The Red Knight (94 page)

His skin prickled.

Gelfred the huntsman strode past him, eyes wary, moving faster. The mercenary didn’t seem to mind stepping on the cremated boglins.

Random wondered how long he’d have to do this before he was like Gelfred, or Milus.

Behind him, forty men moved carefully along the trench – company archers, new recruits, farm boys. The reinforcements.

They came out of the trench under the wall of the Bridge Castle and hollered to the watch to open the postern. Random had answered the call from the fortress before mains, and he wasn’t in
armour. He grabbed a bite of bread and a sound apple, and one of the young whores who’d come with the convoy handed him some good cheese. He smiled. ‘What’s a nice girl like you
doing in a place like this?’ he asked. Dora. She was Dora Candlesomething. Young Nick Draper fancied her, and Allan Pargeter had drawn her naked, which was still a nine-day wonder among the
wagons, despite the flying monsters and magic. That made Random laugh.

She smiled back at him. ‘Money,’ she said. ‘Same as you.’

He shook his head and laughed again. ‘If we get back to Harndon, come and ask me for a job,’ he said.

She looked at him. ‘You mean that?’ she asked.

He made a face. ‘Of course.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Just when we’re all going to die.’

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

The captain looked out through the hole in his wall and watched the fires burning in a swathe across the enemy’s camp. The enemy’s men, at least, cooked supper.

The rest of the camps were dark.

His back hurt. But then, his side hurt too, he now had cracked ribs on both sides of his ribcage – his shoulders were wrenched from the stress of being plucked off the ground by his
knights, and his right hand had odd, numb spots in it and he had no idea why.

He was supposed to be in bed.

Toby stood uncertainly by the door.

‘You want to be in bed, I suppose,’ he said.

Toby shrugged. ‘I’m hungry.’

The Red Knight went to the table in the middle of the room and tossed his valet a biscuit.

Then he looked at the lute on the table. He hadn’t played it in—

He couldn’t remember when he played it last.

He picked it up, suddenly decisive, and walked out the door into the hallway. Toby tried to cut him off.

‘Oh, Toby,’ he said. ‘I don’t give a fuck.’ He knocked on the door to his Commandery.

In three heartbeats, Michael was there.

‘Grab your lute,’ he said. ‘Good evening, Miss Lanthorn. Michael, these people need some music. Not a grim silence. Let’s light a fire.’

Michael sometimes forgot that his master was only a few years older than he was. He grinned. ‘Give me – us – a moment.’

Lissen Carak – Mag the Seamstress

Mag looked out into the darkness because she’d heard music.

There it was again, the sound of a southern lute. A wild, joyous sound.

And then another, lower lute played back.

There was a bonfire burning on the cobbles.

An archer, Cuddy, came and peered out of the North Tower. He shouted something.

Amy Carter peered out of the stable door and saw Kaitlin Lanthorn dancing by firelight, her legs flashing.

She ran back inside and rubbed her sister’s cheek. ‘They’re dancing!’ she said.

Kitty sat up, fully awake.

Low Sym heard music playing below the windows at the end of the hospital room. He threw his feet over the end of the bed and walked softly across the floor and opened one casement, and the sound
of the notes raced in like a spell. He leaned out, listening.

The nun appeared by his side. ‘What is it?’ she asked.

Sym giggled. ‘Capt’n likes to play. Fast.’ He shook his head. "Leastways, he used to play. On the Continent. Ain’t heard him in an age.’

She smiled. Leaned out. ‘You like him,’ she said.

Sym thought about that for so long she thought he wouldn’t answer.

From their vantage point, they saw the music do its work. Men came out of the stable and down the steps from the towers and the stumps of the towers. Women emerged from the stables and from the
nun’s dormitory.

Suddenly, there were as many people in the courtyard to dance as had been there for the priest.

The two instruments were joined by pipes and a drum.

The dancers began to move in a circle.

‘I don’t hate him.’ Sym admitted.

Amicia turned. ‘You are not lost, Sym,’ she said. ‘You are more hero than villain, even now.’

He stepped back as if she’d struck him. But then he grinned.

Then he stiffened. ‘Where you going?’

She smiled. ‘You can come guard me. I’m going to dance. Or at least to watch.’

In the courtyard, Sister Miram stretched her arms and smiled wearily at the Red Knight, who stood with his back to the fire playing his lute like a madman. She turned to Sister Anne and ordered
a cask of ale opened.

Bad Tom put a man-at-arms on the door to the cellars and another on the barracks. He and Jehannes whispered for a moment in the darkness beyond the fire, and Jehannes doubled the watch and
forced some unwilling soldiers onto the walls where the farmers could see them.

When Jehannes looked down, Tom was dancing with the seamstress’ daughter.

Mag, Lis, and Sister Mary Rose hauled a great cauldron of beef soup to the door of the dormitory. Cheering archers and farmers hauled it together into the firelight.

Long Paw appeared with a brace of wine jars, and handed them to the first men he saw. They toasted him, and the bottles passed around, soldier to farmer, and farmer to soldier, until they were
empty.

A farmer went and burrowed in his belongings in the stable, and returned with a jug that proved to contain apple jack.

And the lutes played on.

Lissen Carak – Michael

At some point, Michael knew he had never played so well, and he also knew that his fingers were going to hurt all the next day. Kaitlin whirled by, leaped in the air and was
caught by Daniel Favor; Bad Tom caught Mag’s Sukey around the waist and she, a widow of twenty-four hours, squealed like a girl; Low Sym turned with the eight-year-old daughter of the
Wackets, and Sister Miram and Sister Mary turned a somewhat statelier pavane together when Long Paw bowed, very Continental, and took Sister Miram’s hand and led her around the yard. Francis
Atcourt bowed over Sister Mary’s hand and she laughed, and curtsied. Amicia danced with Ser Jehannes, Harmodius whirled Lis like a much younger man, and her feet spun her skirts out around
her like a king’s cloak. and then Amicia spun by again with Ser George Brewes, and the Red Knight drank off his fourth glass of the Abbess’s red wine and played on. Cuddy tilted the
apple jack back and back . . . and rolled off the barrel on which he was perched, and landed flat on his back, and didn’t move, and the farmers laughed. Wilful Murder had an arm around Johne
the Bailli and a leather flagon in the other hand, and was singing at the top of his voice, his face lit like a daemon’s in the firelight.

The Carter girls began to dance, a fast, flashy dance of their own creation, and the Lanthorn girls, not to be beaten, leaped into the circle, and the music ran away with them. More pipes joined
in, and Ben Carter produced bagpipes, and his drunkenness seemed to fall away as he played for his sisters. Fran Lanthorn leaned out of the turning circle and kissed him hard on the cheek as she
swept by, and he blushed furiously and his tune tumbled, but he caught it and launched it anew.

Lissen Carak – Michael

Michael and his master allowed their fingers to fall still. The lutes dropped out of the busy music, which swept on.

Michael felt his captain’s arms go around his shoulders. He was afraid he’d cry. The captain had never hugged him before. Or anyone else that he knew of. He’d never seen the
man’s face so open. So – defenceless.

And then he was gone into the swirling darkness and firelight.

Lissen Carak – Thorn

Thorn could hear the music. It drew him the way a candleflame will draw insects and frogs on a still summer night in the deep woods. He walked heavily to the edge of the woods,
and listened with his keen senses to the sounds of people laughing and dancing, to the sounds of as many as ten instruments.

He listened, and listened. And hated.

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

The Red Knight lay with his head in Amicia’s lap. She was looking at the firelit scene at their feet, inside the walls of the courtyard, and he was looking at the line of
her throat and jaw. She was thinking about how simple happiness could be, and he felt the current of her thoughts through their joined hands.

Gradually – glacially slowly – she lowered her mouth over his.

Playfully, at the last moment, he licked her nose, and they both dissolved into laughter, and he shifted, grabbed her under the arms and began to tickle her and she shrieked and tried to hit
him.

He put her in his lap and bent to kiss her. She arched her back to reach him more quickly, and their tongues touched, their lips touched—

He drank her, and she drank him. Each of them could feel the contact, real, aethereal, spiritual.

He had pulled her robes above her hips, and she had not stopped him. The feeling of her naked flank inflamed him, and he pressed on.

She broke the kiss. ‘Stop,’ she said.

He stopped.

She smiled. Licked her lips. And then rolled out from under him, as swift as a dancer. Or a warrior.

‘Marry me,’ the Red Knight said.

Amicia stopped. She froze. ‘What?’

‘Marry me. Be my wife. Live with me until we die, old and surrounded by children and grandchildren.’ He grinned.

‘You’d say that to any girl who keeps her legs closed,’ she said.

‘Yes, but this time I mean it,’ he said, and she swatted him.

‘Amicia,’ said Sister Miram. She was standing by the apple tree. She smiled. ‘I missed you at the fire.’ She looked at the captain, who felt like a schoolboy. ‘She
may choose for herself whether to marry a mercenary or be the bride of Christ,’ Miram said. ‘But she can choose in daylight, and not on an apple-scented night.’

Amicia nodded, but her half-hooded eyes concealed a spark that the Red Knight saw, and rejoiced at. He sprang to his feet. And bowed low. ‘Then I bid you good night, ladies.’

Miram stood her ground. ‘It was well thought,’ she said. ‘They needed to rejoice. And the lady would have wanted a better wake than we were providing.’

The captain nodded. ‘It
was
good. I didn’t—’ He shrugged. ‘I just wanted some music. And maybe to lure this lady into my lair’ He smiled. ‘But it
was good.’

‘There is more heart in us tonight than last night, despite everything.’ Miram looked at Amicia. ‘Will you wed her?’

The captain leaned very close to the nun. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said.

Miram put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. ‘Then tell us your name,’ she said.

‘I know his name,’ Amicia said. ‘He’s—’

There was a sudden cheer from the courtyard, and then a roar of voices. The captain saw that Ser Jehannes was standing at the edge of the firelight, and behind him were three men in full plate,
the fire lighting them like moving mirrors. They had black surcotes with white crosses.

The Red Knight turned away from the two nuns. He waved to Ser Jehannes and leaned out into the courtyard. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Now someone’s come
into
the secret passage,’ Ser Jehannes said. ‘From outside. From the king.’ At the word
king
the courtyard burst into cheers
again. Jehannes pointed to the trio of armoured figures standing in the ruin of the covered way. ‘Knights of the Order.’

The music stopped.

One of the three knights raised his visor. He was an old man, but his smile was quite young.

The relief that flooded the captain was palpable, solid. He felt giddy. He felt weak. He said, ‘Splendid.’

The captain clasped hands with the first man in the long black cloak that marked the Knights of the Order of Saint Thomas of Acon.

‘I’m the captain,’ he said. ‘The Red Knight.’

‘Mark, Prior of Pyrwrithe,’ said the man whose right hand was clasped in his own. ‘May we offer you our compliments on a brilliant defence? Although I understand from Ser
Jehannes that the lady Abbess is dead.’

‘She died last night, my lords. In battle.’ Suddenly the captain was hesitant. He had no idea how the fighting orders felt about Hermeticism or any other form of phantasm.

The Prior nodded. ‘She was a great lady,’ he said. ‘I will go and pay my respects. But first – the king is across the river, moving carefully. But he should be opposite
the Bridge Castle by late tomorrow. The next day at the latest.’

The captain grinned with pure joy. ‘That is welcome news.’ He looked at the three men, all in full armour. ‘You three must be tired.’

The prior shrugged. ‘The armour of faith is such that we feel little fatigue, my son. But a glass of wine is never amiss.’

‘Let us go to chapel,’ murmured the central figure. He wore a black tabard with the eight pointed cross of the order.

‘If I may: I’d rather you stood where the people could see you just a little longer,’ said the captain. ‘There have been doubts.’

The Prior shook his head. ‘We’re late and no mistake, Captain.’

The captain raised his hand for silence. In the courtyard, they cheered and cheered. But after a a few resurgences of spirit, they fell quiet, with Mag shouting ‘Shut up, you fools’
and a titter of laughter.

‘Friends!’ the captain said. His voice carried. ‘Our prayers have been answered. The king is here, and these three knights of the order are the vanguard.’ There were
cheers, but he went on. ‘We’ve had a sip or two and a dance tonight. But when the king comes, we’ll have to break this siege. The enemy is still out there. Let’s have some
sleep while we can. Aye?’