male parts of songs. I was becoming a man, physically, at least. And when we practised swordplay on the exercise yard I remembered the blond man I had killed, and squared my shoulders, and scowled at Guy across the rim of my shield. I still ended up in the dust, of course.
There were other small changes too. Our settlement was growing. Young men, sent by Robin, had drifted into Thangbrand’s in ones and twos over the summer. For the most part, they were unprepossessing: often malnourished, exhausted and with an air of desperation. But Thangbrand welcomed them, fed them and, when they had rested, they joined us on the well-swept yard for battle practice every day. Soon there were ten of us, fifteen, twenty in a line; swinging swords or using spear and shield in combination, learning battle manoeuvres, drilling endlessly, while an exasperated Thangbrand roared at some unfortunate newly arrived vagabond: ‘No, you fool, it’s a war spear, not a ox goad. Don’t poke with it, you are supposed to be stabbing a man, not tickling him. God save us all from plough-bred peasants!’
Not all the newcomers joined us in this farcical display. The men with greater than average physical strength were trained to the bow: lifting great weights all day, rocks and sacks of grain to condition their muscles, and shooting yard-long ash arrows at round straw-filled targets a hundred paces away, not always with the greatest of success. Those men who could ride, and had brought their own or stolen horses, were trained separately, too. I was taught to ride properly by Hugh, who soon had me galloping around a paddock, jumping over small hurdles with my arms folded across my chest, gripping the horse only with my knees. He trained the cavalry contingent, too. They would gallop, with a blunt lance couched under one arm, at a quintain: a horizontal pole with a target shield at one end and a counterweight (usually a bag of grain) at the other. The pole was mounted on a vertical post and when the shield was struck from horseback by the lance the contraption would rotate at high speed and the bag of grain could sweep an unwary horseman off his seat as he rode past. Guy was fascinated by the quintain. He would watch the men practising for hours and, strangely, when they were knocked out of the saddle, though the other onlookers guffawed and wiped away tears of hilarity, Guy never did. At the end of one training session, he begged a horse for an hour and tried it himself. Of course, like all the other novices, he was tumbled into the dirt by the heavy swinging bag of grain every time he charged the machine. But he didn’t give up. He worked out that speed was the essence; he had to be moving fast enough to avoid the sweep of the counterweight, but at high speed it was difficult to hit the target shield with your lance and you risked horse and rider crashing into the stout wooden block if your lance didn’t jab it out of your path.
I thoroughly enjoyed watching Guy being hurled from the saddle again and again to thump into the turf of the cavalry training field. But I also felt a grudging respect. He never gave up. After each tumble, he got up, brushed the dirt from his tunic and hose, recaptured the horse and climbed stiffly back into the saddle. By the end of that first session he had managed, once, successfully to hit the target and, admittedly with a dangerous sway of his body, had ridden clear, raising his lance in triumph and shouting his victory to the greenwood. Within the week he was able to gallop past, striking the shield cleanly and with considerable force, without the swinging counterweight coming anywhere near him.
He was improving with the sword, too. Almost in spite of Thangbrand’s plodding teaching methods, Guy was becoming skilled on the exercise yard. When we paired off to practise sword combat, instead of the furious storm of blows that used to batter at my defences, Guy was showing craft, cunning even. He feinted, made mock-lunges, kept me off balance and then struck; knocking me sprawling with the flat of the blade and then holding the sharp tip at my throat and demanding surrender. He no longer cursed me or tried to hurt me in petty ways on the exercise field: he was taking it seriously; not me, but the practice of war. And he was good at it.
Thangbrand noticed it and began getting Guy to demonstrate particular sword and shield manoeuvres, with me as his partner. A pattern emerged: a cut or two, a clash of shields and I’d be sprawling on the ground. One day, knocked on the flat of my back for the twentieth time, I felt a great weariness in my bones and I couldn’t bring myself to get to my feet as the session ended. I just lay there listening to the sounds of the other men and boys leaving the yard: the ribald laughter, the clatter of arms, a curse or two and then blessed silence. I continued to lie there, staring up at the blue summer sky above, when a voice spoke.
‘You are not all that bad, you know,’ it said. ‘You are not strong yet, it’s true. But you are quick — very quick, I believe. The problem is that you don’t move your feet. You stand like a woodsman trying to chop down a tree. Your enemy isn’t a tree. He’s a living, breathing, fast-moving, fighting man. And, if he knows how to move his feet, he’ll kill you.’
It was a good voice, mellow and mild but with comforting depth. I turned my head and looked up at Sir Richard at Lea standing there blocking out the sunlight. He held out his hand and I scrambled to my feet.
Sir Richard had recovered well from his injuries. I had noticed him exercising with some of the other men- at-arms; I’d even seen him take a tilt at the quintain, and, of course, he struck the target beautifully dead in the centre and cantered on unscathed. He was just marking time, really, waiting for Sir Ralph Murdac to raise the money for his ransom. But there seemed to be some delay, I didn’t know what. He could have escaped any time he wished; he wore a sword, had been allocated a horse, and he was almost entirely healed. But he was a gentleman, a knight, and he had given his parole to Robin.
‘Watch my feet,’ he said. And, drawing his sword, he executed a few elegant passes, moving lightly on the balls of his feet, back and forward on the exercise yard. It looked simple; half steps back and forward, side to side, a large quick pace before the lunge. Then he drew a circle in the dirt about a yard wide and gave me his sword. ‘I’ll stay in this circle,’ he said. ‘Try and hit me.’
‘But I might hurt you,’ I said. He just laughed.
So he stood unarmed in the dirt circle and I lunged halfheartedly at him with his sword. He moved easily, casually, out of the way of the blade. ‘Come on, try harder,’ he said. I lunged again, faster this time. He moved nimbly once more, dancing out of the way. I struck as fast as I could: a snake-quick stab at his heart. He merely twisted his body to avoid the blade. I could see how he thought this would play out, and it irritated me: I’d poke at him, the clumsy boy, he’d give a manly guffaw, and skip lightly out of my path. I was well fed with such humiliation, so I hacked hard and suddenly at his head; he ducked only just in time. Then I held the sword with two hands and, with a swirl of real anger in my gut, I swung it as hard and fast as I could at his middle. If the blow had struck his waist, it would have sliced into his body and half severed him. He stepped forward, lightning fast, to the edge of the circle, caught my double handed grip on the hilt with his left hand, half-blocking my swing, his right foot was outside my right foot, his right hand was under my left shoulder, shoving hard — and I was tumbled into the dirt once again. ‘You are quick,’ said Sir Richard, ‘angry, too. That’s good. A man needs his anger in a fight.’ He helped me up again. ‘Now it’s your turn,’ and he nodded towards the circle in the dirt.
And so Sir Richard at Lea, the renowned and noble knight, taught me to move my feet. For the rest of the morning, and then every morning after Thangbrand’s battle practice for the next few weeks, I stood in the dirt circle as Richard lunged, swiped and hacked at my dodging body. He attacked slowly at first, building the basic foot movements into my mind, so that they became second nature. Then he would speed up, even try to take me by surprise. After a month, he let me use my sword to defend myself and he started by teaching me the basic blocks, and after a while some more complicated patterns; but, he emphasised again and again until I was sick of hearing it, it was my feet that mattered.
As Sir Richard and I practised in our dirt circle, we were often watched. Bernard, come to collect his daily rations from the hall, would lounge against the side of the building, grinning as I swiped at Richard and missed or was tumbled into the dust. And most days little yellow Godifa would stand solemn-faced by the edge of the practice ground and gaze at us as I sweated, and skipped, grunted and lunged on the exercise yard. She never said a word and always by the end of the session, at noon, when Richard and I would go and drink a pint of ale together in the buttery, she was gone.
I enjoyed the after-exercise drink as much as the sword-work itself. Sir Richard was taciturn at first, though perfectly amiable. But gradually I began to learn a little about him. He was more than just an ordinary knight, I discovered. He was a Poor Fellow-Soldier of Christ and the Temple of Solomon: one of the famous Knights Templar. They were the elite forces of Christendom, trained for many years in all forms of arms to become perfect killing machines for the glory of God. I was being taught to use a sword, it slowly dawned on me, by one of the best soldiers in the world. The previous year, Sir Richard told me, he had been one of the few Templar Knights to escape the massacre at Hattin, when the infidel Saladin had smashed a Christian army and murdered hundreds of Christian knights who had been taken prisoner. Later that year, Saladin had captured Jerusalem itself and the Pope had ordered a new expedition to free the Holy City from the hordes of Islam. Sir Richard had been sent back to his homeland to preach Holy War to the English and help King Henry raise forces for the great battles to come in
