Miles Cameron - The Red Knight

As do I. As does-

Yes.

Mag sorted her cards. A boy brought an armload of sawn oak and started to lay a fire. The smell of lamb filled the common room.

Gawin sat back. ‘Captain? I need to borrow some money.’

The captain looked at him.

Mag was grinning.

‘Doubled and rebated,’ Maggie said.

‘I’ll never be wed at this rate,’ Gawin said.

‘Wed?’ asked the captain.

Ser Alcaeus smiled politely into his ale. ‘To the Queen’s Lady Mary, if I’m not mistaken,’ he said politely.

The captain laughed and laughed, remembering her. ‘A most beautiful lady,’ he said.

‘Eldest daughter of Lord Bain.’ Gawin looked off into the distance. ‘She loves me,’ he said suddenly. He choked on the words. ‘I – I’m not worthy of her regard.’

The captain reached out to his brother tentatively but Gawin didn’t seem to notice.

Youth. It’s wasted on the young.

Alcaeus barked a laugh. ‘Listen, messire. I have known a few knights. You cede worthiness to none.’

Gawin said nothing. He drank off the rest of his jack, and raised his cup to the tap-boy. ‘Wine, boy. And in truth-’ He rose. ‘I need to piss.’

Alcaeus cleared his throat when Gawin was gone. ‘I can’t help but note,’ he said with some diffidence, and paused. ‘He calls you brother.’

The captain laughed. ‘He does me that honour.’ Here we go.

‘I had thought – pardon me, messire-’ Ser Alcaeus sat back.

‘You thought I was some man’s bastard. And here’s the great Duke of Strathnith’s son, calling me brother.’ The captain leaned forward.

Alcaeus met his eye steadily. ‘Yes.’

The captain nodded. ‘I had thought – pardon me , messire – I had thought that you were a free lance, a knight on errantry, joining my company. And yet-’ He smiled. ‘Sometimes, I might be tempted to a thought. And that thought . . .’ He sat back.

Mag looked back and forth. ‘Men,’ she said quietly.

‘What thought would that be?’ Ser Alcaeus whispered.

The captain drank some excellent ale. ‘Sometimes it seems anything I say to you will go straight to the Emperor.’ He shrugged. ‘I mean no insult. You are his liege man.’

‘Yes,’ Ser Alcaeus admitted.

‘And his cousin,’ the captain went on.

‘Ah? You know this?’ Ser Alcaeus sighed.

‘I guessed. So as to my own parentage-’

Ser Alcaeus leaned forward. ‘Yes?’

‘It is not your business, messire. Am I clear?’ he said leaning forward.

Ser Alcaeus didn’t flinch. ‘Men will speculate,’ he said.

‘Let them,’ the captain said.

Mag put a hand on the table and picked up the cards – large squares, beautifully painted. ‘People are watching you, my lords. You look like two men about to draw daggers.’

Alcaeus finished his ale. ‘Beer makes men melancholy,’ he said. ‘Let’s have wine, and I’ll think no more about it.’

The captain nodded. ‘I don’t mean to be a touchy bastard. But I am.’

Alcaeus nodded and extended his hand. ‘For what it is worth, so am I. A bastard.’

The captain’s eyes widened. He reached out and took the hand. ‘Thanks for that.’

Alcaeus laughed. ‘No one has ever thanked me for being a by-blow before.’ He turned to Mag. ‘Would you like me to shuffle?’ he asked.

She shook her head. ‘You rich boys,’ she said. ‘You think bastardy matters? Look at yourselves – gold rings, fine swords, wool cotes worth fifty leopards. Fine horses. By the Gentle Jesu, m’lords. Do you know what a poor man has?’

‘Parents?’ Ser Alcaeus said.

‘Hunger,’ Mag answered.

‘God’s blessing,’ the captain said.

Gawin came back. He had a glow on, a brittle humour. His eyes sparkled. ‘A fine inn. Maybe the best I’ve ever seen. Look at that lass – red hair. Red! I’ve never seen so much red hair in all my life.’ He looked around. ‘Their fires burn hotter, or so men say.’

Maggie smiled, reached under her cap and teased out the end of her braids. Her hair was bright red. ‘Really, ser knight?’ she said.

Gawin sat back and laughed. The captain laughed harder, and Alcaeus caught it too. It was infectious.

As if his laughter was a signal, the Inn burst into life. Tom and Ranald came in, and joined their table, and men and women came pouring in. Local farmers and shepherds from the hills arrived as the word spread, and the mercenaries who served the Keeper, and a tinker and his apprentices – the smith, and his apprentices too.

The common room could hold them all, well enough.

Men called for music, and Tom sang surprisingly well. Gawin turned to the captain amidst the uproar. ‘You used to play the harp,’ he said.

The captain frowned. ‘Not in years. And not here.’

But the Keeper had heard him. He took a harp down from the wall and put it in the captain’s arms. He shushed the room – something he did as easily as a magus might cast a spell.

‘There’s a man here as may be a harper,’ said the Keeper.

The captain cursed Gawin under his breath.

‘Give me some time,’ he said, when it was clear to him they wouldn’t let him off. He took the harp and his second cup of wine and walked out into the summer night of the yard.

It was quiet out there.

Sheep baaed, and cattle lowed, and the sounds of men in the Inn were muted, like the babble of a distant brook.

He started to tune the harp. There was a plectrum in the base-board, just where he would have expected it, and a clever mechanical key for the strings.

Let me, said Harmodius. It’s just mathematica.

He drew power, and cast – and his power manifested in the strings.

The rule of eight, rendered in sinew, said the dead Magus.

Thanks, said the captain. I always hated tuning.

He walked about the yard, plucked out a simple tune – the first he’d learned – and walked back into the Inn.

They fell quiet when he appeared, and he sat down with Gawin and played some simple stuff. He played There Was a Squire of Great Renown and everyone sang, and he played Green Sleeves and Lovely On the Water. He made mistakes, but the audience was forgiving.

‘Play for dancing!’ the young widow called.

The captain was about to admit he didn’t know any dances, but Harmodius forestalled him.

Allow me.

His fingers plucked the strings slowly, and a jig peeled out – slowly at first, and then faster and faster, and then it was a reel and then it was a hillman dance tune, sad and wild and high-

The captain watched his fingers fly over the strings, and wasn’t altogether pleased. But the music swept on, higher and higher, and the men fell out of the dance, and the women danced, skirts kirtled up, legs flashing, heads turning and Mag jumped up and leapt into the circle.

The harp grew warm under his hands.

Sarah Lachlan leaped and flashed like a salmon. Mag gave a turn and one of the Inn’s servants twirled in billow of skirts. The men applauded wildly as the hands on the harp fell still, and the captain seized control again.

Ahh, said Harmodius. I had forgotten.

Please don’t do that again, old man. The captain went to steady his own breathing. People were crowding around him, slapping his back.

‘I swear,’ said the Keeper. ‘You play like a man possessed.’

Later when men and women had paired off, when Mag had gone, bright eyed, to her room, and Ranald had been congratulated by every man and woman there, and when Ser Alcaeus had the Inn’s prettiest serving girl in his lap – he went back outside.

He stood under the stars, and listened to the cattle.