calhoun did not leave his chamber without a dagger sheathed at his calf and a sword strapped to his side. When mounted, he carried a shield and a twelve-foot lance, his favorite weapon, unless Fulk had instructed him to practice with the mace or battle axe. In Calhoun’s hands, both were deadly weapons.

He no longer struck at tree stumps, but dueled with Fulk himself, trading blow for blow. Both warriors frequently drew blood. The heavy suit of mail protected its wearer from slashes and glancing cuts, but a direct penetrative hit from sword or lance would invariably part the woven metal rings, so Fulk and Calhoun fought carefully and with discipline. Calhoun was accustomed to bruises on his ribs and back from Fulk’s heavy sword, but he bore his pain stoically and resolved to be quicker on the morrow.

Calhoun was Warwick’s champion jouster from his first contest, but he modestly attributed his skill to days spent tilting at the quintain at Margate when he was a boy. He and Charles had spent hours rushing the dummy quintain with long poles, and more than once he had missed the target or hit it and forgot to duck, so the moving weight swung toward him and knocked him from his horse. He had failed often enough as a boy to remember the humiliation of landing in the dirt, and Calhoun resolved never to be knocked from his horse at Warwick. As a squire, he rushed now not at a dummy quintain, but at other squires who aimed long, padded poles at his chest as they charged toward him on their horses.

In his year at Warwick, Calhoun had quickly become the squire exemplar, first among his peers in fighting, wrestling, jousting, hunting, and even dancing, but he was not accorded this rank with Lord Thomas. As far as Lord Thomas was concerned, it was Squire Arnoul who was the best and finest boy in training, and it was Arnoul, cousin of the king, who was awarded honor, praise, and a seat at the lord’s table. Calhoun, whom Arnoul openly despised, received no attention and little praise from the lord of Warwick Castle.

Calhoun bore the injustice with as much dignity as he could muster, finding no comfort even in the surreptitious pitying smiles of Lady Clarissant whose blue eyes seemed to understand the truth of the situation. Calhoun knew he could not even complain to Fulk, for his master had tried to remedy the situation long before.
Perhaps if I had let Arnoul win on that day, things would be better,
Calhoun thought.
But what honor lies in failure?

An opportunity for salvation presented itself during the holidays of Christmastide. Lord Thomas announced a three-event tournament for the squires, consisting of jousting, swordplay, and a wrestling match. The winners of those three events would then compose and read a poem to Lady Clarissant, for a knight’s social skills were as valued as his physical abilities. She would then select the winner of the tournament.

Calhoun threw himself into practice for the tournament. He would win all three events, surely, and he would be the only squire eligible to stand before Clarissant and read his poem of love to her. The days and nights at Warwick had wrought another change in him, a transformation he did not expect. Emotions and inexplicable urges stirred his days and nights, and often, in restless sleep, he was awakened by Fulk, who roughly commanded him to go outside and chop wood. Calhoun obeyed without protest, bewildered by the feelings that swayed his body and mind.

He only knew that the center of his attention lately had been Clarissant. Her voice, her form, her laugh, all had the power to send him reeling across the room in delightful delirium. She was the most lovely, most serene, most gentle woman he had ever known. It mattered not that she belonged to Lord Thomas, for Calhoun could not even conceive of marrying, or even kissing such a creature. It was enough to stand and gaze at her, and love chastely from a distance.

As a child, Calhoun had tolerated the visiting troubadours and their songs of love, but now he found himself drawn to both the pain and pleasure in their music. He wrote poetry for Clarissant as did the other squires, but the most personal of his thoughts he hid from her, passionately scrawling them on snatches of parchment and later tossing them into the fire where they flamed with the intensity of his heart.

When after supper the squires were allowed to dance with Clarissant and her maids, he hung by the walls as he had at Margate. In earlier days he had not been interested in dancing; now he was vitally interested, but petrified with fear. If Clarissant should so much as touch him, he knew his heart would burst through his chest and she would be horrified by what she saw there.

But the Christmastide tournament offered a noble way for him to prove his love and devotion. He would out fight, out wrestle, and out ride every other squire. His poetry would shine forth with the purity of his love, and her beauty would fire the words to sing forth from his lips. Then Clarissant, Thomas, and all the assembled host would recognize that Calhoun was a squire of the first order. Calhoun of Margate would make a knight worthy to carry the king’s own banner.

***

The day of the tournament dawned bright and clear, and Calhoun jerked Gislebert awake from a sound sleep. “Wake up, little mouse,” Calhoun called, prodding the boy in the straw. “I need help with this armor, and my master Fulk awaits my arrival at the stables.”

“So soon?” Gislebert mumbled, wiping sleep from his eyes. He blinked and stared fixedly at Calhoun’s hauberk. “Does it begin today?”

“It begins today,” Calhoun snapped, placing his cold hands under the boy’s arms and lifting him to his feet. “Hurry up and help me get dressed.”

The first event was jousting, and Calhoun thought his aim had never been more clear or his hands more steady. He had dispatched his first four opponents with ease, knocking them from their horses as if they were made of nothing but straw and mud.

But now he faced Arnoul, who weighed considerably more than the young men who had nervously charged him before. Calhoun knew the key to unseating Arnoul lay in enticing the larger boy off balance. Then a mere prod with the lance would tilt Arnoul off his horse as easily as a turtle is tipped onto its back.

Calhoun lowered his visor, gripped his padded lance, and spurred his horse. This day would end in victory.

***

“How does it feel to be the first day’s winner?”

Calhoun recognized Fulk’s voice, and he smiled slowly, bringing his thoughts from love to victory. He had been lying on his bunk trying to find the words for his poem to Clarissant.

“Victory is agreeable,” Calhoun admitted, “but my next challenge is intimidating, Fulk. I cannot find the words for what I want to say in my poem. As the jousting winner I will certainly have to read a poem to Lady Clarissant, and though the words are here--” he lay his hand over his heart, “they will not spring onto the paper.”

Fulk grunted and pulled off his boots. Gislebert hopped up from his straw bed and ran to clean the dusty footwear, and Fulk stretched out on his bunk. “I cannot help you,” he grunted. “I know little of love.”

“I know so much,” Calhoun sighed. “My heart is full of it when I gaze at the lady. But--”

“You know less than I,” Fulk retorted. “Your heart is full of giddiness, but it knows nothing of true love.”

“My love is true,” Calhoun answered indignantly, pushing himself upright. “Love drives me to distraction. I can’t think, I can’t eat--”

“True love drives a man to destruction,” Fulk answered, closing his eyes. “But you will not believe me now. So dream on, young squire, dream on.”

Calhoun settled back on his bunk, more than a little upset that Fulk considered his devotion so insignificant. If this affection was not love, what was it? Love or not, his passion was indescribable, and Calhoun scowled at the blank page in front of him.

***

He fought the next day in the contest of swordsmanship, and was so charged by his passion and the previous day’s victory that his opponents scarcely managed to land a blow on him. He had to curb his impulses, so high was his energy, lest he turn his sword and run his blade through his fellow squires. The noble Arnoul did not even face him in the final contest; the royal cousin had been defeated two rounds earlier.

But that night Calhoun’s victory felt hollow because the prize, so near for the taking, was still miles out of reach. He had no words for the Lady Clarissant, no adequate descriptions of her beauty, no praises eloquent enough to compliment her goodness.

The next morning Calhoun scowled at each of his wrestling opponents and dispatched them with such rapidity that the spectator knights declared the contest boring; such a one should be tempered in his skill to make the contests more equal. “Why don’t we tie his feet together?” one knight suggested, and they laughed until Fulk countered their recommendation with a glare. No one dared say anything after that, especially since it appeared that Fulk’s young charge now possessed a scowl as threatening as his master’s.

By mid-afternoon Calhoun was the victor in all three contests and the certain winner of Clarissant’s favor. He alone would stand before her tonight and recite a poem, but to fully commend her beauty the poem must be no less than an epic, a timeless piece of workmanship.

The task was too great; Calhoun could feel his brain turning to mush. The distraction he had felt on his first attempt at writing had evolved into frenzy, and he paced through the garrison until he finally collapsed upon his bunk in defeat.

“I’m not worthy to be a knight,” Calhoun moaned to Gislebert, who watched in bewildered silence. “I can face any enemy who charges me on horseback, with a sword, or with his bare hands, but at the sight of a beautiful woman I am turned to jelly.”

“You’re working too hard,” Gislebert said, shrugging. “You’re trying to produce something equal to your feelings, and that’s probably impossible.”

Calhoun considered Gislebert’s words. “What you say is true. But it won’t help me produce the poem my lady Clarissant expects.”

“Write about someone else,” Gislebert suggested. “Someone else you have loved. Your mother, or your sister.”

“But I have never loved anyone like this!”

Gislebert sighed in exasperation. “Love is love, regardless of the degree. Write sanely about someone you once loved, and let the purity of your thoughts guide you clearly. After the poem is written you can just adjust the words to reflect the lady Clarissant.”

Calhoun stared at his young friend for a moment, then reached out and rumpled the boy’s hair. He was a mouse, always underfoot, but he made sense. Calhoun thought a moment, then began to write.

***

That evening at supper, as the bowls were passed, Lord Thomas bestowed a rare smile on Calhoun. “Congratulations are due to you, Calhoun of Margate,” he said, “for winning three contests in as many days. But to be declared winner of the tournament, you must read a poem for Lady Clarissant and find favor in her eyes.”

Calhoun wiped his mouth and stood from his place at the table. His mouth felt dry and he was sure his hands were shaking, but he smiled as boldly as he dared. “To find favor in my lady’s eyes is prize enough,” he said, “but to please her with a poem would bring joy beyond measure.”