Secrets of the Tudor Court Boxed Set (26 page)

“Did Longueville know about this attack on Brighton in advance?” Will’s eyes were cold as ice.

“No. Longueville desires peace. He wants this marriage between King Louis and the Lady Mary to succeed. He hopes to arrange for a ceremony here in England with himself standing as proxy for his master. He called the raid the act of a fool.”

“The king is furious.”

“As he should be, but not with the duc de Longueville.”

Will seized my upper arm in a painful grip. “Some may seek the most convenient target for their wrath.”

“Do you count yourself in their number, Will?” I was trembling with fear, but I forced myself to challenge him. I glanced pointedly at his hand. I would have bruises where his fingers bit into my flesh.

Scowling, he released me, but he did not apologize.

“I lost the same friends you did to the French,” I reminded him, remembering that before Lord Edward, there had been Tom Knyvett.

“And yet you do not hesitate to spread your legs for the enemy.”

Fighting the instinct to shrink back and cower, I stood up straighter. “At the king’s command! Since the night of the masque at Havering-atte-Bowe, I have been King Henry’s creature and you, above all men, know it.”

“You have taken pleasure from your duty.”

“Mayhap I consider it my due, as I have had little other recompense!”

But Will Compton was no longer listening. He stood silent for
a moment, and then began to laugh. Of a sudden, he picked me up and whirled me around, kissing me soundly on the lips before he set me back on my feet. “Ah, Jane! You are an inspiration.”

“I—I am what?”

Still grinning, he seized me by the shoulders, bringing his face close to mine. His eyes danced with excitement. “Do you not see? By quarreling with you, my anger at the French was diverted into a safer channel. I exploded, but with fireworks instead of cannon fire. That is what the entire court needs—a means to vent their anger and frustration without doing any real harm.”

I thought him mad. “I can scarce pick fights with each and every courtier.”

“But the king, at my prompting,
can
invite the duc de Longueville and his bastard brother to compete in the May Day tournament.”

With one last kiss, this one a resounding smack in the middle of my forehead, he left to set things in motion.

B
Y THE DAY
of the tournament, I was almost ill with worry. No one would dare harm the duke, but Guy would be fair game. Nervous jitters attacked my belly and I felt an incessant dull pounding at my temples. Both were made worse by the noise and smell of the crowd of spectators.

From the purpose-built, covered grandstand that was the royal gallery, I had a clear view of the double tier of bare wooden benches, solidly but plainly constructed, that occupied the far side of the field. They could be had, for a price, by anyone who wished to attend the tournament. They were full to bursting with spectators gaping and pointing at the splendors of the king’s new tiltyard.

Even in my troubled state, I could understand why they so admired the construction, which had been completed only a few
days earlier. Inside the high wall that enclosed the whole were not only the lists with their wooden barriers and the tents of the competitors, but the gallery itself. At each end was a high octagonal tower—an octagonal stair turret, in truth—surmounted by pointed pinnacles of fanciful design. At their center the queen sat under her canopy of estate and in front of rich blue hangings embellished with gold designs. Cushions of cloth-of-gold padded even the lesser seats in her vicinity.

“Is it not splendid?” Bessie Blount whispered as the grand procession began. She’d chosen to sit beside me when others shunned my company. In spite of my jangled nerves, I could not help but smile at her simple delight in the spectacle.

“This is but a poor echo of the pageantry in old King Henry’s time,” I told her. “In those days, all the participants entered in fancy costumes and riding in pageant cars. They placed their names on a ‘tree of chivalry’ located near the head of the tilt. The tree was painted with leaves, flowers, and fruit, and beneath it, hung upon rails, were the shields of all the knights.”

Once every jouster had been in costume, acting the role of Amadas or Lancelot or some other knight of olden times. The tournaments had been presented as allegories as elaborate as those in any masque. There was still pomp and ceremony, color and spectacle, but that element was missing. It was considered old-fashioned.

Footmen, drummers, and at least a dozen trumpeters came onto the field, along with forty mounted members of the king’s spears and all the king’s pages. The sun glinted off the gold chains the spears wore and the silver in their horses’ trappings. The jousters, fully armed and with visors down, came next, challengers and answerers, each surrounded by gentlemen on foot who were dressed in satin and velvet. Tawny, scarlet, crimson, even silver and gold blossomed among the greater mass of gray and russet and servants’ blue.

“I cannot tell one knight from the other,” Bessie complained.

The gaily caparisoned mounts lacked heraldic devices, nor were there any to be seen on spear or helmet or breastplate. I could only pick out the duc de Longueville by the fluttering scarf he wore wound around his forearm. It was the one I had given to him as my favor only a few hours earlier. I had given Guy my little dragon pendant. I hoped it would serve as a good luck charm, a protection against injury.

“Mayhap it was deemed safest not to identify each knight,” I murmured. During a mock battle, it would be far too easy to exact private vengeance on an opponent, to maim or even to kill.

“I have never attended a tournament before,” Bessie confided. She’d been bouncing up and down with excitement since the moment she arrived and kept swiveling her head in order to see everything at once. “This is called a tiltyard. Is there an event called the tilt?”

“A tilt is any fight between a pair of competitors using lances.”

I had to raise my voice to be heard above the noise. Interspersed with cheers and shouts were derisive catcalls aimed at the French jousters. Spirited wagering on the outcome of various matches also accounted for a good deal of racket.

“There will be four parts of the tournament,” I continued. “First, opponents fighting on foot at the barriers, using swords across a waist-high wooden fence. Then hand-to-hand combat with a variety of weapons—two-handed swords and pikes and axes. The tourney is next, fought by small teams on horseback, with swords. And finally there is the joust between mounted knights with lances. Each knight will run several courses and dozens of lances will be broken before they are done.” I could only pray no heads would be splintered in the process.

A sudden hush fell as two men dressed as hermits suddenly
appeared from the area underneath the grandstand, an area closed in to provide storage for jousting equipment between tournaments. The hermits bowed before the queen and waited for her to acknowledge them.

“Mayhap the fashion in pageantry has not passed away after all,” I murmured, recognizing the king and Charles Brandon.

In truth, everyone knew who they were. And everyone pretended not to know. King Henry wore a white velvet habit with a hat of cloth-of-silver and a long silver beard made of damask. His companion, all in black velvet, sported false hair of similar color and design.

When enough time had passed for the crowd to admire his disguise and speculate about who he might be, the king threw off habit, beard, and hat to reveal shining black armor beneath. He tossed the garments to the queen, who caught them with apparent delight. Brandon did the same, gifting the Lady Mary. Her cheeks pink with pleasure, she accepted the robe and gave him a length of green ribbon. He kissed the bit of fabric and tucked it into the breastplate of the pure white armor revealed when he removed the black habit.

“The king looks very grand,” Bessie whispered, “but does he not risk injury to participate?”

“He does, a lesson he learned early. The Earl of Kent, who was charged with teaching the young prince to joust, broke an arm just demonstrating the sport.” Bessie’s face paled and I hastened to reassure her. “His Grace is very good. He has trained in the lists since he was a boy of sixteen and he excels at breaking lances. There was a time when he would practice every day.”

I had gone to watch him sometimes, with the Lady Mary. When they lacked real opponents, he and those companions his father approved—Harry Guildford, Will Compton, Ned Neville,
Charles Brandon, and the rest—had charged at detachable rings set on posts and tilted at the quintain, an effigy on a revolving bar.

“How do they decide who wins the tournament?” Bessie asked.

“The jouster’s aim is to dismount his opponent, but that rarely happens. Next best is to shatter the lance on his head or body. The heralds keep the score sheets. Marks are awarded according to which parts of an opponent’s armor are struck, even if the lance does not split. The helmet scores highest, closely followed by the breastplate.”

She shuddered. “That sounds passing dangerous to me.”

I had been struggling not to think about that aspect of things, glad of Bessie’s questions to help keep my mind off my fears that someone dear to me might end up dead before the day was through. The throbbing pain in my head had subsided to a dull ache, but my stomach remained queasy.

“The knights break their lances across a high barrier to prevent collisions. They did not always do so. The contest was running
volant
—without lists—the day Ned Neville nearly killed Will Compton during a tournament.”

Bessie’s eyes widened. She was silent for a moment, then asked if the lances themselves were sharp.

“They are hollow, and fluted, and they have blunted points. They are designed to shatter on impact.”

The force of two jousters colliding could shower long wooden splinters in every direction. They could blind a man. They could kill. While Will Compton had almost died at the hands of a good friend, I did not like to think what might happen when an opponent was filled with hatred and bent on revenge. Picturing Longueville and Guy in all their fine armor, lying side by side in a puddle of blood, I shuddered.

The tournament began to a roar of approval from the crowd.
All through the first two events men brandishing drawn swords shouted and whooped. The crowd cheered every time the flat of a sword clanged against armor. And as every hit reverberated, I shivered inside, thinking of what was to come.

When the tourney added horses to the mix, there was even more noise from thudding hooves and equine screams. The crowd greeted every foray by the king’s team with enthusiastic cries of approval.

Although the ground was hard packed—a layer of sand deep enough to rake topped by a thick layer of gravel sealed with plaster—the horses stirred up great clouds of dust. It coated everything, spectators included. Throat clogged, vision obscured, I strained to see what was happening on the field and breathed a sigh of relief when I realized the tourney had concluded with no serious injuries.

The joust came next. Longueville rode out, matched against the king. He held his lance strongly braced in his right hand and charged without faltering. The horses raced toward each other, and within seconds both lances shattered with a crash like a thunderclap. I was certain I saw Longueville’s armor bend from the impact, but he rode off as if nothing had happened.

Brandon took on Guy Dunois with a result nearly as spectacular. I let out a breath I had not been aware of holding when I realized that Longueville’s half brother was no novice at this sport either. I should not have been surprised that Guy was competent. He was efficient, clever, and skilled at whatever he undertook to do. For just a moment, the memory of his kiss came to mind.

I quickly banished it by shifting my attention to Charles Brandon. There was something in Brandon’s manner that I did not like. Lord Edward had been one of his particular friends in the old days, and Brandon was just arrogant enough to think he could use this
tournament as an excuse to seek revenge. Would he? And would it be ruled an accident if he killed his opponent?

The challengers and the answerers were evenly matched. The king had taken care to assign knights of equal ability to each team. He had always preferred a fair fight in which to test his own mettle. Indeed, few things irritated him more than facing an unworthy opponent in the lists. I tried to take comfort from that knowledge, telling myself that I had no cause for alarm, but I could not quite quell my fears.

Lance after lance broke to loud applause and cheers. Once again dust filled the air, making it almost impossible to see the barriers. A part of me was grateful to be spared that sight. By then the wood was liberally caked with spatters of spilled blood.

“I thought there would be more falls.” Bessie had been quiet for so long that I had almost forgotten she was there.

“Gentlemen warriors are trained from childhood to keep their seat. At Eltham, even as a young boy, King Henry was wont to practice leaping onto his horse from either side or the back while the horse was running. He could grab the mane of a galloping horse and jump into the saddle while wearing helmet, breastplate, and cuisses.”

Only after close to a hundred lances had been broken did I begin to relax. The tournament was almost over. No one had been killed.

Then a soft, spring breeze carried Meg Guildford’s venom-laced words to my ears: “Harry told me there were plans for a fight to the death. Only a direct order from the king put a stop to them.”

“There is still the mêlée,” her sister said in a cheerful voice. “Anything can happen then.”

Seeing me cringe, Bessie leaned close to whisper, “What is a mêlée?”

“It is the general battle on horseback at the end of a tournament. Rival parties of knights fight using either long spears or blunted swords.”

“Is it more dangerous than what has gone before?”

“It can be.”

I remembered one time in the last reign when the mêlée had turned into a near riot. It had been necessary to call in the king’s guard to quell it. I prayed matters would not go that far today.