The Ill-Made Knight (4 page)

A boy can grow used to anything, eh? I served in the house; I ran errands for the shop; I did apprentice work like polishing silver and pewter and cleaning the files and saws; I went to Mass and to matins; I learned my letters and I cooked. And on Sundays, after church . . .

If you three were Londoners, you’d know what we do on Sunday after church.

The girls dance in the squares.

And the lads take a sword and a buckler and fight.

By the gentle Christ, I loved to fight. I never minded the split knuckles, the broken fingers, the gash in the head. Daily beatings from my uncle made me hard. I had to borrow a sword – it was years before I had one of my own – but there was this fellow who was like a god to us youngers; he was an apprentice goldsmith to the big shop that served the court, and he had woollen clothes and a fine sword and he was such a pleasant fellow that he let little things like me use it. Thomas Courtney, he was. Long dead. I’ll wager he is
not
burning in hell.

Thomas Courtney was my hero from very young. And
par dieu
, messieurs, he would have been a good knight. He was ill-sorted for the life of a draper, and he was an example of everything that I could be.

I’d like to say I grew better, but I was too young to wield a man’s sword properly – it was all I could do to block a blow – but I learned how to move, and how to avoid one. One of the monks was a good blade, and he taught me, too. He was a lusty bastard, a terror with the virgins as well as being quite fast with his fists, and he taught me some of that, too. Brother John. A bad monk, but not such a bad man. Nor a good one, as you’ll hear.

And there was wrestling. Everyone in London – every man and boy and no few women – can wrestle. Out in the fields, we’d gather in packs, peel off our hose and have at it.

I loved to fight, and there were many teachers. It was just as well. I grew fast, and I had red hair.

When I was eleven, I came in from an errand and couldn’t find my sister. She should have been helping the cook, who was my friend in the house. Cook hadn’t seen her. I went up to the rooftrees and I found her, with my uncle trying to get between her legs.

He’d tried his member on me several times, and I’d learned to knee him in the groin. So I wasn’t as shocked as I might have been.

I hit him.

He beat the living hell out of me, his parts hanging out of his braes. He chased me around the attic, pounding me with his fists.

But he didn’t finish what he was about.

After that, I never left my sister alone in the house. I went to my aunt and told her, and she turned her head away and said nothing.

So I went to the monks. An eleven-year-old boy needs an ally.

Brother John took me to the Abbott, and the Abbott went to the guild of goldsmiths, and that was the end of it.

A week later, my uncle came home late, with his face puffy and his lip and eyebrows cut from punches. Footpads had set on him, taken his purse and pounded him.

Next day, Brother John had two sets of split knuckles, and so did Brother Bartholomew. Perhaps they’d had a dust up.

For a year, things were better. But better is an odd word to a boy who has to fear everything and everyone, and who has to fight every day. I’m not making excuses for what came later. Just saying.

I’m coming to Poitiers in my own time. Listen, messieurs. When you face the arrow storm, when you face a big man in the lists or on the battlefield, when you stand knee deep in mud and your sword is broken and you cannot catch your breath and you have two bloody wounds – then you need to have something. Some men get it from their fathers. Some get it from God.

So just listen.

I always wanted to be a knight. In my boy’s head, my pater had been a knight – not strictly true, but a boy’s dreams are golden and that’s how it was. And yet, such is youth, when the Guildhall sent for me and I was entered as an apprentice – at the insistence of the Abbott, I think – I was puffed like an adder, over the moon with delight. I intended to be the best goldsmith since the Romans, and I worked like a slave. I went to another shop. My sister was working every day for the sisters of St John, serving the poor and thus safe from my uncle, so I could go and work the whole day with a free heart.

As apprentices, we had thirty-five feast days a year. My master was John de Villers, and he beat me when I broke things. I never heard a word of praise from him, and I got a ration of curses, but that was only his way. He wasn’t a money-grubbing louse. He was a fine craftsman, and he didn’t make the cheap crap you see in the streets. He made nothing but scabbard fittings for the nobility, and he made things that caused me, as a boy, to gawk. Enamel blue, whorls of gold like the tracery on a cathedral – by St John, friends, he had the true gift of making, and all his bad temper didn’t stop him from teaching us. In fact, he liked his apprentices better than some apparently kinder men – most of his boys made their grade and got their mark.

I worked in copper and learned my way. I did a lot more low work – I remember that I spent a week cleaning his stable shed, which can’t have taught me a thing about metal work – but he took the time to show me some things, and I loved the work, and I could tell that he could feel my enthusiasm.

I made a set of clasps and hinges for a Bible for the monks, and Master de Villers said they were good enough. That was a great day for me. As far as I know, the monks still use that Bible – I saw it on the lectern in King Richard’s day.

Oh, aye, messieurs, I’m older than dirt. I can remember Caesar. You asked for this story – fill my cup or go to your bed.

That’s better.

I was getting bigger. I had a little money. I finally bought a tuck – a sword. It probably wasn’t so much, but
par dieu
, gentlemen, it was the world to me, and I wore it out on Sundays’ under my buckler – a fine buckler with copper and bronze studs and a fine iron rim, all my work or my friends’ work. And when I swaggered swords with another boy, girls watched me.

Well. When they danced, I watched them.

And glances became looks, and looks became visits, and visits became hands brushing, and perhaps clasping, and then there was kissing . . .

Heh, I’ll assume you know whereof I speak. So you know what comes next. I’m a sinful man, and lust has always had a place for me. A pretty face, a pair of breasts, a fine leg shown when tying a garter, and by our saviour, I’m off like a greyhound. I started young, and I’m not sure that I’m finished. But a chivalrous man is a lover of women – Lancelot was a lover of women, and Sir Tristan, and all the great knights. The priests clip us too close. There’s very little harm in a little love, eh?

Any gate, by the time I was fourteen I was ready to be wed, and my chosen mate was Nan Steadman, whose da’ was an alderman. He thought me beneath her, but she had him wrapped around her fingers. She wed another, and I have a different life, but we still share a cup when I’m in London, Nan and I. Fifty years and more.

Bah, I’m old. What I’m trying to say is that I had a life, a fine life. Hard, but I was making it, and with gentle manners and a good craft skill, there were no limits to what I might be. A fine life. I haven’t really said what an advantage my mother’s work on my manners were. But I spoke like a gentleman, English or French, and I could bow, carve, pour wine, read or speak a prayer. These may not seem like great achievements, but by our lady, without them you are doomed to be a certain kind of man. I had them, and as the alderman said, if I wasn’t hanged, I’d be Lord Mayor.

I had everything required to succeed, in London.

And in two afternoons, I fucked it away.

I was learning to ride and joust and use the bow. Nay, don’t shake your heads – the Londoners over there nodding know that by law any free man of London, and that includes an apprentice, may bear arms and ride the joust – eh? Just so, messieurs. And such was my passion for it that I took Nan to see some foreign worthies fight at barriers in the meadows – knights and squires. There were Frenchmen and Germans and Englishmen and even a Scot. We fought the French, but we
hated
the Scots. But the Scottish knight was
preux
, and he fought well, and the French knights fought brilliantly – one of them like the god Mars incarnate – and one of the Brabanters was no great swordsman, but he was brave and spirited and I admired him. He was in the Queen’s retinue, I thought – she was a Hainaulter, and she brought more than a few of them with her.

Things were different then, and when he was in his pavilion disarming, I walked in, bowed and paid my compliments on his fighting. He was older than I thought, and he was very pleased to have his fighting complimented by any man; it was nothing to him that I was an apprentice, and we talked for some time and I was served wine like a gentle. I think it went to my head, the wine and the company.

There were other men about, and my Nan, looking a tad embarrassed as women are want to be when out of their element. But Sir Otto, as he was called, was courtly to her, and she blushed.

A young English knight came in. They’d fought three blows of the sword, and they embraced, and I saw that the knight knew me. And I knew him. He was a cousin, on my mother’s side. A De Vere. He winced when I said I was a goldsmith.

We might have had hot words, but then he shrugged. I didn’t want to admire him, but I did; he was everything I wasn’t, and suddenly he, by existing, burned my happiness to the ground.

I didn’t want to be a goldsmith. I wanted to be a knight.

He was Edward. Well, everyone was Edward in those days. He was a little too courtly to Nan, who ate his admiration the way a glutton eats pork. He had fine clothes, beautiful manners and he’d just fought in armour. Every one of you knows that a man never, ever looks better than when he’s just fought in harness. His body is as light as air. Fighting is a proper penance for sin – a man who has endured the harness and the blows is as stainless as a virgin for a little while. Edward had golden hair and a golden belt, and even then and there, I couldn’t resent Nan’s attention.

Besides, after some initial hesitation, he treated me as family, and that only made me seem higher. I was glad. Nan would go home to her father and say we’d been served wine by gentlemen who were my relatives.

The French knights came – they were prisoners of the war in France, waiting in England for ransom. The older knight was courtly to Nan and quite polite to me – no foolish distance. His name was Geoffrey de Charny, and if my cousin Edward looked like a true knight, De Charny looked like a paladin from the chansons. He was as tall as me – and damned few men are – a good six feet in his hose, and maybe a finger more. He had a face carved from marble, and hair the colour of silver-gilt, with blue eyes. He looked like the saint of your choice. He was the best fighter in armour that I ever saw, and he had the most perfect manners, and the reputation of being the fiercest man in the field. In fact, he was considered the greatest knight of his generation – some men say the greatest knight of all time.

You know of him, messieurs, I’m sure. Well, I will have more to say of that noble gentleman.

The other man knight was as young as me, or Nan, but he wore the whole value of my master’s shop on his back. The first
silk
arming jacket I ever saw, with silk cords pointed in figured gold – and this a garment meant to be worn
under
armour and unseen.

Nan was the only woman in the tent, and she received a great deal of attention, and I tried not to be angry or jealous. I was so busy hanging on de Charny’s every word that I scarcely noticed her. But young men are fools, and she blushed and smiled a great deal, and eventually came and stood by me, and Messire de Charny told her that she was very beautiful. She still tells that story, and well she might. He asked her for a lace from her sleeve, and promised to wear it the next time he fought.

I admired him so much that I restrained my jealousy and managed to smile.

We had too much wine, and on the way home we found a lane and we dallied. She had never been so willing – grown men know about women and wine, but young ones don’t know yet. She was liquorice, and I was hot for her. Her mouth tasted of cloves. We played long, but we stayed just inside the bounds, so to speak.

I took her to her door, begged her mother’s forgiveness for the hour and escaped alive. Just.

So when I came home to my uncle’s house, I thought I was safe and whole, relatively sinless.

He was raping my sister. She was crying – whimpering and pleading. I could hear them from the back door, and all the while I climbed the stairs I knew he had her and was using her, and that as a knight, I had failed, because I had not been there to protect her. Climbing those stairs still comes to me in nightmares. Up and up the endless, narrow, rickety stair, my sister begging him to stop, the sound of his fist striking her, the wet sound as he moved inside her.

Eventually I made the top. We lived in the attic, under the eaves, and he had her on my pallet. I went for him. I wasn’t ten years old any more, and he never trained to arms.

I’ll make this brief – you all want to hear about Poitiers.

I beat him badly.

I dragged him off her, and locked one of his arms behind his back, using it to hold him, then I smashed his face with my fists until I broke his nose. As he fell to the floor, arse in the air, I kicked him. I made his member black by kicking him there fifteen or twenty times.

The next day, he stayed abed. I had to mind
his
shop, and I sent a boy round to my true master and said my uncle was sick. It was evil fate riding me hard.

The French knight Geoffrey de Charny – the one who had fought so well the day before – came to the shop. The younger knight was with him. De Charny had a dagger, a fine thing, all steel – steel rondels, steel grip, steel blade – and better than anything I’d seen in London. It was a wicked, deadly thing that shouted murder across the room. He laid it on the counter and asked how much it would cost to put it in a gold-mounted scabbard.