The Red Knight

‘With stars from the sky,’ Flint said. His deep voice was like the sound of a rasp cutting into hardwood.

‘I have come to ask-’ Faced with Flint, it was suddenly difficult to explain. Bears were well known for their complete contempt for organisation. For government. Rules. War. Bears would kill when roused. But war repelled them.

‘Do not ask,’ Flint said.

‘What I do-’ Thorn began.

‘Has nothing to do with bears,’ Flint said. He nodded. ‘This is the cub of Sunbeam, of the Clan of the Long Dam. Sunbeam’s brother will no doubt come and avenge her.’ The old bear said this with obvious sadness. ‘As will his friends.’ Flint picked up the cub. ‘They are young, and understand nothing. I am old. I see you, Thorn. I know you.’ He turned his back and walked away.

All at once Thorn wanted to chase down the old bear and sit at his feet. Learn. Or protest his – not his innocence, but his intentions.

But another part of him wanted to turn the old bear to ash.

It was a long walk back to camp.

Lissen Carak – Sister Miram

Sister Miram was missing her favourite linen cap, and she took the moments between study of High Archaic and Nones to visit the laundry. She raced down the steps of the north tower – for a large woman, she was very fast – but then a flash of intuition made her pause at the door to the laundry. Six sisters laboured away, their hands and faces red, stripped to their shifts in the heat of the room. A dozen local girls worked with them.

Lis Wainwright was also stripped to her shift. Forty years had not ruined her figure. Miram might have smiled, but she didn’t. Beyond Lis were younger girls. Miram knew them all – had taught them. The Carters and the Lanthorns. The Lanthorn girls were simpering. There wasn’t usually a lot of simpering in the laundry.

A hundred nuns and novices generated a great deal of laundry. The addition of four hundred farmers, their families, and two hundred professional soldiers, forced the laundry to boil linen day and night. The drying lines were stretched at every hour, and even senior sisters like Sister Miram received their linens slightly damp and badly ironed. Or left them missing things like caps.

She looked around for Sister Mary, whose week it was to run the laundry, and heard a man’s voice. It was a cultured voice, singing.

She listened intently. Singing a Gallish romance.

She couldn’t see him, but she could see the four Lanthorn girls in their shifts, giggling, preening and showing a great deal of leg and shoulder.

Miram’s eyes narrowed. The Lanthorn girls were what they were, but they didn’t need some smooth-talking gentleman to encourage them on their road to hell. Miram strode across the damp floor and there he was, leaning in the laundry door. He had a lute, and he was not alone.

‘Your name, messire?’ she asked. She had pounced so swiftly that he was locked in indecision – keep playing, or flee?

‘Lyliard, ma soeur,’ he said sweetly.

‘You are a knight, messire?’ she asked.

He bowed.

‘None of these four unmarried maidens is of noble birth, messire. And while it may suit you to bed them, their pregnancies and their unwed lives will weigh heavily on my convent, my sisters, and your soul.’ She smiled. ‘I hope we understand each other.’

Lyliard looked as if he’d been hit by a wyvern. ‘Ma soeur!’

‘You look like a squire,’ Sister Miram said to the young man at Lyliard’s elbow. He also had a lute and while he lacked Lyliard’s dash and polish Miram’s opinion was he’d get there in time. And he was handsome, in a raffish, muscular way.

‘John of Reigate, sister.’ He was young enough to drop his eyes and look like a schoolboy caught out in a lark. Which he was. She had to remember that they killed for a living, but they were still people.

The third man was the handsomest. He had polish and good looks. And he blushed.

‘And you are the captain’s squire,’ she said.

He shrugged. ‘Unfair. My fame proceeds me.’

‘Don’t ape your master,’ Miram said. ‘The three of you, gently born, should be ashamed of yourselves. Now go.’

Lyliard looked abashed. ‘Listen, sister, we merely crave some female company. We are not bad men.’

She sniffed. ‘Do you mean you would pay for what you take?’ She looked at all three of them. ‘You seduce innocents instead of committing out and out rape? Is that supposed to impress me?’

The captain’s squire sniffed. His left hand patted the bandage around his waist. ‘You really have no idea who or what we are. What we face.’

Miram caught his eye and stepped very close, close as a lover. Almost nose to nose. His eyes were blue, and she had once been a woman to enjoy handsome men.

Hers were a deep, old green.

‘I know, young squire,’ she said. ‘I know exactly what you face.’ She didn’t blink and he couldn’t tear his gaze away from her. ‘Save your posturing for whores, boy. Now go and say twenty Pater Nosters, mean them, and think about what it might mean to be a knight.’