Between Two Fires (9781101611616) (39 page)

It was when he came around a limestone bluff that he saw the stream. The road humped in front of him to form a small bridge that went over a stream feeding the Rhône. It was an old stream, then, one that soldiers had likely been stopping at for years to water their horses.

As these men bearing the quartered arms of Navarre had also stopped. Chrétien and his men were here, all sixteen of those Thomas had seen ride by. Putting on helmets and mounting their lovely Spanish and Norman destriers. They were just getting ready to take to the road again. If Thomas was going to do something, it had to be now.

But what?

A dense thicket and a sort of hill braced the clearing by the stream; it would have been easy to approach in force and deal these men an ambush, but what was a single man to do?

Stop thinking of ambushes and stealth.

You are a knight again, not a brigand.

Act like a knight.

“I seek an audience with Sire Chrétien d’Évreux. It is a matter of honor,” he said in his war voice, walking up to the men, staring at the comte.

A squire, holding his helmet in one hand and leading his horse with the other, walked closer to Thomas, looked at him from his boots to his head, and then called behind him, “Sire, there is a sort of
routier
or raggedy-man here who speaks of honor.”

Thomas stepped past him.

Men surrounded the comte now, unsheathing their swords and taking axes from their saddle-hooks.

“You should teach your squires respect, sire. It is unbecoming for a man to let his dogs bark for him. I have come here hoping that there is enough honor in you to grant a knight audience.”

A big man reined his horse closer. He was nearly close enough to give Thomas a chop with his axe. Thomas’s hand drifted for the pommel of his sword.

Don’t.

It was Delphine’s voice in his head.

Don’t.

Thomas did not unsheathe his sword.

The comte, still three horse lengths away, leaned forward in his saddle to peer at Thomas. Thomas had never seen him before; he knew him only by his heraldry. He was a big man, like Thomas, but softer in the face and very young, not twenty-five. Had his wife really shared her bed with this puppy?

He was a resplendent puppy, though; that armor was the ransom of a village.

“I know of no knight,” the young man said, “who goes alone on foot, with no surcoat, and a month overdue for a shave. Who are you?”

Some of the men-at-arms laughed to show their loyalty.

A boy of ten, a page in Navarrese red and yellow, leaned closer, his pale face excited; this could be the first time he saw blood shed in earnest.

The comte’s horse was excited, too; it wanted to wheel about and get to open ground, but the nobleman reined it firmly and heeled it back the two steps it had taken.

The raggedy-man spoke.

“I am Thomas of Picardy, once seigneur of the little village of Arpentel, until it was stolen from me while I served our king.”

“Hoooo!” one knight called out, apparently familiar with the story and aware of the implications.

Another of the knights near the comte blanched.

Thomas cut his eyes to this man.

It was André, his squire, the one who had saved him on the field; but he was a squire no more. He wore a fine suit of chain now, and had a moustache coming in. He rode a horse from the stables at Arpentel, one that Thomas had left behind when he went to war because it was too young and green.

What was the horse’s name? He had ridden him only twice.

Jibreel, Arab for Gabriel.

Though this was a warhorse, no Arab.

My goddamned horse.

And my squire.

André. I hope your dubbing was the best day of your life. How could you serve this bastard now?

The squire did not lower his eyes, but those eyes moistened with shame.

The big man with the axe had cheated closer to Thomas and now nudged him with the head of his weapon.

“Leave him,” the comte said.

Thomas turned his gaze back to the comte.

He knew what the young man was thinking: How could he be shut of this nastiness and come out looking honorable? Thomas had been respected. Everyone knew that his excommunication was unjust and that his lands had been stolen. Every man who served a king or a seigneur looked at Thomas’s betrayal and wondered when an accident of loyalty and war would leave him vulnerable to a powerful opportunist like Chrétien.

His hands and more were up your wife’s gown she loved it she loved a pretty young man in her bed and he is pretty not a scarred old bullock like you have you seen your ridiculous beard you look like a whoring prophet

Thomas blinked his eyes hard to bring him back to now; this was not a time to let his thoughts wander.

“What is it you want?” d’Évreux said.

Your Christless head lying in the grass for me to kick into that stream.

“Justice.”

A crow cawed in the trees.

“And what sort of justice might I give you in a field, in Provence, away from my lands?”

Some of which are my lands

The crow again.

“I think you know.”

“Hooo,” the ignorant knight started again, but the comte shot him a look that cut it short. This was deadly serious business.

“Are you threatening me?” Chrétien d’Évreux said, leaning forward a little, hoping there was a trap here for the older man to stumble into.

“I am offering you the chance to redeem your honor, and mine, in an affair of arms. Here, in the sight of witnesses, both men and…”

“And what?”

“Those higher than men.”

The crow again.

Now all eyes were on the comte. He had mishandled this—he desperately
wished he had shoved this man aside before he could say his piece; but now the words were hanging there, and none of these men would forget them. Particularly not the young man, recently knighted, who had served as squire to Thomas of Picardy. Chrétien had once delighted in the theft of this man’s fealty, on top of everything else he had taken; but now he thought the former squire’s true allegiance lay where it always had.

He wished, too, that he had not ridden ahead in his eagerness to meet with the pope; another forty loyal men rode three days behind them with his younger brother, Charles.

He wished he were with them now.

If only that goddamned crow would stop.

“This man is excommunicate,” he declared, “and cut off from honor, and the rights and privileges that come with it…” He felt the gazes on him now, and they were not kind. They weren’t going to let him dismiss this man now that they knew who he was. If Chrétien opened the gates of Jerusalem with one hand and burned down Acre with the other, these men would remember his cowardice here, by this stream, and they would speak of it. His father had been cousin to the king; his blood was royal on his mother’s side, too. He would be king of Navarre when she died. Death was promiscuous now; it was not impossible that the crown of France might fall to him,
him
, if he had enough support. If he was not thought a coward.

He would have to fight.

He might best this rustic fellow on his own.

If not, Don Eduardo would save him in extremity, out of love for his dead father.

“Notwithstanding that,” he said, changing his tone, “I would not have any man here say that the Comte d’Évreux and the heir to the throne of Navarre would hide behind such words, especially from a man who insults him before his peers. Many who ask for justice are sorry to get it, and so shall it be with you.”

Don Eduardo de Burgos, the oldest of the four knights, a Spanish vassal of d’Évreux’s father and a veteran of battles with the Moor,
shook his head at the young man’s foolishness. It was always best to avoid a fight that would cost much and gain little. The man in the rusty armor was a serious man.

“Ay,” Don Eduardo said, shaking his head again, and he dismounted, as did the others, all of them making their way back to the clearing by the stream.

The crow stopped cawing.

As Thomas had no horse and would not condescend to borrow his own, it was decided that the affair of honor would take place on foot.

The men squared off.

Thomas in his bad hauberk, bareheaded, his legs unarmored as his
cuisses
and greaves had sunk in the Rhône.

The comte in his thigh and shin armor, his arms likewise covered in steel, fine riveted mail under all of it, and under his breastplate, which gleamed in the weak sun—he had removed his surcoat so it would not be torn should the man’s notched and snagged war sword cross it.

His own sword was beautiful, almost pristine, the shallower notches of the training yard having been easily ground out of it by his squire.

“Ready?” said the Spanish knight, who would reluctantly serve as marshal for this grotesquerie.

Thomas nodded.

The comte nodded as well, lowering the visor of his helm.

The Spanish knight lowered his baton.

“This is your last chance to think again,” the comte said, his voice muffled ridiculously. He circled the older man but kept well out of range.

Thomas said nothing, holding his ground, his legs at a good bend.

“I will be willing to forgive your insults if you apologize and go your ways.”

Thomas said nothing.

He knew the man would speak again.

“Then prepare yourself for the justice you—” he started, but Thomas launched himself at just the moment he knew the other man would have to inhale. He was stronger than the comte, much stronger, and lighter, too, since he had little armor. The comte defended himself, his training overriding his fear enough to keep from being killed, though only just. His breastplate deflected a thrust, aimed at the armpit, that would have broken his ribs through chain mail. He panted and gave ground, setting himself again.

“Anything else to say?” Thomas asked, but this time the younger man kept quiet. He licked out at Thomas with the point of his sword, and his reach was so long it might have caught a slower man, but Thomas batted it down, struck the young man a vicious upswing against his helm, and then knocked his sword down again. The comte managed to hold on to it, using it to block the blow that came at his legs. And so it went. Thomas worked at exhausting his better-armored foe, battering down his sword six times, causing the other knight, whose sword was getting very heavy, to panic and flail. Thomas ducked one fatigued upswing and this time planted his sword deftly in the comte’s armpit; the chain kept it from killing him, but he tore muscle, and the comte cried out.

He saw motion to his side.

The one with the axe had gotten closer.

He circled away from that man and tried to close again with the comte, but the Spaniard interposed himself.

“Hold!” he cried.

“What?” Thomas shouted.

“I will make sure the comte can continue.”

“The fight is on, man. There is no stopping it!”

“You will have your chance,” the Spaniard said regretfully, “but I will make sure his armor is not damaged so as to prevent him from defending himself. Because this would not be honorable.”

He took his time about checking the articulation of the injured man’s armor, giving him plenty of time to catch his breath. Several of
the squires and even the little page were shaking their heads at this, but it continued.

“If your lordship is quite ready,” Thomas called.

The younger man nodded.

The Spaniard stepped away and, before he lowered his baton, gave the young lord a look that said quite clearly he could expect no more indulgences.

It started.

When Thomas beat down the exhausted knight’s sword again, the man with the axe stepped too close for Thomas’s taste; he spun just in time to raise his sword at the man, who had indeed shifted his axe in preparation for a swing. The man shrugged as if to suggest he had no such intention, but it was obvious to everyone watching that he had been about to strike. Now Thomas’s former squire took that man by the shoulders and threw him down. The ignorant knight, seeing this, pushed Sir André away from the downed axe-man and drew his sword. André drew his in answer.

“Stop it!” the Spaniard barked, deeply ashamed, knowing that his lack of honor in defending his dead friend’s cowardly son was to blame for the disgrace this was becoming.

Before the axe-man could get up, Thomas had a moment of inspiration about how to deal both with him and with the problem of the comte’s armor. He kicked the downed soldier in the face, throwing his own sword out of reach and taking the heavier axe from the stunned man. He now rushed at the Comte d’Évreux, who, blinded by sweat and confused by all the motion, parried high, protecting his head, using his mailed palm to reinforce the blade near the point. He was right that the stroke would be heavy. He was wrong about where it would land. Thomas caught him squarely in the breastplate, his hips sunk into the blow; but the armor was Milanese, and, though it dimpled with a loud clang under the war axe, saved the outmatched comte’s life again. He fell backward onto his ass.

Thomas had no intention of giving the comte the time he would need to stand in that armor.

He circled now; it was only a matter of seconds before he would see the correct angle for the killing blow.

Chrétien, Comte d’Évreux, dug in with his heels to swivel on his ass, keeping his sword high to parry. The sword seemed to weigh as much as a small tree. The bearded cuckold had put the sun behind him and was about to kill him. With a whoring axe, as if he were a whoring capon. He tried to remember a prayer but couldn’t think of one.

The ignorant knight’s squire, who had stayed out of it until this moment, now saw his chance to earn the comte’s favor at no great risk to himself; he walked up behind Thomas and clubbed him in the head with the iron-capped back end of his poleaxe.

Thomas went to his knees.

Curiously, the man who hit him fell down, too.

Thomas looked at his former squire, who had been shouting at the ignorant knight. He stopped now and looked at Thomas, seeing he was in need of help. He started walking toward his former master, then stopped as if another thought had occurred to him.