The Red Knight

wharves and peers at the riverside, merchants’ houses, streets of craftsmen in houses built tall and thin to save land.

He walked down the ramp, leading his two horses past the sentries – men he knew. More hand clasps.

He walked along Flood Street, past the great convent of St Thomas and the streets of the Mercers and Goldsmiths, and down the steep lanes past the Founders and the Blacksmiths, to the place where Blade Lane crossed with Armour Street, at the sign of the broken circle.

The counter was only as wide as two broad-built men standing side by side, but Ranald looked around, because the Broken Circle made the finest weapons and armour in the Demesne, and there were always things there to be seen. Beautiful things – even to a hillman. Today was better than many days – a dozen simple helmets stood on the counter, all crisp and fine, with high points and umbers to shade the eye, the white work fine and neat, the finish almost mirror bright, the metal blue-white, like fine silver.

And these were simple archer’s helmets.

There was an apprentice behind the counter, a likely young man with arms like the statues of the ancient men and legs to match. He grinned and bobbed his head and went silently through the curtain behind him to fetch his master.

Tad Pyel was the master weapon smith of the land. The first Alban to make the hardened steel. He was a tall man with a pleasant round face and twenty loyal apprentices to show that the mild disposition was not just in his face. He emerged, wiping his hands on his apron.

‘Master Ranald,’ he said. ‘Here for your axe, I have no doubt.’

‘There was some talk of a cote, of maille as well,’ Ranald added.

‘Oh,’ Tad nodded absently to his apprentice. ‘Oh, as to that – Continental stuff. Not my make. But yes, we have it ready for you.’

Edward, the apprentice, was shifting a wicker basket from the back, and Ranald opened the lid and looked at the river of gleaming mail, every ring riveted with a wedge so small that most of the rings looked as if they’d been forged entire. It was as fine as the hauberk he’d worn as a King’s Man.

‘This for thirty leopards?’ Ranald asked.

‘Continental stuff,’ the master replied. He didn’t actually sniff, but the sniff was there. Then the older man smiled, and held out a heavy pole with the ends wrapped in sacking. ‘This would cut it as a sharp knife cuts an apple.’

Ranald took it in his hands, and was filled with as sweet a feeling as the moment that a man discovers he is in love – that the object of his affection returns his feelings.

Edward cut the lashings on the sacking, revealing a sharp steel spike on one end, ferruled in heavy bronze, balancing an axe blade at the other end – a narrow crescent of bright steel, as long as a man’s forearm, ending in a wicked point and armed with a vicious back-hook. All balanced like a fine sword, hafted in oak, with steel lappets to guard against sword cuts.

It was a hillman’s axe – but incomparably finer, made by a master and not by a travelling smith at a fair.

Ranald couldn’t help himself, and he whirled it between his hands, the blade cutting the air and the tip not quite brushing the plaster of the low room.

Edward flattened himself against the wall, and the master nodded, satisfied.

‘The one you brought me was a fine enough weapon,’ the master said. ‘Country made, but a well-made piece. But the finish,’ he winced. And shrugged. ‘And I thought that the balance could be improved.’

The spike in the butt of the haft was as long as a knight’s dagger, wickedly sharp and three-sided.

Ranald just smiled in appreciation.

The master added two scabbards – a sheath of wood covered in fine red leather for the axe, and another to match for the spike.

Ranald counted down a hundred silver leopards – a sizeable portion of two years’ pay. He looked admiringly at the helmets on the counter.

‘They’re spoken for,’ the master said, catching his eye. ‘And none of them would fit your noggin, I’m thinking. Come back in winter when my work is slow, and I’ll make you a helmet you could wear to fight a dragon.’

The air seemed to chill.

‘Naming calls,’ Edward said, crossing himself.

‘Don’t know what made me say that,’ said the master. He shook his head. ‘But I’d make you a helmet.’

Ranald carried his new maille out to his pack horse, who was not as fond of it as he was, resenting the weight and the re-packing of the panniers it necessitated. He came back for the axe, and put it lovingly into the straps on his riding horse, close to hand. No one watching doubted that he’d handle it a dozen more times before he was clear of the suburbs. Or that he’d stop and use it on the first bush he found growing by the road.

‘You ride today, then,’ the master said.

Ranald nodded. ‘I’m needed in the north,’ he said. ‘My brother sent for me.’

The weapon smith nodded. ‘Send him my respects, then, and the sele of the day on you.’

The hillman embraced the cutler, stepped through the door, and walked his horses back up the old river bank.

He stopped in the chapel of Saint Thomas, and knelt to pray, his eyes down. Above him, the saint was martyred by soldiers – knights in the Royal Livery. The scene made him uncomfortable.

He bought a pie from a ragged little girl by the Bridge Gate, and then he was away.

Harndon City – Edward

‘There goes a fearsome man,’ said the master to his apprentice. ‘I’ve known a few. And yet as gentle as a lady. A better knight than many who wear spurs.’

Edward was too smitten with hero-worship to comment.

‘And where’s our daring mercer?’ asked the master.

‘Late, your worship,’ said his apprentice.

Tad shook his head. ‘That boy would be late to his own funeral,’ he said, but his voice suggested he had nothing but praise for the mercer. ‘Pack the helmets in straw and take them round to Master Random’s house, will you, Ned?’

No matter how kind your master is, there’s no apprentice who doesn’t relish a trip beyond the Ward. ‘May I have a penny to buy baskets?’

Master Thaddeus put coins in his hand. ‘Wish I’d made him a helmet,’ he said. ‘Where’d the thought of a dragon come from?’

Harndon Palace – the Queen

Desiderata sat primly on an ivory stool in the great hall, its stucco walls lined with the trophies taken by a thousand brave knights – the heads of creatures greater and smaller, and a very young dragon’s head, fully the size of a horse, filling the northern wall beneath the stained glass window like a boat hull protruding from the sea. To her, it never quite looked the same way twice, that dragon – but it was huge.

She sat peeling a winter apple with a silver knife. Her hair was a halo of brown and red and gold around her – a carefully planned effect, as she sat in the pool of light thrown by the king’s beloved rose window. Her ladies sat around her, skirts spread like pressed flowers on the clean checkerboard marble floor, and a dozen of the younger knights – the very ones who should have been tilting in the tilt yard, or crossing swords with the masters – lounged against the walls. One, the eldest of them by half a dozen years and some fighting, was called ‘Hard Hands’ for his well-known feat of killing a creature of the Wild with a single blow of his fist. It was a story he often told.

The Queen disliked men who boasted. She made it her business to know who was worthy and who was not – indeed, she viewed it as her sacred role. She loved to find the shy ones – the brave men who told no one of their deeds. She thought less of the braggarts. Especially when they sat in her hall and flirted with her ladies. She had just determined to punish the man when the king came in.

He was plainly dressed, in arming clothes, he smelled like horses and armour and sweat, and she wrapped herself around him and his smell as if they were newly wed. He smiled down into her face and kissed her nose.

‘I love it when you do that,’ he said.