The Red Knight

Chapter Two

Bad Tom

Harndon Palace – The Queen

Desiderata lay on the couch of her solar chewing new cherries and savouring the change in the air. Because – at last – spring had come. Her favourite season. After Lent would come Easter and then Whitsunday, and the season of picnics, of frolics by the river, or eating fresh fruit, wearing flowers, walking barefoot . . .

. . . and tournaments.

She sighed at the thought of tournaments. Behind her, Diota, her nurse, made a face. She could see the old woman’s disapproval in the mirror.

‘What? Now you frown if I sigh?’ she asked.

Diota straightened her back, putting a fist into it like a pregnant woman. Her free hand fingered the rich paternoster at her neck. ‘You sound like a whore pleasing a customer, mistress – if you’ll pardon the crudity of an old woman-’

‘Who’s known you all these years,’ the Queen completed the sentence. Indeed, she’d had Diota since she was weaned. ‘Do I? And what do you know about the sounds whores make, nurse?’

‘Now, my lady!’ Diota came forward, waggling a finger. Coming around the screen, she stopped as if she’d hit an invisible barrier. ‘Oh! By the Sweet Lord – put some clothes on, girl! You’ll catch your death! It’s not spring yet, morsel!’

The Queen laughed. She was naked in the new sunlight, her tawny skin flecked with the imperfections of the glass in her solar’s window, lying on the pale brown profusion of her hair. She drew something from the sunlight falling on her skin – something that made her glow from within.

Desiderata rose and stood at the mirror – the longest mirror in the Demesne, made just for her, so that she could examine herself from the high arches of her feet, up her long legs, past her hips and thighs and the deep recess of her navel to her breasts, her upright shoulders, her long and tapered neck, deep cut chin, a mouth made for kissing, long nose and wide grey eyes with lashes so long that sometimes she could lick them.

She frowned. ‘Have you seen the new lady in waiting? Emmota?’ she said.

Her nurse chuckled alongside her. ‘She’s a child.’

‘A fine figure. Her waist is thin as a rail.’ The Queen looked at herself with careful scrutiny.

Diota smacked her hip. ‘Get dressed, you hussy!’ she laughed. ‘You’re looking for compliments. She’s nothing to you, Miss. A child. No breasts.’ She laughed. ‘Every man says you are the beauty of the world,’ she added.

The Queen continued to look in the mirror. ‘I am. But for how long?’ She put her hands up over her head, arching her back as her chest rose.

Her nurse slapped her playfully. ‘Do you want the king to find you thus?’

Desiderata smiled at her woman. ‘I could say yes. I want him to find me just like this,’ she said. And then, her voice coloured with power, she said, ‘Or I could say I am as much myself, and as much the Queen, naked, as I am clothed.’

Her nurse took a step away.

‘But I won’t say any such thing. Bring me something nice. The brown wool gown that goes with my hair. And my golden belt.’

‘Yes, my lady.’ Diota nodded and frowned. ‘Shall I send some of your ladies to dress you?’

The Queen smiled and stretched, her eyes still on the mirror. ‘Send me my ladies,’ she said, and subsided back onto the couch in the solar.

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

At Ser Hugo’s insistence, the master archers had set up butts in the fields along the river.

Men grumbled, because they’d been ordered to curry their horses before turning in, and then, before the horses were cared for, they were ordered to shoot. They had ridden hard, for many long days, and there wasn’t a man or woman without dark circles under their eyes.

Bent, the eldest, an easterner, and Wilful Murder, fresh back from failing to find a murderer’s tracks with the huntsman, ordered the younger men to unload the butts, stuffed with old cloth or woven from straw, from the wagons.

‘Which it isn’t my turn,’ whined Kanny. ‘An’ why are you always picking on us?’ His words might have appeared braver, if he hadn’t waited until Bent was far away before saying them.

Geslin was the youngest man in the company, just fourteen, with a thin frame that suggested he’d never got much food as a boy, climbed one of the tall wagons and silently seized a target and tossed it down to Gadgee, an odd looking man with a swarthy face and foreign features.

Gadgee caught the target with a grunt, and started toward the distant field. ‘Shut up and do some work,’ he said.

Kanny spat. And moved very slowly towards a wagon that didn’t have any targets in it. ‘I’ll just look-’

Bad Tom’s archer, Cuddy, appeared out of nowhere and shoved him ungently towards the wagon where Geslin was readying a second target. ‘Shut up and do some work,’ he said.

He was slow enough that by the time he had his target propped up and ready for use, all nine of the other butts were ready as well. And there were forty archers standing a hundred paces distant, examining their spare strings and muttering about the damp.

Cuddy strung his bow with an economy of motion that belied long practice, and he opened the string that held the arrows he had in his quiver.

‘Shall I open the dance?’ he said.

He nocked, and loosed.

A few paces to his right, Wilful Murder, who fancied himself as good an archer as any man alive, drew and loosed a second later, contorting his body to pull the great war bow.

Bent put his horn to his lips and blew. ‘Cease!’ he roared. He turned to Cuddy. ‘Kanny’s still down range!’ he shouted at the master archer.

Cuddy grinned. ‘I know just where he is,’ he said. ‘So does Wilful.’

The two snickered as Kanny came from behind the central target, running as fast as his long, skinny legs would carry him.

The archers roared with laughter.

Kanny was spitting with rage and fear. ‘You bastard!’ he shouted at Cuddy.

‘I told you to work faster,’ Cuddy said mildly.

‘I’ll tell the captain!’ Kanny said.

Bent nodded. ‘You do that.’ He motioned. ‘Off you go.’

Kanny grew pale.

Behind him, the other archers walked up to their places, and began to loose.

The captain was late to the drill. He looked tired, and he moved slowly, and he leaned on the tall stone wall surrounding the sheepfold that Ser Hugh had converted to a tiltyard and watched the men-at-arms at practice.

Despite fatigue and the weight of plate and mail Ser George Brewes was on the balls of his feet, bouncing from guard to guard. Opposite him, his ‘companion’ in the language of the tilt yard, was the debonair Robert Lyliard, whose careful fighting style was the very opposite of the ostentatious display of his arms and clothes.

Brewes stalked Lyliard like a high-stepping panther, his pole-arm going from guard to guard – low, axe-head forward and right leg advanced, in the Boar’s Tooth; sweeping through a heavy up-cut to rest on his right shoulder like a woodcutter in the Woman’s Guard.

Francis Atcourt, thick waisted and careful, faced Tomas Durrem. Both were old soldiers, unknighted men-at-arms who had been in harness for decades. They circled and circled, taking no chances. The captain thought he might fall asleep watching them.

Bad Tom came and rested on the same wall, except that his head projected clear above the captain’s head. And even above the plume on his hat.

‘Care to have a go?’ Tom asked with a grin.

No one liked to spar with Tom. He hurt people. The captain knew that despite all the plate armour and padding and mail and careful weapon’s control, tiltyard contests were dangerous and men were down from duty all the time with broken fingers and other injuries. And that was without the sudden flares of anger men could get when something hurt, or became personal. When the tiltyard became the duelling ground.

The problem was that there was no substitute for the tiltyard, when it came to being ready for the real thing. He’d learned that in the east.

He looked at Tom. The man had a reputation. And he had dressed Tom down in public a day before.

‘What’s your preference, Ser Thomas?’ he asked.

‘Longsword,’ Bad Tom said. He put a hand on the wall and vaulted it, landed on the balls of his feet, whirled and drew his sword. It was his war sword – four feet six inches of heavy metal. Eastern made, with a pattern in the blade. Men said it was magicked.

The captain walked along the wall with no little trepidation. He went into the sheepfold through the gate, and Michael brought him a tilt helmet with solid mesh over the face and a heavy aventail.

Michael handed him his own war sword. It was five inches shorter than Bad Tom’s, plain iron hilted with a half-wired grip and a heavy wheel of iron for a pommel.

As Michael buckled his visor, John of Reigate, Bad Tom’s squire, put his helmet over his head.

Tom grinned while his faceplate was fastened. ‘Most loons mislike a little to-do wi’ me,’ he said. When Tom was excited, his hillman accent overwhelmed his Gothic.

The captain rolled his head to test his helmet, rotated his right arm to test his range of motion.

Men-at-arms were pausing, all over the sheepfold.

‘The more fool they,’ the captain said.

He’d watched Tom fight. Tom liked to hit hard – to use his godlike strength to smash through men’s guards.

His father’s master-at-arms, Hywel Writhe, used to say For good swordsmen, it’s not enough to win. They need to win their own way. Learn a man’s way, and he becomes predictable.

Tom rose from the milking stool he’d sat on to be armed and flicked his sword back and forth. Unlike many big men, Tom was as fast as the tomcat that gave him his name.

The captain didn’t strike a guard at all. He held his sword in one hand, the point actually trailing on the grass.

Tom whirled his blade up to the high Woman’s Guard, ready to cleave his captain in two.

‘Garde!’ he roared. The call echoed off the walls of the sheep fold and then from the high walls of the fortress above them.

The captain stepped, moved one foot off line, and suddenly he had his sword in two hands. Still trailing out behind him.

Tom stepped off-line, circling to the captain’s left.

The captain stepped in, his sword rising to make a flat cut at Tom’s head.

Tom slapped the sword down – a rabatter cut with both wrists, meant to pound an opponent’s blade into the ground.

The captain powered in, his back foot following the front foot forward. He let the force of Tom’s blow to his blade rotate it, his wrist the pivot – sideways and then under Tom’s blade.

He caught the point of his own blade in his left hand, and tapped it against Tom’s visor. His two handed grip and his stance put Tom’s life utterly in his hands.

‘One,’ he said.

Tom laughed. ‘Brawly feckit!’ he called.

He stepped back and saluted. The captain returned the salute and sidestepped, because Tom came for him immediately.

Tom stepped, then swept forward with a heavy downward cut.

The captain stopped it, rolling the blade well off to the side, but as fast as he could bring his point back on line, Tom was inside his reach-

And he was face down in sheep dip. His hips hurt, and now his neck hurt.

But to complain was not the spirit of the thing.

‘Well struck,’ he said, doing his best to bounce to his feet.

Tom laughed his wild laugh again. ‘Mine, I think,’ he said.

The captain had to laugh.

‘I was planning to chew on your toes,’ he said, and drew a laugh from the onlookers.

He saluted, Tom saluted, and they were on their guards again.

But they’d both shown their mettle, and now they circled – Tom looking for a way to force the action close, and the captain trying to keep him off with short jabs. Once, by thrusting with his whole sword held at the pommel, he scored on Tom’s right hand, and the other man flicked a short salute, as if to say ‘that wasn’t much’. And indeed, Ser Hugo stepped between them.

‘I don’t’ allow such trick blows, my lord,’ Hugh said. ‘It’d be a foolish thing to do in a melee.’

The captain had to acknowledge the truth of that assertion. He had been taught the Long Point with the advice never use this unless you are desperate. Even then-

The captain’s breath was coming in great gasps, while Tom seemed to be moving fluidly around the impromptu ring. Breathing well and easily. Of course, given his advantages in reach and size, he could control most aspects of the fight, and the captain was mostly running away to keep his distance.

The last five days of worry and stress sat as heavily on his shoulders as the weight of his tournament helm. And Tom was very good. There was really little shame in losing to him. So the captain decided he’d rather go down as a lion than a very tired lamb. And besides, it would be funny.

So – between one retreat and the next blow – he swayed his hips, rotated his feet so that his weight was back, and let go the sword’s hilt with his left hand. Eastern swordsmen called it ‘The Guard of One Hand’.

Tom swept in with another of his endless, heavy, sweeping blows. Any normal man would have exhausted himself with them. Not Tom. This one came from his right shoulder.

This time, the captain tried for a rebatter defence – his sword sweeping up, one handed, coming slightly behind Tom’s but cutting as fast as a falcon strikes its prey. He caught Tom’s sword and drove it faster along its intended path as he stepped slightly off-line and forward, surprising his companion. His free left hand shot out, and he punched Tom’s right wrist, and then his left hand was between the big man’s hands, and Tom’s aggressive pursuit of his elusive opponent carried him forward – the captain’s left hand went deeper, and he achieved the arm lock, and twisted, in complete possession of the man’s sword and shoulder-

And nothing happened. Tom was not rotated. In fact, Tom’s rush turned into a swing, and the captain found himself swinging off Tom’s elbow and the giant turned to the left, and again, and the captain couldn’t let go without tumbling to the ground.

His master-at-arms had never covered this situation.

Tom whirled him again, trying to shake him off. They were at a nasty impasse. The captain had Tom’s sword bound tight, and his elbow and shoulder in a lock too. But Tom had the captain’s feet off the ground.

The captain had his blade free – mostly free. He hooked his pommel into Tom’s locked arms, hoping it would give him the leverage to, well, to do what should have happened in the first place. The captain’s sense of how combat and the universe worked had received a serious jar.

But even with both hands-

Tom whirled him again, like a terrier breaking a rat’s neck.

Using every sinew of his not inconsiderable muscles, the captain pried his pommel between Tom’s arms and levered the blade over Tom’s head and grabbed the other side, letting his whole weight go onto the blade.

In effect, he fell, blade first, on Tom’s neck.

They both went down.

The captain lay in the sheep muck, with his eyes full of stars. And his breath coming like a blacksmith’s bellows.

Something under him was moving.

He rolled over, and found that he was lying entangled with the giant hillman, and the man was laughing.

‘You’re mad as a gengrit!’ Tom said. He rose out of the muck and smothered the captain in an embrace.

Some of the other men-at-arms were applauding.

Some were laughing.

Michael looked like he was going to cry. But that was only because he had to clean the captain’s armour, and the captain was awash in sheep dip.

When his helmet was off, he began to feel the new strain in his left side and the pain in his shoulder. Tom was right next to him.

‘You’re a loon,’ Tom said. He grinned. ‘A loon.’

With his helmet off, he could still only just breathe.

Chrys Foliack, another of the men-at-arms who had hitherto kept his distance from the captain, came and offered his hand. He grinned at Tom. ‘It’s like fighting a mountain, ain’t it?’ he asked.

The captain shook his head. ‘I’ve never-’

Foliack was a big man, handsome and red-headed and obviously well-born. ‘I liked the arm lock,’ he said. ‘Will you teach it?’

The captain looked around. ‘Not just this minute,’ he said.

That got a laugh.

Harndon Palace – The King

The king was in armour, having just trounced a number of his gentlemen on the tilt field, when his constable, Alexander, Lord Glendower – an older man with a scar that ran from his right eyebrow, all the way across his face, cleaving his nose from right to left so deeply as to make most men he met wince – and then down across his face to his mouth, so that his beard had a ripple in it where the scar had healed badly, and he always looked as if he was sneering – approached with a red-haired giant at his back.

Glendower’s scar couldn’t have suited a man worse as he was, as far as the king was concerned, the best of companions, a man little given to sneering and much to straight talk unlaced by flattery or temper. His patience with his soldiers was legendary.

‘My lord, I think you know Ranald Lachlan, who has served you two years as a man-at arms.’ He bowed, and extended an arm to the red-bearded man, who was obviously a hillman – red hair, facial scarring, piercing blue eyes like steel daggers, and two ells of height unhidden by the hardened steel plate armour and red livery of the Royal Guard.

Ranald bowed deeply.

The king reached out and clasped his hand. ‘I’m losing you,’ he said warmly. ‘The sight of your great axe always made me feel safe,’ he laughed.

Ranald bowed again. ‘I promised Lord Glendower and Sir Ricard two years when I signed my mark,’ the hillman said. ‘I’m needed at home, for the spring drive.’

Sir Ricard Fitzroy, so indicated, was the captain of the guard.

‘Your brother is the Drover, I know,’ the king said. ‘It’s a troubled spring, Ranald. Alba will be safer if your axe is guarding beeves in the hills, rather than guarding the king, safe in Harndon. Eh?’

Ranald shrugged, embarrassed. ‘There’ll be fighting, I ha’e na’ doot,’ he admitted. Then he grinned. ‘I have no doubt, my lord.’

The king nodded. ‘When the drive is over?’ he asked.

‘Oh, I have reason to come back,’ he said with a grin. ‘My lord. With your leave. But my brother needs me, and there are things-’

Every man present knew that the things Ranald Lachlan wanted involved the Queen’s secretary, Lady Almspend – not an heiress, precisely. But a pretty maid with a fair inheritance. A high mark for a King’s Guardsman, commonly born.

The king leaned close. ‘Come back, Ranald. She’ll wait.’

‘I pray she does,’ he whispered.

The king turned to his constable. ‘See that this man’s surcoat and kit are well stored; I grant him leave, but I do not grant him quittance from my service.’

‘My lord!’ the man replied.

The king grinned. ‘Now get going. And come back with some tales to tell.’

Ranald bowed again, as ceremony demanded, and walked from the king’s presence to the guardroom, where he embraced a dozen close friends, drank a farewell cup of wine, and handed the Steward his kit – his maille hauberk and his good cote of plates beautifully covered in the royal scarlet; his two scarlet cotes with matching hoods, for wear at court, and his hose of scarlet cloth. His tall boots of scarlet leather, and his sword belt of scarlet trimmed in bronze.

He had on a doublet of fustian, dark hose of a muddy brown, and over his arm was his three-quarter’s tweed cloak.

The Steward, Radolf, listed his kit on his inventory and nodded. ‘Nicely kept, messire. And your badge . . .’ the king’s badge was a white heart with a golden collar, and the badges were cunningly fashioned of silver and bronze and enamel. ‘The king expressly stated you was to keep yours, as on leave and not quit the guard.’ He handed the badge back.

Ranald was touched. He took the brooch and pinned his cloak with it. The badge made his tweed look shabby and old.

Then he walked out of the fortress and down into the city of Harndon, without a backwards glance. Two years, war and peril, missions secret and diplomatic, and the love of his life.

A hillman had other loyalties.

Down into the town that grew along the river’s curves. From the height of the fortress, the town was dominated by the bridge over the Albin, the last bridge before the broad and winding river reached the sea thirty leagues farther south. On the far side of the bridge, to the north, lay Bridgetown – part and not part of the great city of Harndon. But on this side, along the river, the city ran from the king’s fortress around the curve, with wharves and peers at the riverside, merchants’ houses, streets of craftsmen in houses built tall and thin to save land.

He walked down the ramp, leading his two horses past the sentries – men he knew. More hand clasps.

He walked along Flood Street, past the great convent of St Thomas and the streets of the Mercers and Goldsmiths, and down the steep lanes past the Founders and the Blacksmiths, to the place where Blade Lane crossed with Armour Street, at the sign of the broken circle.

The counter was only as wide as two broad-built men standing side by side, but Ranald looked around, because the Broken Circle made the finest weapons and armour in the Demesne, and there were always things there to be seen. Beautiful things – even to a hillman. Today was better than many days – a dozen simple helmets stood on the counter, all crisp and fine, with high points and umbers to shade the eye, the white work fine and neat, the finish almost mirror bright, the metal blue-white, like fine silver.

And these were simple archer’s helmets.

There was an apprentice behind the counter, a likely young man with arms like the statues of the ancient men and legs to match. He grinned and bobbed his head and went silently through the curtain behind him to fetch his master.

Tad Pyel was the master weapon smith of the land. The first Alban to make the hardened steel. He was a tall man with a pleasant round face and twenty loyal apprentices to show that the mild disposition was not just in his face. He emerged, wiping his hands on his apron.

‘Master Ranald,’ he said. ‘Here for your axe, I have no doubt.’

‘There was some talk of a cote, of maille as well,’ Ranald added.

‘Oh,’ Tad nodded absently to his apprentice. ‘Oh, as to that – Continental stuff. Not my make. But yes, we have it ready for you.’

Edward, the apprentice, was shifting a wicker basket from the back, and Ranald opened the lid and looked at the river of gleaming mail, every ring riveted with a wedge so small that most of the rings looked as if they’d been forged entire. It was as fine as the hauberk he’d worn as a King’s Man.

‘This for thirty leopards?’ Ranald asked.

‘Continental stuff,’ the master replied. He didn’t actually sniff, but the sniff was there. Then the older man smiled, and held out a heavy pole with the ends wrapped in sacking. ‘This would cut it as a sharp knife cuts an apple.’

Ranald took it in his hands, and was filled with as sweet a feeling as the moment that a man discovers he is in love – that the object of his affection returns his feelings.

Edward cut the lashings on the sacking, revealing a sharp steel spike on one end, ferruled in heavy bronze, balancing an axe blade at the other end – a narrow crescent of bright steel, as long as a man’s forearm, ending in a wicked point and armed with a vicious back-hook. All balanced like a fine sword, hafted in oak, with steel lappets to guard against sword cuts.

It was a hillman’s axe – but incomparably finer, made by a master and not by a travelling smith at a fair.

Ranald couldn’t help himself, and he whirled it between his hands, the blade cutting the air and the tip not quite brushing the plaster of the low room.

Edward flattened himself against the wall, and the master nodded, satisfied.

‘The one you brought me was a fine enough weapon,’ the master said. ‘Country made, but a well-made piece. But the finish,’ he winced. And shrugged. ‘And I thought that the balance could be improved.’

The spike in the butt of the haft was as long as a knight’s dagger, wickedly sharp and three-sided.

Ranald just smiled in appreciation.

The master added two scabbards – a sheath of wood covered in fine red leather for the axe, and another to match for the spike.

Ranald counted down a hundred silver leopards – a sizeable portion of two years’ pay. He looked admiringly at the helmets on the counter.

‘They’re spoken for,’ the master said, catching his eye. ‘And none of them would fit your noggin, I’m thinking. Come back in winter when my work is slow, and I’ll make you a helmet you could wear to fight a dragon.’

The air seemed to chill.

‘Naming calls,’ Edward said, crossing himself.

‘Don’t know what made me say that,’ said the master. He shook his head. ‘But I’d make you a helmet.’

Ranald carried his new maille out to his pack horse, who was not as fond of it as he was, resenting the weight and the re-packing of the panniers it necessitated. He came back for the axe, and put it lovingly into the straps on his riding horse, close to hand. No one watching doubted that he’d handle it a dozen more times before he was clear of the suburbs. Or that he’d stop and use it on the first bush he found growing by the road.

‘You ride today, then,’ the master said.

Ranald nodded. ‘I’m needed in the north,’ he said. ‘My brother sent for me.’

The weapon smith nodded. ‘Send him my respects, then, and the sele of the day on you.’

The hillman embraced the cutler, stepped through the door, and walked his horses back up the old river bank.

He stopped in the chapel of Saint Thomas, and knelt to pray, his eyes down. Above him, the saint was martyred by soldiers – knights in the Royal Livery. The scene made him uncomfortable.

He bought a pie from a ragged little girl by the Bridge Gate, and then he was away.

Harndon City – Edward

‘There goes a fearsome man,’ said the master to his apprentice. ‘I’ve known a few. And yet as gentle as a lady. A better knight than many who wear spurs.’

Edward was too smitten with hero-worship to comment.

‘And where’s our daring mercer?’ asked the master.

‘Late, your worship,’ said his apprentice.

Tad shook his head. ‘That boy would be late to his own funeral,’ he said, but his voice suggested he had nothing but praise for the mercer. ‘Pack the helmets in straw and take them round to Master Random’s house, will you, Ned?’

No matter how kind your master is, there’s no apprentice who doesn’t relish a trip beyond the Ward. ‘May I have a penny to buy baskets?’

Master Thaddeus put coins in his hand. ‘Wish I’d made him a helmet,’ he said. ‘Where’d the thought of a dragon come from?’

Harndon Palace – the Queen

Desiderata sat primly on an ivory stool in the great hall, its stucco walls lined with the trophies taken by a thousand brave knights – the heads of creatures greater and smaller, and a very young dragon’s head, fully the size of a horse, filling the northern wall beneath the stained glass window like a boat hull protruding from the sea. To her, it never quite looked the same way twice, that dragon – but it was huge.

She sat peeling a winter apple with a silver knife. Her hair was a halo of brown and red and gold around her – a carefully planned effect, as she sat in the pool of light thrown by the king’s beloved rose window. Her ladies sat around her, skirts spread like pressed flowers on the clean checkerboard marble floor, and a dozen of the younger knights – the very ones who should have been tilting in the tilt yard, or crossing swords with the masters – lounged against the walls. One, the eldest of them by half a dozen years and some fighting, was called ‘Hard Hands’ for his well-known feat of killing a creature of the Wild with a single blow of his fist. It was a story he often told.

The Queen disliked men who boasted. She made it her business to know who was worthy and who was not – indeed, she viewed it as her sacred role. She loved to find the shy ones – the brave men who told no one of their deeds. She thought less of the braggarts. Especially when they sat in her hall and flirted with her ladies. She had just determined to punish the man when the king came in.

He was plainly dressed, in arming clothes, he smelled like horses and armour and sweat, and she wrapped herself around him and his smell as if they were newly wed. He smiled down into her face and kissed her nose.

‘I love it when you do that,’ he said.

‘You should practise your tilting more often, then,’ she said, holding his arm. Behind the king, Ser Driant stood rubbing his neck, and behind him, Ser Alan, and the constable, Lord Glendower. She laughed. ‘Did you defeat these poor knights?’

‘Defeat?’ asked Driant. He laughed ruefully. ‘I was crushed like a bug in an avalanche, my lady. His Grace has a new horse that’s bigger than a dragon.’

Ser Alan shrugged. ‘I was unhorsed, yes, lady.’ He looked at Ser Driant and frowned. ‘I think it rude to suggest the king’s horse rolled you on the sand,’ he said.

Driant laughed again. He was not a man who stayed downcast for long. ‘There’s a great deal of me to hit the ground,’ he said, ‘and that ground is still frozen.’ He rubbed his neck again, peering past the Queen to her ladies sitting with their knights. ‘And you lads – where were you when the blows were being dealt and received?’

Hard Hands nodded appreciatively. ‘Right here in the warm hall, basking in the beauty of the Queen and all these fair flowers,’ he said. ‘What man goes voluntarily to fight on frozen ground?’

The king frowned. ‘A man preparing for war?’ he asked quietly.

Hard Hands looked about him for support. He’d mistaken the bantering tone of conversation for permission to banter with the king.

The Queen smiled to see him humbled so swiftly.

‘Out beyond the walls are creatures who would crack your armour to eat what lies within – or to drink your soul,’ said the king, and his voice rang through the hall as he walked beneath the rows of heads. ‘And alone of these fair flowers, Ser knight, you know the truth of what I say. You have faced the Wild.’ The king was not the tallest man in the room or the handsomest. But when he spoke like this, no other man could compare.

Hard Hands looked at the floor and bit his lip in frustration. ‘I sought only to entertain, Sire. I beg your pardon.’

‘Seek my pardon in the Wild,’ the king said. ‘Bring me three heads and I will be content to watch you flirt with the Queen’s ladies. Bring me five heads and you may flirt with the Queen.’

If you dare, she thought.

The king grinned, stopped by the younger man and clapped a hand on his shoulder. Hard Hands stiffened.

He did not want to leave the court. It was plain to see.

The king put his lips close to Hard Hand’s ear, but the Queen heard his words. She always did.

‘Three heads,’ the king whispered through the smile on his lips. ‘Or you will stay in your castle and be branded faithless and craven.’

The Queen watched the effect on her ladies and held her peace. Hard Hands was quite a popular man. Lady Mary, who was known as ‘Hard Heart’ had been heard to say that perhaps his hands were not so very hard, after all. Seated nearest to the Queen, she pursed her lips and set her mouth, determined not to show the Queen her hurt. Behind this vignette, the king waved to his squires and set off up the main stairs to his arming room.

When the king was gone, Desiderata sat back down on her stool and picked up her sewing – an arming shirt for the king. Her ladies gathered round. They felt her desire and closed themselves against the younger knights, who looked to Hard Hands for leadership. Or had. Now they were disconsolate at losing their leader. They left with the sort of loud demonstration that young men make when socially disadvantaged, and the Queen laughed.

Hard Hands stopped in the arch of the main door and looked back. He met her eye, and his anger carried clearly across the sun beams that separated them.

‘I will come back!’ he shouted.

The other young men looked afraid at his outburst, and pushed him out the door.

‘Perhaps,’ purred the Queen. She smiled, much like a cat with a tiny piece of tail sticking out between its teeth.

The ladies knew that smile. They were silent, and the wisest hung their heads in real, or well-feigned, contrition, but she saw through all of them.

‘Mary,’ said the Queen gently. ‘Did you let Hard Hands into your bed?’

Mary, sometimes called Hard Heart, met her eye. ‘Yes, my lady.’

The Queen nodded. ‘Was he worthy?’ she asked. ‘Answer me true.’

Mary bit her lip. ‘Not today, my lady.’

‘Perhaps not ever – eh? Listen, all of you,’ she said, and she bent her head to her ladies. ‘Emmota – you are latest amongst us. By what signs do you know a knight worthy to be your lover?’

Emmota was not yet fully grown to her womanhood – fourteen years old. Her face was narrow without being pinched and a clear intelligence shone in her eyes. She was nothing next to the Queen, and yet, the Queen admitted to herself, the girl had something.

But in this instant, her wits deserted her, and she blushed and said nothing.

The Queen smiled at her, as she was always tender for the lost and the confounded. ‘Listen, my dear,’ she said softly. ‘Love only those worthy of your love. Love those who love themselves, and love all around them. Love the best – the best in arms, the first in the hall, the finest harpist, and the best chess player. Love no man for what he owns, but only for what he does.’

She smiled at all of them. And then pounced. ‘Are you pregnant, Mary?’

Mary shook her head. ‘I did not allow him that liberty, my lady.’

The Queen reached out and took Mary’s hand. ‘Well done. Ladies, remember – we award our love to those who deserve us. And our bodies are an even greater prize than our love – especially to the young.’ She looked at each in turn. ‘Who does not yearn for the strong yet tender embrace? Who does not sigh for skin soft as fine leather over muscles as hard as wood? But get with child-’ she locked eyes with Mary, ‘-and they will call you a whore. And you may die, bearing that bastard. Or worse, perhaps; find yourself living meanly, rearing his bastard child, while he rides to glory.’ She looked at the window. ‘If you are not locked away in a convent.’

Emmota raised her head. ‘But what of love?’ she asked.

‘Make your love a reward, not a raw emotion,’ the Queen said. ‘Any two rutting animals feel the emotion, child. Here, we are only interested in what is best. Rutting is not best. Do you understand?’

The girl swallowed carefully. ‘Yes, I think so,’ she said. ‘But then – why would we ever lie with any man?’

The Queen laughed aloud. ‘Artemis come to earth! Why, because it is for the love of us that they face terror, girl! Do you think it is some light thing to ride out into the Wild? To sleep with the Wild, eat with it, live with it? To face it and fight it and kill it?’ The Queen leaned down until her nose almost touched the sharp point of Emmota’s nose. ‘Do you think they do it for the good of humanity, my dear? Perhaps the older ones – the thoughtful ones. They face the dangers for us all because they have seen the alternative.’ She shook her head. ‘But the young ones face the foe for just one thing – to be deemed worthy of you, my dear. And you control them. When you let a knight into your lap you reward him for his courage. His prowess. His worth. You must judge that it has been earned. Yes? You understand?’

Emmota gazed into the eyes of her Queen with worship. ‘I understand,’ she said.

‘The Old Men – the Archaics of long ago – they asked “Who shall guard the guardians?”’ The Queen looked around. ‘We shall, ladies. We choose the best of them. We may also choose to punish the worst. Hard Hands was not deserving, and the king found him out. We should have known first – should we not? Did none of you suspect he was merely a braggart? Did none of you wonder where his prowess lay, that he made no show or trial of it?’

Mary burst into tears. ‘I protest, madame.’

The Queen gave her a small embrace. ‘I relent. He is a good man-at-arms. Let him go prove it to the king. And prove himself worthy of you.’

Mary curtsied.

The Queen nodded, and rose to her feet. ‘I go to attend the king. Think of this. It is our duty. Love – our love – is no light thing. It is be the crown of glory, available to the best and only the best. It should be hard won. Think on it.’

She listened to them she went up the stairs – broad marble stairs of that the Old Men had wrought. They didn’t giggle, which pleased her.

The king was in the Arming Room, with two squires – Simon and Oggbert, as like as two peas in a pod, with matching freckles and matching pimples. He was down to his shirt and his hose and his braes. His leg harnesses still lay on the floor having been removed, and each squire held a vambrace, wiping them down with chamois.

She smiled radiantly at them. ‘Begone,’ she said.

They fled, as adolescent boys do when faced with beautiful women.

The king sat back on his bench. ‘Ah! I see I have won your esteem!’ he grinned, and for a moment he was twenty years younger.

She knelt and undid a garter. ‘You are the king. You, and you alone, need never win my esteem.’

He watched her unbuckle the other garter. She buckled the two of them together and placed his leg harnesses together on a table behind her, and then, without hurry, she sat in his lap and put her arms around his neck and kissed him until she felt him stir.

And then she rose to her feet and unlaced her gown. She did it methodically, carefully, without taking her eyes off him.

He watched her the way a wolf watches a lamb.

The gown fell away leaving her kirtle – a sheath of tight silk from ankle to neck.

The king rose. ‘Anyone might come in here,’ he said into her hair.

She laughed. ‘What care I?’

‘On your head be it, lady,’ he said, and produced a knife. He pressed the flat of the point against the skin of her neck and kissed her, and then cut the lace of her kirtle from neck to waist, the knife so sharp that the laces seemed to fall away, and his cut so careful that the blade never touched her skin through the linen shift beneath it.

She laughed into his kiss. ‘I love it when you do that,’ she said. ‘You owe me a lace. A silk one.’ Her long fingers took the knife from him. She stepped back and cut the straps of her shift at her shoulders and it fell away and she stabbed the knife into the top of the table so that it stuck.

He rid himself of his shirt and braes with more effort and far less elegance, and she laughed at him. And then they were together.

When they were done, she lay on his chest. Some of his hair was grey. She played with it.

‘I am old,’ he said.

She wriggled atop him. ‘Not so very old,’ she said.

‘I owe you more than a kirtle lace of silk,’ he said.

‘Really?’ she asked, and rose above him. ‘Never mind the shift, love – Mary will replace the straps in an hour.’

‘I was not being so literal. I owe you my life. I owe you – my continued interest in this endless hell that is kingship.’ He grunted.

She looked down. ‘Endless hell – but you love it. You love it.’

The king pulled her down and hid his face in her hair. ‘Not as much as I love you.’

‘What is it?’ she asked, playing with his beard. ‘You are plagued by something . . . ?’

He sighed. ‘One of my favourite men left me today. Ranald Lachlan. Because he has to make himself a fortune in order to wed your Lady Almspend.’

She smiled. ‘He is a worthy man, and he will prove himself or die trying.’

The king sighed. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But by God, woman, I was tempted to give him a bag of gold and a knighthood to keep him by me.’

‘And you would have deprived him of the glory of earning his way,’ she said.

He shrugged and said, ‘It is good that one of us is an idealist.’

‘If you are in a giving mood,’ she said, ‘might we have a tournament?’

The king was a strong man with a fighter’s muscles, and he sat up despite her weight on his chest. ‘A tournament. By God, lady – is that what this was in aid of?’

She grinned at him. ‘Was it so bad?’

He shook his head. ‘I should be very afraid, were you to decide to do something I didn’t fancy, inside that pretty head. Yes, of course we can have a tournament. But the wrong men always win, and the town’s a riot for a week, and the castle’s a mess, you, my dear, are a mess, and I have to arrest men whose only crime was to drink too much. All that, for your whim?’ He laughed.

Desiderata laughed, throwing her head back, and she read his desire in his eyes. ‘Yes!’ she said. ‘All that for my whim.’

He laughed with her. And then frowned. ‘And there are the rumours from the north,’ he said.

‘Rumours?’ she asked. Knowing full well what they were – war and worse in the northlands, and incursions from the Wild. It was her business to know them.

The king shrugged. ‘Never mind, love. We shall have a tournament, but it may have to wait until after the spring campaign.’

She clapped her hands. Spring was, at last, upon them.