The Red Knight

She worked her way through the cases – the murder of a draper by a woman, the theft of a herd that trailed off into accusations and counter-accusations by the monks of two rival abbeys – and then there was a messenger.

He wore the royal scarlet and midnight blue livery, and even covered in road dust it commanded instant attention.

He was young and not particularly handsome, and yet had an air about him. He knelt at her feet and presented a bag.

‘The king sends to you, my lady,’ he said formally.

She didn’t know him, but word of war had made the king increase every part of the household – an action that would affect the royal budget for ten years to come.

‘Royer Le Hardi, my lady,’ the messenger said.

‘The news?’ she asked.

‘All is well with the army,’ Royer replied.

The Queen took the pouch and opened it, cutting her husband’s seal carefully and opening the lead wafers that secured the buckles with the small knife she always wore in her girdle.

There were four scroll tubes holding about a dozen folded and sealed letters – she saw letters to the Emperor of Morea and the King of Galle – and a thick packet with her name on it in his handwriting, which she snatched up.

She read a few lines and frowned. ‘My lords, ladies, and good men and women,’ she said formally, rising to her feet. ‘I will hold court in the morning, and all cases are held over until then. The seneschal and sheriff shall attend me, as will my own lords.’ She smiled, and many in the multitude at her feet smiled back, so personable was her smile.

The hall’s chamberlain smacked the floor with his staff. ‘The Queen has dismissed the assembly,’ he said, in case there were those who didn’t understand.

Before the last draper had cleared the portico the Royal Steward and the King’s Treasurer – were at her side. ‘News?’ asked Bishop Godwin. Lord Lessing – a banker promoted to the aristocracy by the old king – rubbed his beard.

She tapped the cover note against her teeth. ‘We will continue north to join the army,’ she said. ‘If we have a tournament at all, at this rate it will be in the face of the enemy, at Albinkirk or even Lissen Carak.’ Her thoughts were clearly elsewhere.

Her king’s note sounded desperate, and he had ordered her not to come.

‘Strip this town of carts,’ she said. ‘I will leave everything that I don’t need – I’ll take four maids. No state gowns, no frippery, no clothes. You, my lords, should stay here. You will form the government.’ She paused. ‘No. Go back down the river to Harndon.’

The bishop breathed a sigh of relief.

‘I might be gone a month,’ she said. ‘Or more. I may stay with the king until the emergency is past. Lord Lessing, I would take it as a kindness if you would organise the supply convoys as I have been doing.’

Lessing pulled at his beard. He had gold wire in it, which somehow served only to make it look greyer. ‘I will do your will, Lady,’ he said gravely. ‘But some of those wagons need to start coming back. We have stripped the southern kingdom bare and I doubt that there is even a wheeled cart to be had in Harndon. If they are lost, the harvest will rot in the fields.’

‘Best they not be lost, then,’ she said lightly. ‘I’ll see to it that the wagons I’ve sent north are turned around – either empty, or full of the northern harvest.’

‘Boats,’ Lessing said suddenly. ‘If he’s aiming for Lissen Carak, you should go by boat. The docks here are full of empty hulls – Master Random of Harndon’s boats. He’s arrayed a mighty fleet of river boats to buy the grain harvest in the north. It’s supposed to be a secret, I admit. But I had it from his wife, and you can go faster by oars and sail up the river. And it’s safe as houses – never yet heard of a boglin as could swim. Eh?’

She loved her lords because they weren’t going to try to stop her, and because both of them began immediately to plan for the practical details of her trip to join the army.

After they’d made a dozen lists and summoned half the prominent men of Lorica to witness deeds and to become commissioners of this and that, she collapsed at last into the best bed in the royal keep of Lorica.

Mary stripped off her silken cote hardie, her kirtle, her shift, and the man’s hose she’d worn underneath so she could ride astride. ‘You will take me with you?’ Mary asked.

‘You and Emmota, Helena and Apollonasia,’ the Queen said languorously. ‘And Becca.’

‘Bath?’ Mary asked.

‘Perhaps the last for many days,’ the Queen said. ‘Oh, par dieu, Mary, we are about to break free of it all and have an adventure.’

Lady Mary smiled at her mistress. But her eyes had no smile in them, as if she was looking far beyond their room.

‘Do you still think of him?’ the Queen asked her First Maid.

‘Only when I’m awake,’ Hard Heart admitted. ‘And sometimes when I’m asleep.’

‘He is not with the army.’ Desiderata had received two missives from her husband that included the name of Gawin Murien, but in both his whereabouts was unknown.