Crispin drew an arrow from the ground and handed it to Martin. “Yes. And many other places.”
Martin pulled the string back as Crispin taught him and aimed unsteadily. “I’ll wager you laid a few low with this,” he said.
Crispin flinched but tried to hide it by yanking an arrow from the turf and jamming it back in. He repeated the gesture several times. “I wasn’t an archer,” he reminded Martin quietly.
The shaft flew into the woods. Martin looked up from over his bow and stammered, “Oh. Of course. You wouldn’t have been, would you?”
“No. Indeed.” France. France’s battlefields, villages, forest-glotted estates. Thank God it wasn’t all muddy camps and damp pavilion tents. The duke had estates in France, and there were many similar English holdings where a bed and a grand meal awaited. Crispin circulated in villages aplenty, observing the natives, sampling the food (there was a sweet-tasting bread he especially liked), employing French tailors and French cobblers. French cotehardies were more tapered, more sweeping from the body. Their shoes, particularly the wooden clogs of both peasant and noble, were carved with more flare than the stoically practical English equivalent.
Crispin looked down at the arrow in his hand, rolled the shaft between his fingers. He missed those days. They seemed carefree, with that preponderance of time separating those events from these. He had certainly been free with his money. What he wouldn’t give for one of those French cotehardies now . . .
He raised his head and scanned the other men practicing with poorly hewn long bows and short bows. Women gathered, too, making an outing of it with food and drink—and why not? The king decreed it, but it didn’t mean the people could not make pleasant what the king made a chore.
Martin handed Crispin the bow again and Crispin took his turn with several arrows. The string calloused his fingers, but he didn’t care. Fine gloves or leather tabs used to protect his fingers, and a leather brace shielded his bow arm when out hunting with Lancaster on his lands. But Crispin owned no such leather goods now. Still, it felt good to have a weapon in his hands, under his control. To feel the tautness of the string at the folds of his fingers, the arrow’s shaft resting on his index finger as he aimed, the breath of wind as the fletching hissed by his ear, and the satisfaction of the faint thud when the point sunk into its target.
“I’d go to war m’self,” said Jack, standing just behind Crispin, chin up like a cockerel and keeping a sharp eye on every movement he made.
“Oh?” Crispin pulled back the string again and carefully aimed above the shaft already in the target.
“To see the gonfalons and the banners. And the horses. I’d fight with the best of them and win me ransom. Aye, I’d like to see that.”
The arrow whirred away and struck an inch above the first. Jack handed him another and Crispin nocked the arrow in the string. “So you’d like to fight, eh? Ever seen a battle?”
“Only at tournament. The melee. A fine show, that.”
Crispin closed his left eye and took aim with the right. “You think so, do you?” He let loose the arrow. It stuck the target above the last shaft. He lowered the bow until one end rested on the ground. He leaned on it and turned to Jack. “Ever see a man dismembered and disemboweled?”
Jack’s brows widened. His lips parted and hung open. “No.”
“You’d see plenty of it. Swords chopping and arms flung off. Men’s entrails spilling out at your feet.” Jack looked down at his own feet and stepped back. “Blood spattering your face as you swing your blade. Bits of bone snapping up at your eyes. Men screaming and then drowning in their own blood. That’s in the true melee, not the spectacle with wooden swords at a tournament.” He took the last arrow from the turf and jabbed the point toward Jack’s chest. The boy jerked back and stared down his nose at the arrow point. Crispin pursued, jabbing and stepping forward for each of Jack’s steps back. “In all probability, you’d be struck down by an arrow before you ever raised a weapon.” He jabbed at him again and Jack cringed, his chest caving inward. The boy’s fingers covered his breast protectively as if trying to stop a misdirected quarrel.
“Still want to go?” prodded Crispin.
Jack looked at Martin. Both their faces paled with new sobriety. “Well,” said Jack, quieter than before, “maybe not.”
Crispin turned back to his bow, nocked the arrow, and lifted the weapon.
Jack wiped his hands down his dirty tunic and licked his lips. He sauntered with recovering dignity back beside Crispin and watched him aim. “But what about you, Master? That’s what being a knight is, eh? If you were a knight again, would you go to war with the king?”
Crispin drew back the bowstring and pressed his thumb hard against his cheek. He blinked slowly in rhythm to his even breathing. “In a heartbeat,” he murmured.
The noise of men and the thump of a heavy horse drew up behind them. “What’s all that?” asked Crispin, still taking aim. He couldn’t decide whether to hit the target below or above the arrows in the center.
“It’s the king’s Captain of the Archers,” said Martin. “He’s a fine-looking gentleman on a splendid horse all frilled out in a colorful trapper.”
“All men look like fine gentlemen on a horse,” said Crispin. He let the arrow fly. It struck in the middle of his arrows and trembled. Five arrows bristled from the target, all clumped together in the center circle. “But not all are gentlemen.” He set the bow on one end and turned to look at the Captain of the Archers.
It was a fine horse. Its trapper—the hem reaching down to the horse’s fetlocks—swished in the wind and with the horse’s skittish gait. A bow hung on the saddle’s high pommel as did a quiver with arrows. Crispin looked higher.
A cold hand seemed to close over Crispin’s heart and squeezed, holding his breath, his blood, his very life in a suspension of time. Blinding anger overtook the shock and he gritted his teeth to keep from shouting outright. He flung the bow away and stomped up to the man on the horse. Before anyone could say or do anything, Crispin reached up and dragged the man to the ground. He pulled him up to a sitting position, yanked out his blade, and thrust it toward the man’s surprised face.
“Throat or gut?” rasped Crispin. “Your choice. Either way, you’re a dead man!”
6
“CRISPIN! ARE YOU MAD?” Martin tugged Crispin’s arms.
Crispin heard him distantly like a midge buzzing about his head. He did not yield. When the two men-at-arms arrived they did a better job. They swung him to the ground. Crispin sprang to his feet and the men grabbed him again.
“Master!” Jack trotted around them like a sheepdog, trying to get to Crispin.
Crispin spun out of the guards’ grip. He kicked one in the gut and slammed his fist in the other’s jaw. The first man recovered and pulled his sword. Crispin darted under the blade and grabbed the wrist holding the weapon. With hands firmly on the struggling guard’s wrist, he directed the steel toward the other man still groaning on the ground and smacked him in the head with the side of the blade. The man slumped solidly down.
With his fist still ringing the swordsman’s wrist, Crispin tried to disarm him, but the man twisted and kneed Crispin’s chest, knocking the air out of his lungs. Crispin had no choice but to release his grip and stagger backward. The man raised his sword, but Crispin whirled and landed a blow with the heel of his boot to the man’s groin. The man’s face squinted and his mouth formed a soundless “O.” Crispin threw an uppercut and smiled when the man slammed backward into the mud. The sword flung from his hand.