Christian Cameron: The Ill-Made Knight

It wasn’t the end of the world. I had waited tables for gentlemen visiting our house — my mother was trying to bring me up gently, even though we lacked the money or influence to have me placed as a page. I could carve and I could serve, so I hid my dismay and did my best.

It’s a long time ago, but he beat me before the day was out, and he liked it. I remember his breath, his face red. Licking his lips. I took it. I think I cried, but I took it. But later on he tried to beat my sister, and I bit him.

I had years of it. I doubt a day went by when he didn’t hit me, and some days — some days he beat me badly.

Bah. This isn’t what you want to hear.

I went to the church school — he did that much for me — and the monks liked me, and I liked them. Without them, I think I’d be a much worse man. They doctored me when he beat me too badly, and they prayed with me. Praying — it’s always helped me. I know there’s men-at-arms who spit at God. I think they’re fools.

I learned some Latin. Saved my life later.

I also learned to cook. My uncle wasn’t just a bad man, he was a nasty-minded miser who wouldn’t buy good food or pay a cook. He bought old meat and the last vegetables in the market. It was like a compulsion for him, not to spend money. And his poor wife was too broken to do more than throw it all in a pot and boil it. I was tired of this, and hungry, and when I complained I was beaten. Well, I’m not the only boy to be beaten for complaining about food, but I may be one of the few who decided on the spot to learn to cook. I asked men in pot houses and taverns, and women who worked in great houses, and I learned a few things. As you will see. The path of arms, for me, included many beatings, a little Latin and cooking.

A boy can grow used to anything, eh? I served in the house; I ran errands for the shop; I did apprentice work like polishing silver and pewter and cleaning the files and saws; I went to Mass and to matins; I learned my letters and I cooked. And on Sundays, after church. .

If you three were Londoners, you’d know what we do on Sunday after church.

The girls dance in the squares.

And the lads take a sword and a buckler and fight.

By the gentle Christ, I loved to fight. I never minded the split knuckles, the broken fingers, the gash in the head. Daily beatings from my uncle made me hard. I had to borrow a sword — it was years before I had one of my own — but there was this fellow who was like a god to us youngers; he was an apprentice goldsmith to the big shop that served the court, and he had woollen clothes and a fine sword and he was such a pleasant fellow that he let little things like me use it. Thomas Courtney, he was. Long dead. I’ll wager he is not burning in hell.

Thomas Courtney was my hero from very young. And par dieu , messieurs, he would have been a good knight. He was ill-sorted for the life of a draper, and he was an example of everything that I could be.

I’d like to say I grew better, but I was too young to wield a man’s sword properly — it was all I could do to block a blow — but I learned how to move, and how to avoid one. One of the monks was a good blade, and he taught me, too. He was a lusty bastard, a terror with the virgins as well as being quite fast with his fists, and he taught me some of that, too. Brother John. A bad monk, but not such a bad man. Nor a good one, as you’ll hear.

And there was wrestling. Everyone in London — every man and boy and no few women — can wrestle. Out in the fields, we’d gather in packs, peel off our hose and have at it.

I loved to fight, and there were many teachers. It was just as well. I grew fast, and I had red hair.

When I was eleven, I came in from an errand and couldn’t find my sister. She should have been helping the cook, who was my friend in the house. Cook hadn’t seen her. I went up to the rooftrees and I found her, with my uncle trying to get between her legs.

He’d tried his member on me several times, and I’d learned to knee him in the groin. So I wasn’t as shocked as I might have been.

I hit him.

He beat the living hell out of me, his parts hanging out of his braes. He chased me around the attic, pounding me with his fists.

But he didn’t finish what he was about.

After that, I never left my sister alone in the house. I went to my aunt and told her, and she turned her head away and said nothing.

So I went to the monks. An eleven-year-old boy needs an ally.

Brother John took me to the Abbott, and the Abbott went to the guild of goldsmiths, and that was the end of it.

A week later, my uncle came home late, with his face puffy and his lip and eyebrows cut from punches. Footpads had set on him, taken his purse and pounded him.

Next day, Brother John had two sets of split knuckles, and so did Brother Bartholomew. Perhaps they’d had a dust up.

For a year, things were better. But better is an odd word to a boy who has to fear everything and everyone, and who has to fight every day. I’m not making excuses for what came later. Just saying.

I’m coming to Poitiers in my own time. Listen, messieurs. When you face the arrow storm, when you face a big man in the lists or on the battlefield, when you stand knee deep in mud and your sword is broken and you cannot catch your breath and you have two bloody wounds — then you need to have something. Some men get it from their fathers. Some get it from God.

So just listen.

I always wanted to be a knight. In my boy’s head, my pater had been a knight — not strictly true, but a boy’s dreams are golden and that’s how it was. And yet, such is youth, when the Guildhall sent for me and I was entered as an apprentice — at the insistence of the Abbott, I think — I was puffed like an adder, over the moon with delight. I intended to be the best goldsmith since the Romans, and I worked like a slave. I went to another shop. My sister was working every day for the sisters of St John, serving the poor and thus safe from my uncle, so I could go and work the whole day with a free heart.

As apprentices, we had thirty-five feast days a year. My master was John de Villers, and he beat me when I broke things. I never heard a word of praise from him, and I got a ration of curses, but that was only his way. He wasn’t a money-grubbing louse. He was a fine craftsman, and he didn’t make the cheap crap you see in the streets. He made nothing but scabbard fittings for the nobility, and he made things that caused me, as a boy, to gawk. Enamel blue, whorls of gold like the tracery on a cathedral — by St John, friends, he had the true gift of making, and all his bad temper didn’t stop him from teaching us. In fact, he liked his apprentices better than some apparently kinder men — most of his boys made their grade and got their mark.

I worked in copper and learned my way. I did a lot more low work — I remember that I spent a week cleaning his stable shed, which can’t have taught me a thing about metal work — but he took the time to show me some things, and I loved the work, and I could tell that he could feel my enthusiasm.

I made a set of clasps and hinges for a Bible for the monks, and Master de Villers said they were good enough. That was a great day for me. As far as I know, the monks still use that Bible — I saw it on the lectern in King Richard’s day.

Oh, aye, messieurs, I’m older than dirt. I can remember Caesar. You asked for this story — fill my cup or go to your bed.

That’s better.

I was getting bigger. I had a little money. I finally bought a tuck — a sword. It probably wasn’t so much, but par dieu , gentlemen, it was the world to me, and I wore it out on Sundays’ under my buckler — a fine buckler with copper and bronze studs and a fine iron rim, all my work or my friends’ work. And when I swaggered swords with another boy, girls watched me.