The Red Knight (19 page)

He kicked Gawin in the groin when he turned to look at Toma, whose head was cut nearly in half by the blade. Gawin fell, retching with the pain, and the big knight showed no mercy; knelt on his
back, and pushed his nose into the mud in the courtyard. He stripped the sword from Gawin’s hand.

‘Yield,’ he said.

Northerners were reputedly stubborn and vengeful. Gawin, in that moment, swore to kill this man, whomever he might be, if it cost him his life and his honour to do it.

‘Fuck yourself,’ he said through the mud and blood in his mouth.

The man laughed. ‘By the law of arms, you are my prisoner, and I will take you to your king to show him how very much he needs me.’

‘Coward!’ Gawin roared. Even as part of his mind suggested that slumping in pretended swoon might be the wiser course.

A gauntleted hand rolled him over and pulled him up. ‘Get your things out of my room,’ he said. ‘I will pretend I did
not
hear you say such a thing to me.’

Gawin spat blood. ‘If you think you can take me to the king and
not
be bound for murder—’

The blond man sniffed. ‘You killed your own squire,’ he said. He allowed himself just the slightest smile at the words and, for the first time, Gawin was afraid of him. ‘And
calling a man who has bested you in a test of arms “coward” is poor manners.’

Gawin wanted to speak like a hero, but rage, sorrow, fear, and pain spat his words out ‘You killed Toma! You are no knight! Attacking an unarmoured man? With a war sword? In an
inn
?’

The other man frowned. He leaned close.

‘I should strip you and have you raped by the grooms. How dare you call me – me! – an unfit knight? Little man, I am Jean de Vrailly, I am the greatest knight in the world, and
the only law I recognise is the law of Chivalry. Yield to me, or I will slay you where you stand.’

Gawin looked into that beautiful face – unmarred by anger, rage, or any other emotion – and he wanted to spit in it. His father would have.

I want to live.

‘I yield,’ he said, and hated himself.

‘All these Alban knights are worthless,’ de Vrailly laughed. ‘We will rule here.’

And then they all dismounted, leaving Gawin alone in the courtyard with the body of his squire. The boy was quite dead.

I killed him
, Gawin thought.
Sweet Christ.

But it wasn’t over yet, because Adam was a brave man, and he died one in the doorway of their corner room.

One of the foreigners threw all his kit through the window after he heard his squire die. They laughed.

Gawin knelt on the stones by Toma and, after an hour, when the bells rang for evensong, the innkeeper came to him.

‘I’ve sent for the sheriff and the lord,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry, m’lord.’

Gawin couldn’t think of anything to say.

I killed my brother.

I killed Toma.

I have been defeated and yielded.

I should have died.

Why had he yielded? Death would have been better than this. Even the innkeeper
pitied
him.

Lorica – de Vrailly

Gaston was wiping the blood from his blade, fastidiously examining the last four inches where he’d hacked repeatedly into the young squire’s guard, battering his
defences until he was overwhelmed and then dead. His blade had taken some damage in the process and would need a good cutler to restore the edge.

De Vrailly drank wine from a silver cup while his squires removed his armour.

‘He cut you, the man in the courtyard,’ Gaston said, looking up from his task. ‘Don’t try to hide it. He cut you.’

De Vrailly shrugged. ‘He was swinging wildly. It is nothing.’

‘He got through your guard.’ Gaston sniffed. ‘They aren’t really so bad, these Albans. Perhaps we will have some real fights.’ He looked at his cousin. ‘He
hit you hard,’ he pointed out, because de Vrailly was rubbing his wrist for the third time in as many minutes.

‘Bah! They have little skill at arms.’ De Vrailly drank more wine. ‘All they do is make war on the Wild. They have forgotten how to fight other men.’ He shrugged.
‘I will change that, and make them better at defeating the Wild as I do. I will make them harder, better men.’ He nodded to himself.

‘Your angel has said this?’ Gaston asked, with obvious interest. His cousin’s encounter with an angel had benefited the whole family, but it was still a matter that puzzled
him.

‘My angel has commanded it. I am but heaven’s tool, cousin.’ De Vrailly said it without the least irony.

Gaston took a deep breath, looking for his great cousin to show a little humour, and found none. ‘You called yourself the best knight in the world,’ he said, trying to raise a
smile.

De Vrailly shrugged as Johan, his older squire, unlaced his left rerebrace and began to remove the arm harness over the wound on his wrist. ‘I am the greatest knight in the world,’
he said. ‘My angel chose me
because
I am the first lance in the East. I have won six battles; I have fought in twelve passages of arms and never been wounded; I have killed men in
every list in which I’ve fought; in the melee at Tours—’

Gaston rolled his eyes. ‘Very well, you are the best knight in the world. Now tell me why we’ve come to Alba, besides bullying the locals.’

‘Their king will proclaim a tournament,’ de Vrailly said. ‘I will win it, and emerge as the King’s Champion.’ He nodded, ‘and then I will be the king, to all
intents and purposes.’

‘The angel has said this?’ Gaston asked.

‘You question my angel, cousin?’ De Vrailly frowned.

Gaston rose and sheathed his sword. ‘No, I merely choose not to believe everything I’m told – by you or any other man.’

De Vrailly’s beautiful eyes narrowed. ‘Are you calling me a liar?’

Gaston smiled a crooked smile. ‘If we continue like this we will fight. And while you may be the best knight in the world, I believe I have bloodied your knuckles more than once –
eh?’

Their eyes crossed, and Gaston saw the glitter in de Vrailly’s. Gaston held his gaze. Few men could do it. Gaston had the benefit of a lifetime of practice.

De Vrailly shrugged. ‘You couldn’t have asked this before we left home?’ he asked.

Gaston wrinkled his nose. ‘When you say fight, I fight. Yes? You say: gather your knights, we go to conquer Alba. I say: lovely, we shall all be rich and powerful. Yes?’

‘Yes!’ de Vrailly said, through his smile.

‘But when you tell me that an Angel of God is giving you very specific military and political advice—’ Gaston shrugged.

‘We are to meet the Earl of Towbray in the morning. He will engage us in his mesne. He desires what my angel desires.’ For the first time, de Vrailly seemed to hesitate.

He pounced. ‘Cousin –
what does your angel desire?
’

De Vrailly drank more wine, put the cup down on the sideboard, and shrugged out of his right arm harness as his younger squire opened the vambrace. ‘Who can know what an angel
desires?’ he said quietly. ‘But the Wild here must be
destroyed.
That’s what the king’s father intended. You know they burned swathes of the wood between the towns to
do it? They waited for windy days and set fires. The old king’s knights fought four great battles against the Wild – and what I would give to have been part of that. The creatures of
the Wild came forth to do battle – great armies of them!’ His eyes shone.

Gaston raised an eyebrow.

‘The old king was victorious in the main, but eventually, he sent to the East for more knights. His losses were fearsome.’ De Vrailly looked as if he could see it happening.
‘His son – now the king – has fought well to hold what his father gained, but he takes no new land from the Wild. My angel will change that. We will throw the Wild back beyond the
wall. I have seen it.’

Gaston released a long-held breath. ‘Cousin, just how fearsome were these losses?’

‘Oh, heavy, I suppose. At the Battle of Chevin, King Hawthor is said to have lost fifty thousand men.’ De Vrailly shrugged.

Gaston shook his head. ‘Numbers that large make my head ache. That’s the population of a large city. Have they replaced their losses?’

‘By the good Saviour, no! If they had, do you think we could challenge for the rulership of this land with three hundred lances?’

Gaston spat. ‘Good Christ—’

‘Do not blaspheme!’

‘Your angel wants us to take this realm with three hundred lances so that he can launch a war against the Wild?’ Gaston stepped close to his cousin. ‘Should I slap you to wake
you up?’

De Vrailly rose to his feet. With a gesture, he dismissed his squires. ‘It is not seemly that you question me on these matters, cousin. It is enough that you summoned your knights and now
you follow me. Obey me. That is all you need to know.’

Gaston made a face like a man who has discovered a bad smell. ‘I have always followed you,’ he said.

De Vrailly nodded his head.

‘I have also saved you from a number of mistakes,’ Gaston added.

‘Gaston,’ de Vrailly’s voice suddenly softened. ‘Let us not disagree. I am advised by heaven. Do not be jealous!’

‘Then I should like to meet your angel,’ Gaston said.

De Vrailly narrowed his eyes. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘perhaps my angel is only for me. After all – I alone am the greatest knight.’

Gaston sighed and moved to the window where he looked down at the lone figure kneeling on the smooth stones of the courtyard. The bodies had been taken, laid out and wrapped in linen ready for
burial, but still the Alban knight knelt in the courtyard.

‘What do you plan to do with that man?’ Gaston asked.

‘Take him to court to prove my prowess. Then I’ll ransom him.’

Gaston nodded. ‘We should offer him a cup of wine.’

De Vrailly shook his head. ‘He does penance for his weakness – for the sin of pride, in daring to face me, and for his failure as a man-at-arms. He should kneel there in shame for
the rest of his life.’

Gaston looked at his cousin, his face half turned away. He fingered his short beard. Whatever he might have said was interrupted by a knock on the door. Johan put his head in.

‘An officer of the town,
monsieur.
To see you.’

‘Send him away.’

After a pause in which Gaston poured himself wine, Johan reappeared. ‘He says he must insist. He is
not
a knight. Merely a well-born man. He is not in armour. He says he is the
sheriff.’

‘So? Send him away.’

Gaston put a hand on his cousin’s shoulder. ‘Their sheriff’s are king’s officers, are they not? Ask him what he wants.’

Johan could be heard speaking, and then shouting, and then the door slammed open. Gaston drew his sword, as did de Vrailly. Their gentlemen poured in from adjoining rooms, some still fully
armed.

‘You are Jean de Vrailly?’ asked the newcomer, who didn’t seem to care that he was surrounded by armed foreigners who topped him by a head or more. He was in doublet and hose,
with high boots and a long sword belted at his waist. He was fiftyish and running to fat, and only the fur on his hood, his bearing and the sword at his hip suggested he was a man of any
consequence. But he glowered.

‘I am,’ de Vrailly answered.

‘I arrest you in the name of the king for the murder of—’

The sheriff was knocked unconscious with a single blow from Raymond St David, who let the body fall to the floor. ‘Bah,’ he said.

‘They are soft,’ de Vrailly said. ‘Did he bring men-at-arms?’

‘Not one,’ Raymond said. He grinned. ‘He came alone!’

‘What kind of a country is this?’ Gaston asked. ‘Are they all insane?’

In the morning, Gaston’s retainers collected the dull-eyed Alban knight from the courtyard and packed him onto a cart with his armour; his horses were tethered behind. He
tried to engage the Alban in conversation and was repelled by the man’s look of hatred.

‘Destriers,’ his cousin commanded. There was a lot of grumbling at the order – no knight liked to ride his war horse when the occasion didn’t demand it. A good war horse,
fully trained, was worth the value of several suits of armour – and a single pulled muscle, a strain, a cut, or a bad shoe was an expensive injury.

‘We must impress the earl.’

De Vrailly’s household knights formed up in the inn’s great courtyard while the lesser men-at-arms prepared in the field outside the town. They had almost a thousand spears, as well
as three hundred lances. Gaston had already been out the gate, seen to the lesser men, and was back.

The innkeeper – a surly, sharp faced fellow – came out and spoke to the Alban knight on the cart.

De Vrailly grinned at him, and Gaston knew there would be trouble.

‘You!’ de Vrailly shouted. His clear voice rang across the courtyard. ‘I take issue with your measure of hospitality, Ser Innkeeper! Your service was poor, the wine bad, and
you attempted to interfere in a gentleman’s private matter. What have you to say for yourself?’

The rat-faced innkeeper put his hands on his hips. Gaston shook his head. He was actually going to
discuss it
with a knight.

‘I—!’ he began, and one of de Vrailly’s squires, already mounted, reached out and kicked him. The kick caught him in the side of the head and he fell without a sound.

The other squires laughed and looked to de Vrailly, who dropped a small purse on the unconscious man. ‘Here’s
money
, innkeeper.’ He laughed. ‘We will teach these
people to behave like civilized people and not animals. Burn the inn!’

Before the last wagon of their small army had pulled out onto the road, a column of smoke was rising over the town of Lorica, and high into the sky.

An hour later, Gaston was at his cousin’s side when they met the Earl of Towbray and his retinue where the Lorica road crossed the North road. The man had fifty lances – a large
force for Alba. The earl was fully armoured and wore his helmet. He sent a herald who invited
The Captal de Vrailly and all those who attend him
to ride forward and meet the earl under the
shade of a large oak that grew alone at the crossroads.