time we two met … and no doubt you will be panting to hear all.” He looked about him at the expressions on the faces of the others in his small group and then laughed. “Well, my friend, if that is the case you can put your tongue back into your mouth. You were the fortunate one, to be far gone on that occasion. It was tedious, Henry, tedious. Was it not so, Sir Andre? Apart from the single instant when I felt that crown come down solidly upon my head, to be sure. That one moment made the entire thing memorable and worthwhile. But the remainder of the event was boring beyond belief, all muttered Latin amid solemn dirges sung in a sea of smelly, swirling incense.” His eyes moved away again, narrowing with interest.
“Damn me, it
“Well, what think you? Shall we join the King?”
Sir Andre smiled and shrugged. For a moment, Henry thought he detected a tinge of something unexpected, almost a bitterness, in his son’s eyes, but when he looked more closely there was nothing there to be seen, and he thrust the thought aside.
“If he is going to fight afoot with the English soldiery,” Andre was saying, “as I suspect he is, we ought not to miss the spectacle, for I am told he does it rather well.” He bent forward in the saddle, reaching out towards Sir Henry, who grasped his hand warmly. “Good day to you, Father. Permit me to introduce Sir Bernard de Tremelay, who has accompanied us from Orleans.”
Sir Henry again nodded cordially to the newcomer. “De Tremelay, you say, from Orleans? Was there not a Master of the Temple once who had the same name and came from Orleans?”
“Sir Bernard de Tremelay.” The stranger nodded, smiling. “Your memory is excellent, Sir Henry. That was more than thirty years ago, and he was Master for barely a year. He was elder brother to my grandfather. I heard much about him in my youth, for he was highly regarded, but I never met the man. Shall we join the King?”
The three men prodded their mounts towards the place where the King and his two squires had dismounted in front of the small knot of kneeling English yeomen whom Henry had been watching earlier. By the time they arrived Richard was already rousing the kneeling men to their feet, laughing and slapping at the cumbersome padding the men wore.
“ … on your feet,” he was saying. “A fighting man need kneel to no other. A bending knee may indicate a pledge of fealty from time to time, but a bent knee that stays bent means subjugation, and I’ll have none of that in men who are my friends. Brian!” he called to the instructor, the only man among the English yeomen who was not swaddled in padding. “Pick me your three finest among this crew. No, wait. That would be … injudicious. I’ll pick my own three, and take my chances. You will supervise the fight.” He scanned the twelve astonished men in front of him, then raised a hand. “Now listen, all of you. I pick three of you, and we fight. Three single bouts, to a fall or a solid hit. Brian will judge.” He favored all of them with his dazzling grin, all flashing eyes and gleaming teeth. “But be warned, any man fool enough to hold back to spare my royal kingship and dignity will find himself digging latrines for the next two weeks. Is that clear? It had better be. I want to beat all three of you honestly and fairly because I am the better fighter. And if you can beat me, best me, knock me on my arse in the mire, then you had better do it, for I will not thank you for insulting me by holding back. And besides, I have a golden bezant for any man who knocks me down— three of them, if need be.” He looked from man to man again, meeting each one’s eye, then chose his opponents with three flicks of an index finger. “You, you, and you, let’s fight. Someone among the rest of you lend me a quarterstaff, and we’ll set about it.”
Word spread quickly, for the King’s behavior around his soldiers was well known, and even before he and his opponent faced each other for the first of the three bouts, a crowd had formed, encircling the fighters tightly so that the remaining nine yeomen of Brian of York’s group had to busy themselves forming a protective cordon, keeping the press back sufficiently far to afford the fighters room to move freely. But the nine of them were not sufficient to control the surging crowd. Those at the back of the throng jostled for a better view, pushing the people in front of them forward, and Sir Henry himself soon had to requisition additional “volunteers” to hold back the crowd.
The first bout began innocuously, both men circling to the left, easily balanced on the balls of their feet, their quarterstaffs held at the ready and their eyes intent upon each other. They were watching for the slightest hint of a coming attack, judging and interpreting every nuance of shifting balance, every flickering shade of expression. The yeoman, a tall, wide-shouldered young fellow called Will, whom St. Clair would have sworn to be less than twenty years old, had the enormous arms and wrists of a longbow archer, and he appeared to be unimpressed by the fact that he was face to face with his King in single combat. He was poised and cool and showed not the least sign of being intimidated as he moved easily in concert with Richard, gliding smoothly, knees lightly bent in readiness to spring.
Henry was not surprised that it was Richard who made the first move, lunging forward to his right, the staff in his hand suddenly transformed into a whirling blur of violent motion punctuated by hard-hitting, clattering blows that would have broken bones had they landed on anything other than his opponent’s weapon. They would certainly have forced most men to fall back and give ground, but the young yeoman stood firm and met the attack strongly, parrying and absorbing the flurry of blows easily and seemingly without effort, so that Richard soon stopped in mid-swing and sprang away, ending the clash and landing lightly poised on his toes. The younger man went after him immediately, giving him no time to rest, and for a space of whirling, rattling blows and stifled grunts it was Richard who went on the defensive, even yielding ground to the inexorable strength of young Will’s advance before he managed to regain the advantage by feinting ingeniously and almost disarming his opponent with a backhanded chop that forced the archer to spin nimbly away to his right. That spin, a miraculous recovery against an unforeseen blow, should have resulted in the end of the contest, for it exposed the archer’s back fatally to the huge blow that followed as the King swung around in a full pirouette, continuing the arc of his backhanded chop into a massive, sweeping downswing. But the young archer’s evasive move was so sure and swift that it carried him beyond Richard’s reach, and instead of striking him squarely between the shoulders, the tip of the King’s staff merely grazed the center of the heavy padding at Will’s back and glanced off, continuing downward to strike the ground hard and giving the young man an opportunity to recover and regain his poise.
After that, neither man seemed willing to take any risks, and for a while the action swayed back and forth as first one and then the other sought to take the initiative, but that state of affairs could not last long—not with Richard Plantagenet being watched and judged by his own men. He feinted right and then sprang to his left, slashing backhanded again in the hope of catching his opponent off guard. The archer was there to meet him and smashed the quarterstaff right out of the King’s hands, drawing a grunt of surprise, quickly followed by a howl of approval, from the watching crowd.
Disarmed and shaken as he was, Richard nonetheless gave his opponent no time to improve upon his advantage, but flung himself forward into a head-tucked, rolling tumble towards his fallen weapon, barely missing Will’s legs in his charging dive. The yeoman was forced to step aside as the King passed directly beneath his arms and snatched up the fallen quarterstaff in lunging to his feet. Sir Henry had to stifle a grunt and bite down on an admiring smile, for this action was pure Richard Plantagenet—the kind of spontaneous, unpredictable, and brilliant feat that made the man so beloved of his soldiers of all ranks; a move so unexpected and yet so sure and sudden that the King, re-armed, was back on the attack before anyone, including his opponent, could recover from their surprise. He cut young Will down with a heavy, powerful blow to his padded thigh that crushed the man’s protective padding and paralyzed his leg, sending him toppling sideways to his knees, hands flat on the ground, head hanging, with no other choice but to yield when the butt of Richard’s quarterstaff pressed down against the back of his neck.
The watching soldiery went wild with approval when Richard grinned and gallantly assisted his battered and vanquished adversary to his feet, making a great show of being out of breath and pushed almost to the limits of his strength. And yet, as he handed young Will from the fighting arena, he was already beckoning to the second man to step forth and face him.
This bout was far shorter and less exciting than the first, perhaps because Richard was flushed with victory and enthusiasm, or perhaps because the second yeoman was dismayed by what he had already seen. Whatever the reason, the second man crashed down solidly, flat on his back with both wits and breath driven out of him
