Across the square, two dozen boys took turns playing at sword and buckler. The game was a complex one with many unwritten rules. Boys and men used sharp swords – so the only target permitted was the buckler. Some games allowed the defender to move the buckler, and some specified that the buckler had to be hit a certain kind of blow, and some boys had elaborate sword and buckler chants, with each boy going through a particular rhythm of blows and blocks to a rhyme or a poem.
Edmund fancied himself a fair blade. He practised at the pell in his master’s yard; he had a chance to watch real knights and men-at-arms test new weapons. Master Pye sometimes even took lucky apprentices and journeymen with him to the palace to watch the Royal Guard practise, or to see knights prepare for the tournament.
He paired up with Tom, who, despite being three years his junior, was already fully his height and weight. They started slowly, and Edmund requested a halt to take off his cote and retie his hose. Tom shook his head. ‘Why wear a cote and tight hose to the square?’ he asked. ‘It’s like you was dressed for church!’
Other, older boys rolled their eyes. Most boys over fifteen dressed up to go to the square.
Edmund smiled to himself and folded his jacket.
He and Tom had a fine bout – long enough to work up a good sweat, skilful enough that the other young men pressed around, watching them. Edmund was the better blade, but Tom was so fast that the exchanges were never one-sided.
Eventually, though, as the younger boy’s wrist started to tire, Edmund began to strike his buckler faster and harder. And then Tom stepped back and raised a hand – at first Edmund thought it was surrender, but then he saw what Tom had seen – the other young men were watching something else.
The four new boys stuck out from the moment they entered the square. They wore bright clothing, where most apprentices wore drab or black. The leader – and there was no mistaking that he was the leader – wore hose that were striped in three colours, in the Gallish fashion, aping the look of the new foreign knights and making him look like a fool to Edmund. But he noted that all the girls turned to look at this display.
The new boys talked loudly, too, and swaggered. The thinnest of them – a boy so thin he was on the edge of invisibility – managed to take up so much space that he bumped into one of the boys watching the sword and buckler play.
The local boy stepped back and mumbled, ‘Beg your pardon’ automatically.
The colourful boy shoved him. ‘Hey, fuckwit, watch where yer going!’ he said, and his mates laughed.
The boy who’d been shoved looked resentful, but didn’t take the matter up.
The thin boy whooped. ‘Look at the pretty sluts,’ he said.
Tom sighed. ‘They want trouble.’
Edmund had just heard his sister called slut. He was doubly maddened to see several of the girls giggle and look at the brightly clad bastards. But his sister met his eye firmly.
He was a journeyman. It wasn’t his place to get in brawls.
But his three apprentices were watching him. Sam smiled, Tom frowned, and Duke was picking up his buckler.
The leader had the short hair the Galles wore, and his, like Duke’s, was white-blond. He had sharp features and a long dagger on his crotch, with a sword on his left hip. He rubbed the hilt of his ballock dagger. ‘Which of you bitches wants it?’ he asked. He laughed. ‘You, sweet?’ he said, stepping close to Mary.
Their behaviour was absurd. But Edmund had heard about them – gangs that acted like Galles, and kept to what they called the ‘Rule of War’. Some of them really were the squires and pages of de Vrailly’s men, and some just dressed to be like them.
The thin boy cackled. ‘They all want it,’ he shouted. ‘There’s not a man with balls here!’
Edmund stepped out of the crowd of apprentices. ‘Get lost,’ he said. It wasn’t said as mildly, as drily, or as loudly as he’d intended, and worst of all, his voice rose as he spoke. His hands were shaking.
The colourfully dressed boys were scary.
‘What was that, little fuckwit?’ asked the leader, whom Edmund had christened Blondie. ‘Go hide in your bed; the hard boys are here.’ He put his hand on his dagger. ‘Want some of this?’
For days afterwards, Edmund would think of witty replies. But at the time, he just shrugged.
‘What’s that?’ said the boy, and drew both weapons.
Edmund was Harndon born and bred. He knew that lower-class boys were tough as nails and fought differently from apprentices. On the other hand, he’d used weapons since he was a boy, and he was a Harndonner – he didn’t make way on the street for anyone.
He plucked his buckler onto his fist. ‘He drew first,’ he said cautiously, to the crowd of apprentice boys.
Blondie made a sly cut – a long, leaping cut from outside engagement range. It was a fight ender. And a move that would probably lead to a murder trial.
Edmund got it on his buckler and almost lost the fight immediately, as the other boy tried to power over the rim of his little shield and into his shoulder with his hilt. He had a feeling of unreality. The fool was really trying to kill him.
Then the reality of it hit him.
He got his sword out of his scabbard in time to stop two strong cuts to his open side, and blind luck and long training left his buckler in the way of the dagger strike – which nonetheless licked past his buckler and pricked his arm.
He backed away.
‘I’m going to fuck you up,’ Blondie said, just as one of his mates slammed his fist into Edmund from behind.
Everything happened at once.
The punch shocked Edmund – but it fell on bone, and it turned him and made him stumble to the left. Blondie attacked, stamping his foot and cutting heavily at Edmund’s unshielded side – even reeling in pain, Edmund had the boy summed up. He only had three cuts.
Unfortunately, his stumble didn’t save him and he fell.
But he rolled, cut low, and connected.
It was the first time Edmund had ever used a blade with intent – and even hurt and desperate, he had a heartbeat’s hesitation in putting his full force into the blow. But it landed hard enough, and Blondie gasped.
Edmund got to his feet to find that a dozen apprentices were burying the thin boy in fists.
Blondie’s hose were ruined, and blood was spreading over his shin.
He backed away. ‘I’ll be back with twenty bravos,’ he said. ‘My name is Jack Drake, and this square is mine. And everything in it.’
Edmund would, under other circumstances, have let him go except for the last comment. He followed the retreating boy.
‘Coward,’ he said. It was the first thing in the fight that went the way he wanted.
Blondie paused, and then laughed. ‘I’ll be back, and then you’re dead,’ he said, and his boys came and helped him walk. But as soon as they were clear of the ring of bystanders, the man called Jack turned and came after Edmund.
He cut at Edmund’s head again – outside line, high to low.
This time, no one hit Edmund in the head and his sword licked out, picked up the cut and forced it down even faster across his opponent’s body and onto Edmund’s buckler as he stepped forward. He bound the man’s arms under his buckler, and slammed his pommel into the man’s mouth, making teeth fly.
The same motion threw the man to the ground. Edmund kicked him. The man threw up.
‘Kill him!’ shouted several apprentices.
The thin boy had been beaten bloody. The other two were across the square.
Edmund had every eye on him. Anne looked—
‘Yield,’ he said, putting his sword at the man’s throat.
‘You better fucking kill me, fuckwit,’ Drake said. He spat another tooth.
Edmund shrugged. ‘You are wode,’ he said. ‘Insane!’
The other man’s eyes bored into him. ‘This square is mine.’
Edmund didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t just kill the bleeding man in cold blood. And his
insistence was as frightening as his original challenge.
‘That’s why I’ll beat you, fuckwit,’ Drake said. ‘You haven’t got the balls—’
A board hit Drake in the head, and his body sagged. Tom leaned on the board – a door lintel from a building site. ‘My da says you have to kill ’em like lice,’ he said.
‘What about the law?’ asked Edmund. He couldn’t tell whether the man was alive or dead.
‘I don’t see the sheriff,’ said Tom. ‘Good fight, by the way. Nice move.’ He laughed. He sounded a little wild, but his hands were steady. ‘Let’s take him somewhere – the monastery. Monks always know what to do.’ He shrugged. ‘He’s not dead. You gonna let him live?’
Edmund found his hands were shaking hard. ‘Yes,’ he said. And knew he’d regret the weakness. But he also knew he couldn’t kill Jack Drake in cold blood. Not and be the same man afterwards.
Albinkirk – Ser John Crayford
Ser John looked at himself in the polished bronze mirror recently mounted on the armoury wall, and laughed aloud.
His new squire, young Jamie, paused. ‘Ser John?’
‘Jamie, there’s nothing sillier than an old man aping a younger one,’ he said.
Jamie Vorwarts was a Hoek merchant’s son. His whole family had died in the siege and the boy had nowhere to go. He knew more of arms than business, and he could polish steel better than any squire Ser John had ever had. He was perhaps fourteen. He was tall, a little too thin from hard rations, and his face was a little too pinched to be considered handsome.
He went back to polishing his master’s new six-piece breastplate. It was an expensive miracle of steel and brass, with verses from the Bible inscribed around the edge.
‘You could at least tell me I’m not old,’ Ser John said.
He was standing in front of the first mirror he’d owned in twenty years, wearing a fine green doublet, three layers of heavy linen covered in silk, and laced to the doublet were a pair of hose in green and red – themselves embroidered in flowers and fall leaves. The hose were slightly padded and quilted to wear under armour, and so was the doublet, but for Albinkirk they were as good as court clothes and they made him look slim and dangerous.
And old.
‘Mutton dressed as lamb,’ he said with a curse.
Jamie looked at him and allowed himself a smile. ‘That’s damn good, my lord.’
‘I didn’t concoct that little saying myself, you young scapegrace. When I was about forty years younger, that’s what we called prostitutes who were too old to roll over.’ The old man frowned.
‘Older women are very attractive,’ Jamie said carefully.
‘I know somewhere you will be very popular indeed,’ said Ser John.
An hour later, the two of them arrived at Middlehill Manor with a pair of donkeys laden with hampers. Ser John sat on his horse in the yard, noting that the new sheep had trimmed the yard grass, and he didn’t see so much as a wayward scrap of cloth on the ground – the grass was yellower than formerly, but the house was clean and neat, the door was replaced on its pintles – he’d helped with that himself – and out in the fields, six women took turns holding a plough for winter wheat. Their furrows were none too straight but then ploughing was hard work even for a fit man.
‘Jamie?’ he asked. ‘See those fine ladies struggling with a plough?’
Jamie leaped down and then paused. ‘Is it a chivalrous thing to plough?’
Ser John frowned. He felt like a magnificent hypocrite whenever he spoke on chivalry, as he’d spent most of his life killing men for money while wearing armour. But he shrugged. ‘Jamie, to the best of my understanding, anything you do to help a woman who needs help is chivalry. In this case, that’s ploughing.’
Jamie stripped his cote and his doublet in the warm sun, and Ser John smiled, thinking that he would endear himself very deeply to the six women who now paused, favouring their backs and fully aware that they were about to be saved from more ploughing.
Helewise came into the yard and smiled. ‘I ploughed yesterday,’ she said. ‘My pater taught me a woman can do aught a man can do. But by the wounds of Christ, he was a gentleman and never had to plough a furrow in his life.’ She caught herself tossing her hair, which just happened to be down. And clean.
‘I could rub your back,’ Ser John said. ‘It works when I’ve exercised too long with the sword.’
She smiled happily at him. ‘I might hold you to that, ser knight. But not, I think, until all are abed.’ She was already moving towards the door, and although she spoke naturally, she kept her voice low. ‘And perhaps not tonight.’
He stabled his own horse and saw that the nun’s palfrey had been there – her elegant shoes had left prints in the straw, and there were fresh droppings in the next stall.
He went into the house, and Helewise indicated a settle in the kitchen and went back to wrapping twine around herbs. ‘I saved most of my herb garden,’ she said. ‘I suppose they’re really wild plants, and the Wild didn’t mind them too much.’
He joined her, cutting lengths of hemp twine and giving each bundle of rosemary a single twist. A very young boy – just seven or eight – took them one at a time, climbed a ladder, and hung them from the rafters.
‘What brings you here this time?’ Helewise asked, eyes twinkling.
‘I’ve sent to the King for a new garrison,’ Ser John said. ‘Until then, Jamie and I are knights bent on errantry. You may see us more frequently than you like.’
‘I doubt it,’ she said, and just for a moment their hands touched.
‘Sister Amicia was here,’ she went on. ‘She’ll be back tonight, more’s the pity.’
‘You mislike her?’ asked Ser John.
‘Never say it. By the rood, John, I love her for her confidence. She makes women proud to be women and my daughter fair dotes on her. I won’t say my daughter’s bad, John, but she was in Lorica where it is all the fashion for young gentlewomen to play the wanton—’
John smiled.
‘Don’t smirk at me, sir! I’m too old to kindle and too practical to come to harm.’ She blushed.
‘For myself, madam, I find you very beautiful.’ He reached out, greatly daring, and pushed a lock of her hair from her forehead. He smiled into her eyes. ‘But it is all the Queen. She is a force of nature, and she has them all playing at it.’
‘I won’t hear a word agin’ her.’ Helewise sat back.
‘I speak none. But what is right for the Queen might not sit so well with a mother,’ Ser John said.
‘Where was all this wisdom twenty years ago, messire?’ she asked.
He laughed. ‘I hadn’t a grain of it, sweeting.’
She shook her head. ‘I miss Rupert. Seems an odd thing to say to you, but he was solid. And he was better with Pippa than I am.’
John shook his head, leaned into the chimney corner and stuck his booted feet out towards the fire. ‘I was never jealous of him. I’d never make a husband.’ He looked at her. ‘He’d never ha’ made a knight.’
‘True that,’ she said. ‘I crave your hands on my body,’ she said suddenly.
‘Now who’s wanton?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘Any gate, you best not come to me tonight while the nun is here.’
He smiled and rose. ‘In that case, I’ll not quibble to hold the plough and work up a good sweat.’
‘Though you look very fine,’ she replied.
As swift as a sword strike, he bent over and planted his mouth on hers.
Three long breaths later, she broke away. ‘Fie!’ she said. Delight rather ruined her attempt to be severe. ‘Broad daylight!’
Later the nun came into the yard, and Ser John, now stripped to his hose, took her palfrey, and then used a fork to muck the straw and put in new. She brought feed.
‘I have your package,’ he said. ‘Right here in my saddle pack.’
She smiled. ‘You needn’t have. We’re not much for things of this world.’ She smiled mo
re broadly. And then frowned. ‘I haven’t seen a Wild creature, but down towards the old ferry I saw a swathe of destruction as if a herd of oeliphants had made a dance floor. Trees are down. And there’s a house I think I remember intact, now roofless.’
‘By the ferry?’ Ser John asked. He was rooting in his pack and it began to occur to him that he’d left her package on his work table in Albinkirk. ‘How often do you get to the ferry?’
‘Every week,’ she said. ‘I have a special dispensation to say mass at the ruined chapel there. It’s the only kirk for seven mile.’
Ser John had a sudden notion. ‘Wait,’ he said. He reached in his belt-purse, and there it was – a package the size of a big walnut. ‘Not in my saddle bag at all, I fear,’ he said ruefully.
She took the package and looked at it. He thought she looked disappointed. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘May I borrow your eating knife?’
He drew it from the sheath of his roundel and handed it to her, and she slit the waxed linen of her package. It proved to actually be a walnut. She cracked it open it and gasped.
He paused and then said, ‘Are you all right?’
Her face worked, and she was weeping silently. Then she gathered her wits. ‘Bastard!’ she spat, and hurled the walnut shell across the stable to clatter against a distant stone wall, lost in the darkness.
Ser John, provided with yet another test of chivalry, elected to slip quietly out the main stable door. Some things are too perilous for mere men, and the air around her had begun to glow a golden green, casting light in the dark stable, and he didn’t think he was up to whatever she might be about to face.
But in a few heartbeats the light died away, and he heard a fragile laugh. She stepped into the dying light of the day from the darkness of the stable, and something glittered on her hand.
‘He sent me a profession ring,’ she said. She held out her hand, the way a woman might show a betrothal ring. The ring bore the letters ‘IHS’ in beautiful Gothic script.
‘Who did?’ asked Ser John, feeling like a man caught in someone else’s story.
She frowned. ‘I think you know,’ she said.
Ser John bowed. ‘Then I think he’s a bastard, too.’