The Red Knight

‘Oh, he was,’ Gawin answered. ‘So proud he sent me to court so the king could send me away. I rode north to Lorica, and put up in an inn.’ He turned his head away. ‘I’m not sure I can tell this while I look at you. I took rooms. A foreign knight came with a retinue – I don’t know how many, but it was a hundred knights, at least. Jean de Vrailly, God curse his name. He called me out into the courtyard, challenged me to combat, and attacked me.’ Gawin fell silent.

‘So? You were always a better swordsman than I,’ the captain said.

Gawin shook his head. ‘No. No, you were the better swordsman. Ser Hywel told me after you died; you’d pretended to be inept.’

The captain shrugged. ‘Fine. You were, and are, a fine man-at-arms.’

‘Ser Jean imagines himself to be the very best knight in all of the world,’ Gawin said.

‘Really?’ the captain said. ‘How very dangerous.’

Gawin snorted. ‘You really haven’t changed.’

‘I have, you know,’ the captain said.

‘I never thought I’d be able to chuckle while I told this. He was in armour – I was not.’

The captain nodded. ‘He would be, being a Galle. I was just fighting there. They take themselves very seriously.’

‘I only had a riding sword – by Saint George, I make too many excuses. I held him – took a wound, and he punched my sword into one of my squires. My own sword killed my sworn man.’ Now all the humour was gone, and Gawin was somewhere between toneless and sobbing. ‘I lost all sense of the fight, and he mastered me – pushed me down into the dirt. Made me admit myself bested.’

How that must have tasted, the captain thought. Because he had imagined doing exactly that to this man a thousand times. He sat by the very man’s bedside and tried to think what had changed in a few minutes, that now, it seemed impossible that he had imagined his half-brother’s humiliation. Desired it. Tasted and savoured it, just two days ago.

‘Then he went into the inn and killed my senior squire,’ Gawin said. He shrugged. ‘I have vowed to kill him.’

The captain had a restless urge to go follow Amicia. He felt the need to extract a vow of silence. Or was that just an excuse? And the pain – raw, like a visible bruise – in Gawin’s voice – he’d only just forced himself to decide in favour of the younger man, and now he was his confessor.

It was like being the captain.

‘Your enemy is my enemy,’ he said simply, and leaned down, and put his arms around his brother’s neck. Amongst the Muriens, a good expression of hate was a way of showing love. Sometimes, the only way.

‘Oh, Gabriel!’ Gawin said, and burst into tears.

‘Gabriel died, Gawin,’ the captain said.

Gawin dried his eyes. ‘You have problems of your own, no doubt.’ He managed a smile.

‘Where would you like me to begin?’ the captain said. ‘I’m engaged in a siege with an enemy who can deploy any kind of creature, who outnumbers me ten or fifteen or twenty to one, and who is led by a ruthless genius.’

Gawin managed another smile. ‘My brother is a ruthless genius.’

The captain grinned.

Gawin nodded. ‘You’re about to try something insane. I can taste it. Remember the chicken coup? Remember your alchemical experiment?’

The captain looked around, as if he feared an eavesdropper. ‘He’s going to hit us hard, tonight. He has to. Up until now, to all intents and purposes, he’s been losing the siege. The way the Wild works, eventually, some one of his own will see him as weak and take him down.’

Gawin shrugged. ‘They’re the enemy. Who knows what they think?’

The captain returned a grim smile. ‘I do. All too well.’

‘So?’ Gawin asked, after a difficult moment. ‘Why do you know? What they think?’

The captain drew along breath.

Why do you curse God every morning?

Because-

‘Maybe sometime I’ll tell you,’ the captain said.

Gawin absorbed that. ‘The man of secrets. Very well. What are you about to do?’

The captain shrugged. ‘I’m going to try for him. Try to drag him down. The old Magus is in on it.’

Gawin sat up. ‘You’re going for Tho-’

‘Don’t speak his name,’ the captain said. ‘Naming calls.’

Gawin bit his lip. ‘I wish I were fit to ride.’

‘You will be, soon enough.’ The captain leaned forward and embraced his half-brother. ‘I’d rather be your friend than your foe. Foe was merely a habit.’

Gawin patted the captain’s back gently. ‘Gabriel! I’m sorry!’

The captain held the young knight until he slept. It didn’t take long.

‘I’m not Gabriel,’ he said to his sleeping half-brother. And then he went to find the woman. But he didn’t have to go far. She was sitting on a chair in the corridor.

Their eyes met. Hers said, Don’t come too close – I’m vulnerable just now.

He wasn’t sure what his own said, but he stopped at arm’s length. ‘You heard,’ he said, far more harshly than he intended.

‘Everything,’ she said. ‘Don’t offend me by requiring my silence. I hear the confessions of dying men. I care nothing for the secrets of the mighty.’