‘No,’ Harry says, an edge creeping into his voice. ‘Hugh, thank you for your concern, but I can’t leave.’ He sighs, raking a hand through his hair. It needs cutting now. He glances down at his nails, dark with dirt. ‘I know it seems like I’m going mad. I wonder it myself, in the deep hours of the night. But the only way for me to know is if I stay.’ He wants so desperately to unburden himself to the other knight, to tell him his hopes and fears. But these are not things that can be spoken aloud, to anyone.
‘Do you see them? In your dreams? The people you’ve killed?’ asks Sir Hugh quietly. There’s a pause as a chunk of wood in the fire splits with a loud pop. Both knights flinch. Then Sir Hugh exhales, long and ragged. ‘Because I do.’
‘It’s not that,’ says Harry, though the dead visit his dreams as well. ‘My ghost walks in daylight.’
Harry watches Sir Hugh’s brow crease in confusion, and then smooth, as the old knight’s eyes widen slightly. He had always been a perceptive man.
Sir Hugh nods. ‘I’ll fetch another jug, then.’
‘Good idea,’ Harry says.
It’s a terrific idea. They get astoundingly drunk, to the point where Harry almost pitches forwards into the embers as he tries to stand. The ground is surprisingly … unsteady. He ends up having to crawl into his tent, collapsing face-down on his pallet. It’s the most relaxed Harry’s felt in years.
He pays for it the next morning. The taste of small beer at breakfast has him scurrying off to a waste pit, jaw clenched around the vomit rising in his throat. Kneeling over the stinking pit, he throws up until there’s nothing left in his stomach. As he wipes his mouth on the back of his forearm, he notices how filthy his hands are.
He feels like he’s sweating alcohol, on a stiflingly warm day for late October.
Harry grabs the bar of lye soap and a brush from his tent and staggers down to the river. He discards his clothes on the bank and wades in. A few other knights and men-at-arms are bathing, and some camp-followers and squires are doing laundry on the bank, over buckets. The cold water feels heavenly on his abused body.
Harry scrubs himself until he’s pink, then climbs out, wraps himself in his cloak, and heads back to his tent. He digs out the small silver mirror he hasn’t used in months, and his whetstone. Knife sharpened, he shaves. He has great plans to go out riding later that day, but for now, he goes back to sleep again. It’s a luxurious feeling, being clean. He used to be so meticulous about such matters. He’d forgotten what it was like.
When he wakes again, the sun is low in the sky, but there’s still a couple of hours of riding time left. Harry staggers to his feet and pulls on his clothes and mail, trying to ignore his half-hard dick. He decides he won’t bother with the plate. He’s not going far. And besides, he never sees anybody on his rides.
Until he does, of course.
Until the sun is skimming the horizon and he’s still an hour away from the English lines. Until a raiding party of French knights, well armed and well armoured, sweeps out from around the side of a stone farmhouse. Half a dozen men; maybe more. They come at him from the west, so the low sun is in his eyes, blinding him. Their shadows reach him long before they do.
And Harry doesn’t have a death wish – not any more, at least – so he raises his hands in surrender. He glances down at his old, battle-worn clothing, hoping he can somehow appear worth ransoming rather than putting to the sword then and there. Not that anyone on the English side would raise a purse for him. But his captors don’t need to know that.
A sudden, desperate thought occurs to him: if he is taken behind French lines, maybe he will see the Black Knight. Maybe he will find out if the man under the helmet has pale eyes and an off-kilter, roguish smile.
‘I surrender,’ Harry says. ‘I am Sir Harry Lyon of Dartington, friend of—’ He hesitates— ‘friend of the Earl of Arundel, who would ransom me.’
A small but broad knight with a dark beard visible under his helmet looks Harry up and down. Then the man turns his head and spits on the ground. ‘We have no room to ransom common knights. In a few minutes, Englishman, you will meet the Devil. Ask him to write to your Earl of Arundel. He probably knows the address.’
The knights laugh.
Harry shifts uncomfortably. He still has his hands in the air. There are eight knights, all mounted, and they surround him. Two have light war lances. One mace. The rest have swords drawn.
His mind races through tactics; angles. Drop off Nomad and roll under one of their horses … and then get run down on foot. Any plan that allows him to escape the circle doesn’t let him outrun the knights; any plan to outrun the knights won’t succeed in breaking the circle without grievous injury to him and Nomad. He can’t get out of this.
The bearded knight raises his sword, and Harry can see the mace rising too, out of the corner of his eye.
‘Wait,’ Harry says. ‘I need to speak to the Black Knight. To the Chevalier de la Mort. I know him.’ He suddenly realises he’s crying, tears running down his cheeks under his helmet. ‘Please. I know him.’
One of the knights with the lances speaks up again. He moves the lance-point so it hovers just beneath Harry’s helmet, at the soft flesh below his jaw. It’s no tournament lance, built
