TW01 The Ivanhoe Gambit NEW (10 page)

Although Marcel did not display much of an aptitude for knightly skills, Andre responded to the training well and quickly. She learned how to control a horse while in full armor, though Giles' armor was extremely large on her and she could barely move about inside it without his assistance. She learned how to use a crossbow, how to fight with a broadsword, which she had not even been able to lift at first. She was almost constantly in pain from the demands placed on her young and undeveloped muscles, but she was possessed of intense determination. As time passed and she grew, her muscles became stronger.

She became concerned when she noticed that she was beginning to develop as a woman, but the fact that she was never meant to be voluptuous, coupled with the response of her muscles to the highly intense training, resulted in her developing a body that aided her in her deception. Her breasts, though firm, were small and easily, if uncomfortably, concealed. Her shoulders, though not as broad as those of many men, were nevertheless much broader than the standards of beauty dictated for women. Her arms were large for a woman and her legs did not have the coltish slimness indicative of indolence. Where women of the day were soft, Andre was hard. Where their skin was smooth, Andre's was rough. In short, as a woman, Andre de la Croix was too mannish to attract very many men and, indeed, she would have intimidated them. But in the aspect of a man, she gave the impression of possessing a studied, languid grace, a trim and compact body and a youthful prettiness that gave her a very boyish quality and frequently made others underestimate her.

When Giles succumbed to pneumonia, Andre and Marcel buried him in the forest and Andre took his horse and arms for her own. She applied the skills that Giles had taught her and improved upon them, selling her services to anyone who could afford to pay. In time, she was able to improve upon Giles'

ill-fitting armor by commissioning an armorer to craft a suit especially for her. There were many knights involved in the Crusades and they proclaimed this by wearing the cross upon their chests and shields.

Andre instructed her armorer to fashion a cross as a device for her, as well, only to make it different from those worn by the Crusaders. The armorer gave her a fleury cross and reversed the colors of the Crusaders from red on white to white on red and the red knight, Andre de la Croix, was born.

As she stood outside upon the parapet, feeling the cool evening breeze upon her face, Andre considered the unlikely part that fate had chosen her to play in the scheme of things.

She wished she understood more about the intrigue she was involved in.

"It is time for us to talk," a voice said at her side.

She jerked, startled. She had been all alone upon the castle wall mere seconds ago and the hooded stranger had appeared at her side as if out of thin air. It was not the first time he had so surprised her.

"Would that I could learn to move so swiftly, or with such silence," she told him. "Where did you come from?"

"That need not concern you."

"What do you want, then?"

"I want you to perform a service for me. You will listen carefully and follow each of my commands to the letter. I will not tolerate refusal or failure on your part. You—"

"I am not one of your serfs," said Andre.

"You are bought and paid for."

"You have purchased my services, my lord, you have not purchased me. I care not if you are the rightful King of England or Jesus Christ, Himself; it is all the same to me. So long as I am paid, I will follow your instructions. It would serve you well to consider that I could as easily inform your brother of our dealings, should you become too inconvenient a paymaster."

"I don't doubt that you could burn the candle at both ends successfully," said the referee, "but I possess the means whereby you might be singed."

"You threaten me?"

"With exposure as a woman, yes."

Andre stiffened and her fingers moved toward the dagger in her belt.

"Yes, I know, but rest assured that your secret will be safe with me so long as you follow my instructions."

Moving with lightning speed, Andre drew the dagger from its sheath and stabbed at—but he was no longer there. Andre looked quickly from side to side, holding the dagger out in front of her. She was alone upon the parapet. Thinking that her intended victim might have fallen over, she leaned out over the edge of the wall to look down and—

—powerful hands pinned her down against the stone. If she struggled, she could be thrown over the edge in a moment. She froze, resigned to her fate.

"That was very foolish, de la Croix. Your life rests in the palm of my hand, do you understand me? I could kill you at
any
time. Any time at all. Now drop the knife." It spun away into the darkness.

"Better."

He let her up. She looked shaken. "Have I bound myself over to a sorcerer?" she said.

"You have bound yourself over to Richard of England." Andre shook her head.'' You are not Plantagenet.'' Irving smiled. "Perhaps not. But I will be. Now listen carefully, I have a task for you . . . ."

The last day of the tournament was traditionally set aside for the melee, a mock battle staged for the benefit of the spectators. The melee held a great attraction for the masses, for it had all the elements of a real war. Once again, there was a great deal of milling about until Prince John showed up with his entourage, then the marshal began to organize things.

As the victor of the joust, Lucas was to captain one side while de la Croix, who took the second best honors, led the other. There were more entrants into this event than there had been in the jousting, not so much because it was less challenging as for the reason that with so many men upon the field, the fall of one was made less of a spectacle.

Predictably, Bois-Guilbert was among the first to enter on the side of de la Croix, as he was anxious to have another crack at the knight who had humiliated him the previous day. The bulk of De Bracy's Free Companions also took the side of de la Croix, while De Bracy himself was forced to watch the action from the stands, his shoulder bandaged and his pride a little hurt. There was no shortage of men to fight on the side of the white knight, however. Athelstane of Coningsburgh and several other Saxons entered the event on the side of the challengers, as did several Normans who wanted to try their hand against the mercenaries. When it was made certain that the numbers on both sides were even, the heralds announced the rules of the passage at arms.

Since the weapons to be used were real, whereas the battle was a mock one, there were certain prohibitions involved for the sake of preventing the melee from turning into a blood bath. Swords were to be used for striking only. Thrusting was forbidden. Maces and battle axes were allowed to be wielded with impunity, but daggers were forbidden. An unhorsed knight could, if capable, continue to fight on foot with someone in the same predicament, but then he could not attack or be attacked by a mounted knight.

Any knight who was forced, by his opponent, to the opposite side so that some part of his arms or person touched the palisade was considered vanquished and his horse and armor were forfeit to the victor. If a knight was unhorsed or struck down and unable to get up, it was permissable for his squire to run out and drag him out of harm's way, but in such a case, he also lost his horse and arms. The melee would cease when Prince John threw down his truncheon. Any knight breaking the rules was to be stripped of his arms upon the spot.

All things considered, it was still possible to get hurt in such a donnybrook, which fact did not escape Brian de Bois-Guilbert, who was intent on embedding his battle axe well and truly in the white knight's cranium. The memory of their joust was still fresh in his mind and he still felt the burning shame of it.

Everything about the white knight made him furious. The man would not reveal his face or state his name; he clearly showed himself to be a Saxon by declaring war upon the Norman knights and that a Saxon should prevail over a Norman . . . And on top of everything, he had chosen a Jewess as his queen, an open insult to every Norman lady and, yes, even to the Saxon wenches, as well.

Still, in spite of himself, Bois-Guilbert had to admit that the Jewess had been breathtaking. The Templars were not a celibate order; they granted themselves liberal dispensations. Bois-Guilbert was possessed of a hearty sexual appetite and, Jew or no Jew, the woman was a tasty morsel. Her lack of social standing made her quite vulnerable, a fact of which she was no doubt aware. She had absented herself from the day's festivities, leaving the Saxon girl, Rowena, to reign in her place as she had done at the previous night's banquet. Either the Jewess had chosen not to come in order to avoid any discomfort or someone had spoken to her, telling her she was not welcome. It irked Bois-Guilbert. On one hand, he was angry with the white knight for honoring a Jew and, on the other, he was irritated at her absence, since if she was not around, the chances of his getting between her legs were somewhat diminished. He was determined to take out his frustrations upon the man who had caused them all.

When both sides had taken their positions, the head marshal cried
"Laissez aller!"
and the fanfare sounded. Lances lowered, both sides thundered toward each other, crashing together in the center of the meadow with a clangor loud enough to be heard a mile away. There followed a cacophonous din, a pandemonium of metal upon metal as the knights hacked and flailed at each other with a vengeance, raising a thick cloud of dust that blew over the stands, adding the cursing and the coughing of the spectators to the general uproar.

In their first rush together, not a few knights were unhorsed and some lay still upon the field of battle, whether dead, wounded or merely stunned no one would know until their squires rescued them. It would have taken a brave squire, indeed, to rush out into such a press. Most of them waited until the dust had settled somewhat and the numbers thinned. Other knights struggled to their feet and took to bashing at each other, able to tell for which side they fought by the battle cries they voiced. Those on the side of de la Croix shouted out
"Tiens a ta foy!"
or "Hold to your faith!", the motto on the red knight's shield, while the white knight's men, to Prince John's great consternation, were instructed by their captain to cry out

"De par le roy!”
or "In the king's name!"

Lucas had less difficulty in the melee than did all the other knights. His nysteel armor allowed him to move far more freely than the others could and his helmet, though damaged from his joust with de la Croix, was still capable of filtering out much of the dust. While all around him knights sweated in their suits of armor, breathing in dust while risking heat exhaustion, Lucas felt relatively cool and unencumbered. As he lay about him with his sword, he found himself thinking that the melee was a good metaphor for the U.S. Temporal Corps. Soldiers on both sides battling it out while observers or, as in this case, marshals kept score. And even scorekeeping was a chancy proposition in this instance, as one marshal discovered who saw Philip de Malvoisin pressed against the palisade by his antagonist. The marshal pronounced Malvoisin vanquished and the attacker turned away to find another to defeat, whereupon Malvoisin promptly took advantage of the interposition of another mounted knight between himself and the stands to smite both marshal and victor with his mace.

As the spectators strained to follow their favorites, the air became choked with dust and bits of plumage shorn from the helmets of the knights. The deafening sound of metal upon metal was falling off somewhat as arms grew tired and the number of antagonists grew smaller. Many knights had now been pronounced "dead" by the marshals and they had withdrawn. The field was liberally littered with dead, dying and wounded men and even a horse or two and there were but a few combatants left. Now the squires began to risk running out upon the field to drag away their fallen masters.

Bois-Guilbert, de la Croix and Malvoisin were the last remaining knights on their side, while on the other there were the white knight, Athelstane of Coningsburgh and an unknown knight dressed all in black upon a jet black stallion. His shield was black as well, bearing no device. He was not well liked by the spectators, who had observed him to hang back from the fray, fighting only when pressed by another knight and, even so, doing nothing more than making a defense. He was booed by the spectators as he simply sat astride his horse and watched while Malvoisin and de la Croix pounded Athelstane into the ground and then turned to join Bois-Guilbert in doing battle with the "nameless oak." Many of those watching called to John, shouting at him to throw down his truncheon and end the contest, since it was obvious that the white knight would be overwhelmed and the crowd was sympathetic toward him. They did not want to see their favorite beaten to a bloody pulp by superior odds, but John held off, watching and smiling.

"Mark Bois-Guilbert," he said to Fitzurse. "The Templar has a score to settle and I'll wager our white knight will not live out the day."

Indeed, the Templar was pressing his attack with a fury, hammering away at the white knight for all he was worth with his battle axe while both de la Croix, on horseback, and Malvoisin, on foot, stood by to finish him off.

Lucas was doing his best to parry as many of the blows with his sword as possible. They could smash away at the nysteel until doomsday and make only the most superficial dents in it, but he was anxious to keep up appearances. He had seen de la Croix and Malvoisin team up on Athelstane, with the red knight attacking him on horseback and Malvoisin standing by to complete the job the moment Athelstane was unhorsed. The Saxon now lay senseless, possibly dead, some few yards way. Now Malvoisin stood ready, waiting until Bois-Guilbert and de la Croix managed to unhorse him so that he could take his shot. John showed no intention of stopping the contest until he was stretched out full length upon the field.