The Red Knight

The captain raised an eyebrow.

‘He’s not the enemy, Mary,’ Gawin said, and the Queen’s Lady in Waiting emerged. She was blushing.

‘You have other things to take up your time,’ the captain said.

Gawin laughed. ‘I really don’t know where she is,’ he admitted.

The captain turned with a wave, and headed out. He peeked into the dispensary and the apothecary, and he climbed the steps in the dormitory. No one had seen her. The smiles he left in his wake pained him.

Finally, in the courtyard, he met Sister Miram. She smiled at him, and took him by the hand to her cell in the chapel. ‘You are going,’ she said, pouring him wine.

He tried to refuse the wine but she was a forceful woman, and a pleasant one, and her silence intimidated him. She waited him out. Finally, he drank it. ‘Tomorrow.’

‘We will celebrate the feast of Mary Magdalene tomorrow,’ she said. She smiled. ‘We will inter the old Abbess.’ Sister Miram looked at her hands. ‘I will be ordained Abbess in her place.’

‘Congratulations,’ the captain said.

‘There is talk that the whole convent is to be moved south to Harndon,’ Sister Miram said. She looked the captain firmly in the eye. ‘I won’t have it.’

The captain nodded.

‘We will also accept the vows of novices advancing to the sisterhood of Christ tomorrow,’ she said.

Ice formed in the captain’s stomach.

‘She is performing her vigil at the moment,’ the sister said. ‘Drink your wine, Captain. No one is forcing her to.’

The captain took a breath.

‘We owe you so much,’ Sister Miram said. ‘Do you think we do not know it? But she is not for you, Captain. She is to be the bride of Christ; it’s what she wishes.’ She rose, went to her prie-dieu, and opened the triptych. From it she drew a folded piece of parchment. ‘She left this for you. If you should come.’

The captain took it with a bow. ‘Your servant, ma soeur. May I express my congratulations on your elevation, and my-’ He stopped. Swallowed. ‘I will make a donation to the convent. Please give Sister Amicia my congratulations and my kindest regards.’

Somehow, he reached the courtyard.

Toby was holding his horse.

The captain took the reins, and vaulted into the saddle, aware, in that cursed part of him that was always awake, that he was on the stage of chivalry, and that half of the knights of Alba were watching him.

Then he rode down the hill to his camp. He paused at the guard fire.

Don’t be a fool. Read it.

The Red Knight took the parchment from his breast, and threw it in the fire unread.

You idiot.

Michael was sitting in his tent. He leaped to his feet, obviously guilty about something. ‘Master Ranald is waiting for you,’ he said. ‘I was entertaining him!’

Ranald Lachlan sat with a mug of beer, and his cousin Tom sat across the captain’s camp table with another. They had dice on the table, and cards.

‘It’d be a pity to stop him playing,’ Tom said. ‘Especially as I’m taking all his money,’ he added.

‘I’m so pleased you two feel free to make use of my tent and table,’ the captain spat.

Tom raised an eyebrow. ‘Brother’s got something to say,’ he said.

Ranald rose. ‘I – need to make a great deal of money,’ he said. ‘I wonder if you’ll have me as a man-at-arms.’ He looked embarrassed to ask.

‘I’d have thought the king would’ve knighted you,’ the captain said.

Ranald shrugged.

‘All right,’ said the captain, sitting and pouring wine for himself. ‘Now deal me a hand.’

‘But first,’ Ranald said, ‘I have to pay a visit to the Wyrm of Erch.’

The captain gagged on his wine. ‘The Wyrm?’

‘Our liege lord in the hills, or so we call him,’ Ranald said, and Tom nodded.

The captain shook his head. ‘I don’t understand.’ He frowned. ‘Possibly because I’m drunk.’

Tom shrugged. ‘The ways of the hills are easier on a man with drink in him. Tis like this, my lord: the Wyrm guarantees us peace for a tithe of the flocks. Tis been that way for twenty generations of men or more. These Outwallers that killed Hector – the Sossag – they were serving a Power of the Wild called Thorn. Aye?’

‘Naming calls. But yes.’ The captain drank.

‘So I call him and he comes and I gut him,’ said Tom. ‘So?’

‘Excellent point,’ the captain said. ‘Go on.’

‘The Wyrm owes us for our loss,’ Ranald said.

The captain sat back. ‘I’m not drunk enough to believe that,’ he said.

Tom and Ranald sat with set faces.

The captain finished his cup. Michael poured him more, and he didn’t say no. And then he said, ‘She’s taking orders as a nun, Tom.’

Tom shrugged as if all women were one and the same. ‘Best find another one then,’ he said. And then, as if the collapse of the captain’s hopes was not the most important thing in the world, he said, ‘So we want leave to go to the Wyrm.’

The captain shook his head. ‘I have a better idea,’ he said. ‘Let’s all go.’

Ranald looked at him and raised an eyebrow at his brother.

‘I love him,’ Tom said to his brother. ‘He’s mad as an adder.’

Ranald smiled. ‘So we all go? The company?’

Yes. This is important.

The captain suddenly had a piercing pain between his eyes.