Michael, JECKS - The Tournament of Blood

‘A hole under the arms?’ Baldwin enquired doubtfully.

‘Yes. Where the breast- and back-plates met there was a gap, and there a man might stab a sword. Bear it in mind, should a heavily armoured German ever attack you!’

‘Interesting. Still, it will make you a much sought-after herald. A man with knowledge of foreign customs and weapons is always attractive. You are happy to be home?’

Odo pulled a face. ‘Well, you know, I sat upon my horse on the way here today and stared about me at the countryside, and do you know what I saw?’

Baldwin shook his head.

‘Green. Everywhere I looked, the land was green. Verdant, healthful, with glorious and riotous plantlife on every side. Where there weren’t trees, there was grass – all over the place. And do you know what struck me?’

‘No.’

‘For all this grass to have grown, for all these trees, for all the flowers, there must have been plenty of sodding rain! Yes, it pisses down all the time here!’

The planning for the tournament at Oakhampton had been set in train weeks before the event was due to start. Messengers had to reach all the wide domains of Lord de Courtenay: knights from Cornwall to Carlisle received invitations and either groaned because of the journey they must undertake or crowed with delight at the thought of the money and renown they could win.

At his castle in Gidleigh, Sir Richard Prouse took the note and gave it to his priest, listening with a set face to the cleric’s slow reading. When he had finished, the priest gave him a sympathetic glance over the top of the sheet, but Sir Richard ignored him, turning his back while he considered. He had no desire to take the man into his confidence. He didn’t trust the feeble, weak-minded fool enough to enlighten him about his own innermost feelings. Dismissing the messenger and curtly telling his priest to seek out food and ale for the fellow, Sir Richard limped slowly to his upstairs chamber.

A tournament; another damned tournament, and he was invited to witness the ‘festivities’.

It was because of tournaments that the castle was built upon debts and mortgages. That was his father’s legacy: a place without the finance to support it. All he could have used was bound up under other people’s control, like that whore’s cub Benjamin, the money-lender who had fleeced his estates after his father died. If it wasn’t for him, Sir Richard could have come into his estates with some dignity, but no! Benjamin had been determined to take all he could. He had an English name, but in terms of his business dealings he was as much a thief as a Venetian!

That was the trouble with jousting. If a man became hooked on the thrill he could gamble away his entire inheritance. Many a man depended upon his wife’s financial acumen to protect lands and property. A knight was no use if his sword and charger were in pawn to a usurer. And Sir Richard’s father had been completely hooked on the sports.

Whereas Sir Richard perpetually wore a strained, anxious expression and with his deepset eyes under his dark hair looked older than his almost thirty years, his father had appeared much younger than his thirty-four years merited when he died; he was a cheery, pleasant, open-faced man who accepted the blows fate dealt him with a calm resignation or charming self-effacement but, like any gambler, believed that the next joust would recoup his losses. In part it was his very assurance and easy manner that had attracted so many women to him. Sir Richard knew all too well how other men’s wives would look to Sir Godwin and invite him to their beds. Especially at tournaments when they could be bowled over by the handsome knight’s easy flattery. Courtesy , Sir Richard sneered to himself. That was what they called it, those self-righteous arses in the nobility; if not they called it chivalry , as if that excused a man who persuaded a woman to ignore her marriage vows and lie with him. Sir Richard himself could exercise all the courtesy in the world and never win a woman’s heart. Not with his disabilities.

If his father hadn’t died, maybe he could have grown to respect him. He often wondered about that – whether if he had come to know Sir Godwin a little better he could have learned even to love him. Instead all he could see was the gross foolishness of his rumbustious lifestyle, the drinking and whoring, the madness of a man who lost so much money he couldn’t afford the best arms to protect himself, and who died for the lack.

Sir Richard had witnessed his father’s death at Exeter. It was an unfortunate mace blow – misaimed, it didn’t strike Sir Godwin a ringing buffet on the centre of his helmet as intended, but glanced down the side until it caught his shoulder. It was the kind of blow that all knights were used to, one which would bruise but shouldn’t incapacitate a man with full armour, yet all could see at once that Sir Godwin was badly wounded. He fell back as if stunned, then stumbled. The spectators saw him put down his sword as if he wished to surrender, then let his blade fall to the ground, grabbing for his helm. He tripped, still desperately clawing at the steel of the helmet, and then there was a shout from the crowds as someone saw the blood seeping from beneath his helm.

Soon everyone could see that the fallen knight was dying. Squires and heralds ran to him from all over the field while Sir Godwin’s opponent let his mace fall and lifted off his own helmet, gazing at the dying man with bemusement, wiping his hair from his brow. Then someone managed to remove Sir Godwin’s helmet and all could see the bright blood pumping.

Afterwards they pieced together what had happened. The spiked mace had caught the junction of helmet and mail tippet, and a rivet had sheared inside the helmet. It was bad luck, everyone said, nothing more: the rivet had shot away and the flap of steel it held in place had been exposed, slicing through Sir Godwin’s neck like a dagger and opening his jugular.

He could still see his father’s body lying in a lake of blood, limbs moving lazily, mouth opening and closing, the blood dribbling now, while his mother gripped his shoulder with fingers of steel. All about them men clamoured noisily, some sombrely making the sign of the cross, others baying for the blood of the victor. It was clear that his opponent, the other knight, was in danger, and a small group of squires surrounded him and hastened him from the field when the crowd turned nasty, folks pressing forward to the barriers. Sir Godwin was popular, known to all the watchers in the stands, and his killer was not.

Sir Richard had been a youthful squire of only some fourteen summers then, back in 1306, and in the years that followed, he had been forced to attend several other tournaments in order to win his spurs as a knight, but that had all ended in 1316 at the tournament in Crukerne when he was twenty-four. Since then he hadn’t been able to participate, of course, and he tended to try to avoid them. He saw them as the frivolous pursuits of the foolish and indolent. His time was too taken up with building up the profits of his estates.

It was fortunate that Sir Richard’s mother, of blessed memory, had been a talented woman and skilled with finance. She had scrimped and saved, juggling the profits of the estates in an attempt to keep the place afloat. His mother was no fool, thank God, and she was, like so many women, a good manager of money, but even so the place soaked up his treasure like a sponge. Matters were beginning to improve and Sir Richard had managed to qualify for knighthood when he was nineteen, but then came the disastrous famine of 1316, and he had been forced to borrow money again. Another visit to Benjamin; another crippling debt. And if 1317 was little better, 1318 was a disaster, and not only personally. There simply were not enough villeins to support the place and all their efforts were needed to keep Sir Richard solvent.