Christian Cameron: The Ill-Made Knight

Well. When they danced, I watched them.

And glances became looks, and looks became visits, and visits became hands brushing, and perhaps clasping, and then there was kissing. .

Heh, I’ll assume you know whereof I speak. So you know what comes next. I’m a sinful man, and lust has always had a place for me. A pretty face, a pair of breasts, a fine leg shown when tying a garter, and by our saviour, I’m off like a greyhound. I started young, and I’m not sure that I’m finished. But a chivalrous man is a lover of women — Lancelot was a lover of women, and Sir Tristan, and all the great knights. The priests clip us too close. There’s very little harm in a little love, eh?

Any gate, by the time I was fourteen I was ready to be wed, and my chosen mate was Nan Steadman, whose da’ was an alderman. He thought me beneath her, but she had him wrapped around her fingers. She wed another, and I have a different life, but we still share a cup when I’m in London, Nan and I. Fifty years and more.

Bah, I’m old. What I’m trying to say is that I had a life, a fine life. Hard, but I was making it, and with gentle manners and a good craft skill, there were no limits to what I might be. A fine life. I haven’t really said what an advantage my mother’s work on my manners were. But I spoke like a gentleman, English or French, and I could bow, carve, pour wine, read or speak a prayer. These may not seem like great achievements, but by our lady, without them you are doomed to be a certain kind of man. I had them, and as the alderman said, if I wasn’t hanged, I’d be Lord Mayor.

I had everything required to succeed, in London.

And in two afternoons, I fucked it away.

I was learning to ride and joust and use the bow. Nay, don’t shake your heads — the Londoners over there nodding know that by law any free man of London, and that includes an apprentice, may bear arms and ride the joust — eh? Just so, messieurs. And such was my passion for it that I took Nan to see some foreign worthies fight at barriers in the meadows — knights and squires. There were Frenchmen and Germans and Englishmen and even a Scot. We fought the French, but we hated the Scots. But the Scottish knight was preux , and he fought well, and the French knights fought brilliantly — one of them like the god Mars incarnate — and one of the Brabanters was no great swordsman, but he was brave and spirited and I admired him. He was in the Queen’s retinue, I thought — she was a Hainaulter, and she brought more than a few of them with her.

Things were different then, and when he was in his pavilion disarming, I walked in, bowed and paid my compliments on his fighting. He was older than I thought, and he was very pleased to have his fighting complimented by any man; it was nothing to him that I was an apprentice, and we talked for some time and I was served wine like a gentle. I think it went to my head, the wine and the company.

There were other men about, and my Nan, looking a tad embarrassed as women are want to be when out of their element. But Sir Otto, as he was called, was courtly to her, and she blushed.

A young English knight came in. They’d fought three blows of the sword, and they embraced, and I saw that the knight knew me. And I knew him. He was a cousin, on my mother’s side. A De Vere. He winced when I said I was a goldsmith.

We might have had hot words, but then he shrugged. I didn’t want to admire him, but I did; he was everything I wasn’t, and suddenly he, by existing, burned my happiness to the ground.

I didn’t want to be a goldsmith. I wanted to be a knight.

He was Edward. Well, everyone was Edward in those days. He was a little too courtly to Nan, who ate his admiration the way a glutton eats pork. He had fine clothes, beautiful manners and he’d just fought in armour. Every one of you knows that a man never, ever looks better than when he’s just fought in harness. His body is as light as air. Fighting is a proper penance for sin — a man who has endured the harness and the blows is as stainless as a virgin for a little while. Edward had golden hair and a golden belt, and even then and there, I couldn’t resent Nan’s attention.

Besides, after some initial hesitation, he treated me as family, and that only made me seem higher. I was glad. Nan would go home to her father and say we’d been served wine by gentlemen who were my relatives.

The French knights came — they were prisoners of the war in France, waiting in England for ransom. The older knight was courtly to Nan and quite polite to me — no foolish distance. His name was Geoffrey de Charny, and if my cousin Edward looked like a true knight, De Charny looked like a paladin from the chansons. He was as tall as me — and damned few men are — a good six feet in his hose, and maybe a finger more. He had a face carved from marble, and hair the colour of silver-gilt, with blue eyes. He looked like the saint of your choice. He was the best fighter in armour that I ever saw, and he had the most perfect manners, and the reputation of being the fiercest man in the field. In fact, he was considered the greatest knight of his generation — some men say the greatest knight of all time.

You know of him, messieurs, I’m sure. Well, I will have more to say of that noble gentleman.

The other man knight was as young as me, or Nan, but he wore the whole value of my master’s shop on his back. The first silk arming jacket I ever saw, with silk cords pointed in figured gold — and this a garment meant to be worn under armour and unseen.

Nan was the only woman in the tent, and she received a great deal of attention, and I tried not to be angry or jealous. I was so busy hanging on de Charny’s every word that I scarcely noticed her. But young men are fools, and she blushed and smiled a great deal, and eventually came and stood by me, and Messire de Charny told her that she was very beautiful. She still tells that story, and well she might. He asked her for a lace from her sleeve, and promised to wear it the next time he fought.

I admired him so much that I restrained my jealousy and managed to smile.

We had too much wine, and on the way home we found a lane and we dallied. She had never been so willing — grown men know about women and wine, but young ones don’t know yet. She was liquorice, and I was hot for her. Her mouth tasted of cloves. We played long, but we stayed just inside the bounds, so to speak.

I took her to her door, begged her mother’s forgiveness for the hour and escaped alive. Just.

So when I came home to my uncle’s house, I thought I was safe and whole, relatively sinless.

He was raping my sister. She was crying — whimpering and pleading. I could hear them from the back door, and all the while I climbed the stairs I knew he had her and was using her, and that as a knight, I had failed, because I had not been there to protect her. Climbing those stairs still comes to me in nightmares. Up and up the endless, narrow, rickety stair, my sister begging him to stop, the sound of his fist striking her, the wet sound as he moved inside her.

Eventually I made the top. We lived in the attic, under the eaves, and he had her on my pallet. I went for him. I wasn’t ten years old any more, and he never trained to arms.

I’ll make this brief — you all want to hear about Poitiers.

I beat him badly.

I dragged him off her, and locked one of his arms behind his back, using it to hold him, then I smashed his face with my fists until I broke his nose. As he fell to the floor, arse in the air, I kicked him. I made his member black by kicking him there fifteen or twenty times.

The next day, he stayed abed. I had to mind his shop, and I sent a boy round to my true master and said my uncle was sick. It was evil fate riding me hard.