The Tournament of Blood (31 page)

She couldn’t watch. As if some premonition warned her, she closed her eyes and covered them, praying as the lances lowered and the two men aimed their weapons at each other.

A sudden silence in the crowds, as if all were holding their breath. Then the appalling din of the collision.

It was like an anvil being struck with a large, flat-headed hammer, then a thousand horseshoes hurled onto a sheet of steel. A sigh went up from some people in the audience, while from others
there was a hoarse cry of cruel delight.

And opening her eyes she saw that her husband was fallen. Even as she felt the disappointment grip at her throat, Alice realised that something was very wrong. Usually a man would struggle to
regain his feet, would roll to clamber to his hands and knees preparatory to levering himself upwards. That was what William was doing, raising himself upwards and tugging at his vizor.

But Geoffrey remained lying on his back, and her fists rose to her mouth as if to smother a scream.

A herald was cantering towards his body. It was the man Odo. Alice had met him earlier during the procession, but now her attention only registered him in passing. She was staring in horror and
terror at her man.

Odo rode to Geoffrey and swung down from his mount with both feet out of the stirrups. He landed before the horse had fully halted, and darted to Geoffrey’s side. All men-at-arms knew that
the first thing to do was to let the poor fellow breathe.

The helmet was a complicated one and it took some time to work loose the hinged clips. Then he lifted away the vizor and was about to begin to pat Geoffrey’s face and try to waken him,
when he stopped. Beneath the neck of Geoffrey’s tunic there was a blossoming crimson stain. ‘Jesus!’ Odo muttered in shock. Then, ‘Someone find a priest and a physician.
Quickly!’

In the distance he thought he heard a woman wailing, but he had no time to concern himself over the feelings of a girl. He busied himself with the squire’s armour, ignoring the slow
movement towards him from the stands. There was nothing new in a crowd wanting to see the dead victim of a bout.

Edith smothered her cry as she saw William fall. Her heart
literally
stopped. She was
literally
frozen with horror. She’d never felt like this before.
It was
terrible
. She couldn’t believe it. Her William, poor William was
dead
.

Without further thought, she darted from the
ber frois
and ran through the loungers who stood contemplating the scene. ‘Oh, William,’ she cried.

He knelt dazedly, his vizor open, but bent after the impact. It must have been hard for him to focus, from the way he peered about him. ‘My head . . . Is he all right?’

‘I don’t know. Oh William, I was so scared you had been killed,’ Edith said and burst into tears, dropping to her knees at his side to the delight of the throng about them.

William spat blood. When he hit the ground the jolt had slammed his jaw closed and a tooth had snapped. He wanted to rinse his mouth. ‘You didn’t bring any wine, did you?’ he
asked plaintively.

Odo gestured for the other heralds to help and pushed men back. ‘Give him space. Do you want to kill him? Give him space!’

The muttering groups of men withdrew unwillingly and Odo was pleased to see Mark Tyler leading a dark-clothed physician towards him.

‘How is he?’ the physician asked.

‘I don’t know. He looks dreadful and he snores like a sleeping man. There’s blood here and . . .’

Odo withdrew as the physician crouched and began his examination. A hand caught at his shoulder.

‘Sir, will he die?’

‘Lady Alice, I do not know,’ he replied heavily. ‘He took a bad fall.’

‘He can’t die. He
mustn’t
!’ Alice declared, distraught.

‘Your husband is in God’s hands,’ Odo told her compassionately.

‘Geoffrey!’ Alice wailed, and fainted.

Odo caught her, but as he looked about him, he saw only the shocked expression on Squire William’s face.

Edith had seen her father’s eye on her as she wept at the side of her lover. There was no concealing her feelings and she hadn’t even considered his, but now she
was worried that he would have something to say about her rushing to William’s side. Probably quite a lot, she feared.

Even though she was convinced he was being unreasonable about William, she hated upsetting him; she loved him too much to see him sad. The trouble was, he didn’t seem to realise she was a
woman now, not some baby. Christ Jesus! Edith was old enough to wed and bear children. How much
more
proof did he need?

Margaret and Baldwin were approaching her now. Edith had waited while William was given some wine, then helped away. Geoffrey had been removed from his armour and carried off on a stretcher, and
now Edith stood in a thinning crowd desperately trying to avoid glancing in her father’s direction. She knew what she would see in his eyes: angry confusion at her behaviour, and hurt.

Baldwin would make a good father, she thought. Solemn, true, but understanding. He had been around the world, seen cities, met strange foreign people; when he was young he had joined the last
Crusade, Simon told her once. He was old, she thought critically. Someone so ancient was practically in the grave, although she could understand why Jeanne found him attractive. He had something
about him, especially with that scar on his cheek. It added a sort of hint of danger.

Even as the word sprang into her mind she recalled the terror she had felt on seeing her champion on the grass. Ah, it was such a relief when he moved. If he had been killed, she would have died
too. At the least she must have swooned, overcome with emotion like that other girl. And Edith’s love for her dead champion would have become common knowledge, and men and women all over
Europe would have heard about her fidelity, and minstrels would have sung about her and her William.

It was a lovely thought, and made her quite light-headed. If she could be sure that she would die on his death, she must surely be in love. It was consoling – and sustaining.

Inspired by this to a spirit of rebellion, she met her mother’s eye boldly, but when she saw Margaret’s sad expression, she felt her resolve melting. She hated hurting her mother.
Sometimes she did so when her temper flared, but she always regretted it even when she couldn’t bring herself to apologise.

Margaret merely said, ‘Do you love him?’

Edith felt her composure crack like glass. ‘Of course I do, Mother.’

‘Then,’ Margaret sighed, ‘if you are sure, we shall have to convince your father.’

Sir Edmund had left his pavilion with a distinct sense of grievance. His mail had gained a faint dusting of rust where it had been insufficiently oiled and there was a rip in
his tunic that had not been mended. Both should have been dealt with by his squire, but Andrew was nowhere to be seen. Usually Sir Edmund would not mind, but today he was tense after seeing Lady
Helen Basset last night.

She was as beautiful as ever, he reflected. The thought that she had married that brutish man of hers was enough to make him want to puke; the idea that he would be pawing at her body after she
left Edmund made him shudder with jealousy and disgust. Andrew had led her away, protecting her from unwanted attention, and now Edmund desperately wanted to speak to Andrew, to hear what he
thought of her attitude, but he was nowhere to be seen. Where in hell’s name had he got to! Andrew was a good man generally, an experienced fighter and loyal servant, but recently he had
become quite lax. Sir Edmund wasn’t sure why, but thought it was since they had come down here to Devon after Boroughbridge. In fact, now he thought about it, it was ever since Andrew had met
Odo the Herald at the feast. Afterwards Sir Edmund often saw Andrew eyeing the herald with many a sidelong glance.

Sir Edmund had met Andrew in Béarn at a tournament, shortly after Sir Edmund had fled England to seek his fortune. Being beaten by Sir John had ruined him and he needed to win some
tournaments and accumulate some money. With neither horse nor resources, he found himself watching other knights fighting in the lists, unable to participate. He had no armour, no squire,
nothing.

It was there that he also met Sir Roland de le Puy, a cheery old man who saw his gloom and offered to loan his own horse and armour. Unable to believe his fortune, Sir Edmund accepted with
alacrity. But he needed a squire, a man on whom he could trust to protect him. He found Andrew – and after that, the two had travelled widely through France and the English King’s
territories, visiting all the tournaments. Within a year they had won for themselves more than forty Knights Bachelor and one Count. The ransoms made them wealthy and led to their being noticed by
others. Soon they had a new lord, a vassal of Earl Thomas, and when they returned to England it was only natural that they should in their turn become vassals to him.

Ever since, even after the disaster at Boroughbridge, Andrew had been a perfect servant, but recently he had grown slack, as though losing interest. Sir Edmund hoped he had not become
over-religious. It happened sometimes that a man who had lived too long in the secular world could seek to hide himself in a convent. Sir Edmund knew that well enough himself – but he hoped
Andrew wasn’t heading that way. A good squire was hard to find. Still, the fellow would have to be told to mend his ways. Sir Edmund could not tolerate having his own schedule dictated by his
squire’s. Sir Edmund left his archer oiling his armour, muttering rebelliously, and strode purposefully towards the jousting.

Entering the field, he had to stand back while a pair of galloping men-at-arms shot past, great clods of mud and grass thrown up by their mounts as the riders whooped and cheered them on. Sir
Edmund cast an eye over his light velvet tunic to make sure no dirt had been flung upon him, then carried on to the stands in the middle of the field.

As another pair of opposing riders hurtled towards each other, he looked over the field for his man. He was not at either end where the racks stood filled with lances. At each were huddles of
squires waiting to pass fresh ones to their friends. There was a lot of laughing and joking in the fair-day atmosphere but Sir Edmund’s face was not softened by the sounds of other
people’s enjoyment. He had seen Sir John.

The last time they had met in a tournament was when Sir Edmund had been unfairly captured. Sir John had not been a part of the
mêlée
but he had joined in for profit. And as
a result, more people had died. Sir Edmund could have saved some if he had been able to keep Sir Walter off Sir Richard. He had seen the hooves flailing, had seen the bodies.

He was at the side of the stand now, and a trembling in the ground made him halt. Any man who had fought in a battle would recognise that brutal drumming: warhorses. Over his shoulder he could
see the first one approaching, gradually building up speed, lance held point high, so that the unwieldy weapon was balanced vertically. That was the trouble with lances, as Sir Edmund knew. The
things were long and heavy, impossible to hold on target from a bouncing saddle, so they could only be lowered at the last moment.

This fellow was experienced. His point was still up as his horse cantered on, although it had dropped halfway to the horizontal by the time he entered the enclosed fighting area. Once there, it
kept falling until the rear end slipped beneath his armpit and the whole massy pole was pointing at his enemy. Sir Edmund held his breath, waiting for the inevitable crash of metal on metal, and
sure enough there it was, a terrible hammer stroke that almost seemed to explode inside his ear drums. Then the audience were clapping, one or two drunks roaring their approval, and a riderless
horse cantered past Sir Edmund, stirrups flying. A mounted herald overtook it and snatched at the reins to hold it before it could enter the tented area and cause havoc.

Meanwhile, Sir Edmund could see that in the lists heralds and squires were running to the assistance of the fallen man. There were enough people there. One more would just get in the way, Sir
Edmund thought philosophically.

Where
was
Andrew? He cast a careful look over all the spectators, but the squire was not there. He walked along between the stands to the other end, but there was no sign of him there
either. This was growing slightly worrying. Andrew could have gone to visit the town, but he usually asked permission, as he should, before leaving his master. Besides, Andrew was a keen martial
artist and would not miss an opportunity to watch fighting.

There was laughter and giggling from the riverbank. Sir Edmund wondered whether Andrew could have found a woman, and headed towards the sound. There was thick gorse lining the bank except at the
ford which Baldwin had used, but in a clearing Sir Edmund glimpsed a young woman with her man, a youth little more than a boy. He left them and continued along the bank, listening to the soothing
noise of the water. The jousting appeared to have ended for a space.

A flash of blue gleamed to his right and he turned in time to see a kingfisher dart up to a branch, a streak of silver gripped in its beak. Sir Edmund admired the silken beauty of the creature,
thinking that he should catch and kill one, and use the feathers for decoration on his hat. Idly he wondered how he could trap one. Probably easiest would be to pay some peasant to spread birdlime
on branches along this stretch of river.

It was while he mused on the feasibility of capturing and killing the bird that he noticed the rooks squabbling. His attention was caught by the pair as they hopped down and pecked among the
tall fronds of ferns that lined the bank farther away. At first he watched without interest, but then a grim conviction began to form in Sir Edmund’s mind and he slowly made his way to
them,

The sight that met his eyes when he pulled the foliage aside and first saw the blindly staring face was in some ways a relief.

At least it wasn’t Andrew, he thought with a sigh.

Simon squatted before the body. After the shock of seeing his daughter with Squire William, it was another shock to see Sachevyll’s ruined body.