The Red Knight

Later still, he realised that her eyes were open.

She wriggled off his lap. He considered a dozen remarks – all variations on being warmer than her gentle Jesus, but then dismissed them all.

He was, after all, growing up.

He kissed her hand.

She smiled. ‘You pretend to be far worse than you are,’ she said.

He shrugged.

She reached into her sleeve, and put something in his hand. It was a plain square of linen.

‘My vow of poverty isn’t worth much, because I have nothing,’ she said. ‘I did a little to ease the tire-woman’s joints, and she gave me this. But I’ve cried in it. Twice.’ She smiled.

He hoped that he wasn’t seeing her in the first light of morning.

‘I think that makes it mine,’ she said.

He crushed it to his heart, pushed it inside his arming cote, kissed her hand.

‘What do you want?’ she asked.

‘You,’ he said.

She smiled. ‘Silly. What do you want out of life?’

‘You first,’ he said.

She smiled. ‘I’m easy. I want people to be happy. To live free. And well. With enough to eat. In good health.’ She shrugged. ‘I like it when people are happy.’ She smiled at him. ‘And brave. And good.’

He winced. ‘War must be very hard on you.’ Winced again. ‘Brave and good?’

‘Yes,’ she said. She shook her head. ‘You don’t know me very well, not yet. Now you. What do you want?’

He shook his head. He didn’t dare tell the truth and didn’t want to lie to her. So he tried to find a middle ground. ‘To defy God, and my mother.’ He shrugged, sure that her face had just hardened, set in automatic anger. ‘To be the best knight in the world.’

She looked at him. The moon was up – that’s all it was, not daylight – and her face shone. ‘You?’

‘If you can be a nun, I can be the best knight,’ he said. ‘If you, the very queen of love, can deny your body to be a nun, then I – cursed by God to sin – can be a great knight.’ He laughed.

She laughed with him.

That’s how he liked to remember her, ever after – laughing in the moonlight, without the shadow of reserve in her face. She held out her arms, they embraced, and she was gone on soft feet.

He didn’t even stop to shiver. He ran up the steps to the commanderies, drank off a cold cup of hippocras that had once been hot. But before he let himself sleep, he woke Toby and sent him for Ser Adrian, his company secretary. The man came softly, in a heavy wool overrobe.

‘I don’t mean to whine,’ said the scribe, ‘But do you know what time it is?’

The captain drank another cup of wine. ‘I want you to ask around,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what I’m looking for, but I’m hoping you can find it for me. I know I’m not making sense. But there’s a traitor in this fortress. I have suspicions, but nothing like a shred of proof. Who here can communicate with the outside world? Who has a secret hatred of the Abbess? Or a secret love of the Wild?’

He almost choked on the last words.

The scribe shook his head. Yawned. ‘I’ll ask around,’ he said. ‘Can I go back to bed?’

The captain felt foolish. ‘I may be wrong,’ he said.

The scribe rolled his eyes – but he waited until he was out of the captain’s door to do it.

The captain finished his cup and threw himself, fully dressed, on his bed. When the chapel bell rang he tried not to count the rings, so he could pretend he’d had a full night’s sleep.

The Siege of Lissen Carak, Day Three.

Michael could hear the captain snoring, and envied him. The archers said he’d ‘been busy’ half the night with his pretty nun, and Michael was vaguely envious, vaguely jealous, and desperately admiring. And mad as hell, of course. It was unfair.

The third day had been so without event that Michael had begun to wonder whether the captain was wrong. He’d told them the enemy would attack.

All day, the wyverns flew back and forth.

Something monstrous belled and belled, a high, clear note made somehow huge and terrifying in the woods.

No action today. We watched the enemy assemble rafts to replace the boats we burned. The captain warned us that they will eventually assemble machines of war – that the men among the Enemy would traitorously teach the monsters to use them. The fog kept up all day, so that, while the sentries on the fortress walls can see many leagues, almost nothing can be seen of the fields immediately around the castle. The men say that the Abbess can see through the fog.

We heard cutting and chopping all day.

Towards sunset, a great force moved through the woods to the west. We could see the trees moving and the glitter of the late sun on weapons. And the roar of many monsters. The captain says a force is crossing the river. He ordered a sortie to form when another force, even larger, formed in the woods opposite our trench, but then dismissed us to dinner when there was no attack.

Michael sat back. He wasn’t any good at keeping a journal, and he knew that he was leaving out important developments. Wilful Murder had shot a boglin almost three hundred paces away – shooting from a high tower, over the fog, on the dawn breeze. He was now drunk as a lord on the beer ration provided by his mates. But it didn’t seem to change the siege. Or be a notable or noble event. Michael had only the histories from his father’s library as his examples, and they never mentioned archers.

The captain came in. He had dark circles under his eyes.

‘Go to bed,’ he said.

Michael needed no second urging. But he paused in the doorway.

‘No attack?’ he said.

‘Your talent for stating the obvious must make you wildly popular,’ the captain said savagely.

Michael shrugged. ‘Sorry.’

The captain rubbed his head. ‘I was sure he’d attack the trench today. Instead, he’s sent something – and I worry it’s a strong force – south across the river, despite our burning his boats. There’s a convoy down there, he’s going to destroy it, and I can’t stop him – or even try – until I’ve bloodied his nose in my little trap, and my trap isn’t catching anything.’ The captain drank some wine. ‘It’s all fucking hubris. I can’t actually predict what the enemy will do.’

Michael was stung. ‘You’ve done all right so far.’

The captain shrugged. ‘It’s all luck. Go sleep. The fun part of this siege is over. If he doesn’t go for my nice trench-’

‘Why should he?’ Michael asked.

‘Is that the apprentice captain asking, or the squire?’ the captain asked, pouring himself more wine. He spilled some.

‘Just an interested bystander,’ Michael said, and casually, by mistake done-apurpose., knocked the captain’s wine off the table. ‘Sorry, m’lord. I’ll fetch more.’

The captain stiffened, and then yawned. ‘Nah. I’ve had too much. He has to assume I’ve filled the trench with men and that with one good rush he can overrun it and kill half my force.’

‘But you have filled it with men,’ Michael said. ‘I saw you send them out.’

The captain smiled.

Michael shook his head. ‘Where are they?’

‘In the Bridge Castle,’ the captain said. ‘It was very clever, but either he saw through the whole thing or he’s too much of a coward to try us.’ He looked in his wine cup and made a face. ‘Where’s Miss Lanthorn?’ he asked. Then he relented. ‘Why don’t you go see her?’

Michael bowed. ‘Good night,’ he said. And he slipped out into the hallway and pulled his pallet across the captain’s door.