The Red Knight

‘You have a gift for it that must have won you many admirers,’ he said gallantly.

She struck the back of his hand with her fan. ‘Back in the ancient times when I was young, you mean?’

‘Like all beautiful women, you seek to make an insult of my flattery,’ he returned.

‘Stand here. Everyone can see us here.’ She nodded to Father Henry, who was standing hesitantly between the chapel and the steps to the Great Hall.

The captain thought that the man was a-boil with hostility. A year ago, the captain, in one of his first acts on taking command, had executed a murderer in the company – an archer who had started to kill his comrades for their loot. Torn had been a non-descript man, an outlaw. The captain eyed the priest. He had something of the same look. It wasn’t really a look. A feel. A smell.

‘Father Henry, I don’t believe that you’ve been properly introduced to the captain.’ She smiled, and her eyes flashed – a glimpse of the woman she had been, who knew that a flash of her eyes would restore any admirer to obedience. A predator who liked to play with her food.

Father Henry offered a long hand to shake. It was moist and cold. ‘The Bourc, his men call him,’ he said. ‘Do you have a name you prefer?’

The captain was so used to dealing with petty hostility that it took a moment to register. He turned his full attention on the priest.

The Abbess shook her head and pushed the priest by the elbow. ‘Never mind. I will speak to you later. Begone, ser. You are dismissed.’

‘I am a priest of God,’ he said. ‘I go where I will, and have no master here.’

‘You haven’t met Bad Tom,’ the captain said.

‘You have a familiar look about you,’ Father Henry added. ‘Do I know your parents?’

‘I’m a bastard, which you’ve already found cause to mention,’ the captain said. ‘Twice, man of God.’

The priest withstood his glare. But his eyes were as full of movement as a man dancing on coals. After too long a pause, the priest turned on his heel and walked away.

‘You go to great lengths to hide your heredity,’ the Abbess noted.

‘Do you know why?’ the captain asked.

The Abbess shook her head.

‘Good,’ said the captain. His eyes were on the priest’s back. ‘Where did he come from? What do you know about him?’

The dance had finished, and men were bowing, women dipping deep courtesies. Michael had just noted that his lord had witnessed his troubadour skills and flushed deep red in the torchlight, and the Abbess cleared her throat.

‘I told you. I took him from the parish,’ the Abbess murmured. ‘He has no breeding.’

The sky to the east lit up, as if from a flash of lightning, but the flash lasted too long and burned too red, for as long as it took a man to say a Pater Noster.

‘Alarm!’ roared the captain. ‘Gate open, all crossbows armed, get the machines loaded. Move!’

Sauce had been watching the dancers. She paused, confusion written on her face. ‘Gate open?’ she asked.

‘Gate open. Get a sortie ready to ride, you’ll be leading it.’ The captain pushed her towards her helmet.

Most of his men were already moving, but if he hadn’t been beguiled by the evening’s revelations, they’d have been in their armour already.

Already, a dozen men-at-arms stood by their destriers in the torchlit gateway, their squires and valets scrambling to arm them. Archers scrambled from the courtyard onto the catwalks around the curtain walls, some even bare-arsed in the light of the courtyard fires, their hose down and their shirttails dangling.

There was a second flash of fire to the east, half as long as the last.

The captain was grinning. ‘I hope you didn’t need olive oil for anything really important,’ he said, and squeezed her arm in a very familiar way. ‘May I take my leave? I should be back with you before the next bell.’

She eyed him in the fire-lit darkness. ‘This is your doing, and not the enemy’s?’ she asked.

He shrugged. ‘I hope so,’ he said. Then he leaned close. ‘Hellenic fire. In their camp. Or so I hope.’

North of Harndon – Harmodius

Dissection is one of those skills a man never really forgets. Harmodius had exhumed the corpse himself – not much of a risk, given the haste with which it had been buried.

He was only interested in the brain, anyway. Which was as well, as the thorax was badly damaged and the central body cavity was largely empty. Something had eaten the guts.

Harmodius was above such feelings as nausea. Or so he kept telling himself. A steady spring rain fell on his back, darkness was falling, and he was in the midst of the northern wilderness, but the body was there for the taking and it was, after all, what had started him on this mad-cap chase. That, and the firm and magnetic draw of the power. Power like a beacon.

He took out a hunting trousseau – a pair of very heavy knives and half a dozen smaller, very sharp ones – and quickly and accurately flensed the skin from the dead man’s skull, folded the flaps back, took a trepan from his pack, and lifted a piece of skull the size of a triple leopard of solid silver.