Michael, JECKS - The Tournament of Blood

Geoffrey retreated a pace as Andrew came closer, his hand reaching for his sword. His palm was slick and he could scarcely grip the hilt, but then a tussock caught his heel and he tumbled down with a squeak. He saw Andrew above him, a long knife in his hand, and he whimpered, snapping his eyes shut, bringing an arm up to protect his face.

There was nothing. No prick of pain, no kick, nothing. He heard a low chuckle of contempt and when he opened his eyes, he saw Andrew’s back as the squire marched back to the fields.

It made him want to sob. He couldn’t be shamed in front of all the people here. It would be unbearable – he’d never be able to hold his head up in public again. Terrible! Utter social ruin. And what of Alice? She would hardly want a coward for a husband.

The scene came back to him with appalling clarity. He had been at the side of his knight, as he should be, when the little party had been given permission to ‘ride out’, the technical term which meant seeking plunder with the Earl’s permission. Of course he was already anxious because of the stories about the army which the King had brought up against them all. Who wouldn’t have been? It was scary knowing that you were committing treason. There was a special punishment for that: slow hanging till nearly dead, then drawing, being gutted while alive, the still-beating heart hauled from the chest before the body was beheaded and hacked into quarters. Hideous!

He slowly climbed to his feet, the bile acrid in his mouth.

When the suggestion that he should seek fodder was made, he hadn’t intended running. He was a squire, committed and determined to do his duty by his knight. He and a number of other men had gone. And Andrew had been one of them.

He was dead . Geoffrey had seen him die! How could he have come back from the grave?

Their route had taken them towards some smoke in the distance, thinking that it must be a farm. Farms had food. Except when they arrived, there was a strong force of the King’s own men waiting and the little group had been surrounded. Andrew had been one of the first into the medley, shrieking some weird cry, sword on high as he spurred into them. Geoffrey wasn’t going to fight – he thought he could ride back and get help, get away from the clattering, clanging battle, but when he looked over his shoulder, he saw that they were already cut off. There was only the one way to safety, and that was ahead.

He had taken a moment to grit his teeth, swallowed his terror, clapped spurs to his mount and lowered his head as his charger leaped forward. There was one place where the fighting was thin. Andrew and others were in a solid mass to his right, but Geoffrey wasn’t stupid enough to head for them. The weight of him and his horse could have beaten back the ambushers, but he would have been embroiled in the same dangerous fight and he had no wish to die. Andrew had screamed at him, just the once, and as he thundered through the thin ranks of foot-soldiers, eyes squeezed tight shut against the horrible sight of polearms and axes aimed at him, he had glanced back quickly to see Andrew fall from his horse, dead. Or so it had seemed.

Geoffrey had not stopped galloping until he was convinced he had not been followed, and then he had not known where to go. North lay the Earl’s own estates and men, but there were also groups of the King’s men who were trying to capture any stragglers. Southwards was the King’s host, and yet… If he were to go south, he might be able to avoid the King’s men, perhaps skirt around them all and make his way homewards. It was a better chance than any other.

Shivering with fear, he had made his choice. He had no desire to die like Andrew and the others, and he had no desire to join the Earl’s men if they were all to be slaughtered as they subsequently were.

That was his saving. He had escaped, and later he heard how the King’s men stopped Earl Thomas at Boroughbridge, holding him and his men at the bridge and a ford until the King’s main host arrived. There was a great killing there, the river running red with the blood of the brave men who contested the passage over that long day.

All Geoffrey knew when he heard of the battle was relief. He might have been there, and if he had, he would have been at the side of his knight Sir Hector, who died on the slick wooden bridge; if Geoffrey had been there, he too would probably have succumbed to an arrow, a bolt or a sword just as his master had. But thank God he had been saved from that doom, emerging unscathed from the danger and without anyone to accuse him of cowardice.

And now a witness had emerged. A witness who could testify to his running from the enemy.

Edith had paid for the sweetmeats before she realised she was free. Her mother was still talking to Sir Baldwin in a low voice some way off, and neither was glancing in her direction, they were too involved in their own conversation. Hugh was watching a man testing a bow. They had moved since she had left them, and that gave her the excuse she needed. She bent her gaze towards where they had been – she could easily say she’d thought they’d still be there – and under the cover of a small group of passers-by, she walked back steadily the way she had come, towards the ring where the swordsmen had been.

They were no longer fighting, although their swords were still there lying on a table with other weapons: daggers, long-bladed knives and iron-shod staffs lay with axes and cudgels. She meditatively went to them and felt the edge of one of the swords. The blade was chipped and notched where it had hit the other, and there was a fine sheen like oil on it. When she took her finger from it, she saw that it was blood; there was a red stain on her hand which made her pull a face in disgust. She didn’t want to mark her new tunic, so instead she wiped her fingers on the table’s edge wondering whether it was the blood of the shorter man. It probably was, she reckoned. The taller man was almost unmarked.

The loser wasn’t attractive, but Edith admired his courage in standing against an opponent with so much greater reach. It was silly of him to get into a fight like that, silly but brave, she felt, and she wondered what they could have been fighting over. Perhaps it was foul words, for men so often insulted each other with ‘villeinous and blasphemous swearing’ according to the local priest, but Edith hoped that there was something more honourable at the heart of their battle. Perhaps it was a fight over a woman.

It was a lovely thought, that two men should fight for one woman’s favour. She imagined that they might fight over her , and smiled at the idea, hugging herself gleefully as a most unchaste thrill ran though her. That, she decided, would be best: to have two men risk their lives to impress a woman who would then grant her favours to the winner and hold him up, still bloody from his encounter, to everyone’s adulation – that would be really good. Everyone would judge her magnificence and beauty by the blood shed to win her.

And it would show her mother and father that she was no longer a child to be commanded at their whims: to ‘go there, come here, do as you are told,’ she snarled to herself.

That was the trouble: her parents couldn’t see she wasn’t a baby any more. Standing haughtily near a fence-post, Edith considered the field and the milling people while she brooded on her parents’ unreasonable attitude. They seemed to think that she needed to be constantly supervised and protected. It was so stupid ! If she was left alone, she would be fine. She knew how to protect herself. She certainly didn’t need to be locked up at the house like one of her father’s prisoners at Lydford Gaol. Not that she was ever locked in, exactly, but it came to the same thing, being told she couldn’t go to Tavistock to see Susan when she wanted. Susan could go out more or less when she wanted, but no, Edith had to stay in. She’d told them, if they were worried, they could send Hugh with her to look after her, but although her father had initially said yes, that permission was immediately withdrawn when Simon heard that she had already asked Margaret and Margaret had meanly said no.