It was a hillman’s axe – but incomparably finer, made by a master and not by a travelling smith at a fair.
Ranald couldn’t help himself, and he whirled it between his hands, the blade cutting the air and the tip not quite brushing the plaster of the low room.
Edward flattened himself against the wall, and the master nodded, satisfied.
‘The one you brought me was a fine enough weapon,’ the master said. ‘Country made, but a well-made piece. But the finish,’ he winced. And shrugged. ‘And I thought that the balance could be improved.’
The spike in the butt of the haft was as long as a knight’s dagger, wickedly sharp and three-sided.
Ranald just smiled in appreciation.
The master added two scabbards – a sheath of wood covered in fine red leather for the axe, and another to match for the spike.
Ranald counted down a hundred silver leopards – a sizeable portion of two years’ pay. He looked admiringly at the helmets on the counter.
‘They’re spoken for,’ the master said, catching his eye. ‘And none of them would fit your noggin, I’m thinking. Come back in winter when my work is slow, and I’ll make you a helmet you could wear to fight a dragon.’
The air seemed to chill.
‘Naming calls,’ Edward said, crossing himself.
‘Don’t know what made me say that,’ said the master. He shook his head. ‘But I’d make you a helmet.’
Ranald carried his new maille out to his pack horse, who was not as fond of it as he was, resenting the weight and the re-packing of the panniers it necessitated. He came back for the axe, and put it lovingly into the straps on his riding horse, close to hand. No one watching doubted that he’d handle it a dozen more times before he was clear of the suburbs. Or that he’d stop and use it on the first bush he found growing by the road.
‘You ride today, then,’ the master said.
Ranald nodded. ‘I’m needed in the north,’ he said. ‘My brother sent for me.’
The weapon smith nodded. ‘Send him my respects, then, and the sele of the day on you.’
The hillman embraced the cutler, stepped through the door, and walked his horses back up the old river bank.
He stopped in the chapel of Saint Thomas, and knelt to pray, his eyes down. Above him, the saint was martyred by soldiers – knights in the Royal Livery. The scene made him uncomfortable.
He bought a pie from a ragged little girl by the Bridge Gate, and then he was away.
Harndon City – Edward
‘There goes a fearsome man,’ said the master to his apprentice. ‘I’ve known a few. And yet as gentle as a lady. A better knight than many who wear spurs.’
Edward was too smitten with hero-worship to comment.
‘And where’s our daring mercer?’ asked the master.
‘Late, your worship,’ said his apprentice.
Tad shook his head. ‘That boy would be late to his own funeral,’ he said, but his voice suggested he had nothing but praise for the mercer. ‘Pack the helmets in straw and take them round to Master Random’s house, will you, Ned?’
No matter how kind your master is, there’s no apprentice who doesn’t relish a trip beyond the Ward. ‘May I have a penny to buy baskets?’
Master Thaddeus put coins in his hand. ‘Wish I’d made him a helmet,’ he said. ‘Where’d the thought of a dragon come from?’
Harndon Palace – the Queen
Desiderata sat primly on an ivory stool in the great hall, its stucco walls lined with the trophies taken by a thousand brave knights – the heads of creatures greater and smaller, and a very young dragon’s head, fully the size of a horse, filling the northern wall beneath the stained glass window like a boat hull protruding from the sea. To her, it never quite looked the same way twice, that dragon – but it was huge.
She sat peeling a winter apple with a silver knife. Her hair was a halo of brown and red and gold around her – a carefully planned effect, as she sat in the pool of light thrown by the king’s beloved rose window. Her ladies sat around her, skirts spread like pressed flowers on the clean checkerboard marble floor, and a dozen of the younger knights – the very ones who should have been tilting in the tilt yard, or crossing swords with the masters – lounged against the walls. One, the eldest of them by half a dozen years and some fighting, was called ‘Hard Hands’ for his well-known feat of killing a creature of the Wild with a single blow of his fist. It was a story he often told.
The Queen disliked men who boasted. She made it her business to know who was worthy and who was not – indeed, she viewed it as her sacred role. She loved to find the shy ones – the brave men who told no one of their deeds. She thought less of the braggarts. Especially when they sat in her hall and flirted with her ladies. She had just determined to punish the man when the king came in.
He was plainly dressed, in arming clothes, he smelled like horses and armour and sweat, and she wrapped herself around him and his smell as if they were newly wed. He smiled down into her face and kissed her nose.
‘I love it when you do that,’ he said.
‘You should practise your tilting more often, then,’ she said, holding his arm. Behind the king, Ser Driant stood rubbing his neck, and behind him, Ser Alan, and the constable, Lord Glendower. She laughed. ‘Did you defeat these poor knights?’
‘Defeat?’ asked Driant. He laughed ruefully. ‘I was crushed like a bug in an avalanche, my lady. His Grace has a new horse that’s bigger than a dragon.’
Ser Alan shrugged. ‘I was unhorsed, yes, lady.’ He looked at Ser Driant and frowned. ‘I think it rude to suggest the king’s horse rolled you on the sand,’ he said.
Driant laughed again. He was not a man who stayed downcast for long. ‘There’s a great deal of me to hit the ground,’ he said, ‘and that ground is still frozen.’ He rubbed his neck again, peering past the Queen to her ladies sitting with their knights. ‘And you lads – where were you when the blows were being dealt and received?’
Hard Hands nodded appreciatively. ‘Right here in the warm hall, basking in the beauty of the Queen and all these fair flowers,’ he said. ‘What man goes voluntarily to fight on frozen ground?’
The king frowned. ‘A man preparing for war?’ he asked quietly.
Hard Hands looked about him for support. He’d mistaken the bantering tone of conversation for permission to banter with the king.
The Queen smiled to see him humbled so swiftly.
‘Out beyond the walls are creatures who would crack your armour to eat what lies within – or to drink your soul,’ said the king, and his voice rang through the hall as he walked beneath the rows of heads. ‘And alone of these fair flowers, Ser knight, you know the truth of what I say. You have faced the Wild.’ The king was not the tallest man in the room or the handsomest. But when he spoke like this, no other man could compare.
Hard Hands looked at the floor and bit his lip in frustration. ‘I sought only to entertain, Sire. I beg your pardon.’
‘Seek my pardon in the Wild,’ the king said. ‘Bring me three heads and I will be content to watch you flirt with the Queen’s ladies. Bring me five heads and you may flirt with the Queen.’
If you dare, she thought.
The king grinned, stopped by the younger man and clapped a hand on his shoulder. Hard Hands stiffened.
He did not want to leave the court. It was plain to see.
The king put his lips close to Hard Hand’s ear, but the Queen heard his words. She always did.
‘Three heads,’ the king whispered through the smile on his lips. ‘Or you will stay in your castle and be branded faithless and craven.’
The Queen watched the effect on her ladies and held her peace. Hard Hands was quite a popular man. Lady Mary, who was known as ‘Hard Heart’ had been heard to say that perhaps his hands were not so very hard, after all. Seated nearest to the Queen, she pursed her lips and set her mouth, determined not to show the Queen her hurt. Behind this vignette, the king waved to his sq
uires and set off up the main stairs to his arming room.
When the king was gone, Desiderata sat back down on her stool and picked up her sewing – an arming shirt for the king. Her ladies gathered round. They felt her desire and closed themselves against the younger knights, who looked to Hard Hands for leadership. Or had. Now they were disconsolate at losing their leader. They left with the sort of loud demonstration that young men make when socially disadvantaged, and the Queen laughed.
Hard Hands stopped in the arch of the main door and looked back. He met her eye, and his anger carried clearly across the sun beams that separated them.
‘I will come back!’ he shouted.
The other young men looked afraid at his outburst, and pushed him out the door.
‘Perhaps,’ purred the Queen. She smiled, much like a cat with a tiny piece of tail sticking out between its teeth.
The ladies knew that smile. They were silent, and the wisest hung their heads in real, or well-feigned, contrition, but she saw through all of them.
‘Mary,’ said the Queen gently. ‘Did you let Hard Hands into your bed?’
Mary, sometimes called Hard Heart, met her eye. ‘Yes, my lady.’
The Queen nodded. ‘Was he worthy?’ she asked. ‘Answer me true.’
Mary bit her lip. ‘Not today, my lady.’
‘Perhaps not ever – eh? Listen, all of you,’ she said, and she bent her head to her ladies. ‘Emmota – you are latest amongst us. By what signs do you know a knight worthy to be your lover?’
Emmota was not yet fully grown to her womanhood – fourteen years old. Her face was narrow without being pinched and a clear intelligence shone in her eyes. She was nothing next to the Queen, and yet, the Queen admitted to herself, the girl had something.
But in this instant, her wits deserted her, and she blushed and said nothing.
The Queen smiled at her, as she was always tender for the lost and the confounded. ‘Listen, my dear,’ she said softly. ‘Love only those worthy of your love. Love those who love themselves, and love all around them. Love the best – the best in arms, the first in the hall, the finest harpist, and the best chess player. Love no man for what he owns, but only for what he does.’
She smiled at all of them. And then pounced. ‘Are you pregnant, Mary?’
Mary shook her head. ‘I did not allow him that liberty, my lady.’
The Queen reached out and took Mary’s hand. ‘Well done. Ladies, remember – we award our love to those who deserve us. And our bodies are an even greater prize than our love – especially to the young.’ She looked at each in turn. ‘Who does not yearn for the strong yet tender embrace? Who does not sigh for skin soft as fine leather over muscles as hard as wood? But get with child—’ she locked eyes with Mary, ‘—and they will call you a whore. And you may die, bearing that bastard. Or worse, perhaps; find yourself living meanly, rearing his bastard child, while he rides to glory.’ She looked at the window. ‘If you are not locked away in a convent.’
Emmota raised her head. ‘But what of love?’ she asked.
‘Make your love a reward, not a raw emotion,’ the Queen said. ‘Any two rutting animals feel the emotion, child. Here, we are only interested in what is best. Rutting is not best. Do you understand?’
The girl swallowed carefully. ‘Yes, I think so,’ she said. ‘But then – why would we ever lie with any man?’
The Queen laughed aloud. ‘Artemis come to earth! Why, because it is for the love of us that they face terror, girl! Do you think it is some light thing to ride out into the Wild? To sleep with the Wild, eat with it, live with it? To face it and fight it and kill it?’ The Queen leaned down until her nose almost touched the sharp point of Emmota’s nose. ‘Do you think they do it for the good of humanity, my dear? Perhaps the older ones – the thoughtful ones. They face the dangers for us all because they have seen the alternative.’ She shook her head. ‘But the young ones face the foe for just one thing – to be deemed worthy of you, my dear. And you control them. When you let a knight into your lap you reward him for his courage. His prowess. His worth. You must judge that it has been earned. Yes? You understand?’
Emmota gazed into the eyes of her Queen with worship. ‘I understand,’ she said.
‘The Old Men – the Archaics of long ago – they asked “Who shall guard the guardians?”’ The Queen looked around. ‘We shall, ladies. We choose the best of them. We may also choose to punish the worst. Hard Hands was not deserving, and the king found him out. We should have known first – should we not? Did none of you suspect he was merely a braggart? Did none of you wonder where his prowess lay, that he made no show or trial of it?’
Mary burst into tears. ‘I protest, madame.’
The Queen gave her a small embrace. ‘I relent. He is a good man-at-arms. Let him go prove it to the king. And prove himself worthy of you.’
Mary curtsied.
The Queen nodded, and rose to her feet. ‘I go to attend the king. Think of this. It is our duty. Love – our love – is no light thing. It is be the crown of glory, available to the best and only the best. It should be hard won. Think on it.’
She listened to them she went up the stairs – broad marble stairs of that the Old Men had wrought. They didn’t giggle, which pleased her.
The king was in the Arming Room, with two squires – Simon and Oggbert, as like as two peas in a pod, with matching freckles and matching pimples. He was down to his shirt and his hose and his braes. His leg harnesses still lay on the floor having been removed, and each squire held a vambrace, wiping them down with chamois.
She smiled radiantly at them. ‘Begone,’ she said.
They fled, as adolescent boys do when faced with beautiful women.
The king sat back on his bench. ‘Ah! I see I have won your esteem!’ he grinned, and for a moment he was twenty years younger.
She knelt and undid a garter. ‘You are the king. You, and you alone, need never win my esteem.’
He watched her unbuckle the other garter. She buckled the two of them together and placed his leg harnesses together on a table behind her, and then, without hurry, she sat in his lap and put her arms around his neck and kissed him until she felt him stir.
And then she rose to her feet and unlaced her gown. She did it methodically, carefully, without taking her eyes off him.
He watched her the way a wolf watches a lamb.
The gown fell away leaving her kirtle – a sheath of tight silk from ankle to neck.
The king rose. ‘Anyone might come in here,’ he said into her hair.
She laughed. ‘What care I?’
‘On your head be it, lady,’ he said, and produced a knife. He pressed the flat of the point against the skin of her neck and kissed her, and then cut the lace of her kirtle from neck to waist, the knife so sharp that the laces seemed to fall away, and his cut so careful that the blade never touched her skin through the linen shift beneath it.
She laughed into his kiss. ‘I love it when you do that,’ she said. ‘You owe me a lace. A silk one.’ Her long fingers took the knife from him. She stepped back and cut the straps of her shift at her shoulders and it fell away and she stabbed the knife into the top of the table so that it stuck.
He rid himself of his shirt and braes with more effort and far less elegance, and she laughed at him. And then they were together.
When they were done, she lay on his chest. Some of his hair was grey. She played with it.
‘I am old,’ he said.
She wriggled atop him. ‘Not so very old,’ she said.
‘I owe you more than a kirtle lace of silk,’ he said.
‘Really?’ she asked, and rose above him. ‘Never mind the shift, love – Mary will replace the straps in an hour.’
‘I was not being so literal. I owe you my life. I owe you – my continued interest in this endless hell that is kingship.’ He grunted.
She looked down. ‘Endless hell – but you love it. You love it.’
The king pulled
her down and hid his face in her hair. ‘Not as much as I love you.’
‘What is it?’ she asked, playing with his beard. ‘You are plagued by something . . . ?’
He sighed. ‘One of my favourite men left me today. Ranald Lachlan. Because he has to make himself a fortune in order to wed your Lady Almspend.’
She smiled. ‘He is a worthy man, and he will prove himself or die trying.’
The king sighed. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But by God, woman, I was tempted to give him a bag of gold and a knighthood to keep him by me.’
‘And you would have deprived him of the glory of earning his way,’ she said.
He shrugged and said, ‘It is good that one of us is an idealist.’
‘If you are in a giving mood,’ she said, ‘might we have a tournament?’
The king was a strong man with a fighter’s muscles, and he sat up despite her weight on his chest. ‘A tournament. By God, lady – is that what this was in aid of?’
She grinned at him. ‘Was it so bad?’
He shook his head. ‘I should be very afraid, were you to decide to do something I didn’t fancy, inside that pretty head. Yes, of course we can have a tournament. But the wrong men always win, and the town’s a riot for a week, and the castle’s a mess, you, my dear, are a mess, and I have to arrest men whose only crime was to drink too much. All that, for your whim?’ He laughed.
Desiderata laughed, throwing her head back, and she read his desire in his eyes. ‘Yes!’ she said. ‘All that for my whim.’
He laughed with her. And then frowned. ‘And there are the rumours from the north,’ he said.
‘Rumours?’ she asked. Knowing full well what they were – war and worse in the northlands, and incursions from the Wild. It was her business to know them.