The Ill-Made Knight (43 page)

‘I have to hope so,’ I admitted, ‘because I’m rather like any man myself. If only high birth makes a knight, I will never make the grade. And yet, my lady, I agree with you this far. I have recently seen what happens when boys are broken in spirit and trained to war like dogs to the chase, and it is truly horrible. Certes, if a man is to be a knight, he must know something of the rules and customs of being a knight – of chivalry – or he is a mere killer.’ I paused and opened my curtain a touch. ‘I missed you,’ I said.

She was pregnant – well along, in a flowing kirtle that emphasized the pregnancy rather than hiding it. The whole kirtle was silk, figured in swans, her husband’s badge. Her kirtle and over gown were worth about twice my war horse’s value.

I cannot tell you which shocked me more, her preganancy, or the slavish adoration inplied in the heraldic dress – a gown that emphasized her condition and her master. That stressed that she was
property
. Like a retainer, or a man-at-arms.

All my thoughts must have been on my face.

She laughed, the nasty little laugh she used to hurt herself.

‘There, you see me as I am,’ she said. ‘Fat as a hog, blotchy-faced and ugly.’ She hung her head in mock contrition, then glared at me, eye to eye like an adversary, daring me to speak. ‘If you’d kept the curtain closed, you need not have known.’

‘You are just as beautiful pregnant as not,’ I said. It wasn’t quite true, but really, one doesn’t have to be bred to court to know what to say to a pregnant woman. ‘And I am yours, body and soul, whether you are beautiful as heaven or come to me with leprosy.’

Her smile.

But my sense of honour was as sharp – and double edged – as hers. ‘I can’t say that I’ve brought your favour much honour.’ I hadn’t realized how bitter I was until I heard myself whining like a baby. ‘Killing peasants,’ I heard myself saying. ‘Burning towns.’

We watched each other for some heartbeats.

Both of us armed with the weapons to do the other hurt.

She nodded and looked away. Bright – even brittle – she said, ‘Monsieur du Guesclin says that you require clothes. I took the liberty of sending for a tailor on your behalf.’ She smiled then.

I was holding the hangings open to watch her, and now she rose – still graceful as a dancer. ‘As you are a cripple and I am a hog,’ she said, ‘I don’t think that the gossips of the world will be troubled if I open your curtains and this window and give you some air. I know that the best doctors are against it, but then, my midwife says all man-doctors are fools.’

I just sat back and smiled like a fool – and worried that I was unwashed and unshaven. ‘You will have to send the tailor back home,’ I said. ‘My ransom and the purchase of a new horse will wipe out what I’ve saved.’

She leaned in and brushed my lips with hers, as fast and controlled as a master swordsman. Then backed to her stool. ‘That’s as close to an embrace as I’ll dare,’ she said, matter of factly. ‘I’m watched. This baby is very important to my husband.’ Her eyes flicked to the door and she smiled. ‘But I’m more than rich enough to satisfy my fancy. And I fancy getting you some clothes that don’t look quite so, mmm, manly.’ She had my doublet in her hands, having picked it off the back of the chair. It was almost unrecognizable to me, it was so clean and well-repaired by the servants of the chateau, but she looked at it as if it was covered in bugs.

‘Did you . . . make it yourself?’ she asked wickedly.

In those days, a doublet was a small garment. Not the sleeved cote of today, but a sleeveless vest, usually two layers of linen (hence ‘doublet’ or doubled linen) whose sole purpose was to hold up the hose – hose were separate then.
Par dieu!
Messieurs may remember how we dressed when I was young. At any rate, the hose were pointed, tied with laces to the doublet, which was worn over the shirt and under the cote, or jupon. While I owned a couple of nice cotes and gowns, they were in my baggage. I wore armour, all day, every day, and I didn’t need to wear a gown with it. In winter, sometimes one put a gown over the armour.

Ah! While we’re on the details of costume, I’ll add that sometimes I wore a quilted jupon over my doublet to protect my skin from my mail. That was a truly horrible garment. It smelled so bad that it attracted dogs. I saw that it was gone. Horrible as it was, it fit me and my mismatched harness perfectly.

And as a final note, the doublet took especial stress as it also served to hold up my leg armour – don’t imagine nice white armour, but leather and splint contraptions with plate knees that weighed too much and tore the fibre of my doublet from the constant stress.

Why have I shared all this?

At that moment, I hadn’t owned clean, dry, fashionable clothes in years. Or rather, I owned them; I just never wore them. I was dirty and my seams split all the time, and when I slept with a woman, I usually begged her to work on my clothes while she stayed with me. My shirts were all sewn by whores and camp-followers.

So when Emile asked me if I made it myself, I probably flushed.

‘Allow me to dress you,’ Emile said gently. ‘You saved my life.’

‘Your husband . . .’ I said quietly.

‘You saved my husband’s life, very publicly. The Dauphine approves of you. The nasty rumour, which, I confess, I believe was spread by my husband, has died away. Pregnancy has given me,’ – she smiled, and the fire in her eyes would have burned a monk – ‘power. ‘Let me do this.’

‘As a service for an old friend?’ I asked. She wore his colours: she was his woman now. So spoke the angry boy we all have in our hearts.

She opened my small window – really, little more than an arrow slit. The air of spring wafted in. I could smell . . . growth. I must have inhaled a great gout of air, because Emile laughed.

‘I will give my thanks to God that you are on the road to recovery,’ she said. ‘Du Guesclin despaired of you in your fever. You know I came then?’ she asked, somewhat hesitantly.

‘No,’ I said. The angry boy was silent.

‘Boucicault doesn’t approve of me,’ she said. ‘He never has,’ she added. ‘Prig. Prude. Sanctimonious hypocrite.’

I must have looked surprised.

She looked away. ‘I wasn’t . . . a virgin when I was wed, somewhat hastily, to my husband. If I’d been a servant girl, I’d have been turned out of doors.’

I laughed lightly. In London, among merchants and artificers, this sort of occurrence was so commonplace that I’m not sure I can remember a girl who was wed without a bulge under her gown.

Emile choked, ‘I thought of killing myself,’ as if that was a matter-of-fact statement, a commonplace.

‘It is not so great a sin,’ I said. Odd to take the husband’s side. ‘It is really of no moment if your husband-to-be is a trifle ardent in paying his attentions—’

She looked at me, and I wasn’t sure what her face was saying – anger? Indifference? Daring my comment? ‘Not my husband, dear.’ She turned and looked out the window. ‘I was not a good girl.’

Why on earth do people tell each other these things?

She was trying to hurt herself. Not me.

It sat there, between us.

Perhaps to a real nobleman, this would have been crushing, a proof that she was a soiled flower, a worthless, honourless trull. There was something in her voice that told me she was, in fact, daring me to be appalled.

But I was a child of London and war, and all my other women were real whores. To me, she was the essence of – perhaps not modesty, but womanly dignity. Pregnancy sat lightly on her, and added . . . maturity, perhaps, without detracting from allure. Oh, no. The allure was shouting at me, despite her folded hands and the anger on her face.

Perhaps it takes a many-times betrayed man of war to recognize a woman who has come a hard road, and is looking—

I shrugged. ‘So?’ I said. ‘I’m sorry, Emile, are you trying to tell me you are of no worth? Because I know your worth. I care nothing for your other lovers.’

She turned her head. Her face was in shadow, backlit by the spring sun. ‘How many do you think I had?’ she asked.

There’s a moment in a certain kind of fight where you think you are winning, and then, without warning, you lose control of something – perhaps your opponent’s left hand – and there is a particular feeling as you realize you have lost it, and you know the blow is coming. And there’s nothing you can do to stop the blow.

I cared
nothing
for how many lovers she’d had as a young girl – Holy Virgin, no one counted my score – but her face and her posture said that this was . . . vital. Essential. And I had lost control of the trend of the conversation.

Except she wasn’t trying to hurt me. She was trying to hurt herself, of course.

‘You had enough lovers to tarnish your reputation and harm your opinion of yourself,’ I said. ‘But not enough to affect my opinion of you.’ I leaned forward, regardless of the pain. ‘I know who you really are. I know who you were in the siege. That is all there is, to me.’

Her eyes widened. Leaping from the chair she sat in, Emile leaned over my bed and kissed me. ‘You are a true knight,’ she breathed. ‘I will treasure that.’ But she was gone before my left arm could pin her. ‘The tailor is a present from me. If you love me, don’t spurn him.’ She pulled a ring off her finger. ‘The Dauphine gave you a ring. Where did it go?’

I sighed. ‘I pawned it,’ I admitted.

‘Holy Mary mother of God, you had a love token from the Dauphine and you
pawned
it?’ She shook her head.

I shrugged. ‘Horses eat a lot,’ I said.

‘Will you promise not to pawn this one?’ she asked. ‘On your word as a knight?’

‘Does it come with a kiss?’ I asked. I shrugged. ‘I am scarcely a knight.’

She waved a hand in dismissal, as if my hopes and fears on that subject were of no consequence.

‘Emile, you see me a captive, taken in arms by a good knight. You knew me in the siege as a rescuer, a man from a grail romance.’ Was I spurred by her recital of her past lovers? I’d never said this much to Richard. ‘I’m no knight. I ride with routiers and collect
patis
from peasants and sometimes I rob the church.’

She set her jaw. ‘That is not who you really are,’ she said. Her eyes locked with mine, and they were as hard as diamonds. ‘We do what we must, eh, monsieur? But that need not be the sum of who we are.’ She pulled the ring from her finger and reached it out.

I tried to snatch her hand. She pulled it away.

‘If you aren’t faster than that, you’ll never beat Jehan le Maingre for me.’ She had avoided another attempt by my left arm to pin her to the bed. ‘I will visit again. Don’t get well too soon.’ She smiled and extended the ring again.

I held out my hand, and she placed it gently on my finger. ‘Be my knight,’ she said.

It is uncomfortable when you meet another person’s eyes for too long. It is as if you have no secrets left.

I cannot say how long we were like that.

It was long.

Like a fool, I broke it. ‘You are beautiful,’ I said. ‘Pregnancy makes you . . .’ I tried to find a word for her.

‘Fat,’ she said. ‘
A demain, m’amour
.’

My ransom didn’t appear from the Captal. The tailor came every day for three days, measuring, cutting and showing me fabrics at my bedside. The truth is that I agreed to everything he suggested. If I had any taste of my own, it was mostly direct emulation of older men I had admired: Sir John Cheverston, Sir John Chandos, Jean de Grailly and, most especially, my sometime mentor and nemesis, Jehan le Maingre, whose slim good looks seemed to mock my large build and bright-red hair. I told the tailor, in some detail, what I liked on each of these men.

He was a patient man. He heard me out and asked some questions about styles. After two days, he pursed his lips and said, ‘Scarlet and black.’

‘What about them?’

‘Those will be your colours. Your, mmm, patroness has suggested that I design arms for you, as well. Gules and sable.’ He fingered his beard. ‘I have a little scarlet broadcloth – a very little, dyed before the war. Black is expensive, but everyone wears it. Your hair, coming out of a sable cap, will be . . .’ he smiled. ‘You will be wanting a new arming coat,’ he said.

I agreed.

He nodded. ‘Two cotes, two doublets, two gowns, one with fur, six shirts, six braes, six black hose and six red hose. A hood hat. The short gown, trimmed in sable, and a second gown plain. Two pairs of shoes and a pair of boots.’ He smiled. ‘A pair of wicker panniers and a leather male, or trunk. A full cloak and a half cloak. Six linen caps.’ He looked up from his wax tablet. ‘Anything else?’

‘Gloves?’ I asked hopefully. I loved gloves. They protect your hands in brush, or in a street fight.

‘Gloves, for monsieur. My god-brother can make them. Chamois or deerskin?’ His stylus poised over the wax.

I had no idea what the difference was. ‘One each?’ I asked.

Judging from his face that was a foolish answer, but that’s what I got.

In between visits from the tailor, I read about chivalry. My host had de Charny’s questions, and I read them. Some of them made little sense to me – his refined sense of what might constitute right and wrong in the taking of a man’s horse and arms in a tournament were beyond my experience – and he didn’t seem to ask the questions to which I wanted answers. How many peasants can you torment for their grain before you cease to be a knight? Must you fight, regardless of the odds against you? When is surrender still ‘worthy’?

But other questions fascinated me.

And Vegetius might have been a captain of routiers. Some of his advice bore no relationship to war as I knew it, but his views on ambush and the chance of battle seemed solid enough. And scouting.
Par Dieu
, monsieur, the old Romans knew about scouts and spies, eh?

My host, the Captain of Reims, Gaucher de Chatillon, appeared at my bedside the next morning, dressed in immaculate green and gold. Three days closeted with a tailor had caused me to examine clothing. I still do.

He bowed at the doorway. ‘Monsieur, please accept my apologies for not attending you before. My lord the Marshal has told me how you helped to defend our cousin the Dauphine, and all French gentlemen owe you a debt of gratitude.’ He bowed again. ‘I am also given to understand that you preserved my friend the Duke de Bourbon in the face of the foe, and the Comte d’Herblay.’