The Red Knight

Long Paw looked at him for a moment. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I feel like I was dead, and now I’m not. It’s not all bad – not all good.’ He smiled, but it wasn’t one of the archer’s usual smiles. ‘Ever ask yourself what we’re here for, Captain?’

All the time, he thought, but he replied, ‘Sometimes.’

‘Never been that close to being dead before,’ Long Paw said. He lay back. ‘I reckon I’ll be right as rain in a day,’ he said. He smiled, a little more like himself. ‘Or two.’

The pretty novice was, of course, Amicia. She was slumped in a chair at the end of the lower ward. When he saw her, the captain realised he’d been hoping to find her in the hospital. He knew she had power – had felt it himself, but he’d finally made the connection to healing when he saw her go in and out of the hospital building that adjoined the dormitory.

Her closed eyes didn’t invite conversation, so he walked softly past her, and up the steps, to see Messire Francis Atcourt. Atcourt was not a gently born man; not a knight. Rumour was he’d started life as a tailor. The captain found him propped up with pillows looking very pale. Reading. The parchment cover with its spidery writing didn’t offer the captain a title, but closer to, he saw the man was reading psalms.

The captain shook his head.

‘Nice to see you, m’lord,’ Atcourt said. ‘I’m malingering.’

The captain smiled. Atcourt was forty – maybe older. He could start a fire, trim meat, make a leather pouch, repair horse harness. On the road, the captain had seen him teach a young girl to make a closed back-stitch. He was not the best man-at-arms in the company, but he was a vital man. The kind of man you trusted to get things done. If you asked him to make sure dinner got cooked, it got cooked.

He was not the sort of man who malingered.

‘Me, too. You’ve lost a lot of blood.’ The captain sat on his counterpane.

‘Your nun – the pretty one-’

The captain felt himself blushing. ‘Not my nun-’ he stammered.

Atcourt smiled like a schoolteacher. ‘As you say, of course.’

It was odd – the captain had remarked it before. The commonly born men-at-arms – leaving aside Bad Tom, who was more like a force of nature than like a man, anyway – had prettier manners than the gently born. Atcourt had especially good manners.

‘At any rate, the lovely young novice who gives orders so well,’ Atcourt smiled. ‘She healed me. I felt her-’ He smiled again. ‘That is what goodness feels like, I reckon. And she brought me this to read, so I am reading.’ He made a face. ‘Perhaps I’ll finish up a monk. ’Ello, Tom.’

Bad Tom towered over them. He nodded to his friend. ‘If that arrow had struck you a hand’s breadth lower, you could ha’ been a nun.’ Then he leered at the captain. ‘The tall nun’s awake, and stretching like a cat. I stopped to watch.’ He laughed his great laugh. ‘What a set o’ necks she has, eh?’

The captain turned to glare, but it was nearly impossible to glare at Tom. Having sat, the captain could feel every tired muscle, every one of his six bruises.

‘We all saw you charge those archers,’ Tom said, as he turned away.

The captain paused.

‘You should a’ died,’ Tom went on. ‘You got hit what – eight times? Ten? By war-bows?’

The captain paused.

‘I’m just sayin’, lad. Don’t be foolish. You ha’ the de’il’s own luck. What if it runs out?’ he asked.

‘Then I’ll be dead,’ the captain said. He shrugged. ‘Someone had to do it.’

‘Jehannes did it, and he did it right,’ Tom said. ‘Next time, raise your sword and tell someone to ride at the archers. Someone else.’

The captain shrugged again. For once, he looked every heartbeat of twenty years old – the shrug was a rebellious refusal to accept the reality of what an adult was trying to teach him, and in that moment the captain was a very young man caught out being a fool. And he knew it.

‘Cap’n,’ Tom said, and suddenly he was a big, dangerous man. ‘If you die I much misdoubt we will ride through this. So here’s my rede: don’t die.’

‘Amen,’ said the captain.

‘The pretty novice’ll be far more compliant with a living man than a dead one,’ Tom said.

‘That based on experience, Tom?’ Atcourt said. ‘Leave the lad alone. Leave the captain alone. Sorry, m’lord.’

The captain shook his head. On balance, it was difficult to be annoyed when you discover that men like you and desire your continued health.

Atcourt laughed aloud. Tom leaned over him, and whispered something, and Atcourt doubled up – first laughing, and then in obvious pain.

The captain paused to look back, and Tom was taking cards and dice out of his purse, and Atcourt was holding his side and grinning.

The captain ran down the steps, his leather soles slapping the stone stairs, but she wasn’t there, and he cursed Tom’s leer and ran out into the new darkness.

He wanted a cup of wine, but he was sure he’d go to sleep. Which he needed.

He smiled at his own foolishness and went to the apple tree instead.

And there she was, sitting in the new starlight, singing softly to herself.