Edmund would, under other circumstances, have let him go except for the last comment. He followed the retreating boy.
‘Coward,’ he said. It was the first thing in the fight that went the way he wanted.
Blondie paused, and then laughed. ‘I’ll be back, and then you’re dead,’ he said, and his boys came and helped him walk. But as soon as they were clear of the ring of bystanders, the man called Jack turned and came after Edmund.
He cut at Edmund’s head again – outside line, high to low.
This time, no one hit Edmund in the head and his sword licked out, picked up the cut and forced it down even faster across his opponent’s body and onto Edmund’s buckler as he stepped forward. He bound the man’s arms under his buckler, and slammed his pommel into the man’s mouth, making teeth fly.
The same motion threw the man to the ground. Edmund kicked him. The man threw up.
‘Kill him!’ shouted several apprentices.
The thin boy had been beaten bloody. The other two were across the square.
Edmund had every eye on him. Anne looked-
‘Yield,’ he said, putting his sword at the man’s throat.
‘You better fucking kill me, fuckwit,’ Drake said. He spat another tooth.
Edmund shrugged. ‘You are wode,’ he said. ‘Insane!’
The other man’s eyes bored into him. ‘This square is mine.’
Edmund didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t just kill the bleeding man in cold blood. And his insistence was as frightening as his original challenge.
‘That’s why I’ll beat you, fuckwit,’ Drake said. ‘You haven’t got the balls-’
A board hit Drake in the head, and his body sagged. Tom leaned on the board – a door lintel from a building site. ‘My da says you have to kill ’em like lice,’ he said.
‘What about the law?’ asked Edmund. He couldn’t tell whether the man was alive or dead.
‘I don’t see the sheriff,’ said Tom. ‘Good fight, by the way. Nice move.’ He laughed. He sounded a little wild, but his hands were steady. ‘Let’s take him somewhere – the monastery. Monks always know what to do.’ He shrugged. ‘He’s not dead. You gonna let him live?’
Edmund found his hands were shaking hard. ‘Yes,’ he said. And knew he’d regret the weakness. But he also knew he couldn’t kill Jack Drake in cold blood. Not and be the same man afterwards.
Albinkirk – Ser John Crayford
Ser John looked at himself in the polished bronze mirror recently mounted on the armoury wall, and laughed aloud.
His new squire, young Jamie, paused. ‘Ser John?’
‘Jamie, there’s nothing sillier than an old man aping a younger one,’ he said.
Jamie Vorwarts was a Hoek merchant’s son. His whole family had died in the siege and the boy had nowhere to go. He knew more of arms than business, and he could polish steel better than any squire Ser John had ever had. He was perhaps fourteen. He was tall, a little too thin from hard rations, and his face was a little too pinched to be considered handsome.
He went back to polishing his master’s new six-piece breastplate. It was an expensive miracle of steel and brass, with verses from the Bible inscribed around the edge.
‘You could at least tell me I’m not old,’ Ser John said.
He was standing in front of the first mirror he’d owned in twenty years, wearing a fine green doublet, three layers of heavy linen covered in silk, and laced to the doublet were a pair of hose in green and red – themselves embroidered in flowers and fall leaves. The hose were slightly padded and quilted to wear under armour, and so was the doublet, but for Albinkirk they were as good as court clothes and they made him look slim and dangerous.
And old.
‘Mutton dressed as lamb,’ he said with a curse.
Jamie looked at him and allowed himself a smile. ‘That’s damn good, my lord.’
‘I didn’t concoct that little saying myself, you young scapegrace. When I was about forty years younger, that’s what we called prostitutes who were too old to roll over.’ The old man frowned.
‘Older women are very attractive,’ Jamie said carefully.
‘I know somewhere you will be very popular indeed,’ said Ser John.
An hour later, the two of them arrived at Middlehill Manor with a pair of donkeys laden with hampers. Ser John sat on his horse in the yard, noting that the new sheep had trimmed the yard grass, and he didn’t see so much as a wayward scrap of cloth on the ground – the grass was yellower than formerly, but the house was clean and neat, the door was replaced on its pintles – he’d helped with that himself – and out in the fields, six women took turns holding a plough for winter wheat. Their furrows were none too straight but then ploughing was hard work even for a fit man.
‘Jamie?’ he asked. ‘See those fine ladies struggling with a plough?’
Jamie leaped down and then paused. ‘Is it a chivalrous thing to plough?’
Ser John frowned. He felt like a magnificent hypocrite whenever he spoke on chivalry, as he’d spent most of his life killing men for money while wearing armour. But he shrugged. ‘Jamie, to the best of my understanding, anything you do to help a woman who needs help is chivalry. In this case, that’s ploughing.’
Jamie stripped his cote and his doublet in the warm sun, and Ser John smiled, thinking that he would endear himself very deeply to the six women who now paused, favouring their backs and fully aware that they were about to be saved from more ploughing.
Helewise came into the yard and smiled. ‘I ploughed yesterday,’ she said. ‘My pater taught me a woman can do aught a man can do. But by the wounds of Christ, he was a gentleman and never had to plough a furrow in his life.’ She caught herself tossing her hair, which just happened to be down. And clean.
‘I could rub your back,’ Ser John said. ‘It works when I’ve exercised too long with the sword.’
She smiled happily at him. ‘I might hold you to that, ser knight. But not, I think, until all are abed.’ She was already moving towards the door, and although she spoke naturally, she kept her voice low. ‘And perhaps not tonight.’
He stabled his own horse and saw that the nun’s palfrey had been there – her elegant shoes had left prints in the straw, and there were fresh droppings in the next stall.
He went into the house, and Helewise indicated a settle in the kitchen and went back to wrapping twine around herbs. ‘I saved most of my herb garden,’ she said. ‘I suppose they’re really wild plants, and the Wild didn’t mind them too much.’
He joined her, cutting lengths of hemp twine and giving each bundle of rosemary a single twist. A very young boy – just seven or eight – took them one at a time, climbed a ladder, and hung them from the rafters.
‘What brings you here this time?’ Helewise asked, eyes twinkling.
‘I’ve sent to the King for a new garrison,’ Ser John said. ‘Until then, Jamie and I are knights bent on errantry. You may see us more frequently than you like.’
‘I doubt it,’ she said, and just for a moment their hands touched.
‘Sister Amicia was here,’ she went on. ‘She’ll be back tonight, more’s the pity.’
‘You mislike her?’ asked Ser John.
‘Never say it. By the rood, John, I love her for her confidence. She makes women proud to be women and my daughter fair dotes on her. I won’t say my daughter’s bad, John, but she was in Lorica where it is all the fashion for young gentlewomen to play the wanton-’
John smiled.
‘Don’t smirk at me, sir! I’m too old to kindle and too practical to come to harm.’ She blushed.
‘For myself, madam, I find you very beautiful.’ He reached out, greatly daring, and pushed a lock of her hair from her forehead. He smiled into her eyes. ‘But it is all the Queen. She is a force of nature, and she has them all playing at it.’
‘I won’t hear a word agin’ her.’ Helewise sat back.
‘I speak none. But what is right for the Queen might not sit so well with a mother,’ Ser John said.