The Red Knight

Gerald Random, Merchant Adventurer of Harndon, looked back along the line of his wagons with the satisfaction of the captain for his company, or the Abbot for his monks. He’d mustered twenty-two wagons of his own, all in his livery colours, red and white, their man-high wheels carefully painted with red rims and white spokes; the sides of every wagon white with red trim, and scenes from the Passion of the Christ decorating every side panel, all the work of his very talented brother-in-law. It was good advertising, good religion, and it guaranteed that his carters would always form his convoy in order – every man, whether they could not read or figure or not, knew that the God Jesu was scourged by knights in their guard room, and then had to carry his own cross to Golgotha.

He had sixty good men, mostly drapers’ and weavers’ men, but a pair of journeymen goldsmiths and a dozen cutlers, and some bladesmiths and blacksmiths, a handful of mercers and grocers too, all armed and well armoured like the prosperous men they were. And he had ten professional soldiers he’d engaged himself, acting as his own captain – good men, every one of them with a King’s Warrant that he had borne arms in the king’s service.

Gerald Random had such a warrant himself. He’d served in the north, fighting the Wild. And now he was leading a rich convoy to the great market fair of Lissen Carak as the commander, the principle investor, and the owner of most of the wagons.

His should be the largest convoy on the road and the best display at the fair.

His wife Angela laid a long white hand on his arm. ‘You find your wagons more beautiful than you find me,’ she said. He wished that she might say it with more humour, but at least there was humour.

He kissed her. ‘I’ve yet time to prove otherwise, my lady,’ he said.

‘The future Lord Mayor does not take his wife for a ride in the bed-carriage while his great northern convoy awaits his pleasure!’ she said. She rubbed his arm through his heavy wool doublet. ‘Dinna’ fash yourself, husband. I’ll be well enough.’

Guilbert, the oldest and most reliable-looking of the hireling swordsmen, approached with a mixture of deference and swagger. He nodded – a compromise between a bow and a failure to recognise authority. Random took it to mean something like I have served great lords and the king, and while you are my commander, you are not one of them.

Random nodded.

‘Now that I see the whole convoy,’ Guilbert nodded at it. ‘I’d like six more men.’

Random looked back over the wagons – his own, and those of the goldsmiths, the cutlers, the two other drapers, and the foreign merchant, Master Haddan, with his tiny two wheel cart and his strange adult apprentice, Adle. Forty-four wagons in all.

‘Even with the cutlers’ men?’ he asked. He kept his wife there by taking her hand when she made to slip away.

Guilbert shrugged. ‘They’re fair men, no doubt,’ he said.

Wages for six more men – Warrant men – would cost him roughly the whole profit on one wagon. And the sad fact was that he couldn’t really pass any part of the cost on to the other merchants, who had already paid – and paid well – to be in his convoy.

Moreover, he had served in the north. He knew the risks. And they were high – higher every year, although no one seemed to want to discuss such stuff.

He looked at his wife, contemplating allowing the man two more soldiers.

He loved his wife. And the worry on her face was worth spending more than the value of a cart to alleviate. And what would the profit be, should his convoy be taken or scattered?

‘Do you have a friend? Someone you can engage at short notice?’ he asked.

Guilbert grinned. It was the first time that the merchant had seen the mercenary smile, and it was a surprisingly human, pleasant smile.

‘Aye,’ the man said. ‘Down on his luck. I’d esteem it a favour. And he’s a good man – my word on it.’

‘Let’s have all six. Eight, if we can get them. I have a worry, so let’s be safe. Money is not all there is,’ he said, looking into his wife’s eyes, and she breathed out pure relief. Some dark omen had been averted.

He hugged her for a long time while apprentices and journeymen kept their distance, and when Guilbert said he needed an hour by the clock to get his new men into armour – meaning they’d pawned theirs and needed to redeem it – Random took his wife by the hand and took her upstairs. Because there were so many things that were more important than money.