The Red Knight

instinctively.

‘Aye,’ said the farmer. He was defensive, and he looked at his cousin for support. ‘There was tre of ’em. Crossing my fields.’ He hugged himself. ‘An’ one loosed at me. I ran for ta’ house, an’ picked up me latchet and let fly. An’ tey ran.’

Ser John sat a little too suddenly. Age and armour were not a good mix.

Will Flodden sighed. ‘Just show it to him.’ He seemed impatient – a farmer who wanted to get back to his farm.

Before he even undid the string securing the sack, Ser John knew what he was going to see. But it all seemed to take a long time. The string unwinding, the upending of the sack. The thing in the sack had stuck to the coarse fabric.

For as long as it took, he could tell himself that the man was wrong. He’d killed an animal. A boar with an odd head, or some such.

But twenty years before Ser John had stood his ground with thousands of other men against a charge of ten thousand irks. He remembered it too damned well.

‘Jesus wept. Christe and the Virgin stand with us,’ he said.

It was an irk, its handsome head somehow smaller and made ghastly having been severed from its sinuous body.

‘Where, exactly?’ he demanded. And turning, he ignored Tom Lickspittle, who was a useless tit in a crisis. ‘Clarkson! Sound the alarm and get me the mayor.’

Lissen Carak – The Red Knight

Patience had never been the captain’s greatest virtue, and he paced the great hall of the convent, up and back, up and back, his anger ebbing and flowing as he gained and lost control of himself. He suspected that the Abbess was keeping him waiting on purpose; he understood her motives, he read her desire to humble him and keep him off guard; and despite knowing that he was angry, and thus off guard.

Gradually, frustration gave way to boredom.

He had time to note that the stained glass of the windows in the clerestory had missing panels – some replaced in clear glass, and some in horn, and one in weathered bronze. The bright sunlight outside, the first true sign of spring, made the rich reds and blues of the glass glow, but the missing panes were cast into sharp contrast – the horn was too dull, the clear glass too bright, the metal almost black and sinister.

He stared at the window depicting the convent’s patron saint, Thomas, and his martyrdom, for some time.

And then boredom and annoyance broke his meditation and he began to pace again.

His second bout of boredom was lightened by the arrival of two nuns in the grey habit of the order, but they had their kirtles on, open at the neck and with their sleeves rolled up. Both had heavy gloves on, tanned faces, and they bore an eagle on a perch between them.

An eagle.

Both of them bowed politely to the captain and left him with the bird.

The captain waited until they were clear of the hall and then walked over to the bird, a dark golden brown with the dusting of lighter colour that marked a fully mature bird.

‘Maybe a little too fully mature, eh, old boy?’ he said to the bird, who turned his hooded head to the sound of the voice, opened his beak, and said ‘Raawwk!’ in a voice loud enough to command armies.

The bird’s jesses were absolutely plain where the captain, who had been brought up with rich and valuable birds, would have expected to see embroidery and gold leaf. This was a Ferlander Eagle, a bird worth-

– worth the whole value of the captain’s white harness, which was worth quite a bit.

The eagle was the size of his entire upper body, larger than any bird his father – the captain sneered internally at the thought of the man – had ever owned.

‘Raaaawk!’ the bird screamed.

The captain crossed his arms. Only a fool released someone else’s bird – especially when that bird was big enough to eat the fool – but his fingers itched to handle it, to feel its weight on his fist. Could he even fly such a bird?

Is this another of her little games?

After another interval of waiting, he couldn’t stand it any more. He pulled on his chamois gloves and brushed the back of his hand against the talons of the bird’s feet. It stepped obligingly onto his wrist and it weighed as much as a pole-axe. More. His arm sank, and it was an effort to raise the bird back to eye level and place it back on its perch.

When it had one foot secure on the deerskin-padded perch, it turned its hooded head to him, as if seeing him clearly, and closed its left foot, sinking three talons into his left arm.

Even as he gasped, it stepped up onto its perch and turned to face him.

‘Rawwwwwwwk,’ it said with obvious satisfaction.

Blood dripped over his gauntlet cuff.

He looked at the bird. ‘Bastard,’ he said. And he went back to pacing, albeit he now cradled his left arm in his right for twenty trips up and down the hall.

His third bout of boredom was broken by the books. He’d given them only a cursory glance on his first visit, and had dismissed them. They displayed the usual remarkable craftsmanship, superb calligraphy, painted scenes, gilt work everywhere. Worse, both volumes were collections of the Lives of the Saints, a subject in which the captain had no interest whatsoever. But boredom drove him to look at them.

The leftmost work, beneath the window of Saint Maurice, was well-executed, the paintings of Saint Katherine vivid and rich. He chuckled to wonder what lovely model had stood in a monk’s mind, or perhaps a nun’s, as the artist lovingly re-created the contours of flesh. Saint Katherine’s face did not show torment, but a kind of rapture-

He laughed and passed to the second book, pondering the lives of the devout.

What struck him first was the poor quality of the Archaic. The art was beautiful – the title page had a capital where the artist was presented, sitting on a high stool, working away with a gilding brush. The work was so precise that the reader could see that the artist was working on the very title page, presented again in microcosm.

The captain breathed deeply in appreciation of the work, and the humour of it. And then he began to read.

He turned the page. He imagined what his beloved Prudentia would have said about the barbaric nature of the writer’s Archaic. He could all but see the old nun wagging her finger in his mother’s solar.

Shook his head.

The door to the Abbess’s private apartments opened and the priest, hurried past, hands clasped together and face set. He looked furious.

Behind him, the Abbess gave a low laugh, almost a snort. ‘I thought you’d find our book,’ she said. She looked at him fondly. ‘And my Parcival.’ She indicated the bird.

‘I can’t see how such a brutally bad transcription merited the quality of artist,’ he said, turning another page. ‘I thought as much f that’s your bird, you are braver than I thought.’

‘Am I?’ she asked. ‘I’ve had him for many years.’ She looked fondly at the bird, who bated on his perch. ‘Can you not see why the book is so well wrought?’ she asked with a smile that told him that there was a secret to it. ‘You do know that we have a library, Captain? I believe that our hospitality might extend as far as allowing you to use it. We have more than fifty volumes.’

He bowed. ‘Would I shock you if I said that the Lives of the Saints held little interest for me?’

She shrugged. ‘Posture away, little atheist. My gentle Jesu loves you all the same.’ She gave him a wry smile. ‘I am sorry – I would love to spar with you all morning, but I have a crisis in my house. May we to business?’ She waved him to a stool. ‘Still in armour,’ she said.

‘We are still on the hunt,’ he said, crossing his legs.

‘But you killed the monster. Don’t think we are not grateful. In fact, I regret taking the tone I did, especially as you lost a man of great worth, and since you were so very effective.’ She shrugged. ‘And you have done your work before the new month – and before my fair opens.’