The Red Knight

The captain crossed his arms. Only a fool released someone else’s bird – especially when that bird was big enough to eat the fool – but his fingers itched to handle it, to feel its weight on his fist. Could he even fly such a bird?

Is this another of her little games?

After another interval of waiting, he couldn’t stand it any more. He pulled on his chamois gloves and brushed the back of his hand against the talons of the bird’s feet. It stepped obligingly onto his wrist and it weighed as much as a pole-axe. More. His arm sank, and it was an effort to raise the bird back to eye level and place it back on its perch.

When it had one foot secure on the deerskin-padded perch, it turned its hooded head to him, as if seeing him clearly, and closed its left foot, sinking three talons into his left arm.

Even as he gasped, it stepped up onto its perch and turned to face him.

‘Rawwwwwwwk,’ it said with obvious satisfaction.

Blood dripped over his gauntlet cuff.

He looked at the bird. ‘Bastard,’ he said. And he went back to pacing, albeit he now cradled his left arm in his right for twenty trips up and down the hall.

His third bout of boredom was broken by the books. He’d given them only a cursory glance on his first visit, and had dismissed them. They displayed the usual remarkable craftsmanship, superb calligraphy, painted scenes, gilt work everywhere. Worse, both volumes were collections of the Lives of the Saints, a subject in which the captain had no interest whatsoever. But boredom drove him to look at them.

The leftmost work, beneath the window of Saint Maurice, was well-executed, the paintings of Saint Katherine vivid and rich. He chuckled to wonder what lovely model had stood in a monk’s mind, or perhaps a nun’s, as the artist lovingly re-created the contours of flesh. Saint Katherine’s face did not show torment, but a kind of rapture-

He laughed and passed to the second book, pondering the lives of the devout.

What struck him first was the poor quality of the Archaic. The art was beautiful – the title page had a capital where the artist was presented, sitting on a high stool, working away with a gilding brush. The work was so precise that the reader could see that the artist was working on the very title page, presented again in microcosm.

The captain breathed deeply in appreciation of the work, and the humour of it. And then he began to read.

He turned the page. He imagined what his beloved Prudentia would have said about the barbaric nature of the writer’s Archaic. He could all but see the old nun wagging her finger in his mother’s solar.

Shook his head.

The door to the Abbess’s private apartments opened and the priest, hurried past, hands clasped together and face set. He looked furious.

Behind him, the Abbess gave a low laugh, almost a snort. ‘I thought you’d find our book,’ she said. She looked at him fondly. ‘And my Parcival.’ She indicated the bird.

‘I can’t see how such a brutally bad transcription merited the quality of artist,’ he said, turning another page. ‘I thought as much f that’s your bird, you are braver than I thought.’

‘Am I?’ she asked. ‘I’ve had him for many years.’ She looked fondly at the bird, who bated on his perch. ‘Can you not see why the book is so well wrought?’ she asked with a smile that told him that there was a secret to it. ‘You do know that we have a library, Captain? I believe that our hospitality might extend as far as allowing you to use it. We have more than fifty volumes.’

He bowed. ‘Would I shock you if I said that the Lives of the Saints held little interest for me?’

She shrugged. ‘Posture away, little atheist. My gentle Jesu loves you all the same.’ She gave him a wry smile. ‘I am sorry – I would love to spar with you all morning, but I have a crisis in my house. May we to business?’ She waved him to a stool. ‘Still in armour,’ she said.

‘We are still on the hunt,’ he said, crossing his legs.

‘But you killed the monster. Don’t think we are not grateful. In fact, I regret taking the tone I did, especially as you lost a man of great worth, and since you were so very effective.’ She shrugged. ‘And you have done your work before the new month – and before my fair opens.’

He made a sour face. ‘My lady, I would like to deserve your esteem, and few things would give me greater pleasure than to hear you apologise.’ He shrugged. ‘But I am not here to spar, either. Unworthily, I assumed you kept me cooling my heels to teach me humility.’

She looked at her hands. ‘You could use some, young man, but unfortunately, I have other issues before me this day or I would be happy to teach you some manners. Now, why do you say you do not deserve my regard?’

‘We have killed a monster,’ he acknowledged. ‘But not the one that killed Sister Hawisia.’