The Red Knight

here than when I was first a novice – more families. And yet. When I was young, nobles hunted the Wild in the mountains – expeditions into the Adacrags were a knight errant’s dream. The convent used to host them in our guest house.’ She glanced out the window. ‘The border with the Wild used to be fifty leagues or more to the north and the west of us, and while the forest was deep, trustworthy men lived there.’ She met his eyes. ‘Now, my fortress is the border, as it was in my grandfather’s time.’

He shook his head. ‘The wall is two hundred leagues north of here. And as far west.’

She shrugged. ‘The Wild is not. The king was going to push the Wild back to the wall,’ she said wearily. ‘But I gather his young wife takes all his time.’

He smiled. And changed the subject. ‘Tell me what the book is?’ he asked.

She smiled. ‘You will enjoy puzzling it out for yourself,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t want to deny you that pleasure.’

‘You are a wicked old woman,’ he said.

‘Ah,’ she smiled. ‘You are beginning to know me, messire.’ She smiled, all flirtation, and then paused. ‘Captain, I have decided to tell you something,’ she said. She wasn’t hestitant. She was merely careful. ‘About Sister Hawisia.’

He didn’t move.

‘She told me that we had a traitor in our midst. And that she would unmask him. I was supposed to be at the farm that day. She insisted on going in my place.’ The Abbess looked away. ‘I’m afraid that monster was meant for me.’

‘Or your brave sister unmasked the traitor and he killed her for it. Or he already knew she intended to unmask him, and set a trap.’ The captain hadn’t shaved in days, and he scratched absently under his chin. ‘Who knows of your movements and decisions, my lady?’

She sat back. Her staff smacked against the floor in real agitation. Their eyes met.

‘I am on your side,’ he said.

She was fighting tears. ‘They are my people,’ she said. She bit her lip and gave her head a shake that moved the fine linen folds of her wimple. ‘Bah – I am not a schoolgirl. I will have to think, and perhaps look at my notes. Sister Miram is my vicar, and I trust her absolutely. Father Henry attends me at most hours. Sister Miram has access to everything in the fortress and knows most of my thoughts. John le Bailli is my factor in the villages and the king’s officer for the Senechally. I will arrange that you meet them all.’

‘And Amicia,’ the captain said quietly.

‘Yes. She attends me at most hours.’ The Abbess’s eyes locked with the captain’s. ‘She and Hawisia were not friends.’

‘Why not?’ asked the knight.

‘Hawisia was gently born, nobly born. She had great power.’ The Abbess looked out the window, and her bird bated slightly at her movement.

‘Put him back on his perch, please?’ she asked.

The knight collected the great bird on his fist and transferred his great weight to the perch. ‘Surely he is a royal bird?’

‘I had a royal friend, once,’ said the Abbess, with a curl of her lips.

‘And Amicia is not gently born?’ the Red Knight prodded.

The Abbess met his glance and rose. ‘I will leave you to make such enquiries yourself,’ she said. ‘I find that I am uninterested in gossiping about my people.’

‘I have angered you,’ said the knight.

‘Messire, creatures of the Wild are killing my people, one of them is a traitor and I have to hire sell-swords to protect me. Today everything angers me.’

She opened the door, and he had a glimpse of Amicia, and then the door closed behind her.

Given an unexpected moment of freedom, he walked to the book. It stood under a window of Saint John the Baptist so he began to turn the pages, looking for the saint’s story.

The Archaic was painful, stilted, ill-phrased, as if a schoolgirl had translated the Archaic to Gothic and then back, making grievous errors in both directions.

The calligraphy was inhuman in its perfection. In ten pages, he could not find a pen error. Who would labour so over such a bad book?

The secret of the book merged in his mind with the secret that hid in the corner of Alicia’s downturned mouth, and he began to look more carefully at the lavish illuminations.

Facing the tale of Saint Paternus was a complex illustration of the saint himself, in robes of red, white and gold. His robes were richly embellished, and in one hand he held a cross.

In the other hand he held an alembic instead of an orb, and inside the alembic were minute figures of a man and a woman . . .

The captain looked back to the Archaic, trying to find the trace of a reference – was it heresy?

He stood up, releasing the vellum cover. Heresy is none of my concern, he thought. Besides – whatever that smug old woman was, she was no secret heretic. He walked slowly across the hall, his sabatons clinking faintly as he walked, and his mind still on the problem of the book. She was right, damn her, he thought.

Heading North – A Golden Bear

The mother bear swam until she could no longer swim, and then she lay up all day, cold to the bone and weary from blood loss and despair. Her cub sniffed at her and demanded food, and she forced herself to move to find some. She killed a sheep in a field and they fed on it; then she found a line of bee-hives at the edge of another field and they ate their way through the whole colony, eight hives, until both bears were sticky and drunk on sugar. She licked raw honey into the wounds the sword had made. Men were born without talons, but the claws they forged for themselves were deadlier than anything the Wild might give them.

She sang for her daughter, and called her name.

And her cub mewed like a animal.

When Lily was stronger, they went north again. That night, she smelled the pus in her wounds. She licked it and it tasted bad.

She tried to think of happier days – of her mate, Russet, and her mother’s den in the distant mountains. But her slavery had gone on too long, and something was dimmed in her.

She wondered if her wound was mortal. If the warrior man had poisoned his claw.

They lay up another day and she caught fish, no kind she recognised, but something that tasted a little of salt. She knew that the great Ocean was salted, perhaps the river had a spring run of sea fish.

They were easy to catch, even for a wounded bear.

There were more hives at a field edge, whose outraged human guard lofted arrows at them from his stone croft. None of them struck home, and they slipped away.

She had no idea where she was, but her spirit said to go north. And the river flowed from her home, she could taste the icy spring run off. So she kept moving north.

The Great North Road – Gerald Random

Gerald Random, Merchant Adventurer of Harndon, looked back along the line of his wagons with the satisfaction of the captain for his company, or the Abbot for his monks. He’d mustered twenty-two wagons of his own, all in his livery colours, red and white, their man-high wheels carefully painted with red rims and white spokes; the sides of every wagon white with red trim, and scenes from the Passion of the Christ decorating every side panel, all the work of his very talented brother-in-law. It was good advertising, good religion, and it guaranteed that his carters would always form his convoy in order – every man, whether they could not read or figure or not, knew that the God Jesu was scourged by knights in their guard room, and then had to carry his own cross to Golgotha.

He had sixty good men, mostly drapers’ and weavers’ men, but a pair of journeymen goldsmiths and a dozen cutlers, and some bladesmiths and blacksmiths, a handful of mercers and grocers too, all armed and well armoured