The Red Knight

‘Store the dismantled wagons wherever the hoardings are now,’ the captain said. ‘And then we’ll start on patrols to fetch in the peasants. Gentlemen, this place is going to be packed as tight as a cask of new-salted mackerel. I want to say this in front of the Abbess. There will be no rape and no theft by our men. Death penalty on both. My lady, I can’t do much about casual blasphemy, but an effort will be made – you understand me, gentlemen? Make an effort.’

She nodded. ‘It is Lent,’ she said.

Jehannes nodded. ‘I gave up wine,’ he said, and then stared at the floor.

‘Jesu does not care what you give up, but rather, what you give him,’ Sister Miram replied, and Jehannes smiled shyly at her.

She returned his smile.

The captain released a heavy sigh. ‘Ladies, you may well cure all of our souls yet, but it must wait until the hoardings are up and all your people are safe. Michael, you are in charge of them. I recommend that my men live in the towers and galleries – if we have time, we’ll build them beds.’

‘My people will go four to a room,’ the Abbess said. ‘I can take the older girls and single women from the farms into the dormitory, and all the men and their families will go in the hall. Overflow into the stables.’

Michael nodded. ‘Yes, my lady,’ he replied. He turned to the captain. ‘I’m at your orders.’ He looked back and forth. ‘Will we hold the Lower Town?’

The captain stepped up onto the gate wall and looked down at the four streets of the town, a hundred feet below.

‘For a little while,’ he said.

Albinkirk – Ser Alcaeus

Ser Alcaeus passed a bad night and drank too much wine in the morning. The man whose daughter had been abducted sat in the garrison barracks and wept, and demanded that the garrison send out a sortie to her rescue.

The mayor agreed with him, and hot words were exchanged.

Alcaeus didn’t want any part of it. They were too alien – the commoners were both too servile and too free, and Ser John was no knight. Even the churches were wrong. Mass was said in low Archaic.

It was disorienting. Worse than the convoy of slaves had been, because he could ignore them.

Mid-morning, as he finished his ablutions – he, the Emperor’s cousin, washing without so much as a servant or slave to help him – he heard the mayor’s shrill voice in the guardroom, demanding that Ser John come out.

Alcaeus dressed. He had spare shirts because the boy had saved his packhorse, and he’d see the page richly rewarded for it.

‘Come out of your hole, you doddering old coward!’ shrieked the mayor.

Alcaeus was trying to lace his cuffs by himself. He had done his own in the past, but not since he became a man. He had to press his right hand against the stone of the castle wall and pin the knot in place.

‘Master Mayor?’ he heard. It was Ser John, his voice calm enough.

‘I demand that you gather all the useless mouths you call your garrison and go out and find this man’s daughter. And open the gates – the grain convoys are on their way. This town needs money, though I’m sure you’ve been too drunk to notice.’ The mayor sounded like a fishwife – a particularly nasty one.

‘No,’ said the captain. ‘Was that all?’

Alcaeus couldn’t, in that moment, decide exactly what he thought of the knight. Over-cautious? But memories of yesterday’s ambush were still burned onto the backs of his eyelids.

He reached for his boots – uncleaned, of course. He pulled them on, and fought with all the buckles, his head suddenly full of irks and boglins and worse things. The road. The confusion.

He had been trained to fight the Wild. Until yesterday, he’d only fought other men – usually one to one, with knives, at court.

The images in his head made him shudder.

‘I order you!’ the mayor screamed.

‘You can’t order me, Master Mayor. I have declared martial law, and I, not you, am the power here.’ Ser John sounded apologetic rather than dismissive.

‘I represent the people of the town. The burgesses, the merchants, and the artisans!’ The mayor’s voice sank to a hiss. ‘You don’t seem to understand-’

‘I understand that I represent the king. And you do not.’ Ser John’s voice remained level.

Alcaeus had made his decision. He was going to go support the low-born knight. It didn’t matter what the two men were debating – it was their manners. Ser John was knightly. He might even survive at court.

Alcaeus tested his feet in his boots, and took his heavy dagger and put it in his belt. He never left his rooms without a dagger. Then he went out into the hall – a hall crowded with garrison soldiers listening to the argument in the main room below. He ran light-footed down the stairs.

He’d missed an exchange. When he entered, the mayor, red-faced, thin and tall and blond as an angel, was silent, his mouth working.